Chapter One

"Your condition is unacceptable, fugitive." Zeta glared at the dried torso pinned under a twisted piece of black panel, the male's flight suit shredded and faded, his head and limbs missing. "I need you alive."

Currents of scorching hot air wafted up from the reddish–brown sand, Chamele 4 barely inhabitable, its extreme temperatures legendary. An anonymous tip had led Zeta to the arid planet. The highly visible scattered remains of the single–manned ship had narrowed her search.

"I must be mistaken. You can't be him. Fate isn't that cruel," Zeta muttered, knowing first–hand that it was. She jabbed the tester deep into the male's chest and the brittle skin cracked on impact, all moisture long evaporated from the corpse.

She squinted at the tiny screen. A trickle of perspiration ran down her spine, her shirt sticking to her torso, the heat absorbed from the leather straps holding her daggers and guns burning through the coarse fabric.

"Target confirmed," the machine chirped happily.

"Son of a Palavian whore." Anxiety twisted Zeta's stomach into tight little knots. The client required the intergalactic jewel thief retrieved alive.

"I traveled across two galaxies for nothing, no thief, no bounty." She tilted her head back and stared at the giant blood–red sun, finding no solution to their precarious financial situation there, the rent for their bounty–hunter school due in fifteen universal days. "I can't go back empty handed. I can't disappoint the girls."

Rough fingers drifted across her forearm, sending waves of sweet sensation rippling over her body, the caress tightening her nipples and lighting flames of desire deep within her.

"Touch me again and I'll shoot your invisible ass," Zeta warned, her inappropriate arousal irking her. Since her arrival on the planet, the male had tracked and tormented her. At every opportunity, he'd stroked her skin and fondled her curves, building a need she couldn't tend to, her personal time limited.

Her yet–to–be identified stalker chuckled, the sound low and pussy–moistening deep.

She turned slowly, surveying the landscape, searching for signs of him. No shadows fell upon the viewscreen lodged in the sand to her right, the clear surface cracked, feathered with fine fractures. Behind her, only a single set of footprints marred the otherwise untouched sand dunes. The fossilized remains of what might have once been a tree loomed to her left, as dead and lifeless as the planet it inhabited.

"Spirits," Zeta grumbled as she trudged toward her ship, the wind biting at her back. She hunched her shoulders in defeat, leaving the headless corpse of her target to disintegrate to dust, baked by the relentless sun.

"Behind you, Zeta," her mysterious male urged, his gruff words spoken in the universal language.

She extracted a dagger from her waist sheath and pivoted. A giant featherless creature swooped silently downward, the weather–worn hide on its wings stretched tight. Its talons reached out for her, its prey. Its huge beak opened, revealing multiple rows of sharp teeth, the beast designed for killing.

Zeta snapped her wrist, releasing her favorite dagger, the action as natural to her as breathing. The weapon whistled through the air and lodged with a juicy smack in the creature's right eye socket, bursting the eyeball. The beast screeched and reared upward, flapping its great wings.

Zeta grabbed another dagger and carefully aimed. The creature rolled in the cloudless sky, spinning away from her, its velocity too fast for her to lock upon.

"Your hide is mine." She ran after the predator, determined to down her attacker and retrieve her mother's dagger, that last gift from her now–dead parent having once served as her only protection.

You have to look after yourself now, Zeta. Her mother's final words echoed in her ears as she sprinted, her gaze fixed on the creature's fading silhouette, its monstrous form etched against the bright sun.

With three more beats of its great wings, the animal surged out of range, and Zeta skidded to a stop, sand spraying her ugly black boots, her clothes soaked with perspiration.

"No thief, no bounty and now, one less dagger." She kicked a large red boulder, its varying shades of color delineating centuries of soil settlement. "This day couldn't get any worse." Zeta sheathed her remaining dagger, disgusted by her failure.

"It could have been worse. You could have been eaten by the rock vulture."

Him again. "Is that what happened to you?" She cocked her head, her hair sliding over her shoulders, hanging loose, her fastener also lost during the assault. "Are you a spirit, destined to walk the sands of Chamele 4, warning others of your mistake?"

"I'm no spirit, little hunter. And I don't make mistakes." A muscled form materialized from the nearby wall of rock, his skin turning from red to tan, his long hair darkening to black. He was dauntingly large, his biceps huge and defined, his broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist and then disappearing into nothing.

"You have no legs." Zeta frowned, meeting his midnight gaze, his face as hard as the stone he faded into. "What are you?"

His lips quirked upward. "I have legs." A long silver scar slashed down his cheek from his left eye to the corner of his mouth. "My invisibility, as you call it, is for your benefit. I'm in hunting mode and Chameles hunt naked." He spread his fingers and long, deadly claws extended from his knuckles.

"Oh." Zeta's face heated, the urge to see him, all of him, tremendous. Is he as big all over? A pulse throbbed deep in her womb, her starved sex drive demanding her attention, too much of her life spent alone, untouched, emotionally safe.

I don't need him. She bit the inside of her cheek, smothering her arousal with pain. I don't need anyone.

He breathed deeply, his nostrils flaring, his chest rising and falling, the sun's rays casting shadows over his muscles. "This isn't the time nor place for rutting, gerel."