by Lyn Gala
Tom rolled his eyes and headed for the luggage. He figured it’d be easy enough to spot what she meant for him. They weren’t exactly the same size.
She flipped her legs up and over her head and sort of somersaulted off the side of the bed. “Wait.”
“For what?”
“Put a chair in the bathroom,” she said, but then she went over to the desk chair and picked it up herself. When it came to giving orders, she didn’t seem to understand exactly how it was supposed to go. She put the chair in the bathroom, blocking off the shower before she backed out of the room.
“Sit.” She pointed at the chair. The order was clear enough and Tom had vowed to try to play at being a good slave, so he headed into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the chair, his muscles bunched and tense.
She followed and slid the cover back on a small shelf. Tom hadn’t realized there were shaving supplies there and he reached up to take them from her, but she twisted away so he couldn’t reach them. Not sure what game she was playing, he sank back down in the chair. “Could use a shave,” he said.
Ignoring him, she laid materials out on the narrow ledge over the sink. After she lined all the jars up on the edge, she turned to him and reached down, pressing on the outsides of his legs so he would close his knees.
“You mind if I get dressed for this?”
“Yes.” She straddled him and then sat on his lap so they were facing each other. Tom sat with his hands held out to the side without any idea of where he was supposed to put them.
Reaching out, Da’shay caught his hand and pulled it close, putting it on her thigh. Still feeling a little like a man handling dynamite, Tom brought his other hand in and rested it on her right hip. She might look small, but he could feel the muscle under her uniform as she reached to the side and grabbed one of the jars. Pulling the top open, she smoothed the cream between her palms and then brought her hands up to his face.
His hand came up by reflex. He didn’t normally have people touching his face, but she said in a lilting sing-song, “Hands!” He settled himself back down.
“If you’re doing what I think—”
“Yep,” she cut him off. “Too hairy.” She stroked her hands down his cheeks and then reversed the direction so that his stubble scratched across her palms and sent a shiver down his back. Tilting her head to the side, she seemed lost in herself as she worked the lotion in, her fingers stroking over his cheeks and nose and across his chin and down his neck. Her warm fingers tickled until her stroking turned firmer.
“Oxytocin deprivation,” she whispered, her hand wandering down to caress his shoulders, her strong fingers massaging Tom’s tight muscles.
“I ain’t…” Tom reached up to catch her hands, but she froze and glared at him. Swallowing his nervousness, he put his hands back on her hips. His cock was getting all kinds of confused about having a strong woman order him around. She shifted in his lap and reached for the next jar.
Humming under her breath, she ran a hand under the faucet to get it wet and then started rubbing the foaming soap until it turned white. It was weird having a woman spend all her attention on him, so weird that Tom wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be doing. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if Da’shay was trying to start with sex or just being some new brand of crazy. Hell, all he knew was that she didn’t want his hands to move and that was actually reassuring because he could follow that rule.
She stroked the creamed soap across his face, cooling him when he was starting to feel real hot. With a wicked smile, she ran a finger down the center of his chest, leaving a trail of white soap. “Diamonds harder than graphite formed in fused sheets by unprotected atmospheric reentry.”
“Huh?” His cock was pretty damn hard, but if she was commenting on that, she wasn’t using a tone of voice he understood.
She wiped her hand off on a towel before reaching down to trace a circle on the back of Tom’s hand where he was holding her hips. She picked up the razor and brought it up to his face. When she drew the razor down across his cheek, a cold shiver went through his body. Once he got out of this mess, he was going to find himself a good doxy to do this again because his cock was hard and aching now and he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get sex once Da’shay had finished. Of course, he might be wrong. Right now, he was really hoping he was wrong, even if letting himself enjoy this was going to cause him to get all kinds of mixed up in his head.
With a thumb, she pushed at the bottom of his jaw and he tilted his head back to allow her to run the razor over the sensitive skin just over his jugular. In all his life, he hadn’t ever felt this exposed and his cock got harder. Da’shay kept humming as she shaved him, each stroke long and steady against his skin.
She finished and set the razor aside before caressing his face, her fingers searching out every wrinkle and freckle and corner. Her weight pressed into his cock and Tom thought tears were going to come to his eyes from the sheer need. He kept his hands where she’d told him, but now he pulled her close. If she weren’t genta, it’d be so easy to flip her back and thrust into that warmth. He would run fingers between her inner lips until he found the hard little clit all swollen with need and finger it as he thrust harder. Tom closed his eyes and tried hard to think about something else—redesigning security protocols to account for stolen codes, the allocation of water resources on the Kratos. Instead, he could only think of the way Da’shay’s body was warm and strong under his hands.
She started to slide back and he tried to hold her. She braced her feet on the chair and pushed. Tom struggled. He could feel his arm muscles bunch and he started sweating with the effort of holding her close, but in the end, genta strength won and she settled herself on his thighs—far enough away that Tom’s cock felt the neglect.
Without commenting on Tom’s touch of rebellion, Da’shay picked up a cloth and ran water over it before wiping away the last of the soap. About halfway through, she paused to tangle her fingers in his hair.
“About time for a cut,” Tom said. He knew he sounded inane, but the silence in the small room had grown too heavy for him.
“Like it shaggy. Unruly. Like Tom.”
“I thought you wanted me to play at being a rule-following slave?”
She went back to wiping his face and then his chest and shoulders, either cleaning specks of soap or just wiping off the beads of sweat. “Want you to play Tom-slave.”
Da’shay sounded almost coherent, but Tom wasn’t sure he still had enough blood in his big head for three brain cells to fire at the same time. “What exactly are the rules for that?”
She reached for the last jar and stared at the clear gel inside for long seconds. “Be Tom.”
Tom snorted. “In case you ain’t noticed, I’m not good at being a slave. I keep glaring at people and then I keep expecting you to get upset with me for glaring at them.”
Da’shay looked up at him, her unnaturally large eyes studying him. “You’re not their slave. Glare at them. Threaten to shoot them. Search rooms for listening devices. Hit people. Whispers of people telling me to be someone else. I don’t like that so I won’t whisper to Tom. Da’shay acts like Da’shay and Tom acts like Tom.”
When she stroked his cheek, Tom jumped in surprise as the cooling gel soothed his face. “Hands!” she said sharply. Tom hadn’t even realized he’d moved them, but he put them back where she wanted and waited as she let her fingers stroke over his cheeks and neck again and again. The cool was enough of a shock to take a little of the edge off his need to come, but not much. If they got on the Kratos tomorrow and flew back to government space, Tom was going to be masturbating to this memory for the rest of his life. And the fact that she wanted him to be himself was going to figure into that fantasy.
“Wait. Who tells you to be someone else?”
Da’shay sighed. “Whispers in diamonds until they scream about how wrong I am,” she said with such sorrow that Tom was feeling more sympathy than he was used to. She finally seemed to get e
nough of stroking him. Twisting around in his lap, she reached over to wash her hands without getting off.
“So, how is Tom-slave different than Tom?” he asked as she dried them.
Again, she looked at him for a long time. With one finger, she traced the swirls of his slave mark for a while. The skin was still sensitive and Tom struggled to keep his hands where they were supposed to be.
“Tom-slave should believe that crazy genta girl can swim, even if the words are all tangled in her head.” Her gaze drifted from his mark up to his face. “Tom-slave should follow so I can get him back to the exit.”
“And the totally and completely fucking crazy people?”
Da’shay pursed her lips, a gesture that made her look even more alien. “They think their vultures picked out all the scabs, skin sticking to them. Think to swim in diamonds and not get cut.” She leaned back. “Tom-slave following, I can swim hard enough for both of us. Show the captain the totally and completely fucking crazy people—rip the masks so that all the mice will eat their feet.”
Only about a third of that made any sense to Tom, but if there was some group of psychos out there, showing Ramsay their true faces sounded like a good plan to him. It was a little short on detail, but then he’d spend six years following Ramsay when the man tended to come up with plans that included directions like, “don’t get yourself dead” and “figure it out.” He was actually pretty fucking good at handling vague directions.
“So, you want me to follow you the way I do Ramsay?” Tom asked.
She blinked and seemed to think hard on that. Then she leaned forward. Tom groaned. “Like to touch,” she said. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder and then the side of his neck as she trailed fingers up and down his arms. “Only touch. Taste. Such good tastes. Diamonds on my tongue.” She whispered the words against his neck, her warm breath ghosting over his hot skin. “Slave-Tom lets me taste.”
“Taste as in?” Tom held his breath and prayed to any god that would listen that she was going to do something—rip his towel off and ride him, take him in her mouth, wrap long fingers around his shaft and pull at him until he came. He didn’t care. He knew that he needed more and he was stuck with his hands on her hips.
“Touch. Only touch.” Da’shay stood up, and Tom grunted with need, but he kept his hands in place as she stood over him. She stroked his hair until he couldn’t help but squirm some, the need to come quickly overwhelming his need to follow her orders. Just as he was about to grab himself and jerk off, her hands caught his wrists in a grip of iron as she studied him, and all he could do was squirm as the towel came untucked and part of it fell away.
“Should have an orgasm and then come to bed,” she said as calmly as if she’d been discussing the sunshine. Then she let him go and turned to head back into the bedroom. She hadn’t even vanished from sight before Tom swept the towel away with one hand and jerked himself off with the other. His cock was hard and hot under his hand as he squeezed it, thrusting his hips up into his grasp. With a gasp, he came, white come splattering over his hand and the towel as he sagged back in the chair, his muscles shaking. He’d paid good money and never come that hard, and she hadn’t even given him sex. Hell, his head really was screwed on backward.
His legs still shaking, Tom pushed himself up and wiped his hand off on the towel before dropping it to the ground. He still didn’t have any clothes, and she’d made him ruin the only full-sized towel.
Tom walked out of the bathroom buck naked and stopped. Da’shay was on the bed, naked, her head thrown back and her face twisted into that wonderfully ugly face women made when they came. Her chest heaved as she gasped for air and she had ripped the bed covers loose.
She opened her eyes, and they were pure black. Holding out a hand, she called him. “Come.”
“Was looking for clothes,” Tom said. He’d never seen a woman orgasm except when he was right there lost in the middle of the lust with her or when he’d been watching some vid. He suspected both were faked as often as not, but Da’shay’s whole body had been tight and twisted with her orgasm.
“Time to sleep. Want to touch.”
Da’shay pulled the sheet aside and then squirmed over to get under it before holding it up for him to join her. The very fact that Tom wanted nothing more than to slide between those sheets should have sent him running the other direction. He could feel himself slide into this comfortable place where he was content making her happy and that was an unsafe place to be. Comfortable, but unsafe.
However, he also didn’t have a lot of choices. He’d agreed to playing slave, and even if he hadn’t, he was starting to suspect she could make him a slave easy enough. He fingered the slave mark she’d chosen and put on him as he moved closer to the bed. She watched as he sat on the edge and then slipped his feet between the sheets and shifted around to lie on his stomach.
“We doing something about those totally and completely fucking crazy people tomorrow?” Tom asked. He realized that he couldn’t do anything if she said “no,” but there was some part of him that needed reassurance that he wasn’t just putting his neck in a collar here. He needed to know that the damage his psyche was taking served some cause other than Da’shay’s.
“Yep. Start with Hou. Make sure totally and completely fucking crazy people know that Ramsay’s story tastes true. We only came to demand money, make claims.” She shifted closer and pulled the sheet part of the way off Tom’s back so she could lay draped over him. She rested her head on his shoulder so that her hair tumbled down and tickled him. “After Hou, we go and find Ramsay.” She whispered the promise, but Tom clung to those words and prayed that Da’shay wasn’t one more person who was going to let him down, because the mark and the collar meant he couldn’t just walk away this time.
Chapter Seventeen
Tom walked through the crowd in Palapa Tower, this time with Da’shay instead of Ramsay. He rested his hand on the end of the gun Da’shay had handed back to him this morning and glared at anyone who dared to look at him for too long. Unfortunately, too many people were. Da’shay had put him in a filmy silk shirt that caught the light, but did nothing to cover him. His slave mark and every muscle were clear for the world to see. He looked like a fucking rent boy.
The collar yanked against his neck and Tom turned to look behind him. Da’shay was staring off at one of the windows, her gaze blank; however, his leash was still wrapped around her fist. He reached out and caught the taut chain to give it a sharp pull. “Hey, princess,” Tom called. Da’shay blinked and stared at him as if she wasn’t sure who he was. He was seriously starting to doubt that she could deal with Hou without getting them both killed, but then aliens had their own logic and it was never logical. He’d given his word, and he’d live by it. Or he’d die by it. One or the other.
Turning back toward their destination, he started walking again. His collar dug into his neck as he dragged her for the first few steps and then she was back with him, following behind as he pushed through the crowd. This time, if Veska Hou tried blowing them up, he had permission to shoot the bastard. Tom never had been a forgiving soul, and having someone blow him up not once but twice was grating on the nerves.
Da’shay moved to his side, wrapping her hand around his arm when they reached an escalator. Instead of standing on her own step, she crowded in with him and leaned against his arm. “Dish with too many spices. Diamonds spilling out onto the floor.”
He looked at her. “I know you think I’m going to figure the diamond shit out, but I think you’re overestimating my ability to figure out,” he warned.
She looked at him. “You know how to not get lost in all the sparkles. That’s more than I know.”
He didn’t understand a word of that, but he could see her sadness and the shame that she had failed in some way. He reached over and let his fingers push back her hair from her face. It was cool and slick, smoother than a human’s and thick. He leaned close to whisper. “Princess, are you okay doing this today? If you’re n
ot tracking with reality, this ain’t the time to walk into enemy territory.”
She leaned into him and stared back at the level they were leaving behind. Shops lined the wall and the sun was starting to come in the tall windows. “I don’t have to taste all the flavors.” She straightened up and smiled at him. “Going to inform Veska Hou that he violated my shipmates.”
“Say it that way and it sounds a little worse than him just blowing us up,” he complained.
“Yep,” she agreed with a fierceness. The escalator reached the top and she took off before him so that now he followed her.
Now if she could just keep feeling fierce as they talked to Hou, they might get out of this without getting blown up or arrested again. It did seem unfair that Hou had set off low level explosives and Tom had been the one charged. Actually, the paperwork Da’shay had shown him when they’d gotten up said that Tom Frieden and Jonathan Ramsay were co-conspirators, but the fine had been paid and Tom had been sentenced to slavery, so for some reason that got Ramsay off the hook. Da’shay had tried to explain local laws, something to do with superiors and subordinates, but Tom didn’t care much about even Corps law, so slaver law was just so many worthless words to him.
“Mice in the cat trap.” Da’shay pointed at the glass wall that marked the beginning of Hou’s territory and Tom was having an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. Hopefully this time he wouldn’t get blown up. Da’shay stopped.
“We waiting here?” he asked. Inside, the same secretary that had tried to stop him and Ramsay was coming out from behind his desk with an alarmed expression on his face. Fucking right, he should be alarmed.
Da’shay looked at the secretary and then at Tom. “I’ll break him into little pieces if he says ‘no’ while diamond slices like little papercuts,” Da’shay said. Tom didn’t understand most of that, but it did seem like killing the secretary might be a bit much. When Tom killed, he preferred to target the bosses. Some little slave who did Hou’s paperwork sure as hell hadn’t been the one to set either bomb.