Free Mesmerized by Lauren Dane

marauded through the streets. She’d sewn up their wounds, had been their lookout when they’d nicked food or gear.
    He’d laughed with her. Been her shoulder when she cried. And then she’d been his in every way. Had given herself to him shyly, but no less beautiful for her inexperience. She’d been the place he was never angry. The person who gave to him without expecting something in return.
    With Piper there’d been acceptance. The quiet place in the noisy storm of his daily life. She’d brought him calm when the rage had pumped through his veins like fire.
    He hadn’t tasted her in eleven years, but the phantom feel of her skin against his fingertips still tingled from time to time as the ghost of her lived in him for a breath or two.
    The velvet of her voice still soothed, even as she teased. Maybe because she felt comfortable enough with him, even after all they’d been through.
    “What do you mean?”
    “You think so deeply. You just go away. Your eyes show it. Where do you go when you think like that?”
    He nearly choked, and she laughed. “ Oh! You were in that place. Tell me about it. Who is she, this mystery woman you were with in your head?”
    “A true man does not kiss and tell, Piper.” Desperate to change the subject, he held the valve up. “I think we’re good. I’m going to go see if that’s so.”
    She put a hand on his arm. “I’ll go with you. And then, shall we take a trip to town? See what business we can get our way?”
    He nodded, hoping she’d go out first. Of course she didn’t, and he had to hold his things in front of his crotch so she couldn’t see the raging evidence of just exactly what place he was in.
    Work then. He needed to put his mind back to the job.
    He’d checked in the night before, after he’d read over the data Benni had passed him. Mining for something. Clearly they were Imperialist troops, there to guard the dangerous open pit mines. No one would notice them so far away from population centers.
    Daniel would pass the information to Julian and Vincenz and told him to report in daily, even if it was to say he saw nothing. They had the key, at least one of them anyway. They now needed the lock. In the chip, on the very edge, there had been a sliver. Andrei assumed it was the material being mined.
    With the parts he found around the compound, he’d managed to extract enough data to send to Vincenz. He and Julian would figure it out and he’d hear back and they’d know what the next steps were. In the meantime, Andrei wanted to get closer to the Imperialist minister and his lackeys who had shown up there in the Portal town.

Chapter 6
     
    T wo days later, Andrei sat next to her in the truck as they headed toward the ramshackle cluster of buildings on the north end of the portal town often referred to as Thieves’ Alley. Though he’d been there a few nights before when he’d met Benni, the place was different in the light. Despite the ominous name, really it was several bars, a few houses of prostitution, boardinghouses and flats and food carts. Those streets had been his second home for years of his childhood.
    He pondered a trip down those memories, just to take his mind from the alarming rate of speed they traveled at.
    She drove like she did everything else. Fast and bordering on reckless.
    In the case of driving and flying, the pleasure of watching her so intent on her job, on the level of skill and competence she had, was nearly too much. Not that it would stop him from watching her. Watching her had become something of a favorite activity since he’d arrived.
    When they’d returned from running cargo, Kenner had told them that on his trip to town that morning, he’d seen some Imperialist types around. Imperialist types attempting to hire on a crew.
    “More troops around lately.” She slowed as they entered the more populated areas heading into the center of town.
    “Yes.” She had no idea how truly bad things were. He found himself caught