Free Pharon's Demon by Anne Marsh

Chapter One
     
    Planet Zemelda.
     
     
    Certain obvious difficulties presented
themselves when you came from a race of highly successful
intergalactic pirates. Bennu’s people had more than enough money to
buy their own small planet hidden in an out-of-the-way galaxy, and
her own brothers had proved quite happy to follow in the family
footsteps. Anhur, Kneph and Kontar were skilled thieves who
conducted daring raids in the small, bullet-shaped ships that her
engineer-mother had designed just for that purpose. Two of them
even specialized in reconnaissance thefts, going undercover to
spirit away whatever object had caught their fancy. Pin-up posters
across the galaxy featured their faces, smiling, winking and oozing
sex appeal. Catch one of her brothers and he’d brazen it out with
flashing dimples and smooth, golden charm. Bennu had watched women
melt at their feet, happy to hand over whatever piece of jewelry or
expensive statuary her brothers had been apprehended in the midst
of thieving.
    Her brothers were excellent pirates.
    She, on the other hand, was not.
    She knew how to skulk and dodge, how to
rappel up smooth walls and into security-riddled vaults and
mansions. She’d mastered those skills at just as young an age as
her brothers had. She could fence, shoot, and arm-wrestle an
opponent with as much élan as any of her brothers. It wasn’t the
derring-do part of things that got her in trouble. It was the
getting caught part.
    Bennu loved getting caught. Other thieves
feared being caught; they did everything in their power to prevent
it. She, however—she got hot and wet remembering the times she’d
been caught. And yet none of her captors had ever punished her like
she deserved. Like she secretly wanted. Hell, the last time, the
warlord from whom she’d been purloining a particularly spectacular
gold dagger had laughed at her effrontery and tumbled straight back
into his furs, without any other sort of prelude. She preferred more in the way of foreplay than spreading her legs, even
if he was deliciously large and brawny.
    There had to be someone out there willing and
ready to teach a girl a well-deserved lesson.
    Wherever he was, he wasn’t here. The Director
of Intergalactic Piracy Planning continued his lecture on her
shortcomings in the piracy-planning arena, forcing her attention
back to what her life was rather than what it could be. He
strode back and forth in front of his desk, the dark material of
his blacksuit pulling slightly over his paunch. Somehow he managed
to look stern and disapproving even as he advocated theft. You’d
have thought he was calling her on the carpet for kicking small,
fuzzy animals or stealing candy from orphans.
    “You need to pull your own weight around
here,” he concluded, clearly finishing up the canned part of his
speech.
    She took issue with that. “I do. Believe me,
I do.”
    He sighed, a disappointed sound as familiar
as the speech. “I’m sure everyone appreciates your willingness to
pitch in and do whatever needs to be done, Bennu, but there’s only
so far that fetching, carrying and creative accounting can get you
in this business.”
    Her last official job had been six months
ago—the warlord with the dagger. Her brothers believed her
spectacular failure to bring home the prize was due to a lack of
skills on her part. They’d spent every subsequent waking
minute—when they weren’t out collecting more jewels and gold coins
to add to Zemelda’s already overflowing coffers—training her to
sneak around and to disguise herself. They’d sent her clambering
over walls and sliding along ropes. Not only was the constant
work-out exhausting, but the only sexual satisfaction she found now
was what she gave herself. Living at home was worse than living in
a cloister. A quick hand job in the dead of night—particularly when
her family had the night vision of cats and were stealthy enough to
make knowing where they were more guesswork than certainty—was
nowhere