by Gail Koger
The assassin screamed in agony and fumbled desperately for his laser pistol with his left hand.
The minute it cleared his holster, I yanked the pistol out of the assassin’s remaining hand and hurled him across the room. He bounced off the wall and crashed to the floor. Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat!
His cries were muffled by the webbing.
“Now that is what I call teamwork.” I eyed the Tabor warily. I wasn’t afraid of him. What was up with that? Had Hothar been mucking around in my head? Probably. We were going to have a long talk about personal boundaries. “Are you Bey?”
“I am.”
“Thanks for the help.”
“Human females frequently require saving.”
“Do not.” Prickles charged up my spine. “Incoming bad guy.”
A Coletti warrior in full battle armor teleported in, grabbed me and teleported out. Inky darkness spun crazily around us.
Whoa! I was getting seasick. I blinked as little sparks of lightning danced over us. Weird. That had never happened before. After what seemed like an eternity, the darkness fell away. Friggin’ hell. I was back on spider island. I wriggled in his grip. “What do you want?”
“The Overlord will surrender to me or you die,” the traitorous fool stated.
A hairy golden appendage waved at me over the warrior’s shoulder.
I grinned. “If you can distract the traitor long enough for me to get access to his warrior’s bracelet, Uncle Saul showed me an icon that will help us take him out,” I told Bey.
“He did not pick his prey carefully.”
“No, he didn’t.” I let out a big belly laugh.
The warrior growled, “What do you find so amusing?”
“You just made the biggest mistake of your life,” I chortled.
“How is that?”
“Your first mistake was assuming the Overlord would ever surrender to you. He won’t. Your second mistake was thinking my mate would stand idly by and let you hurt me. Not a chance. And the last reason is him.” I pointed at Bey. “My personal bodyguard.”
The second the traitor turned his head to look at Bey, I hit an icon on his warrior’s bracelet. His battle helmet retracted. Bam! The Tabor had his fangs buried in the warrior’s throat.
He released me and yanked wildly at the Tabor riding his face.
“Did you know one bite from a Tabor and you’re dead before you take your next breath?”
The warrior made funny gurgling gasps and collapsed.
“Okay, my bad. Two breaths.”
Bey crawled off the traitor. “He is not Coletti.”
“But he teleported. Kinda.” I pushed the dead guy’s head up with my foot. “He looks Coletti.”
“Prosthetic fangs and his blood tastes like Bjarke.”
I bent down for a better look. “Huh? The Bjarke are mercenaries. The question is who hired him and had his appearance altered?”
“There are many suspects with the technology to accomplish that.”
“Yeah, Earth First could pull it off. The Legionnaires aren’t smart enough and the Rodan usually don’t play well with others.”
Hothar appeared beside me and did a double take. “Did you know that jumpsuit is transparent in the sun.”
“What?” I looked down. Dang! It was. You could clearly see my girls and hoo-ha. “Did you know the Coletti Bey just killed is actually a Bjarke warrior in disguise?”
His lecherous grin vanished. “Bjarke?” Hothar quickly tapped several icons on his bracelet. “Wazzock’s piss.”
“I have many cousins on this island,” Bey commented casually.
My eyes bulged at the sight of several hundred spiders scuttling towards us. “Cousins? Those eight-legged freaks like to eat people.”
Bey waggled his legs. “As do I.”
“What!”
“Quit teasing her Bey.” Hothar tossed a stun grenade at the spiders.
Boom! My ears rang, and for a moment the world tilted dizzily around me. “Whoa!”
Hothar grabbed me before I did a face plant in the sand. “My apologies. The sight of your glorious body has scrambled my brains.”
I smacked his chest. “You’re so full of shit and why didn’t you use your bracelet’s bug repelling sonic thingy?”
“It affects Bey too.”
“Right. Wouldn’t want him to get all woozy and accidently eat one of us.” I blinked to clear my vision. The beach was covered with curled up spiders. “Are they dead or playing possum?”
In a move that mimicked Zarek, Hothar cocked a dark brow. “Possum?”
“Acting like they’re dead until they get the chance to bite you or make a run for it. Wolf spiders in Arizona do it all the time. I usually blast the hell out of them with bug killer to make sure they stay dead.”
Bey stroked a leg over my bare toes. “You killed my brethren?”
“Yeah. Got a problem with that?” The day from hell got the best of my temper and I dropped into a combat stance. “Then bring it on. Cause I need to kick some ass.”
“She is no longer afraid of Tabors or their cousins,” Bey said, his amusement obvious.
“You bastard!” I punched Hothar in the gut. “You did muck around in my head.”
Hothar scowled. “As my mate you will be dealing with a number of unique lifeforms. You cannot behave like a frightened child every time. It could get you killed.”
“I want a divorce.” I hurled Hothar down the beach.
Poof! He teleported back. “Do you?” Hothar picked me up and kissed me like a starving man. “How about now?
“You had no right…”
Hothar lips locked on mine. He slowly and thoroughly ravaged my mouth. Pleasure fogged my brain until I was wrapped around him like a limpet. He tasted so damn good. I needed his touch more than I needed to breathe.
Ack! Ack! Bey heaved and hacked like he was trying to cough up a hair ball.
Reality broke through the haze of desire. Divorce wasn’t in a Coletti warrior’s vocabulary. I was stuck with Hothar. Warts and all. Could I deal with a control freak for the rest of my life? Hothar’s naughty, naughty fingers electrified my body, unleashing a voracious hunger, a clawing want. In that instant I knew Hothar was mine. I couldn’t imagine a future without him.
Ack! Ack!
I broke the kiss. “Are you okay Bey?”
“No. I am not okay watching humanoids perform sex acts.”
“It was just a kiss.”
Hothar gave me a “seriously” look and reluctantly released me.
“Okay, it was one hell of a kiss,” I said on our private link.
Hothar winked.
Bey retorted, “Is the Overlord aware of your enthusiastic kissing?”
Nope and it needed to stay that way. “Where is the omniscient one?”
“Interrogating the prisoners. General Jones is taking the submarine to the Australian naval base at Cairns,” Hothar answered.
“Okay, our job is to discover the traitor’s identity before he does any more damage. Like siccing another fake Coletti on us,” I said.
Hothar nodded. “A good plan. What did I miss?”
“The Bjarke teleportation resembled a mixture of the Gorum and Katanic methods of travel,” Bey answered.
I fed Hothar my memories of the dead guy teleporting us. “The little sparks of lightning surrounding us was kinda freaky. I kept waiting to get zapped.”
“If you had been zapped, you would have exploded into tiny pieces or your bodies would have merged together.”
“Dang.” I shuddered as I pictured my head on Bey’s body.
“A most unpleasant complication,” Bey said, equally repulsed.
Hothar searched the fake Coletti. He pulled off the weapons belt and examined it. “This belt is a quantum logic gate.”
“What does a quantum logic gate do?” Curious minds wanted to know.
“It breaks down your body into photons and channels the energy between two teleportation devices,”
Hothar replied.
“Kinda like a transporter?”
“In a way. A stable quantum gate cannot be tracked or blocked. It would allow enemy warriors access to our command centers or secure areas on a warbird.”
“Well, color me horrified. Earth First would love to get their hands on this kind of technology. How safe is it?”
“Sometimes the quantum gate creates an unstable magnetic field and the resulting explosion can be catastrophic,” Hothar answered.
“So, we’re lucky we didn’t go boom or end up stuck in a wall?”
“Yes.” Dropping the belt, Hothar rans his hands over me.
I quivered in delight. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure you have all your parts,” Hothar responded, trailing one hand up my ass.
“Are you going to check Bey too?”
Bey skittered away. “I have all my parts.”
“Are you sure?” A giggle escaped me.
“Very. We should be more concerned about where the other device is and who is controlling it,” Bey groused.
I winced. Hothar wasn’t the only one with raging hormones. I mentally checked the area. “Bey has a point. There would have to be another gate nearby. Earth First fanatics could turn the device into a powerful suicide bomb and use it to destroy our bases. We need to find a way to track it.”
“If the gates are unstable, they will be easy to locate.” Hothar scanned the area with his bracelet. A high-pitched beep sounded. “There. In that pile of debris.”
A burning sensation crawled along my shoulders. “Something’s wrong.”
“Charged particles are ionizing the air,” Hothar responded, tapping different icons on his warrior’s bracelet.
“Does that mean the magnetic field is destabilizing?”
A worried frown knotted Hothar’s forehead. “Yes.”
The sand vibrated beneath our feet. “That can’t be good.”
“There is a metallic hum coming from the belt,” Bey warned.
A strange boom, boom, boom reverberated around the island. “I think it’s getting ready to blow! Run!”
“We cannot outrun it.” Hothar scooped me up. “Bey, to me.” The second the Tabor leapt on his back, he teleported.
Chapter Eight
There was a flash of inky blackness and we popped out in the middle of a fluffy, white cloud. A cry of horror escaped me as we fell. The pulsating bolts of energy highlighted the churning water far, far below us. “Hothar!”
“I have you,” Hothar rasped. Another flare of indigo engulfed us. Poof! We were suddenly on the deck of a luxury yacht. An elderly man with a dead critter perched on his head sat in a bubbling jacuzzi surrounded by four bikini-clad babes. They stared at us in opened-mouth astonishment.
I stared back in equal amazement. Who in the hell got into a jacuzzi in this heat? I linked with Hothar, “What happened? I thought you were taking us back to the ship?”
“A burst of photon energy disrupted my power. I was able to do a mid-port shift and bring us here.” Hothar said grimly, lines of strain bracketed his mouth.
Holy hell! If Hothar hadn’t done that mind meld with Zarek, we would be very dead. Most warriors his age didn’t have the skills or power to do a mid-port shift. If Hothar had failed, we would have either appeared in the airless vacuum of space or hit the ocean at Mach 1. Uncle Saul had mentioned how incredibly difficult it was to shift locations in the middle of teleporting to a predetermined location. I patted Hothar’s chest. “Leave it to Hot Lips to pull off the impossible.”
“Do not call me Hot Lips. It is demeaning,” Hothar grumbled and dumped me on my feet.
“It’s a compliment. Cranky butt is not. See the difference?”
Hothar gave me his best menacing glare.
The geriatric playboy pulled a satellite phone out of God knows where and took our picture.
Slashes of incandescent silver flashed across the horizon.
“Oh, lookie at the pretty lights,” one of babes cried. Like magic, pink satellite phones appeared in their hands and they started snapping photos of the phenomenon.
They didn’t have a friggin’ clue those “pretty lights” could kill them. “Are we out of the blast radius?”
“Yes.”
I did a quick mental scan of the old guy while he took some selfies with the magnetic storm in the background. The old geezer was a self-made billionaire and loved the ladies. The younger, the better. He liked to party, and a helicopter would soon be flying in more of his guests. I smiled brightly and used my best Southern Belle accent, “Goodness gracious, y’all are having some wild weather. I hope you don’t mind us popping in like this? But why use a copter when a Coletti is available?”
The old geezer climbed out of the water, excited at the idea of a Coletti warrior attending his bash. His itty-bitty gold Speedo left nothing to the imagination and exposed his shortcomings to the entire world. “How did you hear about the party?”
I picked a name out of his head. “Armando told us all about your famous parties. He said we should stop by and say G ’day. Didn’t he honey?”
Hothar grunted.
“Gotta say this is some boat. You must be richer’n Croesus. You can call me Chastity, the big guy is Hothar and the Tabor is called Bey.”
Bey dropped to the deck and waved a leg all friendly like.
The babes screamed blue, bloody murder and fled below deck.
“Human females frighten so easily,” Bey complained.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, because ginormous spiders are so common.” I gave the old geezer an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that, sugar. The Tabor won’t hurt you.”
“Do not make promises you cannot keep,” Bey said ominously.
“Behave yourself, or we’ll find out how well you swim.”
Hothar snarled, “Enough!”
“You got a fella?”
I jerked my attention back to the geriatric playboy. His lecherous gaze roved over me and settled on my Bermuda Triangle. Maybe I should start waxing down there.
Hothar growled deep in his chest and stepped in front of me.
Like I would do it with gramps? He was hairy as a gorilla and wearing enough gold chains to sink a battleship. I poked my head around Hothar’s back. “I do have a fella. Say howdy to the nice man, Hothar.”
“Howdy.” Hothar bared his fangs in a predator’s smile.
The old geezer twitched. “Can I get you something to drink? Beer, whiskey or a margarita for the lady?”
What the hell? I was hungry and thirsty. “Bless your heart. A margarita sounds wonderful. Hothar will take a beer and do you have any chips?”
“A beer, a margarita and some chips, Bambi,” the old geezer commanded the bikini clad bartender cowering behind a fancy chrome wet bar.
“Yes, sir.” Keeping a wary eye on us, Bambi whipped up a margarita.
“You didn’t ask what I wanted,” Bey grumbled.
“I doubt they have any insects for you to munch on and you’re not eating one of them.”
“I like chips and beer.”
“Seriously?”
Hothar ran a weary hand over his face. “He does.”
“Who knew?” I called to Bambi. “Could you make that two beers, sweetie?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I didn’t like the fatigue lining Hothar’s face or how ghastly pale he was. “You don’t look so good.”
“The mid-port shift drained my power.”
“Does Shrek make house calls?”
“The magnetic field has temporarily inhibited my long-range telepathy and it also scrambled the electronics in my warrior’s bracelet.”
“Terrific. My blood will fix you up, right?”
“It should.”
I urged him over to a lounge chair. “Sit. Drink.” I offered Hothar my wrist.
“It will hurt.” He licked my pulse point.
I stroked his cheek. “You saved our lives. I can deal with a little pain.”
“You do know, I will never let you divorce me?”
“Once you’re feeling better, we’ll talk about personal boundaries.”
“If you insist.” Hothar bit down gently on my radial artery. A sharp pain radiated up my arm. The discomfort was quickly replaced by raw want as he took my blood.
Ack! Ack!
“Give it a rest, Bey. Hothar needs my blood.” My core pulsed with sudden moisture and an unbearable ache began to build between my legs. Oh, God. Oh God. I fought to squelch a whimper.
“The facial expressions of a human being aroused is nauseating,” Bey griped.
“Then don’t watch.” I dug my fingers into Hothar’s shoulder as my pleasure grew and grew. Could I have an orgasm standing up? Phantom tentacles vibrated against my clit and ecstasy cascaded over me. A moan broke from me as my entire body shook, and I literally saw stars. Wowzers!
Ack! Ack!
Hothar locked his left arm around my hips. “Easy there.”
“I think you’re feeling better.” The toe-curling aftershocks continued to shake me.
A satisfied smile curved Hothar’s mouth. “I am. I like watching you come.”
Ack! Ack! “I do not. It is beyond disgusting.”
“Yes, we know Bey.” I placed a light kiss on Hothar’s mouth. “The old pervert enjoyed the show too. Voyeurism gets him off and I’d rather that didn’t happen again. Kay?”
“In the future, I will endeavor to feed somewhere secluded.” Hothar added, “The old pervert envies me.”
“I doubt it. He has his own personal harem. I can’t compete with their model good looks.”
“Your beauty outshines all of them.”
“You’re turning into such a Don Juan.” I twitched, as the sweet warmth of his tongue licked the puncture marks on my wrist. “Do you smooth talk all the ladies?”
“Only you.”
“Good answer.”
Bambi cautiously approached with the beers, my margarita and a bowl of chips on a silver tray. She placed it on a glass-topped table next to Hothar. “If you need anything else, please let me know.”
“Do you have any extra swimsuits?”
“Yes, ma’am, we do.”
“I’d be obliged if you could loan me one.”
“Sure. No problem.” Bambi twitched nervously when Bey picked up a beer bottle with two of his front legs and drained it.