Forbidden Worlds - Box Set (25 page)

He turned her in his arms, trapping her against him with one hand splayed across her belly. While she trembled with anticipation, her eyes closed, he licked his thumb and swiped it over the round blue symbol. He’d have loved to indulge by running his tongue over her fevered skin, but that was how wealthy men ended up dead or worse. He wanted her, and he knew how to get her without losing any of himself to the aphrodisiac in the process.

She stiffened, her breath catching as the compound took effect. She began to pant, and sweat broke out across the exposed skin of her back.

“Do you feel it?” Her silvery whisper came on the tail end of a low moan.

A little white lie wouldn’t hurt in this case. “Yes.” He steadied her hips and dragged her dress up high around her waist. “I feel everything.”

She practically crawled across the bed, her perfect ass high and swaying. Tarrant watched her, intrigued by her movements. She bucked and arched, as if some invisible lover had already impaled her. He reached over and tore away her black thong, exposing the pink folds of flesh nestled between her legs.

“Come on, do it!”

“Be patient.” He chuckled at her urgency. If he’d licked the U-4EA stamp, he’d be on her already, pumping away in a frenzy that would leave them both exhausted in less than an hour. Tarrant Kane had more exotic plans than a quick fuck and a drowsy hangover.

He opened his pants and slid them off, but left on his briefs. He threw off his jacket and opened his shirt. “Lie down. I’m going to make this last.”

“No! I need you now! You can’t tease me like that.” She rolled over, her legs wide. One hand snaked down, and her long fingers shook as she rubbed her clit. Kane grabbed her hands and trapped her wrists above her head.

“No, no. Let me do that.”

She arched for him, begging with her eyes. He straddled her, and she gasped in anticipation. “Give me your cock.”

“Not yet. I’d like to see how this plays out. I’ve never used U-4EA before. I want to enjoy it.”

She writhed. “Come on! Don’t you want to fuck me?”

“Of course, but I want to make it memorable.” He touched her then, gently, massaging the swollen nub of flesh with the pad of his thumb. She cried out and struggled against the hand that held her wrists. “No helping,” he said. “I can take care of this. Hands off.”

She moaned.

He moved his ministrations to her thighs, then cupped her mound, petting the silky hair until she begged him to finish her off.

“You’re still half dressed, Nola. That’s no good.” He shook his head and let her hands free. She pulled her dress off, freeing breasts that could make a man weep.

Kane settled himself over her, felt her juices seeping through the fabric of his briefs. He wanted to strip them off, but it wasn’t time. He stretched his body over her, pressing his chest tight against hers. Her nipples rasped against his skin, and she began a wave of motion that thrust her hips upward in a sensuous rhythm.

“Good.” He urged her on. She shuddered under him when he lowered his mouth to the soft skin beneath her jaw and nibbled. He dragged his mouth along her hot skin down to her breast and sucked the hard tip of her nipple into his mouth. She curled against him, another low moan escaping those ruby lips.

“Please! Please…”

He rose up and pushed her breasts together, creating a deep valley between them for his tongue to play in. After an indulgent dive between the sumptuous mounds of flesh, he raised his head. “This bed is too soft. Come with me.”

“I want to!”

He laughed and rolled away from her. She complained until he dragged her up from the bed and walked her to the empty wall between the bedroom and what was likely a master bathroom. “Stand here.”

She obeyed, her eyelids fluttering. She threw her head back and splayed her hands against the smooth white wall behind her. Tarrant slipped out of his briefs and rubbed a glistening drop of pre-cum over the swollen head of his cock. “I want you to know something,” he said, punctuating his words with nibbles along her jaw.

“What?”

“I’m safe. I’ve been vaccinated for everything.”

“Me, too.” She held up her left wrist where a small blue dot certified her free of any communicable diseases. “I’m wearing a sterile patch, too.”

Tarrant smiled as he positioned himself between her thighs. He wanted to say her medical status didn’t concern him. With his enhanced immune system, a gift from the scientists who made him what he was, even the deadliest STDs known to man couldn’t set up housekeeping in his body. He made a note to look for the sterile patch and found it during his languorous exploration of her thighs. He wore one also, since genetic enhancements didn’t extend to birth control. He had no desire to pass along his priceless DNA and possibly saddle some unsuspecting youngster with the biological imperative to make war.

He mumbled some assurances into her mouth, then grasped her hips and lifted her just enough to seat her on his cock. She gasped when he filled her to the hilt and wrapped her long, long legs around his ass. Then she whispered a naughty command in his ear that he readily obeyed.

* * * *

Nola’s body betrayed her every step of the way. She’d expected to enjoy this assignment. So far, this was the first in a long time that didn’t make her long to break free of her servitude to In-Teron. She’d long ago worked off the debt she owed them for saving her life when there had been so little left worth saving.

Sex with a man like Tarrant Kane, with his sculpted muscles and soldier’s self-discipline, was bound to be good, but by all the gods, she hadn’t expected to feel like this. The U-4EA heightened every sensation until the merest touch of his fingers on her skin felt like a firebrand directly in her sex. Every muscle below her jaw seemed stretched to the limit, ready to snap. The smooth, cool wall rubbing against her ass as he thrust his magnificent cock into her felt like a sensual caress. The warm breath he blew across her ear with each pump of his hips felt like a blast of sexual heat. Her nipples ached, the pain assuaged only by the press of his pectorals against her flesh.

Within her, an orgasm built somewhere near the base of her spine. She cried out for it, digging her nails into his broad back as he worked her, guiding her hips in a desperate rhythm. How could he be so focused? She’d fucked men in the throes of U-4EA before and they usually came in an uncontrolled gush after a series of haphazard thrusts. Afterward they remembered the best sex of their lives, and she remembered something sloppy and animalistic that felt good at the time but left a bitter taste.

This was different. Tarrant Kane was waging a battle, winning by degrees. Each time her ass connected with the hard wall behind her, each time she felt his taut shaft slide deep into her body, she moved another inch closer to the end of everything. When her climax finally burst inside her, she let out a sound she’d never made before, even with the few men she’d considered lovers rather than jobs. She wrapped her arms around his neck and curled her exhausted body around him, hanging on for one more thrust.

At the very edge of the precipice, with her body rigid in his expert embrace, he came. He flooded her with electric heat, and she arched hard, eager to take in every drop of the precious fluid she’d come to collect. He moaned in her ear, a feral command that made her throbbing clit tingle for more.

“Get on the bed, I’m not finished.” He wrapped his arms around her and carried her back across the room. With her body still convulsing, his seed still pumping within her, the soft blankets felt like a diamond file against her skin. The rasping intensified her orgasm, drawing his essence up into her where four perfect receptacles waited to collect a precious sample of Tarrant Kane’s genetic material.

Nola smiled as he settled himself on top of her again. “I hope you’ve got a lot more where that came from.”

He smiled and cupped her ass, tilting her to receive his still hard cock again. “Ms. Rule, I’ve only just begun.”

* * * *

Her body hummed beneath his, ripe and magnificently responsive to his every move. Each time he brought her to climax, she cried out his name, and he’d begun to like the sound of it on her lips.

When he finally lay down next to her on the feather-soft bed and she whispered in his ear, he felt strangely fulfilled, as if this was where he was meant to be. If he could have made the moment last forever, he would have. Unfortunately, reality intervened too soon. Lying spent in her arms, he directed his thoughts to her strange encounter in the lobby. His conditioning wouldn’t allow him to ignore it.

Kane pushed aside guilty thoughts and gently disengaged from her sleepy embrace. She moaned and rolled over. Her lips were swollen from his kisses and still pursed in an enticing “O”.

When she woke, he planned to put those lips back to work, but in the mean time, he needed to conduct reconnaissance.

He moved around the clothing-strewn bedroom, careful to disturb nothing but his own belongings. If she woke, he could easily explain that he’d been searching for his underwear, since that was partly true.

His thorough search of the bedroom turned up nothing unusual, but in the bathroom he found the false bottom of her small cosmetic case and the fascinating items contained within the hidden compartment. The U-4EA applicator he found there looked like the ones sold in the gift shop. He’d seen a number of Sensuron’s guests purchasing the aphrodisiac, along with a variety of other “enhancements” and toys, so this, by itself didn’t give him pause.

However, along with the silver capsule, he found a spare sterile patch like the one she wore on her inner thigh. The package holding the small, durafilm disc was unusually plain, but Tarrant wasn’t familiar with every brand of adhesive birth control, so he couldn’t immediately count this as suspicious. The third item interested him more than the other two, though. A handheld transmitter, no larger than the U-4EA capsule, seemed a strange item for a woman such as Nola to carry with her lipsticks and perfumes.

Her ID, which he found in the tiny clutch purse she’d carried in the lobby, seemed genuine though it listed her age as a bit higher than he would have guessed. Putting that aside, he rummaged in each storage compartment of the bathroom until he came across one final item that cast suspicion on Ms. Rule’s sincerity. He dressed quickly, leaving everything else where he’d found it, and slipped out of her bungalow. She sighed in her sleep as he closed the door, and a pang of regret settled in his gut. He would have liked to stay, to wake with her next to him, warm and ready for more intimate play, but the soldier in him couldn’t rest until he knew her secrets. All of them.

Chapter 3

Nola woke with his name on her lips. A soft moan escaped her as she stretched her well-used body beneath the tangled sheets of her wide bed. The last vestiges of the U-4EA had settled in her clit, leaving the small ridge of flesh still sensitive. One more orgasm would probably cure her.

She blinked away the veil of sleep that clouded her vision and twisted her supple body around to search for her partner.

The other side of the bed was cold and she didn’t need to listen for the shower to know that Tarrant had left. Tarrant. She’d panted his name enough times through the night to find it comfortable on her lips now. Could it be the U-4EA that caused the odd, empty sensation in the pit of her stomach at the realization that he’d gone? Never before had the aphrodisiac induced feelings of longing mixed with the piquant afterglow.

Nola dragged herself from the bed, shaking away the melancholy. Men usually didn’t leave her bed voluntarily. In fact, some had to be forcibly removed. Mild annoyance tickled the back of her consciousness as she padded into the bathroom. He’d be back. They always came back for more.

With her bright lipstick smudged across her swollen lips, and her hair in sensual disarray, she looked less than respectable this morning. With fast, efficient movements, she washed her face, swished the taste of him out of her mouth with cool water and mint cleanser and reached for her hairbrush. That’s when the reason for her mission came back to her. Duty before beauty, she thought with a sigh.

Disappointment battled with relief as she rummaged in the back of a storage cube for the thin silver arc of her personal med-scanner. One swipe of the device over her abdomen would tell her if the tiny organic containers implanted in her womb had collected enough of Kane’s sperm. Once the four receptacles were full, they would seal, and within them, cell mitosis would begin. By the time she reached In-Teron, she’d carry a dozen microscopic embryos, the first crèche of cloned super-soldiers to be implanted in artificial gestation tubes.

Kane would never know that his first dozen sons would become patterns for a new class of super-soldier. He’d never know how much money he could have made if only he’d agreed to sell his DNA. He’d also never know how much Nola disliked deceiving him. Eventually, through continuous denial, though, she’d forget it herself. Years spent in service to In-Teron after the war had devastated her home colony had taught her how to compartmentalize both her emotions and her memories.

A thread of panic tightened around her chest when she didn’t immediately find the device she’d secreted behind the bath towels. She reached further into the cubicle, then tore away the fat rolls of terry-cloth until nothing remained. She cursed. Damn him. He’d taken it.

She clawed through her cosmetic case and found the transmitter. She could call In-Teron and have another med-scanner delivered to her in a day, but if the containers weren’t full of healthy sperm, she’d have to convince him to fuck her again or the tiny cylinders would begin to break down and be absorbed into her body. While the bonus for success was considerable, possibly even enough to finally earn her freedom, she didn’t want to consider the penalty for failure.

She leaned on the bathroom counter and took a deep, steadying breath. She’d find a way. She had plenty of cover stories. Even a man as savvy as Tarrant Kane would have to believe one of them.

* * * *

He waited just out of sight behind a flowering bush until Nola left her bungalow. Like a bullet, she shot out of the patio doors, her long legs encased in high-heeled silver boots. A mini-dress of matching metallic fabric hugged her sumptuous curves.

Despite himself, Kane’s cock responded to the rhythmic, determined sway of her hips. She was beautiful, clever, and dangerous enough to be sexy as all hell. He wanted her again, and he’d have her, too, but not until she told him everything he wanted to know.

He let himself into her bungalow moments after she left and began his preparations.

* * * *

“You owe me,” Hathan said, his voice stiff with pain.

Nola rolled her eyes at his image on the communications screen. “How do you figure?”

“Your general hurt me. I’ve been with a masseuse all morning trying to work the kinks out of my neck.” Hathan ran a hand through his gray hair and scowled into the video pick-up. “I’m charging the cost to your expense account.”

“Stop whining. It’s part of your job.”

“No, this was a favor to you. I’m not officially assigned to Kane.”

“Well, I need another favor.”

“And I need medical attention. I may have to wear a brace on my neck.”

“It won’t be the only place you’ll need one if you don’t help me.”

Hathan sighed. “What do you need?”

“A new med-scanner. He stole mine.”

“He stole it?”

“It was gone this morning. I assume he’s having it analyzed.”

Hathan laughed. “You’d better get the hell out of there. Have you read all of his profile? He’s a war machine. He’ll hurt you if he finds out who you work for.”

A shiver coursed through Nola’s body. “No, he won’t.”

“Please. Don’t fancy yourself above it. You’re a common thief. When he finds out what you’ve stolen from him, he’ll probably reach right up your pretty little—”

“Hathan!” Anger clenched Nola’s jaw, and she bit the word out. Under her irritation at her cohort, a flicker of shame brought heat to her face. While she’d come to resent her indentured status at In-Teron, she’d never felt guilty about her work before. If the galaxy knew how many medical innovations had come at the expense of a little illegally obtained DNA, they’d be grateful to the bio-engineering conglomerate. In the outer colonies, children stricken with Norbright’s Syndrome had been given a second chance to walk. A deadly plague on Prythia had been stopped in its tracks a decade ago after only a dozen deaths rather than millions. Miners from the Threxis Belt no longer lost their unborn offspring to radiation sickness—all thanks to In-Teron. Nola prided herself on those jobs. She’d helped save lives when the strict government rules on bio-crèche technology had prohibited the most innovative medical cures. Those were the assignments that almost made her feel like she had a choice in what she was doing.

This job should have been no different. Even with the war essentially over, Earth-Sec needed a reliable army—something stronger and more fierce, something to protect humanity from the next threat and the next.

A super-soldier, created for the express purpose of running Earth’s defense systems practically owed his DNA to science. They’d retired him to make room for the AIs—the true war machines that would not let human emotion stand in the way of their objective. Wouldn’t he prefer to be useful in his retirement, she thought? How could he have refused In-Teron’s generous offer? Did he really have all the money he needed? How could he turn down a little more in exchange for what ultimately amounted to a few grams of disposable bodily fluid?

“I don’t have all day, Hathan. Can you get me the scanner or not?”

“I’m not showing my face on that damn asteroid again. I’ll have it messengered to you tomorrow. I’ll expect a thank you. An expensive one.”

Nola flicked off the video feed and pressed her cold hands to her hot cheeks. One more day. If she could get through one more day, she’d be free, and she could forget about Tarrant Kane and the way her body trembled when he touched her.

* * * *

Tarrant’s finely honed senses told him she’d returned long before he heard the sharp click of her boot heels on the path outside.

He tensed, ignoring another pang of regret. What lies would he have to sift through with Ms. Rule to get to the truth? How long would she withstand his personal brand of interrogation?

He had her beneath him on the bed barely seconds after she strode through the door. The sudden flare of fear in her violet eyes subsided quickly, though, replaced with a fiery defiance when he dragged his hand away from her mouth and set about fastening her wrists to the bedposts with strips he’d torn from her own clothing.

She didn’t struggle, only watched him with a feral appreciation as he fastened her ankles as well, then stationed himself at the foot of the bed, the U-4EA capsule glinting in his hand.

He’d disabled the automatic lights and the door lock, pulled the privacy drapes tightly closed, and put a Do Not Disturb warning on her account to keep the cleaning bots out of the bungalow all day long.

He regarded her with clinical detachment for a moment, tempered by an arousal he couldn’t deny.

“So you like it rough?” she asked, punctuating her question with a saucy bounce of her hips. She tugged on the bonds and the realization that with a little effort, she could break free, softened the acerbic twist of her lips.

“I prefer it honest. I’d like some answers, Ms. Rule, and if you give them to me, you can have it any way you want it. I enjoyed last night immensely, and I think it would be a shame to allow a little deception on your part to ruin what could be a very enjoyable repeat performance.”

She grinned and licked her sinfully red lips. “I knew you’d be back.”

“Of course you did. You’re a professional, aren’t you?”

“The best in my field.” She bucked her lower body again, and Tarrant’s cock surged in response.

“I have no doubt. Now, let’s get on with those questions. If you cooperate, we may be able to make an early seating for dinner.”

Nola tossed her head and laughed. She didn’t stop until he pulled out the med scanner. Tarrant had no doubt her sudden sober expression was a calculated act. She looked vaguely frightened, but her eyes still sparkled.

“Your identification lists you as an anthropology professor. Scientists of that ilk don’t normally carry medical equipment like this,” he began, tapping the gently curved device in his palm.

“I have a condition that requires careful monitoring.”

“Oh?”

“Capstan’s Disease. A pancreatic syndrome not unlike diabetes mellitus.”

“Really?” Tarrant paced around the bed. He drew beside her and reached down toward her abdomen. Her silver dress clasped in front with a series of fine buttons, and he looked forward to opening them one by one. As he flicked the bottom three open, she arched against his hand.

“Capstan’s Disease usually strikes the very old,” he commented as he pushed her dress up above her navel. Beneath the shimmery metallic fabric, she wore a matching silver thong which barely hugged her hips. Tarrant licked his lips and forced himself not to touch the thin straps of the undergarment as he placed the cold metal scanner on her bare stomach.

“What will this device tell me when I turn it on?”

“You’re turning me on. Do you know that?”

He pressed the scanner into her flesh and flicked the switch. It whined and purred, and she undulated beneath his ministrations as if the examination aroused her.

“It doesn’t register any diseases.”

“I lied.”

“Of course you did.”

“Place it a little lower and activate the blue button.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to find out if I’m pregnant.”