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  The Perfect Creation

  by Marie Harte

  THE PERFECT CREATION

  Science can create many things, but only a trouble-making Mardu can introduce Erin to the wonders of love.

  Knocked out and kidnapped by a beautiful fugitive who’s mistaken him for someone else is enough to turn Rafe’s day from bad to worse. A peacemaker, he’s sworn to uphold the law. But Erin brings out his protective instincts, as well as the mating urges he’s thus far in life been able to deny. When he learns this special woman is a Creation, an abomination in the eyes of the System and one that is to be terminated on sight, Rafe doesn’t just bend the rules, he breaks them. Now he just has to convince Erin his love is real.

  CREATIONS SERIES

  The Perfect Creation

  CreatiON’s Control

  Creating Chemistry

  Caging the Beast

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and plot points stem from the writer’s imagination. They are fictitious and not to be interpreted as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locations or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  The Perfect Creation

  Copyright © August 2017, June 2008 by Marie Harte

  2ndEdition

  No Box Books

  Cover by TINB

  This book has been revised and reedited from a previous release.

  All Rights Are Reserved. None of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for reviews or promotion.

  http://marieharte.com

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About the Author

  Other Sci-fi Romance Releases

  Creation’s Control

  Lurin’s Surrender

  A Civilized Mating

  Chapter One

  Planet Mardu, the Vrail System

  A CAUTIOUS GLANCE around her showed Erin she’d picked the right establishment. Raucous music and drunken carousing made it nearly impossible to hear anything anyone said. The illegal haze of popper smoke sat over the din like a blanket of obscurity, and the intentional darkness in the gaming bar more than told her the law was just as welcome, as say, someone like her. Not at all.

  Furtively keeping to the deepest shadows in the place, she kept her eyes open for the one person she’d been guaranteed could help her. The prisoners on Eyra had assured her that for the right price, Cheltam would do anything. And if it meant crossing System law, so much the better.

  Studying the slop of a watering hole, she had less and less confidence in the infamous Cheltam. Unwashed, hard looking men and women dotted the area. Shockingly, couples engaged in sex wherever and whenever they pleased, while others placed bets on anything from vid-displayed threll races to which woman over the bar would orgasm first. Not the best place to find herself a savior. But with no other option, Erin would do what she had to in order to survive. A large body bumped her, and as she turned to apologize, the sight that met her stunned her into silence.

  A large male shoved his trousers to his knees. He stood between the naked thighs of a heavily made-up female, one currently moaning and groaning as the male latched onto one of her bared breasts with a slick, open mouth. Slurping and sucking noises grew, grunts and straining flesh pressed at each other in odd places, and to her surprise, Erin felt heat rush to her face. What? I’m surprised? Embarrassed? Another thought occurred to her. I’m sexually aroused?

  Curious, as she’d never before felt the sensation, she watched the couple slam up against the wall, oblivious to their audience. The male pressed into the female, and without further pause gave in to her demands. He lifted her against the wall, wrapped her legs around his waist, then... Erin and several others shifted to get a better look. The male gripped something between his legs, probably his penis, and shoved inside the female with a long, drawn out groan.

  They moved against one another, and the male began pumping his hips. The joining ended rather quickly, with the male’s sudden stillness, a groan, and the female’s cries for more. Much like an animal coupling, Erin thought, no longer intrigued by the act itself. The pleasure the male appeared to have received, however, made her curious. In all her studies, she’d never quite exhausted human reproduction. Oh, she had the basics from books and such, and her sister was a fount of information, but a live demonstration had been deliberately avoided. Even her schooling on the subject had been brief. Why had Canunn left off that part of her education? And why had Synster been so adamant to instruct her in the act? Was this male’s pleasure the reason her Handler constantly looked at her so oddly?

  And why am I wasting time on this crap when I have more important things to do? Like keep my damned neck out of a peacemaker’s collar? Disgusted with her rampant curiosity, which, if she weren’t careful, would be the death of her, Erin bypassed the ragged couple and sought the tall, scarred man she’d been told would lead her to Cheltam.

  Trying to make herself appear much smaller, she hunched her shoulders, tucked into her stolen black netter’s jacket, and carefully stepped through the bar, trying hard not to invite undue attention. In addition to the darkness and smoke, the long collar and drape of her jacket sufficiently covered the parts of her not encased by long trousers and a thin sleeveless shirt. Boots and gloves hid her extremities. And the dark glasses on her face hid the unusual, mismatched hues of her eyes. One glimpse at her unique coloring and System law would be all over this place. The sinful denizens around her would have to be insane to pass up the exorbitant reward Blue Rim Labs offered for information on one of their “scientists gone rogue.” An out and out obvious lie, but they knew she’d never tell anyone the truth... not if she wanted to live.

  She grimaced at thoughts of the prison she’d recently escaped. Four hellish years, almost her entire life, spent surrounded by drab green walls and Eyran scientists. Everything had a reason. Everything, down to the last detail, was planned. Tests, tests, and more tests. Pain and numbness, followed by experiments that even now made her shudder in remembrance. And Canunn thought she would come crawling back home if given enough time in the real world?

  Erin huffed and moved faster through the bar. With her brother and sister now taken care of, she had no other thought than vengeance on her mind. Too bad the law couldn’t be trusted worth a damn. She glanced back over her shoulder and narrowed her gaze, calling on her second sight. In seconds the haze in the room cleared, and she plainly saw a pair of peacemakers—the ones she thought might have been following her earlier—talking to one of the huge thugs working as bar security. The guard, a Ragga, one of the System’s strongest inhabitants, would be invaluable in a place like this. Very few could defeat a Ragga, and though Erin’s own manufactured strength had been tested, she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out if the practical application of what she’d been taught would hold.

  Quickening her pace, she all but ran into the man she’d been looking for.

  “Sorry.” She coughed and deliberately lowered the pitch of her voice, fixated on the distinctive scar marring his left cheek. “You Dreyk?”

  “Maybe.” The man wasn’t thick enough about the torso and arms to be Ragga, but he had height and strength of presence. Somet
hing told her he could hold his own in a fight, and as she instinctively sized up a potential enemy, her body automatically readied to protect itself. It was with some effort that she maintained calm and held back her pheromones in the face of this dangerous male. Dreyk’s eyes were gunmetal gray and flat, the scar on his cheek pinching the corner of his mouth into an unhappy grimace. “Your contact?”

  “Wheller.”

  Dreyk stared at her a moment. Then he nodded, and she released the breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding. He motioned for her to follow him, and they left out of a side door she hadn’t seen when she’d previously scouted the bar. Dreyk opened the door of a nondescript rover, and she hesitated before getting in. Her instincts were screaming at her not to enter the vehicle, where her defensive maneuvers would be limited by the constrained space.

  “You come with me, or you don’t see him.” He waited.

  If she’d had anyone else she could turn to she would have. But she’d only been on the outside for four measly months, and two of them had been spent healing and evading the law. It had taken her a month to track down Cheltam, and as long to find a ship to stow away in to Mardu. She’d made it this far. A little courage would get her where she wanted to be soon enough.

  Taking a leap of faith, she entered the vehicle. Dreyk closed the door behind her and entered. He started the vehicle with the sound of his voice and set a course to their destination, then leaned back to let the conveyance lead the way.

  “We’ll be there in twenty minutes, standard time.” Dreyk turned to face her. “Not Eyran time, which I’ve been told is much more accurate than the common timestamp the rest of us use.”

  Her pulse sped and her heart raced at his mention of her homeworld. Eyra, a place she never wanted to see again, unless she stood at the controls of a Melan Warship with enough firepower to burn Blue Rim to the ground.

  Erin tried to shrug it off but kept her attention on his face and hands.

  “I can’t make out much more than your hair color. It’s what, red-black? But natural, I’ll bet, not dyed like the whores on Nebe6.” He narrowed his gaze. “And it’s funny, but your skin doesn’t seem to glitter the way it does in the description Blue Rim gave to the mercs.”

  Shit. How the hell he knew she didn’t have time to figure out. Because before she could move, he had a hold of her throat in one large, callused hand. “No sudden moves, pretty lady. I know all about what you’re capable of. If we’d wanted to send you back to Eyra, we could have shipped you off with those peacemakers in the bar.” Dreyk closed his hand tighter, and Erin fought the urge to struggle. Instead, she adjusted her body to need less air and deliberately calmed.

  “What do you want?” she rasped quietly.

  Dreyk studied her, his gaze impassive. “Not what I want. My boss wants to see you, and to see how high Blue Rim is willing to go. A hundred thousand beks is nothing to laugh at. And if you’re worth that much, he figures he can make you worth more.”

  The bastard. She wanted to rage at the unfairness of it all. That even a low-down criminal mastermind would take Blue Rim’s side before hearing her out. Dreyk gave a warning squeeze and let her go, nodding when she did nothing.

  “Good. Remain steady and silent and this will be relatively painless.” He smiled then, and the darkness in his gaze stirred her to an uncomfortable anxiety. Again, forcing herself to relax, she breathed evenly, gradually allowing herself a full intake of air. Erin hadn’t escaped a lifetime of imprisonment to walk placidly into the arms of a lying, cheating scoundrel. All the while scheming, she kept her eyes downcast and away from Dreyk. She also cued her body to occasionally shiver, and to curl in on itself, as if in fear.

  Unfortunately, that fear wasn’t all feigned. The instinct to please Dreyk, to do what he said, whispered at the back of her mind, and she fought the urge with satisfying success. Erin had been bred and trained to follow orders. First her Creator’s and then her Handler’s. Going against her need to please had been harder than anything she’d ever had to face in the labs, especially since she’d done it in secret, with no help from anyone but her brother Ryen. Hell, the scientists had no need to lock her in, not with that submissive imperative buried deep in her psyche. It had taken two years of constant trial and error before she’d been able to resist even the simplest of tasks, but nothing that would alert Blue Rim to her plans.

  Most of those outside Blue Rim that she’d come in contact with had been easy to ignore and evade. Dreyk, however, bothered her on a fundamental level, so she did her best to give him no reason to exert undue authority.

  The rest of the ride passed in silence. When they finally came to a stop, she remained frozen, pleased when Dreyk gave her no more than a glance before leaving the vehicle. He opened the door and pulled her out gently, to her surprise. They walked together toward an unremarkable house on the edge of what looked like a once-respectable neighborhood. Now it was rundown and festered with trash and street vermin—both animal and human.

  Dreyk punched in a code, the sounds of which she committed to memory. They entered into a dingy receptacle, where a scanner made note of her weapons. Dreyk raised a dark brow and waited, a hand out.

  Erin quickly handed over her pistol and the Easfran dagger she’d pocketed from the first Mardu thief dumb enough to misjudge her. Playing along with Dreyk set him at ease even more. Though the large man didn’t unbend enough to slouch, she read the ease in his body and contained an inner sneer, her confidence returning in force. She couldn’t wait to lay into him. Him and that scum Cheltam.

  Dreyk dumped the weapons in a storage bin that pinged a moment after disposal. A large door slid open, and they walked through it. Once past the entrance, the hallways showcased an altogether different house than the one she thought she’d walked into. The air smelled clean. The floor boards underfoot sparkled, and the walls had not a smudge or nick to mar the refreshingly bright yellow color.

  “In here,” Dreyk growled and nudged her toward a set of large furen wood doors. He pushed them open and followed her inside.

  “There you are. I’ve been waiting.” The man who stood from behind an oversized, ornate desk was nothing like what she’d been expecting. Yes, he had measuring, unforgiving eyes and a full-lipped smirk. He wore danger like a second skin, the menace inherent in his character there to see. Yet the sheer beauty in this Mardu male took her by surprise. Cheltam had shoulder-length dark-brown hair pulled back in a neat tail. His face was narrow, masculine planes and lines that hinted at a rough life. His nose was strong, his chin square and hinting at stubbornness. The stark cheekbones and exotically slanted eyes made her think of a jungle cat’s—golden and mesmerizing if one stared too long.

  “Cheltam.” She waited, wanting to hear him acknowledge his name.

  “In the flesh.” His gaze wandered over her. “All covered up I see. Smart.” He nodded. “You’re worth a pretty bek to the folks at Blue Rim. Not sure if it’s really because you’re stirring up trouble with science or not. Obviously interference in the scientific process is a criminal offense. But you must have seriously interfered with something big to be worth a hundred grand.”

  “Wheller had said you were a man who could help.” She wanted to smack the satisfaction off his handsome face. Instead she trembled and shrunk smaller. “Why won’t you help me?” Calling on the helplessness she’d felt all too often during her short life, she willed tears to her eyes. By the blessed suns, she managed to squeeze one over her left lid.

  Dreyk homed in on the tear trailing down her cheek and frowned in what looked like concern. Cheltam, however, didn’t budge.

  “Nice try, but—”

  Dreyk coughed at the same moment and offered her a cloth to wipe her eyes. Cheltam, dammit, was too far away to take down with Dreyk. But she feared if she waited much longer, they’d bring in reinforcements. When Dreyk shoved the cloth at her again, she slowly reached out a hand.

  In seconds, she’d taken the cloth, and Dreyk, to his knees. A wris
t lock kept him down while she pinched the nerves on his neck, at a spot at the base of his skull, to knock him out. As he tumbled to the floor, she crouched before shooting into the air, meeting the blow Cheltam aimed her way. She saw his eyes widen as his fist met her open hand.

  Good, she’d surprised him. But that wasn’t all she meant to do. Whipping her glasses off, she shocked him anew with her eyes and used that short moment of inattention to cuff his chin. The blow knocked him back enough that she could use what she knew of the Mardu to her advantage. Clamping one hand on his wrist and another to his thigh, she tugged on the inner bands of his feralis nerves and took him to blessed unconsciousness.

  The damage she’d done to both men would keep them out of it for at least half an hour if not more, enough time for her to scout the place, find some restraints, and then convince Cheltam that he’d be helping her, one way or the other.

  ******

  Rafe of Mardu swore as he checked his timepiece again. Gar had a bad habit of ignoring him to suit his convenience. It wasn’t as if Rafe wanted to be here, checking on his older brother. But Sernal, damn his hide, had ordered him to.

  “Either check on Gar and ascertain his readiness, or be prepared to take on the roll of Cheltam again,” Sernal, the oldest of the Mardu brothers, ordered. “Though I have to say, Gar makes a hell of a crook, almost better than you were.”

  “As if,” Rafe muttered and kicked at a fallen shoe. By Flor’s dagger, his brother was a slob. Gar’s bedroom looked as if a solar storm had lit it. Clothing scattered everywhere. Shoes, socks, and... hell, was that a woman’s undergarment hanging from the overhead fan?

  Rafe perked up, pleased at the thought that his brother might finally be putting the past behind him. Not that Rafe expected Gar to ever get over the loss of his wife and son. But hell, it had been nearly three years now. Three years of consuming grief, defeat and rage swimming in Gar’s gaze, one once so like his own. Whereas once he and Gar had been identical, the years of pain had ravaged Gar’s features, turning the once warm Mardu into a steely-eyed devil, one who liked nothing better than to annoy those he considered bothersome. Still, people who didn’t know them well took them as twins. As if Rafe’s head was anywhere near as hard as that of his stubborn idiot of a brother.