His lips moved off hers to kiss the line of her jaw, the nape of her neck, the curve of her collarbone, the swell of her upper breast. Jewel tried to keep up her exploration as well, but the tremors of pleasure Erik generated inside her kept causing her to stutter in her progress.
He rubbed his cheek against the side of her breast. He had just a hint of the shadow of a beard and the slight roughness against her smooth flesh was excruciatingly pleasurable. He found her ribs with his lips and wetly kissed them while his hand opened the front of her uniform trousers so that his fingers could slip inside and trace the contours of her sex through her panties.
Jewel closed her eyes and let Erik make love to her, teasing her with his fingers and his lips as he gently worked his way down her body. This moment was worth abandoning her parents’ fortune. This moment was worth taking any risk to preserve what she’d found here with Erik on the Fringe.
He slid her pants and panties down past her thighs, over her knees and finally, after he removed her shoes, off to lie on the floor. Then he patiently worked his way back up her body—kissing and licking the curve of her ankle, the underside of her calf, the soft flesh between her thighs, the flushed heat of her swollen labia…
“I love you, Jewel,” Erik whispered. His hot breath tickled her pussy and she smiled as she squirmed before him.
“I know you do,” she whispered back.
“You can trust me,” he told her just before his tongue flicked out and touched the moist seam between her thighs.
She gave herself to the pleasure and groaned.
“Whatever it is,” Erik assured her. “Whatever you think you’ve done, whoever you think might come after you—I’ll still be right here, sharing my love.”
He kissed her deep and long, as if her lower lips were her upper mouth. Jewel wasn’t certain how to respond at first, but then the pleasure took over and she squirmed joyfully beneath her lover’s touch. He came up for a short breath before settling back down on her lips again, cleaning her with his tongue before delving back inside of her body. His strong hands stretched her thighs apart, which only added to Jewel’s excitement.
Her hips began to gyrate up and down as well as left and right, not violently, not forcefully, but slow and sensuously beneath her lover’s touch. She found her nipple and squeezed it tenderly. She found Erik’s hand on her thigh and covered it with her own. She never remembered feeling a greater sense of peace and happiness then she did right then. For the first time in her life, she believed she belonged with someone—someone of her choosing, not the man her parents wanted for her.
Erik worked his way up to Jewel’s clitoris, first working the outside with his tongue, then unsheathing it with his lips so that he could flirt with her most sensitive flesh.
The orgasm surprised her. Rather than crashing through her body like the ones she had enjoyed in the shower or on the Genesis, it spilled out of her pussy to roll in waves down her thighs and up through her breasts.
She stretched beneath it as her whole body began to shudder with increasing force. The sheer joy of Erik’s presence and attention consumed her whole world. He pushed her thighs apart and she welcomed him as he pressed the smooth tip of his powerful erection against her and slowly penetrated her.
Long, powerful strokes edged her passion higher. She never quit climaxing, but the slow shudders increased in potency the deeper Erik delved within her. She wrapped her legs around his and pulled his shoulders down so that his chest pressed against her breasts. She circled her arms around his back, striving to meld his body into hers and make them one.
She could feel Erik’s urgency growing within her, breaking with the steady tempo he’d established as the frantic energy of his own need surged within him.
She met his passion with equal energy, lifting her hips against him as he thrust, instinctively helping her lover over the edge. She smiled deep within her soul as her pussy tightened on his cock and Erik began to come.
* * * * *
Jewel rolled over on the bed and looked down at her sleeping lover. She’d met a lot of handsome men growing up as a Cartelite, but at this moment she thought Erik exceeded all of them. His tight, muscular chest, broad shoulders, blond hair and, when he was awake, beautiful blue eyes were so different from the man she’d always expected to be joined to. Armenites were dark of hair and eye. Erik, an impoverished exile from a conquered planet was the antithesis of what her parents had planned for her—not that she thought that had anything to do with her attraction to him.
Her fingers lightly traced the deft lines of his abdomen, just above his groin. His skin was smooth and hard, but even in sleep he had some idea what she was doing to him. He squirmed and rolled onto his side away from her.
She remembered their first time in the shower and how she’d been afraid that the sound of their lovemaking would wake Vega.
Vega? How long did she have until her roommate would return? The surge of fear she felt when thinking of these things spoiled her mood. She checked the clock and found she had less than two hours until Vega was off her shift and might return here. She needed to move quickly if she were to have enough time to do what she needed before then.
Getting out of bed, she slipped into the shower for less than her allotted three minutes of water ration. She just needed enough time to quickly clean her body and get out again. Then she dressed and went to Erik, touching him gently on the shoulder. “Hey, time to get up. Vega will be back soon.”
Erik groaned sleepily, then rolled over, suddenly awake, alert and momentarily confused by his surroundings. “Jewel?”
She smiled at him. “Hi, remember me? Your…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to figure out what to call herself. She wanted to be Erik’s girlfriend, but it sounded so juvenile to her. She wanted to be more mature for him. “Your lover?”
Erik sat up and pulled her against him. “As if it were possible to forget you.”
His lips met hers, warm and delightful.
Jewel kissed him back and then pulled away. “I think you’d better get dressed and get out of here,” she said. “I really don’t want Vega to find us together. I don’t want to do anything that will feed the rumor mill about us until this trip is over and we’re ready to run away together.”
Erik reluctantly let her go. “I guess I can see why you’d feel that way, although it seems to me that who we sleep with is nobody’s business but our own.”
Jewel had thought about having this discussion with Erik several times and she had an answer ready for him. For all practical purposes, she needed to end their relationship for the period of time that her bioware was going to be active again. She couldn’t let the spy she was going to wake in her head have any idea that she’d fallen in love with a man on the Fringe. Fortunately, the unpleasant dynamic involving Erik’s old lovers gave her a plausible reason to put some distance between the two of them.
“This is an important project that the captain has set for us,” Jewel reminded Erik. “And it also has the potential to be quite dangerous. There are two groups of colonists who have disappeared down there and I don’t want to add anyone on our crew to the list of the dead.”
Erik instantly grew more serious. “I agree with you. Frankly, I think what we’re doing is even more dangerous than you’re suggesting because the risk will only increase if we’re successful in leaving this system with the ore. The Armenites will stop at nothing to maintain their stranglehold on the supply of armenium and they’re going to respond forcefully when they find out that someone else has discovered armenium deposits. I wouldn’t be surprised if war results from all of this and if every member of our crew ends up with an Armenite bounty on his or her head.”
None of that would surprise Jewel either, but she hadn’t expected Erik to worry about those things. Perhaps she should have. Armenites had to be a continuing concern for him too.
“I agree with you,” she assured him, “but if you think this is so dangerous—”
“Wh
y didn’t I argue against the mission with the captain?” Erik finished for her. He began to tick his reasons off on his fingers. “First, I’ve been with the captain long enough to know that nothing is going to dissuade her from pursuing a profit. Second, I really hate the Armenites, and if we can find a mine down there and get it into the hands of a foreign power like the League or the Confederacy, that would be a serious blow to the Armenite Hegemony. And finally, I want to know what happened to my countrymen and those answers are down on the surface of this moon. If I’m going to learn their fate, I have to go down there to discover it.”
Jewel could understand all those reasons. She was glad, strangely enough, that making a fortune wasn’t what was motivating Erik. She opened her mouth to comment, but Erik caught hold of her and pulled her down on the mattress against his naked body. “What I can’t figure out is why you’re so against it,” he said. “Even if you’re not a Cartelite like Brüning says—and I don’t see how you could be, despite those things on your face—why don’t you want to be wealthy? If there really is a mine down there it could put you on the road to claiming all those riches your parents were after.”
Jewel squirmed free of Erik so that she could sit up beside him instead of lying in his arms. She couldn’t afford for him to pull her back into another round of lovemaking. She needed to reactivate her bioware and set it to work covering her trail in the Euripides’ systems, and since the captain was sending them to the surface of the moon soon, this might be her last chance to do that. She really needed to wrap up this conversation so she’d have time to complete the task, but she also wanted to address Erik’s question.
“Because there are about ten thousand things that could go wrong down there,” she told him, “and so many people are already dead. I don’t want to add any to that list. I just don’t see that money is worth dying over.” That last statement was practically the antithesis of Cartelite philosophy, but Jewel really believed it. She didn’t want people dying to make her rich. If death was what she sought she could have committed suicide rather than try to escape into hiding on the Fringe.
Erik nodded. “What you’re saying makes sense to me too. I’m more than a little concerned about the risks of this venture. I may want revenge on the Armenites but not at the price of another crew.”
Jewel saw her opening and pushed forward with her plan. “Then I hope you’ll understand why we can’t carry on like this on the world’s surface.” She gestured with her hand toward his distractingly naked body and the mussed sheets of the bed. “We’re going to have to be extremely professional while we’re down on that world, not only so that we stay focused and don’t make any stupid mistakes that endanger people, but so that we don’t make any of your ex-lovers even more jealous. They can’t start making mistakes because they can’t concentrate on the job they have to do.”
Erik started to protest, but Jewel cut him off. “I’m really serious about this. We’re on the cusp of starting a great life together. I don’t want to blow it before we get going for the sake of a quick cuddle or a little flirting. If you can’t keep it together for the few days we’ll be down on the surface, how can I count on you when we’re running across the Fringe together?”
Rather than pick up his protest again, Erik seemed to consider Jewel’s argument.
She pressed forward with her case. “I think being perceived as your girlfriend also weakens me with the crew—not just with the captain and Ana, but with all the enlisted personnel too. It’s hard for them to respect me when they think of me as your latest bedmate. I’m an officer on this vessel. It’s important to me that I act like one.”
Erik sighed. His expression made clear his unhappiness with her position. “I don’t think that a few kisses will really undercut you, especially if no one knows they’re happening.”
The spy in her head would know, and that was enough. “They will know, Erik. Something like this can’t be kept secret. It’s just going to be for a few days. Then we’ll be back up here and sailing to another port and we can figure out what’s acceptable again.”
He still didn’t give in. “I don’t think I can just cut off what I’m feeling for you.”
“I’m not asking you to cut it off,” Jewel told him. “I need you to control yourself, put your executive officer hat firmly on your head and support me in this. It’s only going to be a couple of days. We go down to the surface, find the stockpiles of armenium, and get them transported back to the ship. Then we can start planning our life after the Euripides.”
He still looked uncertain to her.
She touched his forearm. It felt strange doing so. He was still completely naked after all. His penis stirred when she touched his arm.
She ignored all that. “Please, Erik, do this for me?”
He sighed. “All right, I can see the point you’re making and while I don’t like it…I agree.”
A great weight lifted off Jewel’s shoulders. “Thank you.”
Erik scooped her into his arms again. “But don’t think that means you’re getting out of here without making love to me again.”
He playfully wrestled her onto the bed and started kissing her again.
“Mr. Gunnarson,” Everson’s voice helpfully interrupted them through the com system. “Please report to the captain’s briefing room.”
“Void!” Erik cursed as he sat up again. “It’s almost like the damn woman is watching us.”
Jewel wondered about that, but she’d already searched her quarters and hadn’t found any cameras. It was probably just a coincidence that the captain kept looking for Erik when he was with her. “It’s all right,” she told her lover. “It’s just a couple of days and then we can have each other all we want.”
Erik gave her another quick kiss and started to get dressed.
Chapter Eight
Jewel sat back down and recovered the narrow wand from the case in the bottom drawer of her desk. She tested the device by depressing a tiny stud on the base of the tool and watched the sparks flicker at the end of the wire for approximately three seconds. As a six-year-old, completely by accident, she’d discovered that the bioware her parents had installed in her temple was susceptible to strong electric charges. That was the same occasion that she learned that the human body also found electricity basically incompatible with its continued healthy functioning. Jewel had required bed rest and medications to get on her feet again. Her bioware, however, had required a factory reset and the reloading of six days worth of data storage and program updates. The reset had been carried out with a tool just like this, and Jewel was about to discover if she could accomplish the same thing without a specialist surgeon or technician doing the work for her.
She took a deep breath, still uncertain that she should be doing this, but Dr, Gunther Brüning posed a clear and present danger to her freedom and well-being in the here and now. If she didn’t deal with him, controlling her reactivated bioware would be the least of her problems. Besides, she had rigged the desk lamp to electrocute her if she touched its base so she had a way to shut the bioware down again before they reached a populated star system with ongoing interstellar commerce.
As long as Jewel remained in the isolated Valkyrie system, the immediate damage that her bioware could do to her would be contained. Interstellar communications were dependent upon the starships that traveled between solar systems. Since the only starship present in Valkyrie was the Euripides, the bioware would have no way of sending communications out to her parents or their agents to report on Jewel’s location until they reached a new star system. She would shut it down again before that happened.
Jewel examined her temple in the mirror set in the lid of her tool case, ignoring for once the too thin nose to look at the jewels she’d been hiding from the world for most of the past year. There were three of them surgically implanted in her flesh—three organically grown chips that looked extraordinarily similar to diamonds. The first, positioned highest on her face, had been given to her as an inf
ant. The middle one had been implanted on her ninth birthday. The last had been given to her when she’d turned twenty-one. Had she not fled, she’d have received a fourth on the day she turned thirty—a symbolic recognition of her nominal legal independence. Her parents, arrogant divas that they were, had each had an additional jewel implanted, as did most people of their class and position. The extra jewel was used mostly in dealing with the galaxy outside the Cartels, but Jewel had always suspected that its real function was in publicly proclaiming just how wealthy the elites really were. At some ten million solars a chip, they were better than a power yacht at proclaiming a wearer’s status.
While she reminisced, Jewel set the tip of the needle at the base of her original jewel and slid it quickly into her flesh. A drop of crimson appeared on her skin but she didn’t actually feel any pain until she began to root around for the extraordinarily tiny indentation that covered the reset cavity. A doctor was supposed to do this with the assistance of advanced imaging technology, but Jewel didn’t have access to that.
The crimson drop became a thin streak leaking down her cheek.
The needle struck a tiny groove in the jewel and locked into what she hoped was the proper position. If she aligned her instrument correctly, this jewel would allow her to reset all three. She extended the hair-thin wire and depressed the stud.
Her teeth immediately ground together as an electric current coursed through her body. She was damn lucky she hadn’t bitten her tongue off. Perhaps she’d been medicated the first time because she hadn’t remembered it feeling like this at all.
Good morning, Luxora, her chip said to her. Are you ready to explore my new upgrades?
The safety shut-off clamped down on the electrical charge in her wand, letting Jewel think again.
Warning! the chip announced. My systems have been compromised! Our GPS location has been altered. Initiating—
Emergency lockdown! Jewel thought at the thing. No outgoing communications or contact without my express permission!
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