by Robyn Bachar
She had to admit, the man had a devilishly talented tongue. Ryder licked, nibbled and sucked in all the right places. She tried and failed to remember the last time she felt like this, when she’d been touched like this—the eager attention of a new lover. It felt like the first time, but she knew she couldn’t be a virgin. She’d had a husband, given birth to a child...hadn’t she?
The crest of a climax interrupted her train of thought, and all she felt was sensation. She shouted her approval, and Ryder raised his head and grinned.
“Was kind of hoping you were a screamer,” he said. “Figured anyone that quiet has to come apart during sex.”
“You figured right.”
“Now let’s see how loud you can be.”
He slid two fingers into her sex, pumping her as he returned to tormenting her with his tongue. Jiang lost track of time, lost count of the number of times she came, and abandoned herself to Ryder’s touch. He murmured encouragements against her thighs, whispered praise against the sensitive skin of her sex, and each word drove her to new heights. She didn’t just want to come—she wanted to because he asked it of her. He finally stopped when she lay sweating and panting, her voice ragged from moaning. Ryder rose and looked down at her with so much raw desire that she could almost feel the heat of it emanating from his body.
“Tired, boss? Because I can stop,” he said. Ryder grinned wickedly.
Jiang sat up too fast and he steadied her as the room spun. She breathed deep and focused.
“Tired? I’m just getting started.” She leaned in and kissed him. She tasted herself on his lips, and the scent of her arousal faintly perfumed his skin. With an eager grin she bared his throat and nipped his earlobe. Ryder moaned as she traced hungry kisses along his neck, culminating in a love bite that would leave a bruise to mark her territory.
She reached for his fly and unfastened his pants. She slipped her hand into his drawers and stroked his hard cock. “That’s quite a flight stick you have.”
Ryder moaned. “Good thing you’re a pilot.”
Jiang grinned, dragged his pants down and nudged him until he lay flat against the deck. She straddled him, her hands splayed atop his chest.
“Don’t I get a pillow or something?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Doesn’t seem fair.” Ryder’s teasing grin faded as she lowered herself onto his cock.
Jiang gasped—he was hard, huge and happy to see her. Almost a little too big, but thanks to the attention he’d lavished on her sex she was wet enough to handle him. She threw her head back and cried out in ecstasy as she took him to the hilt. Heaven, this was heaven. Jiang rode him without mercy, using every inch of him to pleasure herself. He reached for her hips and she recognized the frustration in his eyes.
“Arms above your head,” she said. “I’m in command here.”
As he complied Jiang leaned down and rewarded him with a long, scorching kiss. She moaned into his mouth, and as she braced herself above him, she picked up the pace. They moved together, meeting each other thrust for thrust as need and pleasure built, peaked and then exploded.
Jiang cried out in ecstasy as each pulse of Ryder’s cock sent new waves of sensation tingling through her.
Ryder looked up at her with a lazy grin. “That was amazing.”
She nodded—this was the best terrible idea she’d ever had.
* * *
The darkness was close, claustrophobic. Jiang was pinned beneath a crushing weight, unable to move, almost unable to breathe. The air was hot and stale, clogged with dust and tinged with smoke and blood, and her lungs wheezed with each breath.
Trapped. The building had collapsed, and she was trapped beneath the rubble.
“Well, aren’t you the clever one?”
Jiang blinked. Her eyes were gummy with dirt, but there was nothing to see, only more smothering shadows. “Who’s there?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice, rough and angry.
“Can you help me?” Jiang asked.
The reply was a bestial snarl and a rush of air as though a thing with teeth and claws had swiped at her and barely missed. Jiang gasped but couldn’t move. Everything hurt—her entire body was a wound that throbbed with every beat of her pulse.
“Help you? You?” The voice thundered in the darkness like the rumble of artillery fire. “You are nothing!”
The world shook as another hailstorm of artillery fire rained down from the heavens. Ominous creaks and groans sounded from all sides as the rubble above her shifted. The weight of it pressed her harder, threatening to squash her flat at any moment.
“Please! My name is Jiang Chen. I have a husband and a daughter who need me.”
“Do you?” Her voice changed, the rage replaced with a sneer. “Do you really? Tell me something simple. Tell me their favorite colors.”
Silence stretched as Jiang struggled to remember. Simple—it was simple, wasn’t it? A simple detail every mother, every wife should know about her family. But she didn’t have an answer.
“I can’t think...” she said.
“You can’t think, therefore you aren’t.”
Jiang was startled by the rasping slide of cloth on concrete.
“You are a mistake.” Slide. “A malfunction.” Slide. “Nothing but bad data.”
Jiang was filled with dread as the sound crept ever closer. She shrieked as bony hands grabbed her throat in an iron grip. She shut her eyes, terrified of what she might see if she opened them, and felt the hiss of hot breath against her face.
“It’s time to end this program.”
Jiang bolted awake. She gasped for air and reached to dislodge the phantom hands that strangled her.
“Hey.” Ryder sat up and placed his hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong? Bad dream?”
She managed a choked laugh. Bad dream. Understatement.
He rubbed her back, and she eased into the comfort of it. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
“Safe?” Jiang croaked the word like a bullfrog. “We’re in Soviet space.”
“You’re safe with me.”
For a moment—one golden, contented moment—she allowed herself to be comforted by that idea. Ryder would protect her. It was his job. Then pain lanced through her skull like a scalpel. She hissed and held her head in her hands.
A mistake. Bad data.
Jiang pushed herself out of the bunk and stumbled away, putting a safe distance between them. Her head throbbed in agony and she pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes.
Malfunction. Broken.
A horrible realization dawned over her, leaving numbness in its wake. “Shit. That’s what this is, isn’t it?” she asked. She was such an idiot—lost her focus, couldn’t see the obvious truth that stared her in the face.
“Huh?”
Jiang dropped her hands and glared at him. “Don’t play dumb with me. This.” She waved a hand that encompassed them and their state of undress. “Mr. ‘I’m chief of security and it’s my job to make things okay.’ You’re trying to fix me.”
He frowned. “With what? The healing properties of my cock?”
“No. Well, maybe. I mean, that’s your MO, right? Love ’em and leave ’em satisfied.” She cut him off with a wave of her hand before he could protest. “That’s not the point. The point is that you’re here because I’m a mission to you. Not consciously. You probably never realized it. But this is what you do. You make things okay. And at first when I came on board the Mombasa I was just a melancholy pilot and you kept your distance, but then we found out about the implant and all this spy shit and now I’m like a...a crusade or something. A damsel in distress.”
“And that’s...bad?” Ryder scratched his chin, confused.
“Yes. It’s complicated.” Jiang sighed and looked for her panties among the clothing strewn on the floor. “And we don’t need complicated right now.”
“Can we do complicated later, then?”
“No. We’re not doing this again. This was a mistake.”
“What?” Ryder shoved the blanket aside and rose. “No. This was amazing.”
“The sex was amazing. But it was a mistake. This happened for all the wrong reasons.”
“Which are?”
“You don’t want me for me. You want me because I fit your profile. You’re trying to save me because you couldn’t save Erik, or your unit. And no. Just...no.” Jiang shook her head. “I can’t be your redemption. I’ve got my own shit to deal with.”
She snatched her shirt from the chair and dragged it over her head. She froze when she looked at him, and realized that she’d gone too far. Bringing up his unit was a sucker punch, and the devastation of it was written in the horror of his pained expression. She could have stabbed him and done less damage. She was swamped with a wave of guilt, but instead of apologizing she set her jaw and continued to dress. It would be easier if he was pissed at her—a clean break.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “Okay. I see your point. This was a mistake. From now on we stick to the mission.”
“Good. It’s better this way.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
Jiang flinched—for the first time the nickname wasn’t a friendly endearment, but a slap.
Chapter Nine
“Deep breath,” Jiang said. “Here we go.”
Ryder tensed in the copilot’s chair, but he remained silent—one word of English spoken over the comm was likely to get them shot out of the sky.
They arrived in the system with a minimal amount of fuss from the border patrols. New Leningrad was one of the largest, most prosperous settlements in Soviet space. It was a shining example of the Party’s superiority—the Soviet Union had been the first to launch a satellite into space, first to put a man in orbit and first to land on the moon. (It was still a sore point that the Americans had reached Mars first.) Despite its strategic importance, there was little action this far into Soviet space, and the pilots were bored and lazy. But the traffic controller for New Leningrad’s spaceport was bound to be more alert, and less forgiving if they slipped up.
Jiang activated the comm. “New Leningrad Control, this is civilian shuttle 201138 requesting permission to land.”
Silence. Jiang licked her lips as her pulse rate rose a notch. Her Russian was flawless, and the most brilliant criminal minds inhabiting the Stryke Zone had forged new identities for her, Ryder and the shuttle, so they should be safe, in theory. But Soviet paranoia was an epic thing to behold, along with Soviet bureaucracy. A citizen couldn’t even sneeze without the right papers granting him permission to do so.
She waited a full minute before repeating her hail, and finally someone responded. “Civilian shuttle 201138, this is New Leningrad Control. Permission will be granted upon receipt of your documents.”
Jiang exhaled a relieved breath—that was one hurdle passed. “Transmitting documents now.”
She muted the comm and waited. Ryder tapped the console in front of him with a nervous beat until Jiang silenced him with an annoyed glance.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Those stations are making me nervous.”
“They’re supposed to.”
Several defense platforms orbited the colony, bristling with weapons like angry porcupines. The installations were ostensibly meant to give the citizens peace of mind that they were well protected, but the truth was that the platforms were meant to keep the people in as much as keeping enemies out. People had been defecting from the Soviet Union since its inception, though none so spectacularly as the colonies that had rebelled during the war.
“Civilian shuttle 201138, you are clear to land at berth 0313. All passengers must have papers ready for inspection upon arrival.”
“Acknowledged, Control,” Jiang said.
“Too easy?” Ryder asked as Jiang prepped the shuttle for landing.
“Seemed pretty standard to me. The trick will be getting through the security checkpoints once we’re on the ground.”
“At least I’ll be able to understand them with this earpiece.” Ryder tapped the side of his head. His false ID included military records, with a mention of injuries that resulted in amputating his arm and damaging his hearing. The “hearing aid” that he currently wore was actually a translation device—instead of amplifying sound it provided English translations in real time. Most security agents would see his missing limb and think nothing of an earpiece—or so they hoped. One hypervigilant agent was all it would take to get them both captured and executed for espionage.
Jiang closed her eyes for one quick moment as she took another calming breath. Easy. One thing at a time. “You already know the most important Russian words: yes, no and I want vodka.”
“Da,” he replied.
During the journey Jiang had taken the precaution of teaching Ryder a few other important phrases. It was practically the only time she could get a word out of him, in English or otherwise. The smiling, joking Ryder she was used to had been replaced by the stoic Chief Kalani who struck fear into the hearts of the Mombasa’s enemies. Jiang repeated “This is for the best” over in her mind like a mantra, but that knowledge brought her little comfort.
The shuttle left the upper atmosphere and sailed toward the spaceport. “Doesn’t look like much,” Ryder said.
Jiang snorted. “They left the flashing neon architecture to New Vegas.”
“I was expecting something more...sinister.” Ryder shrugged. “You know. The Alliance talks about the Red Army like they’re monsters waiting to pounce and crush our freedom beneath their commie boots.”
“Really?” Jiang piloted an Alliance privateer ship, but she didn’t pay much attention to its politics. She worked for the Alliance because the Nyotas did, not out of any sense of loyalty to the government.
“Yeah. Again, you’re really lacking in Earther culture.”
“But I’ve learned so much from you, Chief. “ She eased the shuttle into a small landing berth, and the upper bay doors cycled closed above them with an ominous bang as the ship powered down.
Ryder peered out of the viewport. “Can those be opened manually?”
“No. If we don’t get permission to launch, we’ll be trapped in here.”
“Good to know.” Ryder unbuckled his harness and rose. “Well, guess it’s showtime.”
Two security officers waited for them when they exited the airlock. Jiang and Ryder immediately extended the data sticks holding their travel documents, and the officers took them to scan.
“Welcome to New Leningrad,” one of the men intoned. His voice was flat and lifeless, as though he’d given the same speech hundreds of times. “We will escort you to civilian intake. Large cargo can be left here for examination before shipping. Any cargo carried with you will be scanned. Weapons are not allowed inside the colony. If you have weapons, please leave them on your ship now. Any weapons brought past this point will be confiscated and you will be fined one thousand credits per weapon.”
“We understand,” Jiang said. She had already warned Ryder about this rule, much to his dismay. She shouldered her travel bag. “We are ready to proceed.”
The men returned the data sticks, and Jiang and Ryder followed them out of the bay. The door cycled open and led to a long corridor. The spaceport felt familiar. Jiang wasn’t sure if the familiarity was due to time spent on the colony during her murky past, or if it came from study of the place. Or possibly from the fact that nearly every major Soviet spaceport had the exact same layout—as far as communists were concerned, once you found a design that worked, there was little p
oint in changing it.
Overhead speakers softly played one of the myriad Soviet anthems, and Jiang fought the urge to roll her eyes. In her opinion it was a poor sign if the government demanded ever more songs to praise its greatness instead of inspiring the people to compose tributes of their own. Propaganda posters lined the walls, evenly spaced every few feet. Bright images encouraged passersby to “Follow the true path, comrades!” while others touted “All power to the Soviets. Peace to the People. Land to the workers.” It almost made Jiang miss the advertisements for booze and brothels that graced the corridors of Swiss space stations.
Almost.
The officers deposited Jiang and Ryder at the end of a long queue that snaked back and forth through the intake terminal. The air was hot and stale, recycled too many times through the same filters. Jiang smiled up at Ryder and took his hand. They were playing the role of newlyweds combining a search for work with their honeymoon. It would allow them to share quarters without raising any eyebrows, and to ask questions about local news.
For the most part the scene was quiet, but the presence of armed guards patrolling the room wasn’t lost on Jiang. Anyone who failed to pass inspection would be detained for further questioning. Some would be released a few hours later, but some travelers were never heard from again. Jiang prayed that their forged IDs continued to hold up under scrutiny.
After two hours they finally reached the front of the line, and Jiang and Ryder were sent to separate agents. She fought the urge to grimace—it would have been easier if she could have answered questions for him. Ryder’s limited Russian should be enough to let him reply because his earpiece was translating the questions.
A tired woman looked up at Jiang. “Documents.”
Jiang handed her data stick to the woman, who plugged it into her data terminal.
“Name.”
“Mei Borodin.”
“Purpose of your visit.”
“It’s my honeymoon.” Jiang giggled and beamed an adoring smile at Ryder, who winked in reply. The agent wasn’t impressed.