by Cathryn Cade
“Harder,” she pleaded. She pressed her fingers over his as he teased her with a butterfly-light touch on her clitoris. “Oh, please, Daron. Have me…harder.”
“Oh, I’m having you, little flower. And I will again. If you ask me very nicely, perhaps where others can watch how lovely you are as you take me deep inside you.”
He felt her shock, her secret delight at this notion jolt through him and then groaned as her tight little pussy began to squeeze him with her orgasm. Ah, she was his, his, his!
He thrust one last time and let his orgasm overtake him, jetting deep within her heat.
She relaxed with a sigh as he withdrew. He felt her little curl of embarrassment at having been so excited once again by the thought of voyeurism and smiled to himself as he dropped a kiss to her silky head. Such an innocent. And so right, cradled in his arms, damp from their loving.
“Sleep, flower.”
Navos himself needed very little sleep. He was startled to wake after a few more hours and find himself holding a sleeping woman. She was actually draped over the top of him. After biting back his natural caustic reaction to such an imposition, he found himself surprisingly content with the situation. She was lissome and light, a living blanket of lovely female.
She lay with her head tucked in the curve of his neck, her soft breath against his throat. Her arm was looped over his shoulder, her legs entangled with his own.
His long arms lay naturally about her, one of his hands cupping the silky curve of her ass, the other absently stroking her back. When had he ever held another being thus, sleeping in his arms with such complete and utter trust?
Not his onetime mistress, certainly, he thought with a bitter twist of his mouth. He was not surprised to recall, looking back, the bitch had remained cool and watchful even as he lost himself in her body.
And not the courtesans he’d frequented for the last several years. They had all been lovely, enticing women, but delicately reticent in their attentions, even when he’d requested two at a time. They gave only as much as a client wished, careful not to encroach.
With one notable exception—his eyes gleamed in the darkness as he recalled a certain young half-Indigon, half-Aquarian woman who had taken the place of one of his chosen courtesans, offering herself unreservedly in exchange for a favor. That had been a strange, haunting interlude. He’d shown her just how to fulfill a male’s deepest fantasies and then said goodbye forever. He hoped the man for whom she’d been preparing herself had been able to perceive his good fortune.
No courtesan would have thrown themselves into his arms as Nelah had when he offered to tutor her. He’d been startled by her joy—for that was what it had been. He was sure there was no calculation in her response to him.
Only desire and…infatuation, he told himself. She was not in love with him. This was simply an affair and when it was over, he would find a way to release her without hurting her. He would never wish to hurt her. Indeed, he wished he could protect her from the disappointments that would inevitably occur as she went through life.
With another man at her side. Another man enjoying her rapt attention…the way her smile lit up her lovely eyes so she was nearly incandescent…the way she surrendered so completely, enjoying that part of the sexual union as much as the physical pleasure. Another man would revel in being allowed into her psyche. Even, perhaps, in being used for a pillow.
And he would go back to visiting courtesans, who would never dream of falling asleep on top of a man. Of trusting him to teach them new ways of enjoying their blooming sensuality, as she did.
He recoiled at the sudden bitter bleakness of these thoughts.
Or, perhaps…just perhaps, she really did love him. She certainly believed so. He’d divined it quite clearly from his forays into her psyche.
And perhaps he felt something for her that would outlast this voyage. He certainly craved her sexually. Little did she know, he thought wryly, she needed no power to summon him. All she had to do was exist. He’d wanted her the first moment he saw her. Since then, he seemed to spend every moment either reliving their last sexual union, or craving the next.
He was jealous at the thought of another man enjoying her smiles and her conversation. He could even picture her in the home he’d had built of white Indigon stone on the hillside above the university. Could picture them conversing over a glass of blue wine, or playing at balloits on the lawn, or discussing the latest research at the university. He could definitely picture her in his huge bed, learning new ways to please him and be pleasured.
He closed his eyes and savored the feel of her in his arms for a few more moments. When this was over and they caught once and for all the villains menacing the Orion, he would invite her to go away with him. She would like that.
Moving her to the side, gently, for he hoped she would sleep much longer, he sat up and slid out of bed. He had important work to do. Moon-dreams wouldn’t keep the Orion safe, or clear his good name.
He looked down at her sleeping face one last time and tucked the coverlet around her bare shoulder. She always seemed to find a way to lose some of the bedcovers.
After a quick shower-dry, he went directly to the command deck. Qwerx and Halix were there, their dark heads together over a holo-vid display. Both round faces were grave.
“You have new information?” he asked, as he paused to punch a button on the gleaming machine on a side counter. It hummed busily, snorted and then produced a large cerametal cup, emanating steam with the unique fragrance of Pangaean coffee.
Qwerx nodded. “Yes. We have been following connections between the Mazarin Intel Clinic and your Indigon University. We have found one. A professor.”
“Really.” Navos took a drink of the hot coffee, barely tasting it. “What is his—or her—name?”
“Cyan. Loftan Cyan.”
Navos’s mug shook in his hand. Rage seared through him, colder than the dry ice.
“That slime,” he bit out. “I should have known.”
“You are not surprised,” Qwerx murmured.
“No. He has long been a rival; for funding, for research quarters.”
“He’s an enemy?”
“It appears so,” Navos said coldly. “What is his involvement with the Mazarin woman?”
Halix and Qwerx exchanged a quick look. “According to sources at the university, they’re lovers.”
“Well, there you have the source of the leaked research.” Navos took another drink of coffee. It burned a trail down to his belly, where it failed to heat the ice in his gut.
Because he’d just remembered something else. He sat abruptly in his chair, the cup landing askew on the table before him. It rocked violently before he stilled it automatically, without looking.
Instead of the command deck, he saw Nelah’s face as she admitted reluctantly, “He’s my stepfather.”
Nelah woke slowly, feeling better than she had in days. She smiled to herself as she stretched luxuriously under the smooth coverlet. Her body still hummed with pleasure and her mind was once again free of the terrible rawness caused by her intense labors on the passenger rosters. Daron had done that. He’d used his powers to soothe her, even as he pleasured her.
Opening her eyes, she looked around his stateroom. It was quietly luxurious, with the finest fabrics and a few objects d’art, including a very fine piece of Serpentian fire glass in a recess.
She rose and padded barefoot across the room to admire it, caressing the sleek sculpture with her fingertips. It was a deep, clear blue, with a center so dark it was almost black. The shade of his eyes when he was aroused, she thought with a shiver of pleasure.
She used his shower-dry and then went back to her own room to change her clothing, humming to herself. Realizing she was starving, she rode the elevator down to the dining hall. She’d just finished a delicious breakfast and settled back with her coffee to watch her fellow passengers, when Navos’s interns strolled into the room.
One of them saw her and n
udged the other. Smiling, they came to sit with her.
“How are you enjoying your internship?” Nelah asked politely.
They preened themselves visibly, obviously proud of working with Navos. Nelah eyed them, smiling behind her coffee cup, until one of them, Chad, spoke.
“We’ve finished a very important task,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Hugh.
“Oh, really? What?”
After a quick look around, he leaned closer. “We have examined the entire roster of passengers on the ship.”
“Looking for behavioral anomalies, you understand,” finished Chad, with a conspiratorial smile.
Nelah felt as if she’d been punched. Her empty mug landed on her plate with a little crash. She barely noticed. All her work, all the pain and exhaustion, all for…for nothing!
She hadn’t been doing real work at all. She’d been set a make-work task, following the two male interns like a puppy chasing after the hounds.
At the moment, she would have cheerfully done harm to Daron Navos and his two precious interns. How could he treat her with such disdain?
She wanted to weep, she wanted to scream, she wanted to hit something.
Flying out of her chair without a word to the two startled Indigons, she hurried out of the dining hall. She needed to vent the rage boiling inside her.
She hurried to the gym, changed into the singlet the attendant handed her and strode over to a sparring robot. She set the speed to high. With a growl of ferociousness that clearly startled another passenger working out nearby, she attacked.
Her breakfast sat like lead in her stomach. Finally, perspiring and nauseous, she had to stop.
She staggered into the locker room and into a cool shower-dry. The water streaming down around her unleashed the hurt that had been lying in wait behind her anger. Leaning her head against the cerametal, she let the hot tears fall.
A long time later she emerged. She gazed at her flushed reflection in the mirrors. She wanted to be a million miles away from this ship and from Navos. She wanted to go home.
But, first, she was going to tell Daron Navos exactly what she thought of him. She sent intuitive power zinging through the ship.
There he was, on the command deck. Realizing just in time he was engaged in an important discussion, she stopped before she confronted him psychically.
Jealously, she found herself searching for the two interns. What important task did he have them working on now? If he meant to hand it to her for a repeat, she would tell him where to shove it.
They were relaxing in the spa, having massages. The pampered twits.
If she hadn’t been so angry, she would never have done it. An Indigon did not probe another Indigon. But, almost without realizing it, she was inside the mind of one of them. Hugh was nearly asleep, relaxed by the strong hands of the masseuse. He was contentedly reliving losing his virginity in the sexual ménage he and the other, Chad, had enjoyed with a Serpentian guard.
She withdrew with a grimace and thrust into his friend’s mind. It was, she discovered, in a vastly different frame than Hugh’s. Chad woke suddenly when she probed his mind and she felt his shock at the intrusion. Her irritation still intense, Nelah gave him the empathic equivalent of a thump on the head and began to withdraw.
Instead, she found herself frozen in shock. Some other kind of presence lurked here. Her hands clutched on the edge of the desk for support in the physical realm, Nelah forced herself to go on. It was the psychic equivalent of forcing herself to walk farther into a dark, frightening place.
Before she could flee, she forced herself to stay calm, to search out impressions of each lobe of his brain. And there, next to the cerebral cortex, she found it. A thing, forged of tissue and cells, but not his own. It nestled secretively, waiting. And as she recoiled in horror, it pulsed with life.
Nelah screamed.
Chapter Seventeen
Navos sat at the command console when brilliant red lights began to flash and an alarm cut sharply through the quiet. He sprang to his feet and whirled to stare at the always-ready holo-vid image of the ship.
A bright light pulsed—the auto-navigation deck, just across the passageway.
No! It couldn’t be—not again.
“Guards in the forward port quadrant, report to the auto-navigation deck,” said a computerized voice. “Crew commanders, to the command deck.”
Craig shot into the deck, Slyde and Sirena at his heels.
“Holo-vid, magnify auto-nav!” Craig ordered, his eyes riveted to the space above the command console.
Navos stared, unable to believe his eyes, as the holo-vid tilted and flexed to magnify the auto-nav. Chad stood before the auto-nav console.
“That’s one of your boys. How the hell did he get in there?” demanded Craig.
“And more importantly, what is he doing there?” Sirena asked.
Navos shook his head. “I…don’t understand this.” The boy couldn’t have hidden any evil intentions from him. It wasn’t possible.
“He’s locked the doors,” Slyde reported grimly. “I can’t override it from here.”
“Get that little slimeball out of my auto-nav,” snarled a deep voice, “or I’ll break open the doors and rip his throat out!” It was Panthar, the big Tyger navigator, filling the doorway with murder in his golden eyes.
“No,” Craig rapped. “By the time we force our way in there, he could do a lot of damage. We might not survive another session without it.”
“You’d better believe it,” Panthar answered. “Even I can’t get us past Cirrius and her moons. All their gravitational pulls are programmed into that system.”
“Gas him,” Slyde said. “He’ll drop in a moment and we can go in with masks.”
“Hell,” Craig swore. “Look—he’s putting one on right now. Somehow he knew about the gas. How does he know all this?”
“You can’t come in here!” a Serpentian guard barked at the open hatch.
“But I must speak to Commander Navos!” It was Nelah, pale and distraught.
“Stay back.” The guard gave her a push.
“Commander Navos!” she called. “Daron! You must listen to me! It’s Chad. He—”
“We know about him,” Navos snapped. He waved impatiently at the guard. “Release her.”
He turned back to the others. “I’ll take care of him. It’s the only way.”
Craig nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”
Navos strode out of the command deck, the others following. Serpentian guards stood at the ready outside the auto-nav. Inside, limned against the gleaming lights and blinking signals, Chad stood over the console, already reaching out to one of the controls.
“No!” snarled Panthar. “Not the override! Get him before he sends us all hurtling to perdition.”
“Quiet!” Navos’s cold voice sliced like a knife through those around him. “I cannot work if anyone speaks.”
He braced his hands on the edge of the hatch and closed his eyes. He sent a current of psychic power surging into the auto-nav. He was sent reeling back by a wave of malevolent power. It was not the boy’s.
Snapping back to his own mind, he stared into the auto-nav, where Chad was touching first one, then another control, as if trying to decide which to use. He was nodding, then shaking his head as if someone were giving him orders.
Someone powerful. Someone very angry. Someone who had to be on the ship.
There was only one being on the ship besides himself capable of this. An icy sickness rose up in him. Mazarin had done the implant. Mazarin and Cyan were involved. Cyan had sent Nelah to the Orion. She was talented enough, and the temptation of wielding great power had been the ruin of more than one Indigon.
He whirled. Yes, she was there, at the fringes of the small crowd. Watching the boy intently.
“You,” he accused. Her lovely eyes widened as they met his. “Cyan talked you into this, didn’t he? Or coerced you,” he guessed as she shook her head, hurt and horro
r written on her face. “But never mind that. How are you doing it? Damn you, how?”
Blindsided by the shock of having the man she loved, admired, turn on her, Nelah could feel her mouth working, but nothing would come out of her throat. Like a small flutter-moth she was pinioned by his icy gaze.
She noticed with ridiculous detail how the two guard captains moved to place themselves on either side of her. Perhaps they thought she was capable of doing bodily harm. Or was it so she could not escape? As if there were anywhere she could go. She swallowed a hysterical giggle.
With a greater effort of will than she’d ever summoned, she forced herself to speak. She supposed she should thank Navos for that—she’d learned more about self-control from him than anyone she’d ever met—as well as more about losing it.
“He has—an implant,” she managed. “It is made of biotic materials.”
“What? How did you discover this?”
“I—I was angry.” Unable to bear the contempt in his gaze, she spoke to the emblem on his chest. “I intuited him. At once, I sensed there was another presence. I don’t think he was aware of it. But it was awake, somehow. It sensed me.” She shuddered at the memory.
She dragged her gaze up to his. “If you wish, I will remove myself to a sealed portion of the ship. Or—or you may have me incapacitated. But I would like to stay and help.”
“Think you could hurry it up back there?” Panthar snarled. “He’s got his paws on my manual drive.”
Without warning, Navos sent his power slamming into her mind. Nelah reeled back against the wall behind her. Every instinct screamed to defend herself from this sudden invasion. But she left herself defenseless, letting him blast through every corner of her mind. It burned, but the pain was more than psychic, it was her heart shattering.
This was no beguiling lover, but a cold, impersonal Navos, intent only on discovering whether she spoke the truth. Whether she was a calculating manipulator, or merely a foolish blunderer who had awakened a sleeping viper.