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Snowburn

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by E J Frost




  S n o w b u r n

  E. J. Frost

  Snowburn

  Copyright © 2014 by E. J. Frost

  All rights reserved.

  www.ejfrost.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or

  transmitted, in any form, or by any means

  (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording

  or otherwise) without the written permission of

  the author. Any person who does any

  unauthorized act in relation to this publication

  may be liable for criminal prosecution and civil

  claims for damages. By purchasing an authorized

  electronic edition, you are supporting the author’s

  rights. Thank you!

  All characters and events in this book are

  fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or

  dead is strictly coincidental.

  Cover art by Alexandria N.

  Thompson

  www.gothicfate.com

  Interior book design by Bob Houston

  eBook Formatting

  ISBN: 1497397863

  ISBN-13: 978-1497397866

  Dedication

  To my family, physical and virtual,

  you know who you are.

  And to Carina Persson, DeeGee

  Timms and Jamelith, for keeping the

  faith.

  Chapter 1

  Movement.

  It catches at my modified senses. Jerks

  my brain onto high alert. My mind’s been

  idling as I move along the familiar path

  through the spaceport. Turning over

  possibilities: what I want for dinner, what I

  can find for entertainment afterwards.

  There’s Maier’s poker game, but the idea of

  sitting in his claustrophobic cube, filling my

  lungs with the stink of the punters’ anxiety

  while I fleece ‘em, ain’t doing anything for

  me. Still, I’ve got three days to kill before

  my next flight. Maybe it’s time to hit the

  Delta.

  Small, deliberate movement in my

  peripheral vision wipes all those thoughts

  from my brain.

  I hyperfocus. A woman. On her own. No

  visible weapons. No obvious modifications.

  My brain slows down a fraction at the lack

  of threat and takes in small details. A flash of

  pale skin through ripped fishnets as she

  draws up her knee. She props a well-worn

  boot against the plaz fence separating the

  restricted area of the docks from the rest of

  the spaceport. The jet wash off a launching

  Starflare blows white-blonde rat-tails a few

  shades darker than her skin around her

  shoulders as she turns her head to look at me.

  I’ve seen that pale skin, those long rat-

  tails, before.

  It takes me a moment and then I place her.

  Yesterday. Round the same time and place.

  Only then she wasn’t making it obvious, the

  way she is now. The rat-tails were tucked

  under a slouchy hat; the pale skin hidden

  under loose black fatigues.

  So she’s been watching me. And now

  she’s decided to make her play. Interesting.

  I pretend to ignore her. I’m a busy man.

  Twice as busy as I used to be, since I’m

  living two lives now. My old life as Hale

  Hauser: ex-S.A.W.L., escaped convict,

  declared dead in the wreckage of a prison

  transport two years ago, but you never know

  when a stray piece of DNA will trip a

  watcher program somewhere.

  So while I’m laying low and being

  careful what I touch, I gotta keep up

  appearances in my new life as Sandringham

  Snow, master of the short hopper, Spinning

  Marie, transport for the legal and not so

  legal throughout the Vespers System.

  I pass the girl, moving steadily down the

  walkway but not too fast. Leaving enough

  distance between us that she’ll have to lunge

  if she tries to come at me. She doesn’t look

  big or tough enough to be a peacekeeper, but

  the only place those kind of assumptions get

  you is back in the hole.

  “Hey, mister,” she says. Loud enough for

  me to hear her clearly but not loud enough to

  draw attention from the other pilots,

  passengers and random passers-by on the

  walkway. “Are you a pilot?”

  I glance over my shoulder at her. “D’you

  need one?”

  “Yeah.” She falls into step with me. “Can

  I buy you a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  She catches my hand. The warm shock of

  skin on skin nearly makes me stumble. I’m

  not used to being touched. Not like this. Not

  without paying for it. She tugs on my hand

  and when I don’t resist, leads me off the

  walkway into the warren of side streets that

  wriggle around the port like maggots through

  meat.

  I follow her curiously. Waiting for the

  catch. The sting of transdermal drugs on my

  palm. Heavy breathing in the alley ahead.

  But there’s nothing. Her hand is warm and

  soft in mine. The alley’s silent until we turn

  the corner and there’s a burst of pounding

  bass music as a door opens and shuts ahead

  of us. Too loud for my modified senses. Too

  conspicuous for Snow’s low profile.

  “Not there.”

  She glances up at me. Pale blue eyes

  within kohled circles. Light from the haylon

  street signs catches on small metal rings

  through her nose and ears. “There.” She nods

  at a door further down the street. Very little

  haylon. Very little noise.

  I nod. I like her taste.

  She leads me through the quiet door.

  Locals bar. Smatterings of people clustered

  around their drinks. Low hum of

  conversation. Clink of glaz. Some

  anonymous and unappreciated bastard

  playing a magnellon towards the back, so

  quietly the drone of conversation almost

  drowns him out.

  The girl’s internal propulsion cuts out at

  the bar. She turns and looks up at me. Pale

  oval of a face in the bar’s low lights. Pale

  pink bow of a mouth that shows white teeth

  when she speaks. Pale blue circles of her

  irises around huge black pupils. The bar’s

  dim but not dark enough to make her go owl-

  eyed. She’s high.

  I lean into her, ostensibly to give her my

  drink order, but really to catch her scent. She

  doesn’t smell strongly, mostly of soap, and

  underneath a warm, musky, female scent. No

  herbs, no chemicals. Smells clean.

  After naming a local brand of beer – real

  beer not the algae-crap they serve in the

  haylon-lit places – I could step back. Give

  her a little space. Let her cool down and see

  what her eyes do. Instead I stand close, so

  close the air
between us warms from the heat

  off our bodies. Reach one hand into the back

  pocket of my fatigues so my chest and

  shoulders flex. Watch her pupils dilate until

  there’s just a thin rim of blue.

  “Uh.” She clears her throat. Drags her

  eyes away. Orders two beers from the

  bartender who is doing a bad job of hiding

  his smirk.

  I take the bulb she passes me. Wait while

  she pays. Hard credits. No wonder she

  brought me here. Hard credits wouldn’t be

  accepted in the haylon-lit places. Both

  Hauser and Snow are fond of hard credits.

  Easy to steal; impossible to trace. But, then,

  both Hauser and Snow have the skill and

  lack of conscience to get and keep hard

  credits. That this girl carries them, without

  visible means of offense or defense, raises

  her a notch in my estimation.

  She takes my hand again once she’s paid.

  Her skin’s cool from handling the drinks.

  Warms quickly against mine. She leads me to

  a booth towards the back. Close enough to

  the musician that no one’s gonna hear us over

  the music. Far away from the bar’s other

  point of interest: two silver-skinned Mods

  who are kissing flamboyantly across a table

  near the door. Everyone’s watching the

  silverfish, but trying not to be obvious about

  it. No one’s gonna pay any attention to us.

  Even when she pulls me into the booth next

  to her instead of sitting across from me. Even

  when she tucks my hand against her thigh and

  keeps her fingers wrapped around mine.

  I could break her hold in a split-second if

  I needed to. But that split-second could be

  the difference between reaching a weapon in

  time and not. I draw my hand out of hers

  slowly. Lean into her so she knows I’m not

  rejecting her. I’ve never had a woman come

  onto me so physically before. I like it. I like

  everything about her so far. Except maybe

  the piercings. Hope she doesn’t have too

  many in other places. I’m not a fan of metal

  against my skin.

  She looks up at me. From under a curtain

  of bangs and blonde dreadlocks. Out of those

  deeply-kohled, hugely-dilated eyes. A kitten-

  pink tongue flicks out and wets her full lower

  lip. I follow the movement with my eyes, let

  her see that I’m watching and that I like what

  I see. Her breath catches. Shallow breasts

  rise under a black tank. In the bar’s dim light,

  against the black neopoly of her shirt, her

  skin glows like pearl.

  She finally looks away and color flushes

  her cheeks. Even her ears flush around the

  silver hoops. I chuckle.

  “What can I do for you, Miz—?”

  “Kez.” She shifts on the genSkin seat,

  crosses her legs and presses her knee against

  mine. The color in her cheeks fades; her

  pupils contract. She’s back in control. Or

  thinks she is. “I need to move something from

  Kuus to New Brunny. Interested?”

  Very. But not in her shipment. “What’s

  the deadline?”

  “Pick up tonight at midnight.” There isn’t

  really a midnight on Kuseros, which has a

  twenty-three hour day, but even the natives

  call the last hour of the day ‘midnight.’ A

  leftover from our collective origins on Earth.

  “Drop by five a.m.”

  Not a tight schedule, particularly in the

  Spinning Marie, which is a better ship than

  her original owner deserved. Although the

  girl’s asking me to drop into a war zone.

  New Brunny’s been in a permanent state of

  shitstorm for the last three months while the

  peacekeepers have been trying to put down

  water riots. She’s also living dangerously if

  she’s only lining up a pilot now. Midnight’s

  less than three hours away and Kuus is all

  the way on the other side of the long valley

  that makes up the Western Colony. She’ll

  need a ship to make the pickup, much less the

  drop. “What’s the package?”

  “Organic. Fifty kilos give or take.”

  Could be anything, but at fifty kilos it’s

  unlikely to be drugs – too heavy – or a body

  – too light – which is where I draw the line.

  Most shit is tolerated in the Vespers, but

  getting caught transporting drugs or bodies is

  a one-way ticket back to Tol Seng. “My

  cut?”

  “Three thousand. Soft.”

  Credit wands are useless to me. They’re

  validated by fingerprint and I burned mine

  off long before I landed on Kuseros.

  “Twenty-five hundred. Hard.”

  The pink tongue licks out again. Is she

  trying distract me with the promise of that

  mouth? I reach out and drag the pad of my

  thumb over her wet lip. Brush the backs of

  my fingers across the swell of her breast as

  my hand drops back to the table. Two can

  play at that game, and I play harder than she

  does.

  Her pupils dilate again. Breath catches

  and her chest heaves as she takes the next

  one.

  “Deal,” she says breathlessly.

  “And twenty minutes out back.”

  “Uh,” she stammers, blushes furiously.

  “Deal?” I lean into her a little more.

  “Fifteen.” It’s such a soft whisper that I

  lean closer to catch it. Breathe warmly into

  the shell of her ear, buried in the dreadlocks.

  “You’ll get more out of it if it’s twenty.”

  Her eyes squeeze closed, soft pink mouth

  drops open. “Deal,” she finally manages.

  “Let’s go.” We leave our drinks

  untouched. I lead her this time, with my hand

  in the small of her back. A more intimate and

  controlling guidance. She makes no objection

  as I steer her past the musician making

  complicated patterns through the magnetic

  fields of his instrument, through a swinging

  door that leads to the toilets, past some doors

  marked ‘Private’ and through the one marked

  ‘Exit,’ to the obligatory dark alley behind the

  bar. Directly behind the bar it smells of stale

  beer and grease, so I steer her further into the

  shadows until the stink and the occasional

  noise from the haylon-lit place down the

  street fade and all there is is darkness and

  her rapid breathing.

  I stop her by a convenient wall that looks

  neither too dirty nor too rough for what I

  have in mind. “Here,” I say as gently as I

  can. She halts, compliant. But she’s

  trembling under my hand. No matter what

  kind of thrill-seeker she is, she must be at

  least a little scared by the idea of giving

  herself over to a stranger in the dark.

  “Rules,” I say. I run my hand up her back,

  grip the collar of her jacket and pull it off

  her. She rolls her shoulders so it slips down
/>   her arms. Still compliant. I drop her jacket

  onto the pavement. Shrug out of mine and

  drape it over hers. The spring night’s too

  cool to take off our tanks, which is

  disappointing, but what the night air is doing

  to her nipples makes up for it. I enjoy the

  view for a moment before turning her around

  to face the wall. “Rule one, your hands stay

  here.” I place her palms against the cool

  permacrete. She leans into the wall with a

  sigh, rests her cheek between her hands.

  “Rule two, dead puppies ain’t no fun. You

  want me to stop, you say so.”

  She turns her head slightly to look at me

  over her shoulder. Teeth and eyes and silver

  hoops glint in the dark. “Dead puppies?”

  “Uh-huh.” Seems a safe enough safe-

  word. Dead puppies have never figured into

  sex before, no matter how strange it’s gotten.

  “Okay.” She arches her back, lifting her

  ass a little, so it brushes my groin. I don’t

  need any further invitation. I reach around,

  pull open the fly of the tight, shiny shorts

  she’s wearing over the fishnets and push

  them down over her hips. The fishnets are

  suspenders, outlining her long legs, baring

  her ass, sexy as hell. No underwear. I shape

  her soft ass with my palms before reaching

  around, spreading my hand over her belly,

  and cupping her mons. She’s bare there:

  smooth skin under my fingertips. I finger her

  for a moment, until she moans. Then I bring

  my other hand down on that soft, round ass.

  Hard.

  She jumps at the spank. Cries out and

  tries to twist around.

  “Rules,” I growl and she whimpers,

  clinging to the wall.

  I spank her again, the slap punctuated by

  my voice, rough and angry. “How long you

  been watchin’ me?”

  “T-two days.”

  She had to think about it. Fucking liar. I

  spank her again, hard enough that my palm

  stings. Hard enough that she jumps and

  trembles. Hard enough that wetness slicks

  the fingers I still have between her thighs.

  She may not have asked for the spanking, but

  she likes it. “How long?”

  “Four! Four days.”

  Another hard smack. Her ass-cheek has

  gone cherry-red, even in the dark; she’ll

  wear the marks of my fingers tomorrow.

  “Who sent you?”

  “No one.”

  She didn’t have to think about it but I

  spank her again for good measure.

  “No one!” she cries. Nearly comes off

  the wall, then grips it like a lifeline. “I

  swear, I’m not working for anyone.”

 

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