by Calinda B
Now, though ... something was wrong. He sniffed. No alien odors, so no one else in the room but him or her. Her ... she was close.
He opened his eyes, a smile ready for the woman who’d pleased him with her surrender and her passion.
The first thing he saw was his own laser weapon aimed at his chest.
Then he focused on her arm holding it steady and her face behind it. She was fully dressed, her vest zipped to her throat. Although her lips were still kiss swollen, her beautiful eyes were heavy, shadows like bruises beneath them. Her gaze was cold, colder than he’d have thought eyes that color could be.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice hoarse with sleep. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Her flat tone ramped up the foreboding icing in his gut. “Well, I’ll tell you, mate. You’ve been out for hours. Defenseless. Guess you used up all your reserves pulling that power play on me. You’ve Indigon somewhere in your mongrel mix. It’s enough to use, right?”
She stroked his face with her fingertips, that eerie look creeping him out. “But not enough of their genetics to let you use the power without a cost,” she mused. “Takes a lot out of you.”
Guilt roiled sickly in his gut.
Fuck. She was furious, and with justification. He’d wanted information and used the strange power he’d inherited from one of the beings in his unknown past to get it. Nothing wrong with that. In his world, information was power. A man used the weapons he had to get the first and keep the latter.
But then, for the first time since he’d realized what he was, what he could do, he’d gotten sidetracked. He hadn’t cared about anything but getting inside her. He’d used his mojo to gain a woman’s sexual surrender. And this one wasn’t just a woman, she was a warrior. And in spite of her background, a fiercely proud one.
No, she wasn’t just another woman. What he’d done would have been wrong even then, because he might use women for his pleasure, but he let them choose.
Not that anything they’d done had been against her will, but ... he’d bent her will. Okay, more than a bit. He’d used his mojo on her to get intel, but he should have made sure she was well out of it before he had her. And he sure as hells shouldn’t have started the whole thing when he was turned on from Trix’s teasing.
And then somehow, with Scala, he’d become tangled in the coils of his own power. Hadn’t even thought of stopping until he had her.
“I knew something was wrong,” she said, still in that eerily calm voice. “I felt like I was drugged, like my will was half-gone, out of my control. But all I could think about was how much I wanted you, what a thrill it was to have you want me so much. And how many times you were making me come.
“When I woke up,” she went on, “I knew I’d been played. No sick feeling from drugs or too much alcohol. Just ...” she shook her head. “Just knew I’d been fucked in more ways than one.”
He lifted his own hand to cover hers, opening his mouth to explain.
She lifted his weapon, cocking it. He froze as the tiny green indicator light gleamed.
“Not a very wise thing for the captain to do, leaving yourself vulnerable like that,” she went on. “If we’d been attacked, you wouldn’t have been worth skrog shit, would you?”
Anger blew away the guilt roiling sickly in his gut. He welcomed it, fanned the flames.
“My crew can handle the craft, get us out of danger until Darry could give me an adrenaline shot if needed.”
She’d watched him sleep. He quarking hated the vulnerable feeling that gave him. He was supposed to be the one watching over his people.
“And you used me,” she went on, her voice shaking with intensity now. “I don’t whore for anybody, Tal. I take a lover, it’s my choice. My choice, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“I won’t be here for much longer. I’m getting off at the first stop we come to. Until then, guess you’ve got your Indi powers, and I got nothin’ but my skills. But here’s fair warning—you pull that shit on me again, I’ll use your weapon on you. I swear I will.”
All right, he was done with this. She wouldn’t even let him apologize.
“I didn’t do it to fuck you,” he snarled. “I needed intel. You’re new. Something of an enigma. I have people around me, I need to know I can trust them.”
The laser shook in her grasp, and something like fear flickered through her gaze. “Find out anything interesting?”
“Yeah. That you’re a great fuck when you let yourself go. Hottest fuck I’ve had for a long time. And here’s another thing to think about. Kill me, and my crew will dump you on your desert alone, looking for your next gig with that chip going off. You think I’m bad? Someone like the bitch we’re after gets hold of you, you’d end servicing males that make me look like an angel.”
“Already been there, mate,” she whispered, old pain and rage peering out of her amber eyes like something so horrific she kept it caged deep.
No. He reached for her, the protector in him snarling to life. Whatever agony of memory it was that writhed within her, he’d slay it for her. That’s what he did.
“Babe,” he breathed. “Come here.”
But she moved too quickly, sliding out of reach. Standing, she backed away to the foot of his bed. He moved to keep her in sight, on both elbows, his legs splayed beneath the covers.
“I don’t need your pity,” she snarled, her lush lips curled with contempt. “Anyway, as far as your crew making me pay, I didn’t say I’d use a weapon to take you down, Darkrunner. No, you’d look like you just ... fell. Yeah, maybe off that gangplank of yours. Don’t forget this is a killer body in more ways than one.”
She cocked her head, examining him like a new and somewhat disgusting species of creature. “Darkrunner. They call you that because you scuttle around inside minds, where you don’t belong?”
That struck home, shame stamping heat across his cheekbones. “Babe, listen—”
Her arm straightened, her eyes narrowed dangerously. “No. No more of your sweet words. Stay out of my head.”
She fired, a slash of red streaking out toward his balls. The charge hit the covers between his legs, and heat scorched his balls. His body tensed hard as a cerametal rod, waiting for the pain, but it never came. Instead, smoke bloomed between his thighs, the stench of burning fabric rising with it. Air hissed from the mattress beneath him.
His laser landed on the bed beside his hand. She glared down at him for a moment. Then she turned her back on him and stalked out of his stateroom just as the sprinklers spurted on, water spitting down on him in a final derisive splutter.
He squinted through the rain at the closed hatch. Why was he certain that though she’d damaged his bed and his ego, he’d broken something far more valuable?
* * *
Scala sat at the table in the galley, staring blindly into her mug of coffee. Steam rose in lazy spirals, soft against her chin. The brew itself was black as Darkrunner’s hair, black as those beautiful tattoos all over his body. Black as his fucking heart.
The hatch opened and she tensed. His three crewmembers sat at the table, Darry and Trix playing a desultory match of holodice, Dalg feeding his face as usual, all three of them diplomatically ignoring her.
Tal was the only one missing, so this was him. But damned if she’d look at him. She was afraid if she did she would kill him—or try anyway. Betrayal writhed in her gut like a viper, along with fear. What if she’d let something slip last night? Something he hadn’t had time to think about, but when he did, he’d realize the significance and know she was a spy.
She tensed even further when she felt him close behind her. She waited, her hands shaking on her mug, for an accusation.
Instead, his arm appeared over her shoulder, his hand opened, and something dropped into her lap. She reached down to catch it reflexively, then stared at it, not understanding. Her breath caught.
It was a laser weapon. Small, and sheathed in amber cerametal, chased w
ith pure gold. Topaz winked from a design picked out on the side. He’d given her a gift.
She scowled up at him anger lasering away her fear. “What’s this? Payment for sex?”
He cast her one darkling look over his shoulder and then slammed out of the cabin, taking half the oxygen with him. Scala glared after him. Bastard, thinking he could buy her forgiveness. And she wasn’t disappointed that he hadn’t tried to touch her, not in the slightest.
The others sat in silence for a moment, their game suspended. Scala stared stubbornly into her coffee, the laser clutched in her lap. She stroked the cerametal with her thumb. It was still warm from his grasp.
Trix sighed loudly, and slapped her hands on the table. “Okay, enough. That, girlfriend, is the equivalent of a boy giving you his favorite toy, the one he carries around in his pocket always, and sets on his bedside hovertray so he can admire it before he sleeps. Given to him by a very wealthy dude, for helping rid New Seattle of a very bad dude.”
Scala stared dumbly, the other woman’s words echoing in her head.
Trix rolled her eyes. “Great God beyond, I wish you two would just admit you’re a matched set and get over it.”
Darry made an odd noise, and Scala’s gaze whipped to him to find a wide grin on his face. He covered it with one hand, his eyes dancing.
Dalg held up his huge hands, shaking his head. “Peace, woman. I’m just a bystander here.”
“You agree with me,” Trix snapped at him and Darry. “And you know it.”
“I do,” Darry said, giving Scala a straight look. “I get you think Tal stepped over the line, but we’re not exactly on a sanctioned mission here. He needs to know who he can trust.”
“Yeah, so do I.”
Trix glared at her. “You can trust Tal Darkrunner to the end of this galaxy and beyond.”
“Right. I can trust him to behave like an out-of-control alpha, and pull every dirty trick he can, including—”
“No.” The rest of Scala’s words were lost as Trix leaned forward over the narrow table, her pixie face ablaze with intensity. “You listen to me. You wanna know about Tal Darkrunner? I’ll tell you. He was abandoned on the docks in New Seattle when he was a tot. Never knew who his parents were. He survived, somehow. I don’t know what he had to do, but I got a pretty good idea, because I had to do some of it myself, and so did Darry here. Whoring, stealing, running errands for any slimeball who had a little credit or something to eat, a warm place to sleep.”
Darry looked miserable, but he said nothing, just began to flip his gold coin over one hand as he stared at nothing.
Trix raged on. “Tal came out of hell, and he came out strong, and determined take care of himself so no one could ever have power over him again. Yeah, he has a kind of force the rest of us don’t have, but it’s not just his mojo, it’s him. Tal doesn’t just take care of himself, he takes care of everyone around him. He has more beings gathered around him than you’d believe. And every one of them knows they’re alive and well because of him. Because the slimers and the other gangs are more afraid of him than they are vicious, or greedy. So they stay out of his way, and they leave us all alone. If they don’t, they pay.”
Darry was flipping his coin so swiftly it was a dancing blur, but he jerked his chin in agreement. “She’s right, Scala. If you stay, you can trust him all the way.”
Stay … with him? Scala shot out of her seat, shaking her head. “You’re all crazy, if you think—No. Just no.”
She had to get out of here. She wasn’t sure where to—Tal Darkrunner, to tell him what she thought of him handing her his priceless treasure, or to hide in her cubby. Because the truth was, she had no idea what she thought. Her mind was whirling like the inside of a black hole full of space debris.
“Fine, go,” Trix huffed. “Stupid Serp.”
“Let her go, babe,” Darry soothed. “Tal will settle it.”
“No, he won’t.” Scala headed for the passageway. “I will.”
She couldn’t carry the burden of knowing how hard Tal had fought to survive, how tight the bonds of trust between Tal and his crew, and go on lying to him, lying to all of them.
She shoved the laser in the back of her belt and went to find him.
He sat in the cabin, both feet on the floor, hands on the arms of his seat. His chin was down, and he was watching the entrance as if waiting for her to appear. His face was an expressionless mask, only his eyes alive.
Scala swallowed, her breakfast roiling in her gut. He was waiting for her to accept or reject his offer to stay with him. But when she was through telling him the truth, or at least as much of it as she dared, that offer would evaporate like a vapor trail.
Because if she had difficulty forgiving Tal for seducing her, how much less chance did she have that he’d ever forgive her for spying on him?
Chapter 12
Something was wrong with her. Tal sat very still and watched Scala cross the cabin to him, her steps slow as if she were walking to her own execution. It wasn’t just that she was going to reject his offer. No, this was more than that. And it was bad.
“I have something to tell you,” she said. Under her golden tan, she looked ill. The alpha in him snarled to be loosed, to go and take her in his arms and make it right, whatever pained her.
But hard won caution held him back. Something she’d said last night whispered just out of reach, something other than ‘take me’ and ‘harder’
“So tell me,” he said.
Fire was kindling in his gut, the flames feeding on the certainty that something was very wrong, and it emanated from the beautiful woman standing before him, guilt in every line of her face and stance. What had she said to him last night? He’d been so fucking turned on, he could barely question her. But he had, he remembered that much.
As the Z went into a banking turn, Scala gave him a guarded look. And he remembered. His hands closed on the arms of his chair, digging into the skrog leather covered frame of the seat until they were numb.
“I have something to tell you, about why I’m here,” she said, her voice quavering. “It’s not … for the reason you believe.”
“You think I don’t know that? I do.”
She didn’t need to know he’d finally had this revelation two secs ago. “Now tell me the rest.”
She froze, her eyes riveted on him. Good. Finally she understood how close he was to wrapping both hands around her throat. He shot out of his chair, consumed with fury so great he could hardly contain it.
“Tell me all of it!” he demanded. “Last night I asked if you’d talked to your ‘cousin’ about why we’re here, and you said ‘She already knew’. How? How did she know? And maybe more important—why would she know that?”
Darry and Trix appeared in the passageway behind her. Tal ignored them, pacing toward Scala. Nothing mattered in the face of his realization that she was some kind of plant, a lovely, sensual spy set on him to do … what? And for whom?
He took another step and Scala flinched.
“Afraid?” he asked. “Good. Better listen to that fear, because I will know everything, Snake Eyes. Before I toss your lying, deceitful Serpentian ass out in this desert. We’ll see how you fare with all your precious vipers and adders and the rest of your kind.”
She glared, her jaw setting pugnaciously. “You don’t have to threaten me, I’ll tell you. And you won’t have to put me off—I’ll go myself. Rather hang out with vipers than a manipulative Indigon mongrel any day.”
Darry groaned. “Careful,” he murmured.
Scala ignored him, her voice slashing through the cabin like a blade.
“I’m here to surveill you, ganger. To spy on you—make sure you stay out of New Seattle.”
Tal stared at her. “What the fuck?” he demanded. “Who—? A rival gang? Did that bitch Mordacity hire you?”
She gave him a blank look. “Who?”
“No,” he growled. “No, don’t tell me this is about Logan Stark. That security expert o
f his, Berenson—he was there to get me out of the way.”
She raised her winged brows. “Wow, got it one. Good job.”
Disbelief warred with a strange pain in his chest—betrayal. He should remember how it felt, but he’d forgotten in the thrill of having her. “This is all a fucking setup, with you spying on me for Stark? Is he that worried that I’ll steal his woman?”
She stared at him as if seeing him clearly for the first time. And not liking what she saw.
An unaccustomed heat burned in his cheeks. He would not feel guilt over asking her to stay with him even as he pursued Kiri. That was none of her business, or Kiri’s either.
“No,” she said. “That is, I don’t know or care about Logan Stark. I’m doing a favor for Kiri. She’s my friend. And she’d just as soon one of her … lovers didn’t murder the other.”
He scowled, hating the way she now stared at a point over his shoulder, instead of looking him in the eye. “Stark really is missing … in my city.”
“That’s the word.”
“So sending Tal off to hunt this slaver was just a distraction?” Darry asked.
Scala shrugged, as if she didn’t know or care about that. “Not like the galaxy won’t be better off without her.”
“I just want to know one thing,” Trix demanded, shouldering past her. “Are you the reason I spent an entire night puking my guts out?”
“Yes,” Scala admitted. “I’m sorry about that part, Trix. I … needed a way onto the Zharrdul.”
“So it wasn’t just a coincidence that you were on Quol-Ray?” Darry asked. “Thought that was too good to be true.”
“Thanks for sharing now,” Tal snarled at him.
Darry shrugged. “Nah, I meant because she’s so hot.”
“Sorry,” Scala said to him too.
Tal’s gaze narrowed on her. She was holding herself as tightly as a strung wire.
“I just … I owed a favor to a friend for helping me, so when she told me what she needed, I didn’t ask questions,” she said to that point over his shoulder.