Page 94 of Enthraller

Renard’s gaze flicked over her shoulder, where she knew Ed was standing.

“Bit harder now I’m not restrained and I have a friend along, isn’t it?” Wren asked.

“We were playing a role,” Renard said, slowly, as if he thought she had trouble comprehending his words. “Sure, I maybe had a bit too much fun with it, but you were always going to go back home in one piece.” He frowned. “What’s with the weird jewelry?”

Wren looked down at the bracelets. “Weird? They’re great.”

She looked back up. “Now, hand over that laz, please.” She walked toward him, hand extended, and he grabbed for her, his big hand clamping her wrist as he spun her up against his chest, so she was facing the door. Facing an extremely calm Ed.

He leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. “Anytime now. I don’t like his hands on you.”

“You think she can do?—?”

Behind her, Renard dropped like a felled tree, hitting his head on the corner of the control panel as he went down.

Wren winced. “Ouch.”

“I could see what you were going to do, but let’s try something different next time,” Ed said, a little grumpy. “Like no physical contact.”

“Got you.” She smiled at him as he grabbed Renard’s ankles and dragged him out. She looked down at Linao, and considered what to do with her.

When Ed came back, she raised her brows. “Keep as a prisoner, or dump on Ytla?” she asked.

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “My gut says keep. They’ll swoop down and get her if we leave her here. She’s right at thetop of this, and all her protestations about being done with them is a flat-out lie.”

“Agreed.” She went to find restraints, came back and shackled Linao, then pulled her into the small change room next to the bathroom.

“Let’s go.”

“I hope you can fly this,” Ed said, with a sudden quirk of his lips. “Because I can’t. I’m only licensed for petrals, which are single-passenger craft.”

She looked down at her hands, flexed her fingers. Looked up at him in surprise. “Apparently, I can.”

He gave a laugh, throwing back his head in delight. Then he reached out and took one of her hands, kissed her knuckles. “First time, though?”

She nodded. “I hope you like living dangerously.”

He kissed her knuckles again. “I most certainly do.”

36

The battleship was gone.

Ed stared out at the empty space around Ytla and tried to process it.

“Where did they go?” Wren sat at the controls, calmer now than she’d been when they’d first taken off.

She’d given him a wide-eyed look as she’d touched all the right buttons and danced her fingers over the screen in front of her, cute even while being possessed by nano tech.

He was ridiculously smitten.

The nanos had been wasting their time and energy enthralling him when he and Wren had met, because he couldn’t see another path for them except the one they were on, no matter what had happened.

Wren finally seemed to be accepting that, too. She was no longer flashing him quick, nervous looks, just in case he wasn’t making decisions completely on his own.

“Maybe the Caruso popped their heads up, and the battleship went to have a look?” If the Caruso were coordinating with the Core Company execs who were behind this plot, then drawingthe battleships away from Aponi while they tried to take the government made sense. Except . . .

“They’ve done it too early, if the location of the second warehouse died with Pontia.” Ed knew Evette Linao didn’t know the location the warehouse—that’s why she needed him and his scanner.

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