Kieran (Tales of the Shareem) (6 page)

Too bad, because Kieran enjoyed Judith’s straightforward, no-nonsense attitude toward sex, a rarity on Bor Narga.

Tonight, however, Kieran felt no disappointment that he couldn’t take Judith upstairs and relieve his aching cock. He’d met Felice.

“Kieran.” Rees waved a hand in front of Kieran’s face. “You still with me?”

He was waiting for his report. Kieran took a long drink of ale, then he leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and recited all he remembered.

“Seven transports heading for Station 579. All of them C-class, not very big. Two heading toward Sirius, but stopping in about ten ports along the way. Eight of those ports have treaties with Bor Narga and would send us back.”

“In body bags,” Braden said. Kieran didn’t open his eyes, but he heard Braden settle himself on the seat next to him. “Or as little piles of dust.”

“Yeah,” Kieran agreed.

“After that he found a woman and went back home,” Braden said, humor in his voice. “Better things to do than poke around dockyards.”

Kieran shrugged. He kept his eyes closed, savoring the memory of waking up wrapped around Felice. He rarely slept with his women—he did his job and left them, no matter how much they begged for more. Sleeping with Felice had been . . . nice.

“Kieran,”
Rees said again. Kieran opened his eyes and found Rees watching him closely. “This is important.”

“I know.” Kieran swallowed another large mouthful of ale. Judith served it in insulated tankards that kept it cool even under her faulty air conditioning. “I’m screwed up in the head, Rees, not stupid. You mean that if we can’t find transport for everyone, we’re stuck.”

“Sorry,” Rees said, actually looking sorry. Talan was having a good effect on him. “Keep going with your story. You left the dockyards because patrollers found you. What did they say to you?”

Kieran chose his words carefully. “Not a lot. I started talking about sex, and the patroller got nervous and sent my ass out of there.”

“And then you met up with the woman?”

Was it Kieran’s imagination or was Rees watching him in suspicion? “Yes,” Kieran said. “Found her. Took her home.” He almost said
did her
, but that would be a lie, and Rees would know. Rees always knew when Kieran was lying.

“Took her home,” Rees repeated without inflection. “To your place.”

“Yes, my place. It’s home, as shitty as it is. So what?”

“You didn’t take her to a hotel or to her house? Or to the pleasure palace? What I mean is, you didn’t take her someplace special.”

“This was different.” Kieran swallowed another drink, wiped his mouth, and fixed Rees with a scowl. “Hey, do I grill you every time you have a woman? Do I ask what you and Talan get up to in her mansion on the hill?”

“No,” Rees said. “But you usually describe in pretty good detail everything you do to your women, so that any sad Shareem who had no sex that day can get it vicariously. Why the sudden discretion?”

Kieran set down his tankard. “Listen, I promise, the woman I was with doesn’t know anything about why I went to the docks. She doesn’t have anything to do with patrollers, and she won’t mess us up. All right?”

Rees watched Kieran for a long time, Braden tense between them. Finally Rees gave Kieran a nod and lifted his own tankard. “All right.”

Braden let out his breath, while Kieran took a noisy sip of ale, as though unworried.

Rees wasn’t satisfied, Kieran could see, but at least he shut up. Rees was too damn clever for his own good, though, and would probably try to find out who Felice was another way.

Kieran set down his tankard. “You know what the difference is between you and me?” he asked Rees. “I’ll tell you. It’s that DNAmo tried to make me more and more mindless and you smarter and smarter. Backfired both times, didn’t it?” He laughed, as though he’d already forgotten the whole conversation.

Rees at least grinned with him. “It did, my friend,” he said. “It truly did.”

*** *** ***

Kieran took Judith aside before he left and asked in a low voice whether he could borrow some of her coveralls.

Judith grinned. “For you? Don’t think they’ll fit.”

“For a lady. Her clothes got ruined.”

Judith looked interested. “Really? Doing fun stuff with you? Is she gorgeous?”

“Yeah.” Kieran couldn’t stop his smile. Felice with her sweet body, no matter about the cruel scars, was a pretty one. He looked forward to seeing that body again, scenting her, tasting her . . .

“Calm down,” Judith said, and Kieran knew his eyes had gone bluer, his skin hotter under Judith’s touch. “Sure, the coverall. Want me to come over with it? Mitch doesn’t like me with Shareem anymore, and I’m fine with it, but he’s not as worried about my occasional enjoyment with something female.”

“She’s not into that,” Kieran said quickly. Kieran had no idea whether Felice was into women—he hadn’t asked her. But he felt a deep need to keep Felice away from the rest of the Shareem, and even Judith. He wanted to get to know Felice himself before he let any of the others see her. “I’ll just take the coverall.”

Judith winked at him. “I’m teasing you, Kieran. You be alone with her, if that’s what you need.”

She led Kieran up the stairs to her apartment above the bar. The other Shareem watched them go, some of them silently saluting Kieran, thinking they were heading upstairs for other reasons.

“What do you mean you’re fine with it that Mitch doesn’t want you with other Shareem?” Kieran demanded as Judith rummaged in her closet. “You’re kidding, right? You love Shareem.”

“I do.” Judith turned around with two pairs of coveralls, one over each arm. “But Mitch is a good guy. I don’t want to mess things up with him.” Her voice took on a little tremor.

Hmm. Interesting. Yesterday, Kieran might not have understood what Judith worried about, but today he did.

“Thanks, Judith.” Kieran took the coveralls then pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. Used to be, he’d automatically turn the kiss into a seductive invitation.

Not this time. He kept the kiss friendly, wadded the coveralls into a ball, and left her.

*** *** ***

Felice’s sense of self-preservation, honed by years of keeping herself out of the path of the crueler crew chiefs, told her to escape the minute Kieran left her alone. Her calmer sense told her he was right that she needed to eat something.

With Kieran gone, being naked lost its appeal. Kieran’s words and caresses had made Felice stop minding, but now she shivered as she dug through his closet.

The way he’d touched her, the things he’d said to her . . .

Her body was still hot, and she wanted release. Felice wasn’t a virgin, but she hadn’t had any sexual encounters in a long, long time.

Any thoughts of sex had been pushed far away as she’d concentrated on survival. And, thank all the gods, one huge rule of TGH Corp was that indentured servants couldn’t be forced to or required to have sex. Not because the company was moral, but because the worker needed to be strong and ready for labor at any time. Not to mention the risk of the worker getting pregnant or diseased. TGH Corp didn’t want to have to pay for anything like that.

Kieran was a survivor too, Felice understood as she looked around his tiny, very basic apartment. But he seemed to believe that survival was not enough. Even in this cramped space, warm from the heat outside, he’d let her know that he could give her any pleasure she wished. She shivered again.

Felice searched until she found a tunic small enough not to fall off her. It must be short on Kieran, but it covered Felice nearly to her knees.

She settled the tunic and went to his kitchen, another cramped space that was nothing more than cupboards and a food heater. It looked like Kieran existed on dried things in packets, she decided after looking through the cupboards. Felice dimly remembered, so long ago and far away it might have been a dream, laughing and talking in a huge kitchen, while things sizzled on an indoor grill, and wine flowed.

Right now, though, a packet of dried soup mixed with boiled water tasted of heaven.

After she ate, Felice went through the apartment, finding out all she could about Kieran. What she learned floored her.

Chapter Five

An hour or so later, Felice heard Kieran coming back in. At the dockyards, he’d been silence itself. Now he bellowed a greeting to someone outside and slammed open the door, letting in heat and the dim light of twilight.

He let the noisy door crash closed behind him. “You’re still here,” he said, staring at Felice, who was on his sofa, reading from his terminal’s screen.

“I am.” Felice said, not looking up from the computer. Everyone had a terminal on Bor Narga—they were built into every house from mansion to hovel. Policy, she’d learned from her research, so that every citizen could be alerted in case of emergency. For the last hour or so, she’d searched for every scrap of information she could find on Bor Narga, saving the more interesting things to the microdot, which she’d hidden in Kieran’s bathroom while she’d showered.

“I brought you some clothes.” Kieran tossed coveralls to the couch next to her. He looked her up and down, his slow smile spreading over his face. “But I kind of like you in mine.”

Felice pushed the terminal aside on its arm that folded into the wall, her heart beating faster. She wondered whether what she’d read about Kieran had been true. He seemed so—well, if not
normal
, then untouched.

“I learned what Shareem were,” she said.

Kieran gestured at the terminal as he headed to the kitchen. “It’s in the databases.”

“I also learned about you.” Felice continued. “Like you said, it’s in the databases.”

Kieran returned with two cold containers and handed her one. Some kind of ale, Felice decided, from its scent. She wasn’t sure she could handle alcohol when she’d been so dehydrated, but she politely took it.

Kieran sat down on the sofa right next to her, his shoulder touching hers. “Everyone knows about me. It’s not a secret.”

Felice watched him, but his eyes were neutral as he took a drink of the ale. The liquid passed into his mouth in a slow stream, then he swallowed with a languid movement of his throat.

“You were sold to a woman,” Felice said, saying it out loud so he’d understand what she knew. “She kept you in a . . . shipping crate, I guess.” A ten by ten by ten space, the information had said. “She locked you in and only let you out to do whatever sexual thing she wanted you to do. For a year.”

“Yep,” Kieran said. He took another sip of ale.

“Kieran.”

He set down the ale and studied her, as though searching Felice’s face for what she wanted him to say. “Like I told you, it’s not a secret. I was sold to her about a year before DNAmo got shut down. I didn’t even know DNAmo had had been closed or that they were hunting for the Shareem who’d escaped. Rees found me at the woman’s house, in her basement, and let me out.”

“But how did you . . . ?” Felice’s heart squeezed. “I mean, it’s horrible. How did you survive?”

A shrug. “Rees helped me. He hid me until the order came that Shareem weren’t to be terminated, that we could live on our own, and that owning us was illegal. I went with Rylan—he’s another Shareem—to a place way out in the desert and helped him for a while. Rylan makes singing spheres—they’re really beautiful. Then Rees needed me here again, so I came back.”

The cadence of his words, the words themselves, were so different from the wickedness he’d poured over her when he’d kissed his way down Felice’s back. It was difficult to reconcile that the phrases came from the same man.

“But how could you stand it?” Felice said. “I’m so sorry.”

Kieran’s expression was unreadable. “I mostly try not to think about it. See, the DNAmo people, they messed with my head.” He touched the side of it with his large forefinger. “They cut pieces out and shot me full of chemicals. Every day. That hurt worse than being kept in a shipping container, trust me. I was in pain all the time at DNAmo. When the lady bought me, that was just sex and sleep. I didn’t like it, but it was a lot easier to take.”

“By the gods.” Felice put her hand to her lips, her eyes stinging with tears. “That’s awful. I’m glad you got free.”

“Yeah, me too. What cutting all those pieces out of my head was supposed to do was make me be a perfect slave and not care. You know? Do my Dom thing, and then shut off. Completely. Eat, sleep, sex, that’s it.”

“Holy shit.” Felice put her hand on his, where he held his ale. The contrast of Kieran’s warm fingers with the cold container was soothing.

“They made it so I didn’t really notice.”

But he had noticed, Felice read in his eyes. Her anger rose. “That’s totally wrong. I was as good as a slave on that freighter, working like a robot—hell, they took better care of the robots. But at least they didn’t expect me to shut down like one.”

“It was all a long time ago,” Kieran said. “Now is better.”

“Yes,” Felice said. She squeezed his hand, her heart full. “Now is better.”

Kieran’s gaze heated, and Felice didn’t mistake that his irises spread this time. She’d read in the database that a Shareem’s eyes changed when he grew aroused.