Metal Pirate (Warriors of Galatea Book 3)

by Lauren Esker

  And words weren't needed as Claudia drew him toward the bed.

  She got shy again when they reached the bed. Skara slipped off his jacket, draped it on the chair, and then sat on the other side of the bed, careful to place himself so she was between him and the door, making sure she knew she could leave anytime she wanted to.

  He leaned across the bed and touched his fingertips to her chin, drawing her close for a kiss. Her mouth was warm and willing. He gently slipped the red strap of her dress off her shoulder and kissed the skin there, then kissed her throat where her pulse fluttered.

  With kisses and touches, he drew her out of her shyness, finding delight in each of her gasps and smiles. He cultivated a reputation as a playboy, but in reality he was choosy about his partners, and it was important to him to please them. No woman went away unsatisfied from the Skara Experience.

  So he paid close attention to her small tells: slowed when she needed him to, coaxed delight from her hesitations, and took as much enjoyment from her delight as from his own savoring of her smooth, beautiful body.

  It took him awhile to get the weird claspy breast-covering thing off, but it was worth it when he finally managed it, exposing glorious breasts that he wanted to bury himself in. She paused, breathing heavily, and he tongued her nipples and drew more of those delightful small gasps from her.

  The rest of the dress followed, and then his own clothing, again necessitating a small struggle with the fastenings and clasps, which had been hard enough to put on but were even harder when he couldn't see what he was doing. Stupid primitive planet with its primitive clothing fasteners.

  Claudia put her hands over his, and helped him with the trouser fastenings. "It's like you've never seen buttons before," she murmured, and then made a small sound when he was exposed. "You're ... not wearing underwear. Okay. Wow."

  Hmm, he thought, perhaps there was supposed to be a layer of fabric between the metal slide fastener and his more sensitive parts. It did seem a worrying design.

  Anyway, now there was no more clothing between him and Claudia. Her bare skin slid against him as she found his mouth again, and he felt the soft tingling of his species' inherent tendency to imprint on people through skin contact. It wouldn't be permanent, not from just one night, but for a few weeks, at least, he would be drawn to her as if to a lodestone; it was just how it worked, and another reason why he was not as much of a playboy as the persona he wore like another of his shapeshifting guises.

  "Oh," Claudia gasped suddenly, pulling away from him. "I forgot—just a minute—"

  "What's wrong?" Skara asked, and then remembered she couldn't understand him. She didn't seem hurt or upset, but she was struggling to rise, so he kept an arm around her nicely curvy waist as she leaned off the bed to retrieve her carry-bag and start fishing around in it. She got out a little square plastic packet and fumbled nervously to open it.

  "I've never used one of these before," she said breathlessly, pulling out what he took at first for some sort of tiny bag. "You'll have to tell me if I get it wrong."

  What was it? An alien sex toy? He didn't figure it out until she rather shyly held it in front of his erect member, and then he got it. It was a physical contraceptive device.

  If he could only explain there was no risk of that! He always made sure his contraceptive implant was up to date before indulging in this kind of encounter. He had no intention of leaving behind little purple babies on this backwater planet.

  No ties. No connections.

  But he couldn't explain, so he let her roll the contraceptive covering onto his member. It was actually quite erotic, her dexterous fingers caressing him, easing it onto him.

  And then he sank into her ready heat, and there was no more talking or thinking for some time after that. He could tell she wasn't very experienced, but she was receptive and willing and a fast learner. He brought her to satisfaction twice, to her obvious delight, before allowing himself to follow her.

  When they had both finished, he propped himself on an elbow and indulged in simply looking at her, the parted lips and half-closed eyes. She was tousled and glorious and delightful. He should probably go, but he wanted to stay.

  "That was ... wow," she murmured, opening her eyes. "In your face, Naomi. Where's my phone? I need to let her know I am gloriously and grandly deflowered."

  Deflowered. What a charming local euphemism for sex. He handed her the little clutch bag, and she tapped out a quick text message on a small silver-and-black communications device.

  "Mission accomplished. I just let my sister know I'm okay. Better than okay." She grinned at him as she dropped the device back into the bag, and the bag off the edge of the bed. "And you can't understand a word, I know. Mmmm. I guess that just proves that we don't have to talk in bed to have a good time, right? Oh ... the condom ..."

  She helped him slip it off and dropped it in the little bin with a plastic bag in it. Aha, that was for trash disposal; they put it in a box. Such a primitive planet.

  "You're so warm," Claudia murmured, curling up around him. She stroked a hand down his arm and lingered over his cuffs, hidden earlier by the jacket he'd been wearing. They were technological interfaces, communication devices, and weapons, each in the form of a gold band around his wrist. "These are interesting bracelets. You don't usually see guys wearing jewelry like this. I like it." She tried to slip a finger under one of the cuffs—it wouldn't have gone, of course, since they were bonded to his skin. He lightly removed her hand. "Sorry. I didn't mean to invade your personal space."

  The urge to talk to her was overwhelming, but there was no point since his words would make no sense to her. Instead he lay back on the bed and pulled her down with him invitingly.

  Another deeply hidden dark secret: he truly enjoyed cuddling.

  Claudia curled against him. He was only going to stay like this for a little while. But bit by bit, she went lax against him. Her breathing deepened and steadied.

  Getting up would wake her. There was no need to do it quite yet. Perhaps he'd just stay here for a few more minutes ...

  He drifted off to sleep.

  As they both slept, tangled up in each other, neither of them was awake to notice a faint violet glow under the skin of Skara's arm, where it rested across Claudia's waist.

  The glow coalesced above his arm and extended cautiously to touch Claudia's skin.

  The bioengineered symbiont that Skara had carried inside him for years was not intelligent, as such. But it had distinct preferences for certain hosts, and it liked female hosts better than male ones. After all the time its host had spent tonight touching this Earth woman, it had decided that it preferred this host to its old one. This woman was the most compatible host it had found since the very early days of its long existence, when it had been designed to be used by hosts from what the galactic cultures now called Birthworld.

  And Claudia was pure, unmodified Birthworld human, the best match it had ever found. The symbiont was delighted.

  The glow slipped beneath Claudia's skin and vanished.

  The symbiont had been designed to be as unnoticeable to its host as possible. Claudia slept on, stirring only slightly, as the symbiont read its new host's nervous system and migrated to her spine, where it had lived in Skara's body, waiting for instructions from its host to use its special abilities.

  The departure of his symbiont didn't wake Skara; he was oblivious to it. But Claudia twitching against him made him jerk suddenly awake. Claudia murmured in her sleep, and Skara stopped himself from his instinctive urge to leap out of bed and reach for his knives. Instead he held himself still until she fell back into deeper sleep.

  His deeply ingrained startle response was no surprise. The real surprise was that he'd fallen asleep with her in his arms. This was something that had never happened before, not with any of the women he'd dallied with in spaceports around the galaxy. He had little trust for people, certainly not enough to relax into sleep with someone else in his bed.

  An
d yet he'd done it with her, for the first time he could remember.

  Skara propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her face in the dim glow of the city's nighttime illumination that came through the window coverings. Her hair spread around her on the pillow in a fuzzy halo; her lips were parted, her cheek so soft-looking he gave in to the urge to brush it with the backs of his fingers.

  She turned her head as if to follow his hand when he withdrew it. As if to say, Please stay.

  "I only wish I could, sweet Claudia," he murmured. He knew her name, but she would never know his. And it was time to go.

  Aching with regret for a different life, a life that could never be his, he moved with exquisite stealth as he slipped out of bed and found his clothes in the dark room. From the doorway, he looked back one last time. Her face was turned away from him, and perhaps that was just as well; if he'd been able to see it, he might not have been able to pry himself away. Temptation tugged at him anyway: go back to bed, sleep until morning, and then ...

  And then try to explain why he had to leave and she'd never see him again, when she couldn't understand a word he said? No. Better this, by far.

  He let himself quietly out of the room, and out of her life.

  Or so he thought.

  Two

  "Are you okay? You look tired."

  "A word to the wise, Denny," Claudia said, turning her chair away from her computer monitor to look at the large-sized printout clipped up on her drafting board. "Don't ever tell a woman she looks tired."

  "She's right, Denny," came from Marcie, the office assistant, as she came in with brisk clicks of her heels, carrying a stack of proofs. "But he's also right. You do look tired."

  Claudia groaned and rubbed her eyes. "We all look tired. Because we work too much. Let me see those."

  She took the glossy prints from Marcie and flipped through them. Working for an ad agency wasn't the way she'd intended to use her art degree. But it paid the bills. She had realized awhile back that she didn't mind digitally editing cans of smiling spray cheese or sunny meadows with rolls of toilet paper bouncing around in them. It was enjoyable work, even if there was a lot of overtime when big accounts ran up against deadline. Like now.

  "You shouldn't stay too late tonight," Marcie added, pulling on her coat. Looking around, Claudia saw several other people collecting their things, while others were still hunched over a computer like her. "I know you and the rest of the graphics division have been pulling long hours on this client, but you gotta have a life too."

  Claudia laughed. "Working helps me forget I don't have a life. But thanks. Have a good night, Marcie."

  "You too." The office assistant fluttered a hand at her and hurried out the door, already on the phone to one of her kids from the sound of it.

  Claudia turned back to her computer. She really did mean it. When there was barely time to run home for a takeout dinner and a few hours' sleep in her own apartment before hopping on the bus again the next day ... well, it kept her too busy to get too upset about her slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am Dwayne Johnson lookalike, and that was probably a good thing.

  Kiss and tell, maybe not. Kiss and run, for sure. Mr. Right? Definitely not.

  Even if it had been some killer sex. She kept thinking about it, getting a warm tingling feeling. Even if he'd only given her one night, it was a lovely night to look back on.

  Now if her headache would only go away. She raised a hand to rub at the base of her neck. She normally got headaches as one of her PMS symptoms, and she'd had a couple of bad ones right after her possibly ill-advised (but oh so much fun) cherry-popping. Which had made her assume that she was about to start one early. But she hadn't, and she kept having occasional headaches ever since.

  Nothing to worry about, she had been telling herself nervously. It had only been a few days, and they'd used a condom. Even if she had somehow, through incredibly bad luck, managed to get pregnant, there was no way she'd be feeling it yet.

  She'd even tried talking about it with Naomi, who just rolled her eyes and said, "Girl, you know men's cocks aren't magic, right? I'm glad you got your hoo-hah dusted but, even if The Rock's shorter twin brother did knock you up, in which case I plan to track him down and introduce him to my fists, you cannot tell you're preggers two days after you have sex."

  Maybe lack of sleep had something to do with it. It wasn't just the long hours at the ad agency. She'd also been having incredibly vivid dreams. Strange dreams. Dreams of a man's face, the skin a violet hue, oddly familiar and compelling, though she could swear she'd never seen him before in her life. Dreams of stars and the curve of a planet in a ship's window. Dreams of strange aliens. She'd had the Star Wars toys when she was a kid and all of that, but she wasn't sure what had made her brain treat her to an epic sci-fi drama full of starships and aliens every time she closed her eyes.

  She saved the file she was working on, and stretched with a groan. Her back ached, her head still hurt, and the office had emptied out—she vaguely recalled saying good night to some of her other coworkers, dimly remembered the lights going off. Now there were just a couple of monitors still glowing, and no one else in the room. She turned off her computer, grabbed her jacket, and headed out the door.

  The building was locked for the night, and rain streaked the windows. Of course it was raining, and to make matters worse, she'd just missed her bus. She caught a glimpse of taillights vanishing down the street.

  "Hey, Barney," she said to the building security guard, who was watching her from his desk across the room. "Do you have an umbrella I could borrow?"

  Rather than answering, Barney got up. He was a shrimpy older guy who had been working there ever since Claudia had been with the advertising firm. He'd never been anything but scrupulously polite to her, but still, as he came over, she found herself unaccountably nervous.

  "No umbrella, but I can walk you to your stop," he said. Claudia frowned at him. He pronounced each word carefully, as if he was trying not to mess up or slur them. Was he drunk?

  "That's fine," she said, taking a step back. "I'll walk myself there."

  "For safety. I'll walk you there." He smiled at her. It was a friendly smile, and it wasn't unusual for Barney to walk women from the building to their bus stop or car after hours. She'd never felt weird about it before. But tonight, even though she'd never heard of anyone at the firm having trouble with Barney, something still felt off. Claudia decided to listen to her instincts.

  "No, thank you," she said firmly. "I'm fine." She pushed open the door and let herself out onto the street.

  This late at night, the buses no longer ran so close together, and when she looked back she saw Barney watching her through the glass door. She was suddenly not at all comfortable with standing at the bus stop until the next bus came. If she walked a street over, she could pick up a different bus that would drop her off on the route where she usually transferred from her normal bus.

  She started walking, shoulders hunched and hands tucked into her pockets. There were few other pedestrians out in the rain, and she was all too aware that she was nearly alone on the street. She kept glancing back nervously, and on the fourth or fifth glance she saw the door of the building open. Barney came out onto the street and start walking briskly after her.

  Oh, okay, this was not good. Why'd he have to turn out to be a creeper? He'd always seemed so nice!

  She turned the corner and immediately started running as fast as she could in her work shoes. Most of the buildings were closed. She wanted to call the cops, but first she needed to find somewhere safe and well lit. Any business would do. She could call Naomi, and the cops; maybe they'd think she was paranoid, but it was better that than turning into a statistic because nice-seeming Barney the security guard turned out to be a serial killer—

  She saw a man step out from between two buildings into her path, just in time to stumble wildly to a halt rather than running into him. He was wearing a long overcoat and a hat, and he was shockingly tall, t
owering over her. Claudia stepped back and took a quick, nervous look behind her. Barney had just turned the corner.

  She was trapped between them.

  Panicking, she fumbled in her purse for her phone or anything that she could use as a weapon. Why, oh why hadn't she let Mom talk her into carrying Mace? "Just get out of my way," she said, her voice shaking. "That man behind me is following me. I just want to get to my bus stop."

  "Calm down. We're not going to hurt you." His voice was deep and gruff, oddly muffled, with a heavy accent she couldn't place. Looking up, she saw that his face was mostly in shadow, but there was a scarf, of all things, pulled over his mouth, though it wasn't cold beyond the typical chilliness of a rainy day.

  We. They were working together. Shit. SHIT!

  "Get back!" She pulled out her keys and pointed them at him, holding them with the keys sticking out between her fingers like she'd seen in a self-defense video on Youtube.

  "We just need to talk to you."

  He was so tall. He must be seven and a half feet. When she risked a quick glance over her shoulder, she saw Barney closing in behind her, panting for breath.

  "Is this him?" the tall guy asked.

  Him?!

  "Yeah, that's him," Barney wheezed, pressing a hand to his side. Now that he was no longer taking pains to enunciate clearly, he had an odd accent too, which she had never heard from Barney before.

  "I'm not a 'him,' you freaks, and I'm telling you, if you come any closer, I'll start screaming!"

  "We know exactly who you are," the tall guy said. "We know what you are. And we know what you have."

  Barney started to reach a hand for her, then dropped it to his side. His tufted brows beneath the bald, rain-beaded dome of his forehead drew together in puzzlement. "That's weird."