Searching for the Kingdom Key

by TylerRose.

  The minute she was nude, he was behind her with his arms around her and her tits in his hands.

  “So let me see if I got this straight. A guy drugs you. Kidnaps you. Rapes and sodomizes you repeatedly. He punches you down both sides some several hundred times, and the first thing you do is seek out a lover to fuck you some more?”

  She snerked a laugh. “Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But seriously, Thom, he fucked vigorously, but he’s really not that good at it. His dick isn’t as big as he thinks it is either.”

  “And the punching?” he asked with more than a little concern.

  She was being too casual about this and he was worried it was an unexpected side effect of her sexual evolution. This was far too extreme, even for her.

  “It’s just another form of impact play. I didn’t like it; but protesting got me more and harder, so I stopped protesting and took it. I submitted and I lived through it. My life was never in jeopardy. He wanted me to live so he could let me go and do it all again another time. I hated it and I hate him, but I wasn’t afraid I would die.”

  “You are afraid of when next he comes for you?” he asked.

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I’m not going to hide out from him. I have a life to live and I like the work I do. Are you going to fuck me or what?”

  He laughed. “I should punish you for that.”

  “I’m not yours to punish. Are we going to the opera or not?”

  They never made it out of the room. Before he let her sleep, she had a new set of bruises coving her ass from one side to the other and top to bottom. For the first time he really wanted to take her in hand. All the discussions previously, he’d been the one to put it off. Now he was questioning those decisions.

  “Stay with me,” he said, holding her close in the morning. “Don’t go back. You don’t have to do any of that work. Marry me and we can travel the world and you can learn whatever you want to learn about any place you want to go. And I’ll only beat you if you ask me very nicely for it.”

  She smiled and chuckled softly and turned over to look out the window to the bright morning sky. He moved in close behind, a hand sliding around her hip and down to—.

  “Not right now. Leave me be,” she said.

  He paused, caught off-guard. She’d not refused him in that manner before. He kissed her shoulder and left the bed. If she needed to be more in control of what was done to her, he would oblige. Perhaps the hell she’d experienced had actually put the brakes on her sexual roar and put a note of caution into her brain.

  “I’ll be back shortly with breakfast for you,” he said once dressed.

  Down to the hotel office, he signed the papers to finalize his ownership and went to the restaurant to eat breakfast.

  [We need to talk] he sent out to the Congressional station.

  Earnol showed up next to the table within a few minutes. Looking around at the surroundings, he sat in the second chair of the smallish table.

  “You allowed that to happen to her, didn’t you?” he accused. “Did you tell the asshole where to find her?”

  Earnol said nothing, which was enough. If he hadn’t done it, he would have said so.

  “Unless you want a war between the two of us, you will not ever do that again.”

  “We are already at war, Odin. We have been since the start of this ill-fated business nearly six thousand years ago. You just didn’t know it because you were brought in to replace Hades as the Apogee when he screwed up. I’ve let the Earth group do my dirty work and you’ve let me do yours. You wanted her to hate me so she would trust, and rather be with, you. Well, she hates me well enough all right, but she didn’t go running back to you until people on my end badgered her. I have tried twice to rid myself of her. She’s a resilient little cunt. My alternate goal is achieved nonetheless. Three of the most important points of her potential pentagon are dead. She cannot hope to succeed with half-assed, unprepared and hastily tutored replacements. Fighting with me over it is irrelevant. My objective is obtained. Try as you like with her. She cannot succeed now.”

  The chair was empty and Odin was left to fume. The manipulative bastard was right. With Hades and Parin dead and Jerome in his current state of uncooperative fury, they couldn’t take her through her evolutionary steps. She would burn out of control because Tiberius had the power source needed. He was too angry for anyone to get near, was still in fight mode.

  Odin finished his plate and compiled another for her. She ate her breakfast naked in his bed while he sat on the mattress near her feet.

  “I’m not going to pretend I don’t worry, Love. I worry a great deal about you. I don’t like that you have enemies who would do this to you.”

  “I don’t think of him as an enemy. Just an obsessed asshole,” she said. “It’s not something I need to continually talk about. Can we not? Please? Or I won’t want to be here either. I came to you to not talk about it.”

  “Okay. No more talking about it. Get dressed when you’re done and we’ll walk through the neighborhoods and window shop.”

  “There is something I want from you.”

  “What? Name it.”

  “Find Jerome Black for me.”

  “What for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I just want to know where he is. I might need to visit him.”

  “Okay,” he said, reining in a huge grin.

  Being drawn to Tiberius was a positive sign. If she still felt his pull, even though he was so angry and wrapped up in himself, then there was hope to succeed. He could see that Earnol was going to underestimate her at every turn.

  “I’ll get my people on it while you dress. Meet me downstairs in the lobby.”

  One phone call was all he needed to make, to his Executive Assistant.

  “Get me the exact location for Jerome Black, and correct directions to where he is staying.”

  “You want coordinates for the front gate in case the roads are washed? It is Mexico and he’s pretty far into the countryside.”

  “That’s why you get the big bonuses,” he said.

  Narrow streets crammed with carts of t-shirts, masks, too many people, and store after store with huge plate glass windows. They made it to the opera that night, but she was too quickly bored. She was withdrawing and he saw it.

  “Would you rather fly somewhere else?” he asked during the intermission. “Rome? Egypt?”

  “Actually, I should get back to my work. I have to transcribe two journals I wrote in Rom to prevent people from reading them. I have to make my report.”

  “You want to leave me to go write a report?” he laughed. “You didn’t bring them with you?”

  No, but she could bring them to herself. Tomorrow. Sit somewhere sunny and do it rather than on a closed up station.

  “You know I don’t sit still for long, Thom. Don’t mind me.”

  “No, I absolutely will mind you, Tyler. Sometimes you need minding.”

  They left to walk the streets for a while rather than go back to watch the rest of the opera.

  In the morning, he told her to bring whatever work she had. After breakfast in the hotel dining room, they went to the canal to get a gondola to take them to the sea side. There, he rented a yacht for the day and told the pilot to take them around the islands of the lagoon as pleased himself.

  Sailing over the water, the open expanse brought a particular quiet she enjoyed despite the noise of the water and the boat. She enjoyed the shade of the back deck while dictating her journal into her vidpad. During a break, he picked up the vidpad to have a look. She let him without a word.

  “Huh. Interesting,” he said of the machine.

  At noon, Thomas told the yacht pilot to pull up to a good restaurant so food could be brought on board, and paid for meals for the crew as well. She ate almost all of her meal before continuing her dictation, moving on to the second book in about half an hour. By the time they returned to the dock, she’d finished both books.

  “F
eel better now you’ve gotten something accomplished?” he asked as they walked through a street to a restaurant for supper.

  “Much better, thank you. Tomorrow I’ll put together my report. Why are you willing to spend that kind of money on a boat to drive aimlessly around the lagoon?”

  “Because I have far more money than I know what to do with and I enjoy spending it on you. I like to go on a boat and it kept you here another day,” he said with a kiss to her cheek. “I’ll do it again tomorrow, except that I’m going to eat you for lunch.”

  A promise he made good on. She finished the report in record time, only needing to copy sentences from her journal document into the final report. When she put it away into her messenger bag, he took her inside to the stateroom.

  “One more day?” he asked when they were on the way back to the dock. “One more day to have you all to myself without your mind being on your work?”

  One more day, spent on one of the little islands that didn’t get so many tourists. A green island that had some plant life that lived in the ground instead of in pots.

  “Do I get an answer to my proposal?” he asked in the gondola back to the hotel. “Or should I leave it an open-ended invitation?”

  “Open-ended. Maybe someday. I’m not even nineteen yet. I’m not going to marry anyone for years. Yours is the second proposal I’ve received in the last two or three weeks.”

  “Is the other as rich as I am?”

  “You are equals in many ways,” she told him.

  No more words as they went into the hotel and up the elevator.

  “I’m going to go,” she said in the room.

  “So sudden? Have dinner with me. One more night. Go in the morning.”

  “One more dinner. One more night. One more breakfast. One more gondola ride. One more lunch,” she threw back at him, and gave a hard, dissatisfied sigh. “One more can keep me just as imprisoned, Thomas. Enough already. No more one more. I love you. I’m not going to love you more with one more of anything. It’s time for me to go.”

  He struggled to accept it graciously. He couldn’t take her In Hand this time around. She was too closed off. He had to let her go again.

  “All right. You’re right. You’re very good at lingering.”

  She hadn’t unpacked her suitcase; but since everything came from his home anyway, she didn’t need to take it. She took out the clothes she’d been wearing on her arrival, put them into her messenger bag. That was it.

  A hug and a kiss goodbye, she teleported to the orbiting arrival ship outside the station. A shuttle took her and two other people into the runway tube, dropping them off in a shuttle bay. She tried not to have a complete panic when the lights shut down in favor of internal running lights.

  At the lift, she brought her keycard to her hands. It had been with her belongings in her room. Of course, using it would alert Julian that she was on the station again. He met her at her door, opening it for her after a hug and a kiss.

  “Are you well?” he asked with the door closed for privacy.

  “I’m fine and I don’t want to talk about any of it,” she said, reaching into her messenger bag.

  Clothes put onto the table, she took out the vidpad. “How do I send my report on K’Tran to you?”

  He took his own vidpad out of his robe pocket and turned it on. “Go to the main menu. Touch transmit. Then the file. Then my designation. 585426.”

  “Two? Two is the letter A. N is six. They use the Earth, USA, keypad code for alphabet?” she questioned.

  “It was the Sistarian keypad alphabet code for many tens of thousands of years before it was used on Earth.”

  “Ah. Sending. Are a lot of things on Earth actually Sistarian in origin?”

  “Yes. Remember, an early scout team went to Earth some three thousand or so years ago. Are you hungry? We can have lunch and I’ll look it over. That way you can answer any questions or clarify anything without me having to bother you through the day.”

  She hadn’t eaten, realized she was hungry. “Okay, but let’s eat here. I’ve had enough of exotic restaurant atmosphere for this week.”

  She ordered a simple egg salad sandwich with a side of extra crispy bacon and a dish of oranges from Deek’Trai IV that she’d liked while on Crecorday. She enjoyed the intense orange flavor. Julian ate while reading the report, asking no questions until he was done.

  “Was Mankell a hot fuck?”

  “You really have no filter, do you?” she asked. “Nowhere do I say we had sex.”

  “I’m too old to have a filter. He was leading the way into your bedroom and encountered Osan first. He would not lead the way in unless you’d already been intimate. That’s how K’Tran are. He’d have stepped aside to let you go in first, and allowed himself to be invited.”

  She snorted a laugh, shaking her head.

  “So tell-tell,” he prompted.

  “Is there anything I left out of the report?” she ignored.

  “No. It’s one of the most complete reports I’ve seen since I’ve been doing this job. Good work.”

  “Thank you. I was always good at writing reports in school. What’s my next assignment? One that can be teleported to and from because I’m not going to be on a space ship again for a very long time.”

  “I don’t blame you. I have a job no one likes, if you’d be willing. Courier position. It’s all teleportation.”

  “Why does no one like it?” she asked.

  “Because it’s a two-person team and you never get to visit around the places you go to because you’re off to your next pick up as soon as you make a delivery. You’re always on the go. Perfect for a gypsy girl,” he grinned.

  “Who is the other person?”

  “Alen, from Earth. He’s been doing it solo for three weeks, since the last partner quit.”

  “If he’s doing it solo, why can’t he continue to do it solo?” she questioned.

  “It’s a matter of accountability. Two-person team is harder to slip away and do something unauthorized.”

  “Paranoid planets?”

  “And then some. Sometimes you’re carrying documents regarding a truce or sensitive trade agreement,” he told her. “If you’ll do that for a couple weeks, I’ll maybe have another application to investigate. The next one up isn’t quite ready for a visit.”

  “Why? Are they still trying to get electricity to all the people?” she joked.

  “You’re not that far off. They had a huge grid failure a few days ago and are rebuilding it. Their assessment is delayed until they are ready.”

  “I wonder what other things they’re taking the opportunity to fix. Who is this?”

  “A planet called Beknim. It’s a little ways from Ercoli, which is their sponsor planet. There, I’ve sent you the application and links to their database entry. You can read it while you’re waiting in various offices to pick up or deliver a package.”

  “Okay, I’ll do the courier thing until they are ready,” she agreed.

  After he left, she transferred her new cds to her music player without the lead vocals. Then she stood with the cds themselves, with the words in hand, and learned to sing them all. She sang for two hours, took a break to rest and toke another bowl, sang for another two hours. By the time she was done, she could sing the entire Benatar album. She looked forward to singing them with Piledriver, when she was able to go back in time and fix it all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Each member planet had a Congressional Embassy on it. Couriers could teleport from one to the next as needed, authorized to use the booster bracelet so long as they were both present. Alen’s had been modified while he worked solo. He taught her how to set their arrival location and activate it.

  Tyler quickly found out half the job was waiting to be received by some diplomat or another, as the things had to be signed for by a specific person. Alen tried to keep her from blowing up, until the day when they were kept waiting while a Congressman was locked in his office fucking his person
al whore.

  Tyler opened the lock psionically and stomped in while he was thrusting away on his desk.

  “I am not going to wait for you to finish fuckin’,” she spat. “Sign this right fucking now or I will tell the entire Congress why I had to wait for an hour before delivering this treaty agreement.”

  “You would not.”

  “The fuck I wouldn’t.”

  She held up her vidpad for his signature. He signed. She dropped the pouch onto the whore’s tits where she lay on the desk.

  “In future, do not keep the couriers waiting. Some of us in the Congress have work to do.”

  She left the door open for anyone else in the office to see where he was and what he was doing.

  “Let’s go.”

  Alen was half a second behind, hurrying to keep up.

  “You did not just do that.”

  “You better fucking believe it. What’s next?” she asked, heading for the transport room.

  “I’m going to like working with you. Sistair. We have to pick up a something from the Junior Congressman and take it to the Senior Congressman who is in negotiations on Thuliot.”

  A fast pickup because the package was waiting in the transport room. Holding it, Tyler felt all the deception contained inside.

  “Why can’t they just take one of their own runners and send them?” she asked. “We’re only going from one teleport room to another. Anyone can do that.”

  “Because the Congress wants all packages routed through their official channels. Cuts down on unauthorized packages being sent secretly. Plus, while every embassy has one of these rooms, almost none of them have any teleport machinery. The Congress prefers to keep them to a minimum. The minute you report a bracelet missing, they send out a pulse that makes it return to its little box on the station.”

  “Huh. Interesting.”

  They were shown into the meeting room for the Senior Congressman to sign.

  “Here’s your pack of lies that you’re going to use to bullshit and bully this planet into doing what you want,” she said, handing over the package. She held up the computer memory cube. “You better make sure they don’t get their hands on this.”