by J. S. Wayne
“This is Dusk.”
Pete nodded. “Okay…”
“We are interested in Dusk for possible military applications beyond the body armor we typically wear.”
Pete raised his eyebrows with a snicker. Anything of military interest that far out in the middle of galactic goddamn Siberia had to be important indeed. “Let me guess. It’s a superweapon that turns all our potential enemies into fuzzy bunny rabbits.”
“That’s not funny, Captain.” Neville’s authoritative tone stopped Pete’s cackle dead in its tracks. “I cannot tell you what the mission parameters are at this time. What I can tell you is that we want someone on-scene who can help negotiate for the materials we require and analyze them for their military usefulness. I personally picked you for this mission, Pete.”
His stomach lurched as if the floor had suddenly given way beneath his chair. “Why me?”
Neville took another long swallow of his drink, a mannerism Pete recognized as the general getting ready to issue a commandment from on high that was not at all to his taste. He’d give the order, but he would stall as long as he could beforehand.
“Because you have a cool head and understand that an itchy trigger finger creates more problems than it solves. You and I have talked before about this, Pete. You understand diplomacy better than most devil dogs, and you’re willing to explore other options before you start anything.”
Neville touched the first stud again, and the holo faded away. Warm Terran sunlight flooded the room. Pete blinked against the sudden brilliance and sipped at his drink.
“You’ll be attached to Ambassador Al-Aziz’s party as a military adjutant. This posting comes with a brevet increase in rank and pay. If the negotiations are successful, you’ll be confirmed at the higher rank as a permanent instatement.”
Pete’s eyebrows shot up.
“Just how high are we talking, here?”
Neville’s voice was smooth enough to make silk feel bad about itself.
“Colonel.”
Pete choked on his drink.
Chapter Three
Olivia groaned theatrically as she ambled out of the DDC chamber.
“God, I thought they’d never shut up.”
Up ahead, at a food vendor just down the corridor, her friend Kase Reed reclined against the countertop, flirting with the adolescent selling the Dusk version of Russian cuisine. Unlike Olivia, she had opted for a far more conservative outfit of a bright teal cropped top that showed off her cleavage to its best possible advantage and a pair of shorts that rode high enough on her thighs to give the hems altitude sickness.
Kase flicked her blonde hair in a coquettish gesture. The move apparently brought Olivia into her line of sight, because the other woman straightened and waved urgently.
Thank God, she thought. I’m famished.
Kase’s narrow face broke into a broad smile as Olivia drew closer.
“Olivia!”
She vaulted off the stool and hurled herself into a bone-crushing embrace. Olivia grunted, patting the shorter woman’s back gently at first, then urgently.
“Can’t… breathe…” she panted.
“Oh!” Kase backed off a step, her signature smile firmly in place. “How was the meeting?”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, get me started on that,” she said sarcastically, making a “blah blah blah” gesture with one hand. “It’s just like going to the beach, except without sand, water, or fun.”
Kase mimicked her gesture with the opposite hand. “Yeah, and you love having power and knowing all the state secrets. I wish I could be in there. Stupid no-telepaths rule,” she spat, thrusting out her lip in a theatrical pout.
“You’d be bored to tears in ten minutes, and you know it.”
“Not if I got to sit next to Merrick.”
Olivia laughed. “Merrick’s hotter than noon, there’s no denying that, but he’s still not enough of a consolation prize to make a DDC meeting entertaining.”
Now it was Kase’s turn to roll her eyes, and she did it with such fervor Olivia entertained a brief spark of alarm that she might injure something.
“Suuuuuuure,” she retorted, drawing the word out until it had about fifteen syllables. “Because you don’t ever pass the time thinking about what’s under Merrick’s breechclout and when he’s going to use it on you next.”
Olivia reached out and swatted Kase’s shoulder.
“You’re terrible.”
“You hungry?” Kase jerked a thumb at the volcanic-complected teenager behind the counter.
“You buying?”
Kase laughed. “I got you this time. I owe you for the Rigelian sapphire brandy you gave me for my birthday.”
Olivia snorted. “As if a couple of salmon blini would make us square on that score. Do you have any idea what that bottle cost?”
Her friend giggled, a distinct twinkle of devilry blinking to life in her eye. “No, and you’re not going to tell me, because I’m not rude enough to ask the price of a gift and you’re not gauche enough to tell me.” She stuck her tongue out and wrinkled her nose in one of the pugnaciously cute expressions she was famous throughout Galacia for.
“Oooh!” Olivia swatted Kase on the shoulder again as she sat down. “Two salmon blini and a large medovukah to drink, with a small salad.” She turned to face the boy directly. “Please,” she added sweetly.
The kid behind the counter didn’t move. His jaw appeared to be locked about halfway open, and his eyes had taken on a distinctly glazed sheen. She raised up a little, and the kid’s eyes moved precisely the same amount.
For a brief moment, Olivia toyed with the idea of being offended. On the other hand, she remembered being, what? Seventeen, maybe eighteen Dusk years old, when the mysteries of the opposite sex had conspired with her own rampaging hormones to make her very curious indeed. It was just possible… no, more than possible, she admitted, flinching away from an embarrassing memory, that she had stared at older men as avidly and lasciviously as the kid now stared at her.
“See anything you like?” she asked gently.
“Uh-huh,” the kid said, his lips turning up into a dreamy smile.
“Jeffrey!” a voice from the kitchen snapped. “Are those paying customers?”
The kid shook as if awakening from a pleasant dream into a nightmare, his smile vanishing like a hrunczek lizard under a rock. “Oh, er, sorry, ma’am. What would you like?”
She smiled and repeated the order, giving no indication of her annoyance. Just because she understood the kid’s predicament didn’t mean she had any interest in being mentally undressed by a boy who probably hadn’t even grown a proper pubic bush yet. The only person she enjoyed being visually undressed by was Merrick, and he was unavailable, taking a meeting with a couple of the other junior ambassadors over some trivial matter of protocol.
The thought of Merrick’s hazel eyes heating as he gazed upon her exposed skin brought a light flush of heat to her face. She wanted a lot more than his eyes. She wanted his big hands and warm, soft tongue, and most of all, his long, thick, hard…
“Olivia!”
She jolted back to the here and now to see Kase staring at her, one hand propping up her chin in a slightly belligerent manner.
“How was your nap?”
Olivia winked. “You should have been there.”
“Uh-huh,” Kase huffed. “Look at you, getting all starry-eyed like a teenage girl.”
She debated whether to make it worse by telling Kase just how good her imaginings had been, before deciding not to. After all, Kase, like half the women in the city, got warm at the thought of Merrick’s form. Aside from possibly angering her by dangling the fact of Merrick’s attachment to Olivia in her face or embarrassing herself by describing intimate details that were certainly not fit conversation for a public corridor, there was nothing to be gained by it.
“What can I say?” She shrugged. “Merrick’s the only man I want looking at me like that.”
Kase gave her a long once-over. “Which is why you dress with such modesty and delicacy.” She put on a horrific mockery of an accent from the southern zone of Terra’s northwestern continent, undoubtedly something she’d seen in an old bi-vee from Terra. “Whah, ah do decleh you look jes’ lahk a virgin on her weddin’ not!”
As if the conversation needed any assistance getting any more awkward, the kid chose that moment to return with her drink. He froze, roughly two paces from the counter, his face blazing redder than the sign above his head.
“Um… your order will be right out, ma’am,” he stuttered, quickly setting the beverage down. With a grimace, he turned on his heel and fled.
From the back, she heard him say, “I’m taking a break, Ivan. Can you get the lady’s order out?”
The lower growl from the owner escaped her, but the kid protested angrily, “I am not! I’m just… look, I need a break, okay?” His voice cracked and wandered over three different pitches.
Olivia raised an eyebrow and glanced at Kase, whose face had gone from pale silk to violent magenta. She tried, with limited success, to choke off a snicker.
“What? What did he say?”
Kase just shook her head and clamped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes bulged as if she was in the throes of a seizure, and her shoulders shook with silent laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Olivia demanded.
A male voice with a thick Russian accent spoke from the kitchen. “I tell him if he want to go jerk off, he do that on his time, not mine.”
Olivia flinched. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry anymore.
“I hef your food for you in a minute, da?”
“Da,” she agreed weakly.
Kase grinned at her impishly. “Sorry you asked?”
For answer, Olivia shook her head with a groan and shifted her chair a few inches to one side. The ventilator return mounted in the ceiling blew a steady stream of cooled air downward, and aside from mussing her hair, it also chilled her skin unpleasantly. Finding a happy medium between too cool and too warm, she settled in.
“Here is your blini, miss.”
The potbellied, dark-haired and dark-eyed man of Russian stock set a plate in front of her with two of the paper-thin pastries. He said nothing more, but waited expectantly. She took the hint and picked up one of the blini. Biting into it, she chewed thoughtfully and then nodded. The spiced “salmon” was prepared perfectly. She swallowed.
“This is very good,” she reported.
The man nodded, the hint of a smile gracing his dour features. “I am glad you approve, miss. If you need anything more, just call.”
She assured him she would, and was rewarded with another smile as he turned away.
Much of the ethnic cuisine available for sale in the food vendors slanted heavily toward Russian, Mexican, Spanish, and Italian dishes, along with traditional fare from the northwest continent. Although the initial settlers had been a fairly mixed bag of ethnicities and cultures, these particular strains and national origins had been particularly well represented. As humans tend to do, when they arrived on Dusk, they sought out things that reminded them of home, dismissing utterly little things like accuracy in naming them. The “salmon” in her blini, for example, was actually the steamed, flaky white flesh of a small ground-roving lizard. She had eaten Terran salmon before and the fish tasted nothing at all like its Dusk counterpart, but she supposed to homesick settlers who were unlikely ever to set foot on their homeworld again it was close enough for comfort’s sake.
Kase studied her. “So, what’s the latest intrigue in the DDC?”
There was nothing confidential in the briefing material. If there had been, Trelawney would have made certain everyone knew it before he proceeded. In quick, concise sentences she described the substance of the meeting.
Of course, Kase could have just plucked the information right out of her head, had she wished. That ability had firmly shut the door on any hope she had of joining the DDC. Diplomats from other worlds would never have tolerated such a huge edge in negotiations if they did not control it, and the multiplicity of dangers perceived and real involved in having someone who could hear the thoughts of another person as clearly as if the person had shouted would create a hazardously unstable base for diplomacy.
However, even if Olivia hadn’t been extensively trained in how to thwart such psionic snooping, it would no more occur to Kase to invade her friend’s privacy that way than it would for her to whip out a blaster and shoot Olivia. It simply contradicted everything in her nature.
Kase’s eyes went wide. “So… what are they going to do?”
Olivia shook her head. “I don’t know. No one seems to want to believe me, but I really think I’m right about this.”
“But how would they use it as a weapon?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea, Kase. I wish I did. The only things I can think of…” she trailed off with a shudder. “Well, let’s just say I can’t think of anything cheerful they might do with it.”
Kase’s eyes widened even more in response to the sudden onslaught of Olivia’s negative emotions. Mental blocks, no matter how rigorous or well-maintained, didn’t count for much when one was all but screaming their emotions to the entire immediate universe. “Um, sweetie,” she gasped, her voice pained, “do you think you can calm down a little?”
Olivia cursed and whispered a calming nonsense rhyme. After a few moments, the anxious anger abated, leaving only a tense calm in its place.
“Sorry about that,” she murmured.
Kase smiled. “No problem. Happens all the time.” Olivia knew her friend well enough to know she wasn’t exaggerating.
“So, tell me what you have planned with Merrick tonight!” Kase urged.
* * *
Merrick smiled at her, showing off the dimples in his cheeks. “Well, what’d you expect? You basically threw a baby nuclear bomb onto the table and dared everyone not to freak out about it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because apparently I was the only one in that chamber who could see what Terra’s up to.” She grabbed Merrick’s hand. “You believe me, right?”
His grin faded a little, but his nod was firm. “It… I don’t like to admit it, Liv, but it makes sense to me. Terra already gets all the projectile-resistant fabric it needs at bargain credits, and there’s nothing else here with true military applications. But --”
“But how would they use magick in a military situation?” Olivia finished. She’d already considered that, but none of the scenarios she came up with were cheerful ones.
Merrick stood silently for a moment, frowning as he mulled over the implications. The sorrowful shake of his head told her he had come to much the same frightening conclusions she had.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but this is a negotiation, not a command. Terra couldn’t order us even if they wanted to.” Merrick turned toward her and wrapped his arms around her.
Despite herself, she relaxed into his warm, powerful embrace. She breathed in the light scent of his preferred aftershave and the slight spicy note of his sweat. His chest featured only a light tuft of hair right over his breastbone, leading down a fine, soft treasure trail that arrowed under his breechclout. With an appreciative purr, she pressed her lips to one firm pectoral, just above the nipple, and let her tongue flick out to taste his masculine flavor.
He gasped slightly and pulled her closer. His hands closed around her buttocks, cradling her in a grip as sturdy and unbreakable as carbonized titasteel as he lifted her up to press against his groin.
“I wanted you so badly the entire time we were in there,” he informed her huskily, dropping his lips to hers.
She started to reply, but before she could, he invaded her mouth with his tongue. It was a shamelessly barbaric male kiss, the kind that no woman has ever needed interpreted since the dawn of the species. That kiss spelled out “MINE” in letters of flame as he teased her tongue with his.
Olivia squeaked at his
possessive turn, but then melted against him, molding her body to his as best she could. Sometimes she hated Merrick’s territoriality, but in the right mood she found it quite arousing. Between her fear of what the Terrans were really after and her need for comfort, right now she was perfectly willing to let his inner Neanderthal have his way with her.
Her crotch met the bulge between his thighs, sending a silent scream of need through her entire body as he pulled her closer yet. Even through his breechclout and her attire the hard ridge of his erection stroked at her needy center, coaxing soft waves of damp desire from her.
She wanted desperately to peel off the scanty strands of fabric and take him right here and now, and to hell with who might see it.
As if reading her mind, he kissed her once more with lavish craving and then pulled away.
“We can do better than up against the ’car,” he said with a wink.
“Oh… okay.” She tried to stop it, but felt her lower lip pooch out into a tiny pout nevertheless.
He pressed his palm to the entry plate. The hatch slid silently forward to allow access to the pilot compartment. This model was designed to carry only two people, but it did so in unquestionable luxury.
With a gallant gesture, he suggested she should enter first. She scrambled over the side, leaving her backside exposed and vulnerable for a crucial second. A stinging, playful smack on her rump brought her head up sharply.
“Hey!”
“Sorry.” He laughed with all the impish sincerity of a toddler caught noshing on forbidden snacks between meals. “But it’s all your fault, you know.”
She glanced back at him, raising her eyebrows.
“Oh, really?”
“If your ass wasn’t so sexy, I wouldn’t want to touch it.”
She groaned, considering all the delectable ways he had touched her ass in the past. Another throb of heat shivered deliciously through her lower body.
“So where are we going?” she asked breathlessly.