Katarina fastened the last clasp on her tunic, picked up her sun-blocking robes, and swept out of the apartment.
Calder didn’t try to stop her. His silence, and the fact that he didn’t demand she stay where she was, hurt her more than she wanted to acknowledge. She stepped quickly into the bright street to let the burning sun dry her tears.
*** *** ***
“I didn’t know it was that bad,” Braden said to Katarina as the two of them entered Braden’s apartment together. Braden had raced after her, declaring once more that the streets weren’t safe.
“How much I didn’t want to leave him?” Katarina raked her hands through her tangled hair as Braden slammed the door against the heat.
“No, how bad his injuries must have been.”
Katarina looked at him in surprise. “Didn’t you live at DNAmo when it happened?”
“I did, but Calder was kept in a separate wing, and I only really met him after DNAmo closed. I knew he’d been burned in some damned experiment, and I knew it was bad, but . . .”
“He saw you pity him. He didn’t like it.”
“Huh. Sweet baby, the fact I saw him unclothed at all is a major breakthrough. And he was so worried about you, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about my reaction.”
Katarina plopped onto a chair and buried her face in her hands. “Gods, Braden, it was so wonderful to be with him. I’ve never been so happy in my life.”
Her tears returned, sliding silently down her face. Her body was tender, stretched and aching. The feeling of Calder’s touch, of his cock, lingered, as though she could open her eyes and find him in her arms again.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” Katarina said, dejected, letting her arms drop over the sides of the chair. “He’s only with a lady once and won’t let them come back, no matter how much they plead or how much they offer to pay.”
Braden went down on his knees in front of her chair and looked up at her. He brushed her damp cheek with the ball of his thumb. “Want me to kiss it all better?”
“No. I’m stupid. I want Calder.” Katarina closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“I understand. But I’m patient. When you finally forget about the shit, I’ll be here.”
Katarina tried to laugh but it came out a croak. “Sure, if you’re not off chasing other ladies. Thanks, Braden.”
Braden leaned to her. His hair smelled like soap and sunshine. “I wish I could say, Oh, he’ll come around, give him time, but I don’t think he will. Calder’s all twisted up inside, and the way women react to him has made it worse.”
“Bitches.”
“Now you’re getting it.” Braden slid his arms around Katarina and pulled her close. “I’ll do what I can for you, sweetie, I promise. And if Calder won’t come around, I’ll throw over every lady in this town to get you into my manacles.”
Katarina lifted her head, laughter mixing with her tears. “You’re a shit, Braden,” she said, then her laughter left her, and the sobs returned. Braden held her close and stroked her hair, and she rested her head on his shoulder, letting herself cry on him again.
*** *** ***
Calder gave up on his client database. After Katarina had stormed out, with Braden in hot pursuit, Calder toyed with the idea of trying to build it again but he’d lost the taste for it. He never wanted to see another woman in his lair again—begging him, running from him, giving themselves over to terror and lust.
His clients, on the other hand, weren’t so happy. The woman from Delta-Terra, Lady Demata, whose appointment Braden had broken for him, was still on Bor Narga, and insisted that Calder honor the engagement.
Calder returned her money but every morning he found nasty messages from her that he started deleting without reading. Women like her, who fled him in his labyrinth then shuddered in pleasure when he caught and fucked them, now filled him with disgust.
They’d always disgusted him, but before he’d been able to put up with it. Being with Katarina had opened Calder’s eyes about a lot of things.
Katarina looked at him—at him—and touched him, unafraid. Not repulsed. Not fascinated. She wanted to understand his pain, to talk about it like he was a normal human being. Which he’d never be.
Only Dr. Laas had ever treated him like that, but even Dr. Laas tended to look at Calder like he was a precious experiment. Katarina, on the other hand, had drawn Calder into her arms, kissed him, touched him, wanted him.
The other women wanted the Beast. Katarina wanted Calder.
Katarina—who’d gone home with the smug Braden, damn his ass.
The problem with letting the database go was Calder’s Shareem metabolism, which demanded constant satiation. An option would be to seek out the level-three lair that Braden talked a lot about. It had started as a place where level threes could take their ladies for dungeon play off the radar of patrollers, but now Shareem of all levels gravitated there.
Braden had told Calder about a room kept dark, so you could screw whatever women you found there in complete anonymity. Some women liked to enter the dark room at the beginning of the evening and stay until dawn, enjoying herself with as many different Shareem as happened in.
Calder figured he could visit this lights-free room, get out his needs, and go home. Just a wet, waiting pussy, nothing more.
Gods, was he that desperate? Even with the highborn women who paid him to ravish them, he preferred some knowledge and contact. He might as well stay home with his hand.
Calder balled his fist and punched the wall. The mirror on the other side, in his bedroom, slid from the wall and shattered.
Fine. Calder was sick of looking at his wrecked body anyway.
*** *** ***
Three days later—three lonely days from hell—Calder answered his door chime to find Rees on the threshold.
“What?”
Rees lifted his brows and stepped into the apartment’s front room. “Yep, you have all the signs. Flushed face, nervous sweats, cantankerous attitude. We have a bet on at Judith’s that you aren’t getting any. I say I win.”
“What do you want?”
Rees had never come to visit Calder before. Smart-assed Rio had been Rees’ preferred Shareem companion before Rio had moved off planet with his lady. Rio, much like Braden, was a shit with a love for jokes. Calder supposed that both he and Rees needed a laid-back friend who looked at the world a different way than they did.
Calder and Rees had far too much in common to become close friends. Rees had been screwed up deliberately, not by accident, like Calder, but both of them had dark sides to their nature from which they needed relief. Together, they’d combust. Probably why Ky, another screwed-up level three, had gone so far as to take the sunny-natured level one, Aiden, as a lover.
“That pretty medic you’ve been seeing, Katarina d’Arnal,” Rees said. He stopped, sniffing the air. “Damn, you haven’t had a woman in here in days.”
“What about Katarina d’Arnal?”
“She’s in trouble.”
One of the pesky emotions Calder wasn’t supposed to have—fear—swooped in and froze his blood. “Trouble? Why? Where is she?”
Rees considered him with eyes more intensely blue than any other Shareem’s. “Come with me.”
Calder grabbed his sun-blocking robes, already dressed head to foot in his usual leather. He’d taken to covering his body completely again, the brief moment of being naked and unashamed in front of Katarina a fading memory.
Rees led him quickly through the streets toward Katarina’s clinic. Sun cut at them through overhangs, patches of burning heat that made the shade seem blissfully cool.
They ended up at the clinic’s door, and Rees ducked inside. “She’s expecting us,” he said to the startled receptionist.
Calder charged into Katarina’s exam room . . . and she looked up calmly from arranging things on a tray.
Calder sagged in relief. She was whole, unhurt, beautiful. She’d tucked her hair into a bun, with curls straggling from it to
her neck. Her brown eyes took in Rees then Calder, and she smiled.
“Thank you, Rees.”
Calder spun around. Rees, the asshole, grinned. “No problem. I’ll tell Talan you said hello.”
Before Calder could snarl a question, Rees walked out. The automatic door slid shut behind him, the mechanism grating.
“What the hell is this?” Calder demanded.
Katarina just stood there, calmer than anyone should be in an exam room. “I needed to talk to you. I had the feeling you wouldn’t open your door to me or answer my calls, and it’s easier for me to meet you here anyway.”
“So you sent Rees to trick me here?”
Katarina smiled. So innocent. Darling, you are so going to pay for this.
“I knew you’d never believe Braden if I sent him,” Katarina said. “Braden’s not very good at lying. Rees was happy to assist.”
Calder growled. “My fucking friends must have nothing better to do.”
“Than help each other? I like your friends. Leave them alone.”
Calder needed to get out of there—fast. Standing near Katarina shot his adrenaline high, and his heart was pumping as though he’d been running. He either had to leave now or throw her to the metal table and take her hard and fast.
“What do you want?” he asked abruptly. “I’m busy.”
He was such a fucking liar.
“I’ve been doing a lot of reading. And research.” Katarina turned away, lifting something from the tray she’d been messing with. “Medics do that—have to in order to keep up with the latest techniques.”
“So?”
“You’re grouchy today.” Katarina turned around again. “Oh no, wait, you’re usually like this. Anyway, I’ve been reading about some new techniques developed for skin grafting, with excellent results. I thought you might be interested in hearing about them.”
Calder took a step back, icy disappointment flooding him. “No,” he said harshly.
“Why not? They might help you.”
“Because, sweetheart, I’ve been through every technique ever dreamed up, starting back when I was first hurt up to last month. Dr. Laas contacts me all the time to try something new, but it never takes. I used to let surgeons who’d touch Shareem screw with me, but they’d do their experiments on me, and say oh, well, when they didn’t work. Nothing ever works. My body is the way it is, and that’s the way it stays.”
“It can’t hurt to try.”
Gods, she was stubborn. And naive. “The hell it can’t. I’ve been subjected to everything from useless injections to having the skin peeled off me and put back on. The skin cells died a long time ago, end of story. And don’t think about trying to fuse plastic to me like I’m a fucking android. I’m not that desperate.”
“No plastic, I promise. It’s a technique developed on Ariel, and it’s hideously expensive. If it will even work on you, which it might not.”
“And you think I can afford it? I use all the money I get for being a whore to make my life bearable and help other Shareem. I don’t have it to spare.”
Katarina’s lips flattened. “I don’t want your money, Calder. I want a skin sample.”
“Too bad.”
“It won’t hurt you. One little strip of skin that never got burned, that’s all I need. You have some of that. I saw it.”
Calder straightened up in a hurry. “And you’re not putting a knife anywhere near my cock.”
“Don’t be stupid. I’ll take it from under your right arm. I only need a little.”
“What for?”
“To test. I’m curious.”
“Yeah? And I can’t tell you how sick I am of being a lab rat.”
Her brows pinched together—sweet Katarina had a temper on her. “Even more than being the Beast? I’m a medic, Calder. I’m always trying to learn. Give me one little piece of skin, and I’ll leave you alone.”
Calder stopped. She watched him intently, her earnestness radiating from her. She wanted to Help with a capital H.
“That’s not what women usually ask from a Shareem,” he said.
“It’s what I’m asking.”
What the hell? Calder shucked his sun-blocking robes and pulled off his tunic. He was sweating beneath, his ruined skin gleaming with moisture.
Katarina started for him with a test tube. A thin-bladed knife, covered with a guard, protruded from it. Gods, Calder hated knives.
When she reached for his side, Calder caught her wrist. “You don’t get this for free, darling.”
“Then what do you want?”
She had a little tremor in her voice, her cockiness wavering. Good.
Calder leaned to her. “I want you—going down on me so hard, working me up so bad, that I come in five minutes. All over your pretty face.”
Her breath caught, her cheeks going rosy. “I can do that.”
Calder straightened, a fierce smile breaking through his agony. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“My shift ends in a few hours. Do you want me to come to your place?”
He laughed, a grating sound. “No, you’re going to do it right here.”
Katarina’s eyes widened. “Here? What if someone comes in?”
“What if they do?”
“It would be . . .” She went redder, and he scented her on the air. Hot, ready, smelling so good. She was wet. He smelled that too.
Calder wrapped his hand through her hair and pulled her head back. “It would be exciting. You want to get caught, don’t you? Have everyone know you let Shareem fuck you?”
“Not really.” The words were so faint that they weren’t convincing.
“Right here. Right now,” Calder said. “Or no samples.”
Chapter Eleven
Katarina stared at him for a long time, her heart flip-flopping while she debated. Calder stood like a rock in front of her, immovable. No way she’d get at him without a large tranquilizer to take him out first.
Or to do what he wanted.
Katarina swallowed. She turned and gently set the test tube back on the tray, then she slowly lowered herself to her knees.
Calder didn’t say a word, but a sound rumbled through his throat. He unlaced his leggings with fast, sure fingers, and his cock tumbled out, long, hard, dark with blood.
To think that a few weeks ago, Katarina had never seen a cock in the flesh. Now she’d seen two, Calder’s and Braden’s. Not only seen them but touched them, licked them, tasted them.
Calder’s took her breath away. One standard foot, it gleamed with sweat, the balls at its base tight and smooth.
Katarina leaned forward and licked the tip. Calder moved slightly, his hand closing in her hair. She smiled with her power and licked some more.
“Suck it,” Calder said. “Suck me.”
Katarina kept licking. She ran her tongue underneath the head and again across his tip.
He tugged her hair. “Suck me, Katarina. Or I punish you.”
Excitement warmed her. She remembered Calder’s hand on her backside, the sting that opened her and made her beg for him.
“Suck,” he repeated.
She licked again, and he dragged in a breath. “Damn you, Katarina. You’re making your punishment worse by the minute, and I don’t want to hurt you.”
Katarina’s heart pounded so fast she could barely breathe. She rubbed her face on his cock, nuzzling it, playing with it with her lips, before she finally opened her mouth wide and took it inside.
“Gods,” Calder whispered. He closed his other hand on her hair and rocked his hips forward.
Calder, the big Shareem with the hideous scars, who hid behind his face cloths, and let no one into his life, was murmuring his joy at Katarina’s teasing.
She loved his cock, every long inch of it. She loved its taste and its scent, the hot smoothness under her tongue.
Katarina got the cock very wet and rubbed her face on it again. She liked the feel of the tip against her nose, the smell of him.
“I to
ld you, you have five minutes to make me come,” Calder said in a ragged voice. Time is marching.”
Five minutes? Katarina would gladly kneel here for an hour, licking, suckling, fondling him until her mouth was raw.
But someone might come in. Appointments would pile up, the receptionist or nurse would come to see what was wrong.
Katarina took Calder into her mouth again, and this time, she suckled. Hard, moving her tongue back and forth on the underside of his cock. He pulled her hair, but she barely noticed as she took him farther and farther into her mouth. He’d choke her, and she didn’t care.
Calder ground his hips forward, thrusting, fucking her mouth. His breath came in strangled grunts. There was no sweetening or soothing this time, just raw sex play.
It took three minutes, by Katarina’s calculation. Calder whispered, “Fuck,” and then a wash of come rushed into her mouth.
Calder kept pumping his hips, sending more and more inside her. He tasted smooth, like cream with a bite of salt. Calder said her name over and over, while Katarina savored his come and swallowed it down.
He pulled her to her feet. His pupils spread black through his blue irises, which had widened to blot out the white. Shareem eyes, changeable, beautiful.
Calder gave her a feral look, scars distorting his face. Before Katarina could say a word, he shoved her back onto the hard exam table, ripped down her leggings, jerked her legs apart, and leaned to press his mouth to her clit.
Calder’s tongue slid through her opening, then he sucked, licked, and teased her swollen clit. Katarina’s hips rocked against the table, her fist pressed into her mouth to stifle her screams.
His teeth scraped her, his tongue’s friction made her crazy. Katarina’s hips undulated as white fire rushed through her, her heels digging into the metal table.
Calder didn’t stop. He kept lapping her clit and her pussy, holding her hips open when she wanted to close, to squeeze.
They had to stop now. He’d cease, back away, let cool air touch her too-hot body.
No. Calder did back away, but only to slide strong arms under her and turn her over. He pressed her face down on the table, full length, and leaned on top of her, his skin hot through her thin cotton tunic.
Tales of the Shareem, Volume 2 Page 11