The Chase (Huntress of the Star Empire Episodes 1-3)

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The Chase (Huntress of the Star Empire Episodes 1-3) Page 2

by Athena Grayson


  Soon, though, that all would change. Starting with him. In the meantime… “Trying to teach me a lesson again?” he asked, only a hint of wry mockery to his tone. He found the clasp for the stealthsuit’s field and twisted the stud.

  Her green eyes flashed up at him from his midsection as her form flickered into view. She licked her lips and grinned as she slid back up his body, her breasts brushing against his bare chest, enticingly held away from him by only the thin skin of the stealthsuit. “Simply trying to round out your education, Schoolboy.”

  Even after ten years, she still had the power to slide those nails of hers under his skin. “Xenna—”

  “Shh,” she murmured, nipping at his lower lip. “I was worried about you. When you disappeared on Vashta…” A shadow flickered behind her eyes and he didn’t need to use his psypath skills to understand. In her own way, she cared.

  He kissed her back, much more gently than her own aggressively affectionate attacks. “You knew I’d be all right,” he said. “It was too risky for me to be caught then. I wasn’t ready.” And the archival codexes of the Vashtans had taught him much about his psypath talents. Talents he would need very shortly, if all went according to plan. “If it’s any consolation, I missed you terribly every moment I spent on that airless tramp freighter.” Safely hidden in a cramped closet in the already-thin atmosphere’d area of a slow-moving bulk freighter, masking his presence from the skeleton crew, living off carefully-preserved rations for weeks…he shuddered. Even his sparse quarters in the Restoration’s home cell were preferable to that. Especially as the freight crew were militant, fully-realized, well-schooled proponents of the New Morality. The mere memory of having to sit through their purity chants was enough to inspire impotent fury in him. Gods of all the senses, just take your damn cocks in your hands and fantasize already!

  But for now, Xenna was here, and her hands were again moving over his skin, teasing more gently this time. And he had missed his partner, as much as she annoyed him. In one swift move, he lifted her under the arms and pushed her against the wall. “Let me show you what the Vashtans called the ‘Grip of Mind’,” he said. “And the…creative practical applications of it I devised, having plenty of time to think of nothing else on my way here.”

  Xenna wasted no time in shedding the stealthsuit, revealing her gloriously fuschia, gloriously naked form. She kicked the suit into a corner while he secured the window shutters and failed to not look. His homespun cloak joined her suit and his tunic followed soon after. She activated a small jamming device for any electronic surveillance, then crouched at his feet and helped him out of his boots. They landed with twin thunks near the clothing.

  Next, he sank down into the lotus pose and closed his eyes, extending his psionic senses outwards, mentally feeling the room. The walls were thick and undisturbed by surveillance. The fixtures, however...

  He stretched his mind and sent a mental flick towards the bedpost. A hiss revealed the presence of a bug. Another one expired, courtesy of his will, from the nightstand glowlamp. He identified three more, one buried in the mattress even. He frotzed that one, but left the one in the pillow and the other one woven into the rag rug on the floor. One never completely eliminated all the bugs in a room, unless you wanted them to know you were onto them. Xenna’s jammer would take care of hiding their activities from the remaining intact nanospies.

  He emerged from the trance and opened his eyes to the sight of her naked form, bent over and rummaging through his pack. Her rounded ass was a lovely shape, perfect for gripping. The combination of scent and sight sent a tremor of lust through him. The aftereffects of the psy-trance left him more open than usual, and he caught the stray sensation from her. She felt his eyes on her, and she liked his hungry stare. To prove it, she subtly arched her back just that much more, spreading her legs just enough to reveal her crimson sex.

  “What are you doing?” he asked hoarsely, his eyes glued to her movements. She knew very well what she was doing, he thought, and decided right then he wanted her on her hands and knees, just like that.

  “Looking at your loot,” she tossed over her shoulder, wiggling her ass again.

  Maybe just right there, too. His hands were already at his waistband, releasing the catch. The heavy fabric scraped down his legs and his aching cock sprung free. “Xenna.” He stepped out of his pants and strode over to her.

  He placed both hands on her waist and pulled her back, sinking himself into her wet pussy. Her moan ended on a throaty laugh. “I knew you couldn’t resist,” she said, twisting her hips against his.

  He wrapped one arm around her waist and put the other on the floor to steady himself. “I’m sorry.” He bent down to kiss the nape of her neck. “Was I supposed to?”

  He began to move slowly, gliding in and out of her well-lubricated channel all the way to the tip and back to the hilt. She pushed back against him to increase their pace, but he held her hips firm. “None of that, love,” he said. “I’m tormenting you, remember?”

  “Don’t be a bastard, Micah,” she said.

  He chuckled low and nipped her earlobe. “You haven’t seen my new trick yet.” Nevertheless, he was a gentleman, obliged to his lady’s pleasure, and increased his pace. The slick friction of their bodies sent shudders through him that tightened his stones and warned of impending release. He pulled her against him and leaned back on his haunches. She rose back with him, taking him deep.

  Both hands free now, he was able to cup her generous breasts in his palms, teasing and thumbing the nipples to firm peaks. Her head dropped back against his chest. “One day,” she sighed. “You’ll finally learn my lesson.”

  His hands left her breasts, sliding down to palm over her stomach and between her thighs. He touched lightly, deliberately so, knowing that she preferred a heavier hand. It was part of their play. His fingers found her swollen lips and he teased them apart to stroke her clit with practiced little flicks. “Won’t ever happen,” he said. He kept his tone light, not voicing what they both knew as fact. He would never be the kind of lover she wanted. Needed. It was enough that they were partners and sought pleasure together. After all, even without a temple, Xenna was still a priestess of Pleasures Untold. “Now do you want to see what I’ve learned?” he asked.

  “Tricks later,” she said breathlessly, flexing her hips. “It’s been too long since I’ve had a man’s cock inside me.”

  She had a point. Their time, after all, might be limited. He settled back on his heels and loosened his grip on her hips, allowing her to set the pace. Her finely rounded ass bounced against his thighs and her tight inner walls hugged him in a rhythm that was as familiar as it was exciting. It took a considerable amount of his mental discipline not to succumb to the need to simply pound mindlessly into her.

  But still—he leaned forward and nipped her neck. “Wait.”

  “Are you mad?”

  He put the force of his will behind his words. “Slow.”

  Her body responded, slowing the shifting of her hips. She groaned in frustration. “How dare you!” Her head whipped around and she glared at him, a flash of something almost hopeful coming to him from her mind. Her pheromones rebelled and the heavy scent of her arousal enticed him and almost convinced him to abandon his restraint.

  Almost, but not quite. “Hush,” he said, stretching out both hands. He drew in a deep breath, drawing in the power from the hot core that burned inside him, pulling it from the elements outside, the very air and earth and light, and directed his will.

  Through slitted eyes, he watched as Xenna’s body rose from the floor. A tiny flick of his finger spun her around. She looked down, looked back up, and gasped. “You’re doing it!” she whispered, a grin breaking out on her face.

  Carefully, he shifted his weight and gathered his legs under him to stand. Without moving his outstretched arms, he rose. He then turned his hand, palm out, and Pushed gently. Xenna flew back towards the wall and he hastily Pulled back at the last minute before she sma
cked into it like a rag doll. “Sorry, love,” he said. “I need more practice.”

  She grinned again. “Not at all. It was a rush.”

  His smile stretched to match her own. “Just wait. You haven’t yet begun the rush.” Using only his mind, he pinned her against the wall and focused his concentration on keeping her there. He moved forward, close enough to touch—to kiss—and touched his tongue to her stomach.

  She sucked in a sharp breath. It was followed by several more that turned into little half-gasping cries as he began to lick her skin. He dragged his tongue down to her denuded mons, pausing to swirl around her navel before teasing at the tip of her slit. Her scent was heady, intoxicating. He’d missed the taste of her spice.

  She tried to draw her legs up, but the levitation prevented her and she grunted in frustrated effort. “Micah, don’t tease!”

  He flicked his tongue over her clit. “That’s exactly what I’m doing, love,” he said. “Feel this.” He shifted his hands and his concentration. He placed both hands on her thighs, but sent the force of his concentration to her breasts.

  “Oh!” she cried. “You—it’s phantom touching!”

  He would have corrected her—the psionic touch was very real on her end. His mind was actually triggering the nerve endings under her skin to respond as if to a physical touch—but he was currently engrossed in tasting her slick inner flesh.

  She let out a ragged moan. “Can you—fuck me this way?” she gasped.

  He shifted his concentration and she peeled away from the wall. “I’d rather just fuck you the usual way right now,” he said, using his kinetic powers to lower her down within reach. “You weren’t the one closeted on a freighter for three weeks.”

  “You poor baby,” she drawled, locking her legs around his hips. She used her ankles to draw him to her, sinking him into her sweet heat again. She swiveled her hips to bring him in deep and rocked back and forth in her own pace. She surrounded his cock, squeezing, gliding over him, guiding him in and out. Her nipples brushed softly against his chest and her pheromones wound through his head.

  Without warning, she dug her nails into his skin, cutting deep. A flash of anger sparked in him and he shoved her against the wall rather roughly before he could rein it in. Deep satisfaction radiated from her at the sudden change in pacing and he cursed himself for falling for her tricks. “Dammit, woman,” he growled. Her scent teased at him, inspiring the darker emotions.

  “Don’t tire yourself out,” she whispered. “Don’t fight it.” She put her pheromones behind her words and he found himself setting a hammering pace, his body enjoying the fast and furious mating even if his mind objected. A sly smile curved over her lips as she threw her head back. “Don’t stop! I’m gonna—aii!” she ended on a small shriek and her tight walls clenched around him.

  It did him in. Weeks without her—without the release of sex—weakened his resistance to her skills. And as a fully-initiated priestess, she had skills. The swivel of her hips, a flutter of her belly, her slick pussy tightening with shimmery ripples along the length of his cock—he gave way to the pleasure that pounded through his skull, only barely remembering to shield his thoughts from broadcasting his hymn to the Hathori pleasure goddess to all and sundry in a fifty-meter radius. Heavy orgasmic heartbeats pulsed through his whole body, centering in his groin as seed pumped from him in time with the ragged gasps escaping through his teeth.

  He sagged against the wall, pinning her against it as well. Her fingers skritched lightly through his hair as she, too, breathed heavily from exertion. “I really did miss you, you know.”

  “I’m sure you kept busy.” He slid away from her. Now that the edge had been taken off, he could afford to think further on the rest of their mission.

  “Of course I did,” she said from the tiny refresher unit. He heard the steam-sonic run its fifteen-second cycle and she emerged, fresh and sparkle-eyed, in a cloud of moist air. “I made friends with a lovely new recruit. A pilot.”

  His lips twisted in a wry smile as he stepped into the cubicle. “Restoration needs more pilots,” he said. “I’m sure you did it for the Cause.” As the steam-sonic recharged, he leaned his head against the wall and tried not to worry about the Restoration’s desperate fight against the tide of the New Morality. Or whether his presence was more of a help or hindrance to them.

  “Not at all.” She smirked. “I did it for the pleasure.”

  He was relieved to hear it. So many years ago, he would have been scandalized—shocked by the notion that pleasure was an end of its own means. Hathori had been an exciting novelty—and a source of speculation and frustration on the parts of the ruling families. Speculation as to the reality versus the reputation for young bucks like he’d once been, and frustration for the ladies who moved in the same social circles, who couldn’t understand the Hathori, yet couldn’t keep their husbands and sons away from the Temple’s halls.

  But all that had changed with the New Morality. Unification, they called it. Unification of purpose and a cultural shift that had turned anything pleasurable into decadence, and rendered it condemnable. The Temple had been shut down by force, its priestesses and acolytes taken into custody and herded into “re-education” camps.

  Oh, some of the ruling families protested—the elder Magnates had taken a long view against the radical movement—and suffered for it, losing assets and sometimes heads in the effort. The universe had changed, and the new buzzwords had become safety and sobriety. And the Hathori—the people for whom pleasure was a way of life dictated by their very physiology—the Hathori suffered.

  Xenna wouldn’t talk about her time in the camps. She’d resurfaced two years into the New Morality and made contact with the Restoration effort he’d consistently been a part of. When the camps were officially closed and the Hathori “released,” there were far fewer of them around the galaxy. Some returned to Hathor, and there they stayed, their home orbit now interdicted and under quarantine.

  The leadership made a political decision to house manufacturing facilities on the outer moons and quarantine its religious caste, in exchange for conditional membership in the New Union. Protection in exchange for suppression. The acolytes, priests, and priestesses of the Pleasure Goddess from temples outside the home system were exiled from the Civilized Orbits. Some returned to the homeworld, but many scattered throughout the outer orbits, making their way in isolation or in secret, under the noses of regional or planetary governors without the latest in genetic scanning tech from the inner worlds.

  The Restoration attempted to help where it could. The Reverend Mother and her surviving acolytes found shelter in a remote system inside a stellar nebula, isolated, but surviving. Restoration ships kept them supplied as best as they could. Micah thought that Xenna would have gone with the Reverend Mother—in his time at the Hathori Temple on Capitol, he knew they were close friends. But Xenna’s personality spilled over into her choice to join the Restoration on the front lines, in direct conflict with the Union, and in direct danger.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he murmured. “I’m quite capable of attracting the attention of a Vice Hunter all by myself.”

  Xenna pulled a tiny disk from the pouch on her belt and breathed on it. The moisture from her breath puffed the disk and she shook out a thin, gauzy robe of gold mesh. “Hardly,” she said. “To attract a Vice Hunter, you need to indulge in vice. You, my dear schoolboy, do not project vice.” She motioned to the pile of his clothing. Against the gold mesh of her sheer robe, it looked like a pile of old rags. “No point in us running if they don’t know to chase us.”

  He rolled his eyes and stepped into the steam-sonic. “In case you’ve forgotten my little demonstration earlier, they’ve quite the reason to chase me without flaunting it.”

  “Yes, but if you’re calling the best of the Vice Hunters, you may as well go down for the best of vices,” she called out. “And if you’re going to be a convincing catch, you have to make a good run of it. In a
good ship.”

  Xenna did have a point.

  The steam-sonic hissed, blasting him with hot steam and sonic waves, erasing the sweat and the dust from outside. “And how fares our lovely Delta Rose?” He raised his voice to be heard over the pipes.

  “Thanks to a little creative foreplay, she’s purring like a krax-cat. And just as deadly. My pilot hooked me up with a fantastic little black-market package of cloak-shields.”

  “Cloak-shields? Excellent.” The little Delta-class transport that he and Xenna had called home among the stars had originally been marketed as a luxury vehicle, suitable for in-system junkets, or short trips through the smaller Jumpgates that linked the many planets in the solar system. Deltas were often the possessions of noble families and almost exclusively used by the wives and daughters of said families. The Delta Rose had been his own mother’s personal conveyance, until the New Morality changed the face of the Union. Luxury vehicles were decadent, and Deltas were notoriously unsafe by the measure of the New Morality. Basic shielding, laser guns that held barely more force than the average personal sidearm, and hyperdrives more suited for sightseeing in jumpspace than getting anywhere truly fast made the Deltas among the first makes of starship to take a hit in popularity, and Delta Stardrives had closed its virtual doors to the Union very soon after the Marauder invasion of the Capitol.

  But needs being what they were, having a Delta versus having nothing made the Delta an attractive after-market choice, and the owners of Delta Stardrives had discovered that not only did the “discount” economy welcome them with open arms, but they proved to be innovative as well. All along the outer orbits, small groups of mechanics, techs, and enthusiasts had developed “mods” for the Deltas that turned them to purposes far greater—and far more effective—than their original design.

 

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