Gabriel's Ghost

by Linnea Sinclair

  He pulled me to the bed and took over my grooming. I closed my eyes. Fingers and comb laced through my hair, down my arms, my back. “This could become an obsession.”

  I reminded him he already had a job. And that he was on duty.

  He pushed my hair to one side, planted a light kiss on my collarbone. “Get under the covers.”

  I did. They were cool, pillows nicely fluffed. I lay my hand on his arm. “Sully—”

  “Hush, Chasidah.” He touched his fingers to my lips. “Close your eyes.”

  I was about to protest I wasn’t sleepy when I felt his fingers on my forehead, then my eyelids, then my mouth again. A soft breeze ruffled over me—

  —and my eyes opened. 1605. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep that quickly. Or that I’d slept for that long. I wasn’t muzzy from it. I knew my body clock hadn’t reset yet, but I felt fine.

  I splashed more water on my face, then pulled on someone else’s clothes. I bound my hair back loosely with a ribbon. “Captain’s heading for the bridge.”

  “Hell’s ass. There goes our card game.” Sully’s lackadaisical drawl made me smile.

  They were sitting on the floor of the bridge, to the right of the captain’s chair, playing cards. At least I didn’t have to fight for possession of the chair.

  I leaned on the armrest and watched the game over Sully’s shoulder. “Who’s winning? No. Delete that. How much does he owe you now, Ren?”

  “One million, seven hundred sixteen thousand, four hundred and five.”

  “That’s all?” I teased. “You’re slipping.”

  Sully pointed at Ren. “Thieving chiseler. Swindler.”

  I chuckled. “Status?”

  “He cheats. That’s status. It’s always been status.”

  “I don’t think that’s what she’s asking you, Sully.”

  “She should be. Your lack of integrity is appalling.”

  I held up one hand. “Gentlemen, I need status.”

  Sully picked up the stack of cards, arced them into his hand, feathered them back down. “On course, all systems stable. No bogies. No transmits from politically wary admirals.” He shuffled the cards again with a skill even the best casino dealer on Garno would envy. Then he angled around to face me, fanned the deck in his hands, and held it up to me. “Pick three. No, four. No, wait. What’s your favorite number?”

  “Five.”

  “Perfect. Pick five. Ah! Don’t look at them yet. Just hold them. Between your palms, that’s right.”

  I pursed my lips together to keep from laughing.

  “Good. What’s your favorite card?”

  “Favorite card? You mean suit?” I’d seen tricks like this in spaceport pubs, though never with five cards. Two at most, and I’d end up holding two gold-novas, high-nebulas, moon-drops, or heart-stars.

  “No, card. Favorite card.”

  I raised one eyebrow. There were no five cards alike in a deck.

  He was grinning his wicked Sully grin.

  Hell’s ass. “Angel of heart-stars.”

  “Fitting. Very fitting. Be a good girl, Chasidah; open your hands and look at the cards.”

  I fanned them out in my hand. Five angels of heart-stars. Five familiar images of slender women, clearly angels because of the halos topping their cascading hair. All identical.

  He stood, brushed his hands against his pants. “Tea, anyone?”

  “Please,” Ren said.

  I was still staring at the cards, my mouth open.

  “You’d best get Chasidah some too,” Ren called as Sully strode through the door.

  “How’d he do that?”

  “Offer to get tea?” There was the hint of a smile on Ren’s lips. He knew I was surprised by something. But unless he touched the cards, he wouldn’t know what.

  “Five heart-stars. I’m holding five angels of heart-stars. There aren’t five angels of heart-stars in one whole deck!” Damn, he was good. I didn’t even see him switch decks.

  “Gabriel’s playing tricks again, is he?”

  “Damn good tricks. This could get you more than a few beers on liberty.” I closed the cards and shook my head, laughing to myself.

  Ren rose, scooping up the remaining deck where Sully had left it on the floor.

  I shuffled the ones in my hand, absently, feeling their raised symbols. Then I stopped shuffling and turned them over. Five angels. I felt the raised symbols again.

  This wasn’t a trick deck.

  Gabriel’s playing tricks, Ren had said.

  I handed the five cards back to Ren. He patted me on the shoulder, gently.

  Warmth.

  14

  “Lose this hand and you owe me two million credits, my friend.” Ren arched his left eyebrow slightly.

  We were an hour from the jumpgate that would take us through most of Dafir and almost to the Calth system. Another four, five days after that and we’d be near the intercept coordinates for the Boru Karn. Six days of long shift duty had brought us to this point, safely—though from Sully’s viewpoint, not inexpensively.

  He stared coolly at Ren, dark eyes narrowed, a hint of a smile on his lips. The quintessential gambler, lounging on the decking, one elbow on a raised knee.

  I gave a low whistle. “Two million. What are you going to do now?”

  He fanned the cards shut, held them, fanned them open again, never taking his eyes off Ren. “Double or nothing.”

  “Sully …” Ren was clearly giving him a chance to rethink his statement.

  “You heard me, Ackravaro. Double or nothing.”

  Ren stroked his cards. “Agreed. Double or nothing.”

  “You’re witness to this, Chaz.”

  “I’m witness to this, Sully.”

  Sully looked at Ren, a triumphant smile on his face. He laid his cards on the deck, one by one, calling them out as he did so. All gold-novas. Sequential. Seven through angel. A good hand. A damned good hand.

  Ren sighed and looked distinctly troubled.

  Sully’s grin widened.

  Ren laid out his cards. All high-nebulas. Ten, angel, empress, emperor, galaxy. “Four million. You owe me four million, my friend.”

  Sully leaned forward. He stared at the cards in front of Ren, then back at his own. “This is a beautiful hand. Then you pull …” He switched his gaze back to Ren again. “You cheated. There can be no other explanation.”

  “You say that every time, Sully.”

  “Yes, I know. Ante up?”

  “Ante up. Who’s dealing?”

  “I am. You’re obviously not trustworthy.”

  I laughed. “Make it a quick game, gentlemen. I need you at your stations in fifteen minutes.” I pulled my armrest controls around, rechecked our coordinates. A longer jump this time than the one off Moabar. Six hours’ jumptime.

  We could all use the time off. It was tense, waiting for something to happen. While jukors were born and Takas died.

  Two thousand, five hundred twenty-five credits later, Sully was at engineering and Ren sat at comm, monitoring internal systems through voice commands.

  Sublights disengaged at forty-eight percent, hypers were on full. The gate grabbed us, drew us in—no twists, no shimmies. The Meritorious glided into the neverwhen flawlessly. Just like old times.

  I stayed an extra half hour on the bridge, watching the readouts on the hypers, making sure guidance wasn’t picking up a skew from the remnant of an old ion trail. I leaned over Sully’s shoulder. He pulled me around and into his lap. “You’re supposed to be off duty.”

  “I just like to take my ship through jump.”

  “And out again, I suppose?”

  “Yes, and out again.”

  “That leaves about five hours with nothing for you to do. Tea sounds good. Can you defend the universe without us for a while, Ren?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “We won’t be far.” Sully stood, grabbing my elbow. In the common room he coaxed two mugs of hot tea from the panels. I pulled th
e chairs out from the table, but he shook his head. “Our cabin. Decor’s better.”

  Yes. It had a bed.

  Six days. In the past six days, he’d done nothing more than kiss me, tuck me in, let me sleep. But he’d made sure, every hour I spent with him, a little more of Gabriel Ross Sullivan came to the surface.

  It was as if he were showing me in small ways what I couldn’t ask and what he couldn’t tell. But he watched my rainbows, cautiously, waiting for my fears to subside.

  And they were subsiding, in equally small ways. That Sully was an empath like Ren was clear. So were a few hundred, or perhaps thousand, other humans in the Empire, from what I’d heard. And I hadn’t heard much, other than those who admitted to the rare mind talent often worked as government-sanctioned med-counselors. I could understand their usefulness in that field. Though it had been disconcerting at first to feel the warmth flowing through my body from the touch of Ren’s and Sully’s hands, it wasn’t intrusive. I didn’t fear that. It was a giving, comforting thing.

  But I still wondered about the differences between empaths and Ragkirils. The Empire called all Stolorth telepaths Ragkirils. Knowing Ren as I did now, I knew that wasn’t true. Ren was an empath. He didn’t have the Higher Link. But what was Sully? Was the ability to do a zral, a cleansing of memory, a part of empathic abilities, not Ragkiril? I’d never heard of any humans with Ragkiril talents, though admittedly, a patrol-ship captain wasn’t likely to be informed of such a discovery. Could it be just a stronger version of a reassuring touch, a blurring of a memory rather than the removal? He never said he could do a zragkor. That procedure was a mind suddenly inside another’s mind, violent, harsh.

  I sensed no violence, no harshness in him or Ren anytime their warmth flowed into me. I didn’t even know if they were aware they sent the sensation, or that I could feel it.

  Sully’s card trick with the five angels of heart-stars perplexed me a little more. You can’t alter matter by touch, by thought. Even my Grizni dagger was mechanical, a hybrid fluid metal reactive to heat and pressure applied at certain key points, coded only to my fingerprints.

  There were only two logical explanations: either Sully did have a second deck, or—why did I have to assume Ren’s reference to “Gabriel’s tricks” meant something on the extrasensory level?—he sent the emotional resonance of acceptance into me when he handed me the cards. I saw five heart-stars because that’s what I wanted to see.

  He put the tea on the bedside table, drew me into his lap in the middle of the bed. He took a moment to undo my boots and his own, pulled them off. He wrapped his arms around my waist, nuzzled his face in my neck. “Tea’s for later. Though it’ll probably be cold by then.”

  Warmth trickled through me, then a flash of heat, flaring, spiraling. Its unexpected intensity made my eyes open in surprise.

  His own sharp intake of breath matched mine. The heat simmered. Gentled. “I want so badly to make love to you, Chazzy-girl. But only if it’s what you want. Tell me to wait—”

  I closed my hands over his. “I don’t want to wait.”

  Another flare, flames dancing, but I was ready for it this time.

  I draped my legs over his thighs, took his face in my hands. Kissed him with small, teasing, nibbling kisses.

  He groaned. Tiny explosions rained inside my body.

  He kissed me back, hard.

  I opened my mouth, tasted him.

  His hands found the edge of my shirt, pulled. I broke from the kiss, stripped my shirt off, then the undershirt. He ran his hands lightly over my breasts, his thumbs circling my nipples. His fingers slid down to my waist, stroking, then up again. The heat came in long, coursing flares.

  I reached behind my head, unraveled my braid, and shook my hair free. It fell to my waist, tangled and curled.

  “Chaz,” he said softly. He ran his fingers through my hair, pushing it back from my face, letting it drift down through his hands.

  I pulled the edge of his shirt out of his pants. His hand covered mine, impatient. He yanked the shirt over his head, then grabbed me, rolling me onto my back. His hard length covered me. His mouth claimed mine, demanding, insistent. A strong hand cupped my breast. Then his lips burned against my neck, my shoulder, closed around a nipple, sucked with a tenderness that made me ache.

  A hot wave rolled over me, soothing the ache, caressing it. Mouth back on mouth now. Breaths shuddered.

  I arched my hips against him, felt him throbbing, felt liquid fire racing through my veins. I ran my hands over the sinews of his shoulders, down to his waist, pushed my fingers into the waistband of his pants. “You going to take these off, or do I have to use my teeth?”

  His dark eyes glittered with a dangerous passion. “We’ll save that method for next time. When we have more than five hours.”

  My pants and underwear came off too, tossed somewhere over his shoulder. Then there was nothing but heat and hardness, hands stroking, fingers tracing, tongues leaving hot, wet trails.

  And fire, searing, cresting, spiraling. I knew it was his emotions I felt, overwhelming me, augmenting and feeding my own.

  I found his mouth again, wanting to kiss that wicked, wicked Sully grin. My hands moved up his chest, through the thick mat of dark hair, and clung to his shoulders. His hands slid under my backside, kneading me, lifting me, his hardness stroking against me, slick. I wrapped my legs around his waist, stroked back with my body. He trembled, kissed me with a passion that made me gasp.

  “Sully, please!”

  I didn’t have to ask twice. He plunged into me, sparks surging, cascading, swirling. My body answered with a fervency I didn’t know I had, pleasure streaming through me at hyperspace speeds. Everything collided, arcing. He rasped my name, stroking deeper.

  And then I swear three suns went nova, half a galaxy was blown away, and the universe shifted at least a hundred feet from where it had been before.

  But it was just Sully, his body hot and damp and heavy against mine, breathing long, ragged breaths against my neck. Sending warm, pulsing waves through me.

  I unwrapped my legs, let my feet drift down the back of his thighs in a slow caress. I stroked his hair and, when he moved slightly, bit his shoulder.

  He chuckled. “You’re a wicked woman, Chazzy-girl.”

  “You’re a wicked man, Sully.”

  I dozed, curled against him, listening to the rise and fall of his breath. Warmth fluttered through my hand and up my arm when I touched him, traced the line of his jaw.

  His eyes slitted open. He grabbed my hand, nibbled kisses on my fingers. “No regrets?”

  “None. Well, maybe.”

  A small flash of concern touched his eyes. His mouth turned into a slight frown.

  Wicked woman, Chazzy-girl. “I like my tea hot.”

  Something between a groan and a grumble vibrated in his throat. He pushed me back, slid on top of me, slid inside me again, hard, throbbing. “Let’s talk about heat.”

  I couldn’t. Talk. Passion, hot, molten passion, streamed through me. Then a second wave, but different, almost intoxicating. Then heat again, melting me, melting into me. Then another, floating, rising.

  The heat returned, more intense, probing, wrapped around me. Parted, pleasure surged, building, cresting—

  “Oh, God, Chaz!” Shuddering, soaring, taking me with him, clinging to each other. Desperate, frenzied kisses.

  Then warmth, soft as the breath on my face, enveloping me.

  I opened my eyes to find Sully watching me. Reading rainbows?

  “You can do that, control what you send? What you make me feel?” Like sensations of intense passion alternating with ones of languid pleasure. Like a sensation of acceptance. Five heart-stars in my hand.

  A long wait was filled with the sound of his ragged breathing, finally slowing. He watched me the whole time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m not supposed to ask—”

  “No. It’s okay.” His was an equally soft reply. Then Sully’s f
ace was next to mine on the pillow, his arm across my chest, hand on my shoulder, pulling me closer against him.

  “Yeah,” he said in my ear, just a breath of a whisper. A near silent confession. “Yeah, I can.”

  Fifty minutes to exitgate. The numbers glowing on my bedside clock focused and unfocused in my sleepy vision. Sully’s arm was heavy across my chest, his breathing deep, steady. I studied his face. Thick brows, dark lashes, straight nose. No Sully grin on those slightly parted lips. Shame, that. When I’d heard he’d been killed on Garno, it was one of the things I knew I’d miss.

  That, and the verbal sparring. Over six years of it. I’d pick up an ID on the border, somewhere in the badlands. Somewhere a ship with that ID shouldn’t be. Send out a hail. Get an answer, a flash on the vidscreen. A dark-haired pirate with a wicked smile. His pilot, bridge crew, always moved in the shadows behind him.

  “Slumming, Captain Bergren?”

  “Weeding my garden, Sullivan. You wouldn’t happen to be waiting for the Osborn Mining long-hauler, now would you?”

  “I’ve no use for synth-emeralds.”

  “Never said they were hauling synth-emeralds.”

  A languid shrug, almost aristocratic. “Lucky guess on my part, then.”

  “You’re in a restricted area. You know the rules. Move it, or we’re boarding. You know how the Empire feels about forged ownership files.”

  “I’m in free space, Captain. Well,” and there’d be that glance down at the arm pad controls on his left, on the empty pilot’s chair, “most of me is.”

  My own downward glance always mirrored his own. Bastard. Sitting right on the border of the restricted zone, only his bridge and a small portion of the forward section of the ship in violation. “You’re playing a dangerous game here.”

  “It’s the only kind worth playing.” Then a hand would be offered across the small starfield between us. And a look, dark and suggestive. “Come play with me, Chazzy-girl. I’ll let you win.”

  The memory dissolved as a long intake of breath feathered against my face. A heavy arm moved slightly, and a hand stirred against the side of my neck. His face tilted. Our lips touched.

  “Forty minutes to exitgate, Sully.”