She snorted, making him look her way again. She faced him with brows raised. “And he’s extraordinary?”
“Yes.” He said it without hesitation because he meant it. John Erik was one of the most amazing men he’d ever met, comparable to his two brothers, Walt and Dan, and that was saying a hell of a lot. “You’ll see.”
“Yeah,” she said, sarcasm hanging heavily on the one word, “I’ll see.”
Charlie decided to ignore the attitude. She was under pressure, after all. “I think you’ll find there’s plenty to do on board. There is an exercise room, of course, and lots of holographic movies, books, and games in the ship’s library.”
“Is there a firing range? And access to the I-Net?”
Okay, she had a weapon, so he could see why she wondered about a firing range, but the Intergalactic Net? The government-controlled database allowed only restricted access. “We use the NewsNet to keep up with what’s happening in the worlds, but you need special permission for the I-Net.”
“The remarkable Captain Erik doesn’t have an access code I could use?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said honestly. “You can ask, but I’d wait. Right now he seems pretty—”
“Pissed,” she said. “I get it.”
She turned toward the window and sank into silence, an action Charlie adopted. In a minute or two they’d be locked into the hover craft portal. Then she’d be the captain’s problem. Nice as she was to look at, Charlie wouldn’t be sorry to pass the responsibility of the strange woman.
A couple of minutes later, she spoke again. “That’s Erik’s Pryde? She hardly looks able to stay alight, much less navigate the universe.”
“Don’t discount her. She pulls through when she needs to.”
He lined the hover craft up with the portal and smartly locked it in place. He cut the engine and scrambled back to open the hatch and gather Danessa’s cases. “Let’s get to your cabin, then secure your weapon, and then we’ll go to the bridge. The captain insists everyone be on the bridge during takeoff.”
“Okay.”
Before he could move, she laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry for the way I acted. It’s just…” She sucked in a deep breath. “It’s been a long day. I have a lot on my mind.”
Charlie smiled. “No worries. Come on. The sooner we get into space the sooner you can settle in and get some rest.”
“Absolutely. The sooner we get into space, the better.”
Somehow, Charlie didn’t think she meant it the way he had.
Chapter Three
“Captain, we’re ready.” Charlie ushered Susan onto the bridge.
She took in the environment in a matter of seconds. The front window opened onto the brightly lit holding area. Other shuttles parked around them, lights flashing, fueling vehicles and hover crafts moving between them. The bridge itself looked well used, to phrase it kindly. She hoped the bucket ran a lot better than it looked.
Three men turned almost as one and stared at her. Charlie moved forward, made a chagrined face, and scratched the back of his neck. “Sir, this is Shanna Ziegler.”
“Danessa Vanessa,” she corrected.
Even without the uniform designations, she knew immediately which of the men was Captain John Erik. Power flowed from him. His narrowed gaze relayed tightly corralled impatience. He took her in with one up-and-down, studied look. She felt his examination with every inch of her body. Her nerves vibrated as though his gaze raked her with electricity.
He pointed to a seat attached to the right wall. “Pull that down and strap yourself in.” Then he turned to one of the other men. “Let’s get going. Adam, tell the tower we’re finally ready.” He cast an accusatory glance her way at the last words.
“Charlie, did you get her weapon stowed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Set the thrusters.” Erik faced her once more. “I don’t appreciate people booking flight on my ship without full disclosure, Miss Vanessa. Your papers stated clearly that you were coming on board without regulated materials. That includes weapons, or didn’t you know that?” His tone said he knew well that anyone cleared to own a weapon also knew the regulations concerning it.
“I know more about weapons than you’ve ever known,” she said. Then, turning her back, she pulled down the fold-up seat, sat down, and slipped her arms through the straps before clicking the lap belt closed.
“Oh, wow! She’s got tits to kill for and she’s strapped in. It’s like having a wet dream right here on the bridge. Maybe later we could tie her down and—”
Susan snapped her head to glare at the fourth man, the stranger still on the bridge. He regarded her with a leer that the most accomplished letch would envy.
“Ohh, I struck a nerve.”
“I forgot to tell you about Dillard,” Charlie explained. “He’s robotic and, despite his diarrhea of the mouth, perfectly harmless. Dilly, mind your manners.”
“Charlie, I just said what everyone else has been thinking.” Dillard flipped a few switches on the control board. Then he flopped into a seat and buckled himself in.
“Criminy,” she said.
“This is going to be a long flight,” Erik muttered. Then he sat in the largest of the four seats and snapped his straps in place.
Within minutes, Charlie and the other man, Adam, were also in their seats. The floor vibrated beneath her feet as the engines geared up. Erik pushed the throttle stick up and they eased forward.
“Cleared for exit to inter,” came a disembodied voice from the COMM speakers.
Susan knew this was just the first step, being allowed into the intermediate takeoff block. She wasn’t away yet. They still had to clear the inter and then the outer gateway before she could breathe.
Gaining a bit more speed, Erik maneuvered them through the other shuttles in the holding area and into the more organized arena of ships in inter. There they waited again. One by one the other vehicles took off, flying from the well-lighted government-controlled inter area into blackness bracketed with guiding lamps, which outlined the channel of space used for departures and arrivals.
“We’re up next,” Charlie said, turning his head to reassure her.
“You are cleared to enter the gateways.”
Susan began to breathe a bit easier. In less than an hour she should be in deep space and farther away from the authorities. Then she’d retire to her room and try to sort through the day’s tragic events. For a moment she closed her eyes, but all she saw was Lisle’s shoe, half-off.
When she looked through the front screen once more, they were in darkness, slowly making their way to the appropriate sector where they would catch the portal into space.
Twenty minutes later, they still hadn’t been given permission to exit. Others had gone around them, and now their sector held only two ships beside them.
Susan’s muscles tightened. She swore she could feel the acid in her stomach increase. Centuries of medical miracles hadn’t produced anything better than antacids for a tense stomach. Too bad the assholes brilliant enough to create Pheron hadn’t concentrated on something really worthwhile, like a pill that did away with an overabundance of stress.
“What the fuck is going on?” Erik pounded the arm of his seat. “I’ve never waited this long to get out of this goddamn terminal.”
He clicked the COMM button. “Tower, this is EP06842, Erik’s Pryde. Can you tell me what the holdup is in exiting to the gateways?”
He was certainly a master of control. No one would be able to tell from his voice how upset he was.
“You are cleared as far as we are concerned,” the tower answered, though not in the previously robotic tone, “but these guys request that we hold you until they confirm something about a passenger. You do carry a passenger, don’t you, EP06842? It is noted on your manifest.”
“Shit,” Erik said, off-COMM. “These guys? What the hell is this about?” He tapped his seat arm while his crew stared at him. Turning his head, he studied Susan.
; It took a great deal of willpower not to squirm under his assessment, so different from the very male examination he’d made when she boarded. She watched his eyes and knew the moment he decided.
Would he hand her over? He had absolutely no reason not to. If she were in control, she would go back and hand her over. If it came to the safety of her crew or getting rid of possible trouble, her crew won out every time.
He activated the COMM. “I had a passenger, a man going to one of the outer planets, but he cancelled. I forgot to change the manifest.”
A different voice came across the COMM. “Security cameras show one of your crewmen, a Charles Sheridan, talking to a woman of interest to us. Did she board your vessel?”
“She did not.”
“Why was he talking to her?”
“One moment and I’ll ask.” Erik clicked off the COMM for a few seconds, then clicked it on. “He says she was hotter than a Venus summer. I chewed his ass about getting back to the ship late. He says he doesn’t know where she went.”
Adam and Charlie swiveled in their chairs to fix their gazes on her. Whatever shit happened now, she was the cause. The captain and his crew were men of courage. Or stupidity. Only time would tell which.
“Good tits and an interesting history. This could be fun,” Dilly said, pushing switches on the console in front of him.
“Captain,” Charlie said, “I don’t know what this is about, but I have a feeling about her. She needs us. Above all—”
“Needs you? Who do you think you are?” Susan asserted at the same time Charlie continued with, “—we should not return to the terminal. There was a guy—”
Erik nodded and waved his hand for silence. He spoke into the COMM. “Who are you to delay our departure?”
“You are to return to the holding area and prepare to be boarded.”
“I’m telling you, no one came on board in Centre City.”
“I said, return to the holding area.”
“Captain,” Dilly said calmly, “I have determined an open portal. If we do not wish to return to Centre City, I suggest we warp out through portal H, located at two o’clock.”
“Fine, fine,” Erik said into the COMM, sounding resigned, “but I’m having engine trouble now after waiting here so long. It will take me a little time.”
Off-COMM he said in an undertone, “Let’s get out of here, gentlemen. We’ll find our course again later.”
“Yes, sir,” Charlie said, flipping switches. Adam’s hands flew across the console. Sudden forward movement pushed Susan against the back of her seat.
The distant stars outside the gateways flew toward them until they blurred with the speed Erik’s Pryde traveled. The virtual walls of the portal’s corridor streaked with color as they sped through it. An alarm deafened her.
“EP06842, you have violated orders. Stop once through the portal and return via the same corridor. Acknowledge…Acknowledge…Acknow—”
Erik flipped the COMM off. “Enough of that shit.”
“We’re about there, Captain.” Charlie sounded ebullient instead of nervous.
“And we’re out.” Adam spoke for the first time since Susan had been on the bridge. His deep voice sent shivers through her, though maybe the drastic change from full stop to mach four had done it instead.
“Make for the Triton galaxy. We’ll come back around to our delivery.”
“Aye,” Adam said.
Erik slowly spun his chair to face her. “And now I have a few questions, Miss Vanessa. Starting with, who the fuck are you?”
* * * *
Erik would grant that Danessa Vanessa could act well. She didn’t even flinch when he came at her. In fact, she came back like a fighter pilot, all heat and flash and cockiness.
Her posture stiffened and her chin lifted a couple of inches. “So, you break the law pretty damn easily. Charlie didn’t give any hint of that back at the terminal.”
“It isn’t as common an occurrence as you might think. And this particular time, you should be goddamn grateful.” He switched his gaze to Charlie. “What do you know?”
“There was a guy watching us, big, definitely a Gov-man,” Charlie said. “She said he was after her for personal reasons. I didn’t like the looks of him and I did like hers.”
Dilly swallowed a laugh. Charlie blushed. Erik shook his head. He’d seen the kid fuck three women—one after another—on a table at a space bar in the Lilia galaxy, and yet he could blush because he thought the lady was sexy. Amazing.
“I meant that I thought she was hiding something but that she was honest. It was a flash decision.” He pondered for a few seconds. “But he couldn’t have known she came on board the Pryde. The hover craft isn’t marked with our insignia, and I circled the area a few times before locking in.”
Erik shifted his focus back to her. “I’ll ask again. Who are you, and why are the authorities looking for you?”
The woman stood now that they were no longer zipping across huge sections of the universe in nanoseconds.
“I’m Danessa Vanessa, formerly a dancer from Illinois and soon to be a bride. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in my cabin.”
Charlie started to stand but she held up her hand. “I can find the way back to my cabin.”
Stopping at the hatchway, she tossed over her shoulder, “Thanks for a real exciting takeoff, boys. I can only hope the remainder of the trip is less so.” And she was gone.
Erik felt a certain heat had left with her, whether from her sexy, hot body or her fiery rhetoric, he couldn’t be sure.
“Well, she’s something,” he commented.
“To tell the truth, I couldn’t tell about her. She said she was nervous about her upcoming wedding.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I think there’s something more, something intense, going on with her.”
“Big tits, big problem,” Dilly put in. “It’s the same with all women.”
“Other than that she has big tits,” Erik said, wiping his eyes tiredly, “what did you get from her, Adam?” His XO was not only the best ship’s officer Erik had ever served with, he was psychic, trained by the best of the best on Omi.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing? That’s impossible, isn’t it?”
Adam pursed his lips and looked out the front screen for a moment. “It’s never happened before. I didn’t probe her mind when she first came onto the bridge, but after the government’s demands I probed plenty. She knows how to block her thoughts.” He cocked his head and looked at Erik. “You know what that means.”
“Yeah, she’s something other than a stripper from small-town Illinois, wherever that is. The question is, if she’s not Danessa Vanessa, who the hell is she? And why is she on my ship?”
Chapter Four
Susan left the bridge before she screamed. Okay, yes, she had to escape Earth before she caught a bullet. And yes, meeting up with the weird bride-to-be who matched her own shape and weight so well had been a near miracle. And yes, any woman with half a brain and a fraction of a libido would kill for the chance to share a long flight with three truly fine examples of men. Even if he hadn’t been more handsome than sin, the captain’s easy show of power made him irresistible. Charlie was adorable in a boyish way that would make any woman want to hold him to her breasts and invite him to suckle. And the third man, Adam, had a physique that made her mouth water. Not to mention his alluring gray eyes.
Yes, any woman would kill for the chance to spend months in space with men like these. Susan had only one question—why her?
For the past twelve years, with rare exceptions when she “rested” in Centre City or hid out in her secret bungalow on Olympus III, she spent most of her life in law enforcement working undercover. There she lived or died solely on how well she read others and kept them from reading her. Emotions were tightly controlled, thoughts were harbored, and anything that might open her inner self to the scrutiny of others—anything like sex, which by i
ts very nature left her vulnerable and unprotected for several seconds—was avoided at all costs. Below the culture’s surface, where criminals and the low members of society lived, Susan had the reputation of being GENvert because she avoided sex so assiduously.
GENverts, or gender-perverted individuals, were genetically manipulated so as to be unsuitable for sex. Used as a form of population control for centuries, the process left males unable to perform and women with no vagina. The government had dictated that another genetic marker be changed at the same time in order to identify GENverts among the general human population. A square-shaped, strawberry-colored birthmark appeared on their necks, just below their right ears. Susan had such a mark—had had it since birth. She considered it a lucky talisman, an accident of true genetics, and a useful tool.
Being thought gender-perverted kept the whole notion of sex out of the equation when Susan dealt with the bastards she did. When the urgency for sex almost choked her, she found some reason to disappear. In her hideaway or Centre City, she took care of her baser instincts, though not with the complications that came with having sex with a man. She had taken an impressive collection of sex toys with her on her trip to Earth, in fact, and had looked forward to spending her nights in Centre City amusing herself while releasing pent-up needs. Too bad they had all been in the suitcase left in the office vault.
But now, faced with the three pilots, she would have to fight for control of her emotions every minute, just when discovering who in the DAT had betrayed her and how to save both herself and her reputation required her full attention. The absolute last thing in the world she needed was three months with the crew of Erik’s Pryde. For the first time, she wondered if truly being a GENvert wouldn’t make life easier in some ways.
The passageways she traversed to her cabin showed wear and tear although they were neat and clean. The ship obviously had age on her, regardless of how the captain tried to hide it. Hopefully she had pick up and go where it counted.
Like the rest of the ship, Susan’s cabin verged on the edge of shabby, without the chic. The paint on the bulkheads appeared faded, and the sparse furnishings showed nicks and dents. If Captain Erik had stretched the truth on the COMM and he’d had passengers cancel in the past, Susan didn’t question why. He had nothing to offer a traveler of any discrimination. She wondered if Danessa Vanessa had any idea of the accommodations she’d booked, or if she would care, being from the outlands.
Knight, Dee S. - Bride of the Pryde (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 3