Before Solara could respond, Doran’s girlfriend made a noise of disgust and whined, “Come on, Dory. Not that one. She’s so…dirty.”
Solara’s cheeks blazed. She’d taken great care to scrub her face at the public bathhouse that morning, even paying extra to have her hair washed and plaited in the latest style. “She is standing right here. And I’m not dirty.”
Doran snapped his gaze to hers, his black brows forming a slash above blue eyes cold enough to frost the fiery moons of Volcanus. “Let’s get something straight, Rattail. If I agree to finance your passage, the only words that will leave your mouth for the next five months are Yes, Mr. Spaulding. If you disappoint me in any way—if my every wish is not brought to fruition—I’ll drop your carcass at the first outpost. Do you understand?”
Solara held her breath while a furious pulse pounded in her ears. Five months as Doran’s slave or a year on the streets. Unpleasant as it was, the decision made itself.
“Yes,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, Mr. Spaulding.”
“That’s better. See?” he said to his girlfriend. “She can be trained.” He pointed at Solara’s wrist. “Where’s the matching band?”
“You buy it from the machine,” Solara told him, nodding at the kiosk beside her.
Once Doran transferred the credits to pay her fare, the gate opened with a beep and an M-emblazoned bracelet dropped into the collection tray. He slapped the band around his wrist, linking them as master and servant.
“Quit standing there,” he said. “You can start by taking Miss DePaul’s bag.”
But the girl—Miss DePaul, presumably—gripped the handle of her pet carrier with ten red-tipped fingers. “I don’t want her touching my things,” she declared, and clicked toward the boarding platform.
Doran shrugged and handed Solara his tuxedo jacket. When they reached the boarding entry, he shouted, “The door, Rattail. Open the door!” She scrambled ahead of him and heaved aside the metal barrier. As Doran preceded her through the gateway, he murmured, “Well, you’re off to a poor start.”
Solara clutched his jacket and resisted the urge to choke him with it. Maybe there was something worse than not being picked.
The beeping awoke her from a dead sleep, but in her foggy state, Solara couldn’t tell where it was coming from. She scanned the darkness for the source of the awful sound until a pillow arched up from the bottom bunk and smacked her in the face.
“Turn off your band!” hissed one of her roommates.
Understanding dawned, and Solara tapped the Accept button on her bracelet. By now, she should be used to Doran’s constant requests. The sadistic jerk hadn’t allowed her a full night’s rest since they’d boarded the Zenith a month ago, so he wasn’t likely to start now.
“He’s ruining my sleep,” another roommate whispered. “Why does he keep torturing you?”
That was a good question.
Solara pulled on a pair of pants and thought about it. The obvious answer was his white-knuckled hold on a grudge from freshman year, the urge to put her back in “her place” after she’d won his father’s award. But aside from that, sometimes she wondered if Doran craved attention. He reminded her of a boy in the group home who used to pull her hair. When she’d complained to the nuns, they had brushed off her concerns, claiming that the boy liked her. But she didn’t enjoy having her hair pulled, so she’d put a stop to it by sinking her fist into the boy’s stomach.
Maybe that was what Doran needed.
After wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she slipped quietly into the hallway and waited for the motion-sensor night-lights to activate. Soon a thin strip glowed in the middle of the floor. She knew from experience it would take 872 steps to reach Doran’s first-class suite from her position in the steerage class level, so she didn’t waste another moment getting there. The last time she’d waited too long to respond, he’d fallen asleep, only to summon her an hour later to pull a clean shirt from his walk-in closet. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he hated small spaces. It made her want to lock him inside a luggage trunk.
She knocked softly on his door. Most valets had key fob access programmed into their indenture bands, but of course Doran didn’t trust her enough for that.
Once the door slid into the wall, she stepped inside his suite and immediately stopped short to survey the damage. He’d hosted another party. The empty bottles littering the carpet made that clear. Someone had overturned the sofa and rearranged the furniture in what appeared to be a tic-tac-toe grid, and naturally she would have to clean it up. But that couldn’t be why he’d called her in the middle of the night.
Or could it?
She slid a glare toward his bedroom but refused to go in there. If the lingering scent of Miss DePaul’s perfume was any indication, he wasn’t alone.
“Did you need something?” Solara shouted.
Doran’s voice was sleep-roughened when he demanded, “Excuse me?”