Free Stark Pleasure; the Space Magnate's Mistress (The LodeStar Series) by Cathryn Cade Page A

this place—here this week, gone when another more beautiful woman caught his eye, that drove her hot words. She was different, that was all. Just a novelty for him in his shiny world.  
    Whereas the debacle awaiting her in hers was of such a magnitude that those sinister wings were flapping under her breastbone again.
    Stark rose, setting his napkin down. Well, that was fine, glad one of them was calm.
    “A pity in a way,” he said. “You’d make an alluring courtesan.”
    Her face burned. Okay then. She knew what he thought of her. Still a whore, just a higher class of one.
    He shook his head, a crease between his brows. “Whatever you’re thinking, no. I wasn’t offering to keep you,” he said. “Though I would be glad to do that.”
    He’d be glad to keep her? She gaped at him. When his gaze fell to her mouth, she closed it with a snap. “Exactly what were you offering?”
    He walked around the table toward her. “To help you. We can discuss it later. Over lunch, perhaps?”
    “Um—no, I can’t. I’ve my business.”  
    “Dinner, then.” He pulled a comlink from his belt in one smooth motion. “Giles, Ms. te Nawa is leaving. Pick her up at the side entrance, please.
    “Giles will take you to the port. He’ll also pick you up later, if you wish.”
    She nodded, not sure what to say.
    “You can wait there,” he indicated a passageway at the end of the large area. “He’ll be up in a few moments. I’ve business of my own to attend to.”
    She waited for him to walk away, but he stopped beside her, his shoulder nearly brushing hers. He lifted his right hand and stroked his fingertips down her cheek. She stared at his collar, fighting the urge to turn her face into his warm hand.  
    Her gaze lifted as high as his cleft chin, then that firm mouth. It curved up slowly in a smile of pure amusement, but there was heat there too.
    “I’ll see you later, little cat.”
    That lifted her gaze to his. She frowned. “Why do you call me that?”
    His smile deepened. “Don’t you know?” he murmured. “Because you remind me of a sleek, lovely little cat, purring one moment, then hissing and showing your claws the next. You’ve Tygean blood in you.”
    “My mother,” she answered, torn between charm and irritation by his description of her.
    “Ah. Perhaps sometime we’ll visit Bryght, and see what effect the mating moons have on you.”
    And with this outrageous suggestion, he pinched her chin gently, turned and strode away, through a wide door that hissed open at his approach, revealing a glimpse of a series of holovid screens glowing, and then shut again.  
    The big room was very quiet, almost empty without his vital presence.
    Kiri forced herself to turn and walk into the passageway. As she entered it, the hatch hissed shut behind her.  
    She looked back for a sec and then squared her shoulders and walked toward the landing pad. Would she really be back, or was this the end of a brief, strange interlude?  
    Everything around her seemed slightly unreal, as if she’d wake up any sec in her tiny, noisy apartment and find that it was time to rise and hurry to work, with Logan Stark not even a memory.
    He wanted to see the effect of the mating moons of Bryght on her? Great God beyond, the man had no inhibitions when it came to making sexual suggestions. She blushed again, this time all over.  
    Full-blood Tygers, both male and female, were known throughout the galaxy to be transformed by the pull of their mating moons into sensual creatures still mostly human in form, but more big cat in nature, who for a week or longer craved sex more than food or water.  
    Her mother had given that up to travel to Earth II with Kiri’s father, but Kiri had read enough to know that being part-Tygean herself, the female mating moons of her mother’s home planet would have some effect on her too if she traveled there. Which she would never do. She might enjoy sex, but she had no intention of trusting her