Under the heading of "books I have no idea why I bought them" comes this - a love story with a side order of Stockholms. I mean; I guess that it's believable given the apparent chemistry and feels but you know, if I'd been aware that the h spends the better part of the book as a sex slave, I don't believe I would have bought it.
So our h is in a pickle. Her husband paid a couple of what passes for local law enforcement to kill her. Only, the ship she was flying on was a former smuggler's ship, and the captain had clued her in on the smuggler's hatch. So she was able to escape the assassination attempt. Now she's hiding, and through what seems to me to be a massive oversight on the part of the smuggler/captain, broke (what? No bag of coins stashed in there for emergency?). She attempts to rob what looks to be a cripple only to find herself face to face with the leader of the local law enforcement. Punishment for robbery plus managing to cause his injury to flair up is a total that equals 38 days of indentured servitude. Since she has no marketable skills, that translates to sex slave. He buys her. I mean; she could have ended up in a brothel...
Over the course of a week or so, there's a discussion about rape in which he informs her that sex slaves can't say no, much sex, a couple of escape attempts - all following seeing something about her apparent death on the news. That last one was a doozy - he was having lunch with her husband *and* the two killers. So she has a damn good reason for not telling him who she is.
And of course, there's the starlight rite - a planetary orgy. She got him to take her to the place his clan would partake in the ritual, then tried to escape. She's caned, and gets to participate in the ritual whether she wants to or not.
After he has her sent back to the indenture hall for resell, he gets around to doing some serious investigating, manages to find the video was altered, find footage of her leaving the terminal, etc. Meanwhile, he's also inadvertently let her husband know she's alive and where she is, so when he figures out what's what, there's the mad rush to save her.
Things that bugged me:
The setup obviously
The lack of emergency funds - you'd think a smuggler might hide something as backup
The rite taking place at the clan one of the killers belonged to (yet he apparently was a no show. Hmmm)
A professional singer (the h is famous) that has never performed publicly, and in fact, nobody knows what she looks like. I mean; I can't imagine that being pulled off *today* and this book is set in the future. Nobody took a snapshot of her at a studio or something? Eh? This conveniently to explain why she was not recognized by anyone until she sang in an attempt to cause a distraction when her husband was trying to drag her off planet.
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