The Star Thief (Star Thief Chronicles #1)(45)
Author: Jamie Grey

The metal was cool against her back, even through her leather jacket, and she tried not to shiver. She stared straight ahead. “It was nothing.”

“Right. And I’m not a space Marine.” Finn sighed. “Want to know how I got this one?” he asked, unbuttoning the top of his uniform to uncover a puckered white circle on his shoulder.

Her eyes widened. “Gunshot?”

“Even better.” His smile was wicked. “One of my first missions out after joining MYTH, we got shot down on Devon Alpha. I was only a corporal then, trying to prove myself. We were trapped in the jungle with only our blasters and a few days’ rations.”

“Damn. That is not a friendly planet.”

“You’re telling me.” Finn refastened the buttons, then rubbed his shoulder as if bothered by phantom pain. “The remaining crew and I decided to make for the main spaceport and hope we could get there before the supplies ran out. Halfway there, a gang of Krongs attacked. Have you had run-ins with them before?”

Renna shook her head. “They’re fairly primitive, aren’t they? Live in huts in the jungle? No space travel?”

“Yeah. They still use spears and bows and arrows. And when they attacked us, one of the spears found the weak patch in my armor where the mesh meets metal. I’ve never been in so much pain. I had to walk around with half a spear sticking out of my shoulder until they could get me to a medicenter. The team called me ‘Pincushion’ for months.”

Renna chuckled. She couldn’t imagine Finn as a raw recruit. Even back in Blur’s gang, he’d been the one to order them around. He’d always seemed so together…so military. “At least it wasn’t poisoned. I hear the stuff they use has…special effects.”

“You mean the penis-shriveling kind? Yeah. I got lucky. I can assure you there’s no damage there,” he said with a sly smile.

Renna’s stomach dropped. If he grinned at her like that again, her insides might spontaneously combust. To distract herself, she shrugged out of her jacket and pushed up her sleeve. A long, jagged scar stretched up her forearm.

“I had a job go tits-up on Enill when I was eighteen,” she said. “The boss thought because I was a girl, he could cheat me out of my payment. He sent his men after me when I left his headquarters. One of them tried to relieve me of my earnings by threatening me with a laser knife. He got one swipe at me before I cut off his balls with it. I made sure the boss understood it would happen to him if he tried that again.”

They grinned at each other for a long moment before Finn unbuttoned his uniform jacket and tugged up the bottom of his shirt. “Okay, one more. I think I might have you beat.”

“Let’s hear it.”

He exposed the flat ridge of his stomach, and the muscles rippling there made Renna’s mouth go dry. Wow. She forced her face to stay expressionless as he pulled the shirt up higher.

“That scar, there?” He pointed at a thin white line high on his ribcage. “I grew up on Forever Station. When I was nine, my parents were killed while running patrols in the western traverse. There was a gang of us kids who ran together. Not much to do on the station, so we invented our own game. Vent diving.”

She shook her head. “Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not,” he said with a smirk, “but I’m going to tell you anyway. We would make up these elaborate races through the venting system on the station. Whoever could get from Point A to Point B in the shortest amount of time using the vents won.”

She chuckled. “Sounds like my kind of game.”

“I’d bet you’d be good at it. The thing was, you could only race through the vents not currently being used for air flow. And they switched those up at random times. When the hissing started, you had sixty seconds to find the nearest escape hatch or you’d find yourself sucked into the furnace area, or worse, vented into space.”

Her eyes widened. “Did that ever actually happen?”

He nodded. “Just once. A few months before I started playing the game. One of the older boys got stuck in a vent and couldn’t get out in time. A patrol found his body in space.”

Renna shuddered. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah, looking back on it now, we were idiots, but when you’re that age, you’re invincible. And I was the king of vent diving. I knew those things in and out. Good thing, too, because it saved my life. One time I got stuck in a vent that was turning on. Shirt snagged on something, and I couldn’t move. Longest twenty seconds of my life was trying to wiggle out of that damn thing. I made a mad dash to the hatch and, on the way out, sliced open my ribs here. I was lucky it wasn’t worse.” His voice dropped lower as he sobered. “I’d barely gotten into the main tunnel when the air was sucked out of the vent.”

“Did you stop diving after that?”

“Scared the shit out of me, but I was too stubborn to stop. Finally gave up a few months later when I got too big to fit.”

She ran a finger along the thin scar, his skin searing beneath her fingertip. Their gazes locked, and something warm and tight coiled in her midsection. She licked her lips as his gaze darkened. Whatever they’d fought about before, whatever conflict they’d had was gone. In its place, a haze of desire hung between them, so strong it felt like a magnet.

“Just a few more scars than the last time I knew you,” she said, her voice husky and low.

Her fingers slid higher, her palm flattening against the ridged muscles of his chest. Beneath her hand, the thump of his heart was as staccato as hers. Every inch of her tingled with awareness. And by the stark need in his eyes, he felt the same way.

Finn growled and cupped the back of her neck, crushing her mouth to his. His lips were hot and insistent as they tortured and teased her until she was gasping for air. His fingers tangled in her hair, pulling it from its ponytail so that it tumbled between them, creating the illusion of safety, of privacy.

He tasted exactly how she thought Finn would, like warmth and sweetness and strength. And when his tongue touched her lips, she opened her mouth to let him delve deeper, to stroke and caress until she moaned against him. Her hands moved lower to trace the muscles of his stomach, the chiseled spot where his hips met his torso.

Finn shifted so he could deepen their kiss, and Renna swung her leg over his to straddle him. His warmth soaked into her skin and made her shudder. Careful not to jar his ribs, she moved closer until there was only a breath between their bodies.