Calder (5 page)

His hand burned, the lube soothed and his come squirted out of him to the waiting towel.

“Katarina!” he shouted, the word falling flat against the walls of his tiny bedroom.

“Katarina,” Calder repeated softly as his frustration eased the slightest bit.

But not enough. His cock was still hard and hot, wanting more. He wiped off his hands and dribbled another dose of lube on his stubborn, needy cock.

Fuck.

*

Katarina glared at Calder’s rusty door on Barkelo Street the next afternoon as the sun slowly roasted her. Her thumbprint wouldn’t open the door and there was no response to her knocking.

Of course he would have changed the thumbprint code. That was probably his standard procedure.

So here she was, standing forlornly on the street like a fool, wanting—needing—to see him again.
Damn.

Passersby eyed her in suspicion. Her highborn robes made her stand out on this backstreet, a person who clearly didn’t belong here.

Face heating, Katarina moved away.

She turned the corner, heading back toward the clinic. She’d taken a hovercab to Calder’s street, dismissing it before she’d approached the door. But she was too restless now to hunt another, and besides, she needed to walk.

The street held a market of tents and metal awnings, temporary structures that could quickly be pulled up in case of one of Bor Narga’s deadly sandstorms. Katarina glanced at the boxes of colorful fruits, bright cloth, piles of robot and computer parts,
and tables upon tables of cheap, gaudy jewelry. Everything for sale, nothing that held her interest.

She wasn’t sure why Calder’s refusal to answer his door cut her so much. He was only a Shareem, after all.

In Bor Narga’s carefully striated culture, Shareem were persona non grata. They were less than the lowest workers because they contributed nothing to a society that had abandoned carnality. Children were conceived outside the body by mixing DNA from carefully chosen partners. Sex was no longer needed and considered unnecessary, even gauche.

Eons ago, Bor Narga had been a barbaric place where women served men—the women on their backs and on their knees. Never again, said the women who now controlled the planet. Never again.

Shareem were created at a time when sexual pleasure had been a form of entertainment, a guilty pleasure. DNAmo, a genetics company already successful at creating the perfect servants, had come up with the ultimate male for pleasuring women.

DNAmo became famous throughout the galaxy for their creations and had exported Shareem to many planets—before the Shareem were deemed dangerous to women’s safety. The Bor Nargan government shut down the company. The ruling council then had to decide what to do with the leftover Shareem, now taboo. The government didn’t want to spend the money transporting the rest of the creatures off world—if they could even find a planet that wanted the refugees—nor did they want the Shareem to remain on Bor Narga.

The highborn women who ruled Bor Narga debated a long time whether to simply terminate the subjects. Shareem weren’t truly human, they reasoned, so it wouldn’t be murder.
In the end, someone pointed out that wholesale slaughter of the Shareem might make Bor Narga look barbaric to other worlds with which they traded. Bor Narga couldn’t afford to lose trade over a hundred Shareem.

So Shareem were granted a stay of execution. Those who’d hidden themselves when DNAmo shut down were required to turn themselves in to the Ministry of Non-Human Life Forms. All Shareem were to be scanned and registered.

Shareem had to agree to visit approved clinics every six months for the rest of their lives to receive inoculations that would prevent sexual diseases and procreation. The penalty for not submitting was termination. DNAmo had claimed that they’d bred all aggression out of them, making them unable to touch a woman without her permission.

And so the Shareem were tamed, controlled.

In theory.

Katarina had started researching Shareem after Calder had come to the clinic, going through the Ministry of Non-Human Life Forms’ data files. She’d discovered that each Shareem was one of three “levels”. Level one—pure sensual pleasure. Level two—fun and games. Level three—dangerous fantasies and bondage.

The Shareem called Calder, for whom the record was sketchy, was a level three.

Katarina shivered.
Dangerous fantasy
described him well.

The rest of Calder’s file held little, no holo pic, no mention of why or how he’d been burned. It noted where he lived and listed the dates of his six-month inoculations, including the one Katarina had done the week before.

Katarina shivered. Calder had commanded the session in the clinic, and he’d more than commanded her in his warehouse. She’d never been treated like that by a man before. She was highborn and female. Men were deferential to her, always.

If anyone in the Ministry found out what Calder had done to Katarina yesterday— or even discovered that he’d refused the scanning process in the clinic—he’d be arrested.
Arrested, confined. Terminated. Calder, the tall, commanding male who’d made her feel sexy for the first time in her life, would die.

Her blood went cold.

“Lady, you gonna order or block the way?”

Katarina jumped. She’d slowed to a halt in front of a tent that served coffee and pastries, and the woman vendor behind the table was glaring at her. The thick aroma of burned coffee filled the air.

“Sorry.” Katarina stepped out of the way as a man passed her to get to the tent.

She stopped in shock.

The man was Shareem. He had long black hair caught in a ponytail and wore tight black leather leggings and a short-sleeved gray tunic. A thin black chain encircled his right biceps, and his skin was bronze-colored, the same as Calder’s. In fact, his resemblance to Calder, minus the scars, was uncanny.

“The usual,” he said to the vendor, his smooth, dark voice making it sound like an invitation to bed.

The sour vendor suddenly grinned. “Hello, Braden. How’ve you been?”

“All better now that I’ve seen you.”

“Liar,” the woman said, but she looked happy.

The Shareem reached for the pastry and coffee the vendor held out to him, paid with a credit slip then turned away, nearly running into a gaping Katarina.

He skimmed his gaze in a flattering pass over her body then he smiled. “Hello.”

His smile could melt butter at ten paces. His voice could sop up what was left.

“What’s your name, pretty lady?” He lifted his thumb from the pastry and licked away a drop of honey. Katarina followed the stroke of his tongue, watched the form of his lips as he sucked.

“Who are you?” she blurted.

“Call me Braden, sweetheart. Who are you?”
His eyes were the same blue as Calder’s—sheer azure blue that glowed even under the shadow of the canopies.

Her heart pounded in her throat. “May I… May I talk to you?”

“Sure,” he said, still smiling. “Tell me where you live and I’ll make arrangements to come there, no one the wiser.”

“No, I mean right now. And I truly mean talk.”

His brows rose. “A highborn woman wanting to
talk
to a Shareem? Will wonders never cease?”

“Please.”

“Suit yourself.”

Braden led her to a cluster of stools and tables under canopies. All the tables were filled but Braden looked meaningfully at two scruffy men, who immediately vacated and scuttled away.

Braden set his pasty and coffee on the table then helped Katarina to a stool with a warm hand on her arm. “Have some pastry. Dilla has a sharp tongue but she’d a damn fine baker.”

Katarina declined. Braden shrugged as he sat down, then broke off a chunk of pasty and put it in his mouth. He closed his eyes as he chewed, slowly savoring it. He swallowed then his tongue came out to slide every stray crumb from his lips. A woman could get wet watching him eat.

“You never told me your name,” Braden said, opening his eyes again.

“Katarina d’Arnal.” It didn’t matter if he knew her name—he’d see her in the clinic sooner or later. “I met someone, another Shareem. You look like him. Do you have a brother?”

Braden shrugged, powerful muscles rippling. “Only if he came out of Vat 23.”

Whatever that meant. “His name is Calder. Do you know him?”
Braden froze in the act of lifting another piece of pastry to his mouth. “You met
Calder
?”

“He came to my clinic for his inoculations.”

Braden’s smile dimmed. “Wait a minute. You’re one of those women who use hypos on Shareem?”

“I just started. Calder was my first.”

“Yeah?” He sounded wary.

Katarina bit the inside of her mouth then continued her confession. “Yesterday, I went to Calder’s…place.”

That brought back his surprise. “You had an appointment with him?”

Katarina opened her mouth to say
no
, but the word wouldn’t form. She remembered the flood of feelings when Calder touched her, the amazing excitement of her climax, the sting of his hand on her buttocks. Her lips numbed and she couldn’t say a word.

“Ah.” Braden grinned, his wary look vanishing. “You couldn’t resist old Calder. I give you points for courage.”

Katarina hadn’t felt brave in the slightest. “He sent me away and today he won’t answer the door.”

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he? You never get a second appointment with Calder.”

Braden’s look grew sinful. “But no worries, sweetheart. I’m not a one-time deal. You can talk to me whenever and wherever you want, for as long as you want, as often as you want. Calder’s loss.”

Katarina pressed her palms to the table. “You don’t understand. I don’t want to make an appointment. I only want to talk to him.”

“Calder doesn’t talk. That’s not what he’s for, sweetheart.” He leaned forward.

“Me, I don’t mind a heart-to-heart.”
His breath on her cheek smelled of honey and Katarina wondered whether his lips tasted of it too.

She realized in the next instant he
wanted
her to wonder that. Her research told her that a Shareem could project deep-seated longing onto a woman. Shareem needed women to want them—always—because Shareem had to keep themselves sated in order to stay alive.

“What happened to his face?” Katarina asked, trying to shut out what Braden was doing to her. “How was he burned?”

Braden sat up again, surprise slowing his outpouring of pheromones. “He showed you his face? The whole thing?”

“It must have been awful for him. Couldn’t regenerative surgery help?”

“Calder had the best plastic and genetic surgeon in the universe work on him. It was the very best she could do. You should have seen him
before
she went to work.”

“How was he injured?”

Braden took another bite of pastry. “I should shut up now. If Calder wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

“How can he tell me if he won’t let me see him? I don’t want to wait until he comes back to the clinic in six months.”

Braden folded the paper over the remains of his pastry and licked honey from his fingers. “Tell me about you. You’re a medic, you said. Do you want to do experiments on him, try to ‘cure’ him to further scientific research? Forget it. That’s been tried.” His pheromones died away and she felt his chill anger.

Shareem weren’t supposed to feel anger, the data files had said. Katarina suddenly wondered if whoever had made those files had ever actually met a Shareem.

Braden went on. “We’ve had enough of scientific experiments, honey, Calder most of all. If that’s what you want, run back to your clinic and leave us the hell alone.”

Katarina stared at him. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
“Then why do you want to see him? Oh wait, I remember, to
talk
.”

“Really, that’s all.”

“If you wanted a conversation, why did you make an appointment with him? You must have known he didn’t let you into his lair to get chatty.”

“I didn’t make an appointment exactly.”

Katarina blushed as she told him what she thought, that the medics at the clinic had made the request on Katarina’s behalf as a practical joke. None of them had betrayed any glee when she’d walked in this morning, and she didn’t dare bring it up, but she was still sure it had been one of them.

When Katarina explained she thought she’d been sent to doctor a hurt street vendor, Braden burst out laughing. Women throughout the market turned and searched longingly for the source of that incredible laugh.

“Oh gods, that’s priceless. You thought you were going to use a hypo on an ailing vendor, and then Calder…”

“It’s not funny. I realized my mistake very quickly.”

Braden held his brawny arms across his stomach. “Man, I wish I could have seen that.” He laughed a little longer then wiped his eyes. “Tell me more, Katarina. You interest me. Why are you, a pretty highborn lady, working in a slum clinic in Pas City?”

Katarina hesitated but it seemed fine to open up to him, to let him draw the words out of her. She told him that she wanted to do real good with her medical degree, not simply doctor women worried about getting too many wrinkles. “I hadn’t realized I’d be inoculating Shareem though.”

“Lucky us. Most highborn women won’t touch us. Forbidden fruit.” He winked at her, his smile sinful—and suddenly Katarina wanted him.

Her interest in Calder was no less strong, but she had the abrupt, overwhelming desire to crawl under the table, unlace Braden’s leggings and put her mouth over his cock.
She wanted him to bend her over the table and screw her right there, no matter how many people watched. It was not an emotional longing, it was pure physical need. Lust in its rawest form.

The blue of his eyes widened, swallowing the white. Need crawled through her, hotter than the Bor Nargan sun, making her just as sweaty.

“You see?” Braden asked, voice soft. “You look at us, you want us, and we have no problem fulfilling our function.”

Katarina pressed her thighs tightly together, her body craving climax. “Please, stop doing that.”

“I’m not doing a thing. You do it to yourself. I’m a level three—like Calder—which means I’d like to tie you down and have you be a true submissive to me. That’s Calder’s specialty too. Women are terrified of him and beg him for it at the same time.”