Hold

by Zannie Adams

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that he’d broken out in a sweat. There was a hard bulge in the front of his trousers and he was devouring her writhing body with his eyes.

  “Can you…” she gasped, deciding she couldn’t wait any longer. She couldn’t ask him to free her from her restraints—that would look far too suspicious—but there was something else she could do. “Can you… I want all of you.”

  Davis released a hoarse groan and pulled his hand out from between her legs. He climbed bodily on the table and then straddled her bound body and leaned over. He kissed her, which was difficult. He smelled clean and his mouth was fairly skillful, but he didn’t smell or feel anything like Cain. But Riana moaned against his mouth and kept rocking beneath him.

  His groin aligned with her pussy and he pushed the bulge of his erection against her.

  Riana tore her mouth away from his. “Oh, oh God. I want it. Please!” She thrashed beneath him, struggling desperately in the manacles, praying he wasn’t the kind who would prefer to fuck her helpless and bound.

  With an agonized groan, Davis reached down beneath the table and flicked a switch. The restraints snapped open and she was suddenly freed.

  She kept wriggling beneath him, though, and wound her arms around him. “Oh, yeah, it feels so good.”

  Davis kissed her again and kept thrusting his arousal against her pussy. Her legs had bent up around his thighs and the two of them sustained an urgent, clumsy, dry hump in the middle of the medical room.

  She was waiting. Everything was exactly as she and Cain had planned it—although she wondered how Cain would feel if he could see her at the moment, with Davis between her legs.

  But now was the time to see if Cain’s device would actually work.

  Davis was starting to unzip his pants when there was a sudden, loud crack of noise. The bang was so loud and so sudden—accompanied by an ominous shaking—that Riana cried out in real astonishment.

  “What the…” Davis’ head jerked up and he looked around in vague confusion. He was obviously half-gone with desire, and he could barely concentrate through his heated daze.

  “What was that?” she gasped.

  “I don’t…” Another shaking—it felt kind of like an earthquake—and alarms started to blare from every side. “Damn it.”

  He clumsily dismounted the table and zipped up his pants with a wince before he started for the door. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

  She knew he’d be back. She was counting on it.

  But she wasn’t planning to stay.

  * * * * *

  Cain’s device had caused some sort of explosion. It wasn’t a bomb exactly—at least not as she’d ever understood explosive devices—but it blasted one of the walls of the Hold. Not enough to cause structural damage, to flood the Hold with poisoned water or cause massive devastation. The foundations and reinforcement of the building structure were far too solid for that. Nothing Cain could create with spare parts could possibly do more than scratch the surface of the wall.

  The damage was only superficial—a loud noise, a lot of rumbling, some dislocated concrete and metal. Since he’d planted it in the public bathroom, it should also mess up the plumbing.

  At most, it would be a temporary inconvenience—as the prison staff scrambled to repair the damage. The device was never intended to forcefully blast a way out of the Hold.

  It just provided a distraction.

  The explosion was certain to cause chaos in the Hold—and that chaos could very easily turn into a riot as the prison staff attempted to maintain order as well as assess and repair the damage.

  That’s what Cain had always been counting on.

  His initial plan had them attempting to escape the Hold in the chaos, but there were numerous mechanisms in place—enforced by the nature of the building structure—that would have made an escape, even in the midst of the chaos, extremely difficult.

  Now that they were already out of the Hold, their chances were far greater.

  And since Riana wasn’t shackled—Davis having been too befuddled to even register that fact—nothing was keeping her from moving around freely.

  There was an automatic lock on the door but Riana had been sure to watch at Davis left the room. The first time, he’d shielded the code he’d punched in from her but when he left just now he’d been too distracted and she’d been able to see the code.

  So she punched it in and felt a thrill of victory as the doors slid open easily.

  She ran into the corridor and only then realized she hadn’t put her clothes on. But she didn’t stop to go back, too afraid they’d run out of time.

  She knew the door at the end of the corridor was the one to the central control center of the building structure. So she sprinted toward it, relieved that no one was around.

  All of the guards must have gone to address the chaos in the Hold, exactly as Cain had predicted.

  The door to the control room wasn’t locked, so she ran right in as the doors slid open. There were two guards left to man the controls but Riana simply ignored them. She ran right across the room and through the door that led to Isolation, where she’d seen guards take Cain earlier.

  One of the guards had turned around at her entrance but he didn’t react until she was disappearing through the door. “Hey,” he shouted belatedly, when he’d recovered from the shock of seeing a naked woman appear out of nowhere.

  She knew he’d chase her but didn’t pause to look back. She saw in relief that the door had led to another short corridor—this one with only one door at the end.

  Cain was there, ready and waiting for her, looking out the small window in the door. She half consciously registered that his face looked terrible—with one eye swollen shut and dried blood on the side of his jaw.

  But, still on her adrenaline high, she didn’t let it distract her. As she ran up, Cain started gesturing in the window. He pointed down to the keypad on the outside, and then he fingered out a short series of numbers.

  She understood immediately and, as she lurched to a stop, panting and flushed with heat, she quickly punched in the numbers as he signed them.

  As she did, she heard the guard running up behind her. It only took a few seconds for him to reach her.

  But she keyed in the last number as he grabbed her. So the doors slid open and Cain emerged in full fight mode. It only took three blows for him to lay out the guard and claim his weapon.

  Grabbing her arm, Cain started toward the control center. The other guard had left his post at the sound of the struggle so Cain calmly shot him in the shoulder, sending him flopping to the floor.

  Riana hugged herself—feeling self-conscious and jittery—as Cain walked over to the control panel. There was a bank of display screens, on which showed surveillance images of the Hold. It appeared to be chaos, with rioting prisoners and scrambling guards, just as they’d hoped.

  “I’m opening the transport docking doors,” Cain said curtly, pulling down a lever and flicking a switch. “But we’ll need the trigger key that Davis carries to undock the transport.”

  Riana’s mind was such a blur of anxiety, adrenaline and excitement that she could barely process that this actually seemed to be happening. “Are you sure he’ll come back up?”

  Cain left the control panel and took her arm again—his grip tight and efficient. He pulled her back toward the medical room. “Yes. He’s not an idiot. After he gives the guards orders down there, he’ll be back up. Once he’s able to think clearly, he won’t leave a prisoner up here unshackled for long. Even one as tempting as you.”

  Despite his words, his expression was curt and businesslike. He was vigilantly focused on their plan and wasn’t wasting any time with warm looks or appreciation.

  They reentered the medical room and Riana grabbed her clothes and started to pull them on.

  Cain stationed himself beside the door—ready to tackle Davis as soon as the man entered. Once he was in place, he finally let his eyes rest on Riana for
longer than a few seconds.

  “So everything went as we planned?” he asked gruffly.

  “Yeah.” Her voice was slightly muffled as she pulled her camisole over her head. “Perfect. For a while, I was afraid he was going to fuck me while I was still bound, but he finally cracked. Thank God.”

  Cain’s eyes followed her as she came over to stand beside him so she’d be out of sight when Davis entered. “How far did he get?” If possible, Cain’s voice was even gruffer than before.

  “Poor guy was just unzipping when the explosion happened. All he got to do was feel my breasts, finger me a little and kiss me.” She let out a sigh and felt an uncomfortable twisting in her belly. “He was so excited. I actually feel kind of bad for him.”

  Cain stiffened beside her. “Do you?”

  Noticing his tense face, Riana frowned. “You’re not going to get weird on me, are you? This was part of the plan.”

  His mouth pressed into a tight line and something almost predatory appeared in his pale blue eyes. “Your getting aroused was not part of the plan.”

  “What?”

  He breathed in deeply through his nose, a muscle in his jaw twitching from tension. “I can smell you. I know what it smells like when you’re turned on.”

  Riana sputtered for a minute. Then she spit out, “Fuck you, Cain. I did my part the best I could. So just shut up and do your part. Get the trigger key from Davis and get us out of here.”

  He returned her glare with a stony look but he didn’t say anything more.

  Riana stewed in silence until she heard footsteps approaching in the corridor.

  Then everything happened at once.

  The doors slid open and Davis appeared. Cain grabbed him before he could react and pummeled him with a series of heavy blows. He struck him a few more times than was necessary but Davis was still alive when Cain grabbed the trigger key from a hook on his belt.

  Riana couldn’t help but throw one last, guilty look back at Davis’ body as she and Cain took off at a run to the docking station.

  After that it was easy. The docking doors were open so, as they took their places at the controls of the transport, Cain simply had to put the trigger key in its slot, start the engine and pull out into the ocean.

  The transport was not one of the Coalition’s sleek newer vessels. It was clunky and battered, and it lurched and groaned as Cain undocked it. But it moved. And it started rising toward the surface of the ocean with only a few more creaks and sputters.

  And it was going to get them out of this hellhole. Off the planet completely.

  As far as Riana was concerned, it was a wonderful, beautiful craft.

  She was silent as they emerged from the ocean and Cain adjusted the controls to launch the transport off the surface of the water and into the thin atmosphere of Genus 6.

  When they’d broken through the gravitational force, Riana let out a long exhalation. She felt weird. And shaky. And kind of sick.

  Cain glanced over at her. “You okay?”

  She blinked, having a hard time processing anything. “Huh?”

  “You look white. Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t believe this is happening.” She put a hand on her stomach. “Did we really get away?”

  Cain’s eyes softened a little as they rested on her face. “We’re getting there.”

  “It all happened so fast,” she mumbled. “And with this clunky transport, I guess I’m feeling kind of dizzy.”

  “That’s natural.”

  She tried to frown at him, but she was trembling too much. “You don’t look—” She broke off, groaning as she felt a sudden wave of nausea. Then, with a flash of panic, she realized what was going to happen.

  She fumbled with her safety belt and went to grab a waste container just as her stomach started to heave. She vomited painfully. A stark physical reaction that seemed to be in response not just to the jerky motion of the transport and the shift in atmosphere and gravity but also to the adrenaline high of the last few hours and the trauma of the last two months.

  Feeling better after she threw up, she wiped her mouth with her hand.

  “All right?” Cain asked, a flicker of worry on his stoic face.

  Burning with embarrassment, she slanted him a sheepish look. “Yeah. Just pretend you didn’t see that, all right?”

  He grunted—a grunt she recognized as both relief and amusement. “I didn’t see a thing.”

  Riana stood up, feeling more grounded now that she’d become used to the motion of the transport. “Are they going to chase us?”

  “They’ll make at least a cursory pursuit, but they’ll need to call in for help and that will take time. We need to dump this transport and find a safer spacecraft as soon as we can. Genus 5 is less than an hour away. We’ll head there. The capital is a big city. We can get lost there easily enough.”

  “Sounds good.” She was about to take her seat again when she thought of something else. “So we have an hour?”

  “Just about. Why? Did you want to take a nap?”

  “No. Too jittery for that yet. But there’s probably a shower in the head. If you don’t need me to help…”

  Cain smiled, an uncharacteristically soft look on his face. “I’ve got it covered up here. Go take a shower.”

  Riana did. And she only felt a little guilty that Cain had to fly the ship and couldn’t indulge in one himself.

  The shower was old-fashioned, a little rusty and wasn’t particularly clean. But it had been two months since Riana had been able to take one.

  With the exception of having sex with Cain, nothing had ever felt better in her life.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, they launched off Genus 5. They’d left the transport in a public docking station and Cain had earned enough money through a couple of jobs for hire to buy them a meal and a change of clothes—people in outlying cities like these were always looking for cheap manual labor to pay by the hour. They’d gone to a rather sleazy bar that evening and Cain had used the remaining money to join a card game. By the end of the night, he’d won a rickety spacecraft—this one safely anonymous—and enough money for fuel and adequate provisions.

  Riana wasn’t surprised by his success at gambling.

  No one could bluff better than Cain.

  She’d felt awkward and uncertain ever since they landed. She wasn’t sure what Cain’s plans were once they were safely away. He would have had every right to dump her at the first convenient location, instead of hauling her around. But she certainly didn’t suggest it.

  While they were on Genus 5, they were still at risk of being recaptured. So Riana let Cain take the lead and was just grateful he was looking out for her still.

  But once they’d launched again, Riana’s uncertainty spiraled up with new force.

  Where was Cain going, anyway? When were they going to discuss future plans?

  Would he want to go back to his old life and forget about her completely?

  All of the unanswered questions made her stomach knot as the creaky craft shuddered and rattled in response to the momentum of their takeoff.

  When they’d made it safely away without disturbance, Riana finally couldn’t stand the uncertainty any longer. Too nervous to jump right into the most pressing questions, she began, “So you think they won’t keep coming after us?”

  Cain shook his head. He’d been even quieter than usual since the escape—only giving her necessary explanations and instructions. He hadn’t touched her at all, which worried her as much as his silence. “They’ll do the obvious things, but they won’t bother with a full-fledged manhunt. We aren’t enemies of the state. And they won’t want the publicity of admitting that anyone managed to escape from one of their prison planets. Occasionally, convicts have made escapes before, but the news is always hushed up. It will be easy enough to cover up—with the explosion and rioting that followed. They’ll just announce that we died in the chaos. The other prisoners wi
ll probably believe it, and no one else will even know to care.”

  It made sense. And, knowing how the Coalition functioned primarily to cover its own ass, Riana didn’t doubt that’s exactly what would happen in this.

  “So what are you going to do now?” Riana’s voice cracked slightly as she asked but she was getting an increasing feeling of foreboding. Cain hadn’t turned away from the controls of the ship—even though it was on automatic cruise now and he didn’t need to pay that much attention.

  For the first time, he turned to look at her, and his face was set and unreadable. “I’m going home.”

  “Oh.”

  She had no idea where his home was. Where he lived. What he did. Who his family was.

  He might have a wife and kids.

  He might be anything.

  “Where would you like me to take you?” He’d turned back to stare straight ahead.

  Riana swallowed hard and tried to think. “I’m not sure. Since I’m a convict, I can hardly go back to the university. Even if they aren’t going to try to track me down, I can’t really just appear back on Earth and demand my old job back.”

  “No, but it’s not difficult to take on a new identity these days. I would have to myself but I refused to give them my name.” Once technology had advanced to an extent that fingerprint identification was obsolete, the Coalition had turned to other methods of keeping track of people. But the Coalition was too vast to keep records on everyone, so only those born in Coalition hospitals or those on staff with the Coalition had their genetic identity on record. Those born on underdeveloped planets like Cain had been could easily avoid getting tagged in such a way. It didn’t make a difference in the criminal system, since they imprisoned people whether they had a real name or not, but she could understand now why Cain had been stubborn about this. He would have lost his chance to go home again otherwise.

  After a reflective pause, Cain continued, “You can probably forge identification and credentials without too much trouble and get a new job—maybe even doing archeology. I’m sure you have friends or family who could help you.”

  Growing dread was a sickening weight in her gut as she tried to imagine starting her life over now. Alone.