Page 52 of Auctioned to the Convicts
“The nanites are doing their job,” he said.
Slowly, she flexed her hand with only a slight twinge of pain registering in her face. He cupped her cheek, hating that she was in pain, even if it wasn’t significant.
Her fingers danced over his wrist. A heat moved through him, straight to his cock as it did every time she touched him. Too many years without a woman, without someone looking at him as if he mattered.
“What are we doing, Vaughn?”
It had been an innocent touch. She didn’t want him, not in the way he wanted her. Oh, she’d offered herself to him, more than once—as payment. That fact still hurt.
Vaughn had seen the looks she cast at Ky’Li and Sersie. Even Ren. Despite the apparent acrimony between them, Ren’s eyes rarely left her, and she quickly defended Ren around Ky’Li, even when Ren didn’t deserve her championing him.
As Vaughn rose to leave, her hand slid under his shirt, to the small of his back. “Stay, for a bit.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not sure I can handle being alone right now.”
He sank back to the bed. Her hand moved in a slow up and down motion over his back. The lightest of touch, so sensual, and so freeing.
Credits. Medical services. . .fine, but pulling their unit together as a functioning team. . . She asked too much of him.
“I’m not sure I can give you what you want.”
“I haven’t said what I want.” Her hand moved higher as she rose to her knees behind him.
“You want us to get along. You want me to be friends with Sersie.”
“Is that so hard?”
“Sersie reminds me of Vance.”
Her hand stopped moving. “Someone close, I take it.”
“That obvious, huh?”
“Nothing gets people madder than family. For me, it was my sister.”
“The one you lost to drugs?”
“Amelia. My only sibling.”
“I lost my older brother Vance a long time ago. Brothers are supposed to watch out for one another, know what I mean?”
“He betrayed you?”
Did she really want to know about him? Her hands moving across his back like a feather across his skin was driving him mad. Maybe she was interested in him after all.
“He gambled,” Vaughn said, surprised at how easy she was to talk to. “Vance was always looking for that big payoff, not caring who he destroyed in the process. When he ran out of money, he used my ID to enter the med-center where I worked. Stole a bunch of nanites and medicine to sell on the black market. Security had vid footage showing me stealing from a locked cabinet. Except it was Vance. The med-center I worked at used facial recognition, not biometrics, in conjunction with IDs. Vance is my identical twin. He’s been passing himself off as me since we were kids. Anytime he got into a bind. I didn’t even know what the hell he’d been doing until I was sentenced.”
Her arms curled around his neck from behind, as she rested her head on his shoulder. Vaughn closed his eyes, trying to take in the moment, the illusion that she cared for him.
“He didn’t try to explain, or do anything to save you?”
“And take the punishment? No way. Probably never even blinked an eye when he heard I’d been arrested. Vance was about having fun, not accepting responsibility for his actions. I told them it was my twin. No one listened. They only had two doctors on Narkos at the time and needed a third. The worst part is Vance never had the guts to come forward, not even to approach me to apologize or say goodbye. No one came. I left Argus without a single word from my family.”
“Amelia didn’t care that she was destroying our family with her addiction.”
“You loved your sister? Mourned for her? I’m betting you even fought for her.”
