Freeker (8 page)

She continued to whisper, as if her part of this dance of death was fragile, easily frightened away by sound or movement. “He’ll continue to hunt me if we let him go. It’s him or me. And if he’s gone, that’s it. There’s nobody to come after me. Nobody to interfere. This is the man behind the program. If he’s gone, there’s no reason for me to run, to hide. Besides, he caused the death of all the guards he brought on this shuttle didn’t he? Tell me. Your brothers would have killed the ones who boarded, didn’t they?”

“They would have.” He nodded and canted his head. Her face was hidden behind her purple streaked hair. A stray thought distracted him about her hair. She must have colored it while at Johnson’s. Did she usually streak it?

He stared at her profile and the rigidness of her shoulders. The trancelike tone of her voice made him want to protect her, shield her from those who might take her from him again because they wanted to drain her memories. Not because of what she did, but to enjoy it for themselves. “Are you trying to convince me it’s a good idea to kill him? I need no convincing. They threatened our ship. That’s enough for me.”

“He’s as tied to me as the others I’ve killed. Have I killed all the men close to me?”

“If they are like this one, they deserved it.” He grunted. As far as he could tell, Chara had taken them out like their ship jettisoned trash at the garbage depots.

“Should we keep him alive, in case we need him to bargain with?” Chara’s body shook, as if the effort to hold back made her vibrate with suppressed energy.

“We’ll drift out here as long as it takes, but he can’t leave this ship. Do it.”

Her face cleared. Her shaking stopped.

Air slid from her mouth and she leaned forward.

The knife slid into Jebe’s chest and into his heart. A sound of air escaping came from his throat, but he never moved, never showed another sign of fight as his life bled from his chest and onto the floor of the shuttle.

Chara’s breathing went ragged and he tightened his grip on her waist. Lifting her, he got to his feet and crushed her against the front of him. “You feel it like a predator. Like one of us. To protect, to feed, or simply to test your own skills, you kill.”

She jerked in his hold but he didn’t let her go.

“You think I judge you for this? Indeed, I do.” He paused as she thrashed in his hold after his admission. Then he added. “I applaud you for it. You are strong. Strength is beautiful. I want you even more.”

Her struggles ceased. Chara made a small sound and her hand dropped the bloody knife to the floor. He carried her to the back of the craft, away from the scene of their fight, and slid her down his excited body and to the floor. Guiding her, he pushed down on her shoulder until she sank into the most rearward seat. He stood between her knees. “It doesn’t matter if you’re free now, or not. I can take you away from here. They will not look for you on Ferrashi.”

“The station won’t care. Nobody will come for me.” She blinked and lifted a hand from her lap. Her soft touch went to his chest and stroked over him. “You killed the other guard.”

“I did.” He frowned, uncertain of her mood. He scented blood but also a hint of her arousal. She didn’t answer him, seemingly preoccupied but not by her immediate status. Licking her lips, she leaned forward.

His muscles locked in place. Completely. The ship was derelict, unmoving beyond the little momentum it already had. There were three dead bodies and a dock boot with an unknown status, but none of that mattered. Nothing mattered but the primal urges Chara had let loose in him and the cloud of need in her eyes. Her tongue slid from her plump lips and flicked across his nipple. It tightened into a hard nub and shivers dotted his torso.

“So good.” She said against his skin.

He shuddered and glanced down as she lapped at him. She licked the guard’s blood from Warrant’s chest. Her grooming, cleaning him, made his cock go so hard the pressure pained him. His chest rumbled. His lips seemed to vibrate and he fisted and loosened his hands over and over in an effort not to grab her. Long, low and deep, his purring filled the cabin. His head fell back and his mouth opened on a silent yell.

Her small tongue smoothed over his hot flesh. She swirled and lapped, missing nowhere, as she tasted every inch of him from his nipples to his lower stomach. He panted. He growled. He shuddered and quaked, but he stayed rooted to the spot with the small woman tormenting him slowly, methodically, and completely with her little wicked tongue.

His lungs worked hard to move oxygen in and out of him despite how his cock had nearly consumed his existence.

Finally, she paused and glanced up at him. Her lips were wet and swollen. Her eyes were glistening as if fevered. Her dark skin was flushed and her little body vibrated so much the seat clattered.

“Not done,” he squeezed from his mouth though making words had been a momentous effort. Unfisting his hands and ignoring the shredded meat he’d made of his palms, he slowly ran his fingers across the top of his fatigues. Her attention seemed completely mesmerized, and she watched him as he painstakingly unlatched his pants and parted them. “Go lower.”

She leaned forward again. He opened his pants wider and his cock freed, aching and long, practically begging. Her small hand gripped the base of his shaft and stole all coherent thought. Then she licked the slit, collecting the bead of semen there.

He howled. His fist slammed into the wall above her head and she made a throaty, pleased sound. Bracing himself, his entire body rigid, throbbing everywhere, he leaned on his fists against the wall and stared down at Chara. Her mouth curved in a wicked smile as she slid his cock between her lips.

“Oh, fuck.” Warrant clenched all over. Every muscle in his body quivered.

She slid him further in and suctioned her mouth around him. Her cheeks indented. Seemed as if she were going to drive him crazy with the pressure. The intensely pleasurable pressure. His entire focus fell to his dick and balls. An electric buzz engulfed him and the impossibility of what she could do with her mouth nearly made his legs collapse from under him.

Chara laughed, muffled by the hard flesh in her mouth. Her hand shoved between her legs and beneath her dress. She toyed with herself. Small little jerks of her arm excited him and he wanted to see where she touched herself, but he was so tight, so rigid, he couldn’t move or tell her. All he could do was take what she gave and watch her. Her eyes stared up at him. They’d been glassy, completely engulfed in the bloodlust but now they sparkled.

Her passion for him had crowded out her lust for killing. That was the most erotic realization of his life. That was the fucking best thing he’d ever felt. It became too big to keep inside, too much to contain, and that pride, lust, pleasure, heat, desire, all needed release at once. The little control he had, abandoned him. He came in a heated rush.

In a long, shuddering, strength-stealing outpouring, he let it all go. All of it, from him and into her.

His seed pumped down her throat and she moaned, swallowing as he jerked and quaked. His eyes slammed closed, shutting away the blush, the vivid life of her face as his knees gave out. His body crumpled to the deck but he made sure not to crush Chara. She made a small shuddering exhale sound and he forced his blurry vision to focus on her face as she came. She was glorious.

Her dark hair was mussed, her face, rigid in concentration. She bit her lip and her arm jerked. For long moments, she hummed a keen sound and froze, basking in a release that made her small body tense all over.

Then she slumped forward. He grabbed her and brought her against his chest.

With a chuckle, he finally spoke, “I still haven’t gotten my dick wet.”

“I’d say you did,” she murmured but didn’t move.

“And it was damned good. But I want inside your slick pussy.”

She slapped at his thigh hard enough to sting a little. “Such language.”

“You love it. I can scent it on you.”

She slapped at the same spot and the stinging made his leg warm enough to go to his dick. Already, he could get hard again. But he wondered at how a woman could come from a family of killers and cheaters and be prudish about language. Nobody out here bothered with worrying over what was polite versus being themselves. The small little doubt was enough to keep him from developing a raging boner. At least, for the moment.

That, and the sudden realization, now that he was relaxed and the immediate danger gone, that they were floating out here and he had no idea where they were, if they could be found, and if they’d ever find a way off this ship. Before he could let that impinge on his sated, pleased feeling, a beeping sound filled the cabin.

With a sigh, he extricated himself from a pleasingly warm and sultry Chara who acted as lazy as he did when well-fed and ready to stretch in the sun. She grunted her dissatisfaction at being disturbed and he helped her to one of the seats before going to stop the incessant alert.

“What?” he snarled as soon as he saw it was a comm ping from the
Night
.

“You’d think you’d be happier for us to be rescuing you,” Tee snarled right back.

“You took care of the boarders?” Warrant didn’t need rescuing—even if he did. He glared at the screen as if he could see Tee there but it was only a red squiggly line.

“This is a question?”

Warrant grunted. Of course they’d taken care of the boarders.

“The shuttle and the
Night
have drifted apart. We’ve indicated to the station that we’ll rescue and drag it back to dock. We estimate re-attachment before dinner time. Hold tight.”

“Tell Nick to make something good.”

Tee ended transmit and Warrant felt the pang of his brothers’ absence when the red line on the comm went dark. Chara climbed back into her seat, causing a creaking sound loud in the cabin, and the uncomfortable feeling of being alone eased a bit. His reaction made him immediately wary. He spoke to her over his shoulder. “We have time. Let’s see what the records say about you.”

Her shrug didn’t fool him but he didn’t hesitate to ignore her as she pretended she didn’t care. The feel of her languor turning to tension changed the air he breathed, made the flush of his skin fade, and sent discomfort through him. But he had to know what was going on and if it’d be too dangerous to continue helping a woman from a known crime family.

The internal comps on the shuttle weren’t secured. They probably didn’t think the expense worth it on the inside of the craft. Once aboard, access to systems were easily hacked unless expensive physical locks were tied to biorhythms or other security.

“They have your file right here. Open and ready to read. Not really a surprise since they were coming to get you.”

“Of course,” she replied from right behind him. She leaned over his shoulder and looked down at the screen.

“You were married. Twice. And agreements were signed for the third marriage—to Jebe Laurent.” A little curl of anger simmered in his belly but he controlled it. She wasn’t married now.

“They’re dead,” she said flatly.

“Looks like you killed all three of them.” He ran a finger over the line that showed she was sentenced to the rehabilitation program for the murders of five men.

“I remember killing one,” she murmured. “It needed doing.”

A small shiver went over his skin at the hunger in her voice and his lip curled enough to bare his fangs. They tingled, exposed to air and unable to sink into anything. Opening his mouth on a pant, he focused on the screen instead of the vicious woman behind him who seemed as if she could’ve been born Scoriah.

“I don’t recognize the other one,” she said.

Warrant dragged himself out of a fantasy of bringing Chara to the nest and curling around her like family. Clamping his mouth closed, he stared at the image of the man who’d first married Chara. It killed the growing lust that had started in his groin.

As much as it seemed as if she might be free from the freeker program, they weren’t sure, and he couldn’t bring her back to the nest, he couldn’t follow these undefined urges he’d started to have, without making sure she wouldn’t endanger the family. Two warring instincts made his thoughts churn and he couldn’t work through it until they knew more about her past.

For now, this was what he needed as much as she did.

They had to know who Chara DuBlie was.

The information was there and he eagerly ate it up as it displayed her life in electronic form.

Chara’s first husband had been much lighter skinned than her. His cheekbones were sharp and his hair cut short. His eyes and expression looked mean. She’d apparently stabbed him in the gut when he’d been caught for breaking into a reserve bank and had given her up in exchange for his freedom. Her father, the well-known head of the DuBlie crime syndicate, had bought her release. A few years later, when her father’s gambling operation had fallen apart, he’d sold her to a new husband, Letzi, in exchange for a ticket off Geonate. Chara had found her father before his shuttle had taken off and slit his throat. Letzi had involved her in grifting until that’d turned bad.

Later, she’d killed Letzi and her trial had ended with her in the freeker program. No mention of her brother Manta. It could be he’d had the records wiped.

 “I didn’t kill that fifth man they convicted me of murdering.”

“You remember?” Warrant’s body had chilled as he’d read through the history. His lover had killed anyone who’d double-crossed her—which was fine by him, but had she killed others? Would she kill indiscriminately, for the pleasure of it? The killings she’d been convicted of doing, she’d gotten pleasure from it. He could sense it. She’d enjoyed killing Jebe.

“I don’t remember the earlier ones,” her voice had a slight tremor now. She wasn’t as unaffected as she’d first been. “Or even if there have been others. But I remember my ass of a second husband. He killed that young man they say was my fifth.”

Warrant nodded. Her scent was unchanged. Maybe he could smell a lie on her or maybe he couldn’t. If he were around her much longer, he was sure he’d find out, but this seemed true enough.