by Celeste Raye
Talon’s fingers rested on her shoulders. Her clit tingled, and her nipples stiffened. Her muscles went slightly rigid as her breath sucked in.
Talon saw her as nothing but a capable warrior, not a woman, and she knew she would never be able to change that fact.
She was a warrior, and a powerful one. Skills she had learned made her formidable. Her hatred made her unlikely to be defeated.
His warm breath washed over her cheek. “What is it?”
He turned her slightly, and she glanced upward at his face then away very quickly. “I have a bad feeling.”
She did. It was not just related to the fact that she had a massive desire for him that was growing more out of control every day either. Her gut told her that something was wrong and that they should see it.
A frown erupted between Talon’s brows. “Talk to me about that.”
Talon always listened to her. He didn’t dismiss her because she had a woman’s anatomy. He didn’t notice that anatomy, and she sighed and stepped slightly away from him, hoping the distance would help her clear her thoughts and figure out what it was that was eating at her gut and whispering of danger.
“I don’t know what it is. It’s just there.”
Talon’s eyes went past her to the windows. Space and planets lay out there, but all she could focus on was his handsome face. Another shiver of desire ran through her body, and she tamped it down. That sense of foreboding came back.
Talon sighed. “You know what? Maybe it’s this exchange.”
She considered that. Selling off ill-gotten gains was always tricky and dangerous, and it was made more so by the fact that the Federation had a high price tag on pirates’ heads.
She managed to find air and drag it into her lungs. “Perhaps.”
“We’ll skip it. We can head to an outlier instead.”
Relief hit. Her eyes went back to the plenty they had been supposed to land on. Her breath hitched. Desire shook her, but so did foreboding. “If you think that is best.”
“I always trust my gut, and I have to admit that I feel like something is off here too. I can’t say what.”
Talon walked away. Jessica turned from the windows then back, a small frown on her forehead. Was it just that exchange? There was maybe something wrong there, but what if what she really felt was the clear and present danger that was her attraction to Talon?
That could very well be.
Trusting Talon was stupid. He would do whatever it took to accomplish his end game, even die. He would burn the whole universe to bits if he thought it would get him what he wanted, and getting in the way of that was sure to result in her getting hurt.
Not to mention that at the moment, the ships Talon commanded, and the credits he helped her to acquire, were something she was actually dependent on and that too rankled her. She had been dependent on a system and a man before and look where that had gotten her: on a slaver ship bound for a pleasure planet and with her mind wiped by the Capo.
The ship banked sharply. She heard the whirring and roaring that meant the cloaking device had gone up. Another pang struck. What if she had been wrong? Then they had just lost a perfect opportunity to offload contraband and every minute that passed with that contraband on the ship was another moment that they were in danger. Their papers as a cargo ship would pass inspection, but there was no way that they could explain the contraband, and that would mean having to kill whatever Federation officials boarded them.
Picking a fight with the Federation was stupid. They owned most of the universe. They were a powerful corporation run by the wealthiest planets that had brought smaller planets and systems into line by bringing war to those planets and systems and then taking control when the armies they were up against fell.
A fight with the Federation was just what she wanted though—and Talon was equally willing to fight that Federation. The Federation had destroyed his system and planet. Killed his parents, and had done so all to gain control of a wormhole that the Federation had known would collapse and cause the system to collapse along with it.
Her own reasons were just as bitter. It had not just been that they had sent her off with her mind wiped and to become a slave for a pleasure planet, where she would have died in chains and in a filthy cell, but because the Federation had destroyed all that she had loved.
She had managed to keep her deepest secrets, even in the mind wipe, because Yori had taught her to build memory caches in her brain and hold things within. They were like lockboxes that she could open and close at will, and she had slammed them shut, locked them, and then buried them deep in a hidden chamber of her mind when she had been captured by her fellow Capos after her betrayal was discovered.
Of course, she had betrayed them, her fellow Capo and the Federation.
Under the ground lived far too many humans, all starving and sick, all of them virtual slaves to the credit chips implanted in their arms at birth and whose bills were always so high.
There were some down there who birthed their children outside the Nexus, and so they escaped that fate of being sent above to work while being forced to go underground again after their twelve-hour day to slowly starve to death.
She had not been able to stand it. She had helped more than one person remove their credit chips, and she’d also learned a secret that not even Jeval, one of Talon’s brothers and a being blessed with the gift of being able to slip into people’s minds, could uncover.
The ship hewed hard right. The shudder and thrust of the engines made the floor rumble below her feet. Her eyes scanned the space around the ship yet again.
Nothing.
It was highly possible that she was afraid of the thing growing in her, the desire that made her want to go to Talon’s bedchamber and slip into his bed, and arms.
She did want that.
She craved it.
More than anything else.
More than credits.
More than revenge.
More than knowing what it was that she had hidden with her brain.
She wanted Talon and so badly that her body ached continually with that want and need.
And he did not want her.
Chapter 2 - Talon
Talon’s feet carried him back to the bridge, but his thoughts stayed on Jessica.
She was a human, but she fought like the finest of Revant warriors. She was fierce and proud, and she was skilled in combat of all type.
She was a terrific asset, and she was one who was starting to be harder for him to have around.
His body always went tight with lust whenever she was around, and he knew that that was problematic. She had no interest in him at all, and he doubted that that was just because he was the leader of their crew.
Jessica had a deeply ingrained distrust of everyone around her, even him, and after everything that she had gone through; he could not really blame her for that. She had been betrayed by not just her fellow Capos—a betrayal she had rather expected, all things considered—she had been betrayed by one of the very people she had been trying to help.
His lips compressed as he recalled that she had said that the informant had sold her out for nothing more than a few pounds of nutro-loaf and a hundred credits.
It was pitiful and sad that someone would be desperate enough to sell a secret and a woman who was helping to keep the very person who had informed on her from starving.
But then again, he knew how it could happen.
When he had been a prisoner in the mines, one of his own people, a fellow Revant, had sold out a secret for an extra ration of water and food. Just one extra ration and he had never gotten it either because the overseers at the mine had killed him as soon as he had spilled that secret.
That secret had been that Talon and his brothers, as well as several of the other crew members forced into that slavery, were hiding the weapons they had been forging out of rock ends and bits of broken mining tools. They had been planning on using those things in an escape effort that was thw
arted before it ever began thanks to the informer in their midst.
He understood betrayal. He completely understood why Jessica trusted no one and likely never would. But that distrust and fear of betrayal meant that she reserved her loyalty for herself and had yet to tender any to him or to any other member of the crew.
She was not exactly keeping it a secret that she was just there because she wanted to get her share of the plunder that they took from the ships that they wrecked. She cared nothing about his personal need to wipe out the Gorlites, the parasitic race that was the scourge of the skies. The same race that had helped to engineer the death of his parents and had sold him and his siblings, as well as many others of his people, into slavery.
He hated the Gorlites, and that hatred coupled with the need for revenge for what they had done meant that he was determined to erase that species from the entire universe forever. As far as he was concerned their extinction was not only necessary for his revenge, but to prevent them from doing the same to anyone else.
Jessica thought that his mission to eradicate the Gorlites was problematic on a lot of levels. She felt that he often paid more attention to hunting that race than hunting down ships that they could wreck and then pocket the credits. She argued, quite often, that they lost too many crewmembers during battles with the Gorlites and that hunting them took up far too much time that could be better spent earning credits.
He could not argue that she wasn’t correct in those things because she was. He had deliberately turned away from ships that he had known were ripe for the plucking because he had gotten word that the worm-like species that he hated so much was nearby and he would much rather kill them than wreck ships.
Talon knew that as soon as Jessica had the credits that she needed in order to live on a planet where her Old Earth status would not cause her to be hauled into a Federation prison cell, she would leave him. A small but insistent voice inside his head often asked him if that was why he chose not to wreck the ships that he did turn away from.
It was foolish of him to want her so much, but he did. It was getting harder to deny that and eventually he would either have to send her off the ship and out of sight in order to get her off his mind or simply…
Simply what?
Tell her what he felt for her?
That was laughable. Jessica had no interest in him. Of all the females in the universe, he had to desire one who felt absolutely nothing for him!
The bridge hummed with activity. Caleb was a young human who had found himself in debt on one of the pleasure planets and was being hunted by the Federation task forces. His answer to that was to take shelter in and stowaway upon Talon’s ship. He waved at Talon urgently.
Talon strode to where Caleb stood. “What is it?”
Caleb’s fingers stroked the scraggly beard covering the lower half of his youthful face. “There is a massive fleet headed right toward us. All Federation, and all warships. There’s really no way to avoid them. Their cloaking devices would get us past them as we couldn’t get high enough to get over them and dropping them would send us skimming over the planet’s force fields.”
Talon peered down at the monitor. Caleb was right, it was a vast fleet. There were at least one hundred heat signatures showing on the screen. The size of the signatures signified warships. A frown marred Talon’s forehead as he considered that.
“That makes no sense. The Federation is not currently at war with any planet or system. Why would they move an entire fleet, and in such a formation?”
Jessica’s voice spoke from behind him, making his head turn to look at her. “I would say that they are at war. The evidence is there on the screen. Whoever they are at war against likely does not know that they are about to have a battle brought to them. What systems are nearby?”
Inwardly Talon bristled. Jessica had a cool, commanding way about her that both aroused him and irritated him. She was used to being in charge, and she had a real problem with authority, especially his. He should’ve asked those questions himself. He would have if she had given him a moment to speak!
He said, “The only nearby planets and system are pleasure planets. We are in the Star World system. There would be no need to bring a war to the system because it has Federation loyalty and alliances. It feeds many credits into the Federation’s pockets and always has done that willingly.”
Jessica said, “Back on Old Earth they used to tell the story about how many, many centuries ago, all of the ships would come across the water—”
Caleb interrupted, “You mean back in the days when they still had ships that ran on water?”
Jessica nodded. Her light eyes probed at first Talon’s face and then at Caleb’s. “Yes. Back when there was sufficient water for ships to be able to use it to move about in. Anyway, there was a great city on one side of what is now the above and over the ground, and the ships would come into the city. The soldiers would spill off the ships and spend several days and nights enjoying the pleasures that the city could give them. They called it…” Her face scrunched up in thought. “Fleet Week. At least I think so.”
Talon said, “That would be an interesting thing to see, but somehow this feels far more sinister to me.”
Her eyes met his again, and he read the same concern in her expression that he knew must be in his as well. She said, “The Federation is forever at war. Could it be that they are merely passing through due to a need to refuel? Could it be that they have decided to shift part of their fleet to another planet in order to protect that planet better?”
Talon said, “One hundred ships is a large fleet, but the Federation commands hundreds of thousands of ships. To us, this is a vast fleet, but to them, it is nothing just a drop in the bucket of space. It could very well be that this particular fleet is being shifted to a new battle post. Perhaps the pleasure planets are having trouble with space bandits again.”
Caleb said, “I’m not sure I care what the reasons are. What I do care about is the fact that they are rapidly overtaking us, boss. Maybe we should do something to get the hell out of their way.”
Talon had to admit Caleb had a point. “We can’t go under, and we can’t go over. We can’t ride beside them with our cloaking devices because they’d be likely to plow right into us. Our only option is to get out of their path. We head to Silver Star. There are gaming halls there as well as supplies but it’s the smallest of all in the system, and it’s the last outpost that a ship fleet of that size would choose to go to.”
Caleb said, “That sounds like a good idea, boss. I put in the coordinates just now.”
Talon nodded and turned away. Caleb was young and human, but he was a damn good pilot, and between the two of them, they managed to stay ahead of whatever came their way.
When he turned, he found himself face to face with Jessica again. He had to shift quickly to keep his growing erection from making a visible tent in his trousers. Her blonde hair had been brushed until it shone sometime earlier in the day and it hung around her sharp features and beautifully sculpted face in shimmering waves of gold and honey.
The urge to wrap his hand into that hair, to tug her face to his and give her a long and deep kiss was so strong that he had to take a step to the right and put his hands tightly to his sides to keep himself from acting on that urge. The woman was going to drive him completely mad.
He headed for the observation deck of the bridge, intent on keeping an eye on the skies because nothing beats a good lookout. Cloaking devices could hide ships from even the most sophisticated of controls and heat registration panels. He needed to know if there was more Federation ships there and what was registering.
And he really needed to put some space between him and Jessica too.
That last part of his plan failed when she stepped up beside him. She spoke in a low voice and that voice, husky and slightly gravelly but also pure and sweet and very feminine, made his desire raise a few more notches.
“I wonder if we could take one of those ships?�
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He glanced over at her. She was staring out the windows, but there was a little smile playing along her mouth. His own heart surged a little bit at the thought. If he loved anything, he loved a challenge. A challenge that involved the taking of a Federation ship was always one that he enjoyed. To take a Federation ship flying alongside an entire fleet?
“I was just wondering the very same thing but, in all honesty, we would have to be crazy to try it.”
“Oh, I agree. It would be stupid. For all we know, all that they are carrying are weapons that we can’t use. I mean, how many weapons do we really need? Or perhaps they’re carrying fresh food supplies from the farming and agricultural planets, but why would we need those? Or maybe they’re carrying water. Real, fresh, cold water from one of the unspoiled planets that still produces it. Not that we need water.”
His grin was devilish. “I see what you are doing here.”
She gave him a sidelong look. Her eyebrow tilted up toward her hairline. “I am not doing anything except trying to dissuade you from such a foolish plan.”
He wanted to laugh. Jessica had a way of invigorating him, and not just because she was so damn beautiful or because his body wanted hers even if he knew he could never tell her so, but because she was wild enough, and crazy enough, to actually contemplate trying to take one of those ships.
“I don’t believe I said that it was a good plan. I also do not recall having said that it was a plan that I thought we should embark upon.”
Jessica’s head nodded up and down. “You’re correct. You didn’t say it.”
Talon wanted to do it. Not just because she had suggested it but because the challenge of it, because if he managed it, that would stick a thorn in the Federation’s side that they would not be able to ignore. Other than killing Gorlites, his biggest pleasure lay in creating problems for the Federation.
“I wonder if they are carrying water.”
His words made Jessica’s head turned toward him. Her lip touched her tongue gently, and he stared at that pink triangle of flesh as it slid across her bottom lip in a slow stroke that told him exactly how much she would have enjoyed fresh water. The recyclers aboard the ship made sure that they never went thirsty, but the water that they drink was flat and often sterile tasting. She said, “How could we know?”