by T C Archer
The tip of his tongue tilted upward and lapped at her juices. Her breath caught. Was that satiny tongue going to flick the aroused nub? Fontana shifted in order to give him quick access, but his grip on her ass tightened, holding her in place. A tremor rippled through her stomach. His tongue thrust inside her channel, careful to stay clear of her clit. Tease! God, where did these guys learn how to bring a woman to the brink with such intensity?
His lips abruptly closed around her clit, and he drew the nub into his mouth like it was a nipple. Pleasure rocketed through her. Fontana cried out. His mouth loosened. Then his tongue flicked her clit. She drew in a sharp breath. He flicked and sucked. She ground her pussy against his face, rocked hard, heedless of anything but the building pressure that tightened her belly and yanked on her pussy until she came in a spasm that took her breath away. Cream gushed from her channel, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he lapped and sucked her sex again.
“Fuck,” she breathed.
Her legs clamped tight around his head. Pressure built like an overloaded warp core. She wondered if she could handle a second orgasm so soon, so intense, but he didn’t give her the chance to decide. Pleasure burst across her senses. Euphoria flooded her, and she felt as if she’d melted. He slid her down beside him. Her heart pounded.
He drew her close and nibbled on her earlobe. “You tasted so sweet.”
A small thrill shot through her. Heat dripped inside her, and despite the orgasm she’d barely had time to recover from, she ached to feel him inside her. He cupped a breast. She shivered at the feel of his warm palm kneading the soft, swollen flesh. Fontana snuggled closer and felt the hard ridge of his desire, still separated by the thin layer of his pants.
In the alley, he’d been so hard and ready. She would never forget how good he’d felt in her fingers, like velvet iron, hot and ready for the forge between her legs. She wanted to curl her fingers around his perfect shaft again. Fontana reached between them, unbuttoned his pants, and tugged at the waistband. He took the hint and shimmied out of the pants.
His erection pointed toward her like a beacon. Her mouth went dry. How was it possible for him to look even better than he had in the alley? He pulled her close again, and her pulse spiked at the feel of his rod, heavy against her thigh. He was going to feel so good inside her. He kissed her slow and easy as if he had all the time in the world and she was the only woman in the world. No matter what happened tomorrow, she needed this.
His hand slid down her hip, along her thigh, then in between her legs. Fontana opened for him, and he slid a finger between her soaked folds. Her breath quickened when he began an in-and-out rhythm. His head dipped, and he took a nipple into his mouth. Desire intensified. She rocked her hips up and down. His finger entered her on a down thrust. A whimper escaped her lips.
Pleasure drove her higher. He worked his finger in and out, and she let him drive her. Waves of pleasure made her squirm as she rocked her hips.
“Brent,” she gasped.
He gave a low chuckle but didn’t stop.
The wave broke over her, flooding her with pleasure. He kept fucking her with his finger, and then a second wave came, leaving in its trail the ache to have him inside her.
“I need you here.” She pulled him on top of her and guided him inside her channel.
He moaned with pleasure as he slid in and buried himself balls-deep inside her sheath. She clenched her channel walls around him. His weight came down fully upon her, and she reveled in the male hardness that pinned her to the bed. He pulled out, then drove deeper. She rocked against him, their hips colliding with each plunge. Desire rocketed through her. She held on to his powerful shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist. Pleasure rippled through her.
His thrusts quickened. He buried his face in her neck. Warm breath bathed her skin. Shivers raced across her arms. His cock plunged deeper until she thought she’d burst apart at the seams. Fontana cried out. He groaned as her channel walls milked his cock. His arms tightened around her like a vise. She gasped for breath, melting into his powerful hold, and his weight came down fully on her. She detected a quiver in his large body as he planted kisses on her jaw and neck.
“Fawn, you are perfect.”
She stilled. “Fawn?”
“Short for Fontana.”
Fawn. Her great uncle had shortened her name to Fawn. He’d died when she was ten, and Mason was the only person to still call her by the nickname.
Brent hugged her close, and Fontana wanted like hell to give in to her first impulse and fall asleep in his arms.
“That was as close to perfect as it gets,” she said.
“Give me a few minutes, and maybe we can top that.”
“Not possible.” Her heart still pounded out a fast rhythm.
“We’ll see.”
Brent gave her a hard kiss on the mouth, then rolled off her onto the mattress and slid an arm beneath her shoulders, pulling her close. She snuggled against him, touching as much of him as possible—hot, perspiration soaked, and still hard. That was good enough to prove he was a professional. What the hell. He’d given her a ride she wouldn’t soon forget.
He nuzzled her neck. “Fantastic.”
She made a halfhearted effort to push him away, then gave up and melted into him again. Maybe she could talk him into staying awhile. If they got tired of fucking, they could get around to discussing quantum physics, philosophy, maybe even business logistics.
A commotion sounded from the hallway—shouts, scuffling—and a ridiculously robotic voice boomed, “Surrender, Brent Yari.”
The door to her room vanished. A six-armed security sentry floated into the room. Fontana bolted upright. The robot’s three eyes swept right and left.
Brent leaped from the bed, pulling the sheet from her grasp.
“Stop, Brent Yari,” the sentry ordered.
Brent sprinted to the French doors and disappeared outside. Fontana stared. Was he actually running through the streets nearly naked a second time?
A laser beam spit from the sentry’s middle eye and hit the door frame. Faux wood splintered. Fontana dove for cover on the far side of the bed. The robot glided out the French doors after Brent. An elderly couple in the hall gawked through the open hallway door to her room.
“Close door,” Fontana ordered.
Nothing happened.
She cursed. The damn robot had overridden voice command. The elderly couple still stared. Fontana, naked and shielded by the bed, waited, but they wouldn’t move on.
“Stupid tourists,” she muttered and rose.
Fontana strutted toward them. The smile on the man’s face was priceless. She punched in the code on the panel beside the door, and the door rematerialized. The sound of a slap and the woman’s incomprehensible curse filtered through the door. Fontana turned back toward her room. Damn Brent, streaking again. He better not take a coat from another woman.
* * * *
That afternoon, after thirty laps in the pool, Fontana sat at the vanity in her room in a luxurious white terry robe, scrolling through the restaurant and nightclub listings on the desktop display. The resort specialized in Earth communities, from Albania to Zaire, and all eras from ancient Egypt to the ultramodern.
Irish pubs were out because Jenny had been an Irish redhead. Wild West saloons reminded her of Rigil IV. Anything spacecraft related made Fontana think of Jenny’s remains in that S-warp drone speeding through the cold vacuum of space alone. There had to be some news of the freighter that had disappeared after customs challenged her. What did the freighter have to do with Jenny’s murder, and what had Gaelen Castor thought Jenny knew that made it worth torturing and killing her?
Fontana paused on a page that displayed black-and-white headshots of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Rick’s Café Américain, the best gin joint in Morocco.
She had copies of seventy-four of the seventy-five feature films Bogart had acted in on her data-cube. The missing one was an army training film lost to time and
decay. He had starred in fifty-one of the films, but Bogie was a man she couldn’t get enough of, and she’d tracked down his first twenty-nine films and bought them for a small fortune.
If she dressed in costume for Rick’s, would Brent come dressed as Rick or Laszlo? In the hours since he’d been chased from her room by the robot, she’d vacillated between tracking him down and settling for what he’d already given her. Curiosity had gotten the better of her—curiosity and the fact that she’d been unable to locate the robot that had broken in on them.
The hotel directory listed Brent as staying at the Hong Kong Hilton. She wasn’t sure if the fact he was a guest at the hotel meant he wasn’t one of the planet’s escorts. Her heart fluttered. Had he fucked her because he found her attractive, or was he looking for some rich bitch to bankroll him? The resort charged exorbitant rates, and he didn’t know the Corps had paid her bill.
His check-in and check-out dates were set to private, which didn’t confirm anything. With a deep breath, Fontana punched up a connection to his hotel room and got his video mail.
“Brent. It’s Fontana.” She paused, surprised how fast her heart was beating. She should have set her side to voice-only so he couldn’t see the unease she was sure showed on her face. All she was doing was calling some guy.
You’re thirty-two years old. You can pursue a man.
Anxiety quivered in her stomach. “I was thinking.” Her voice wavered. “I’m going to be at Rick’s Café tonight, if you’re interested in meeting for a late supper. Around eight?”
Now what?
“Hope to see you there.” She hung up, feeling even more inept than when Daniel Tanner had given her her first adult kiss at the age of sixteen. Had being without a man this last year turned her into a quivering virgin? She grinned. Not if this morning was any indication.
Remembering the dress Ingrid wore when she and Bogie had danced, Fontana switched the display to wardrobe and said, “White chiffon.” She paused. She might not be in the dress long, but she wanted Brent to salivate to get her out of it. “Casablanca, Ingrid Bergman, ankle-length white skirt, blazer, tailored collar, circa 1942—synthetic,” she added. Synthetics were complimentary as part of the all-inclusive package. “Sheer white scarf,” she added. “Floor length.” Ingrid looked damned sultry with that scarf draped around her hair. Had Ingrid worn anything beneath the blazer? Hell yes, but Fontana wasn’t going to.
Confirmation came that the outfit would be delivered to her closet in five minutes. Fontana grimaced. How many other Ingrid Bergmans would be there? She shrugged. As long as Brent saw only her, who cared?
Rick’s was only two blocks away, close enough to walk in heels, but she had tokens, so she ordered a cab to pick her up at 8:15 p.m., fashionably late. She could make a grand appearance, stepping out of the cab, one long gam at a time, in case he waited for her outside.
Chapter Five
By 8:30 p.m., Fontana sat on a barstool at Rick’s, an old-fashioned in a tumbler and a pack of reproduction Pall Mall filterless cigarettes resting by her elbow. A smoky haze hung in the air, but she detected no real smoke.
Rick’s was comprised of three vast rooms, one with a bar where she sat, another with tables and an upright piano where a guest had been playing As Time Goes By with one finger when she walked in, and a third room with a clicking and clattering roulette wheel where people were placing their bets. Waiters in white suits bustled between tables. Actors in French police period uniforms prowled the room. The only things that broke the movie-quality spell were the four Ingrid Bergman look-alikes, six Humphrey Bogarts, and two Paul Henreids playing Victor Laszlo. Evidently, nobody wanted to play the part of Claude Rains, the corrupt French official.
Fontana loved Casablanca, but it wasn’t Bogie’s best. To Have and Have Not took that honor.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns…” Brent’s voice drifted over her left shoulder.
She glanced in the mirror behind the bar. He wore a white suit and shirt and a black bow tie. Handsome. Much more handsome than Bogart. “You had to walk into mine,” she said, her gaze still locked with his in the mirror.
“How did you know Casablanca was my favorite film?”
She rotated on the stool and gave him a sideways look from beneath the brim of her hat. “Lucky guess.”
“This place is fabulous. It even has Vichy police.”
Vichy was the name of the Nazi-controlled French officials. Somehow it pleased her that he remembered the small detail she’d forgotten. How many other insignificant details might he know? What would it be like to find out? She could fall for a guy like Brent—or at least the idea of falling in love. The real man was probably a womanizing arms dealer. But she wasn’t Major Fontana Marks of the Galactic Coalition. This was Earth, twentieth-century Morocco, and she was Ilsa Lund in love with the cynical Rick Blaine.
Fontana pulled a cigarette from the pack on the bar. Brent reached into his breast pocket and produced a pack of wooden matches. Synthetic wood, for sure, but they looked as real as in the movies. She held the cigarette to her lips. He struck the match against the wood and cupped the flame to the tip of the cigarette as if he’d done it a thousand times before. Gaze locked with his, Fontana drew in without inhaling and blew smoke toward the ceiling. It vanished into a light fixture, an inverted cone of some green, glasslike material hanging by a thin rod from the ceiling.
Brent bent and kissed her lightly, totally out of Rick’s character. He leaned against the counter. “I’ve dreamed of doing that again ever since this morning.”
She set the cigarette in the nearby ashtray. The cigarette smoke vanished into tiny vents in the ashtray, which released another substance resembling smoke that curled up toward the ceiling and added to the room’s smoky ambience.
Fontana set her gaze on Brent. “Why are you being chased and hunted? Did you buy the wrong adventure package, or is that what gets you off?”
“Besides you?” He raised an eyebrow.
She gave him a deprecating look, despite the satisfaction that rippled through her. She could accept the robot as part of an adventure package, but she still had trouble believing it was legal for shock troopers to have blown off the back door of Spacer Jack’s.
“Why the shock troopers and sentry robots?” she asked.
He flashed a smile. “I’m misunderstood by so many.”
From the corner of her eye, Fontana noticed a slim blonde enter the restaurant. She clutched a small evening bag, and the tight wool dress that covered her from neck to calf forced her to take short, balanced steps in her high heels as she threaded her way between the tables. Fontana gave a mental groan. Not a Lauren Bacall look-alike. Not in Rick’s Café Américain. Bacall hadn’t starred in Casablanca. Fontana realized the woman was headed toward them. Once she’d drawn near enough, she met Brent’s gaze from beneath thick eyelashes.
“Rick. I’m so glad I found you,” she said, her voice a sultry purr. She was a stunning replica of Bacall.
Brent split a glance between Lauren and her. “I, ah…”
Fontana didn’t mind a little competition, even when the competition was so beautiful, but she hadn’t considered the possibility Brent had another woman, or wife, even. Miss Bacall acted as if she and Brent had a history. Complications were the last thing she needed. Despite the rationale, her heart squeezed.
Fontana picked up her cigarettes. “I’ll leave you two alone.” She started to rise.
The woman placed a hand on Brent’s arm. He shook her off. Fontana tensed when anger flashed in the woman’s eyes.
Brent grasped Fontana’s wrist. “Let’s get out of here.”
Before she could reply, he’d pulled her off the stool and started toward the front exit.
“Brent,” she began, with the intention of saying he couldn’t run—after all, he wasn’t naked—but was cut off by the hulking body that rammed into them.
She was wrenched from Brent’s grip and stumbled back, plowing into another couple. Th
e woman squealed. A heel on Fontana’s shoe broke. She tried to catch herself but crashed to the floor. Mayhem broke out in the room. A man stepped on her hand. Fontana seized his leg and brought him, ass first, to the floor. An arm grasped her waist and pulled her upright. She came face-to-face with Brent.
He grinned and looked down at where her skirt had hiked thigh high. “Can’t even wait until we get back to your room, huh?”
Vichy police whistles blew shrill over the shouts and mayhem inside. Brent swung her into his arms, then hurried forward.
“I can walk,” she said.
He ignored her and pushed through the crowd. He stepped outside and whistled for the autonomous cab parked by the curb.
“Put me down,” Fontana ordered, but the door opened, and Brent slid inside still holding her.
He settled her sideways across his thighs and ordered the cab to drive. The car started forward.
“What was that all about?” he demanded.
Fontana didn’t miss the rock-hard erection that pulsed beneath her ass. The brim of her hat brushed his face, and he leaned back. She pulled the hat off and tossed it on the seat.
“You’re the one racing through Rick’s.” Dammit, was that a breathless note in her voice?
He gave her a deprecating look, then slid her off him and pulled her foot into his lap. He gingerly turned the ankle.
Fontana stiffened when soreness tugged. Dammit. She’d tweaked her Achilles’ heel.
Brent fingered the ankle.
“Why run from Rick’s?” she demanded.
“You were the one running out on me.”
Fontana stared. “Me? Running out on you? Twice, now, you’ve run out on me, the second time from my bed.”
His attention was still on her ankle, but a corner of his mouth twitched. She had the urge to box his ears.
“No swelling, but you could have twisted something. Better see the medi-bot when we get back to your hotel.”
“Sure,” she said. He couldn’t know her body contained Corps standard-issue bionanobots. The nanobot control center implanted in her left lung where it had an ample supply of oxygen and a place to exhaust waste gasses would already have detected her body’s chemical messengers and dispatched the microscopic robots to the injured area.