A Hero for the Empire: The Dragon's Bidding, Book 1

by Christina Westcott

“I can do that.” He twisted so quickly she barely had time to realize he’d moved before she found herself on her back pinned beneath him.

  His mouth claimed hers, their tongues dancing in a slow, complex ballet of need and desire. He nibbled a warm moist line down her throat to her chest where his fingers stroked the juncture of the two old incisions.

  “These are like a treasure map.” His voice sounded husky with desire. His hands cupped her breasts, sliding down over her ribs and then her stomach as his lips moved lower. “If I follow it…” He nipped and licked her abdomen. “I’ll discover a wonderful prize.”

  A wave of pleasure blasted through Fitz as he found her secret and plundered its treasure with lips and tongue. She arched into him, her hands twisting the sheets into knots as she rode each wave of sensation. The soft brush of his silken hair against her inner thighs was an exquisite torment. He took her higher and hotter until she was certain she would nova, but he held her at the brink of that caldron of fire, letting the starquakes of passion ripple across her being. Then he began his slow sweet trip back up her body, stopping to nuzzle at her breasts, drawing heated circles around each nipple with that incredible tongue.

  Fitz tangled both hands into his hair and pulled him to her. His lips were hard and hot and tasted of her body. “I need you. In me. Now.”

  He watched her face as he entered her, teasing her with slow short strokes. Fitz growled her impatience. She grabbed his butt and pulled him deep inside her, wrapping her legs around his hips. They moved together. He felt so right inside her, as if they were two pieces of a single organism too long separated. He was a part of her she hadn’t even realized was missing until that moment. Now that she had found that lost piece of her soul, she would always feel an emptiness if he wasn’t there to fill it.

  She gasped as the first pulse of exquisite release shivered through her. Then again and again. He drove her on, deep into the crescendo of an immense cosmic symphony, his body and tongue wringing every last thundering note of pleasure out of her. As her last tremor of sensation faded, she felt his shuddering release. They collapsed together, bodies and passions exhausted.

  He kissed her with a soft, almost chaste brush of his lips against hers, then found her ear with his tongue—that incredible tongue—and traced a hot line around the edge. She could feel the movement of his lips, the feather of his breath against her face as he whispered.

  “Well, Captain, do I get the job?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Atrium’s artificial sunlight brightened the bedroom when Wolf awoke. He checked the bedside chrono, realizing it was late afternoon station time. He must have fallen asleep hours ago. That was not usual for him. He seldom slept, but after last night, he needed it.

  Fitz had insisted on showing him her way of caring for her crewmen. He felt a tightening in his groin as he recalled her performance. Then she’d wanted a hot shower, which had gotten things started all over again. Hours later, she’d drifted to sleep curled against him.

  Bloody hell, what did he think he was doing? Of all the people in the bleeding galaxy, she was absolutely, positively, the wrong woman for him to develop feelings for. There was no future for them. If this mission failed, she wouldn’t survive. If they were successful, her duty would call her back to help Ari rebuild the Empire, where he couldn’t follow.

  If they did somehow managed to pick their way through the minefield fate had thrown up in front of them, perhaps they could find some happiness together. Would a couple of years with Fitz be worth watching her die a slow and wasting death? He brushed a lock of hair from her face and a part of him wanted to shout, “Hell yes, if that was all I can get, I’ll take it.”

  But it wasn’t that simple. He’s been less than truthful with her. Keeping secrets had become second nature to him. It hadn’t mattered when she was just a casual acquaintance. Now if he started to open up to her, would she ever truly believe him again? Would the questions always be there?

  It was supposed to be just mindless sex. A couple of hot tumbles in the sack during this insane mission, and then they would go their separate ways. But the chufting universe always threw a curve ball when some poor damn fool least expected it.

  He was vulnerable right now, that was all. He’d lost everything. His home. His friends. The only thing he had to hang on to was Fitz. That didn’t mean he loved her. He’d learned his lesson with Ari. Love made him weak, made him easy to manipulate, made him do things he’d regret for the rest his life.

  When Fitz awoke he’d tell her this was a mistake. They needed to keep their relationship on a purely professional basis. That would hurt her—no more than it would hurt him, but unnatural aberrations like him had no right to expect happiness.

  “You’re watching me,” Fitz said.

  “Augies have scanners mounted in the back of their heads now?”

  “No, but I can tell when you’re watching me. I just feel it.” She laughed and wiggled her bottom against him. He fought against the pressure mounting in his groin, trying to pull his thoughts back to what he needed to say.

  “Fitz…”

  She rolled over to face him, taking his hardness into her hand and caressing him. Wolf’s mind went blank, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  She kissed the end of his nose. “You were going to say?”

  “Uh…actually, I don’t recall.”

  “Good, because I’ve got a better use for that talented tongue of yours.”

  The bedroom door slammed open.

  Wolf rolled out of the bed, snatched the slug thrower from the night table and stood, the laser sight a steady red dot on Miah Lister’s chest as she stepped into the room.

  The woman’s eyes flicked to Fitz and back as she walked toward him, nonchalantly pushing the weapon away. “Don’t you point that thing at me unless you plan on using it.” She glanced down. “Or that thing either.”

  She brushed past him and snatched the suppressor module off the table, deactivating it. “Now I know why I couldn’t contact you. Get some clothes on and meet me in the other room. We’ve got problems, big problems.”

  She turned to leave, but stopped and looked at Fitz. “Why am I not surprised? You are exactly his type.”

  Wolf picked up his shorts from the floor and eased into them, while Fitz searched the room to locate the clothes she’d scattered last night.

  “Old girlfriend?” She pulled on her tee shirt.

  “No, but not for lack trying. Miah just never appealed to me. She always seemed a little too…uh, pushy.” He eschewed a shirt, but strapped the gun belt in place.

  Lister snarled orders into her comm as they reached the living room. The image on the media center flickered, blanked and came back up with what appeared to be a live feed from somewhere in the shipyards. Wolf thought they were looking at the inner beacon from the vantage of one of the defense platforms.

  The three ships obviously wanted to be seen. Their running lights were lit and the smart paint was programmed to display the rearing quolla on the dorsal spines of the two Imperial battleships. The third vessel launched waves of fighters like an immense manta spawning hundreds of tiny metal fry.

  “Oh, shit,” said Fitz. “That’s the Chisum Rantha.”

  Wolf remembered the Empire’s predilection for naming carriers after dead emperors. Why did this one have to be named after his old nemesis?

  Lister jabbed a finger in his face. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t turn you both over to them and get them off my back.”

  “Think it through, Miah. They’re not here for us. If they’d been able to track us, they’d have cornered us in the Oxylus system and blown us to bloody bits there. What the Empire wants is this shipyard.” Wolf approached the monitor and pointed to the image of a row of space docks. “More precisely, these are what they’re after. How many Pulsars do you have under construction?�
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  “Five, but…”

  He cut her off. “And how long would it take your fabricators to start pumping out the components to refit them back to Gyrfalcon class corvettes?”

  “They could be up to full capacity by the end of third shift tomorrow. But why does Ashcraft need more ships? None of the Alliance worlds have a Navy, only an outdated fleet of customs inspectors who can’t even keep the smugglers under control.”

  Fitz studied the image on the monitor, arms crossed over her chest. “He needs to replace the ships Kiernan took from him. If Ashcraft is intent on grabbing all thirteen systems in the Midworlds, he’ll need every ship he can get when he moves on New Concordia and Tartaglia. They have defense pacts with the Landers Federation. And the LanFed has a big navy—not a very good one, but they’ve got a lot of battleships. Sometimes quantity can trump quality.”

  “The Gyrfalcon class was small, quick, heavily armed,” Wolf said. “And, if I remember correctly, Lister’s design board touted them as ‘battleship killers’. Just what the Empire would need to go up against the LanFed’s slow-and-heavies.”

  “The Empire’s going to discover that we’re not as helpless as they think.” Lister turned back to the monitor and stabbed several buttons. The view of the yards changed to a control center and a harried-looking young man. “Jenks, bring up the defense platforms.”

  “No,” Wolf shouted and stepped between her and the screen. “You do that and you’ll get every man and woman on board them killed. As soon as they see the weapons go hot, those battleships will blow your platforms to bits. And I’d get your people out of them as quick as you can, before they decide to take them out without provocation.”

  “Those fortifications were built to protect us.”

  “Yes. Eighty years ago. Even then, they were never designed to be your first line of defense. There was a squadron of warships stationed here for that, and if the enemy got past them, you were bloody well screwed anyway. Now a relic that can’t maneuver is little more than a big, fat target to a ship armed with kinetic weapons.”

  “So what do you expect me to do? Invite them in for tea and biscuits and just meekly hand my entire corporation over to them?” She stopped and studied him, dark eyes narrowing. “Now isn’t it odd that your entire base is destroyed and you just happen to walk away unscathed? Then you show up here in the company of a sexy SpecOps agent who appears to be leading you around by your genitalia, and you tell me to hand everything over to the Imperials. Whose side are you on?”

  Wolf stepped in close to Lister and fought to keep his voice soft. “For the sake of the years we’ve known each other, I’m going to forget you said that. Now as I see it, this scenario can play out in one of two ways. In the first, the Empire controls the facility and all this—the fancy hotel, the cushy corporate offices, you, me and probably the entire station—are no more than a cloud of expanding debris. That son of a bitch out there commanding that carrier group doesn’t need Chairwoman Lister and her Board of Directors to get his warships built. He needs the docks and the people, who will be very motivated after they see what happens to you.”

  He started to pace. “In the second, they still run the show, but you—and your Board if you can keep them in line—will be overseeing the day-to-day operations. It’ll take all of that inimitable Lister charm to convince the Imperials you have their best interests at heart while you’re sticking it to them. Lost files, work slowdowns, even actual sabotage, but you’ll have to be careful they never suspect you. It won’t be easy, but I think that Machiavellian mind of yours can manage it.”

  Wolf watched comprehension dawn on the woman’s face. “Now, what about my ship?” he asked.

  “So you’re running out on me?” Lister waved off his reply. “Never mind, I don’t think I want to know. You’ve been tight-lipped about what you were up to since you arrived yesterday. What I don’t know, I can’t tell my new friends. Whatever the two of you are planning, I hope it involves getting Ashcraft in your crosshairs.”

  Lister activated her comm. “Mr. Franquitti?”

  “Here, Ma’am. Whatcha need?” The man shouted to be heard over the rumble of a shuttle engine.

  “The Loki 6 that came in yesterday, the rush job, is it finished?”

  “The abomination? Yeah, pretty much. We swapped out the thruster and got everything hooked back in, but I planned on sending her out for a check ride before I signed off on the job. Don’t look like that’s gonna happen any time soon, but in my humble opinion, she’ll fly. As well as that POS ever could.”

  “We need to get out to the repair dock,” Wolf said.

  “What about it, Franquitti? Any chance of getting the owners out to pick her up?”

  “Wait one.” They heard only engine sounds and a background babble of voices for several minutes before the yard boss came back on the line. “The pilot says she’s got one more run to pick up some techs on Dock 14. Right now she’s about five minutes out from bay C-23 on sublevel two. She needs to refuel before she goes out again, so you got twenty minutes, thirty at max, to get here. If your people ain’t here by then, she says they’ll have to walk.”

  Wolf turned to Fitz. “Grab anything you don’t want to leave behind, but don’t overload yourself. We need to move fast. We leave here in five minutes.”

  “You’d better be right on this,” Lister told him as she stalked out the door.

  Wolf searched the room, reaching for the familiar presence that usually touched a corner of his mind. It wasn’t there.

  “Bloody hell, where’s Jumper?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Precisely five minutes later by her inhead display, Fitz entered Wolf’s room. From the briefcase open on his bed, he produced an array of weapons, surveillance equipment and explosives, stuffing them in his pockets. He strapped on the slug thrower and handed her the laser pistol’s shoulder rig.

  “Did Jumper show up?” He slid a knife into the top of his boot.

  Fitz shook her head as she adjusted the holster to fit.

  “He picked a hell of a time to go walkabout.” Wolf stuffed a handful of ration bars into his bulging pockets.

  “You come prepared for every contingency,” Fitz said.

  “Obviously not. I neglected to pack body armor.”

  She almost laughed before she realized it hadn’t been a joke.

  “When that augie attacked me back at Ishtok, Jumper could sense my danger. Do you think we might be able to reach him now?”

  Wolf shrugged. “This has got to be a nightmare for an empath. If he tries to open up, he’ll be overwhelmed by all the fear and panic out there.”

  He pulled her into the living room and punched the message function on the suite’s comm system. “Jumper, we’re leaving. Meet us at gate C-23 on sublevel two.” He set the message to repeat aloud every thirty seconds.

  His voice reached her via her internal comm. “We’ll probably only be able to communicate via our combat channels. Try not to get separated. If we do, get to the gate as fast as you can. Don’t waste time looking for me.”

  Bedlam ruled in the hallway, tourists jostling executives and ship captains aside in their terror. Most ran empty handed but some struggled with luggage, bottlenecking in front of the lifts. The door of one stood open, a man shouting obscenities as he tried to push a loaded float into the already packed interior.

  A second car prepared to leave. As the doors slid closed, Fitz jumped forward to pull them apart. The sight of two armed people forcing their way inside caused the occupants to shrink back enough to provide a tiny wedge of space for them. The lift dropped toward the concourse.

  Fitz stepped out as soon as they stopped, letting the flood of humanity flow out around her. Wolf remained in the lift. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “There are a couple of bars in the Underworld Jumper likes to frequent. I might be able to locate
him down there.”

  “We don’t have time for this. If we don’t get to that gate, the shuttle’s going to depart without us.”

  “I’m not leaving him. He’s a Gold Dragon, and we don’t leave our own behind.” His voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Besides, he’s my friend.”

  Fitz had seen too many warriors eaten alive by the trauma of walking out of a fire fight when their buddies hadn’t. Wolf left his friends on Rainbow, and now they were dead. Abandoning the cat would be out of the question for him. It didn’t matter that Jumper wasn’t human; he was still Wolf’s last attachment to his previous life. She admired that kind of loyalty, but she couldn’t let it sidetrack her mission, even if the fuzzy moocher had wormed his way into her heart, too.

  “Even if we can’t find Jumper…” She stopped at the sour look on Wolf’s face. “I know, I want to find him, too, but if Lister makes nice with that Imperial admiral, Jumper might be safer here than if he goes with us.”

  “I’m not leaving without him.” A muscle jumped in his jaw as he ground his teeth.

  “You left that message for him in the room. He probably got it, went down to the shuttle dock and is wondering where we are.”

  “Then you need to get down there. Call me on the comm if you find him. Then you’ll have to buy me some time. Whatever you have to do, keep that shuttle there until I arrive.”

  The lift doors closed, and Fitz turned, sprinting for the main concourse.

  The stubborn man would jeopardize their entire mission for a cat. No, not just a cat, Jumper was his friend. Hers, too. If it was her, lost and in trouble, Wolf would be just as stubbornly loyal and protective. For Yig’s sake, she was an augie. She could take care of herself. Just because they’d had sex once—or twice or three times—that didn’t make him responsible for her.

  She cursed men in general and one in particular as she forced her way through the mobbed concourse and down to the lower level. The going was easier there with only spacers and Lister personnel headed back to the working docks. A glance out into the shipyards brought her to an astonished halt. Beyond the arching dome of the terminal, chaos reigned. Ships cut across the lanes at high speed with no regard for proper anti-collision spacing. A yacht pushed back from the dock and into the path of a Trans-Alliance liner that had just departed from an adjacent gate. The two ships avoided impact by less than a dozen meters.