Creed of Pleasure; the Space Miner's Concubine (The LodeStar Series) by Cathryn Cade Read Free Book Online Page A

get enough to reach that state.  
    His heart pounded hard, his breath deep and swift, his cock rigid with need in his soft pants, his hands clenched on the railing. Woman, female, softness and warmth, yielding and enveloping. He wanted her so badly he feared she’d swallow him up, never release him.  
    And that would be a cloak that contained no calm, no control for him. This, he could admit here in the dark of the night, was what he feared. That emotion, lust and need, should he loose them in himself, would destroy him, overpowering him and flinging him at a woman’s feet, at her mercy. That he would need so much and so powerfully that he’d give anything, do anything to possess her, to keep her.
    Logan and Joran had rescued him from poverty and chaos, but not before he’d suffered. They’d given him safety, care and enough to eat, sent him to school and forced him to stay there until he graduated, then given him a place in Logan’s burgeoning business. They’d given him, without saying the words, love.  
    But he’d craved something apart from the busyness of commerce. He didn’t care about wealth and power like Logan did. He didn’t feel at ease with females, the way Joran did.
    He’d found his something more in a chance meeting with the Zhen-Lou, when they streamed into the New Seattle docks like a healing wind and showed him that anger, even rage could be channeled, used for good instead of merely destruction. They’d cleaned out a nest of drug peddlers and other lowlifes. He’d witnessed the swift, brutal reckoning, then followed the cadre of quiet, lethal warriors to their lodgings and waited in the café, heart pounding, until one of them turned and looked at him, then beckoned him to their table.  
    Creed had been eighteen. The absolute confidence, their physical grace and discipline, the simplicity of their clothing and the daring with which these warriors accomplished what the local police had failed to do, sealed his future like a garment settling into place.  
    He wanted a life in which he was in control, in which he saw a wrong and righted it, and did so while holding himself apart from the suffering around him. And apart from the messy, confusing emotions that accompanied his urges toward the opposite sex. Females were too soft, too fragile. They let emotions guide them. Maybe that worked for them, but he wanted no part of it, couldn’t emulate their openness.  
    The intense, constant training he received and the meditations he was taught as a Zhen Lou warrior monk calmed the chaos and allowed him to live a life that was hard but simple, direct and satisfying.
    But for a long time now, he’d been unable to ignore that side of himself any longer. Yearning for physical passion had been working in him like a ferment, growing and churning until he feared it would overtake him. And if he let that become important, who knew what darker urges he’d loose. Men killed for lust, for possession of their lover of choice.  
    Shadows moved in the valley below. A herd of skrog grazed slowly along the river across the valley, the huge omnivores moving together. Nearer, a catamount slipped along from one shadow to another, tail curling behind as it trailed the scent of prey. A low mrrow signaled its mate waiting somewhere ahead.  
    A winged shadow slipped from the sky and dove, a small squeak sounding as a gyre hawk caught a rock rat or other small prey in its claws. It rose again with flapping wings, to meet another hawk circling.
    All the wild creatures had mates. A wave of cold rolled up through Creed. Loneliness. His arms shook as he gripped the railing and his head bowed under the weight of it. He’d been alone for so long. He had his brothers, a few friends, the people who worked for him, but no one to call his own.  
    Only twenty-eight years old, and he felt like an ancient soul. Like the Lost Warriors, wandering the stars in search of their treasure, the fabled Phoenixes, but never finding them.