The Skypirate

by Justine Davis

  “And no matter how much it delights my body to have you do so, my mind cannot accept that you do it at such cost.”

  “It is . . . worth it. To watch you unravel, and know that I have given that to you.”

  “God!” It burst from her, and he didn’t know whether it was unconscious, this use of the imprecation of his world, or if she thought it would have more effect on him. “Don’t you understand, Dax? I can’t do this! It’s too much like I was before, mating without thought to what it was costing my partner.”

  She whirled away from him, her arms wrapping around herself as if she were about to shatter. When she went on, her voice sounded nearly taut enough to shatter as well.

  “I detest the part of me that was able to use slaves in that way, and now you’re asking me to . . . to use you, to gain my own pleasure, while you suffer?”

  He stared at her, at the gleaming cap of her hair, at the fragile nape of her bent neck. That this was her reason had never occurred to him.

  “Besides,” she said, her voice low and choked, “I can’t help wondering if . . . it’s me. If I’m lacking, somehow, that I don’t have what is necessary to pleasure you in return.”

  “God, little snowfox,” Dax said as he reached for her shoulders and pulled her back against him. “It’s not you; it was never you. It’s me.”

  She shook her head, as if she didn’t believe that anymore. He drew in a quick breath, and knew that he owed her this.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “Triotians are . . . different. In mating as well as other things. You know that we believe in mating only inside a bonded or soon-to-be-bonded relationship. That the commitment must be made at least in mind.”

  “Shaylah told me of this. I thought it merely another legend.”

  “It is one of our oldest beliefs. It is not a law, in that it is not inscribed with the other laws that make the Triotian creed. But it runs so deep that to some it is far beyond a mere belief. It becomes a physical thing. A bodily limitation.”

  He felt her go very still. Then, slowly, she turned to look at him. “Are you saying it is so with you?”

  He sighed, knowing he was about to surrender the last and most deeply buried of his secrets to this woman. And knowing he had no choice.

  “I’m saying,” he told her, “that I’ve broken virtually every Triotian law on the tablets. I’ve run away. I’ve stolen; I’ve gambled dishonestly; I’ve committed arson, kidnapping, and piracy. I’ve denied my origins, and when pushed, I’ve killed. There isn’t a bedamned law I’ve missed. Except the one that isn’t written down.”

  He lifted her face then with a gentle finger beneath her chin.

  “My mind may have let me run wild, snowfox, but my body won’t let me break that last law. I don’t know why. It has developed a will of its own, and the fact that I want you more than I’ve ever known it possible to want a woman means nothing. No matter how far or how long I go in mating, I never attain release.”

  She was staring at him, wide-eyed. “But I heard the crew . . . they were talking of some Daxelian female, and of others . . .”

  He gave a weary, halfhearted chuckle. “Do you remember when I said I knew something of reputations? That appearances can be deceptive?”

  She nodded, still staring at him.

  “Well, mine is as . . . deceptive as yours was. Oh, I’m not saying that I haven’t, as you said, sampled my share. There were certainly enough females who seemed eager to bed an infamous skypirate. But I soon learned it was . . . futile.”

  Her brows lowered slightly. “But those women, the crew said they bragged . . .”

  “I know. I don’t know how it started. But once the reputation was there, it seemed to take on a life of its own.”

  “‘Seems every female in the system wants to be able to say they’ve mated with the most celebrated skypirate of them all,’” she quoted softly.

  Dax shifted uncomfortably. “Who in Hades said that?”

  “I don’t remember. But it was Rina who told me you once said that some women wanted wild creatures for pets, to show them off.”

  “It felt that way sometimes,” he admitted ruefully. “I think those women . . . fed it all, somehow. The notoriety just kept growing. I can only guess that each one thought she was the only one to fail.”

  “And so they lied,” she said slowly, “to protect their own pride. That’s why you believed me about . . . my reputation for free mating.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but—”

  “No. It doesn’t sound crazy at all,” she said softly. “I believe I know just how they felt.”

  He gripped her shoulders then. “No, snowfox. You must believe this. That no matter the end, making love with you has given me more pleasure than I’ve ever known before.”

  He used the ancient Triotian love words without thought; there was, he realized, no other words that truly fit what passed between them. He stared down into her eyes as if he could force her to believe him.

  “Even before I left Trios, before my body began to betray me, I never knew such pleasure existed for me. If you deny me the pain, you deny me the pleasure as well.”

  It was an incredible statement. He knew it, and saw the same knowledge in her eyes. He spoke the only words he thought might convince her.

  “I swear it, snowfox. On what is left of my world, I swear it.”

  “Oh, Dax.”

  She sagged against him, and for a moment he thought she was weeping. But then he knew he was wrong; his snowfox would no more allow herself that than he could. But she had believed him, against all logic, and he was holding her again in the way he’d sworn never to do again.

  And as they went down to his bunk together, he saw that his oath not to touch her was but a mote of crystal dust before the intensity of his need for this woman. He needed her as he had never needed anything, and every sign that she needed him as well sent surging bursts of heat through him.

  He hunted down those signs, coaxed them out of her with his hands, then his mouth. He caressed every inch of her as he tugged away interfering cloth, until she was quivering, until, when he gently urged her thighs apart, she opened herself eagerly for his intimate kiss.

  She cried out in shocked pleasure as his tongue replaced his stroking fingers and he tasted the sweet heart of her. She arched upward, moaning his name, and the honeyed sound of it rang in his ears as he felt her body gather itself for flight. As she writhed under his caresses, he knew that every word he’d told her was true.

  And by morning he had made his decision. He could not go on like this. Califa had been right; he was still sulking, still brooding over his failure. It was time—past time—to put it to rest. He knew there was only an infinitesimal chance that he would succeed, either in the task he had now set for himself, or the result, but he had to try. He couldn’t rest until he did.

  And if that rest was of the permanent variety, so be it.

  Chapter 21

  THE CREW SAT in the lounge, gaping at Dax as if he’d lost his mind.

  “Let me get this straight,” Nelcar said. “You’re going to go—purposely—to the Coalition’s worst labor camps, in the hope a handful of Triotians might still be alive?”

  Dax nodded. All eyes save Roxton’s, who was busy on the bridge—Dax no doubt already had his answer, and there was little question as to what it had been—swiveled to Rina, who looked as astonished as the rest of them. When she realized they were all looking at her, she shook her head.

  “It’s not my idea!” Then she focused her gaze on Dax. “You’re not doing this for me, are you?”

  “No, little one. It’s for me.”

  Califa watched him as he watched his crew. Would he tell them, at last, that he was Triotian? Was what she suspected true, that the driving force behind this reckless mission was his hope tha
t somehow it would be enough penance, and his ticket home, if not to forgiveness?

  He’d said little to her this morning when they’d awakened in each other’s arms, merely asked her to join the crew in the lounge, because he had something to say to them all. She’d sensed he’d reached some kind of decision, but she had never expected this. But the moment she had heard his words, she had understood. Perhaps better than he did.

  “I know you all have your own reasons for hating the Coalition,” Dax went on. “As do I. I can only tell you that, in light of what is happening on Trios, there is no better way to strike back at them right now.”

  That much was true, Califa thought.

  “The choice is yours,” Dax said to them. “I expect no one to accompany me on a mission that will bring you no profit, and will very likely endanger your lives. I freely admit this is a personal mission for me. If you wish to leave, we will part friends, and the Evening Star will take you wherever you wish to go.”

  “And if we stay?” Hurcon asked.

  “Then when it is over, the Evening Star will be yours.” A chorus of gasps met that announcement. “You may elect a captain of your own choosing, and do with her as you will.”

  “But what about you?” Larcos asked. “Suppose we pull this off, and rescue those few Triotians that may be left alive, and get them to Trios. Are you saying you will no longer fly with us? What will you do?”

  He will either be back home, or dead, Califa thought, knowing that somehow this had to come to an end for him, and that those were the only two alternatives he would accept.

  “I will . . . decide that when it is done. But in any case, the Evening Star will be my payment to you.”

  Raucous discussion broke out, until at last the taciturn Qantar got to his feet.

  “I would speak.”

  That itself was such a shock that the room fell silent.

  “Most of you know my story. The Coalition has taken all that mattered to me in life. My woman, my children . . . I would have welcomed death, indeed was courting it when Dax found me and convinced me to join you.”

  He looked around at them, his eyes lingering on Rina, then Dax, for a fraction of a second longer than the others.

  “Yet of all the planets the Coalition has crushed, Trios, that most splendid of worlds, has suffered the worst of their viciousness. Her people are hunted down and killed with no more thought than slimehogs. Yet she resists valiantly. As my people never did.” He shifted his gaze to Hurcon. “As Omegans never did.” Then to Califa. “As Arellians never did. For that alone, she has earned my respect. And my help, if I can give it. I fly with Dax.”

  He sat down then, reverting into his stony-faced silence as if he’d never given the eloquent speech. The crew was nodding furiously; Dax looked a little stunned.

  “A vote!” Larcos called out.

  Dax held up his hand. “There is one more thing you have the right to know before you vote. The Coalition will not just be looking out for us. They will be actively hunting us down. If they discover what we are doing, they will throw all the forces they can spare into the chase.”

  “The way I look at it,” Larcos said, “those Triotians who are fighting have done a lot to keep the Coalition off our backs. If we can pay them back a little, I’m all for it.”

  “I hear they’re particular about their laws and such,” Hurcon said warily. “What if they decide to toss us in prison because we’re skypirates, no matter what we bring them?”

  “Trios does not try to rule the system, it has no laws governing the behavior of outsiders while not on Trios,” Dax said, his voice carefully emotionless. “Only Triotians, or those guilty of an offense against the royal family, must pay the price for violating their laws, wherever the crime is done.”

  To Califa, his words sounded ominous. Not because of what he’d said of those guilty of an offense against the royal family—which most certainly would include her—but because of what he wasn’t saying. What would he do, if this chance failed, if they found his offenses too severe, and found it necessary to punish him?

  Surely they wouldn’t, she told herself. If he succeeded, if he found any survivors, and was able to bring them home, surely the council—or at the very least Dare—would forgive him and welcome him. And perhaps, she thought, she could help make sure he succeeded.

  When Larcos called for a vote this time, Dax nodded. To a man they repeated Qantar, until Califa thought the words “I fly with Dax” would ring in her ears forever. To an observer who didn’t know, Dax would no doubt appear unmoved, but Califa saw the tightness of his jaw, the rigid straightness of his body. And she knew he hadn’t expected this.

  Purposely, it seemed to Califa, he left her for last. She was about to speak, to echo the others in their stirring pledge, when he spoke to her first.

  “Since you are not by choice a member of this crew, if it is your wish, I will take you to wherever you wish and you may walk away.”

  Califa felt a chill start to creep up her spine. Why was he speaking like this, so formally? And after the night they’d spent together . . . True, the end result for him had been the same, but she had watched him carefully, and had come to believe that, despite the pain, he had spoken the truth about the pleasure.

  “However,” he said, still in that same, detached tone, “you may have information that would be helpful, such as knowledge of the location of the labor camps.”

  That was exactly what she had thought to offer him; she knew of three camps where it was rumored Triotians were, or had been, held. But something in his tone made her hesitate. It must be simply that he was taking care before the crew not to treat her any differently, she decided. She would—

  “I have a bargain for you. If you will share that knowledge as your part, if you will help where you can, I will swear to you that I will find someone capable of removing that collar.”

  Califa smothered a gasp. She felt as if she’d been slapped in the face, and more humiliated than she’d ever been in her days as a slave. He was bargaining with her. He felt he had to negotiate with her for the help she had been about to freely offer.

  He was looking at her, his eyes reflecting a touch of puzzlement, as if he didn’t understand what had stunned her so. “What do you say, Califa? Your freedom for the information I need?”

  She had heard it said that when she was at her most furious, her eyes made glacial ice look warm. She guessed that was what they looked like now, as she raised them to his. Wariness flickered across Dax’s face, and she knew he had seen the change.

  “I say,” she said with a precise enunciation that matched the frost in her eyes, “that you are a fool to bargain for what you could have had for free. But I will hold you to it, have no doubts.”

  She turned on her heel and strode out of the lounge, but not before she caught a last glimpse of Dax, who was looking very much like a man who has just realized the size of his mistake.

  DAX WAS EXHAUSTED from battling the heavy gravity of Omega, but he had no choice but to keep going. The drugged guards would soon be waking, and they had to be long gone by then. He shifted his burden, and heard a softly voiced apology out of the dark from somewhere near his left ear.

  “Sorry to be so much trouble.”

  “Never mind,” he said.

  She wasn’t much trouble, really, this pale, broken woman who clung to his back. She’d been in the darkest of the dank, grimy cells, her ability to walk long lost to the torturous instruments of her captors. She’d been barely recognizable as Triotian, her once golden hair now turned to silver, her golden skin turned sallow. She was old, and surely looked older. But Triotians lived a very long time, and with care she might well have many years left. And her eyes had given the truth to Califa’s promise that there was at least one Triotian being held here; they were the deep, soft green of the Triotian forest.


  Califa. She had been by his side every step of the way, as she was at this moment. She had spent hours forcing herself to remember any bits of hard information or rumor she’d ever heard about captive Triotians and where they were being held. She had given him detailed layouts of every labor camp she knew of, always with the caution that her information was old, coupled with the assurance that the Coalition moved slowly to change.

  While it had been Dax’s idea to use Nelcar’s potion to drug the guards, it had been Califa’s for her to administer it, going blatantly into danger, flaunting instead of hiding the gold collar that marked her as slave, and her tempting body as well, masquerading as a new piece of Coalition property sent to provide food and drink—and perhaps more—for the guards. This was their third raid, and each time the result had been the same; the guards were so distracted they ate and drank what she brought without question.

  His every instinct had screamed out against it when she had first suggested it.

  “It is part of our bargain, is it not?” she had said icily. “That I shall help where I can?”

  He wondered if she would ever thaw. He’d known immediately that he’d said something very wrong that day in the lounge, when those eyes had gone icier than he’d ever seen them. Unexpectedly, it was Rina who’d made him really see what he’d done.

  “Eos, Dax, you’ve been mating with her, haven’t you?”

  That blunt assessment from this girl he’d always thought of as the child he’d found made his face heat. “I . . . er . . .”

  “Do you think I’m blind?” Rina asked. “Anyone can see the crackle between you. Even Larcos noticed, and you know he’s oblivious unless it’s one of his blessed inventions. And Roxton said he’d never seen you look at a woman like that.”

  “Roxton,” he muttered, as he had countless times before, “talks too much.”

  “So it’s true, then. No wonder she was furious.”

  “No wonder?”

  Rina let out a sigh of exasperation so quintessentially feminine it shook Dax’s childlike image of her to the core. “Don’t you get it? You’ve mated with her, yet you put securing her help on the same level as trading for coins. She’s a slave, Dax. How do you think that made her feel?”