Justin (6 page)

The moment hung while the colors, scents, and sounds of the marketplace whirled around and became a background blur.

Justin skimmed his hand down her arm and closed his strong fingers around hers. “Walk me home.”

It was not a command, not a suggestion, and he didn’t plead. He simply said it.

Deanna twitched her hand from his, but she nodded. Justin flashed another smile at her, one of the amazing ones that lit up his face and made her want to collapse at his feet.

Side by side, they left the marketplace, back to the searing hot streets of Pas City.

Justin’s flat was next to the bar run by the woman called Judith. Two Shareem stood in the bar’s open doorway, a dark-haired one with massive muscles next to a tall blond Shareem with a face of perfect masculine beauty.

The dark man took one look at Deanna, scowled at her, and faded back into the bar, but the blond man eyed her with interest.

Justin ignored the two Shareem completely as he palmed open his door and pulled Deanna inside. The door slammed closed behind her, the lights coming on.

“Now stay here,” Deanna started to say.

Justin backed her against the wall. “You think I can let you go yet? With you looking so beautiful?”

Before Deanna could do more than gape, Justin cupped her face in his hands and pulled her up to him for a hard, hot kiss.

Justin tasted the fire in her. Deanna was shaking, uncertain, but he scented her wanting, which filled him with elation he hadn’t experienced in a long time. He’d had so much grief, and now he wanted a patroller who’d shot him in the ass.

He slanted his mouth over Deanna’s, sweeping his tongue inside. He was Shareem—he couldn’t simply kiss a woman and be done. He had to take her mouth, learn it, explore it.

As her body softened under his, Justin licked the corners of her lips, drew his tongue across her bottom lip, and teased beneath her tongue. She tasted of the coffee, the rich, heady coffee of Bor Narga. Plain and simple, but oh, so strong.

The veil hid the severe bun she insisted on and drew attention from the drab gray coverall. The red silk emphasized her dark eyes, the rich brown of her hair.

And it was damn sexy. This woman had his cock hard, and she was a patroller, for the gods’ sakes.

If he seduced her, if he took her into his bedroom for a long and satisfying afternoon delight, would she leave him the hell alone? Or arrest him again?

No, she was off duty. Forced to take a leave of absence, because of him.

So she’d just call another patroller to come and arrest him.

Justin eased the kiss to a close but kept his hands curled around her face, thumbs caressing her skin.

“You are fucking with my head,” he said softly.

“What?”

“You’re beautiful, and I’m lonely.” And horny. So far, Justin had been making do with his ever-vigilant hand, but that had to stop sometime. Shareem needed sex.

Braden had offered to fix him up with a woman or two to work it off, but Justin hadn’t wanted to be well into a two-day binge and miss any window of opportunity to see his daughter.

Besides, he’d learned the difference between sex with love and sex for the sake of satiation. He preferred the love, though he knew he’d have to sate himself soon or explode.

But he was beginning to like this feisty little patroller. A day with her, teaching her everything she needed to know about Shareem . . .

Justin’s level-two instincts knocked. He could lock her hands behind her, strip her bare, run slow fingers over her body, then kiss her, lick her, bite her, and show her that a little spanking between friends could be fun.

Deanna was ready, he could feel it in her. Her skin temperature was rising, face now a sweet pink. Her need was filling her, probably surprising her, and Justin had to talk fast.

“Tell you what,” he said. “You let me teach you about Shareem—what we really are, not a bunch of crap in your database. Let me teach you, and maybe I’ll tell you what I was doing up on the Vistara.”

He let the lie come to his lips, without stirring up the pain and sweat that other Shareem went through.

Half-lie, actually. He wouldn’t tell her about Sybellie, but he might help Deanna save her job—somehow. It was important to her.

Deanna leaned to him. Her lips parted, her breath touching his fingers, and her mouth started to form the word
Yes
.

“No,” she said.

A hard, emphatic
No
.

Disappointment kicked him in the gut. He’d been looking forward to taking her by the wrists and tugging her with him into his bedroom.
Right now.

Justin could still do it. He’d broken his programming. He didn’t need her permission.

“No?” he asked softly.

“I’m not a whore, thank you very much. No
learning
about Shareem in exchange for anything.”

Fair point. “All right. How about learning about Shareem for the hell of it?”

That stopped her. Deanna wanted it—everything about her screamed it. Her body was tight under his touch, nipples pearling against her coverall.

Deanna took a firm step away. “No.”

She had to drag the word out, but the woman had guts. Not many females could resist a Shareem when they poured it on.

“No,” she said again. Deanna managed to slide herself along the wall toward the door, though she couldn’t look away from him.

Justin let her go. He could take her, sure. He could make her like it so much that she never told a soul and kept it her secret pleasure forever.

He could do anything he wanted, but Justin had the feeling that if he coerced her into it now, this would be their one and only time. As much as he could make her like it, Deanna would be ashamed, and she wouldn’t be back for more.

But it hurt, oh, it hurt, to watch her go.

“Stay here,” she said, her voice stronger the farther she made it from Justin. She touched the door controls. The door flung itself upward, as though it too was in haste to get her out of there. Hot air boiled in at them. “And stay the hell off the Vistara.”

Deanna walked out. Almost ran out. She gave Justin one last look over her shoulder—her longing burning him as her veil glistened in the sunlight—then the door closed, and she was gone.

“Shit.”

Justin ran his hands through his hair, his body sweating, though the cooler tried to staunch the heat. He was going to burn up and die.

He wanted to run after Deanna, haul her back in here, take her against the wall. To drown in her scent, to taste every inch of her—he
needed
it.

Damn her.

Justin collapsed to the sofa, scrubbing his hands through his hair, trying to stop the tingling all over his skin. He needed to release. Shareem genes were taking over, and he needed to release,
now, now, now.

Oh, right, I broke my programming and can live like a normal human.

I’m Shareem, and I always will be.

It was time to see Sybellie. But Justin couldn’t sneak to the Vistara and the coffeehouse where she met her friends when he was burning up like this. He’d never walk three feet with this hard-on.

Judith was next door, a woman who made no secret that she loved Shareem—four or five at a time when she could manage it.

But as she’d indicated when Justin had squeezed her ass the other day, she was holding off Shareem. She liked Mitch, Mitch had asked her to be exclusive, and who was Justin to come between a budding relationship?

Justin occasionally still joined Braden and Elisa for a little ménage fun, but right now he needed mindless fucking, and he didn’t think Braden would stand back and let that happen. Neither would Elisa, and anyway Justin didn’t want to use Elisa that way.

That left his handy hand.

He didn’t have time to make it a formal ritual or even grab some lube. Justin ripped open his leggings, wrapped his hand around his hard and unhappy cock, and yanked.

*** *** ***

Deanna didn’t catch her breath until she was halfway down the street. The veil had sunblocking material woven into the silk, which shielded her from the worst of the sun, but her body was scalding from the inside out.

She still felt Justin’s mouth on hers, his skilled kiss, his fingers gentle on her face. Her body was burning to its core, her need making her hotter than she’d ever been.

Even Deanna’s dream about him hadn’t gotten her this bothered. But that hadn’t been real, and Justin’s searing kiss had been. While she’d stood against him, taking the kiss, she’d wanted to grab his big hand, thrust it between her legs, and beg him to pleasure her.

When he’d offered to tell her what she wanted to know in exchange for teaching her, she’d nearly screamed
Yes
!

Deanna’s hasty claim that she wouldn’t make a whore of herself for him had been a huge lie. She’d wanted to. Justin made her want to. And when he’d suggested they do it for the fun of it . . .

Good thing she’d gotten herself out of there.

Deanna leaned against the wall in a nearby alley, trying to let the heat of the sun-baked brick restore her equilibrium. As she waited, she forced her common sense to return.

In spite of the way he wooed her today, Justin was still up to something. He’d returned to Bor Narga for a reason, and he’d gone to the Vistara for a reason, and that reason was costing Deanna her job, her career, and her life.

She damn well wanted to find out what that reason was. And she would—no letting him distract her with buying her gifts and promising her pleasure.

Deanna wasn’t certain how long she stayed in the alley, watching and waiting, trying to calm down, but the sun moved higher, and plenty of people passed by.

She came alert when a sleek hovercar pulled up in front of Justin’s door. The car was expensive, if Deanna were any judge, barely making any noise as it rocked on its cushion of air.

The car had a driver’s compartment separate from the passenger’s—the type of car its owner would never drive herself. A highborn woman lurked behind those tinted windows in the back, Deanna was certain, a chauffeur in the front.

After about five minutes, the door to Justin’s apartment opened. Justin strolled out, cool and collected, his sunblocking robes pulled over his head and across the lower half of his face. The back passenger door opened politely for him, and Justin slid inside.

The door closed, and the car slid forward, heading straight for Deanna.

Deanna ducked back into the shadows of the alley. As soon as the car passed, she came out of hiding and followed.

The streets down here were full of people, slowing the hovercar, so Deanna easily kept up with it, and the driver didn’t seem to be in a hurry. The car wove patiently through the pedestrian traffic and didn’t pick up speed until it found a main thoroughfare. Deanna stepped back as the car turned the last corner and darted into the stream of traffic flowing uphill.

“Damn him,” she said out loud, the vestiges of her longing washed away by anger.

The thoroughfare was the direct route to the Vistara, the hill upon which upper middleclass and aspiring upper-class women bought homes, raised children to be as snobbish as they were, and dreamed someday of moving on to the Serestine Quarter.

Growling in rage, Deanna sprinted back down the street, never minding the heat. She used her badge that she carried on duty or off to rush past the turnstile at the nearest station, and leapt onto the first train heading up to the Vistara.

Justin barely made it. He stayed well under the shadows of the passage across the street from the coffeehouse, and looked over at the four girls at their usual table inside.

The other three young women were daughters of local well-off families, and they all went to the nearby university graduate school with Sybellie. Sybellie was studying techno-finance, he’d had Elisa look up. He was proud of how smart she was.

As Justin watched, Sybellie lifted her coffee to her lips then threw her head back and laughed at something one of her friends said.

She robbed him of breath every time he saw her. She looked much like her mother, Lillian, but Sybellie had also gotten Justin’s genes, which had been engineered to produce strength, physical beauty, stamina, and robust health.

Sybellie glowed with beauty. Her hair was soft brown, her eyes brown—happily Lillian’s dominant Bor Nargan gene had not betrayed Sybellie by giving her blue eyes. The young woman laughed readily, her pink cheeks matching the rose-colored veils she liked to wear.

In short, she was a twenty-something-year-old woman, happy with her friends, poised to take on life.

Justin had never met her and had never spoken to her. He could only stand here day after day and gaze at her, wishing like hell he could walk to her, take her hand, sit down next to her and say, “Hello, Sybellie. I’m your dad.”

He never could. Shareem in theory, weren’t able to reproduce. But Justin had managed it with Lillian. A fluke, a lucky shot.

A beautiful lucky shot, there with her friends, so happy.

Someone punched him in the ass. No, not punched, shoved a pistol onto his right butt cheek.

“I told you what I’d do if I found you up here again.”

Deanna had a bedroom voice even when she was threatening him. She was still wearing the silk veil too.

Justin turned abruptly, grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the pistol, and flattened Deanna to the wall.

“Shut up,” he said in a low, fierce voice.

Deanna’s eyes widened, but in fury, not fear. “Let go of me.”

“Keep it down.”

She struggled. “I yell once, and every patroller on the Vistara guns you down.”

“That’s why I need you to
shut up
.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“I don’t give a shit. Don’t say a word.”

The door of the coffeehouse slid open, and the four girls came out, talking together. They pulled silken veils down to keep out the heat, but didn’t stop their chatter, which they all seemed to be doing at once.

Justin did his best not to look. He tried not to turn his head, to not so much as move an eyeball.