Highlander's Love: Winter Solestice (Against All Odds Series 3)

by Veronica Wilson

  Nevertheless, the two of them soon stepped out from the hotel proper into the enclosed guest hangar with its rows of skimmer vehicles, ranging from models just big enough for one pilot to long floaters that could take a pilot and a dozen riders. Tavos took Stacey's hand in his and said, "Lead the way."

  They took a few steps on the pavement and Stacey realized, "Oh, Tavos, I should have gotten my linker out of my suite. It can pick out my skimmer from where I parked it. I can't remember."

  Tavos stopped both of them in their tracks, fixed his eyes earnestly on hers, and said, "Please, Stacey, you must try."

  The clamminess on the nape of her neck now broke out all over her skin. With a dire tremble she said, "A-all right." They started forward again and Stacey let her mind roll back to yesterday, when she’d checked in. All she needed was to remember the number of the queue and the assigned letter of the dock, and they could just climb in and take off. With a deep breath and a squeeze of Tavos's hand, she called up the combination and led him off among the queues. They walked briskly and as calmly as they could. It was an effort not to break into a run and invite the attention of anyone else who might be arriving or leaving, but in minutes they were at the side of Stacey's rented skimmer. Tavos helped her into the pilot's seat and then climbed into the passenger's seat. Her thumbprint in the ignition engaged the drive and she pulled the skimmer up and off the dock, and out of the space. Peeling out, they floated smoothly over the paving between the queues and were off.

  At once they came to the vehicle pathways on the hotel grounds. Sunset was on the way, the Martian sky outside the dome of Nirvana growing dim. The time of day made no difference in Nirvana Planitia; the place was always lit up. Gliding the skimmer along the pathways, Stacey felt a forlorn wish that Nirvana were not quite so gaudy and ostentatious. She would feel better about trying to be inconspicuous in a place where everything around her wasn’t as conspicuous as it could be. She got the craft right to the end of the main pathway, when all at once their surroundings were as filled with sound as with light.

  The noise of the blaring, wailing sirens drowned Stacey's shocked and panicked outcry as she lurched the skimmer to a halt, floating over the ground just at the boundary of the hotel property. She and Tavos together looked up and around to find their surroundings coming alive with inbound police craft, their lights flashing, their sirens at full blast. One patrol skimmer dropped in front of them, two more swung in from either side. They felt their own craft lurch and Stacey found the controls suddenly inoperative. The Martian Colony troopers had engaged magnetic locks onto Stacey's craft, pinning it in place.

  Stacey's shoulders slumped. She fell back in the pilot's seat, helplessly. She looked dead ahead at the pair of officers, a male and a female, climbing out of the patrol vehicle in front of them, and barely felt Tavos's hand on her thigh. She did not turn to look at his reassuring expression; it would do nothing to reassure her anyway.

  With weapons drawn, the approaching officers reached Stacey's skimmer, one of them on either side. The female commanded, "Get out of the vehicle and keep your hands where we can see them. You're under arrest for resisting arrest, assaulting patrol officers, and fleeing from extradition."

  Only now did Stacey look into Tavos's eyes and see the resignation on his face. They might have slipped away from her suite, but now they were surrounded and outnumbered. There was nothing to do but obey. Stacey's senses were so filled with the imagined sound of her frightened heart pounding and her heated blood rushing, she could barely hear the recitation of their rights.

  Directly, the officers had the two of them out of the skimmer and into electro-cuffs, had confiscated the pistol from the back of Tavos's pants, and were leading them off to their patrol vehicle hovering a few steps away, when the female patroller touched her helmet and called to her partner, "Wait a minute, Joe, are you copying that?"

  The other officer, likewise touching his helmet, replied, "Yeah, I'm getting it. Standing by for details."

  The two officers stood listening to some communication coming in from their superiors while Stacey and Tavos, cuffed and crestfallen, watched each other and wondered what further, deeper trouble was now upon them. Their mutual bewilderment only mounted when the female patroller turned to Tavos and said, "Tavos of Sarma, you're free to go. The charges against you have been dropped."

  Tavos's jaw dropped open, but not a sound came out at first. He only glanced, flabbergasted, at the same expression on Stacey. In the utterly stunned seconds that followed, the male officer undid the restraints on the Sarmian youth and let Tavos stand unbound. Only when his wrists came free did Tavos find the voice to blurt out, "What—what is happening? What does it mean? I am free? Only I? What of Stacey?"

  Stacey's face had turned ashen by now. She was as much in the grip of confusion as Tavos. The female patroller explained, "Orders from high up, as high as it gets—interplanetary channels. The King of Sarma has just issued a blanket pardon to all Sarmian deserters. There are no charges against you on Sarma any more; the king is over your tribe's head and we don't have the authority to hold you. Headquarters isn't pressing charges either, because Nirvana Planitia doesn't want an interstellar incident. It's bad for business. You're free to go."

  Tavos, relieved but still as scared as the girl still in cuffs at his side, stammered, "But... but Stacey... what is to become of her?"

  "We do have the authority to hold her. Nothing you can do about that." The patroller turned to Stacey. "Let's go, Ms. Fagan. You can link your parents from Headquarters."

  As the officers led her away, Stacey looked despairingly at her suddenly exonerated friend and choked out his name: "T-Tavos..." The fear in her voice was palpable.

  Hearing how frightened she was, Tavos put aside his own jumble of emotions at his unexpected freedom and demanded, "I will ride along with her. Take me with you."

  "If that's what you want," said the uniformed woman. And with her on one arm and Tavos on the other, Stacey Fagan did the "perp walk" to the arresting officers' vehicle.

  _______________

  The reason for the pardon issued by King Dantar of Sarma was all over space. Scientists had found and assembled the parts of a machine left behind by the Shapers, the mysterious, vanished aliens whose civilization predated that of any other known world. The Shapers were the beings who, according to theory, had captured specimens of proto-humans from prehistoric Earth and used them to create the Sarmians. Upon assembly before an interplanetary gathering of the king, his consort, and members of the scientific community, the Shaper device had displayed a recording of one of the Shapers themselves. The being from eons ago had related the story of how Shaper civilization fell victim to its own drive for power, and conferred a warning to present civilizations not to repeat the Shapers' mistakes. Evidently King Dantar had taken his makers' words to heart. He had decreed that the Sarmian people, while not shedding their proud warrior heritage, must now find new ways to live in the galaxy. With this resolution he had unilaterally pardoned all Sarmians who had fled from their planet's wars and absolved all those still on Sarma who had been imprisoned or banished from their tribes under such charges. And that was why Tavos was now free and needed no longer flee his own people.

  As for Stacey Fagan, such was the prominence of her parents and such were the connections they held and some of the favors owed them that they were able to arrange their daughter's release on probation as a first-time offender. Assuming she did not get herself into any further trouble, in time they could even have her record expunged. Some very angry and combustible words passed between Stacey on Mars and her parents on Earth, her parents doing most of the shouting and crying while the mortified Stacey just listened. They allowed her to remain on Mars for the rest of her scheduled stay—it was paid for, after all—with a promise of further upheavals when she got home. Stacey would just have to look forward to that.

  So it was that Stacey, shaken and dejected after the experience of a night in a Martian holding cell,
postponed her appointment for adipose surgery and retreated to her suite to keep as low a profile as she could. She did not want to be seen or heard by anyone except Room Service. She could just imagine how her friends on Earth would react when the word got out that she had gone on the lam with a Sarmian rogue and gotten herself arrested and jailed. She had already fended off the inquiries of all the media from Earth to the moons of Saturn and was afraid to go on the links and look at her messages. She was emotionally drained and exhausted and wanted only to be alone in her suite, in her most comfortable silk gown. As of now, she decided, food and wine were her only friends.

  And that was why the trilling at the door of her suite when she was between Room Service orders came as such a surprise. What could this be? Was it the hotel management, coming to inform her personally that her still-angry parents had decided to cut short her trip after all? Apprehensively she went to the portal, hit the command button, and let it slide open.

  On the other side stood Tavos, dressed as he was when he first came to her on the terrace, as handsome and sexy as ever.

  "You were not responding to your linker," he said before she could get a word out. "I was concerned. May I come in, please?"

  In a hushed voice, she said, "Yes. Yes, please." And she stood aside and let him through the threshold, and let the portal slide shut behind him.

  "Tavos, what are you still doing here? Why haven't you gone back to—?"

  "My own planet? To a family and a tribe that will not be pleased to see me, even with the king's pardon? Neither they nor I look forward to a reunion. I am no longer a rogue and a fugitive, but even the decree of the king does not change what I did. I am still an absconder and a disgrace. Nothing awaits me at home but their shame, their tears, and their wrath. One day I shall return to Sarma, but not now. For now there is a galaxy out there and I am free. I think I should like to know what it is to be on my own in space and not looking over my shoulder."

  Stacey sighed, happy for him if not for herself. "You stopped looking over your shoulder for a minute, and look what happened."

  "That is not upon you, Stacey," he said. "My time would have come sooner or later, if not here with you, then somewhere else."

  "It's very sweet of you to say that."

  "It is true. And what is also true is that for as long as I may live, I shall never forget what you did for me. You hardly knew me, and yet for me you defied your lawmen and placed yourself at risk. This you did to help me, a rogue and a vagabond from a planet not your own. I shall remember your kindness and your courage for all the days of my life."

  Stacey felt like crying. How could he say things to her that she could not believe of herself. "Will you also remember how stupid I was? And how thoughtless and reckless I was, and how I just flew off without thinking what I was doing and could have put myself in all kinds of danger? Because believe me, that's what I've heard from my parents—at the top of their lungs. And they were right."

  "They spoke as parents do. You may rightly believe that what you got from them is as nothing to what I would get now from my own clan."

  Now she felt like laughing through tears. "Look at us—a couple of rogues."

  Tavos put his arms around her and squeezed as if to squeeze out what she had come to have lasered away. "You are the kindest, bravest rogue in all of space."

  He broke the embrace and kept his hands on her shoulders. "Tell me," he said, "have you chosen not to have your laser surgery?"

  "No, I'm still having it," Stacey said. "I've just put it off 'til tomorrow. I didn't want to go anywhere or be seen today. I still really don't want to see anyone after what happened. Except... I'm glad I get to see you now."

  "I am glad as well. For I have not forgotten what I promised I would do for you when your procedure was finished. If you will still have me in your bed, I should still be very honored to shadaal you in your new body. In fact, I should also like to ask one thing more, if I may."

  "What?"

  "Stacey Fagan, if it would please you, I should like to be not only the first thing that your new body knows—but also the last thing that this body knows before it takes the laser."

  Stacey's eyes bulged. She blushed and almost stammered, "You... you want to do it now?"

  "Yes. And then as well. But first, now. May I lie with you in bed and be inside you now?"

  Stacey touched his mesmerizingly handsome face and basked in the warmth and sincerity radiating from him. Only one answer was possible: "Yes. Yes, Tavos, yes."

  He kissed her, the way he’d kissed her before in the wardrobe room. It was everything their first kiss was, and more—because this kiss was the preamble to the fulfillment of the sweetest promise that anyone had ever given her.

  His clothes joined hers on the carpet of the suite, and at once he had her sitting naked with him on the bed. His mouth stayed with hers, and once again Stacey gloried in touching his body. This time, though, nothing was hidden and nothing held back. This time, what he had concealed in a satiny pouch was as free as the rest of him, and at her eager fingertips. It was long and thick, dark, warm, and fantastically hard. Foreskin hugged its head and its tip gave forth a glistening bead of slippery wetness. Bulging from its root was another bounty of softer, succulent flesh. She stroked and squeezed and played with his sex, dizzy in the sensation of what she had wanted for so long. As his hands roamed over her body in these last hours of her roundness, she let her lips slide from his long enough to whisper, "It feels so good, Tavos. It feels so wonderful."

  Licking at her lips, he whispered back, "It will feel more wonderful yet when I lie atop you and put it in your gliarra. But first..." He broke their embrace and lay down on one side of the bed, presenting himself to her. What she had been fondling stood tall between his legs, beckoning to her. "Taste it," he offered. "Please, come down and taste it."

  Thrilled beyond the measure of anything but the steely length and thickness of what he offered her, Stacey went down where he invited her, and with one exuberant swallow she at last knew something she had wanted to know for so long: the taste and fullness of a perfect boy's erection in her mouth.

  "Ooohhh, yes, suck it," Tavos intoned, flexing his every muscle as Stacey's mouth pulled wetly and hungrily at his throbbing tool. "Suck it and play with my briole." Again taking his meaning from the context, Stacey brought her fingers to the yielding and sensitive roundness of Tavos's sac while devouring his stiffened meat, loving the salty taste of what oozed freely from his tip. She wished she could make breakfast, lunch, dinner, and between-meal snacks of his boy-meat. She imagined him letting her do just that, and sucked at him all the more eagerly while the delicate squeezing of her fingers on the fruit at his base made him hurl ecstatic curses into the air over the bed.

  Stacey kept her head buried between Tavos's thighs for a long time and made him writhe euphorically with the way she was able to take almost his entire length into her mouth. His mind whirled with an astonished pleasure that so virginal a girl could deep-throat him as if she had been orally sexing boys for years. She sucked his briole just as expertly, filling her mouth with it and rolling it against her tongue. He cursed more loudly, and the former rogue became the willing captive of her pleasuring even as he would have been the prisoner of the law. He let her suck him on and on until the desire for other pleasure became too great for him. He came up on one elbow and stroked the dark river of her hair, saying, "Lie down for me now and let me taste of you."

  Tingling all over, Stacey let his erection slip from her mouth. It bobbed in the air and slapped, slick and moist, against her cheek, making her giggle softly. She lay down beside him and presented herself to him, and at once Tavos rolled over and brought down his lips between her open thighs. He began by licking and kissing the petals of her opening, so wet with her arousal. She gasped and released a cry that sounded like a rejoicing call up to the heavens, which Tavos could only imagine it truly was. Her exulting calls of bliss, so long desired and at last fulfilled, carried over as Tavos'
s fingers tenderly pried open her secret place and he gazed into the pink-red seal to her entrance. How he wanted to probe her depths with his tongue—but no, that would be for later. Only with his hard and pulsing zazansa would he pierce her maidenhood. Instead he let the lips of her sex close up anew, and put his mouth over her petals. With Stacey's entire body going into a clinch of joy, he sucked and licked and kissed her down below, rolling his tongue up and down her wet flower and over the soft bed of flesh surrounding it. Stacey squirmed at the way he served her, feeling all the nights of unrequited desire and all the dreams of a lonely bed roll away at every flick and stroke of Tavos's tongue.

  With a last intimate kiss between her legs, Tavos said, "I cannot wait any more. I must put my zazansa in you and shadaal you this moment."

  In a carnal stupor, Stacey poured out the words, "Yes... please do it to me... please..."

  Tavos wasted no time. In a flash he was up on his knees and spreading his legs wider. The tip of his piece came at once to her wet opening. Stacey felt as if she were on the precipice of a waterfall, about to plunge into joy. In fact it was Tavos who took the plunge, stroking his piece smoothly and surely into her. He burst the dam of her regroup virginity and slid himself all the way inside her. Stacey made a sound that was both a moan and a scream, which Tavos could feel all the way up his shaft and into his bones and muscles. And with that feeling he settled onto her and began to pump up and down, giving Stacey her first shadaal, the sex of her dreams.