BOOTY HUNTER

by Huss, JA

  I swallow hard. And I’m not sure if it’s because I’m nervous, excited, or afraid. Maybe all of the above. “I’ve never heard of this.”

  “Well, it almost never happens. They genetically engineer their soulmates before birth. So yeah, it is very strange that hers turns out to be you. But other than that, nah. This is all normal, everyday shit.”

  “You’ve had it before then? You’ve experienced it?”

  He looks away from me very quickly. But catches himself and looks back almost as fast. “Maybe. Once. A long time ago.”

  And that’s when I put two and two together. “No,” I say. “No.”

  He smiles weakly, then shrugs. “Yup.”

  “You and Queen Corla?” I ask.

  He sucks a bit of air through his teeth. “Guilty.”

  “When?” I ask.

  “Right before we left Akeela System.”

  I am speechless. I thought I knew everything there was to know about my brother, but apparently I don’t. “But you were like—”

  “Sixteen.” He laughs. “So was she.”

  “How did you even meet her?”

  He chews on his lip and shakes his head. “She was on a delegation—”

  “Wait,” I say, putting up a hand. “The Cygnians were in the Akeela System? For diplomatic relations? Since when?”

  “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” I ask.

  Crux looks at me hard. A little bit too hard. “Serpint,” he says. “We come from them.”

  I hear the words. I see his mouth moving. But what he just said makes no sense at all. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” He takes a deep breath. “I mean we come from them, Serpint. When they used to make their soulmates, fated mates, whatever, we were how they made them. Didn’t you ever wonder why we have the biology we do? How did you get here?” he asks. “Your mother slept with an Akeelian male, she got pregnant with you, a boy. So you are now an Akeelian as well. But did you ever ask yourself what happens to the girls?”

  I start to feel sick.

  “They take the girls, Serpint. Back to Cygnia and use those genetics in their engineering program. That’s how you make a glowing girl. That’s how you make a man with two dicks.”

  “How come I didn’t know this?”

  He shrugs. “No one outside Cygnia and Akeela knows. And we left when you were young. I just figured you knew. Someone told you.”

  “Who would tell me? Jimmy?” I laugh.

  “ALCOR at least.”

  I wait for ALCOR’s input. Crux and I both know he’s listening. But the silence after we invoke his name says far more than words ever could.

  “Look,” Crux says. “There’s a lot of shit happening right now that we need to talk about. But not today, Serpint. Not now.” He claps me on the shoulder and says, “We’ll talk tomorrow. OK? Just go back to that princess and dance with her. Take her back to your quarters and just… enjoy her. Ya know? If she’s your one, then just enjoy her.”

  “Why?” I ask, getting the feeling he’s talking about something else. “I mean…”

  “Don’t overthink it, Serpint.” And then Crux smiles. “And thank you. I don’t think I thanked you.”

  “For what?” I say.

  “Bringing Corla to me.” He holds his breath and lets it out in a long rush. “I never thought I’d see her again.”

  I nod, trying to picture him with this woman. Back when they were kids. “You should wake her up,” I say.

  But he shakes his head. “I can’t. We’re star crossed.”

  I shoot yet another confused look and he claps me on the shoulder again. Laughing. “Tomorrow, Serpint. Go dance with Lyra. Before Jimmy gets any ideas about shooting her up with a plasmid to rearrange her DNA so she’s bonded to him instead.”

  I look over at Jimmy and Lyra and find them still dancing. Smiling and having a good time. And when I look back at Crux he’s already walking off. I yell, “Hey! Wait! Is that a real thing?”

  Because the thought of someone fucking up the genetic bond we have… that just scares the shit out of me. “And we need to talk about Booty!”

  “Tomorrow,” he calls back, already disappearing through a door that leads up to his private quarters. I guess he’s out. Or maybe he’s just going back up to Corla’s cryopod to look at her forbidden body.

  So close, yet still so far away.

  But he didn’t say it wasn’t possible, which means it is.

  I start heading over to Jimmy and Lyra, intent on breaking that little friend affair up real fast, when I glance over and see Lyra’s stupid bot showing off a weapon to Beauty, Valor and Luck’s bot.

  “For sun’s sake,” I mutter, heading over there first. Irritated that I have to babysit a nanny bot. I don’t even understand why he’s even here. If Crux thinks this low-level 700 Series can replace Ceres—well, I just laugh.

  “Excuse me,” I say, interrupting the little bot party. “Can you give us a minute, Beauty?”

  “Sure, Serpint,” she purrs in her over-seductive voice. I have never seen the draw of a sexy bot or cyborg the way Jimmy, Valor, and Luck always did. If you’re gonna have a bot as part of your team they should be manly. Not feminine. Ships should be feminine. Bots, not so much. I like them tough. Like Ceres was.

  Once Beauty floats away I turn to the 700 Series and say, “Bot, put that stupid little laser gun away. It’s the most ridiculous weapon I’ve ever seen.”

  And it is too. Looks like a fucking toy I played with back when I was a baby.

  He chirps at me, squeaking and whistling all kinds of things that make no sense to me. “I don’t understand you.” I say. “And I don’t care what you’re saying. If you belong to Lyra, and Lyra belongs to me, then you belong to me and I can boss you around. So put the toy gun away and act your age.”

  He tilts his body just a little. And if he were humanoid, and had a head, I’d say he was cocking his head at me. Like, Oh, really?

  “Yes,” I say. “Really. You look ridiculous holding that tiny weapon. Does it even shoot real light? Or is it some flashlight left over from your nanny bot days?”

  He straightens his thin, metal arm, points the gun at a storefront, and then his grippy appendage that acts like a hand squeezes the trigger.

  A huge burst of fire erupts from the tiny barrel and then there’s a hole in the wall where the store used to be.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Prince,” ALCOR says in his stern, I-am-the-law-here omnipresent voice. “That is unlawful, and unacceptable behavior on Harem Station. Weapons can only be discharged in designated areas.”

  I forgot the bot was called Prince now. I will never call him that. No matter what.

  Safety bots appear in vast numbers immediately. Dozens of them. One throws a net over the bot, another shocks him with a taser, and a third is reading him his rights.

  I nod my head, satisfied as Lyra’s bot complains loudly.

  “What the hell?” Lyra says, suddenly by my side.

  I smile at her. Take her hand and just… pull her close. “Got what he deserved,” I say. “Dance with me, princess. I’ve got a jealous streak inside me and right now, I’m thinking up seventeen different ways to kill my brother for trying to steal you away from me today.”

  Her smile makes this whole day better. Well, that and the fact that the bot got arrested and is gonna get ripped a new sensor port by ALCOR. “I only had eyes for you the whole time,” she coos in my ear as we press our bodies together and sway to the station music. “What were you and Crux talking about? It looked pretty heated.”

  “Tomorrow,” I say. “We can talk about it tomorrow. Tonight I just want to forget everything but you.”

  She drops her head to my shoulder and lets me twirl us in slow circles. She smells good. And she’s so beautiful tonight, I suddenly have an urge to get her naked and in my bed. Maybe make good use of her magnetic bracelets.

  Hell, maybe I’ll never get out of bed e
ver again.

  That’s a nice thought.

  A really nice thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - LYRA

  Opinions so far on our first date.

  One. Serpint looks hot in his ceremonial suit. And I know that’s totally inappropriate since we’re at a memorial service, but it’s true. He looks so commanding. Everything about him says power. And now that I know what all the various metals and ribbons mean attached to his shirt sleeves, I’m both impressed that he’s still alive and worried about the life he lives.

  Alee talked a lot while she and the other borgs were dressing me. And every bit of it was about Serpint. She must be old, even though she obviously doesn’t look it, because borgs don’t age the way full humans do. She’s known him even longer than Raylor. She came to the station just after the brothers and ALCOR opened it for business, so he was young.

  I try to picture Serpint as a boy and find it very difficult. There is something hard about him. Something dark, too. Something you either never see in children or if you do, you wish you hadn’t.

  I tried to pump her for information about how they all got here, but she didn’t seem to know. Or maybe she just didn’t want to tell me. But I feel like there’s a story there.

  Probably a bad one. Or a sad one. Or maybe both.

  Opinion number two about our first date.

  Meeting his brothers was surprisingly nice. Luck and Valor have some kind of unusual arrangement. Even though I’ve figured out that Serpint and his dead brother Draden had a similar partnership, Luck and Valor seemed different. And that gold bot of theirs? Beauty. She’s just your basic round sphere like my Prince, but somehow she came off sexy. Luck and Valor’s ceremonial metals and ribbons were gold to match Beauty and even more plentiful than Serpint’s, which has me wondering what they do. Do they hunt down princesses, like Serpint? I need to learn more about them before I put all those pieces together.

  Tray. Hmmm. I don’t think I have an opinion about Tray yet. I get the feeling he’s ALCOR’s right hand around here, even though Crux is the one in charge. He was always alone tonight, for one thing. No bot, no borg, no woman. He didn’t even hang out with his brothers, just kept to himself off to the side. And he wore no medals or ribbons on his suit.

  Which might lead one to think he’s the pacifist in the family. Or he’s weak. But that’s not the impression I got. His eyes are dark, dark violet. And narrow like he had a constant look of distrustfulness in them. Always scanning the crowd. Looking for something. Or super-aware of his environment. And then he’d whisper into the air. To nobody. That’s what I thought at first when I saw him doing that. But then I realized he was talking to ALCOR.

  A mystery, then. Maybe they are all mysteries.

  Himmy is a charmer even though that name of his is impossible to say. In fact, I’d go so far as to call him dangerously charismatic. Every word across his tongue is sweetness secretly laced with a threat. Not that I was afraid of him while we danced. I wasn’t. But I probably should’ve been. He’s tall—they are all tall—and has light brown hair and one of those perfectly trimmed shadow beards. He was also looking very handsome in his suit and all his metals and ribbons were silver, white, and black. They matched Xyla.

  Which brings me to opinion number three.

  Xyla isn’t what I expected. Yes, I still think she’s even more dangerous than all these brothers put together, but she was flirting with my bot the entire night.

  Until he blew a hole in that storefront and got arrested, that is.

  I would like to make friends with Xyla. I would like to know where a girl might get one of those black bodysuits that seem to be all the rage. Also, I’d like a few weapons of my own. I think Xyla is just the person to handle these things for me.

  Opinion number four.

  Crux is lying about something. I watched him talk to Serpint out of the corner of my eye as I danced with Himmy, and I saw it. I saw all the tells of a man lying. He knows something the others don’t, or he’s hiding something from them, or… I don’t know. I just know there’s more to him than I can see right now.

  So far nothing about this station is what I thought. And every single one of these men who run it, including the AI and the bots and borgs they include in their inner circle, isn’t what I thought either.

  What is this place? It’s not just a rowdy safe haven for transient outlaws. Where did this ALCOR come from? And how did this little group of people get their hands on what amounts to a floating metropolitan city?

  Mysteries. All of them.

  “What are you thinking so hard about?” Serpint asks, just as the elevator stops at his apartment.

  “Our day,” I say, pulling him closer to me. I’ve got my hands wrapped around his upper arm in a possessive way and I didn’t realize I was doing that until just now, so I let go and try my best not to blush.

  To my surprise, I can control the glow. There’s a little hum inside me that I know is the light in reserve. It’s always there just below the surface, waiting to be unleashed.

  Serpint looks down at my hands, now suddenly free, and takes one. Leading me into his quarters.

  My gown is long and the skirts are full. They swish a little as I walk. Serpint looks over his shoulder at me with a sly grin, mischief in his eyes as he leads me straight back to the bedroom.

  Oh, I’ve been thinking about this all day.

  When we pass through the open door he twirls me around so I’m facing him and slides one of his large, strong hands along my waist. “You look stunning, Lyra. Absolutely stunning. If someone had told me yesterday morning that you’d turn into… this tonight, I wouldn’t have believed them.”

  “Yeah,” I say, laughing a little. “Well, I was doing my best to look like shit. So… I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  “Good,” he says. “That’s how I meant it.”

  He leans in and kisses me and I automatically kiss him back.

  It’s a nice kiss. A soft, warm, gentle kiss.

  But it’s not the heated passion we experienced yesterday.

  In fact, I don’t even glow. Not even a little.

  What the hell? Because I feel good. I feel turned on. There’s a thrum between my legs that lets me know I want him. I’d like him to strip me naked and fuck me.

  But that need is missing now. I cannot even imagine this night turning supernova. There doesn’t seem to be an imploding universe in our immediate future.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, still kissing me.

  I don’t want to talk about it because I’ve kinda gotten used to the idea that I was his and he was mine. And this mythological soulmate bond is real.

  But now it feels a lot more like a stupid children’s fantasy cooked up by a restless and bored mind.

  And I don’t want it to be that way. I want to go back in time and feel the way I did last night. I want to rip his clothes off, and he mine, and fuck until we blow the whole place up.

  Oh, God. Did I really just think that? What the hell is wrong with me?

  “Lyra.” He laughs a little into my mouth. “What are you thinking about?”

  Not anything I can tell you, I silently think. So I do the only thing left to do.

  I begin unbuttoning his shirt.

  He leans back, pulling us out of our kiss, and watches my fingers as they release his buttons from the bottom up.

  I stare into his eyes—and they glow a deep purple violet. When I get to his high collar he tilts his head forward so I can unclasp the pink ribbon around his neck. It’s very smooth in my hand. Silky and expensive and the magnetic ends give it some weight and make it feel important.

  He takes it from my hand and lays it flat and straight on a nearby shelf. Then looks back at me and tilts his head back so I can reach the buttons on his high collar.

  I suck in a breath of air as I release the last few and then open his shirt up to reveal the hard, cut body underneath and place my hand flat on the muscles of his chest.

  He f
eels like smooth, warm stone.

  One side of his shirt falls over his shoulder and hangs there from the weight of the medals. He makes no move to take off the shirt and neither do I.

  Instead I place my other hand flat on his chest, and drag them both down his stomach as I kneel before him.

  He exhales, closing his eyes, when my fingers pop the button on his pants.

  Then he grips my head with both hands when I drag the zipper down and release his hard cocks from his underwear.

  “Two?” I whisper.

  “I don’t know, Lyra. I don’t have any answers for you.” He says this as his fingers slide into my hair and urge me to move my face closer to his groin.

  “That’s OK,” I say, wrapping both my hands around both his cocks. Together they are so thick, I can just barely encircle them in my palms. Gently, slowly, I start to move my hands up and down his two shafts.

  He exhales again, gripping my hair with more force. Leaning his head back to point his closed eyes at the ceiling.

  “Do you like that?” I ask him.

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” he murmurs. “Very much.”

  “Do you want me to put them in my mouth?” I ask.

  He opens his eyes to look at me, then nods his head, wordlessly.

  I don’t think they’ll fit. But I don’t say that. Better to let him fantasize about the possibility. So I lean forward, gently blowing on his tips. He sucks in a long breath of air through his teeth so it sounds like a hiss. And just as he does that, I drag the tip of my tongue across the tip of his heads.

  “Oh, fuck,” he groans.

  And I feel the same way. My pussy is throbbing now. Hot, and wet, and ready for him to be inside me.

  But again, the desperation we felt last night seems to be gone.

  Now everything is slow, and calm, and… different.

  I’m worried about that. So very worried that we’re not anything special. That we are just two ordinary people who met by accident and there’s no fate in our future.

  But I don’t want to think about that right now.

  So I open my mouth as wide as I can, and take one of his cocks in my mouth. Slowly pumping his other one with my hand as I lean forward and take him in my throat.