“Coming about, sir. Sensors report nothing on long range scans.”

Jareth sat in the center seat of the Vengeance, the biggest battle-cruiser in the Imperial Fleet, long legs spread in front of him and a scowl on his face as he listened to the continuous reports from the bridge crew. Consoles flashed and beeped, their chatter a constant he’d gotten used to over time.

He’d lived for this before, patrolling the borders and more dangerous areas of space, but now all he wanted to do was order the damn ship around and hightail it back home. Back to Keliana, who he’d make his wife in…he checked the time again… Three days, two hours, and fourteen minutes.

“Very good. Move onto sector seventeen-alpha and recommence scanning. Check everything. If a pirate so much as looked at this sector with interest, I want to know about it. The bastards have to be hiding somewhere.”

“Yes sir, of course.” Major Terr Benedict, the ship’s executive officer, replied calmly, her voice pitched over the general quiet hum of the bridge. He turned slightly and arched an eyebrow at her, easily catching the edge of amusement in her tone.

When Sethan was aboard the Vengeance, Jareth became the executive officer, with Terr as his second. A career soldier from a military family, with ice blonde hair, blue eyes, and trim figure, she was easy on the eye. Not that he’d ever told her as much, he’d seen the mess she made of newbie commandos who thought any woman in the uniform was fair game and besides, he liked his women small and delicate…just like Keliana.

“Out with it,” he ordered, his voice gruff. There was no need to hide his bluntness from Terr, she was more than used to it.

“I have no clue what you mean, sir.” She gave him wide-eyed and innocent. It was a good look, totally believable on first glance. Apart from the fact he knew her better. She’d fleeced many a recruit during poker nights with that butter wouldn’t melt expression.

“Bullshit. If you’ve got something to say, out with it.”

A smirk crossed her lips, her blue eyes warm with amusement. “It’s just…well. They say the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Nice to see some sayings are true, cause you’ve fallen so hard we’ve practically got a dent in the deck plating. Sir,” she added at the end, the smirk developing into a full on grin.

“I think it’s sweet. You two are so obviously in love. The colonel and the courtesan…it’s so sweet!” She sighed, her eyes unfocused for a second and a soft smile on her lips.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t tell me you’ve gone all soft on me,” Jareth groused, more than a little startled to see the dreamy look on the hard as nails major’s face. Like the Vengeance chief medical officer, Sedj, Terr was a woman who could chew a bulkhead and piss laser particles and that was on a good day. He’d seen both in action and they weren’t women he wanted pissed at him, for any reason.

“Nothing soft about romance, just glad some people around here are getting some.” She dropped her gaze as something on the console in front of her caught her attention and frowned. “Sir, I have an incoming call routed to the Vengeance, but displaying your personal code. Would you like to take it here or in the Captain’s office?”

“How odd. Yes, display it on the command holo please. What’s the originating code?”

His frown matched hers. Why someone would be routing a transmission to him through the ship’s mainframe he didn’t know. Most people used his personal codes, which as he was signed into the command chair, should have been routed through the small console on the arm.

“That’s just it. There isn’t one. Punching it through,” she said, and looked up as the holoscreen in front of the command section flickered into life.

“Fuck me…” Her voice trailed off as an image formed on the screen in front of them. A bed, and a couple in the throes of passion—the man’s tall, muscled body moving over the delicate slenderness of his partner. She was turned away, the man’s bigger form covering her protectively and possessively. Moans and pants, the sounds of passion, reached their ears.

“Oh…baby…feels so good.”

Jareth’s blood ran cold as he recognized the room first. The cream and violet hangings that Keliana had picked out just last week and the cream comforter on the bed.

“That’s it baby… You’re good. Milk daddy’s cock…ugh… Fuck!”

The woman’s hands moved and his gaze latched onto one, his pulse pounding in his ears as he recognized the narrow bracelet on her wrist. His world narrowed down to that one sight as the couple on screen reached the zenith of their passion. The guy’s hips surged forward, his bare ass on screen mocking as he fucked Jareth’s woman.

“Fuck…has to be a fake. I’ll—”

“No,” Jareth cut off Terr’s sentence with an upraised hand. “Pause play, move back six seconds. There… Enlarge quadrant four.”

As the requested section of the screen changed, zooming in so he could see the detail on the bracelet, Jareth slumped back in his chair. He didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to believe that Keliana would play him false, but the evidence was right there on screen.

If it had just been the room, the bed and someone dressed like her, he would have shrugged it off and gotten Terr to send the clip down to the techies to rip it apart and prove it was a fake. But his gut told him the woman on the bed was Keliana. The enlarged section showed her hand and the small cut just above the knuckle on her index finger from when she’d tried to make him lunch two days ago.

He held still as pain roared through him, blinding in its intensity as feral rage clawed at his gut. The need to hit something filled him. To last out, rip…tear. Destroy something. He didn’t care what. Anything to ease the agony making a playground of his body and stomping his heart into the dust.

“It could be a fake,” Terr said softly as she blanked the screen. “Just let me send it down—”

Jareth surged to his feet, shaking his head. He didn’t want it sent down to the techs. There was no point. It wasn’t a fake. She’d fucked another man, in their bed.

“Send a message to the palace. Call off the wedding. I want her gone before we get back,” he ordered, and stormed off the bridge, heading for the practice rings. Perhaps beating the crap out of something until he collapsed too exhausted to care would help.

* * *

“Ugh.”

Keliana came back to consciousness with a thick head and a stomach so queasy she didn’t have to open her eyes to know the room would be spinning around her. Gingerly she cracked an eyelid and winced. She was still in bed, the canopy above her zooming in and out of focus until she screwed her eyes shut again. Memory slammed into her in a chaotic jumble of thoughts and she groaned again. How long had she been out?

She stretched her hand out and felt gingerly for the edge of the bed. She had to raise the alarm, contact Jareth and let him know what happened. A surge of panic hit her, her eyes opening wide before she remembered how much her head hurt. She hissed and curled up on her side as pain stabbed through her head like a heated knife through butter.

By degrees the pain dropped to a manageable throb and she risked opening her eyes a little. Curling her fingers around the edge of the bed-pad, she pulled herself toward it, trying to keep her head as still as possible. It felt as delicate and fragile as a Cawson’s egg. Every movement was agony and she had to keep stopping to catch her breath. The quiet of the apartment surrounded her. The click of the chronometer on Jareth’s side of the bed merged with the soft rustle of the curtains by the open window.

Outside, the sounds of the city were little more than a muffled hum as, nearby, the palace clock chimed twice. She winced at the cascading musical chime. She hated that fucking clock. Located just above the harem, it had ruled her life with mechanical precision, the routines of the women dictated by its chimes.

Two in the morning. It had been just before nine when she’d come back to the apartment. She’d been out five hours. Despite the pain, she kept moving. She had to find out if anything was missing from Jareth’s office. She knew he was one of the top dogs in Sector Seven, which was enough to give anyone pause, but she didn’t know exactly what he did. There were lots of maps and talks about locations that were strategic, or viable…whatever that meant. Still, whether she understood it or not, the information in his office was valuable to someone, somewhere, and if whoever had broken in and attacked her had it, then they could hurt the man she loved.

Inch by inch she worked her way to the edge of the bed, then tried to swing her legs down and push herself into a sitting position. It didn’t work. The complex movement, so easy any other day of the week, was beyond her. Her hand slipped as her feet hit the floor and she lost what little balance she’d had, ending up in a crumpled and pain-filled heap at the side of the bed.

“Lady’s tits.”

Her voice was little more than a mutter as she used the bed for support and struggled to her knees. The pain of the fall cleared some of the fuzziness from her head. It was worth the bruises if she could think straight. Finally she managed an upright stance, locking her legs as she swayed like a reed in the wind.

Bile rose and her stomach complained about the whole standing up deal, tempting her with thoughts of lying still on a cool bathroom floor until she felt better, but she forced it down. She could fall apart later, after she’d let Jareth know so he could be prepared for whatever these people wanted.

She took a faltering step, one bare foot sinking into the plush carpet, and she realized she still had a shoe on. Looking down, she grimaced. Her gown, one of the pretty new ones Jareth had given her, hung at her sides in a tattered mess. Her attacker had torn it down the middle when he’d pretended to fuck her. She stripped it with shaking hands, dropping the fabric in the corner as she dragged the robe from the back of a nearby chair over her nakedness.

Questions crowded into her mind as she staggered from the bedroom, rebounding off the door and navigating the main rooms with rapidly increasing speed as the drug burnt from her system. Who…why? And why just pretend to attack her?

Did you get it?

She paused, resting her head against the cool wood of Jareth’s office door and groaned as the pieces started to slot into place. She was so fucking dumb, they’d had recording equipment. It was all a set up, but why? There was no point in someone blackmailing her—she didn’t have anything of worth, everything belonged to Jareth, even when they married right up until she’d born his first child.

Cold chills fought down the warm feeling that suffused through her at the thought of carrying his baby…their baby. Perhaps it wasn’t to blackmail her, but Jareth himself. As a new prince he had to be careful of his position and status and a vid of his new wife, his ex-whore of a new wife, in bed with another man would ruin any political ambitions before they’d even started. Whatever, the fallout if he’d already seen the recording and believed it could cause problems, perhaps even delay the wedding as they sorted it out.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck.”

She pushed the door open and stumbled into his office, then stopped dead, eyes wide as she scanned the room. Nothing was out of place, the room as spic and span as if he’d just walked out of it. Even the file left in the middle of the desk was slight askew from where the edge of his jacket had caught it when he’d stood to kiss her good-bye.

A frown creased her brow, confusion rolling through her. Why hadn’t they taken anything? She needed to call him, let him know what had happened, then call security. If someone had managed to get into a prince’s apartments, then they had a breech somewhere. She stepped forward, intent on using the console on his desk to try and reach him when the sound of the door opening in the main room reached her ears.

“Lady Keliana?”

Her breath left her in a rush as she recognized the voice. For one horrible moment she’d thought it was those men, back again but the rich, warm tones were ones she recognized. Major Bane, the Sector Seven soldier who’d been nice to her. If anyone could help her, he would.

Robe clutched around her, she rushed into the main room, the story on the tip of her tongue to come tumbling out. One look at the expression on his face stopped her in her tracks. Standing in the middle of the room this wasn’t the laughing, charming man she remembered. Instead his green eyes were cold, like chips of emerald as his hard gaze swept over her.

“Colonel Nikolai sent me.” His voice was as cold as his expression. “You’re leaving. Now.”

She pulled back, wrapping her arms around her body protectively. They’d already done it. Jareth had seen the recording of the attack.

“I can’t, I need to speak to him. To Ja—to Colonel Nikolai,” she started but he cut her off, shifting position and folding his arms over his broad chest.

If he’d looked dangerous when he’d walked into the room, now he looked like the stone-cold killer she knew most of the elite commando’s had to be. The best of the best, with all that entailed, they were responsible for Prince Sethan’s safety, as well as being the guys the prince sent in when the shit had hit the fan and there was no resolution other than bloody and brutal violence. It hadn’t bothered her before but now it did, this time she believed he might actually use the weapons he had to be carrying concealed about his body.

Blood drained from her face, leaving her light-headed. She wasn’t a brave person, not by any stretch of the imagination, and last night’s attack, combined with the lingering effects of the drug they’d given her was enough to push her to the edge.

“Please, there was someone here…he ma—”

His lips twisted into an ugly little smile. “Sweetheart, he ‘made me do it’ is the oldest excuse in the book. Try another one.”

“I’m telling the truth. There were two of them. They gave me something, held me down. Please, you have to believe me,” she begged, taking swift steps toward him, her hand outstretched pleadingly to touch his arm.

He curled his lip, looking down at her hand as though it were venomous. She snatched it back, color flaring in her cheeks as he looked at her in disgust. It was a look she was familiar with, one she’d seen nearly every day of her life as a courtesan. The one that said she was good enough to fuck, but nowhere near good enough for anything else.

“You looked plenty willing enough, moaning and groaning like that.” He grabbed her arm and walked her back toward the bedroom. She bit her lip at the cruel pinch of his fingers as he shoved her through the door ahead of him.

“Belongings, now. A few…nothing expensive, no jewels. And think yourself lucky I’m such a nice guy. Nikolai wanted you thrown out in whatever you were wearing.” He flicked a glance over her thin robe and single slipper. “Like that, you’d get picked within minutes by the street gangs, and hustled into one of the Hosan-dens.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her heart dropped, the great yawning chasm within her soul making her close her eyes for a moment to combat the dizziness that swam up out of it to claim her. Jareth wanted her thrown out.

“He’s seen the recording.”

She didn’t know how she was moving, speaking, but she was, moving about the room on autopilot to gather a few things. As if she was divorced from her body, she watched her hands pick plain undergarments and stuff them in the small duffle he threw on the bed as he headed into the bathroom. A moment later he was back with a few toiletries, just the bare essentials, his large hands dwarfing them as he shoved them in the bag beside the few changes of clothes she’d added.

“Yeah. So have I.” He stopped and looked at her, his expression frustrated. “Why? The stupid bastard was head over heels for you, would’ve given you anything you wanted. Why’d you go and throw it all away?”

Tears welled, stabbing the back of her eyes with all the glee of a knife-fetish serial killer as she shook her head silently.

“I didn’t. I know you don’t believe me,” she added quickly, hands out in entreaty. “But I didn’t do it on purpose. They were waiting for me, held something over my mouth…it made me feel sick and dizzy. When h-he…he didn’t…”

She covered her mouth, bile rising with the combination of memory and the overwhelming realization that this had ruined everything. She’d just thought Jareth seeing the recording would delay the wedding until they could deal with whatever the attackers were demanding. It had never crossed her mind that this could be it, that he would believe that she could do something like that. That she could cheat on him, in the bed they’d shared.

“Didn’t what?” Devil asked, eyebrow raised. “Com’on doll, give me something to work with here?”

She shook her head, tears pouring down her cheeks unchecked. “He didn’t do anything, it was all a show. He didn’t put… His cock wasn’t hard. We didn’t have sex.”

Devil laughed. A short, hard bark as he shook his head. “That’s gotta be the worst fucking excuse I’ve ever heard. We have to leave before he sends someone to check I’ve thrown you out. So if you want to leave dressed, do it now.”

She nodded, grabbing the nearest things she could and disappearing into the bathroom. Her hands shook to match her breathing as she stripped off the thin robe and yanked underwear, then a simple tunic and pants on as she tried not to think. She made it as far as the shoes before she couldn’t fight the bile any longer.

Dropping to her knees she hunched over the toilet bowl and lost the contents of her stomach, meager though they were. Dry heaves combined with her sobs in a continuous circuit of misery. She wanted to die. Just close her eyes and let it all drift away, drop into sleep and never wake up.

Strong hands pressed a cool cloth to her forehead, soothing words uttered in a masculine voice. Unable to think past the storm of pain swirling through her, she yielded control with a soft sigh and let Devil’s surprisingly gentle hands clean her up.