Read Online Thrill-Kinky by Teresa Noelle Roberts - Free Book Online Page A

one of Xia’s messes, because face it, they were funny. How could you not smile over fifty-two adorable kittens that all wanted to be your new friend, even if you then had to figure out how to return them to their rightful owners without anyone ending up in jail?
    This time, he was not smiling. He wasn’t talking. He simply froze, his normally cheerful gray eyes gone to a frigid steel color. That wasn’t good at all. That was how he looked when he was about to do something dangerous and probably illegal, but necessary.
    Gan, by his side as usual, was pointedly not moving, looking like a statue of a particularly good-looking, blue-haired Furagi, which meant he wanted to start something, but was waiting until he knew who he should be starting something with. Thank the stars Buck was taking his cue from Gan.
    Mik spoke slowly when he opened his mouth at last. His accent, which he’d deliberately shed decades ago, reasserted itself so he sounded like the outer-rim hick he’d been born as, but had risen above. “Don’t mind a little crime here and there. Crime pays.” He paused.
    Rita held her breath. When Mik talked like that, it meant he was mad as a Delabrian duck. And once he was mad, Gan’s anger management issues and Furagi size and strength, Buck’s occasional urge to self-destruct and take a lot of people with him, and Xia’s natural tendency toward mayhem, had nothing to check them. She just hoped Drax could play this right, even without all the information about how fragile her friends’ grips on sanity sometimes were.
    He did. “This time the payment may be your life and those of your crew. And even if I’m wrong in that fear, they’re not paying you enough for the risks you’re taking.”
    “Figured the money was too good for the job they said we were doing.” Mik still sounded like a hick, but no one with half a brain would mistake him for a dumb hick. She just hoped Drax realized smart hicks were dangerous, because they thought outside the box. “Thought the Blemondians might be up to something shady. But I did my homework and there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do with that slag except use it for that new style of neurorelays, so I couldn’t figure where the shady came in. Except maybe price gouging, and that’s not illegal most places. At least not killing illegal, or even jail-time illegal, especially if you’re just an intermediary moving the goods and not setting the prices.”
    “Someone is trying to create an interplanetary incident between Banjal and San’bal with the ultimate hope that Blemond will benefit. My government had a fairly good idea of who the parties ultimately responsible are. We did not know until last night who was actually doing the more hands-on work, and I only found out because they found me. I wasn’t supposed to have survived and I might not have if Ms. Anteres weren’t so quick thinking and so good at making an antiquated floater out-maneuver a state-of-the-art sport flyer. In the process of being rescued, I determined that the parties you dealt with are more than likely the same parties who tried to kill me last night. One of them owns a neurorelay factory, but he is also an intelligence operative.”
    Mik nodded slowly. “A spy?”
    “Nothing that official. More like an informant for their intelligence agency.”
    Buck spat on the floor. “I marling hate informants. Sell out their own mothers.”
    Xia started picking at her nails. It looked like a nervous habit, but Rita knew better. The felinoid was sharpening her claws.
    “In this case, he was selling out several planets. Sensitive information was stolen from my government. Tonight we believe they plan to steal an antiquity on loan from my government to San’bal. Both the information and the antiquity will wind up on Blemond, if all goes according to the plan, with evidence that the San’balese government was responsible for the whole mess.”
    Gan spoke for the first time. Rather, he rumbled,