In a voice huskier than his years, Tavos reminded her, "It does not come out of the thong."
Stacey sighed, resigning herself to the limits of his services, but reveling in being at the very threshold of the promised land at last. Resting her head on his shoulder, feeling hypnotized, she began to pet his hidden beauty.
As loath as he was to show it to her or let her enjoy it any more, Stacey still felt tremors of excitement at the hardness, thickness, and stiffness under that cloth. It felt as if it wanted to tear itself free of its restraints and reveal itself to her in all its alien male glory. Stacey gave a silent sigh at the way it felt, and respected her masseur's boundaries.
Eyes still shut, Tavos said, "You are good with your hands. When you have a boyfriend he will appreciate the attention that you give him down there."
"Thank you," she said, feeling the temptation and cursing the limits. With every stroke of her hand on what he was keeping from her, she appreciated those limits less and less. There must be some way to get past them. And then she remembered... "Rovan, did you really like the sim of me, the post-op sim?"
He opened one eye and gazed over at her. "The holographic simulation of your body after your procedure?"
"Yes. Did you really like the way the sim said I'll look after it's done?"
"I liked it very much. You are already very pretty. But when the surgeon is done you will be happier in your body. Happiness makes what is beautiful more so."
"Do you think you could ever... I mean, do you ever, with your clients, when it's not work, when it's social... I mean...," she exhaled, frustrated with herself. Sexually inexperienced because she had never liked her own body, she had never developed the knack for hitting on a boy, and she was now only too keenly aware of how clumsy she was.
Stacey's entire body froze, her hand paralyzed in place on his pouch, when he opened both eyes and drilled them right into her the way she wanted him to do with what she was almost touching, and he said, "You're asking me if I would like to shadaal you in your new body."
Her eyes bulged. Her mouth went as dry as another, lower part of her was wet. She had never heard the Sarmian word shadaal until now, but from the context it was clear that it meant what no human boy had ever wanted to do to her. She half-whispered, half-stammered, "Am I stepping over the boundaries?"
Tavos made her feel ready to faint when he put a hand on the hand that rested on his one covered part. Was he insulted now? Would he take her hand from him and end the session? Stacey wanted to keel over, dreading his reaction. He calmly replied, "You are offering me the first experience of your new body and the first shadaal of your life. You are asking me to end your virginity."
Any second now, Stacey thought, he would have to catch her before she hit the floor. "W-w-would you?" she tremulously asked.
He smiled softly and squeezed her hand. "I have not been anyone's first since my own first time. And I have never been the first to know a woman's reformed body. I am honored that you would ask. As long as we are not provider and client when I take you, it would be my honor."
Stacey suddenly felt lit up inside. She wished it were not today but the day after tomorrow. She smiled her broadest smile, her breath quickening and her skin flushing with excitement. She wanted to throw her arms around him here and now and give him a kiss as big as the girth that she was about to lose. "Oh, Rovan!" she cried. "Thank you! You're the handsomest, sweetest—"
Tavos patted her hand. "Thank you," he said. "Sarmian men are very passionate, as you will find. Your first time, I promise, will be the beginning of a very long night that will go on into morning. I will have you many times." He grinned mischievously. "I may spoil you for human males."
She laughed, "Spoil me, Rovan. Please spoil my brains out!"
And in a moment of sweet anticipation, Tavos reached over to her and brushed his fingers through the dark waterfall of her hair. Thinking of the simulation of the way Stacey would soon be, he wanted to take her to the surgeon for an emergency procedure now, the better to hasten taking her to bed and giving her what she wanted all night long.
And that was when the humming came in from above them.
Startled, Stacey and Tavos looked up at the very official-looking skimmer dropping down from overhead. Stacey held her breath, recognizing its markings as those of Martian Colony Law Enforcement. The skimmer hovered down to a position alongside Rovan's parked craft. Two uniformed, helmeted, and armed officers sat in the compartment, looking directly at Rovan. What could the police possibly want?
Stacey, confused and frightened, looked from the officers to Rovan as first the masseur beside her and then the men in the skimmer stood up. The air around her was abruptly filled with dread—all of it coming directly from the young Sarmian.
The cop who had piloted the craft called, "Stay where you are. Tavos of Sarma, you're under arrest for charges of wartime desertion filed on the planet Sarma and transmitted to the interstellar court system. You're to be taken into custody and extradited to Sarma to face charges and trial on your home planet. Do not resist."
Horrified, Stacey stood up and took Tavos by the arm, her eyes darting nervously from him to the police and back again. "Rovan, what are they talking about?" she demanded. "Who's Tavos?"
With a gulp, Tavos replied, "I am."
"No, your name is Rovan. They're confusing you with someone else."
"No—Rovan is the name I have used since coming to Mars. I am Tavos."
"And you ran out on... on...?"
"On my family and my tribe—and a war that I did not wish to fight. And I have run ever since then. I am a deserter and a fugitive."
By now both officers had stepped off the skimmer and onto the terrace. One had taken out the electro-cuffs and the other had unholstered his pulse pistol. "And now you're going home, Tavos," said the one with the pistol. "Put out your hands; let's go."
Reacting, not thinking, Stacey put herself between the uniformed men and the Sarmian and protested, "You can't do this. He has rights."
"You have the right to remain silent," said the one with the cuffs, looking past Stacey at Tavos, entering the centuries-old ritual. "Anything you say may be taken into the record and transmitted to your home planet to be used against you in court. Upon reaching your home planet you have the right to whatever legal counsel is available to you under Sarmian law. Do you understand these rights as they have been presented to you?"
Seeing and hearing all this, Stacey went pale with horror. "You can't take him! My parents are lawyers! I'll call them! You can't take him off of Mars! I won't let you!"
The officer with the cuffs gently but firmly moved Stacey to one side. "If your parents are lawyers," he said, "they'll recognize interplanetary due process when they hear it. We're doing our job, miss."
Stacey covered her mouth with one hand and hugged herself with the other. Pain twisted up inside her at the sight of the officer with the cuffs putting Tavos's hands behind his back and securing his wrists. Tavos looked sadly over at her and said, "I am sorry, Stacey. Sorry that I lied, and that I will not have the chance to do what we spoke of my doing for you—and that I relaxed my guard at the wrong time. What befalls now is upon me alone."
Taking down her hand and choking back a sob, Stacey blurted out, "But... but..." The cop with the pistol took Tavos by the shoulder to lead him off the terrace and to the police skimmer, and everything she did next happened before Stacey was even fully aware she was doing it. On adrenaline and impulse alone, she reached for the bottle of hot oil on the heating disk and grabbed it. Her arm lunged forth, hurling the contents of the bottle into the air, right into the face of the cop leading Tavos away. His skin suddenly, shockingly spattered, the officer released Tavos and staggered back, dropping his weapon, shouting, wiping frantically at his face. His partner, furious at Stacey's interference, drew his own weapon and advanced on her. Terrified both at the shock of what she had done and the consequences—to say nothing of the thought of her parents' reaction—Stacey
again did the first thing that entered her mind. She grabbed the heating disk, which had cooled enough to handle after bringing the oil to the temperature at which it was ordinarily most pleasurable, and flung it like a discus with all her might, catching the advancing cop right on the forehead, over his eyes and under his helmet. It was an amazing shot—and, Stacey realized with a fright, a costly one. The officer dropped to the terrace floor, stunned.
Tavos whirled around, still cuffed, and fixed Stacey with a look both impressed and bemused. He was accustomed to thinking fast to make a getaway, but he could not have taken down these two lawmen better himself. "Take my bag and let us go!" he called to her.
Stacey grabbed his bag from the terrace floor and the two of them stepped over the fallen lawmen, the one with the oil in his face still rubbing at his eyes. Stacey had just enough presence of mind to snatch her body suit from the chaise before the two of them dashed into her suite and locked the door behind them. As soon as they were inside, Tavos told her, "In my bag there is a weapon. You must use it to blast these cuffs from me. And hurry, they are about to recover."
As he told her, reached into his bag and pulled out his pistol. She eyed the weapon worriedly. "Are you sure this won't hurt you?"
"I keep it set to stun at all times. I do not wish to be a murderer as well as a deserter." He turned his back to her and presented her with his cuffed wrists. "Quickly now. Aim as well as you did when you threw the disk; you can do it."
Breaking into a sweat, her face etched with fear, Stacey aimed the pistol and saw a point of red light appear from its sights on the surface of the electro-cuffs. Wetting her lips and steadying her hands, she squeezed the trigger. A popping sound accompanied a pulse of light from the pistol, and in a second the cuffs flew, sparking, into pieces. Tavos spun back to face her and held up his freed hands. "Get your clothing and some shoes; we must run," he said.
Quickly, fighting back her growing panic, Stacey gave Tavos the pistol, took her body suit from the floor and a pair of shoes from near the bed, and Tavos had his bag in hand once more. They were out of the room just as the men on the terrace outside came back up on their feet.
The two fleeing youths—a Sarmian lad in a thong, carrying a pistol and his supply bag; and a human girl in a sheet—turned every head they passed on their way down the hotel corridor and into the lift. Inside the lift, Stacey hurriedly pulled on her body suit, pointing out to Tavos, "We didn't even have a chance to get your clothes."
"At the moment, that worries me the least," said Tavos. "I have resigned myself to being on the wrong side of the law. I did not wish to bring another to the wrong side with me. I am sorry for what my plight has done to you, Stacey."
"You didn't tell me to attack two cops. I did that myself." After a pause laden with dread, she added, "I threw hot oil on that patrolman. Oh no, I actually did that. I wasn't thinking. I must have hurt him."
Tavos said, "The oil that you splashed on him was no warmer than what I rubbed onto you for the massage. He was not hurt; it gummed up his eyes more than anything."
"But still, my parents are officers of the court and I attacked two cops!"
"And now it may have marked your life. You did this for me. Whatever befalls me, I shall regret what helping me has done to you."
"What do we do now?" she asked.
"Do you have a vehicle here?"
"Yes. I rented a skimmer."
"Then we must take it from here and use it to put some distance between us and this place, and then abandon it."
"Abandon it?"
"Yes. The authorities will take your name from the hotel's manifest and cross-check it with all vehicle registrations in Nirvana. They will trace us that way. We cannot keep the vehicle. We must take it somewhere and run."
Stacey sighed at the enormity of what she was doing as it finally caught up with her. In mere minutes she had gone from debutante to fugitive.
_______________
Reaching the ground floor of the hotel, they crept into the backstage area of the entertainment complex and into the wardrobe room. Here, Tavos ransacked the compartments of men's costumes until he found an acrobat's pants, a pair of boots, and a tank top similar to what he had worn for the appointment, and quickly put them on. Stacey, holding the pistol again until he took it from her, could not help but feel a little sorry to see him dressed once more, in spite of their dilemma.
"What now?" she whispered.
He whispered back, "In my bag is my access to the money that I have earned since I have been here. We will get to a spaceport somehow and I shall bribe someone to look the other way when I board the first ship off Mars."
"And you won't even know where you're going 'til you take off."
"That is my life, Stacey," he said with a tinge of sadness. "On Sarma I would have been compelled to be a warrior. Battle, combat, and conquest are our reputation on a dozen planets and more. Across known space, when beings think of war, they think of Sarma. And yet, not all of us desire such a life, in which we must do battle and face taking lives or perishing ourselves. I looked ahead at that life, at what it would do to me, at what it would cost my very soul, and what I would become. Better to choose this life, I decided, than spill blood or have my blood spilled in a life that others would have me live."
Stacey touched his beautiful, muscular arm. Understanding him, her heart broke for him. She wanted to cry. "I'm so sorry, Tavos. That's a beautiful name—Tavos."
"I did not wish it to be the name of a killer, or a casualty," he said. He gazed deeply and meaningfully into her eyes. "I wanted very much to shadaal you as Rovan. I still wish that I could as Tavos." He half-leaned and half-lunged for her, seizing her lips with his. In a moment of amazement and suddenly unfettered desire, Stacey found herself locked in her first kiss. As the lawmen had bound him with their cuffs, she clasped him with her arms, drawing all the passion from that one incredible moment. It was another regret for both of them when they slowly pulled apart, lingering another moment yet in each other's arms.
"Is it not ironic," Tavos asked at last, "that in Earth's myths Mars was a god of war?"
"I'll bet your people could have taught him a thing or two," Stacey said.
Tavos pulled back, keeping his eyes gently on the human girl. There were so many things he had wanted to teach her about what a man does to a woman he desires, and has her do to him, when he takes her to bed. He envied the one who would show her those things. Softly, he said, "We must go."
_______________
Quietly, carefully, they stole out of the entertainment complex, letting their attire identify them to passersby as entertainers who had been working on one of this evening's shows. Tavos tucked his pistol into the back of his stolen gymnast’s pants. They avoided eye contact with anyone and everyone. Stacey felt a clammy, prickly heat on the nape of her neck and wished she had thought to grab a pair of her sunglasses on their way out of her suite, or that they could get a couple of pairs in the hotel lobby now. The need for escape was their only priority at the moment, and as it occurred to her that her rented skimmer would respond only to her thumbprint, she would now have to be a fugitive's moll, driving the getaway car as if this were some 20th Century Earth melodrama. Her parents were going to disown her for this, she just knew it.
Nevertheless, the two of them soon stepped out from the hotel proper into the enclosed guest hangar with its rows of skimmer vehicles, ranging from models just big enough for one pilot to long floaters that could take a pilot and a dozen riders. Tavos took Stacey's hand in his and said, "Lead the way."
They took a few steps on the pavement and Stacey realized, "Oh, Tavos, I should have gotten my linker out of my suite. It can pick out my skimmer from where I parked it. I can't remember."
Tavos stopped both of them in their tracks, fixed his eyes earnestly on hers, and said, "Please, Stacey, you must try."
The clamminess on the nape of her neck now broke out all over her skin. With a dire tremble she said, "A-all right." They s
tarted forward again and Stacey let her mind roll back to yesterday, when she’d checked in. All she needed was to remember the number of the queue and the assigned letter of the dock, and they could just climb in and take off. With a deep breath and a squeeze of Tavos's hand, she called up the combination and led him off among the queues. They walked briskly and as calmly as they could. It was an effort not to break into a run and invite the attention of anyone else who might be arriving or leaving, but in minutes they were at the side of Stacey's rented skimmer. Tavos helped her into the pilot's seat and then climbed into the passenger's seat. Her thumbprint in the ignition engaged the drive and she pulled the skimmer up and off the dock, and out of the space. Peeling out, they floated smoothly over the paving between the queues and were off.
At once they came to the vehicle pathways on the hotel grounds. Sunset was on the way, the Martian sky outside the dome of Nirvana growing dim. The time of day made no difference in Nirvana Planitia; the place was always lit up. Gliding the skimmer along the pathways, Stacey felt a forlorn wish that Nirvana were not quite so gaudy and ostentatious. She would feel better about trying to be inconspicuous in a place where everything around her wasn’t as conspicuous as it could be. She got the craft right to the end of the main pathway, when all at once their surroundings were as filled with sound as with light.
The noise of the blaring, wailing sirens drowned Stacey's shocked and panicked outcry as she lurched the skimmer to a halt, floating over the ground just at the boundary of the hotel property. She and Tavos together looked up and around to find their surroundings coming alive with inbound police craft, their lights flashing, their sirens at full blast. One patrol skimmer dropped in front of them, two more swung in from either side. They felt their own craft lurch and Stacey found the controls suddenly inoperative. The Martian Colony troopers had engaged magnetic locks onto Stacey's craft, pinning it in place.
Arranged Marriage To The Rogue (Victorian Romance) Page 15