by Lilly Cain
But she was and he could only focus on her intense reaction, her shuddering gasps and the thin ridges on her back that rippled up and down in waves as he plunged into her tight pussy. She moaned as she rode him, caught up in a chain reaction. He released one of her nipples to stroke the stiffening ridges on her belly and then lower, where several lines twisted and met at the wet edge of her pussy. He pulled all the way out of her so he could have the sensation of penetrating her again. He wasn’t going to be able to keep this up. He was losing control, and as amazing as she felt, she wasn’t ready to join him. He could feel that, somewhere in the sexual mesh of their minds. He strained to hold back and rubbed her ridges, slowing his plunge and sliding his fingers into her wet well on the offbeats of his thrusts. She responded so strongly he could almost feel her pleasure, could almost imagine burning lines of sensation along his body matching the pattern of her L’inar.
He almost didn’t hear the first rocking boom. But the second impact threw off his rhythm, and the noise was too loud to ignore. A third blast, as he recognized what it was in his sex-drenched euphoria, slammed through the outer bulkhead. A chunk of the wall flew forward and ripped into the room. He twisted, slid down to the floor, sheltered her body with his. Of all the time for an attack… A shearing pain in his back left him gasping for air.
“The ship is under attack. We have to get out of here!” Her voice seemed muffled. She twisted away from him.
He made a grab for her, tried to keep her from moving from the little shelter he could offer her. “Sarina.” It seemed hard to get her name past his lips.
Something wasn’t right. The ship was under attack. Another blast of laser fire slammed into the wall. She was moving away from him, and he tried to pull her back.
“You’re wounded. We must get you to the medtechs,” she told him. Her voice seemed far away, echoing like a distorted vid. Her face was close to his again. Agony roared through him with each breath and he looked down at his chest. Blood rushed from the edges of a rough piece of metal that pierced his skin. He was run through, he realized, skewered by a part of the bulkhead. The outer wall must have pushed through the inner.
“They are shooting at this section and the shields are giving,” she shouted at him over the sound of more impacts. “If we don’t move, the air is going to get sucked out of here when the shields die.” She stared at him.
He knew what she was thinking. He was going into shock. She was right.
“I’m sorry.”
Before he had a chance to imagine what she might be sorry for, she stood and hauled him to his feet. Pain burned white-hot, and he cried out as the metal piercing him was ripped from his chest. When his knees buckled she grabbed him in a rough hold, taking his weight easily. As the room blackened around him he realized she was carrying him, her slight frame supporting his completely as she dragged him from the room.
Chapter Three
“The attack was definitely centered on your sector of the ship. No other area took any major damage.”
Sarina nodded. Commander Jannii Finar, commander of the Jupiter Moon Inarrii outbase, grimaced over the vid channel as he watched her strap on the last of her dash’tet. She hadn’t thought she would need them on this assignment. In truth, she’d thought she would never have need of the warrior knives ever again. She wondered if Finar had thought the same. Finar was one of the few who had never commented on her injury one way or the other—never given her the false platitudes or the flat-out dismissal of her abilities once it became clear the medtechs couldn’t completely heal her. There was no way to reattach L’inar that had been severed completely from the central column.
Now the knives offered a familiar weight on her forearms. She was dressed for war once again. Knives, spikes, lasers and the nearly indestructible perma-plas uniform, the same as she had worn a hundred times before. Wearing them again and reviewing mission details in her native tongue, rather than the complicated human language, was both a relief and a concern. “The attack seems to have been unusually pinpointed.”
“Agreed. John Bennings was the only possible target. All other legal personnel were located in the seventh section, basically the other end of the ship. The Osprey itself was the only ship in this sector under attack.”
“Why would Bennings be the target? He is hardly a major component for the completion of the Treaty. He is only a lawyer.”
Finar hesitated then responded with a negating motion of his hands—the Inarrii equivalent of a human shrug. “It is possible he was targeted because he was the only legal personnel in that area.”
Sarina tugged an extra laser harness over her chest. Overkill perhaps, considering the man she was supposed to be protecting wouldn’t be going anywhere for a little while. Safely ensconced in an Inarrii medlab on a docked shuttle inside the human’s SS Osprey, John would be unconscious for the next few hours at least. His injury had been severe, far worse than hers had been. He’d almost died.
“Not likely. If they had struck where the other personnel were located, the likelihood of them eliminating more than one target in the attack would have been much higher. Was there anything else in that sector, maybe something we were not aware of? I did an initial sweep upon arrival and sector two appeared the most protected. I moved us there but did not identify any other potential target. It is probably what saved John’s life.”
“You are developing a relationship with Bennings.” It wasn’t a question. Inarrii warriors were expected to form attachments and even sexual relationships with the people they protected. It made the desire to protect much stronger and was a logical product of long periods of time alone together.
“Simple sex.” Sarina turned her attention to the set of her chest holster. A perfect fit could mean the difference between life and death.
“I would suggest some caution in this, Tariim. Humans do not really have simple sex. And your condition—”
“My condition is under control. And it has nothing to do with the current situation, sir.” Sarina didn’t look at the screen. Although they were not friends, his tone was personal. It would have hurt to see him wear an expression of doubt, or worse, pity.
“Very well. Have you noticed anything about Bennings that might indicate a reason for him being the target?”
Images of John’s muscular body flickered though her mind. He moved with the same grace as a trained warrior. That was what seemed so familiar about him. He reminded her of the bunkmate she’d had on her fourth mission against the Archats, an Inarrii warrior who’d died without sending a single message to his clan. He’d been a loner, just as John appeared to be. She had not seen John participate in any social discussions. Perhaps that was the only true similarity.
“No. Nothing. He completes the work assigned to him but doesn’t show any particular importance.”
“At this time we are breaking up the human legal team to relocate them on board the Horneu. Bennings will be the last to move out, as he is still under medical care. You will have the Inarrii medtech shuttle at your command and an escort of two fighters.”
“Understood.”
“Be careful, Soryen Tariim. I’ll see you on board the Horneu. Tel sahiir denay.”
Sarina nodded and flicked the vid panel off. There was nothing to do now but wait. She replayed the conversation with Finar as she made a final check of her equipment. The canny commander obviously suspected something was off about John Bennings. And he might be right.
Sarina glanced around the compartment. A makeshift patch covered the damage to the hull wall. Her belongings and those of her charge had already been packed up and would now be shifted to the shuttle. Her eyes lingered on the couch. She licked her lips, felt a stirring in the unreliable lines of her L’inar. Something had happened between them, more than the casual sex she’d admitted to Finar. She’d felt the first brush of true m’ittar mind contact betwe
en them. More, she’d felt her L’inar respond in a way she’d no longer thought possible. Not that she expected she could have achieved full release. That was too much to hope for. But there had been something. She strode to the door and out into the main corridor. There might not be anything more to do but wait, but she was going to be there when John regained consciousness.
She might have let her clan down, might never bring them another honor point, but she wasn’t about to leave her charge unprotected. That tiny brush of hope she felt within her in his embrace reminded her just how far she’d fallen. What kind of a warrior was she now; what kind of female had she become? The thought hit her like a blow. She straightened her shoulders. Desperation was not a mindset she’d ever accepted. Besides, she had questions for the man and they had unfinished business.
Sarina walked through the human ship, quietly assessing the damage from the recent attack as she worked her way toward the Inarrii shuttle. Commander Finar was correct. Their sector was the only one to take any noteworthy hits from the fighter ships. She scanned the codes on the walls that identified the sector, level and use of each room she passed. Unlike the visually stimulating pictographs and glowing controls commonly used by the Inarrii, human identity codes were simple, and not terribly descriptive. But then, humans didn’t have the visual scope of Inarrii, couldn’t see the same spectrum of light. Without entering the rooms, she couldn’t be certain the human tags were even correct. But her initial explorations and those she had completed over the last three days indicated they were, and that there was nothing to offer a target to the terrorists or the alien Ravagers.
It all came down to John Bennings. Someone in the terrorist group wanted him, specifically, dead.
The Inarrii medical shuttle had docked inside the landing bay of sector four. The Osprey was laid out in fairly logical order, at least to her mind. Perhaps it was because she was a warrior and this was a human military ship, but it seemed as though the humans and the Inarrii had more in common than their physical shape. She considered the similarities of John’s muscular body. True, he had no L’inar, but he was attractive to her. His long legs and wide shoulders drew her, and the light covering of hair in various spots on his body was oddly pleasant to touch.
Even his m’ittar seemed different, alien, yet close enough for her to merge with his pleasure and he with hers. She’d felt more with him than she’d expected to. But then, she’d had no physical contact since her injury with anyone other than Examiner Salis Fiiten, who had acted as her therapist since her injury. Much as she’d tried, she couldn’t find release with the therapist. He’d tried his best, but her L’inar were ruined and he, well, something was different with the Examiner. He had a distance within him that she’d thought was a reaction to her injury. Now she wondered if that was true. He seemed unable to open part of his mind to their pleasure. Perhaps it was simply that he was an Examiner, not a true therapist. He had the memories of a hundred cases in his mind, many things that would be impossible share, even on a subliminal level. Or perhaps he had just been unable to respond to someone with damaged L’inar, even if he had wanted to for her sake.
Sarina rounded the corner to the shuttle dock and paused in front of the scanner until it recognized her DNA. Walking through the hatch, she nodded to the Inarrii fighter pilots lounging in the reception center. They barely acknowledged her, but that was probably because of the lively three-dimensional haisto game they had running on the vid. Haisto seemed to take up the spare time of every pilot she knew—the live adaption of human poker and chess combined with war strategy developed by the first surveillance team in their off time had quickly become the perfect pastime for the flying warrior clans.
She walked by and palmed the glowing control to the doors of the medlab.
“Soryen Tariim. Inar tel sahiir.” The healer greeted her through the mind contact of m’ittar as she entered.
“Inar tel sahiir, Medtech Yassin.” She returned the formal greeting. Between the warrior clans there was no need for formality, but she wasn’t familiar with the clan of this healer. Being impolite could, at very least, slow her mission.
“You are the warrior with the severed L’inar.” It wasn’t a question. It seemed as though every medtech on the mission had been exposed to her case. “I have been experimenting with electro impulse conductive gel—”
“Very interesting. Perhaps we can discuss that later. How is your patient?” She brought the discussion back to where it should be, focused on the status of her charge and how long they would have to wait before they could move out. She’d heard too many pet theories on nerve reconnection.
Taking the hint, the medtech moved to the control panel beside the medbed. He brought up a scan of the lawyer’s healing injuries. Sarina glanced at the brightly patterned vid and then looked down at the bed. John’s body lay on the surface, entirely covered in the dorii-chiksin—a woven cover of sensors and microthin tools able to penetrate a patient’s skin and access the inner organs and tissue without pain. She could see nothing of the patient inside, since the dorii covered him like a cocoon, but that was typical and not alarming. She had to wonder if John would feel the same way. She knew from experience waking inside the dorii could be disturbing. Coming to in darkness, immobilized and bound, if loosely, was always a shock.
“John Bennings is nearly healed.”
“When will he be able to move? A second attack is more than likely. It would be best if we could be in a more protected position.” Sarina resisted the urge to touch the figure on the medbed.
“The recent damage has already been repaired. However, the older scar tissue will take some time to remove.”
Sarina glanced at the technician. “Older scar tissue?” She kept her mental voice casual, but an image of the way John moved with a warrior’s grace flashed into her thoughts. Quickly she strengthened the shields around her mind. No need to raise her suspicions when they were only that.
“He has multiple areas of layered scar tissue beneath the top layer of skin.” The healer shook his head. “The humans will be happy to receive our healing technology. If this is the best they can do with laser burns, I pity their patients. The healing he has received for most of his older injuries has been purely cosmetic.”
The healer pointed to a long white mark on the display vid of John’s body. Scar tissue. She scanned the display more carefully. John had many of what appeared to be old injuries. Not what one would expect from a lawyer. She hadn’t noticed anything the previous evening. It might have only been cosmetic, but the work done had been excellent camouflage.
“Leave the scars for now. We need to move out, away from the Osprey, and get to the Horneu.”
The medtech waved his hands, his feelings about leaving the healing incomplete clear through their light m’ittar contact. But he complied, applying a thin line of laser against the dorii-chiksin. Sarina watched as the folds of medical cloth released and separated, folding back and revealing the man underneath. Light brown hair, cleansed by the same microthin tools in the dorii that would have dealt with body waste, seemed wavy rather than spiked as she remembered. It looked softer to the touch, something she would enjoy taking her time exploring. In seconds his face, still relaxed in unconsciousness, emerged. He had more body hair on his face than before, a thin layer of darker color. Idly she wondered if it would feel soft as well.
Slowly the human’s athletic frame was revealed. Wide, thickly muscled shoulders and a chest with deeply outlined pectorals raised a quick flair of interest across the L’inar on the back of her neck and across her breasts. She was grateful her fighting gear and uniform covered her reaction, as she had no desire to have the medtech insist on observing how her sensory lines reacted in a case of actual stimulation. Instead she concentrated on the human before her.
A small amount of light brown curls nestled in the center of his chest and faded down into a silky line that almost re
ached his navel. She remembered the feel of them, crisp yet silky at the same time. Slowly the layers of the dorii peeled away from his underbelly. She sucked in a breath as she saw the sleek line of hair begin again, pointed downward and widening slightly, an arrow of decoration that was as attractive as any L’inar swirl pattern. She’d missed that pattern in their first frenzied encounter. Her fingers itched to touch, and her sensory nerve lines crested along the edges of her breasts in response to the vision presented before her.
“Ahem.”
Sarina glanced at John’s face to find him watching her. His eyes were dark, the pupils wide. Her L’inar flickered with a rapid intensity. The uniform she’d been glad for moments earlier suddenly felt tight, hot.
“You’re awake.” Sarina took a step toward the head of the bed.
The medtech silently continued his work, releasing the rest of the dorii from John’s body.
“You are in an Inarrii medical laboratory. You were injured in a terrorist attack against the Osprey. We have healed your injuries. You will be released from care in a few minutes. All legal personnel are being relocated to the Inarrii flagship, the Horneu.”
John brushed aside the last loose remnants of the dorii from his arm and lifted a hand to touch his chest where he’d been wounded. “How long have I been under?”
“Only about fourteen of your earth hours, not yet a full day.”
“You should remain in medical care for some time longer,” the medtech interjected. “We could remove all the old scar tissue from your previous injuries.” The Inarrii healer was working to release John’s calves.
Both John and Sarina glanced down at the medtech, but Sarina’s gaze was snagged as she caught sight of John’s cock, naked and half-hard. She pulled her gaze away, looked back at his face.