Forbidden Worlds - Box Set (29 page)

A Novella

By

Bernadette Gardner

This book was previously published

and has not been significantly revised since that printing.

Chapter 1

“I really wish I didn’t have to do this.” Fletcher Gray’s lament and long-suffering sigh echoed through the cavernous hold of the Mogarthan pod carrier he and his partner, Ganymede, had just confiscated.

“Lying.” The disembodied reply came from Ganymede over the ship’s communication system.

Fletch shook his head, annoyed at his partner’s insightfulness. Actually, he did want to do it. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself. Wanting to do it made him feel guilty because he knew it was wrong. “No, there’s a deep, chivalrous part of me that really feels uncomfortable with this.”

“Testicles?” This word was accompanied by a strangled sound, the equivalent of Ganymede’s laughter. Fletch rolled his eyes as he continued to stroll down the narrow corridor that ran down the center of the ship’s cargo hold. On either side of him rose the luminous, tear-drop shaped stasis pods that filled eighty percent of the
Xector IV’s
bulbous hull. He asked himself again what he’d done to warrant being saddled with a Metrian as a partner. While Ganymede’s intelligence and stealth skills exceeded that of any other known race, his acerbic attitude and often single-word communications became tiresome. Conversation with a Metrian was mostly one-sided and usually pointless.

“Leave my testicles out of this, Gan. None of this would be necessary if you had a decent pair of hands.”

Another snort of laughter. Fletcher Gray argued to himself that he really didn’t have a choice in the matter and therefore he shouldn’t let it bother him. He needed help running the damn ship. He only had two arms, and it took four to run a pod carrier of this size. Since Metrians existed just slightly out of phase with the rest of the universe, Ganymede was almost entirely incorporeal and therefore largely useless as anything other than a talking brain.

Hence, it was a vital necessity that Fletch decant one of the twenty-five females held in the ship’s stasis pods and recruit her to help him with navigation and helm controls. That would be after she calmed down enough to sit through a brief lesson in pod carrier piloting and assuming he could still walk, talk, and breathe when she was finished with him.

With his luck, he’d pick a wild cat who’d literally fuck him to death before he could get a word in edgewise.

He could think of worse ways to go, but he had a mission to accomplish, so he wouldn’t really be able to enjoy it. Just another reason why he hated the Mogarthan sex slave trade.

“Let’s make this less personal. How about you pick a number, and that’s the pod I’ll open?” Fletch scanned the nearby pods. He didn’t have a preference. Each pod held one body, floating in a carefully maintained mixture of oxygenated, poly-mechanoid, bio-luminescent gooze. The females were all perfectly formed, exotically beautiful, and naked—since the gooze tended to dissolve the polyblend fibers of most clothing over time.

Four entwined tubes attached each pod to the central processing unit that controlled the chemical makeup of the gooze. One tube delivered nutrients. One tube oxygenated the liquid. One tube carried sedative and stasis chemicals, and the final tube carried a constant, hyper-amplified dose of U-4EA, the most powerful aphrodisiac in the galaxy. A little of the semi-legal compound went a long way toward heightening any sexual experience, and the legitimate producers of the stuff made quadrillions of credits selling it to recreational resorts all over known space. The Mogarthan slave trade used tubs of it to turn illegally captured females into sex-starved maniacs.

“Thinking.”

“Come on, pick a number and let’s get this over with. Then turn off the com. I don’t want you listening in and getting your jollies vicariously when you’re supposed to be searching the ship’s database for its destination coordinates.”

“Seventeen.”

“The coordinates?”

“Pod.”

“Oh…” Fletch stopped before pod seventeen and contemplated the dark-haired beauty floating inside. He had to admit, Ganymede had chosen well.

This one was different than the others. Most of the females in the pods were Breoxan, and while Fletcher liked flaxen blond hair and huge…uh…blue eyes as much as the next man, the dorsal fin and nictating membranes put him off just a bit.

Not that he was prejudiced in any way, but a Breoxan might have had a little trouble with the navigational controls as well. In a pinch, she might need more than three fingers on each hand to work them, and he didn’t want to have to decant a second female and then keep them from sparring for his affections until the U-4EA wore off completely.

The female in pod seventeen was human, just like Fletch. A silky cloud of black hair floated around her heart-shaped face. Fletch liked her long, graceful limbs and tapered fingers, her sculptured brows and perfect, round…eyes. If they were open, they’d probably be lovely. She looked supremely peaceful, and he regretted that calm wouldn’t last for long once he drained the pod of the chemicals keeping her in stasis.

“Nice choice, Gan. I can work with this one.”

The Metrian didn’t answer. Either he’d obeyed Fletch and shut off the com, or he was listening from the bridge and chuckling behind his incorporeal hand at his partner’s dilemma.

“Come on, Fletch, get it together. Let’s go.” He reached for the pod controls, grateful they could all be opened individually. A man, after all, had his limitations. Fortunately sex on demand wasn’t one of them for Fletcher Gray.

* * * *

Talia Lory had achieved nirvana. She didn’t know quite how, but it didn’t matter. She’d never been happier, freer, or more uninhibited.

In her current dream, she floated naked in a warm, green sea, lazily drifting on a sensuous tide. The waves caressed her lovingly and carried her gently back and forth among a school of curious fish. The creatures were invisible to her, but she could feel their tiny lips nibbling on her skin, producing an all-over tingling sensation that felt wonderful. Each anonymous aquatic kiss triggered an answering electric pulse deep within her body. The reciprocal pinging on her nervous system produced a constant hum of indescribable pleasure.

Talia had no idea what she’d done to deserve this little slice of heaven, but whatever it was, she was grateful for it. If it were up to her, life would go on exactly like this forever.

Naturally, it wasn’t up to her. A sudden cooling of the water frightened away the fish, leaving Talia bereft. Her tingling skin now felt hot and itchy. So did other, less accessible parts of her body.

A wave lifted her, and for a moment, she felt wonderfully weightless. Then she hit bottom.

A cold, slick surface smacked her hard in the ass, and she slid forward, head over heels in a rush of tepid brine. She opened her mouth to protest and a torrent of sweet, salty liquid exploded from her lungs. She coughed and dragged in a breath of stale air that made her cough even harder.

Her lungs were on fire, her body was freezing, and everything appeared bathed in a sickly green haze.

A fist slammed into her back, dislodging another lungful of yellowish liquid. When the shock of the sudden blow passed, Talia whirled around, fighting mad and fully prepared to murder her attacker.

“Take it easy, Tiger,” a male voice ordered. “Catch your breath before you take me on.”

“Who the hell—?” Talia blinked the green haze away and stared up into the most gorgeous face she’d ever seen.

He had wavy brown hair, jewel blue eyes and perfect, sensuous lips. He wore tight flight pants and a sleeveless shirt that exposed biceps to die for.

A flush of heat raced down Talia’s body and settled right in her clit.

“I want you,” she said. Her voice had taken on a feral quality she didn’t exactly recognize, but that didn’t concern her as much as the fact that he was still dressed.

She catapulted to her feet and flew at him. To his credit, he caught her mid-flight, as if he’d been waiting for her.

She ripped at his shirt and dipped her head to suck on the tanned skin above his collarbone. He tasted salty and masculine. Delicious. His muscles rippled beneath her lips. She dug in, wrapping her legs around his narrow hips. She snaked one hand between their bodies to fumble with the fastenings of his pants. The bulge between his legs grew under her ministrations, and the pleasant pressure of it was just where she needed it.

“Get them off,” she ordered before plunging her tongue into his mouth. He mumbled something unintelligible, and she bit his lower lip to shut him up.

“Ow!”

She tasted the coppery tang of human blood, and for some reason, it fueled her lust. “Off! Now.”

“All right, I’m working on it.” He sounded mildly annoyed, which didn’t make sense. Talia vaguely noted that she rarely ordered men out of their clothes, but on the rare occasions she had, they’d always readily complied.

She clung to him while he shimmied out of the tight black trousers and gave a joyful little gasp at the size of the equipment he revealed.

She dropped her legs and propelled him backward until his back hit the wall—a metallic wall like the bulkhead of a spaceship.

“Hold on a second,” the man admonished when she tried to thrust her hips against his impressive erection. He wrapped his gorgeous arms around her for a moment, and the sensation of being trapped in his strong embrace almost set her off. She squirmed in his grasp, searching for what she needed. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way—”

“Hard!” She cut him off with a deep kiss, drew his tongue into her mouth and ground her hips against him until his erection slipped between her legs.
Oh, yes.

They fell to the floor with a splash and rolled through the green puddle that spread across the black deck. When they skidded to a halt, he was on top, which was exactly where Talia wanted him.

“Come on, hurry!” She arched beneath him, and she swore she heard a sexy growl right before he thrust inside her willing heat.

Oh, yes!

Now he had the idea. Talia bucked wildly, meeting each thrust eagerly as they slid inch by inch backward across the floor.

The warm ocean had been nice, but this was better. Hard muscles under her hands, hot man between her legs. The cold, wet floor under her back she could have done without, but the contrasting temperatures and textures added to her pleasure. The commingling scents of male sweat and her own sweet musk made her wild.

The wave built to a thundering crescendo, and when it broke she tensed and held, biting her own lower lip until she tasted blood again. Her body convulsed in the throes of an orgasm that left her completely breathless.

She couldn’t think, couldn’t see. It had never been this good, this hard or fast before. When he came a second later, pumping hot seed into her still pulsing core, it was like heaven all over again.

They lay panting in the narrow corridor, green water sloshing around their bodies in shallow waves. The hum of an engine replaced the pleasant buzz in Talia’s spine, and blind panic replaced the fuzzy afterglow of the best sex she’d ever, ever had.

“Where the hell am I?” Who the hell was this guy who now lay next to her, one powerful thigh draped over her hip?

“You’re on the
Xector IV
,” he replied in a conversational tone. “I’m Fletch, by the way. Nice to meet you.” He lifted his hand from her right breast and offered it to her.

She stared.

“Fletcher Gray. My friends call me Fletch. I hope you and I will get to be friends. I’d say we ‘got off’ to an auspicious start, no pun intended. Now, I’m sure you have a ton of ques—”

She punched him.

His head snapped back, and he rolled away from her, moaning and rubbing his rock solid jaw.

Ignoring the pain that now radiated up her arm, Talia lurched to her feet, legs shaking, and backed against the wall. Her complete nakedness, which up until this moment had seemed entirely natural and wonderful, suddenly became a severe problem.

No point in trying to cover anything though. He’d already seen and touched it all.

Fletch finished adjusting his jaw and shot her a disparaging look. A wet slapping sound accompanied the retrieval of his damp pants and shirt, and she watched while he slithered his magnificent body into the soggy clothing.

“Where am I?” Talia’s sudden bout of self-consciousness brought on a violent blush that warmed her from nipples to earlobes. Fortunately it only lasted a moment. To Fletch’s credit, his gaze was centered squarely at eye level, and there wasn’t so much as a hint of a smirk on his lips.

“Right now, we’re just past Gildall II.” With that, he turned his back on her, adjusted his pants carefully, and threw open the dented metal door of a storage locker set into the bulkhead to his left. He didn’t look back. He just held out a black coverall in her general direction.

“Here. The gooze’ll dry pretty fast, and you’re going to be cold.”

Talia made an incomprehensible sound. “Gildall II?”

He shook the coverall as if to get her attention, and cautiously she stepped through the remnants of the green puddle to retrieve it from him.

“We haven’t determined the ship’s exact destination yet, but I’m betting somewhere deep in Mogarthan territory. We’re going to try to divert course to a mining colony in the Threxis belt. I figure that would be the safest place to decant you all at once.”