Daggertail by Kaitlin Maitland Page A

deny that the thought had crossed her mind.
    “Bah, I thought you gave up on childish dreams, Tavvy darling.”
    She took in Heidi's beloved flyaway gray curls and plump frame. The intelligent brown eyes were filled with worry.
    “I thought I had too, Heidi.”
    “So why are you convinced that this man is different from the rest?”
    “He gives me orgasms,” Tavish blurted without thinking.
    Heidi chortled with laughter. “Is that all?”
    Tavish blushed. “No, but I can't explain the rest.”
    “Try.”
    “When I'm with him”—Tavish swallowed—“I forget I'm nothing more than one of Louie's working girls.”

Chapter Ten

    Her words sent Xave reeling. He hadn't wanted to eavesdrop on their conversation, but with his acute hearing, it had been impossible to avoid.
    “Are you listening to me, Kovuchenko?” Warrick bellowed in Xave's ear.
    “I'm here.”
    “You asked for an invitation to the VIP sector of the Persian Maiden, and I delivered. You've got a fifteen-hour window of opportunity. I told you what Mendez has to offer us. Don't let this chance slip away just for a piece of ass.”
    Xave grimaced at Warrick's blatant insinuation. He sure as hell hadn't set out to fall for the spunky, auburn-haired Tavish. But once he'd gotten a good look at the whole package, it'd been impossible not to. She'd not only survived a hellish upbringing, she'd thrived and managed to maintain a wicked sense of humor as well as an unhealthy dose of courage.
    “I shouldn't need to remind you what we could do with the information we can extract from Mendez.”
    Xave grimaced. “I know. We've got a plan to trap Mendez inside the casino.”
    “Then stop thinking with your cock and get it done.”
    Xave rested his head against the wall as the comm link terminated. Once upon a time, an asinine comment like that wouldn't have even applied to him. But now, just the thought of Tavish's soft pussy summoned a fierce desire to slide his cock into her wet heat and stay there until the worlds ended.
    Of course, that desire would become irrelevant when she found out he was the bastard son of a renegade Generation 8 enhanced combat model. If she'd known from the start that the Alliance legal system considered him barely human, there would have never been anything between them at all. The Alliance had never admitted to the masses that they had abandoned cyborg technology to start trafficking bioengineered humans. To the general population, his father was nothing more than a souped-up cyborg, and Xave's existence constituted a crime against the natural order of things.
    This was why he had signed on with Stone Cold Bondsmen, to help Warrick dig up the truth about the Alliance. Warrick had his own, private reasons for their mission, but Xave's purpose had never wavered. He'd grown tired of Alliance propaganda pointing the finger at him and his ancestry. He wanted to live in peace, and he wanted truth for those like Tavish who'd been destroyed by the lies they'd been told all their lives.
    Xave straightened up and rolled his neck from side to side with a satisfying crack . He couldn't change what had happened to Tavish's home and family. The problem would be trying to help her distinguish between his bioengineered parentage and the cyborgs who had altered the course of her entire life.
    It did no good to defend the cyborgs or try to explain their behavior. Nobody understood that they'd been used to commit atrocities on behalf of the Alliance. People in power were adept at distancing themselves from their dirty work. The populace saw what they were meant to see, cyborg soldiers destroying entire settlements with punitive precision. To date it had never been publicly implied that the cyborgs might have been acting on Alliance orders.
    Not yet.
    He sighed. Massaging his temples with his fingertips, he tried to quell the desire his body felt for Tavish. It would do no good to be overcome with lust for a woman who might well turn tail and run once