by Frost, E J
She nods. She’s breathing too hard to speak.
“C’mere.” I withdraw from her, pull her off the wall, turn her around. She’s shaking, limp and saggy like her knees won’t hold her up. “You okay?”
She nods but won’t meet my eyes. I’m not sure what to say to her. After that moment of intense intimacy, we’re back to being two, half-naked strangers standing in a dirty alley.
She reaches down for her shorts, which have pooled around the tops of her boots. Unbalances. I catch her with a hand on her hip. She grabs onto my shoulder to stay upright. I like the feeling of her hands on my skin. I’m not ready to stop touching her.
I pull up her shorts for her. Then I pick her up and push her back against the wall. She stiffens. I hold her loosely until she realizes I’m not demanding anything from her. Then she wraps her arms around my shoulders. I lift her with a hand under her ass; her legs go around my hips naturally.
I could be back inside her in a few seconds, but for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’ve got no urge. I’m completely satisfied. I settle her against the wall, lean into her until we’re warmly pressed together, and enjoy the closeness of her body.
“Was that twenty minutes?” she breathes finally.
Eighteen and some change, by the chrono I had implanted in my right eye by a chop-doc on Cayster. “Close enough.”
She tucks her face into my neck, her breath a humid patter on my skin. Her fingers stroke my sweaty neck.
“I wish we’d done this in a bed,” she whispers.
“Wall too rough for you?”
“No . . . I could sleep . . . for a while.”
Said like someone who doesn’t sleep easily. Maybe the circles around her eyes aren’t all kohl.
“Thought you were on the clock.” Two hours and forty minutes to midnight.
“I am . . . we are. I mean, are we good? We still have a deal?”
“Yeah, we still gotta deal.” It’s why she let me fuck her. I know it and it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. “You ready?”
She nods but doesn’t make any move to disentangle herself. “After . . . after the run . . . maybe we could have another twenty minutes?”
I chuckle, adjust her against the wall. “Yeah, sure.”
“In a bed.”
“Demanding kitten.”
“I am.” I feel her grin against my neck. “And it needs to be at least as good as that.”
I pinch her ass and she wriggles. “It gets better with practice, I’m told.”
“I’m up for some practice,” she whispers.
“Sounds t’me like another deal comin’ on.”
She’s silent for a moment and I wonder if I’ve misread her. Then she rolls her cheek along my collar. “I’ve got another run coming up. To - to the Cloudlands. I could use a pilot.”
“Cloudlands, huh?” Too bad they’re so unfriendly out there. “That’s gonna cost you.”
“Three thousand, hard?” she asks hopefully.
“Forty minutes.”
She laughs. “Sixty. In a bed.”
“You drive a hard bargain, kitten.”
“I do. And I always get what I want.”
“Yeah?” I rub my hand over her ass-cheek, warm from the spanking, even through her shorts. “How you doin’ so far tonight?” It’s a light probe, which she can deflect or answer. She seemed to enjoy it – it felt like she came – but with girls, you never can be sure. She might have faked it.
“Good. Really good.” She sounds extremely pleased with herself. “Batting a thousand.”
I smile into her hair. “It’s unhealthy to get your own way all the time. Creates false expectations.”
“Oh.” She lifts her head and looks into my eyes. I smile at her so she knows I’m teasing. She smiles back. Pale pink mouth. Full lower lip. No artificial color. I like that. I give her a kiss. Gentle, since this isn’t part of the deal. Giving her time to push me away if she doesn’t want it. No tongue. Her lips are soft. She opens her mouth, gives me a taste. Coconut and curry. No chemicals. Definitely clean.
I lean into the kiss. Explore her mouth with slow strokes of my tongue. She kisses me back with heat but no urgency. Slow, deep kisses. Fuck, she’s sweet. Her hand trails down my back, sides under the loosened waistband of my fatigues. She cups my ass in her hand, squeezes when I flex my buttock.
When I break the kiss, she opens her eyes, sucks her lower lip into her mouth. Bites down lightly with her little white teeth. “Mmm.”
Either she liked that or she’s playing me. Or both. “Tasty, kitten.”
“More,” she breathes.
“Yeah?” I’d be happy to oblige her. The little monster’s getting heavy and achy again just from that little bit of kissing. It’s been a while since I paid for an hour of relief, and I never get to kiss hookers like this. Slow and so sweet it makes my teeth ache. But I’m not gonna be satisfied with twenty minutes this time, and if we don’t leave soon, we’re not going to make Kuus by midnight. “Don’t we gotta be somewhere?”
She licks her lip. Nods. Slowly, she unwraps her legs from around my hips. Puts her feet on the ground. I lower her until she’s bearing her own weight. Keep one arm around her as I fasten up my pants.
“We need to pick someone up on the way.”
“Yeah?” She’s rewriting the deal. Normally I’ve got no patience with that sorta thing, but I’ll give her a little leeway. Pulling her up short – or punishing her later – could be all kinds of fun. “Who ‘n’ where?”
“My brother. He’s in Hemos. He’s got our gear.”
I don’t ask what gear she needs, but I file that away for later. “Better get goin’ then.”
She nods. Accepts her jacket when I scoop it up off the ground and offer it to her. Brushes the mane of dreadlocks back off her face and secures them at the nape of her neck with a black thong. Follows me when I begin to lead her back through the alleys to the port.
Chapter 2
After a few steps, her warm hand slips into mine.
I glance at her. She’s looking up into my face. Expression open. Seeking approval.
“Yeah?”
“We’ll attract less attention as a couple.”
True. Smart girl. I slow my steps so she’s not rushing to keep up with me. “So, bein’ bald was the deciding factor, huh?”
She bumps her shoulder against my upper arm. She’s tall for an unmodified woman but carries herself in a way that makes her appear smaller. The carriage of someone who doesn’t want to be noticed. “I asked around. You’re good. You don’t turn tail if things get ugly. And you’re not part of any crew.”
All true. Smart girl. “Why’d you wait so long? I coulda had another job tonight.” I’ve already done one hop today and if her run takes more than six hours, I’ll be over my maximum flying time for the period. There are ways to fiddle it, but I’d rather not if I don’t have to.
“I, uh.” She glances away, bites her lip. “I came down last night to ask you but I, um, I bagged out.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“A woman came out after you. The one with the dark hair? You went back in with her. I wasn’t sure, you know, who she was.”
“Thea, the docking clerk.” She came running out after me on some pretense. Dragged me back to her office for the nightly come-on. That she’s contracted with a passel of kids doesn’t seem to make any difference to her. It would to me even if I found her Second Skin-fits sexy.
“I thought she might be your woman.”
I chuckle. “She’s a little too contracted for me. Why does it matter if I’ve got a woman?”
She flinches. If I wasn’t holding her hand, I wouldn’t have felt it. Certainly wouldn’t have seen it. She covers pretty well. But she did flinch. “I guess it doesn’t,” she says.
“You seen a woman in the time you been watching me?”
“No. But I haven’t seen all that much. You’re not easy to follow.”
That makes me lau
gh. I’m not particularly worried about being followed – to get anything important, someone tailing me would have to get within killing distance – so I wasn’t trying to be evasive. It’s just habit.
“What’ve you seen, kitten?”
“You spend most of your time on your ship but you have a place in Nock City. Down near the river. It’s got good security.” Which means she couldn’t get in. And that she tried. Minx. “You picked up dinner from a noodle place about two blocks from your place the night before last. They deliver. I checked. Why didn’t you have it delivered?”
“Why d’you think?”
“You don’t want anyone to know where you live.”
Very smart. “Top marks, kitten. Anything else?” We reach the port gate and I wave her past the security guard, who nods when I produce Snow’s Multi. That’s one of the things that kept me in the Vespers after escaping that fucking pit on Tol Seng: low levels of automation. Too expensive, this far from the Core System, and too unreliable with the radiation and E.M. flux off Kuseros’s binary star.
“You went to the Delta after your noodles. I lost you in there.” There’s a slightly sulky note to her voice. The Delta is Nock City’s red light district. I went there to cash in a favor, but Maier was out of town, so I did the hop today myself, fucking garbage run, but there’s no way for her to know that. I could have gone to find some paid companionship – I have in the past – but nothing I’ve found was nearly as satisfying as what we just did against the alley wall.
“Yeah? You didn’t see me with the redhead at the Flesh Den? Too bad. You missed a show.”
She tugs her hand out of mine.
I chuckle and wrap my arm around her shoulders. “There’s no redhead at the Flesh Den.”
The Flesh Den’s Pan-Asian, and all the girls have the black silk hair of their Chinese and Indian ancestors. At this moment, I find myself preferring fuzzy blonde dreadlocks. I’ve never been with a woman with dreadlocks before. They’re intriguing. How will they feel against my skin? Are they stronger than regular hair? Strong enough that I could tie her to a bed with them? “There hasn’t been anyone for a long time,” I tell her. Because for a year after I lost her, every woman I tried to fuck wore Marin’s face, and the little monster wasn’t up for necrophilia. “Why d’you care?”
Maybe she’s looking for a boyfriend as well as a pilot. Kinda backwards way to go about it, but maybe the pierced and dreadlocked generation don’t go in for more traditional forms of courtship.
“I don’t. I just want to know who I’m dealing with.”
I stop a few yards away from my ship. Catch her chin in my hand and tip her face up to mine. “You got no idea who you’re dealin’ with, kitten.”
She meets my eyes. Hers dilate and I’ve got her number. It’s the danger she’s attracted to. She may like bald men. She may need a pilot. But the reason she picked me was because she can sense that I’m dangerous. She’s not the first, but she’s one of the few where the timing hasn’t been absolute shit. I shake my head at her. “You like livin’ dangerously, huh?”
Her pink lower lip juts as her jaw firms. “Are you saying no? I thought we had a deal.”
“I’m sayin’ you should run away while you can.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’d better be ready for whatever comes your way.”
“I’ve been on my own since I was eleven. I can handle it.”
I raise my eyebrow. “On your own with your brother.”
“My younger brother,” she retorts. The sulky edge to her voice makes me smile. She doesn’t like being questioned.
“Okay.” I’ll know soon enough if she’s talking shit. We’re only about ten minutes away from picking up little brother. I pull the ship’s master control pad out of a pocket in my fatigues, thumb up the security system and cycle the ramp. “C’mon, then.”
She follows me. "Can I ride shotgun?”
Shotgun’s not the only thing she’s going to be riding before the night’s through. Between the kissing, contemplating uses for her dreadlocks and the verbal sparring, I’m turned on again. We might be late to pick up little brother. “You know anything about ships?”
“No,” she answers honestly. I like that. She’s got her moments of bravado – maybe even false bravado, we’ll have to see – but she doesn’t feel the need to lie just to seem tough.
“Keep your hands to yourself until I show you what to touch.”
She reaches out and runs her hand up my arm. Squeezes my biceps. “Is this okay?”
I shake my head at her, but I’m grinning. My warning hasn’t knocked her back any. “Yeah, that’s okay.”
“What about this?” She reaches around my neck. Goes up on her toes so she can plant an open-mouthed kiss on my lips.
I hold her hips and kiss her back. We’re definitely going to be late to pick up little brother. I reach around to cup her ass, squeeze and lift her up onto my hips. Then I carry her up the ramp and into my ship, which makes her squeak in surprise. She holds on to my neck. Kicks her feet behind me. “God, you’re strong,” she says against my mouth.
“You’re just noticin’?” I held her entire weight for the better part of a half an hour when we were fucking, and during that little cuddle afterwards. But maybe she was too preoccupied with what else I was doing to her to notice.
“You might be stronger than Ape.”
I get mistaken for one often enough, but I let that pass without comment. I palm open the airlock to the flight deck and drop her in the copilot’s chair. Deliberate for a moment. The chairs recline. Little monster’s already on low roar. But I really do want more than twenty minutes and if I take much longer than that, we’re not going to be in Kuus for midnight. Besides I got the promise of sixty minutes and a bed later. “Strap in.”
She does, awkwardly. Definitely not familiar with ships. I speed through my pre-flight check and file a flight plan. Snow always files flight plans, even if they’re not always where I’m going.
“Where’s your brother?”
“Dock C-11.”
I nod. C-11 is a cargo dock. Easy enough to get in and out of. The Spinning Marie has general clearance for most docks on Kuseros, but I’m in and out of the cargo docks so often, I don’t even bother requesting specific clearance before I strap in and lift off.
I do a vertical lift off, since some ass-bag has parked a shiny new Starflare between the Marie and the runway I usually use. That the jump will spatter the Starflare with shit from the Marie’s engines is a nice bonus. Once we’re a safe distance above the port, I rotate the pods and point the Marie towards the distant lights of Hemos.
It’s not even a five-minute flight from Nock to Hemos. Kez spends it in wide-eyed amazement, avidly watching everything from my small adjustments of the flight controls to the lights streaming by below us.
“This your first flight?” I ask.
“Yes,” she breathes. I smile at her honesty, and her unabashed wonder. I’m too jaded for that sense of wonder, but I still get the aftertaste of it every time I fly.
I hone in on the flashing lights of Hemos’s spaceport and circle around to the cargo docks. C-11 is well marked, even though it’s an auxiliary dock, and I settle the ship onto the pad less than a minute later.
“All clear,” I tell Kez as I unstrap from the pilot’s chair. She doesn’t move and I glance over to see if she’s stuck.
“Wow,” she says. Her eyes are alight as she looks up at me. “Wow. That was . . . really . . . wow. Could we do it again? I mean, sometime. I’ll pay.”
“You’re already paying for a flight to New Brunny.”
She looks away and bright pink stains those pale cheeks. “Right. Yeah. I just wanted to see Nock and Hemos from the air again. It doesn’t matter.”
“C’mere, kitten.” I help her unstrap and pull her to her feet. Brush a stray dreadlock out of her eyes and tuck it into the mass at the back of her head. The dreadlocks are soft and fuzzy, but they feel resilient
. Definitely bed-tying material. “You liked that, huh?”
She nods but doesn’t meet my eyes.
“You liked it that much, I guess we can do it again.”
She looks up and gives me that grin I felt earlier against my collar. Full of mischievous delight. “You said I was demanding.”
“Don’t feel like you gotta live up to that.”
“I won’t ask you for anything else. Promise.”
“Mmm.” I’ll be interested to see how long she can keep that promise. I’m betting it’s not very long. “Let’s get your brother.”
She nods and begins fiddling with the assortment of mirrors, beads and straps around her wrist. A couple of soft clicks and they’re aligned into a viewie. I lift an eyebrow. Portable personal communicators are unusual on Kuseros. The E.M. wash off the binary star means that tech has to be heavily shielded. Not a problem inside a building or a ship like the Marie. But wrapping an eskey or vcom in six centimeters of metal foam? Might as well lug a terminal around on your back. Most people don’t bother. Nothing seems to interfere with this little piece of tech, though. Kez taps it on, runs her finger across the screen to the image of a young man with a blond crew cut. The blond’s face fills the screen and begins speaking.
“You’re late.”
“Hello to you, too. Did you get everything?”
“Yeah.”
She looks up at me. “Could you open the ramp?”
I nod and tap a panel to open the ship.
“Come on, Ape.”
“Coming,” the blond says sourly. The screen goes dark, but the ship’s front viewer lights up. ‘Human entrance,’ the ship tells me. I reach around Kez and tap in an acknowledgement so the ship’s security systems don’t fire up. I flick the control for the ramp and close the Marie back up, then go to meet Kez’s brother.
He’s broader than I am, which takes some doing. Shorter, though, almost exactly the same height as his sister. He takes up the Marie’s entire central corridor, he’s so wide. And I can see where he got his nickname. Where Kez is pale, Ape is ruddy. With the muscles, blond crew cut and red skin, he looks like an old Earth orangutan. He’s even got the monobrow.