As they leaned one against the other, their sweaty limbs entwined, their torsos glued, warmth spread in Titan’s heart, swelled outward throughout his chest and forced a grin on his face. He could easily imagine himself with Ballistic Kim. Life sure wouldn’t be boring with the little pocket rocket. With her cutting-edge design and “public relation skills”—namely a latex suit and that killer smile—coupled with his extensive connections and his special “abilities”—namely his guns and how he could put a bullet in a guy’s head at a hundred paces—they’d be quite the team. He could see it now. His grin widened.
“You know what I was thinking,” Kim said from against his shoulder. He made some room for her to talk. “We could be, like, partners, you know. You have the logistics, I have the designs. It’d be fun.”
Yes, it would be. Will be.
When Titan wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her tight, Kim knew she had her answer. Still with his erection sheathed deep, she returned the embrace tenfold, even growled unintelligible words in the crook of his shoulder. His chuckles sounded like the Femme Metal’s main thruster when she fired off. That same soothing, muffled rumble.
He pulled away, pinched the kerchief from his breast pocket and gave it to her. Wet sounds accompanied his retreat. Kim patted her sex. His semen felt hot through the blue silk. She folded it and put it by her side on the cannon.
“We better get you out of here before he shows up,” Titan said as he rearranged his holsters on his waist.
Kim stood and zipped her suit back up. “What about you?”
“I’ll stay and have a chat with Drokesh. I don’t like to be fucked with, plus that’ll give you time to put a few hyperjumps in.”
Dread filled her guts. “Drokesh won’t be happy to know you let me go.”
Titan made a rude gesture. “It’s the least I can do since I got in you this shit. I don’t care if he’s pissed off. Humans should stop trying to please these blue fuckers all the time and start showing some damn self-respect. Plus I’ve got something right here with his name on it.”
As he spoke, Titan pulled his jacket aside and patted his empty holster, the one for his SIG, left on the counter in the kitchen. “Speaking of which, I feel naked without it. Let’s go.”
She followed him out into the tunnel, walking fast to keep up with his long strides. He turned and meant to lock the doors but shrugged. “No time for this. Just go.”
She’d pay a fortune to see Drokesh’s face when he looked at the pointy end of Titan’s extra-long barrel, Nitron finish, ten-inch wonder. Ha!
“Man, what I’d give to see his face,” Kim said with a chuckle. “Big jerk.”
She knocked into Titan when he stopped abruptly. His gaze was upward at the portion of tunnel made of see-through thermoplastic. “You just might get the chance.”
Kim gasped when she spotted three Yithian cruisers circling the landing pad like vultures. One fired attitude jets at regular intervals and managed to squeeze its wide hull beside Titan’s ship while the other two merely took position above the compound. Their thrusters created red and white rings of heat along their fuselage.
Kim jumped in place a couple of times. “But you said he wouldn’t be here until…oh, shit, shit, shit.”
“He’s a bit early, what do we care? It doesn’t make any difference. He can’t have you and that’s the end of it. Maybe you want to go back to the warehouse though.”
“You mean hide?”
Titan ran up the tunnel and threw over his shoulder, “No, I mean go back to the warehouse and get yourself something nice!”
Grinning ferociously, Kim sprinted down the tunnel again and was reaching the doors when a violent shudder forced her against the wall. A wave of heat chased her around the thick metal doors and into the warehouse proper. Then a loud explosion rattled her eardrums. She crouched against the cannon.
“What the hell was that?”
Her first thought went to Titan, who’d been running up the corridor, thus much closer to the source of the explosion. Oh god, he must have been hurt. No way in hell he’d escaped that. Oh god, oh god…
“Sylvyn yns leevyn!”
Kim gritted her teeth as a deep baritone voice yelled in Yithian, “Get the human female.”
That’d be me.
After a quick look through the doors, she charged across the warehouse and clawed open one of the crates holding the kinetic guns. Shiny metal bodies encased close together like a shish kebab of robot lovers gleamed in the red light. She picked one up and flicked it on. A small hissing sound announced activation. With her mouth a tight line—if Titan was hurt, by god, there’d be bits of blue ass floating around the asteroid for years—she cocked and loaded the conductive projectiles inside the chamber, which would complete the circuit and allow electrical current to run up the positive rail, through the projectile and down the negative rail. The resulting buildup in kinetic energy, once fired, would cause even a Yithian to run back home crying for his mommy.
“Time to kick some blue ass,” she murmured, trying to give herself some confidence. A nervous chuckle tightened her belly and throat.
Oh great, nervous giggles, goes very well with the big, honking gun I have in my hands!
Heavy pounding announced at least two Yithians running down the tunnel toward the warehouse. The assholes didn’t even try to be stealthy. They probably thought she’d be easy to catch, a little human and all. Well, this little human wouldn’t go down easy.
She pushed images of Titan’s mangled form out of her mind otherwise she’d go crazy with the pain.
Kim crouched behind a short but wide stack of Twenty-first Century military-issue stun grenades—where Titan had gotten his hands on these, she didn’t want to know—and waited until she heard the doors rub against the floor.
Chancing a quick peek, she spotted two very mean-looking Yithians dressed entirely in black, their silver hair loose around their wide shoulders. One of them wore a ring in his nose. She recognized this one for he’d been one of Drokesh’s personal bodyguards and had watched while all sorts of base things were being done to her.
Knowing she’d get one shot and one shot only at surprising them, Kim took a long breath and knelt beside the crates, out in the open. A split second elapsed before the Yithians turned their large black stunners on her. She fired first.
The recoil of the kinetic discharge hit hard enough to send her flying back several feet and saved her from the electricity-charged balls of polymer coming her way, which would have burst and released an array of nanodarts laced with conductive gel. She would’ve been dancing on the ground like bacon in a pan with even one shot of those things. As it was, the kinetic gun’s recoil sent her so far back the Yithians’ shots never even got close.
One of them took the kinetic surge right in the chest. With a violence that surprised Kim, he flew back as well, only his body looked bent and grossly limp. When he crashed high against the walls and slid to the ground, a wide, dark smear followed him. His blue blood looked purple in the red light. A smell of burned flesh reached her.
Before Nose Ring could adjust his stunner, Kim floundered to her feet and charged at a pile of rigging equipment. She toppled it and hid behind for coverage.
“Komst insir,” he said in Yithian.
Like she would “come here”. Did he think she was dumb?
“Fuck your hand!” she yelled from her hiding place, knowing the Yithian would take it like the insult it was for his kind. Male Yithians were very particular about where they put their penises. And to fuck one’s hand meant he had nothing else better in which to put it.
She heard him swear.
Knowing he wouldn’t be looking much higher than his own height—again, typical Yithian arrogance—Kim slung the heavy gun around her shoulder and crept for one of the metal shelves holding an array of parts and different bits of weaponry. Keeping an eye out for the sneaky bastard, she’d just managed to reach the top when a dry click made her grip the ledge a
nd throw herself back over it. Right where her hand had been oozed a splatter of stunner gel, blue arcs of electricity dancing along the metal corner. She could’ve fallen all the way down! Didn’t Drokesh want her alive?
She felt a tremor and peeked over the edge. The Yithian had jumped high, maybe ten feet, and was clambering up the shelf after her. Shit!
Kim barely had time to roll down the other side that already a blue hand grabbed the ledge, right before Nose Ring’s face appeared. Like all other males from his race, his chiseled features and feral opalescent eyes nearly rooted her to the spot. God they were beautiful. Before he could pull his stunner out of his belt, she pointed the kinetic gun at him. He paled.
“You fire, you fall,” he said in broken English.
“I don’t care.”
Kim fired.
And she fell.
During the full second she arched back through the air, she spotted the Yithian’s broken body scrape the top of the shelf and disappear on the other side of it. Blood trailed in thin ribbons.
She crashed flat on her back atop a stack of wide polymer crates, which toppled and took her down with them. Air left her in a great humph when she landed wedged between crates, gun and cargo netting. Fortunately, she couldn’t feel anything broken as she wiggled her toes and fingers. Unfortunately, she couldn’t feel much of anything at all.
It took her a good fifteen minutes to extirpate her bruised body from the mess. By that time, she was sweating, bleeding from her hands, had ripped her suit in several places and lost a boot. No time to retrieve it either.
Images of Titan’s broken and bleeding form flashed in her mind’s eye. She kicked her second boot off and sprinted silently toward the doors. A quick peek…no one.
Slinking along the wall, Kim padded up the tunnel, crouched under the window when she reached it and neared the corner. A pile of debris and some blood splatter on the floor. Not much blood but enough to scare her. And it was red. Human blood.
Liquid heartbeat swooshed in her ears. She swallowed the growing lump back down. Titan’s metal tooth, his impeccable suit. She missed him already.
Wait a goddamn minute, he’s not dead until you see a body. Got that? So focus, girl, focus!
She clenched her jaw, kept her gaze glued to the door to his house, which was partly open. Inch by inch, she crept up to it and put her eye to the slit. What she saw froze the blood in her veins.
A bleeding Titan lay on his back. Drokesh bent over him with one boot on either side of the man’s shoulder as he kept him partly up by the tie wrapped around a fist. Blue tie and blue skin. Red blood. Black tattoos.
Kim could only process bits at a time. Drokesh wore the pants she remembered vividly, even how they felt against her face as he glided his cock into her mouth. They looked like what those Old Earth Samurais wore, the large black flowing garment that could pass for a skirt cinched tightly by a wide belt reaching high over the navel. His sinewy and tattooed torso rippled and gleamed with a perfection she hated.
He cocked a fist back—like the recoil of some biotech machine of pain—and struck. Titan’s head snapped back then lolled side to side. His eyes had been open and then rolled inside his head.
“Where is the human female?” Drokesh demanded in his characteristically soft voice. She remembered his voice, the steel under the velour baritone, a rich tenor’s voice. She hated that too.
The multitude of rings in his ears and nostrils glittered silver, like his long, flowing hair. Kim closed her eyes when Drokesh hit Titan again.
“Where is the human female?”
To her amazement, she heard Titan clearing his throat with a strangled chuckle. “Kiss my…pink ass.”
Another punch rewarded his bravado. She flinched as if Drokesh had hit her instead of Titan.
She could’ve gone back to the landing bay and piloted the Femme Metal via the decoder strapped to her arm. Neither Drokesh nor Titan would’ve known. Maybe she would’ve had trouble with the two cruisers but she knew she could make it. There was a nice shiny new gyrocompass in the warehouse. Titan had already given it to her.
She could leave.
Maybe she should leave.
Her ship orbited around the asteroid and would be back anytime now. The two Yithian cruisers were still holding their position above the compound. She could go to the Femme Metal and be gone in minutes, despite the lack of functioning gyrocompass. All she’d need to do was open a hyperjump then she could replace the part. She’d seen worse.
How was it again, “If one couldn’t go to the mountain…?”
A mirthless grin tugged her lips. “Then bring the whole fucking thing down on them.”
Chapter Seven
Titan could still hear her boots thumping down the tunnel and hoped she’d have time to make it. The thought of Drokesh catching her made him gag. There was no way, no fucking way, Titan would let him walk out of there with Kim.
He ran up the tunnel, gritted his teeth as he pulled his Glock out and had just made it around the corner when a loud noise deafened him.
WHOOF!
A bright flash of light. Hot air slapping him in the face, slamming him against the wall. Smoke and debris falling. Him coughing, bleeding. Then nothing but a constant buzz in his ears.
“Where is the human female?”
Who?
Something knocked against his jaw. Ouch, shit.
He was choking. A throat oyster that tasted like copper rattled at the back of his mouth and he tried to clear it. How could his head not touch the floor when the rest of him did? He opened an eye just in time to see a massive, blue bejeweled fist coming down his way. Oh this is gonna hurt like a bitch.
And it did.
As though pain had triggered a flash of memory, it all came back to him. Kim. Drokesh. His big blue dick in her. The scars.
“Where is the human female?”
“Kiss my…pink ass.”
Now, this punch really hurt. He felt the floor connect against his skull when Drokesh dropped him. Titan clawed at his tie to loosen it. He gulped a few breaths. Much better.
“I thought you were smart for a human, Mister Harris. Maybe I was wrong.” Drokesh sat in one of the black polymer sofas and straightened his legs. The black tattoos covering his torso, shoulders and arms rippled when he spread them and let them rest on the backrest. The guy had the wingspan of a shuttlecraft. So he’d been a Hunter. Titan had never seen the guy’s body, only his face in the comms screen. Shivers raced up his neck. Poor Kim. The things she must have endured. Yithian Hunters weren’t exactly known for their gentle ways.
Titan only noticed then the other Yithian standing just inside the door, with his back to the wall. He must have been the one to demolish his front doors for he carried a kinetic gun, one Titan remembered selling to Drokesh. Wasn’t life funny sometimes?
“I don’t like to be taken for rides,” Titan snarled as he rolled onto his side and managed to claw his way somewhat upright. He patted himself and winced. “You ruined my best suit.”
Drokesh grinned. “And you ruined my reunion with my favorite human.”
“Isn’t that just a heartbreaker.” Titan slowly lowered his butt in the other sofa. Good god, his back hurt. He wondered what his face looked like. He snorted blood back and swallowed it with a grimace.
“Where is she?”
“Gone.”
“Although you are a very good liar, I cannot believe you. I smell her on you still.” Drokesh nodded. “Humans are very easy to ‘read’, as you say. You wear your emotions openly. It makes easy preys of you.”
Titan barked a quick laugh. “Easy like Kim?”
Drokesh was on him before he could wince. The Yithian grabbed him by the tie—he really was going to ruin it for good—and by the crook of his knee and launched him high over the furniture. Titan rolled his shoulders so he wouldn’t connect head first and crashed against the bathroom steel cylinder. He could actually feel the dent he made when he hit. Growling, he slumped to th
e floor and didn’t even have time to crawl back on his hands and knees before Drokesh was on him again, this time seizing him by the back of the shirt collar and sending him waltzing across the room. Titan collided with the sofa, flipped over it and crashed on the floor in a heap. Who knew Yithians could be so damn bitchy?
The situation reminded him of his eighteen-year-old self on his first night as bouncer. The beating he’d taken!
“I will not ask again, human,” Drokesh snarled, stalking toward Titan with murder in his pearly eyes.
Pain of every documented kind burned across his body. When Drokesh loomed over him, Titan raised his hand and patted the air.
“Okay, okay, fuck, give me a second here.”
The Yithian grabbed Titan by the lapels of his jacket, yanked him up and plopped him down in the sofa. A coil broke and poked Titan in the butt. He was ruining his best suit and breaking his furniture? I hate Yithians.
Yet Titan could end it all right now. He could tell this very large, very angry blue alien where Kim hid. If she was still there, which was a big if. In her place, he would’ve gotten the hell out of there and put several hyperjumps between her and Drokesh. But Titan couldn’t bring himself to tell the Yithian where to find Kim. He’d rather get pummeled to death—he was well on his way, might as well go all the way—than betray her again. Not his brightest moment in life, to have let Drokesh come here in the first place. Monopoly sounded nice but not at the cost of his soul.
I didn’t even know I had one. Ha.
“I am listening,” Drokesh said slowly in that soft voice so incongruous with a guy his size. He must have hovered near the seven-foot mark and weighed two fifty.
Again, images of his taking the tiny Kim by force stirred the white-hot rage in Titan’s heart. If only he had his gun, Drokesh would be in a world of pain. He’d shoot off his toes first, one by one then—
Titan spotted it on the counter, his long-barreled SIG, a brand-new magazine full of ten rounds, gleaming, calling. He could feel its raspy grip, custom made for his palm only, thank you very much, and the satisfying weight when he pointed it straight out, arm in front. Boom-boom. One for each kneecap. He was sure Yithians had them. Oh yeah. Boom. One in the balls for Kim then—boom—one last bullet right between the eyes. Titan enjoyed the mental image of Drokesh falling back on his big blue ass. Ahhh.
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