Collision Course Read Online Free Page A

wear another man’s pants.”
    Her brief hope that he wouldn’t bother wearing anything below the waist was dashed when he snatched up his civvy pants. He stalked away to her quarters. She didn’t want him in there, but room wasn’t exactly plentiful on the Arcadia , and unless she wanted him stripping right in front of her, her quarters was the only place he could change.
    Not that she’d mind watching him peel off his 8 th Wing uniform, the serviceable gray material sliding off his arms, down his hard torso and flat stomach, until he pushed the fabric down his hips, then lower…
    Stop it . This whole forced mission was a screw job, and tangling with the commander would make a complicated situation even more difficult. She liked things an uncomplicated as possible—but she was coming to learn that, where the commander was concerned, nothing was simple.

    In Mara’s quarters, Kell quickly shucked off his uniform, his movements mechanical though his mind and gut churned.
    Why he was so angry? It shouldn’t matter if the clothes belonged to her one-night stands. It shouldn’t matter to him that she even had one-night stands.
    But it did. It mattered.
    He stared at Mara’s unmade bed. It was definitely wide enough for two. Had she brought them here, those men? Did she get these sheets twisted by writhing around with some brash space privateer? The image of her, sweaty and wild and sleek on the bed, came all too quickly into his mind, but it was him he pictured with her, not a swaggering pirate.
    As he stepped into his civilian pants, he felt the strange urge to find those random men and beat them into cosmic powder. For fuck’s sake, get a hold of yourself. He didn’t even feel jealousy about the women he did take to bed, let alone a smuggler he had no intention of bedding. A smuggler with creamy hair and taunting eyes.
    This is about the mission , he reminded himself. Nothing else.
    Still, after picking the one shirt that wasn’t either transparent or cut down to the navel, Kell took a grim satisfaction in using his regulation blade to shred the rest of the men’s clothing. He threw the remains into a waste compartment.
    Brilliant. Why don’t you just piss on them while you’re at it?
    He finished dressing, and was glad there wasn’t a mirror in her quarters. He didn’t want to know what he looked like.
    If the expression on Mara’s face was any indicator, he looked damn good. He ambled back to the galley, dressed in his closest approximation of a smuggler. She sat in the cockpit with her seat swiveled around to face him. Her eyes went wide, and he waited for her to laugh. Instead, a flush crept across her cheeks and she slowly licked her lips.
    “That’ll…work.”
    He glanced down. His pants were standard black cargos, and he’d strapped his blaster back onto his thigh. The shirt was also black, sleeveless, and cut for a smaller man. It fit Kell a little snugly, revealing every ridge and contour of muscle. Judging by Mara’s glazed eyes, she didn’t mind at all. Her gaze lingered over his exposed arms. He had to check the impulse to flex for her.
    “What’s that?” She pointed to his shoulder.
    He absently touched his fingers to the tattoo, an image of a serpent and a hawk locked in combat. “Something to remind me of home.”
    “Home.” She repeated the word as if she didn’t understand its meaning. “Where’s home for you?”
    “With the 8 th Wing, now.” Her question robbed him of any bravado he might have felt from her approving gaze. Coldness swept through his body, reminding him not just of the mission, but the reasons why he’d enlisted with the 8 th Wing in the first place. “You?”
    “This is it, now.” She waved a slim hand to indicate the ship.
    Neither of them asked where home had once been. Before the 8 th Wing, before the Arcadia. Yet the answer was there, just the same. A darker place. The kind of place that made them both find new homes for themselves, new lives. He