Page 57 of Star Prince

She halted, faced him, her mouth twisting bitterly. “My father sold me into sexual servitude. I was thirteen.”

It felt as if the floor dropped out from beneath him. He reached for her. “Lara…”

Her hand shot out, stopping him. She swallowed, twice. “I spent my teenage years as a receptacle for a man’s depraved fantasies. At mealtimes, the pig chained me to the leg of the table.Naked.”She searched his face for a reaction. “With a collar around my neck.”

He stood there, too stunned to move.

“One night he choked to death on a piece of meat,” she said breezily, a tone at odds with the rigid way she held her body. “After he tumbled off his chair, I used his key to unlock my collar. Then I helped myself to his ship and made it mine.”

She attempted to maintain the lighthearted tone, but it sounded false. “I learned to fly from what I’d read, watched, and heard. It wasn’t pretty, and I think I was in love with the autoflyer. I didn’t attempt a landing for months. I was more afraid of wrecking the ship, and my ticket to freedom, than hurting myself.” Her gaze softened a fraction with the memory. “Finally, when supplies ran low, I learned to dock—fast.”

“I imagine you did. And then picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, and became the best blasted tracker I’ve seen in years.”

She shrugged, suddenly awkward. Gann sensed that she started out wanting to shock him, but finished her story craving the solace she hated admitting she needed.

He opened his arms. “I want to comfort you. That’s all.”

She wrapped her arms over her small breasts. The bracelets adorning her wristsglinted in the starlight streaming across the cockpit viewscreen. “I don’t think I can respond in kind. Should you need me to.” Helplessly she added, “Shouldanyoneneed me to.”

“Of course you can.” He hadn’t realized before what he was up against. Now that he did, his heart went out to her.

“No. I’m…too closed up inside.” She pressed her fingers to her lips.

His insides twisted. “Lara, you are so full of fire, so full of life. Let yourself feel, let yourselfheal.Otherwise you’re condemning yourself to a lifetime of loneliness.”

The moment dragged out, tense yet tender. Then, miraculously, her arms lifted. He captured her fingers and drew her close. Strangely, his need to hold Lara went beyond wanting to console her; they had shared something, something he struggled to define. Sure of only one thing he bent his head to taste her lips, but she stopped him.

“He never kissed me,” she said.

Of course the monster hadn’t kissed her, Gann thought, feeling ill. “But, afterward, after you’d escaped, didn’t you…Haven’t you…?”

“Aye. Once. Years later. He was a trader I think. We went straight from the bar to bed, and I was so drunk he got right to business.” She shrugged. “After that, I thought, why bother?”

He had been raised to celebrate lovemaking and the relations between the sexes. Lara’s outlook andexperience were at utter odds with what he knew to be true. He pondered that and the way she wore her mistrust of theVashlike a coat of armor.Great Mother.“He wasVash,wasn’t he?” he practically growled. “Your keeper…?”

“AVash.Aye.”Her mouth dipped in a sneer. “Raised to follow the Treatise of Trade and torespect and reverewomen.”

“The man who abused you was an aberration, Lara. Sexual slavery is banned. It has been since the Great War.”

“Don’t be naive. It still exists. Granted, perhaps only here and there in the frontier, a place youVashsomehow manage to exploit without involving yourselves in our welfare.”

Gann spread his hands on top of the narrow briefing table next to her, his mind wracked with dark images of Lara abused by aVashwhom he prayed would suffer for all eternity to pay for his cruelty.

A place you Vash somehow manage to exploit without involving yourselves.

Her accusation rang with a truth he couldn’t deny. “But the lawlessness and lower standard of living in the frontier stems from neglect, not malevolence,” he defended. “Rom B’kah, our new king, once described theVashfederation as an old quilt—the center tight, the edges frayed. He wants badly to bring the frontier into the fold. He’s been working to do so…”

“How?” she demanded.

Ian.The answer came to Gann in a rush. Rom’s stepson was a frontiersman himself. In choosing the young, contested heir, Rom had proven brilliantly his commitment to the peoples of the outer reaches. Ian would be the first ruler with family ties to both the frontier and the Great Council. People on both sides would look to him for leadership. And once Ian was well established, no man would be better suited to lead the Federation into a new era where the quality of life in the farthest corners of the galaxy equaled that enjoyed in the central regions. Earth was the newest upcoming power in the area, and to right the wrongs in the frontier, the Federation needed that planet’s help.

“I’m deeply ashamed, Lara. You have suffered because of the Federation’s shortcomings. But with Rom’s son-by-marriage as the crown prince, I believe we can change what is wrong.”

She assumed her familiar, defiant stance. “The fact he’s notVash Nadahmakes me more inclined to believe it.”

Gann suppressed a smile. He supposed that was as close as he would get to an “I think you may be right.” He also had the feeling he had come as close as he was going to get for a kiss. But there were two-point-four days left to remedy that. He was more attracted to Lara than ever before.

He glanced over at a furry lump curled in her chair. “Look. Cat’s helped herself to our ship.”

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