Deadly Pleasure

Deadly Pleasure

Spaceport Mercy, Book 2

Lexxie Couper

Published 2017 by Book Boutiques.

ISBN: 978-1-946363-27-5

Copyright © 2017, Lexxie Couper.

All rights reserved.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

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Blurb

No one on Spaceport Mercy knows who Corvan Jareth really is. Everything about the bouncer at The Steam, the port's most popular bar, is shrouded in mystery. The only certainty—don't piss him off if you value your limbs. And definitely don't mess with Emylie, his equally mysterious companion, if you value your life. That's all anyone knows, and that's the way Corvan likes it.

So who's the woman in skintight red leather who suddenly appears on Spaceport Mercy? The one with the massive partner known only as Forty-Two? The one asking questions about the secretive bouncer? And why do her eyes burn with familiar hunger when she finally finds him?

Corvan Jareth's dark past is about to catch up with him. And it couldn't be more dangerous. Or erotic.

Previously Published

(2008) Changeling Press | (2013) Ellora's Cave

Acknowledgements

Cover Art Design: Tabatha Bishopp-Scott

Cover Typography: Valerie Tibbs, Tibbs Design

Prologue

Galactic Union Covert-Ops Compound, Batrium Nuun’r Prime

Galactic Union Calendar 208

"Didn’t your mother tell you it’s rude to fuck and leave?"

Unit Zero Agent, code name Proserpina, glared at the man who was her mentor and lover as well as an efficiently lethal killer. Watching him shove long corded legs and his very impressive cock into a pair of Ezilian leather combat trousers made her shift on the tangled sheets. His cum trickled slickly over the inside curve of her thigh, making her sex constrict and her heart thump.

He lifted his gaze from the strafer now in his hands and his piercing silver eyes made her pussy squeeze again. "I didn’t have a mother. I do have a new target."

His deep voice—calm and completely composed—stroked the silence of the small room. Pulse leaping into wild life, Proserpina scrambled upright. Alone? Without me? What about my training?

The silver stare dropped back to the strafer, sure fingers checking the complicated charging system with blurring ease. Proserpina, your training is complete. You’re now the second-best assassin in the GU. Probably the second best in the known systems.

Proserpina’s throat grew tight. Second best?

One of her mentor’s exceptionally rare grins curled the sides of his mouth. "After me. You’re not that good."

He slid the strafer into its holster on his right thigh, and not for the first time since knowing him, Proserpina found herself unnerved. When had he strapped the holster around his leg?

She’d fought like a demon to be assigned as student upon being recruited by Unit Zero. More than one night had been spent spitting up blood, tending her injuries after a workout in the Galactic Union assassination division’s holo-dojo, wondering if she’d lost her mind, if it was all worth it.

What had kept her going through each and every brutal, bloody training session the computer created was the knowledge she was being watched. She’d felt eyes on her every time, studying her form, her technique, noting how she handled each broken bone suffered, how swiftly she dealt punishment to every simulated attacker fought. Every session, as she swallowed her blood, sweat and pain, she prayed those eyes belonged to Unit Zero’s most mysterious, deadly and feared agent.

Code name—Thanatos.

Little was known about him, other than when he was assigned a target, said target was dead within the cycle, regardless of who it was, how untouchable the target was supposed to be.

Sixty days into her training, after she’d shed more blood and killed more simulated targets than she’d believed possible, Thanatos himself had appeared in the dojo. His massive frame radiating an icy menace that had made her gut churn.

Silver eyes raked over her, marking her. Noting her scars and sweat. Making her heart thump with hope and her sex constrict with an excitement she’d never experienced before. She’d met his silent stare through the tangled mess of her hair, dragging one ragged breath after another through her nose, her blood roaring in her ears, her body burning with adrenaline. Jaw clenched, she’d lifted her chin, daring him to break the silence.

He hadn’t. Instead, with a barely perceptible nod, he’d left.

The dojo had shimmered around her, the training program she’d spent what felt like a lifetime in replaced by what could only be described as a torture arena, with weapons of every kind imaginable hanging on the walls. Waiting to be used.

Before she’d had the chance to draw breath, he’d leapt at her, seemingly materializing out of the arena’s shadows, smashing her against the wall even as his fist smashed against her jaw.

And so her true training began.

Over time he’d broken her, torn down her weaknesses, destroyed her inhibitions. Educated her on every possible way to extinguish a life—up close or from a distance. Taught her how to control every emotion she had, every fear, every thought. He’d remade her, sculpted her, molded her into an image after his own likeness.

Turned her into a killing machine.

She’d grown to hate him with every minute of each training day. Despise him. Loathe him and wish him dead—as much as she’d grown to revere and respect him. Almost as powerfully as she’d grown to lust after him.

He practically owned her. He’d tortured her, humiliated her, viewed her naked vulnerability with the same flat, emotionally detached eyes that gazed upon her naked body. Yes, his hands had brought more pain to her body than all her holo sessions combined. But the rare flashes of approval in his usually unreadable eyes had bolstered her pride and sense of self-worth.

He’d taken the unrelenting shame of her childhood—the parentless existence in a GU refugee compound where she’d barely survived, scavenging whatever she could barter, including her once-innocent body—and turned it into a poised, detached resolve more solid than the Five Moons of Maylaria.

He’d done all that and more, but not once had he ever done what she so deeply, secretly, desperately wanted him to do.

Fuck her. Claim her.

Until tonight.

Tonight, he’d walked into her cubicle, torn her vest open and thrown her onto the bed.

One orgasm so powerful she’d felt sure her heart would stop. One mind-blowing, body-crushing, explosive taste of his mastery. It wasn’t enough.

She feared it never would be.

And now he was leaving.

Proserpina studied him, letting her gaze skim over the chest both harder than Doirnn steel and smoother than Zondarian velvet, over the stomach muscles her tongue and lips had caressed only moments earlier. But I always go with you.

She mentally cringed at the whiny tone in her voice. Gods, she was a UZ assassin, not a desperate, clingy female. What in the name of all the hells was she doing?

Silver eyes studied her as he shrugged into a heavy and well-worn black leather jacket, the pockets of which Proserpina knew contained at least five weapons of death. Your training is complete, Proserpina. You’re now a professional killer.

She swallowed. Not just at the use of her code name, an ancient Terran name he’d assigned her after she’d survived the first week of his training, but at the smoldering desire she saw still burning in his normally unreadable eyes. Her pussy constricted and her breath grew short. He might be going on a mission, but he wanted to fuck her again.

Of course I am, she said, holding his stare.

The corners of his mouth twitched a little as he lifted his neutralizer from the room’s com-desk and slipped it into the waistband at the small of his back. You told me once you knew how to make an Itillian Slap. He deactivated the door’s locking mechanism and stepped into the empty corridor. Killing’s thirsty work. I’m pretty certain I’ll be needing that drink when I get back.

The door slid closed between them, blocking Thanatos from Proserpina’s sight.

She sat motionless, listening to the thick silence of her quarters, imagining his passage down the corridor, his massive frame dominating the narrow space, his finely tuned muscles coiling and flexing with each step.

He was gone. He’d left her and she didn’t know when she’d see him again. Or when she’d get the chance to make him that—

The glum thought faded away and a grin split Proserpina’s face. An Itillian Slap.

He’d requested an Itillian Slap.

The highly illegal and very potent aphrodisiac used by sexual partners to stimulate all the body’s senses during copulation. Wriggling on the bed, she took a deep breath, letting the musky scent of their passion seep into her being.

He wanted to fuck her again. When he got back from the mission, he wanted to fuck her again.

Feeling for the first time in her life like a real woman, she threw up her arms and dropped backward onto the tangled sheets, grinning widely.

I’ll make you an Itillian Slap, Unit Zero code name Thanatos. And after you drink it, I’m going to show you why you named me Proserpina, the ancient Terran goddess of birth-death-rebirth.

She wriggled some more on the sheets, breathing in the trainer, mentor and all-around lethal killer’s distinct, addictive scent.

"You may have created the second-best assassin in the known systems, she stated, smiling at the ceiling and seeing Thanatos in her mind, but I bet I’m the best lover you’ve ever had. I don’t want to be on my own anymore, and the look in your eyes told me you don’t either. She let her fingers dance over her pebbled nipples, down the flat plane of her stomach to the throbbing button hidden between the folds of her still-damp sex. Which means it’s time for you to experience a rebirth of your own."

She closed her eyes and slipped her fingers into her sodden pussy. "When you get back, your true training will begin."

Chapter 1

The Steam, Spaceport Mercy

Galactic Union Calendar 211

"Who’s goin’ t’make me?"

Corvan Jareth suppressed a sigh, his stare fixed on the inebriated, slightly swaying Mendovian waving a broken bottle in his face.

Every time a new ship docked, every time a new smuggler, illegal trader or bounty hunter landed on Port Mercy, he