Kieran (Tales of the Shareem) (2 page)

“Can’t be,” Kieran said, though he knew damn well it was. Every Shareem did. No leaving the planet. No
thinking
about leaving the planet. No even
looking
like they were thinking about leaving the planet. “Restricted areas have signs. Or shock screens.”

“No Shareem allowed in the dockyards,” the patroller said in a firm voice. “You know that.” She took out a handheld. “Which one are you?”

“Kieran,” he said.

“Yeah?” The patroller looked him up and down with eyes that could be nice if she softened them. “Prove it.”

She moved the handheld toward him. Kieran glanced at it and decided to look still more confused. “I guess you could ask my friends?”

The patroller growled. “Just my luck I’d get one of the stupid ones. Stick your ident card in that slot.”

Kieran hid a grin, ignoring the obvious opening for innuendo. “Why didn’t you say so?” He patted the inner pockets of his tunic, then pulled open the front of the garment to reach inside. He bared half his chest doing it, and saw the patroller’s gaze move to his sun-bronzed skin, then his dark brown nipple.

Kieran drew out the strip of plastic that was his ident card and slid it carefully into the reader. He did it slowly, making a sensual game of it.

The patroller flushed, but she stared in fascination as his blunt fingers almost caressed the card. She wasn’t supposed to be interested in anything sexual—Bor Nargans had talked themselves into believing that higher thought was more interesting than carnality.

The patroller shouldn’t have even noticed the suggestion Kieran was making as he slid the long card into the reader’s slot. But the warmth coming off her body and the scent of her arousal—which a Shareem could pick up long before a human could—told Kieran she damn well did. There was a reason her coworker had teased her.

The patroller cleared her throat and studied the readout on the device. “Kieran.” She became less belligerent as she read whatever the card was telling her. “Oh, yeah. The one with the messed up brain.” She leaned forward and spoke loudly and deliberately. “Do you know where you are, Kieran?”

“Bor Narga.” Kieran removed the card from the reader as sensually as he’d put it in. He was a level three, but he’d learned all about sensual stuff from level ones like Aiden.

“In the dockyards,” the patroller said, carefully pronouncing each word.

Kieran frowned. “I know I’m in the dockyards. I know where everything is in Pas City. I’ve lived here all my life.”

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Kieran slipped the card back into his tunic and took his time doing up the fastenings. “Why not?”

“It’s restricted,” the patroller said in exasperation.

“All right, all right. So, it’s restricted. Can I go now?”

The patroller heaved a sigh. “The penalty for being here is arrest. Possibly termination.”

Kieran let his eyes go wide. “Shit, really? We were just looking at the ships. The lady I was with, she said it made her hot—thinking about all these big ships shooting through space. She wanted to fuck right next to one. So what I did was, I got my manacles, and I—”

“Stop!” The patroller thrust her hand out, grimacing. “Don’t tell me.”

“Why not? It was a good session. See, I hooked her up to—”

“No!” The patroller slammed her hands over her ears, one hand still clutching her reader. “Go home, all right?” She lowered her hands and started tapping the device. “Here, I’m erasing that I saw you. Don’t say anything else.” She tapped the reader a few more times and then thumbprinted it, probably to authorize the deletion. “There. Now get the hell out of here. Stay home, and don’t come back. Can you remember that?”

Kieran shrugged. “Hey, if this place is so restricted, why didn’t the lady I was with tell me?”

The patroller made a face as she tucked her reader back into her belt. “She was probably crazy. Anyone would be, to want to be with a Shareem.”

Kieran pretended to consider this. “Good point.” He looked her up and down. “You know, if you want, you could come home with me. I could say thank you there.” He waited, as though he’d offered her something innocuous like a lift somewhere.

“No,” the patroller snapped. Her hand went to her sidearm. “Now, get out of here, before I change my mind and arrest you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Kieran raised his hands in surrender. “I was just saying.”

The patroller’s derisive snort echoed among the crates as Kieran turned away and wandered toward the entrance to the dockyards. He took his time leaving, even hummed tunelessly to himself. All the while his heart was pounding, sweat trickling down his back, his feet itching to run, run,
run
.

Kieran made it to the entrance and out into the main street, the avenue shaded all the way along. Quiet today, because everyone was at the festival for the gods of the Crystal Mountains, but that had been the point.

Now to find out if his mysterious, dirt-covered woman had decided to wait for him as he’d told her, or if she’d fled, never to be seen again.

Chapter Two

Felice hunkered into the shadows at a corner where two canopies overlapped the intersection of two market streets, and waited for her mysterious man to appear. She hadn’t made up her mind whether or not to trust him, but if he could point out a place for her to stay, she’d trust him long enough for that. She suppressed the voice that told her she also wanted to have another look at him.

The corner where the man had told Felice to wait was a popular place—a lot of people were trying to smash themselves into the deeper shade the canopies provided while they shopped at the markets. They didn’t pay much attention to Felice, though. She’d pulled a fold of robe over the lower half of her face and remained against a wall, but no one behaved as though this were unusual. Perhaps they thought her a tired shopper trying to get out of the sun for a bit.

Despite it being a festival day, the place was thronged with people both buying and selling. Felice couldn’t believe the variety and quantity of stuff changing hands. She could tell that Bor Narga was a planet with wealth, because the goods for sale in this working-class area—probably third- or fourth-hand by now—were of high quality.

Felice watched languid Bor Nargans drink water, and swallowed, her throat parched. A few people had water systems strapped to their backs, small hoses in their mouths, so they could suck cool water whenever they wanted. She tried not to imagine the liquid sliding down her throat and wetting her desperately dry mouth. She’d been trained to stay strong for long periods, but there were limits, and she was sure she’d reached hers.

After a nerve-wracking long time, Felice saw her giant man called a Shareem—what the hell did that mean?—approaching. People moved out of the way for him, but not overtly. As he came striding through, they drifted to the sides of the streets as though pushed by the bow wave of a ship. But curiously, they didn’t stare at him, only turned and made for the stalls as if only interested in the wares.

Not interested at all in the big and bulking man in his skin-baring tunic, dark hair tamed into a tight queue, and his square, handsome face. The black chain glistened on his bicep, and his very blue eyes roved the crowd.

What set him apart from the well-covered men and women around him, notwithstanding the chain, the bare skin, the hair, and the eyes, was his size. He dwarfed everyone. He looked different, he moved differently, and everyone got out of his way. Even in Felice’s old life, during her training and after, she’d never met anyone as huge as this man. And yet, he was well at ease with himself.

Women turned to glance at him after he walked by, sizing him up and pretending not to. A few men did too, though they pretended not to even more.

When he reached Felice, he seized her by the arm and pulled her along with him, not stopping, not speaking. He was strong, and Felice had no choice but to hurry beside him, nearly dancing to keep her feet.

In any other circumstance, Felice might be terrified, might fight to get away from him, but this man, this Shareem, wasn’t a slaver. He didn’t have the look. Slavers had cold, dead eyes—didn’t matter what species; the eyes were always the same.

Not all slavers she’d seen mistreated the slaves they sold, and some even took care of them, but they didn’t view slaves as human—or whatever alien they happened to trade. Slaves were commodities. Some slavers talked to their slaves, befriended them, counseled them, but when it was time to sell, anything personal was over. Felice had seen that often enough in the past four years.

This man’s eyes took in a lot and gave back. He wasn’t looking upon Felice as a commodity, although he didn’t regard her with open-armed friendliness either.

He glanced behind them, probably looking for patrollers, before he pulled Felice into a narrow alley that had no covering. Heat blasted down on them, which she could feel even through the robes. How the hell did people live in this place? It was so hot, her breath burned in her lungs.

No canopy, however, meant that no one lingered here. The man pulled her through the empty alley and around yet another corner to a passage whose pavement was covered with slick sand. A rusting metal door was recessed into the wall halfway along, two stone steps leading up to it, a card slot waiting patiently beside it.

The man slid a card into the slot, and the door rolled open with groaning protest, as though it regularly stuck inside its channel. The man pushed Felice into the dim room beyond, then followed her after checking the street.

The door slammed with another grating screech, cutting off the heat.

The apartment Felice found herself in was warm and close, but the contrast to the blast furnace outside made it seem like paradise. Funny how paradise varied with climate, the back of her mind mused—those in the cold thought of sunny meadows; those who lived in heat dreamed of deep shade and cool water.

“Off,” the man said.

“What?” The robe muffled her response.

A large hand closed over the robes and ripped them away, leaving Felice standing in her torn and filthy tunic, exposed and vulnerable. She could fight him if she needed to—she knew that—but she was so exhausted she hoped she wouldn’t have to.

The man looked her up and down. “What are you?” he demanded.

Felice folded her arms, the universal body language for
stay away
. “I should be asking
you
that. You dragged me here. What do you want?”

The man said nothing for a long time, pinning her with his blue gaze, which was starting to make her hot all over.
Forget the temperature outside. It’s scalding in here.

“What do I want?” he repeated as though thinking hard about it. “Somewhere I can live where patrollers don’t follow me around. Friends to laugh with. A lady to do. A cold drink. What do
you
want?”

Felice stared back at him, trying to decipher the answer, which wasn’t an answer. She cleared her throat. “Tell you what. How about I throw out a question, and we each answer it. Then we go on to the next question.”

The man shrugged, which moved his muscles in a nice way. “All right.”

He obviously wasn’t going to say anything more, so Felice asked, “What’s your name?”

The man considered. “That’s a good question. Good place to start.”

“You answer first,” Felice said quickly.

His didn’t blink. “Kieran. You?”

“Felice.”

Damn.
She hadn’t meant to blurt out her real name, but she somehow felt compelled to honesty around him.

Didn’t matter, because he didn’t react. No recognition of the name. That meant no bulletins had gone out about Felice Henderson being missing, no offers of reward for her return. Yet. When her absence was discovered, the crew chief would waste no time trying to get her back.

“Next question,” Kieran said. “I’m from Bor Narga. You?”

“Earth.”

Kieran’s expression turned amazed. “Seriously? Old Earth?”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been there in a while—”

Kieran cut her off. “Shit, woman, why the hell did someone from Old Earth want to come to Bor Narga? This is like the back of the
back
of beyond. A rock with sand that crazy people built cities on.”

“I didn’t come on purpose,” Felice said, her voice scratchy. Hadn’t been her choice where to go for a long time, even before she’d sold herself to TGH Corp.

“Who would?” Kieran went on. “What are you doing here?”

Felice hugged herself more tightly. She was so tired. And thirsty. “Why do
you
live here? If it’s such an armpit?”

“Is that your next question? Answer: No choice.” His gaze softened. “You all right?”

“Is that
your
question?” Felice fought to keep standing while pretending she wasn’t weak.

Kieran steered her to a sofa that looked like nothing more than a slab of plastic. When Felice sat down, though, the sofa cushion rearranged itself to fit her buttocks, cradling her gently. It was surprisingly comfortable, which she’d appreciate if she weren’t so exhausted.