Creed of Pleasure; the Space Miner's Concubine (The LodeStar Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

wrapping her arms around herself.
    Later was now. And now was the culmination of weeks of helpless anger and fear. For the second time in her life, she’d been propositioned to use her body to pay a debt. And this time she’d accepted. She wouldn’t fail Daanel—he was the only family she had left. Even if he would never agree to let her do this. She prayed he’d never know.
    She’d been preparing for those weeks. Amidst the hustle and bustle of packing up her apartment and helping Daanel organize the goods and displays he’d be taking from his shop in New Seattle, Earth II to Frontiera City, Frontiera, Taara had done some of her own shopping in secret, funded by Logan Stark’s credit.  
    She’d even, one never-to-be-forgotten day, visited a courtesan, an expert in seduction who discussed with her male sexuality and particularly how to deal with a man who was sexually backward.  
    The pilot was busy with her controls. Taara turned partly away from the other woman, and in the hollow formed by her body and the arm of her seat, she did as she’d done countless times these past weeks. She opened the holovid image Stark had sent.  
    In miniature, Creed Forth looked back across his shoulder at her. And just for a moment, she lost herself again in those blue eyes, in the mystery of whether a smile was about to break across his handsome face, curve up those sculpted lips.
    She wondered again how a man who looked like him could be shy with women. And said another swift, desperate prayer that Logan Stark had told her the truth and it was not because his brother was a deviant or sicko. He clearly wasn’t gay, because then Stark would have blackmailed Daanel into seducing him instead of her.  
    And what if Logan Stark was wrong? What if Creed Forth already had a woman stashed here that Stark didn’t know about? What would she do then?  
    The craft swooped, gravity loosing them for a sec, then catching them and carrying them down, spiraling toward the ground below like a bolt of fabric unwound. The protein shake she’d consumed at the Frontiera City spaceport roiled in her stomach.  
    Taara dug her fingers into the soft leather armrests. What would the pilot do if she locked her arms and legs and refused to leave the cruiser? She cast one look at the lean, freckle-faced woman in the pilot’s seat and bit back a sob. Probably unbuckle her safety harness and throw her bodily into the night.
    “No worries,” the pilot said cheerfully, misinterpreting her fear. “Been flying in and out of this place for years. I could land on a tree top with this ship. Have you down safe and sound in a few secs.”
    A tree top? That’s right, this planet still had vast forests of trees, and grasslands and all kinds of shrubs. What if they did get caught in a tree or shrub on the way down?  
    She didn’t realize she’d been mumbling her fears aloud until the pilot gave her an odd look and shook her head.  
    “Night vision readout.” She tapped one of the colored screens on the console before her. “Holovid, so it’s 3D. Quark, if I’d realized you were so scared, woulda shown you soon as we took off from Frontiera City. Don’t fly much, huh?”
    Taara shook her head, her gaze fastened on the holovid of the grounds below as if it held the secret to survival—which it did, come to think of it. She rubbed one hand over the burning in her abdomen.
    “Just airbuses on Earth II. I’ve never really been out of the city.” Many inhabitants of Earth II had not, since the only open land left was so polluted no one would choose to exist there.
    The pilot whistled a long, low note. “Whoa. You’re in for a surprise. The Frontiera Range is definitely out , all right. But it’s real pretty out here. Why, you prob’ly won’t want to go back.”
    Taara swallowed as the craft turned around in a slow, flat spiral, the lights—which were much closer now—spinning past the windows.  
    “I won’t be going back,” she said, more to