Page 3 of Smuggler's Beauty

Aiden’s stomach sank when his gaze landed on the stasis pod in the center of the room. Seemed his gut feeling was justified.

The pod hummed, the steady flow of power that kept its occupant alive buzzed with white noise on the air. It had more tubes flowing out of the back of the chamber than was typical. They emanated a golden glow as shimmering light pulsed away from the pod into a tank that reminded him of deep-sea diving equipment.

Aiden was sure this set up was not typical for medical equipment of this type. Stasis pods had one job; they kept the inhabitants alive. This was doing something else entirely. He was no meditech, but he knew that the damn things were not supposed to emanate light of any kind, let alone the shimmering golden glow that tickled his extrasensory senses. A panel behind the pod chamber showed a constant stream of medical data in neon that Aiden didn’t understand. But even he knew what a heartbeat looked like on a medical display.

“You were right. This is fucked.”

“Never ignore the gut, Cairn.”

Aiden approached the stasis pod. The top was a clear domed panel. The mechanism to awaken the occupant was a simple toggle switch. A wiser man than he would turn around and refund Vinnie’s advance. That man would listen to his instincts screaming that whatever was in that pod was trouble, and hightail it off this vessel before the inevitable return of whoever was keeping something alive in the middle of barely charted space.

Aiden wasn’t that man.

He gave the switch the lightest prod with his mind, and the dome shot off the top of the stasis pod. The unexpected lurch of machinery startled him and he staggered backwards in surprise. Determined to maintain his footing, he lurched forward, overcorrected in his haste, and fell face-first onto the woman who’d been peacefully asleep inside.

He caught a glimpse of silky blonde waves, a pale face with a button nose, and a lush mouth with a pronounced cupid’s bow. When their lips touched, her eyes shot open.

“Mmm. Pineapple.”

CHAPTER TWO

The flavorof pineapple on her lips shocked Evelyn awake. Every other time in the last five years that she had returned to the land of the living — well, the land of the hospital droid — it had been a sterile affair, accompanied by a gentle robotic voice announcing that a droid was about to take her vital signs and put her through the exercises necessary to keep her muscles from atrophying during her stay onboard.

Pineapple was absolutely not something Evelyn had encountered on the ship.

“Mmm. Pineapple,” she murmured.

The next thing she registered was that the pineapple flavor was emanating from soft lips that were pressed against her own.

An interesting development.

Evelyn opened her eyes to see a man hovering over her with a dawning look of horror. He was neatly tucked into what looked like a spacewalk suit. His deep brown hair was a little on the long side, parted in the center and pushed behind his ears. He was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, which must be for the aesthetic since eye correction surgery was cheaper than a sandwich in this part of the galaxy. He had a neatly trimmed beard, andlittle crinkly lines in the corners of his brilliant green eyes that indicated he smiled a great deal — when he wasn’t gaping at a stranger he’d just locked lips with.

Way nicer to look at than those weird, faceless droids.

Handsome or not, it was a little strange that he’d opted to wake her for her vital sign checkup by kissing her awake. Surely that went against some code of ethics.

“My breath can’t possibly be that bad, can it?” She blew into her hand.

No stench of rotting garbage. Good.

Evelyn preferred to handle most situations with humor. It was always best to save emotions like crushing mortification for alone time. Rejection, desire, ambitions — all things best not discussed aloud and dealt with privately. But she knew she could only get away with so much stuffing, and when the feelings on display weren’t her own, she was much better at coping with them. This man looked like he was debating the merits of vomiting or passing out, and just sitting in her pod wasn’t going to help him make a decision any faster. He was taking steady steps back from where she lay, the color draining from his golden skin with every footfall.

“So did Emil find some money in the budget to hire an actual phlebotomist, or are you here to service the droids?” She tilted her head to the side and studied him. He didn’t look like the kind of man Emil usually hired. Hair too long, and too much evidence of joy around those mesmerizing green eyes. Then again, you never could tell with technical staff.

This finally seemed to snap his attention back.

“Service the droids?”

“Yeah. Are you like, some sort of nosey repairman, poking around on a medivessel you’re supposed to be tuning up? No judgment. I’m nosey, too.”

“I am absolutely not a nosey repairman. Or a phlebotomist for that matter.” His hand tugged at his beard and he started to pace. Finally he turned around and looked her in the eye. “I think I’m supposed to be a rescue crew.”

Think?

Evelyn sat up. This just wasn’t a conversation to be had lying flat on her back. It probably wasn’t a conversation that was supposed to be happening at all.

The last time she’d come up, the droid had informed her she’d completed five years of the ten she’d agreed to serve for the sake and safety of her people. Surely that couldn’t have been five years ago. She was supposed to be tested at least once a year to make sure she could maintain the level of Amplification energy she was expelling for Emil. It was an ironclad condition of the treaty her father had signed — The Agreement, as she thought of it.