Page 45 of Escape Velocity

“And he found it?”

When Max clicked to another section of the file, Amber gave him a sharp look. “What do you not want me to see?”

He glanced at her, then back at the screen. “Okay. He says Tudor was holding a woman captive in an isolated part of the house. He’d hear her screaming—and pleading for the master to stop what he was doing. Then the pleading stopped. Either he sent her away—or she was dead.”

Amber’s face turned pale as moonstone. When she stood and headed for the door, Max stopped her.

“Stay here.”

“Why?”

“It’s not a good time for you to be alone.” He stood and wrapped his arms around her, stroking his hands up and down her back. Lifting her against his chest, he returned to his chair and sat, cradling her in his lap.

He felt her shivering. Her worst fears about the man who had bought her had been confirmed, and all Max could do was hold her and stroke her. He couldn’t lie and say he knew everything was going to be okay. The only thing he knew for sure was that they had pulled a fast one on a very powerful man.

Amber pressed her forehead against his shoulder. She was a very strong woman. She’d conceived a desperate plot and pulled it off. Now she was shattered.

When she began to speak, it was in a flat voice.

“We used to talk.”

He gazed down at her. “Who?”

“The slaves. Late at night when we were alone, we used to talk about the future—what kind of man would buy us, what we could hope for. We knew we were valuable property, and we prayed to the gods that we would go to someone who would appreciate us and wanted to keep us around for a while. Maybe a few years—until we started to get old looking.

He winced, imagining those late-night confabs among captive women who had no control over their future. “We knew from what the guards said that there was hope our life might not be too bad. We knew we were beautiful and desirable. And we knew there were men who might want to . . . have a real relationship.”

“Yes.”

“We also knew there were some very bad masters, and we knew their names. Tudor was one of the ones we feared. He ordered a lot of women, so we were pretty sure he wasn’t keeping any of them around for a long time.”

Max winced. “He could have been buying them to sell them.”

“That could be true, but not from what we’d heard. When I found out the guards were saying I was going to him, I was desperate to get away.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“I mean off planet. If I tried to stay on Naxion, they could recapture me—and the punishment would be severe.”

“But trying to escape still could have come out horribly.” She gulped in a breath and let it out. “I was so lucky it was you who showed up.”

He tightened his hold on her, hating to imagine this brave, determined woman going to a man who meant to abuse and kill her. She would be with Tudor now if she hadn’t pulled that trick at the beginning—telling him that the slavers meant to kill him.

He could have been angry. Instead he admired her. She had an agile mind—and a knack for survival. The same traits that had kept him alive for years in a field where a lot of guys made a fatal mistake and ended up as space debris.

When she raised her face, he gazed down at her. There was a charged moment when they stared intently at each other. Then she reached to bring his face down to hers.

He could have pulled back. He could have protested that they should be thinking about how to get themselves out of the swamp where they had landed. But he told himself that it wouldn’t hurt to give himself time to think. Sometimes when you didn’t focus on the answer to a problem, it suddenly came to you.

When she began to kiss him, he kissed her back—with passion but also with a sense that she was a woman he never would have met under ordinary circumstances—and that she had come to mean a lot to him in a very short amount of time.

Never mind that she had worked to make it happen. It wouldn’t have been possible if he hadn’t been attracted to her—and if he hadn’t admired her on more than a superficial level.

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Amber pulled back so that she could search Max’s face. What she discovered stole her breath away. His gaze was dark, superheated, and—vulnerable. Although she’d started off by tricking him into rescuing her, it hadn’t taken long to figure out that he was strong and capable—as well as honorable. All the things she’d done to get him on her side had worked because he’d known she was in trouble and felt compelled to help.

At first, she’d just wanted to be rescued. She’d even considered disappearing on the space station if she thought that would be to her advantage. She’d known that was a foolish plan as soon as they’d set foot in the great hall, and she’d realized she was like a toddler thrown into a jungle pit.

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