Along comes cute little Katarina d’Arnal, and weeks later Calder was sitting at Judith’s, whole, strong, and happy.
“I want to kiss her,” Braden said. He slid into his seat, gladly picking up the ale that Judith now deposited in front of him. His headache had suddenly vanished.
Calder lost his smile. “You touch her, you’re dead.”
Braden laughed, feeling good. “It’s like that, is it? You poor son of a bitch.”
“Who’s a poor son of a bitch?” a voice growled behind him. It was Ky, wandering into Judith’s in much the same state Braden had been.
Braden started to answer, then shut up. No wonder Judith had grinned so hard at him. This was fun.
Aiden’s body warmed Braden’s side as the tall level-one Shareem slid into the seat beside him. “Who’s your friend?”
Braden buried his mouth in ale as Aiden ran his gaze over Calder’s body. Ky took a seat on Braden’s other side, pulling pretty Brianne d’Aroth onto his lap. The man didn’t take chances letting Brianne get too far from him when there were other Shareem nearby, especially ones he didn’t know.
Brianne, smarter than either of her lovers, got it at once. Her eyes lit up, but she said nothing.
Calder gave Aiden a cool stare. “If you don’t stop looking at me like that, Aiden, your face meets the table.”
“Hey, I can’t help admiring a pretty Shareem. Ky’s not pretty at all.”
“Face,” Calder repeated. “Table.”
Brianne let out a musical laugh. Ky looked at Calder—truly looked at him. “Holy fuck. What happened to you?”
Aiden was the last to catch on. He got out of his seat so fast he almost knocked it over. “Calder?”
Braden chortled. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“Shareem are slow,” Brianne said, smiling. “Look at his eyes. Look at him. It’s Calder.”
Braden slid his arm around Judith’s waist as she came back with more ale. “Did you recognize him, Judith?”
“Not the minute he walked in, no. I thought he was just a Shareem I hadn’t met. Then I thought about how odd that was—a Shareem I didn’t know? But the way he moved, the way he looked at me, I knew.”
“Women are more perceptive,” Brianne agreed.
Ky snorted. “Women stare at Shareem more than other Shareem do. Except Aiden.”
Aiden lifted his hands. “Cured. I’m all yours, Ky.”
“Oh, lucky me.”
“Where’s Katarina?” Brianne asked. “She’s responsible for the new you, isn’t she?”
“She is.”
Calder set his glass of ale down carefully and rose. No more hiding in shadows, no more watching the others from behind face-concealing cloths, no more shielding his body. His tunic reached mid-thigh, baring legs to the soft sandals most Shareem favored. He looked—normal. For a Shareem.
He picked up his robes and breath mask and draped them over his arm as he sauntered past them.
“Katarina is waiting for me, gentlemen. I have an appointment with her.”
“The come-to-my-lair-pretty-lady kind of appointment?” Braden asked. His body heated as he thought about the last time he’d seen Katarina in Calder’s lair.
“Yes.” Calder’s smile was quiet. “And no, Braden, you’re not invited.”
“Selfish asshole.”
“You got that right.”
Calder gave them all another smug grin, turned his back, and walked out. Braden followed him to the door and saw his friend strolling down the street, looking around in wonder, like a prisoner finally freed.
*** *** ***
Katarina finished lighting the candles, giving the room a delicate glow. She extinguished the lighting stick and set it aside, remembering how intrigued and frightened she’d been the first time she’d come here.
Water skimmed down the copper sheet that Calder had made her face, her hands in the stream. He’d played with her, making her feel wild and wicked for the first time in her life.
Here too, he’d made her wear the tiny, tight leather dress, and he’d introduced her to discipline. Katarina had never known she’d like a man spanking her rear, but she did. She liked it with his hand, and she liked it with his leather whip.
Calder had told her to come here and wait for him. He wouldn’t say how long he’d be away, or when he’d arrive. He expected her to obey.
Katarina smiled. What they’d done in her house before he’d discovered his healing had taken her places she’d never gone. What would he do tonight?
Her body tightened. He’d handed her the leather dress before he’d gone—no one but Katarina had ever worn it.
Katarina donned it now and gazed at herself in the reflective sheeting of the waterfall. The dress felt sexy as hell, and she looked forward to seeing Calder’s eyes warm when he saw her in it.
But tonight would be a little different. Calder wouldn’t be swathed head to foot in black and hiding behind a mask. He’d worn a sleeveless, tight tunic when he’d gone out, and when he came back for their session, Katarina would be able to touch his body in return.
She slid her fingers between her legs, finding herself already warm and wet. Before leaving, Calder had said he wouldn’t tell her how long he’d keep her waiting, to grow the anticipation. But he’d told her not to be hesitant about relieving some of her tension herself. In fact, he might return, unannounced, to see what she did.
Katarina closed her thighs over her fingers, squeezing hard. She groaned with the fineness of it, just as a door chime rang.
“Blast.” Katarina jerked her fingers free then she quivered in excitement.
Calder? What game was he going to play?
She made her way through the secret door to Calder’s apartment as the chime rang again. A panel on the wall indicated it was the back door, the one to the alley, not the main door to the lair. Katarina pulled on sun-blocking robes from the hooks in the back hall in case it wasn’t Calder, and opened the door.
A woman stood there, not a patroller or a delivery person. Her gown and robes looked costly, but she wasn’t Bor Nargan. Her forehead was too high, her eyes too large, and she didn’t cover her face.
“Where is the Shareem named Calder?” she asked, the Bor Nargan words heavily accented.
“Not here.”
The woman pushed Katarina aside with surprising strength and looked around the small living room and kitchen combination.
“I said, Calder isn’t here,” Katarina repeated. “Can I take a message?”
The woman focused on Katarina again, her gaze sharpening. “Do you know who I am?”
A rude, pushy bitch? “Sorry, no.”
“I am Lady Demata from Delta-Terra. I’m the richest woman in four sectors, and I made myself that way. I am not accustomed to men who don’t keep appointments and then make me wait.”
“Calder canceled all his appointments.”
“Why?” She glared at Katarina. “Are you his errand girl? Be nice to me, and I might ask him to call you in to help. Maybe we can both use your services. Or just use you.”
Katarina drew back in distaste. Calder had said that many of the women who’d come to him disgusted him, and she understood why.
“Calder is closed for business,” Katarina said in a crisp voice. “You can leave now.”
“I didn’t travel several dozen light years and ten dusty miles to be turned away by a lackey. He’s already put me off twice.” Lady Demata reached behind her and keyed the door closed, then pulled a pistol out of her robes and pointed it at Katarina. “Let me into this lair of his, now.”
Chapter Fourteen
Calder knew something was wrong the moment he entered his apartment. He smelled an alien perfume that wasn’t Katarina’s, felt a coldness in the air.
Katarina.
He’d walked back home filled with anticipation. Katarina waited for him, ready to play. He had no doubt she’d wear the leather dress as he’d instructed, that she’d put it on and grow excited as she wai
ted.
Calder wondered if she’d started touching herself, unable to resist. He got hard picturing her stretched out on the sheets of the platform bed, her legs spread, her hands working, her eyes closed in pleasure.
But when he entered his apartment through the street door, he stopped, every enhanced sense telling him that Katarina was in danger.
Quietly he set aside his robes and breath mask and crossed to the small control room where he could see all parts of his lair without being seen. From here, he’d talked to the waiting ladies—including Katarina—to instruct them, watching them through cams that sent him feeds from every corner of the room.
He didn’t need all the cams to see Lady Demata, the woman who’d been harassing him more than any other, holding a pistol on Katarina.
Shit.
His first impulse was to shout at the woman to get the hell away from Katarina. But he made himself remain silent, fearing he’d startle her into shooting.
Making no noise, he left the overview room and slid back the section of wall that led to the lair. He’d reach the woman, disarm her, and throw the bitch out.
“If Calder told you he refunded your money, then he did,” Katarina was saying. “Go back home and find it.”
“It won’t be enough to compensate me,” the woman snapped. “I want him.”
“For your twisted fantasy?”
Calder’s heart pounded. He loved that Katarina was so brave, but now was not the time for sassy courage.
“Your twisted fantasy is that he’s in love with you, isn’t it?” Lady Demata said as Calder made his quiet way toward them. “You’re the only one for him, his indispensable errand girl, am I right? But I know much about Calder. He’s serviced friends of mine. He learns what you want and then he gives it to you. That’s the beauty of him. That’s why we all want him. I have some very interesting fantasies I want to play out. They’d shock you.”
“Calder is different now.”
“I’m sure every woman hopes he’ll change for them. I wonder how he’ll use that fantasy to torture you.”
“You’ll never know,” Katarina said clearly. “Because you’re leaving.”
“Bitch!” Lady Demata shot one of the candles, which exploded into wax and flame. An energy pistol, which on its max setting could put out bolts with a force equivalent to lightning. “I came here to let him do to me what no man has ever done. Do you want to watch? Maybe that will cure you of thinking he has a softness for you.”
Katarina started to answer but Lady Demata shot again, and another candle burst apart. She trained the pistol on Katarina once more, and her finger started to squeeze the trigger . . .
Calder leapt at Demata and the shot went wide. A net of energy slammed out of the pistol, frying part of the chamber’s black ceiling and two of the camera lenses.
Calder shouted. “Katarina, get out of here!”
Lady Demata twisted away from Calder, her face set in outrage, her weapon coming up again. Calder hit the floor as lightning from her pistol forked across the room. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. “I want the Beast.”
“He’s not home.” Calder got swiftly to his feet at the same time Katarina got behind the woman and smacked her hard in the back.
Lady Demata stumbled and went down but before Calder could reach her, she swung her arm around and shot at Katarina.
Katarina dove, but a lash of energy caught her side. She screamed, landed on the floor . . . and lay still.
The sound that came from Calder’s throat was primeval and savage. Lady Demata shot wildly, not trying to kill him, he realized, but trying to destroy Calder’s lair. Payback.
The polished copper waterfall exploded into shards of hot metal. The next shot made the bed burst into flame, the next fried the wall next to the door controls, closing and sealing the doorway to his apartment.
Calder tackled the woman. She wanted the Beast, she’d get him. The real Beast—the one who protected the woman he loved.
Another shot seared open the wall, baring wiring and pipes. The energy from the pistol twisted around the exposed power sources, and an explosion rocked the room, flames bursting from the wall.
Calder yanked the pistol away from Lady Demata, powering it down. He locked his arm around her waist and dragged her up, shoving her toward the door to the green maze. “Get out!” he screamed.
Lady Demata, looking scared now, gathered her robes and fled.
Calder turned back.
His lair was engulfed in flames. They spilled from the walls and ceiling where the energy pistol had ripped open the light, heating, and cooling systems. The rain spouts sprang to life, but did little to dampen the fire fed by the fuel in the pipes.
Katarina lay unmoving on the other side of the wall of flames, and he saw fire crawl onto her robes.
“Bloody fucking hell!”
The fire brigade would never get there on time. Would they even hurry when they discovered it was a Shareem residence that had triggered the city alarm?
The intense heat transported Calder back twenty years. He heard again the screams of the two women trapped inside the room that was supposed to be safe for them. He smelled the flames, the acrid stench of burning flesh, the choking smell of plastic and wiring.
Memories of pain embraced him in a grip so crushing it made him sick. He saw again the fire engulf his body as he grabbed each woman and flung her to safety. He remembered lifting his hands and seeing the fire burning him, consuming him, greedily eating him alive.
He’d fallen on his side, thigh flung over his bare cock, curling in on himself in instinctive preservation. Then he’d felt a weight on his body, agony screaming through him, then nothing.
Until he’d woken, a wreck of a man in hellacious pain while researchers coolly talked about killing him.
It took a split second for this to flash through his mind. In the next instant he saw Katarina, her shy look when he’d first come to her clinic, her need to help him pouring from her.
Then her wonder when she’d come to his lair, her compassion when she touched his face. It must have hurt you so much, she’d whispered, and broken him.
Katarina had spent weeks figuring out a way to heal him, which must have cost her a fortune in time and resources. It’s a technique developed on Ariel, and it’s hideously expensive.
She hadn’t done it for the sake of experimentation or to advance research.
Katarina done it for him.
For the Beast.
For Calder.
Calder dove through the flames. He lifted Katarina in his arms and ran back through the plasma fire, feeling it catch his hair, his thin tunic, his skin. She wore thick sun-blocking robes, thank the gods, and though flames had caught them, they’d protect her from the worst of it.
She opened her eyes and stared at Calder in horror. Calder shoved her down onto the tile floor in the maze of greenery, rolling her away from him. The flames in her robes extinguished, and Katarina scrambled to her feet, starting back for him.
“Get out!” he tried to shout.
His own body was already burning, his face melting—just like last time—and his voice wouldn’t work. He lifted his hands and saw the flames consume the beautiful skin Katarina had just given him. Her gift. Because she loved him.
Calder threw himself into the maze, rolling, trying to put the fire out. He smothered some of the flames, but the burning room exploded outward, engulfing him and the greenery he’d filled the place with. It was dying with him.
Katarina had already fled beyond the flames’ reach, safe.
“I love you,” Calder whispered.
The words came out a croak. Then a weight fell on him, and all was darkness.
*** *** ***
“He’s conscious,” a male voice whispered. “Gods, how can he be conscious?”
Calder dragged his eyes open. The pain of the tiny movement nearly killed him.
He could see nothing but a gray haze and lumps of darker gray. He summ
oned all the air in his lungs and forced his lips to form words.
“Fuck you, Braden.”
“Whew,” Braden said. “At least he’s not crazy.”
“Calder.”
Katarina’s warm voice was the most beautiful thing in the world. Too bad Calder wasn’t. Here he was again, a black husk of a man stretched out on a slab.
He started to laugh, a harsh, ugly sound.
“Don’t.” Something cool touched his face. “Don’t move at all. I’m going to give you something for the pain and something to make you sleep. Then Dr. Laas and I are going to fix you.”
“Don’t want to sleep.” If he slept, he might never wake again, never see Katarina again.
“Foolish boy.” Dr. Laas’ clear voice, rife with cynical intelligence, reached his ears. “I can’t rebuild you while you’re twitching and moaning. You really must stop letting burning buildings fall on you.”
“Bite me, Doc.”
He heard a squirt of air and then his body relaxed, his already blurred vision going black.
But this time, things were different. This time his friends were around him—he sensed Braden and the taller mass of Rees, with Rees’ true love Talan hovering nearby. He smelled Judith’s perfume. Overlaid with that, the oils Aiden liked to use on Ky and Brianne. So that threesome had showed up too.
His friends had come to him, had brought Dr. Laas, a woman who would be arrested and probably terminated on sight if she was caught even existing. She’d risked her life to come here—or to have him brought to her. Calder didn’t know where the hell he was.
Best of all, Katarina was there. Calder felt her breath touch his face, smelled her sweet scent.
The last time he’d been dying, he’d been surrounded by cold researchers, interested in him only for their DNA samples. This time he had friends who cared for him. And Katarina.
“Katarina,” Calder whispered, loving the feel of her name in his mouth.
“Shh. Sleep now.”
He managed to move his lips to form one more sentence. “I love you.”
He sensed her bending forward to catch his words, heard the little sob in her throat. “I love you too, Calder.”
Tales of the Shareem, Volume 2 Page 15