He chuckled.
The crackling voice of the Janus 5 control tower filled the cabin. “Approaching craft, please identify yourself.”
“This is the Daggertail, registration number Alpha Charlie four niner niner seven two from Hyperion 4 on approach. Request permission to land.”
There was a brief pause. Tavish wondered if control knew the Daggertail for a bondsman’s vehicle. Her pulse quickened. She couldn’t help but think there might be a possibility that he would have to declare her as a passenger.
“Daggertail, you are cleared for landing in the Bravo sector.”
He flicked a switch on the board and then tapped his comm link. “Xavier to Warrick, we’ve been cleared to land, over.” He waited until the comm gave two short blips to signal Warrick’s acknowledgment.
Tavish picked at the bar code stamped behind her ear. Would Louie somehow be notified of her reentry? Would security send her back to him?
A large, warm hand settled on her leg where it bounced against the copilot’s chair. A soft expression melted some of the ice in his blue eyes. “They’ll have to kill me to get to you, and that isn’t an easy job.”
Something warm, fuzzy, and foreign took up residence in her heart.
“Do you know how to get to Dame Heidi’s from this dock?”
She watched the blazing neon lights surrounding the dock as he eased the Daggertail to the waiting tarmac. Robotic arms extended, jarring the hull as they clamped into place. It seemed to Tavish as if the planet intended to reel them in.
“Tavish?” Xave’s voice softened. “Look at me.”
She swallowed, her breath coming in shallow pants. Why was she so nervous? Hadn’t he just said he wouldn’t send her back?
Xave forced her chin up with his thumb. His dark hair was tousled from the hours of sexual fulfillment they’d enjoyed on the trip. Powerless to resist the urge, she reached out and tucked an errant strand behind one of his ears. Her fingers brushed the rough stubble on his cheek, caressed the strength of his jaw, and traced the soft line of his lower lip.
He grinned. “Look at yourself, Tav. Despite the fact that you are in possession of the sweetest pussy this side of the Lexicon system, you look nothing like a working girl. Nobody will know that you’re not just another bondsman sent to help me pick up Mendez.”
His words brought a smile to her face. In the nondescript black pants and baggy green shirt with her comfy boots, she looked about as fuckable as a service droid.
He stood and reached for his gear. Settling the pack over his broad shoulders, he adjusted the folds of his duster and prepared to lower the ramp.
“What’s in that thing, anyway?” she asked.
“A little bit of everything.”
“You got any food?”
He leveled a devastating grin at her. “I thought you already ate.”
She blushed. The pleasant taste of his cum still lingered in her mouth. “I mean the kind of nourishment that will keep me physically alive.”
“I carry some field rations, but I don’t think you’d like them.”
Tavish sighed. “Guess I’ll have to wait for Heidi’s, then. She’s always looking for an excuse to show off her latest food-processing unit.”
The air lock hissed as the ramp lowered. Taking a deep breath, she followed him down to the tarmac. He paused at the bottom, letting her take the lead. Glancing around, she chose a narrow alley that wound between the tall, tightly packed buildings.
“I didn’t think Louie let you guys roam the planet very often,” Xave said when they’d put some distance between them and the Daggertail.
“We didn’t get to roam. He packed us all into a huge public-transit unit and took us to Dame Heidi’s every few months for new clothes. Since she still makes a lot of her own merchandise in house, it’s cheaper than the imported stuff the other stores sell to the tourists.”
“And you remember how to get to her place?”
She shrugged. “When you only get out a few times a year, you devour the scenery. We always took the same path, and I think I memorized every holo-sign, bench, and building between Louie’s and Heidi’s.”
“Do you remember anything from before Louie’s?”
“I thought we already went over this.”
“And I thought you might’ve come up with something new.”
“You didn’t fuck me that hard, Xave.”
His laugh ricocheted off the surrounding buildings and enveloped them. She found a smile and chuckled along, but deep down she wondered what all-consuming truths lay in his past that made him so determined to pry into hers.
“What about you? Where did you grow up?”
He didn’t answer. In fact, he’d stopped walking. Concerned, she took a breath in order to ask what was wrong. He placed a gentle finger against her lips before she had the chance, then cocked his head. He seemed to be listening to something in the surrounding area.
His comm link hadn’t blipped to signal a message from Warrick, and the streets seemed quiet. So what was he doing?
His hand clamped around her arm, and he dragged her into the sheltering shadows behind a stack of crates.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“There’s a unit of Janus 5 security headed in our direction. They’re sweeping this district.”
She stiffened, her palms sweating as they pressed against the coarse fabric of her pants. He didn’t have to tell her whom they were sweeping for. Louie must be looking for her.
Xave shifted position, forcing her behind his broad back. Concealed by the long folds of his coat, they blended into the shadows like a couple of wraiths.
Seconds later a group of terse security cyborgs trotted into view. Their heads turned methodically, scanning for any telltale sounds. Dressed in black fatigues not unlike the ones she and Xave wore, they were all blond haired and blue eyed with lean, muscular bodies built for cruelty.
She closed her eyes, but their images remained. Creatures like these had decimated her home, murdered her parents and her brothers, and sold her into a life of slavery. It was impossible to separate the unit of six cyborg security officers marching through the present from the ones in her past. All cyborgs served the Alliance for the span of their lives. What if this unit had been part of the larger force that took her from everything she knew? What if they were the same beings who had shattered her life?
“They’ve gone,” Xave murmured.
“I wish they’d stayed. I wish I could blow them apart,” she said, voice shaking. “Then I’d burn the pieces and piss on the ashes to pay them back for all they’ve done.”
He tilted his head to see her over his shoulder, an expression of scrutiny on his stoic face. “Those were Generation 5 cyborgs, the foot-soldier models. They don’t have the cognitive abilities developed for the later models. In fact, the Gen 5s aren’t much more intelligent than service droids.”
She swallowed back her anger, trying to bring her emotions back under control. “So those weren’t the ones that rebelled against the Alliance and attacked all those people?
“Cyborgs don’t have the mental drive for rebellion.” He paused, something else hovering on the tip of his tongue that he wanted to say but wouldn’t. “Don’t believe the Alliance propaganda splashed all over the news. There’s always more than one side to a story.”
“My story had one side. The one that ended in cyborgs murdering everyone I knew.”
“I’m just telling you that things aren’t always what they seem.”
She wondered in silence at his words. She didn’t doubt that he knew more than he would say. But the unsaid fervency behind his words left her with a sense of foreboding about his own truths. What would she eventually discover about this man who had offered his protection and so much more?
He waited several more minutes before standing and pulling her with him. She lingered against his warm, muscular body, thankful for the protection he’d been so willing to give and letting his closeness push the demons away.
“I told you they’re not taking you from me,” he rumbled into her ear.
A shiver of delight chased up her spine. It seemed ridiculous to allow herself to be excited by his possessive nature. But she couldn’t stop her mind and body from reacting.
“We should hurry. They might come back this way for another sweep.”
“Heidi’s isn’t much farther.” Gripping his hand, she started down the last alley toward Dame Heidi’s shop at an energetic pace.
When they reached the dark alcove protecting Heidi’s rear door from prying eyes, Tavish lifted her hand to knock.
“Wait,” Xave ordered. He stepped forward, standing straight and rigid, sniffing the air around them, and seeming for all the world as if he listened to things impossible to hear. “Okay, but do it quietly, Tav girl.”
“You’re going to rue the day you told me to be quiet, Xave.” She teased in low undertones as she rapped four times in quick succession on the heavy door.
The door swung open with a creak. A short, round woman in a tentlike dress stood silhouetted in the doorway only seconds before she grabbed Tavish and yanked her into a huge hug.
“Tavvy, darling! I was so worried!”
“We shouldn’t stand out here,” Xave growled, crowding against them.
“Oh! Of course, of course. Come in!”
Soft yellow lighting revealed Damn Heidi’s living quarters at the rear of her shop. Tavish had grown up visiting these comfortable rooms every few months for the only mothering she could remember.
Xave disappeared, no doubt to check the entire building for safety.
Dame Heidi pulled her farther into the room and urged her onto the worn sofa. The cozy living room boasted a faux hearth flanked by two wingback chairs Heidi had inherited from an ancestor on Earth. The artwork hanging around the room showed the woman’s love of twenty-second-century fashion, shoes in particular.
A tiny kitchen unit took up one corner of the main room, its late-model food-processing unit a testament to Heidi’s successful clothing shop. A common lavatory and one tiny bedroom opened to the left of the kitchen. The master suite with its own private powder room sat on the other side. Tavish had been inside once, but it warmed her that her old friend had splurged on niceties for her decadent boudoir. When she’d been a little girl, Tavish had often dreamed of running away to live with Heidi.
Of course, if she had left Louie’s, she wouldn’t have met Xave. And even the few hours she’d had with him were enough to make up for the lifetime of hell at Louie’s. That, if nothing else, made her a stupid, stupid woman.
“I was so very worried, Tavish darling. Where have you been?”
Tavish nibbled her lip in worry. “Did Louie give you trouble?”
Heidi waved one chubby hand. “I do not much care what Louie thinks. He came to my shop an hour after you’d gone, demanding that I release his property. I would have had my security droids roll his fat bottom out the door had I not been numb with shock over the news of your disappearance.”
“It all happened so fast.”
“And now?”
“And now Xave and I are back to find Vincent Mendez.”
“That space trash?” Heidi scoffed. “What do you want with him?”
She shrugged. “There’s a price on his head. Xave is a bondsman, it’s his job.”
“And you? What happens when this bondsman’s finished doing his job?”
Tavish had nothing to say. She couldn’t deny that the thought had crossed her mind.
“Bah, I thought you gave up on childish dreams, Tavvy darling.”
She took in Heidi’s beloved flyaway gray curls and plump frame. The intelligent brown eyes were filled with worry.
“I thought I had too, Heidi.”
“So why are you convinced that this man is different from the rest?”
“He gives me orgasms,” Tavish blurted without thinking.
Heidi chortled with laughter. “Is that all?”
Tavish blushed. “No, but I can’t explain the rest.”
“Try.”
“When I’m with him”—Tavish swallowed—“I forget I’m nothing more than one of Louie’s working girls.”
Chapter Ten
Her words sent Xave reeling. He hadn’t wanted to eavesdrop on their conversation, but with his acute hearing, it had been impossible to avoid.
“Are you listening to me, Kovuchenko?” Warrick bellowed in Xave’s ear.
“I’m here.”
“You asked for an invitation to the VIP sector of the Persian Maiden, and I delivered. You’ve got a fifteen-hour window of opportunity. I told you what Mendez has to offer us. Don’t let this chance slip away just for a piece of ass.”
Xave grimaced at Warrick’s blatant insinuation. He sure as hell hadn’t set out to fall for the spunky, auburn-haired Tavish. But once he’d gotten a good look at the whole package, it’d been impossible not to. She’d not only survived a hellish upbringing, she’d thrived and managed to maintain a wicked sense of humor as well as an unhealthy dose of courage.
“I shouldn’t need to remind you what we could do with the information we can extract from Mendez.”
Xave grimaced. “I know. We’ve got a plan to trap Mendez inside the casino.”
“Then stop thinking with your cock and get it done.”
Xave rested his head against the wall as the comm link terminated. Once upon a time, an asinine comment like that wouldn’t have even applied to him. But now, just the thought of Tavish’s soft pussy summoned a fierce desire to slide his cock into her wet heat and stay there until the worlds ended.
Of course, that desire would become irrelevant when she found out he was the bastard son of a renegade Generation 8 enhanced combat model. If she’d known from the start that the Alliance legal system considered him barely human, there would have never been anything between them at all. The Alliance had never admitted to the masses that they had abandoned cyborg technology to start trafficking bioengineered humans. To the general population, his father was nothing more than a souped-up cyborg, and Xave’s existence constituted a crime against the natural order of things.
This was why he had signed on with Stone Cold Bondsmen, to help Warrick dig up the truth about the Alliance. Warrick had his own, private reasons for their mission, but Xave’s purpose had never wavered. He’d grown tired of Alliance propaganda pointing the finger at him and his ancestry. He wanted to live in peace, and he wanted truth for those like Tavish who’d been destroyed by the lies they’d been told all their lives.
Xave straightened up and rolled his neck from side to side with a satisfying crack. He couldn’t change what had happened to Tavish’s home and family. The problem would be trying to help her distinguish between his bioengineered parentage and the cyborgs who had altered the course of her entire life.
It did no good to defend the cyborgs or try to explain their behavior. Nobody understood that they’d been used to commit atrocities on behalf of the Alliance. People in power were adept at distancing themselves from their dirty work. The populace saw what they were meant to see, cyborg soldiers destroying entire settlements with punitive precision. To date it had never been publicly implied that the cyborgs might have been acting on Alliance orders.
Not yet.
He sighed. Massaging his temples with his fingertips, he tried to quell the desire his body felt for Tavish. It would do no good to be overcome with lust for a woman who might well turn tail and run once she found out his background. He hadn’t missed the fear and revulsion in her voice when the cyborg unit passed them by. What would it feel like when she turned that revulsion on him? Would it even matter that his father hadn’t been a true cyborg? Would she give the truth a chance?
Shaking off his lingering doubts, he strode into Heidi’s living room with renewed purpose. He had to get to Mendez. Tavish had come here with an eye toward that result. It was time for her to let him know exactly how she intended to accomplish that goal.
�
�We need to get a move on, Tavish. Warrick has opened a window for us at the Persian Maiden.”
She jumped up from the sofa. Her expression showed surprise at his abrupt manner, but this was no time to protect feelings. He hated this businesslike demeanor. He hated having to keep his needs and desires under tight rein. But if he let it all hang out, the only thing that would get done would be Tavish.
“Okay, I just need to borrow a dress from Heidi’s stock.” She shifted her eyes to the plump old lady still sitting on the worn sofa.
“What kind of dress, Tavvy darling? And why ever would you go to the Persian Maiden?”
“I think Mendez would’ve gone to ground where Aiello could help him hide.”
Heidi sighed. “That is not a safe place for you, Tavish.”
“I know. But we have to get Mendez.”
“Who does? You? I think not! It’s him that needs Mendez.”
Xave resisted the urge to shrink beneath the old lady’s fierce glare.
“It’s dangerous for Tavish to appear in any of these clubs. You should take her off world immediately! Don’t you understand what Louie will do to her if she is returned to him for any reason?”
“I won’t let that happen,” Xave assured her.
“Stupid man. No doubt thinking with his prick instead of his brain.” Heidi heaved herself to a standing position. “Come with me, Tavvy darling. I’ll have you looking like some rich man’s wife in no time.”
Tavish tossed an apologetic glance in his direction. “Thanks, Heidi. And don’t worry, I promise I’ll stay clear of Louie.”
Xave watched Heidi grumble her way out of the room, dragging Tavish behind. He considered sitting but discarded the idea. He was wound too tightly to stay still for long. He took to pacing back and forth before the faux hearth instead.
It’d been years since he’d had a hearth. They’d been all the rage when an influx of homesick Earth natives had settled on Janus 5 to set up shop. Not that you could actually have a fire. The lack of substantial water sources made fire a dangerous thing to treat so casually.
He mulled over the relationship between Heidi and Tavish. The woman seemed to have been a mother figure to Tavish during her formative years. A brief smile creased his lips when he compared Heidi to his own mother. Two more dissimilar creatures had never existed.
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