A Galactic Holiday

by Stacy Gail, Sasha Summers, Anna Hackett

  A dangerous hiss escaped her. “They’re the reason I haven’t cut my losses and bailed on a job that I no longer fit into. I promised them I’d do my best to follow in their footsteps and make the world a safer place.”

  “My point exactly. You used to be that way, and I respected the hell out of you for it. But these days, not so much.” Edison leaned his elbows on the table and told himself he was glad the barrier was there. Otherwise he might have given in to the desire to shake some damned sense into her thick head. “You think I’ve lost something during this transition period, right? Well, allow me to shoot that crap right back at you—you’ve lost perspective on what’s important, and that’s pretty damn sad to see.”

  She graced him with the same bitch-slap glare that had made Beowulf cower. “What do you mean? What do you consider important?”

  “I’ll give you a hint—it’s not you, it’s not me, and it sure as hell isn’t the bod-mods or whatever clearance level some desk-jockey jackhole declares you to be. What’s important is dedicating yourself to a job that almost no one else can do as well as you, in a city that needs its best and brightest to keep it safe.”

  “Okay, agreed. That is important.” She fiddled with the pink drink before her, as if she didn’t know what to do with her hands. “But you’re wrong if you think I’ve lost sight of that. I am doing the job to the best of my ability.”

  “Oh, so it’s a habit of yours to take evidence from a crime scene?”

  “It was one measly zebra mussel shell out of dozens. Or at least I think it’s a zebra mussel shell,” she added when his eyes narrowed. “I’ll have confirmation soon.”

  “And you couldn’t send it for official analysis...why, exactly?”

  Again she messed with the glass, but he had to admire her grit when she refused to drop her gaze. “Because I wasn’t in the mood to share with you, all right? I’m still not. You bother me.”

  “I bother you.” Edison had to repeat it just to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood. Then he gave in to the smile that felt like it was coming from the very center of him. “I bother you?”

  “Not all the time. Just when I’m aware of your existence.” She accompanied this with a glare that left no doubt she meant every word. “It started right from the beginning. I’ll never forget how you came swaggering into the precinct, sat down on my desk and told me you were gunning for the top spot. It was like you thought you owned the place.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever swaggered in my life.”

  “Trust me, you swaggered then, you swagger now, and it pisses me off. I’ve never met anyone who gets under my skin the way you do.”

  “Good.”

  It was so damn cute the way her jaw dropped. “Good?”

  “Yeah. There’s no place I’d rather be than under your skin.” And before he could think better of it, he brushed her fingers that held her drink in a lingering touch until they jerked back. Taking the advantage, he brought the glass up to his mouth and laid it against the faint imprint of hers. A moment later he spluttered. “Good God, Reina, how is it you’re not in a diabetic coma? That’s disgusting.”

  “If you don’t like Shirley Temples, you can get your own damn drink.” A flood of color the same shade as the super-sweet liquid glowed in her cheeks as she snatched her glass away. “And in case you haven’t noticed, you keep calling me Reina.”

  Still trying to tame his gag reflex, Edison scowled. “Does that bother you too, Reina?”

  “It’s just...” She stared at the lip imprint on the edge of the glass before she put it to her mouth and drank. Whether that had been her conscious intention or not, the pleasure of knowing her mouth zeroed in on where his had rested made his stomach muscles clench with the sweet ache of longing. “You’re crossing boundaries. Boundaries that have been there between us for two years.”

  “When you put it like that, I can’t believe I’ve wasted that much time. Boundaries were made to be crossed, Reina,” he added when her gaze flew to his in a heated awareness she couldn’t hide. “One by one, I’m crossing them all.”

  Chapter Four

  Snow was coming down hard and fast, blowing in sideways as Reina parked her slick bike near Edison’s racy little coupe outside of Bobbidy Boo’s Toy Store early the next morning. She had to give the guy credit. As a detective, he deserved his level five ranking. While there hadn’t been any discerning features on the toys given to the Seldon children that would set them apart from a billion other toys out there in the world, Edison had taken an internal screenshot of the doll’s factory code stamped on its poly-resin torso. It had taken a better part of the day, but he’d followed the coding to China and back, all the way to its original retail selling point in Chicago. Thankfully the old-fashioned, no-batteries type of toy was a rarity, and according to the store’s manager that type of toy hadn’t been purchased in the last six months. Otherwise trying to find where it had come from in a sea of toys would have been virtually impossible.

  Though the popular store was just now rolling back its high-intensity zapper gates, throngs of last-minute shoppers were already pushing each other out of the way to get their hands on that one last game or toy their little ones had to have for Christmas. With only two shopping days left the flavor of manic desperation hung in the air, and it took most of Reina’s footwork skills to keep from getting trampled as she made her way to where Edison stood waiting.

  “Lovely weather we’re having,” she said, smoothing a gloved hand over her helmet-mussed hair only to have the ferocious wind whip it about her head. Then she realized what she was doing and jerked her hand to her side, cursing herself for the spectacular display of idiocy. Going into frantic grooming mode just to look good for Edison Wicke was a sure sign of imminent insanity and she wasn’t going to allow it, no matter how much her feminine instincts kicked up a fuss. It was his fault those instincts were all messed up to begin with. She wasn’t sure what new game he was playing by amping up the tension between them with flirtatious touches and ambiguous promises, but it had been enough to keep her thinking about him until the wee hours of the morning.

  There had always been an unspoken friction between them—a highly attuned, feverish friction that Reina had never consciously acknowledged until now. Too dangerous, her instincts had always told her. Too volatile. The almost-painful awareness she’d had of Edison was like an unmarked package left in a crowded terminal. There could be nothing inside, or it could go up in her face if she looked at it too closely.

  But now Edison had gone and forced the issue by touching her hand. Not a big deal normally, and to a casual observer that one action might not have seemed like much. But there was no mistaking the intent she’d felt thrumming through it. It had been an amorous lover’s caress, brimming with an eagerness to please, and to be pleasured. With that one move, he’d ripped the luxury of ignoring that intense attraction right out from under her. Now here she was, flat on her proverbial back with no idea how to deal with the flood of near-frenzied awareness of him, while trying to groom in a blizzard.

  God help her.

  The moment she came within touching distance he looped an arm around her shoulders. “You’ve got to help me out here,” he muttered against her ear, and his lips were so cold against her flesh it spawned a spurt of alarm. “Come to find out, bod-mods don’t work so great when the wind chill dips the temp into the minus column. I’m giving new meaning to the term freezing in place.”

  “At last, an admission that there are times when bod-mods aren’t a huge improvement on nature’s design.” More concerned than she wanted to admit, Reina wrapped one arm around his waist. Putting her free hand to his chest she levered her hip against his and made a limping beeline for the toy store’s front door. “Why didn’t you wait in your car, you idiot?”

  “Because one, I was trying to get the damn sales droid to let me in early so I
could get a jump on our meeting with the manager and two, I didn’t know that when it’s minus-fifteen degrees out, the synaptic response-time of the nanites fused with my muscles slows down to a slug-like crawl. By the time I realized I was in trouble I couldn’t make my legs move back to the car without keeling over, so I’ve been freezing my ass off out here ever since.”

  “You need a frictionsuit.” The rusty, Tin Man movements of his body, almost twice as heavy as that of most humans thanks to his military-grade hardware, made her stagger as at last they reached the automatic doors. “A frictionsuit, or a transfer to Costa Rica.”

  “Costa Rica? Pretty random, Vedette.”

  “I’ve always wanted to visit Costa Rica. I hear they put umbrellas in their drinks.”

  “Yeah well, rough-and-tumble Chicago suits me just fine, and I could never look as good as you do in a frictionsuit.” A sigh of relief escaped him as they made it into the store’s vestibule, ignoring both the welcoming pink-eyed sales droid and the saccharine-sweet cheerful Christmas music screaming overhead. “Let’s face it, that gorgeous body of yours owns that look.”

  The admission punched the breath out of her lungs, and for a suspended moment she suspected the validity of her hearing. “I can’t tell if you’re flirting with me, or if your neurolinks have frozen over,” she finally managed, all the while praying his amplified hearing didn’t pick up the sudden chaotic drum roll of her heart. Blame it on the exertion of getting him into the store, she told herself frantically. Or on the freezing weather. Or...

  Or on the fact that he was the hottest damn man-morsel she’d ever come across.

  “Is that so?” His voice roughened around the edges, either a sign of distress or growing desire, she couldn’t tell which. “Obviously I’m going to have to work on my technique. Damn, I can no longer feel my hands.” Then he hissed as they suddenly curled into twisted, spasming fists.

  “Just as soon as I have a free moment I’m going to write a strongly worded email to the bod-mod manufacturer about this.” Genuinely worried now, Reina propped him up in the vestibule’s corner behind the droid and out of the way of pedestrian traffic, then pulled off her gloves so she could sandwich his cramping hands with hers. “Cripes, do you think your system could be malfunctioning? Your skin is like ice. What about hypothermia?”

  “I don’t think I’m that bad off yet.” But he closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall, his face tight with pain. “I just need a few minutes to warm up and I’ll be ready to roll. Your hands feel good.”

  “Yours don’t. They’re turning mine into a couple of ice cubes.” She did her best to chafe them into a relaxed state, but it was a losing battle as her own hands chilled. After a moment’s hesitation, she tugged him upright by his coat lapels. “Switch places with me.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’re bigger than I am, so you make a better blind.” Executing a quick one-eighty, Reina put her back in the corner and took his sluggish body along for the ride. “Okay. Just stand there.”

  “Reina, what are you doing?”

  “Don’t get excited. This is for medicinal purposes only.” With that stern warning leveled at both of them, Reina tore open the Velcro collar overlapping the suit’s zipper pull.

  Even half-paralyzed, Edison still managed to jolt in surprise. “Reina—”

  “Relax, you prude. I have clothes on underneath.” Though it was only a thin camisole in her favorite shade of pink and a pair of low-riding briefs. At least she wasn’t going commando. “Give me your hands.”

  Without a word or hesitation he did as he was told—probably the only time in his life he’d ever done so—and she heard his breath hitch as if he’d been stabbed when she slipped them inside the toasty confines of her suit. It was a strangely magical moment, almost like she was at last realizing a dream she’d never allowed herself to weave. There was no doubt Edison Wicke was the stuff fantasies were made of, so maybe her reaction wasn’t that far off-base. With his cocky smile, impossible swagger and burly warrior’s body that made her hands burn to explore, it was all she could do to keep herself from swooning like a simpering Victorian miss.

  Then his hands shifted, and she tried to inject a little reality into the moment. “Cop a feel and I swear I’ll kneecap you, Wicke.”

  “It’d be worth it.” The knots that were his fisted hands burrowed against her sides before coming to a rest on the flare of her hips. “Geez, this is the worst kind of torture. I don’t know which is worse—the cramping or not being able to feel you.”

  “You poor thing, this just isn’t your day, is it?” If only she had the same lack of sensation, she lamented with a distracted sigh. His hands and forearms were as cold as glacier ice and certainly not the most comfortable thing she’d ever experienced. But concentrating on that less-than-pleasant sensation was preferable to losing herself in the increasingly bold press of his powerful chest and the unapologetic way he slipped his thigh between hers.

  “Um. Detective.” She heard his muffled snort, which confirmed her suspicion that standing on formality at this exact moment in time was, in fact, hilarious. “Remember when I told you this was strictly medicinal?”

  “Uh-huh.” Edison leaned into her with a heady threat so blatantly masculine it made her heart trip over itself. Then he rubbed against her in an all-over body caress that made it scorching hot within her frictionsuit, and as giddy excitement surged through her like a drug she had to reconsider the whole swooning business as a viable option. “Praise me. I’m taking my medicine like a big boy.”

  Big boy. Reina’s mouth went desert-dry as she tried not to notice a bulge starting to swell against her abdomen. But facts were facts. As his body warmed, there was no doubt that Edison Wick was indeed a big boy. “Here’s the thing. I also said not to get excited.”

  “Yeah...about that. I’m going to have to disappoint you on that score. And in my defense, you have to take some of the blame for being so damn sexy you should be declared illegal.”

  “I’m just trying to warm you up.”

  “Congratulations, you’re doing a bang-up job of it.” His head lowered, and his eyes drifted shut as he brushed his face over her hair. “God, Reina. I didn’t know you smelled like heaven and sin all rolled into one. If I had, I would have done this a lot sooner.”

  She pulled in a breath to ask him what he was doing when his mouth slid down her cheek to unerringly capture her lips. Every muscle in her body froze as it launched into a war with itself. Logic told her to push him away and keep the wary professional distance she’d maintained between them for two years, while a sunburst of white-hot need flared as if it were some sleeping giant that had just been waiting to be awakened. That wasn’t too far off the mark; something inside had been waiting for her to let him close enough to touch. Now that she had, the notion of professional distance or thinking of him as the meched-out lapdog of the higher-ups was ridiculous. She wanted him, yearned for him, hungered for him. With Edison’s mouth on hers, there was no room left for hiding from the raw need he’d inspired from the first moment he sat on the edge of her desk and announced he was aiming for her top spot.

  On their own volition her hands slid up his arms, squeezing the biceps and deltoids along the way in a long-denied feminine curiosity. Even before meching out, Edison’s physique had reminded her of a demigod of ancient times, with arms and a chest built to hold a woman in ways that satisfied even the most discerning fantasies. Her eager exploration at last cruised to a stop at his nape, her fingers sifting through his short hair as she angled his head to perfect the fit of their mouths. She went on tiptoe in her eagerness to dive into the kiss, and her brain spun out at the crushed silk over granite texture of his lips. A purr of delight whispered from deep in her throat while he nuzzled her as though he too couldn’t get enough of the sensation. Then that magic-making mouth opened on hers, and he inv
aded her with a bold thrust of his tongue.

  Reina’s eyes had drifted closed without her being aware of it in order to drown in the tactile bliss of his touch. All the higher-functioning systems in her brain went dark, as if her internal grid had suddenly lost power while he danced his tongue with hers, teasing her until she pushed into his embrace in a greedy demand for more. The thin material of her cami was an irritating barrier that held her back from feeling Edison with everything she had, and she sighed when her breasts flattened against him, her nipples growing so tight with arousal it bordered on painful.

  The arctic cold that had been emanating from him faded by degrees, and he pushed further through the opening in her suit to wrap his arms around her like a victor claiming his hard-won spoils. The evidence of just how aroused he was pressed like a steel pipe against the warm softness of her belly, and when he began to rock her against him while his breathing turned ragged, a knee-buckling wet heat bloomed in the hidden cleft between her thighs. It was a sweet, needful urgency pulsating there, tightening her innermost muscles until she wanted to scream with the shivery tension. With his taste flooding her mind and the intoxicating sensation of his body pressing against hers, she could easily imagine the wildness of letting him have her. She would be only too happy to welcome him into her depths, glorying in the sensation of being filled by his powerful, surging thrusts until they were both incoherent with the mindless joy of it...

  The blip of the digicell cuffed to her belt cut like a laser through the white-hot fantasy, and it brought her back to earth with a thud. She pulled her lips from his to glance at it in a dazed sort of way while Edison’s hands—still cool but no longer cramped fists—slipped under the camisole to rove over her back as though starved for the feel of her.

  “It’s not important.” His mouth traced her jaw line before he teethed the multi-pierced lobe. “Really. Not. Important.”