Free Virgin by Cheryl Brooks Page B

startled by the summons and then irritated that he’d been disturbed. On top of that, it turned out to be Ava who wanted to see him, and he’d been just as abrupt with her as he would have been with any woman. She hadn’t helped matters by questioning his integrity, either. Was there a catch, she’d asked. Of course there wasn’t a catch! He’d given her his price, and she’d agreed to it. Why did she have to keep harping on it? Suggesting that there might be more to the deal was insinuating that he would try to cheat her out of what little money she had—or take advantage of her position as the lone female aboard his ship.
    Which he would not do.
    She hadn’t aroused him at all this time, and he’d been looking squarely into her pretty aquamarine eyes. It was a fluke, he decided. No point in carrying it any further. His earlier intention to entice her was a mistake.
    He’d acted the same way he always did with women—especially the pretty ones—adopting an abrupt, no-nonsense manner with them before they got the wrong idea. He’d been told many times that he was rude. He didn’t intend to be; it was just the best way to get them to leave him alone.
    But, he reminded himself, he didn’t want this one to leave him alone.
    Asking Jack for advice was out of the question. He’d never be able to tolerate the “I told you so” attitude she was bound to take with him. Well, maybe she wouldn’t, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. There was someone else he could ask, though. Threldigan. Yes, he would be perfect. He could talk a woman into giving him her firstborn male child and make her think it was her idea. Dax had never paid attention to the technique; he just knew that anytime the two men had been together, though a woman might notice Dax first, he was never the one she spent the night with.
    That’s because you never ask them.
    Dax had never asked a woman out for lunch, let alone anything more intimate. Zetithian men were purported to be the hottest lovers in existence, and ever since the refugee ship had landed on Terra Minor, the word had spread like wildfire: These guys are so hot that some asshole blew up their planet just because his wife took one as a lover. The fact that it was true hadn’t hurt the story any; Zetithian men were some of the best the galaxy had to offer—of the mammalian species, that is.
    Except for Dax. Maybe if that reputation hadn’t preceded him, he might have taken a chance, but with every woman he met expecting fireworks, he didn’t bother to try.
    When he’d been on the refugee ship with nothing but Zetithian women, he’d known they were difficult to entice and just figured he wasn’t any good at it. He’d picked up the scent of their desire once or twice when the other guys purred and knew his body could respond, but he was never the one they were interested in. Since he’d gotten his own ship and traveled the galaxy, he’d met loads of women who thought he was the sexiest thing alive, but he’d yet to meet any non-Zetithian women who did it for him. Except Ava.
    With a heavy sigh, he sent out a hail to Threldigan. He just hoped it wouldn’t backfire on him.
    ***
     
    Halfway through the movie she’d chosen, Ava was regretting her choice. The woman in the story was downright evil, and the man had been her unfortunate, if clueless, victim, which wasn’t the scenario she’d had in mind at all. She scanned the archives and wound up watching a slapstick comedy that at least made her laugh. What to do next was a dilemma of sorts, but the makeover thing was sounding better all the time. If she was drop-dead gorgeous, Dax might at least be civil with her.
    It doesn’t matter whether he’s nice to me or not. I’m going back to Russ. Remember Russ? The man who said he’d love you forever?
    But he’d never made her melt, and he’d never purred, either…
    The chime sounded, calling the passengers to lunch. When Ava arrived at the dining hall, the others were