Hold (14 page)

She nodded beseechingly. “Please.”

To her infinite relief, the shaky control that was holding him back finally cracked, and his hand closed over one of her breasts.

He cupped it for a moment, as Riana pushed up against his hand. Then he started to massage the soft flesh, rubbing the nipple in firm circles.

She gasped and closed her eyes, squirming as much as she could in her restraints.

Then she felt his left hand take her other breast and fondle it in a similar way.

“Yeah,” she whimpered. “Touch me.”

Soon she felt a flush grow from her cheeks down to her chest—part physical response and part embarrassment at the scenario. And at the fact that her body was actually reacting.

Not quickly or dramatically, but his caress of her breasts was having an effect.

She kept her eyes closed and tried to think of Cain—knowing that her arousal needed to be convincing and worried she wasn’t going to be wet enough if Davis checked.

One of his hands moved from her breast to stroke her ribs, side and belly, while the other took her nipple between his finger and thumb, pinching and twirling it.

She made a mewing sound of pleasure and struggled against her restraints. She imagined it was Cain who was touching her, bound and spread-eagle beneath him like this, and her pussy clenched in response to the image.

Davis couldn’t seem to stop touching her. “You’re so beautiful,” he rasped. “Are you sure you want—”

“Yeah.” She writhed in her restraints. “Yeah. Please.”

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His hand trailed lower, to her smooth-shaven pussy. Then he spread her intimate folds and stroked her warm flesh. By now, the stimulation and the thoughts of Cain had aroused Riana sufficiently, and her channel was slick when Davis slid two fingers inside.

He was still fondling one of her breasts, and Riana’s whimpers changed into soft, little sobbing sounds as he started pumping his fingers. She fought against her manacles and started to worry that Davis would move too slowly. She was trying to time this exactly right but a lot depended on how far and how quickly Davis was willing to go.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that he’d broken out in a sweat. There was a hard bulge in the front of his trousers and he was devouring her writhing body with his eyes.

“Can you…” she gasped, deciding she couldn’t wait any longer. She couldn’t ask him to free her from her restraints—that would look far too suspicious—but there was something else she could do. “Can you… I want all of you.”

Davis released a hoarse groan and pulled his hand out from between her legs. He climbed bodily on the table and then straddled her bound body and leaned over. He kissed her, which was difficult. He smelled clean and his mouth was fairly skillful, but he didn’t smell or feel anything like Cain. But Riana moaned against his mouth and kept rocking beneath him.

His groin aligned with her pussy and he pushed the bulge of his erection against her.

Riana tore her mouth away from his. “Oh, oh God. I want it. Please!” She thrashed beneath him, struggling desperately in the manacles, praying he wasn’t the kind who would prefer to fuck her helpless and bound.

With an agonized groan, Davis reached down beneath the table and flicked a switch. The restraints snapped open and she was suddenly freed.

She kept wriggling beneath him, though, and wound her arms around him. “Oh, yeah, it feels so good.”

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Davis kissed her again and kept thrusting his arousal against her pussy. Her legs had bent up around his thighs and the two of them sustained an urgent, clumsy, dry hump in the middle of the medical room.

She was waiting. Everything was exactly as she and Cain had planned it—although she wondered how Cain would feel if he could see her at the moment, with Davis between her legs.

But now was the time to see if Cain’s device would actually work.

Davis was starting to unzip his pants when there was a sudden, loud crack of noise.

The bang was so loud and so sudden—accompanied by an ominous shaking—that Riana cried out in real astonishment.

“What the…” Davis’ head jerked up and he looked around in vague confusion. He was obviously half-gone with desire, and he could barely concentrate through his heated daze.

“What was that?” she gasped.

“I don’t…” Another shaking—it felt kind of like an earthquake—and alarms started to blare from every side. “Damn it.”

He clumsily dismounted the table and zipped up his pants with a wince before he started for the door. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

She knew he’d be back. She was counting on it.

But she wasn’t planning to stay.

* * * * *

Cain’s device had caused some sort of explosion. It wasn’t a bomb exactly—at least not as she’d ever understood explosive devices—but it blasted one of the walls of the Hold. Not enough to cause structural damage, to flood the Hold with poisoned water or cause massive devastation. The foundations and reinforcement of the building structure were far too solid for that. Nothing Cain could create with spare parts could possibly do more than scratch the surface of the wall.

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The damage was only superficial—a loud noise, a lot of rumbling, some dislocated concrete and metal. Since he’d planted it in the public bathroom, it should also mess up the plumbing.

At most, it would be a temporary inconvenience—as the prison staff scrambled to repair the damage. The device was never intended to forcefully blast a way out of the Hold.

It just provided a distraction.

The explosion was certain to cause chaos in the Hold—and that chaos could very easily turn into a riot as the prison staff attempted to maintain order as well as assess and repair the damage.

That’s what Cain had always been counting on.

His initial plan had them attempting to escape the Hold in the chaos, but there were numerous mechanisms in place—enforced by the nature of the building structure—that would have made an escape, even in the midst of the chaos, extremely difficult.

Now that they were already out of the Hold, their chances were far greater.

And since Riana wasn’t shackled—Davis having been too befuddled to even register that fact—nothing was keeping her from moving around freely.

There was an automatic lock on the door but Riana had been sure to watch at Davis left the room. The first time, he’d shielded the code he’d punched in from her but when he left just now he’d been too distracted and she’d been able to see the code.

So she punched it in and felt a thrill of victory as the doors slid open easily.

She ran into the corridor and only then realized she hadn’t put her clothes on. But she didn’t stop to go back, too afraid they’d run out of time.

She knew the door at the end of the corridor was the one to the central control center of the building structure. So she sprinted toward it, relieved that no one was around.

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All of the guards must have gone to address the chaos in the Hold, exactly as Cain had predicted.

The door to the control room wasn’t locked, so she ran right in as the doors slid open. There were two guards left to man the controls but Riana simply ignored them.

She ran right across the room and through the door that led to Isolation, where she’d seen guards take Cain earlier.

One of the guards had turned around at her entrance but he didn’t react until she was disappearing through the door. “Hey,” he shouted belatedly, when he’d recovered from the shock of seeing a naked woman appear out of nowhere.

She knew he’d chase her but didn’t pause to look back. She saw in relief that the door had led to another short corridor—this one with only one door at the end.

Cain was there, ready and waiting for her, looking out the small window in the door. She half consciously registered that his face looked terrible—with one eye swollen shut and dried blood on the side of his jaw.

But, still on her adrenaline high, she didn’t let it distract her. As she ran up, Cain started gesturing in the window. He pointed down to the keypad on the outside, and then he fingered out a short series of numbers.

She understood immediately and, as she lurched to a stop, panting and flushed with heat, she quickly punched in the numbers as he signed them.

As she did, she heard the guard running up behind her. It only took a few seconds for him to reach her.

But she keyed in the last number as he grabbed her. So the doors slid open and Cain emerged in full fight mode. It only took three blows for him to lay out the guard and claim his weapon.

Grabbing her arm, Cain started toward the control center. The other guard had left his post at the sound of the struggle so Cain calmly shot him in the shoulder, sending him flopping to the floor.

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Riana hugged herself—feeling self-conscious and jittery—as Cain walked over to the control panel. There was a bank of display screens, on which showed surveillance images of the Hold. It appeared to be chaos, with rioting prisoners and scrambling guards, just as they’d hoped.

“I’m opening the transport docking doors,” Cain said curtly, pulling down a lever and flicking a switch. “But we’ll need the trigger key that Davis carries to undock the transport.”

Riana’s mind was such a blur of anxiety, adrenaline and excitement that she could barely process that this actually seemed to be happening. “Are you sure he’ll come back up?”

Cain left the control panel and took her arm again—his grip tight and efficient. He pulled her back toward the medical room. “Yes. He’s not an idiot. After he gives the guards orders down there, he’ll be back up. Once he’s able to think clearly, he won’t leave a prisoner up here unshackled for long. Even one as tempting as you.”

Despite his words, his expression was curt and businesslike. He was vigilantly focused on their plan and wasn’t wasting any time with warm looks or appreciation.

They reentered the medical room and Riana grabbed her clothes and started to pull them on.

Cain stationed himself beside the door—ready to tackle Davis as soon as the man entered. Once he was in place, he finally let his eyes rest on Riana for longer than a few seconds.

“So everything went as we planned?” he asked gruffly.

“Yeah.” Her voice was slightly muffled as she pulled her camisole over her head.

“Perfect. For a while, I was afraid he was going to fuck me while I was still bound, but he finally cracked. Thank God.”

Cain’s eyes followed her as she came over to stand beside him so she’d be out of sight when Davis entered. “How far did he get?” If possible, Cain’s voice was even gruffer than before.

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“Poor guy was just unzipping when the explosion happened. All he got to do was feel my breasts, finger me a little and kiss me.” She let out a sigh and felt an uncomfortable twisting in her belly. “He was so excited. I actually feel kind of bad for him.”

Cain stiffened beside her. “Do you?”

Noticing his tense face, Riana frowned. “You’re not going to get weird on me, are you? This was part of the plan.”

His mouth pressed into a tight line and something almost predatory appeared in his pale blue eyes. “Your getting aroused was not part of the plan.”

“
What
?”

He breathed in deeply through his nose, a muscle in his jaw twitching from tension.

“I can smell you. I know what it smells like when you’re turned on.”

Riana sputtered for a minute. Then she spit out, “Fuck you, Cain. I did my part the best I could. So just shut up and do your part. Get the trigger key from Davis and get us out of here.”

He returned her glare with a stony look but he didn’t say anything more.

Riana stewed in silence until she heard footsteps approaching in the corridor.

Then everything happened at once.

The doors slid open and Davis appeared. Cain grabbed him before he could react and pummeled him with a series of heavy blows. He struck him a few more times than was necessary but Davis was still alive when Cain grabbed the trigger key from a hook on his belt.

Riana couldn’t help but throw one last, guilty look back at Davis’ body as she and Cain took off at a run to the docking station.

After that it was easy. The docking doors were open so, as they took their places at the controls of the transport, Cain simply had to put the trigger key in its slot, start the engine and pull out into the ocean.

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The transport was not one of the Coalition’s sleek newer vessels. It was clunky and battered, and it lurched and groaned as Cain undocked it. But it moved. And it started rising toward the surface of the ocean with only a few more creaks and sputters.

And it was going to get them out of this hellhole. Off the planet completely.

As far as Riana was concerned, it was a wonderful, beautiful craft.

She was silent as they emerged from the ocean and Cain adjusted the controls to launch the transport off the surface of the water and into the thin atmosphere of Genus 6.

When they’d broken through the gravitational force, Riana let out a long exhalation.

She felt weird. And shaky. And kind of sick.

Cain glanced over at her. “You okay?”

She blinked, having a hard time processing anything. “Huh?”

“You look white. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t believe this is happening.” She put a hand on her stomach. “Did we really get away?”

Cain’s eyes softened a little as they rested on her face. “We’re getting there.”

“It all happened so fast,” she mumbled. “And with this clunky transport, I guess I’m feeling kind of dizzy.”

“That’s natural.”

She tried to frown at him, but she was trembling too much. “You don’t look—” She broke off, groaning as she felt a sudden wave of nausea. Then, with a flash of panic, she realized what was going to happen.

She fumbled with her safety belt and went to grab a waste container just as her stomach started to heave. She vomited painfully. A stark physical reaction that seemed to be in response not just to the jerky motion of the transport and the shift in atmosphere and gravity but also to the adrenaline high of the last few hours and the trauma of the last two months.