Since she was blond.
“Mother loved you more than me!” she would fume when the two got into squabbles.
“How do you see that?” Brooklyn, the elder by three minutes, would ask.
“You got her mole,” she would moan as she looked into the mirror.
Brooklyn would stare at her sister, who would be looking at her perfect face and hair so blond it often looked white, and try to kick her brain back into gear. “Your complexion is perfect, and what you bitch about is my mole?”
Addison turned to look at her sister. “Guys aren’t interested in perfect, they want character!”
Brooklyn humphed. “They want tits and ass. Whatever else you provide is a plus, unless it’s intelligence.”
The argument would continue down a common road from there.
Addison turned back to the mirror. “Stop picking guys who are six feet tall and little Greek gods, and you might get a guy who appreciates your intellect.”
“Is that why your picks always look like Greek gods?” Brooklyn shot back, grabbing a brush to pull it through her wavy hair. “Hell, I could grate cheese on their abs, they are so cut.”
“I never said I wanted stimulating conversation,” Addison answered. “Give me size, girth, muscles, endurance and the ability to shut the fuck up at the right times and I’m happy.” She took the offered brush from Brooklyn. “Make my eyes pop out and have to regrow, and I’ll consider it all the conversation I need.”
Brooklyn shook her head and smirked. Addison wasn’t focused on long-term relationships. She just lived for the moment and, by God, if you didn’t appreciate that about her, well, you needed to go find some other girl to cry your little bitch-ass emotions to.
Cuz she was all about the next guy once that weekend was over.
For all of that, she was quicker to ask how their friends were doing and bring soup if someone got sick than Brooklyn. Or she would stick around and help one of the guys in the team if they had been jilted by a girlfriend.
Addison was great with their team, but she ran through other guys like they were full-sized Ken dolls she could window-shop, buy, and then take back when the fun was gone. Most of the Weres loved that about her.
The only Were guy who was impervious to Addison’s cute-ass smile was Peter. Brooklyn understood Addison’s reason for never even trying to hit on the Captain. Not only was it because he was the Captain, but she figured Addison knew that Peter wasn’t a typical Were guy.
At least, not anymore. They all knew his early story, and Addison didn’t want to suffer the pain of being shot down.
“Well, maybe I want character,” Addison admitted.
Brooklyn looked at her sideways. “Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?”
“Funny ha-ha.” Addison tossed the hairbrush into the bag they used to hold their hair-care stuff. She turned and walked out of the bathroom, and continued the conversation after sitting down on her bed. “I think I’m getting tired of floozing about.”
Brooklyn’s eyes narrowed and she put down the clips she was using to restrain her hair. She looked out the door toward her sister. “Now you’re just scaring me.”
Addison shrugged. “I think I have the hots for Caden.”
“Ok, now, I don’t think...” Brooklyn walked out of the bathroom to sit on her bed. They shared quarters, with a single bed and a shared bathroom, a desk and a wardrobe each. “You can’t fraternize with the team, Addy.”
Addison grabbed a pillow and pulled her legs up onto her bed, sitting cross-legged. She put the pillow in her lap and hugged it. “I was talking with him last night.”
“Uh huh, you do that all the time. What girlfriend left him?”
“Monica,” Addison mumbled.
“That girl had no right to do Caden wrong. Nothing on Caden, but she shouldn’t have been the one to get out of any relationship with that face.”
“You’d think, but no,” Addison agreed. “Seems she used Caden to get Jered interested in her.”
“Bitch.”
“Skankasaurus, yeah.”
“That’s not usually something that bugs you,” Brooklyn pointed out. “So, give! What’s happened?”
Brooklyn watched as her sister’s eyes went vacant, looking at something she couldn’t see, but she did notice one thing. Addison’s lips curled into a smile.
Ohhhhh, fuck. She’s fallen for him!
“Have you ever noticed his smile?” Addison asked.
Brooklyn wanted to put her head into her hands and scream. Instead she replied, “Why, yes. I point it out to you at times, and you nod your head.”
Addison focused back on Brooklyn, “That’s because I accept that my teammate is happy again.” She pushed herself backward on her bed and rested her back against the wall. “The problem this time was I didn’t want to just help him as a friend. I wanted to hug him and make his worries about that swamp-donkey go away for the last time.”
“Um, before this situation, I had thought you liked Monica.”
“Jaw-monkey can kiss my ass. She used my teammate for her own personal reasons.”
“Uh oh, tell me you won’t let that—” Addison shot a glare at Brooklyn who put up her hands. “Okay, okay. Next time we spar, I won’t stop you from kicking her ass. Just know Peter is going to kick yours.”
She nodded. “I’ll own it,” Addison confirmed. “But Giggle Tits is going to know she’s been cunt-punted when I finish with her.”
Brooklyn just looked at her sister. Cunt-punted?
Addison watched Brooklyn’s face. “I’d kick ass and chew gum, but I’m all out of gum.”
“Oh,” Brooklyn nodded. “Got it.” She grabbed her own pillow. “Where did you hear that?”
Addison looked up a moment, thinking. “Uhh, Chris, Carter, Caden and I were eating over at AGB when Bobcat and William started laughing about someone’s lame-ass way of saying they were going to kick someone’s ass.”
“And?” Brooklyn asked. “You can’t set up a comment about Bobcat and William like that and not tell me more!”
“More of their comments?” Addison asked.
Brooklyn considered tossing her pillow. She lifted it up behind her head.
“Whoa!” Addison snickered. She put her hands up to catch the offending weapon if her sister tossed it. “Give me a second to remember!”
“You got five,” Brooklyn answered, leaving the pillow in the cocked position. “You damn near have an eidetic memory for curse words.”
“That reminds me,” Addison smiled, “the Empress came into our workout space about three weeks ago.”
“Three seconds,” Brooklyn warned her.
“Ok,” Addison said quickly. “There was a cunt-kicking carnival and an ass-kicking circus, some names they claimed came from Earth.”
“Like?” Brooklyn asked.
“Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude van Damme Slam, Chris Brown your ass, Stone Cold Steve Austin.”
“How do you use a name?”
“Well, if I told you I would have to go all Peter Pricolici.”
“Never mind.”
“Can I continue?” Addison asked.
Brooklyn eyed her. “Have I lowered the pillow?”
“So,” she thought about it again, “there was ‘natural selection,’ ‘Geronimo bunga,’ ‘veni vidi vici,’ ‘open a big can of whup-ass,’ ‘beat someone like they were their daddy.’” She looked over. “And a personal favorite, ‘break off my foot in your ass.’”
“Always,” Brooklyn nodded, “but that is one I know.”
“Well a few more were,” she leaned forward, “and I doubt I have even a portion of them, ‘we got bro-snowed,’ ‘chippenfuckyouup,’ ‘ass harassment,’ ‘skinnybitchectomy,’ ‘asskickginormous,’ and ‘a rear-end alignment.’”
“Damn!” Brooklyn lowered the pillow. “Just how many did they come up with?”
“I think someone stopped counting at eighty-three, then the next one was by William, who tossed out ‘go
medieval on your honky white ass,’ and Bobcat popped up with ‘fuck you in the juggahoe with a rear-package slam.’”
“Those two guys are so damned weird,” Brooklyn whispered. “I’m glad Yelena took one for the girl’s team.”
Addison tossed her pillow to the side and slid off her bunk. “Thanks, Sis, I needed to be talked off the ledge.”
Brooklyn watched Addison walk back into the bathroom. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” she called back, “because you don’t screw your teammates.” She turned on the water and said more softly, but at a volume to be easily heard by Brooklyn, “And you never, ever, ever let them know you fell in love with them.”
Brooklyn shook her head. For the last five years, she had been wondering if her sister would ever get over having to leave their parents in Russia and decide that loving someone was ok.
Now she wished her sister still wanted to fuck around. Helping Addison through this was so going to suck.
Especially since they had to continue their training with Gyada starting in the morning for fourteen straight days.
13
QBBS Meredith Reynolds
X’telent sipped his drink, mentally cheering his success at breaking through to the inner sanctum of Team BMW’s headquarters.
Apparently all it took was brains, luck, and months of patience to break through the humans’ security without getting caught.
X’telent motioned to the waiter. He wanted to savor one more drink before he went back to his rented room to enjoy his triumph. Fortunately, he thought, he had an abundance of all three attributes.
Especially brains and patience. He had been successful at each task he had been set. Now he just needed to successfully acquire the information, or enough information of value anyway, and exit safely.
Once he had the information his spybots had accessed, he’d move it to his ship separately from himself. That way, if anyone stopped him before he boarded, he would be clean. He didn’t want to risk moving from his ship to another inside their space. From what he had learned, they had a special way of detecting communications in Etheric Empire space, and he didn’t want to chance making them suspicious.
He glanced up when a shadow passed through the door. He kept his mandibles very still as he returned his eyes to the tablet in front of him.
Two humans had entered. One was a young male, and the other was the one they called Ranger One. Barnabas.
The young man was asking him questions, and the Ranger was smiling and nodding in agreement.
“I can have something?” Johnny asked Barnabas, looking at the menu the lady behind the bar had provided him.
“Yes, provided it isn’t illegal or inadvisable for you to eat.”
“What about a shake?” Johnny asked, looking at Barnabas where he sat on a barstool from the corner of his eye.
“That’s fine,” Barnabas answered.
“With Coke,” Johnny added.
“Ok,” Barnabas agreed.
“And chocolate.”
“That’s just disgusting.” Barnabas frowned at the child.
Johnny paused, a look of concentration on his face. “Um, does that mean it is inadvisabubble?”
“Inadvisable,” Barnabas corrected. “And no, but it should be illegal. It’s a lot of sugar, and your mother will tear a strip from my skin for allowing you to eat so much it will make you bounce off the walls.”
Johnny ordered his Coke float before turning back to Barnabas. “She wouldn’t say anything ugly to you.”
Barnabas smiled. “Maybe not around you, but I’d get one of those looks that tells me I messed up, and maybe next time I offered to take you out, she wouldn’t let us go.”
“Oh.” Johnny frowned. “Sorry, I won’t ask for chocolate next time.”
“See that you don’t,” Barnabas answered.
X’telent watched the two of them until the child finished the treat the Ranger had ordered him. Barnabas had his back to X’telent the whole time, and didn’t seem to care who was in the establishment.
The two finished and Barnabas paid, and they left. Moments later, X’telent settled his own bill, exited the bar, and turned in the opposite direction. He would go back to his rooms via a circuitous route.
“Hi, Mom!” Johnny waved to his mother and dashed past her as she looked up from her desk, which faced the seventh level of the open court.
She turned to see only his back as he ran down their little hall. She slowly turned to look at Barnabas, who was smiling at her.
“How’d it go?”
“You should be proud.” He nodded to Sarah. “He acted exactly as he needed to.”
“So, like a young boy getting a treat from his idol?”
“No, like a young Ranger on his first adventure,” Barnabas answered, face deadpan before winking at her. “Exactly like a young boy getting a Coke float.”
Sarah blinked at Barnabas a moment before her eyes opened in concern. “You didn’t!”
He nodded, affirming that he had indeed.
“Oh, God!” Sarah got up. “You owe me!” she called over her shoulder as she raced down the hall to see what Johnny was up to.
A few minutes later, after admonishing Johnny that he couldn’t use colors and draw on his tablet, she found a handwritten note on her monitor asking if Barnabas could make it up to her by taking her to dinner the night after next.
Sarah smiled and took the note off as she whispered, “You rat bastard.”
Three floors farther down Barnabas walked along the concourse, subvocalizing to ADAM, “No, I don’t know what information he extracted. What? Because the spy himself doesn’t know,” Barnabas clarified. “He doesn’t review stolen data, in order to limit the possibility of getting caught sniffing data packets.”
A few moments later, Barnabas nodded. “Yes, I’ll take that task on personally. I’ll ‘tag and bag him,’ as Tabitha would say. I’m going to switch over to Meredith and find out where he is at this moment.”
X’telent took a left turn at the next intersection and walked toward his rented abode. As he got close, he glanced at the door frame and saw that the little hair he had put there when he left was still in place.
The old ways to make sure no one had been in your room still worked. He pressed the tips of his fingers against the plate to the left of his door and provided a word in his own language that was conglomeration of three words that didn’t work together.
The door slid open and he glanced around the space, then entered far enough that the door closed behind him.
He locked the door and glanced at the furnishings, a long piece they called a “couch” and a narrow place to sit called a “chair.” He walked into the bedroom and pulled off his outside robe, choosing to go without a drape inside his own domicile.
Grabbing his tablet, he returned to the outer room and his four legs took him over to the couch, one of them reaching down to grab the edge of what the humans called a “coffee table.” Using it as a brace, he settled straight down to compose himself.
He was logging into his tablet when everything went dark for a moment. He suddenly felt as if he had just woken up and his mind was trying to make sense of where he was. Fear rushed through him when he realized he couldn’t move anything below his neck.
Turning his head, he clacked his mandibles.
“Hello,” the figure sitting on his chair greeted him. “I know you know who I am, X’telent. However, since we have never been formally introduced, I should tell you my name is Barnabas. You are hereby detained for spying on the Etheric Empire. You are a prisoner of war, not a criminal.”
“You’re a Ranger!” X’telent spoke up. “That’s police business.”
“Oh, I’m a Ranger most of the time,” Barnabas agreed. “However—” he was interrupted when the door opened and another human male walked in. “Oh, good.” Barnabas nodded to the new person. “Let me introduce Stephen. He is the one I’m currently working for.”
“Hell
o, X’telent.” Stephen nodded. “I’m in charge of miscellaneous projects for the Empress, including counter-spying.” His eyes glowed red. “Let’s see what you know, shall we?” His hands reached for X’telent’s skull. “Sorry, I can’t guarantee this isn’t going to hurt.”
X’telent was frozen, unable to move, his mind racing with the realization that the humans would be able to read his thoughts.
“A lot,” Stephen finished.
X’telent’s mental scream seemed to go on forever.
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Military-side Airlocks
“All aboard who’s going aboard,” Bobcat called over his shoulder, before he turned and kissed Yelena. “We will be back in three days.”
“See that you are,” she replied, then kissed him back and biting his lower lip. “Or Momma is going to be upset.”
“Momma?” Bobcat asked, a squeak in his voice.
“It’s a figure of speech, you big scary-cat!” She laughed. “I know how to keep the bread from rising, worrywart.”
“Well, I’ve heard the stories from Eric. You’d think he was a regular human again. Those twins are killing him! And it’s ‘scaredy,’ not ‘scary.’”
“Eric’s just working it for sympathy, and good—scary didn’t make much sense to me either,” she admitted. “My first batch of Bitch’s Pale Lager is going to uncork in two nights.”
He kissed her one more time. “Good luck.”
She shook her head as William walked by the two of them. Slapping Bobcat on the back, William laughed and said, “You two need to get over it. It’s only for three days.”
Yelena leaned around Bobcat and called after William, “Doing who knows what!”
“That’s the point.” Marcus headed for the Pod. “Don’t know anything, can’t share anything, and everyone knows you and Bobcat…” his voice trailed off as Tina went by.
“Are you doing the boom-boom?” she asked them.
“That the best you got?” Bobcat asked, turning to watch Tina enter the twelve-seat Executive Pod.
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set Three: Books 15-21, Never Submit, Never Surrender, Forever Defend, Might Makes Right, Ahead Full, Capture Death, Life Goes On (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets Book 3) Page 82