Nell Thorn (8 page)

Nell pulled the sheet up to her chin and waited a few heartbeats before she asked, “Why did you do it?”

“Why did I do what?”

“Why did you kidnap me?”

His shout of laughter brought her up short and made her frown at him angrily, until he caught sight of her face and sobered instantly. “I didn’t kidnap you.”

“But—” Nell spluttered for a few moments to master her emotions before she burst out with, “I was kidnapped!”

“I didn’t say you weren’t kidnapped,” he corrected her; “just that I was not the one that kidnapped you.”

Nell was sure she must look the picture of confusion, particularly when Angel went on to add, “I rescued you.”

He smiled and Nell felt her stomach lurch. The eyes, the killer smile that revealed a slight dimple in one cheek. Men like him should come with a health warning.

Nell pushed down the sudden bolt of desire that gripped her abdomen.

This is not like me,
she thought desperately
. I’ve just fucked Rowe. How can I be reacting like this to Angel?

“Still suffering from the after-effects of the tranquiliser?” Angel asked Nell with mock sympathy. The look in his eye suggested he knew exactly what was on her mind.

“Yes, yes.” Nell nodded frantically. Yes, that had to be it. She had been drugged, and one could only guess at what had to go into a tranquiliser shot to keep a Rim inhabitant down. Their metabolisms were famous, or notorious, depending on your point of view, for their ability to recover quickly.

She reminded herself that she didn’t really know which side her rescuer was actually on, and she settled for studying Angel hard. Could she believe him? Could she really believe he’d had nothing to do with her removal from the cabin? Was he in league with the shady individuals who seemed to be lurking around the edges of this entire affair? Some of them had nasty intentions with regard to Rowe, and some of them seemed threatened by her, and therefore determined to ensure she did not survive to present her evidence to the Council.

Nell had always preferred an enemy she could identify clearly.

Even Rowe himself had his doubts about Angel.

“Why are you still hanging around?” she asked him. “When Rowe has made it so clear that he doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore?”

Angel laughed.

“You still don’t get it, do you?”

“What is there to get?”

“Rowe and I go way back. Way back to a time before all this, when he was a very different man. He and I were…close. Very close. As it turns out, for me at least, couldn’t live without each other close.” Angel gave her a wry smile. “He always did have great taste. So tell me, Area Commander Helena Thorn, have you any idea who he is?”

Nell could honestly say all she really knew about Rowe was his name.

“He told me… Rowe told me he looked after an area of space that someone else had their eye on.”

“Is that all Rowe told you?” Angel started to laugh. “Try again.”

“A leader…a popular leader of some type? He doesn’t seem disciplined enough to be in something like a fighting force.” Nell considered what she knew about the charismatic man who had at first been in her custody, before their roles had switched and she was in his. “He broke the neck of a man who tried to kill me.”

“Did he?” Angel turned and fixed her with his brilliant blue gaze. “He killed someone for you? Rim Lords rarely get their hands dirty these days, but then that’s Rowe for you.”

“A Rim Lord?” Nell paused, suddenly feeling awkward to be telling Angel any information at all. Rowe was a Rim Lord, like Danyeo. She was a Fleet officer. The divisions between them suddenly sprang into sharp relief. “He saved my life.” She was a Fleet officer, trained to be resistant to all forms of technique designed to draw information from her, yet here she was spilling all to a man she had met only twice, and this second time she was almost completely convinced he had been involved in snatching her from the relative safety of Rowe’s ship. “So, is that it? He’s some kind of deposed leader, a lost Rim Lord, from the…far Eastern Complex?”

Yes, that must be it, Nell realised. Danyeo and Rowe had said as much during their earlier exchange. The far Eastern Complex was a remote sector of Rim space that had little interaction with the Fleet or the Inner Galaxy Worlds as it was abutted on most sides by Rim territories. Its outer edges stretched to touch the very edges of existence itself. It was a source of legend and speculation, as well as great mineral wealth.

No wonder Rowe had been able to resist her paltry offer of gold and crystal ziosite when he had abducted her. The sum of her wealth would be nothing against the sort of riches one could secure from the Eastern Complex.

She raised her eyes to study Angel watching her.

“You are very beautiful,” he said. “Clever, too.”

“And you are very charming,” Nell countered promptly, “and, I’m thinking, dangerous.”

Angel gave a long, slow, predatory smile, revealing beautiful teeth.

“I can smell him on you, you know.”

Nell looked at him blankly. Angel picked up one of her feet and examined it in minute detail, almost brushing her skin with his nose as he inhaled along the line of her foot and up towards her knee. “It’s a delightful combination, both his scent…and yours.”

Her legs weakened, and even Nell could smell the scent of her desire as Angel worked his way up to her dampening crotch, pushing the sheet out of his way as he went.

There was no mystery about how aroused she was becoming.

Don’t be such a slut
, she told herself desperately.
Surely you can resist this?

Rowe didn’t
,
a little voice in her head whispered.

His tongue was hot against her as he licked her between the legs, long and hard from back to front. Nell gave a groan as her entire body started to prickle with desire.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed as he started to rub the flat of his tongue against her clitoris and snake the tip into her, licking, as she rocked against him. An orgasm started to build low in her abdomen, climbing towards an inevitable peak as he continued to suck and lick at her. Nell moaned once more.

Then he stopped, smiled, and watched her face as her arousal ebbed.

Nell frowned at him, puzzled, her body subsiding from being on the edge of orgasm to being merely on edge.

“What…?” Nell started to ask him, but Angel pushed her legs open and resumed his task of licking and sucking. Her climax rose far harder and faster than before, so when he stopped again she was too close to be nice about it.

“What…are you doing?” she gasped at him, her body by now a seething, panting, sweating piece of arousal.

“Enjoying the sight of the infamous Nell Thorn, legs spread, tits shaking as she gets angry at me”—Angel laughed as he rolled away from her—“because I won’t let her come.”

Nell stared at him, speechless.

“He didn’t come either, did he?” Angel went on. “I could taste that, too.”

The memory of Rowe coming in her mouth made her self-consciously moisten her lips. Angel was not as clever as he thought he was.

“What kind of pervert are you?” she asked him finally.

“Oh, sweet Nell, you have no idea.” Angel laughed.

He seized her hands and kissed them in turn. “Just to make sure you save yourself for me, darling. No touching, eh? And as for Rowe, if only he was just a power-hungry, self-serving Rim Lord.” Angel sighed as he stood and turned his attention back to the control panels, touching several before sitting back and rubbing his face with one hand. “If. Only.”

“So what is he, if not that?”

“To most on the Rim, he
is
the far Eastern Complex, and his collective has always been the means by which they have survived this far out on the edge of space. You were not too far off with your guess of a popular leader. Quite simply, to the people of the Eastern Complex, Woodson Rowe is a living god.”

Chapter Eleven

In Nell’s opinion, the living god seemed rather pissed off when he finally caught up with the two of them, in a bar a safe distance away from where the Council was meeting.

His face, as he walked across the grotty bar towards them, was an absolute picture.

Of naked anger.

Rim Lord Woodson Rowe. 

She never would have guessed that the man she’d scraped off a roadside on Egalita Prime could ever have been so critical to such a sensitive area of space. Did Rim Lords not have personal guards? Or maybe that was where his suspicions regarding Angel came in.

Nell suddenly felt absurdly shy in front of Rowe and ducked her head down. Last time she had seen him she had been sucking his cock, after all.

“What happened?” Rowe snapped the words out, immediately looking to Angel for an answer. He completely ignored Nell as he pulled out a chair from between them and sat astride it.

“If you want the short version, I was returning to my ship, and I found our mutual acquaintance causing something of a stir in one of the service corridors.”

It was the first time Nell had heard Angel speak of her attempted kidnapping.

“What were you doing in a service corridor?” Nell asked before she could stop herself.

“Returning to my ship,” Angel replied.

“Did you recognise anyone?” Rowe asked him.

Angel simply raised an eyebrow and said, “Everyone was dressed in black. No markings were evident on the uniforms, faces covered. They were trying not to speak but Commander Thorn managed to kick one of them so hard he did shout out.”

“Anything useful?”

“Not really, but someone must be running scared to try to steal a witness out from under the nose of the Rim Council.” Angel took another swig of his drink and went on to state, “Of more concern to you is that you would appear to have someone on your crew who can be persuaded to part with information. There are factions on the borders of Eastern Complex space that have taken it into their heads that they no longer need the Rowe Collective gene strain to pioneer mining in the extreme districts. They have fallen into company with—”

“Slavers,” Rowe finished the sentence for him.

“You know?”

“Let’s say I had plenty of time and opportunity to work it out.”

“I’ve missed you, you arsehole.” Angel said the words as if they were wrenched out of him.

Rowe stared at him long and hard before grabbing one of Angel’s shoulders and shaking it slightly. “Sure you have. Good to have someone watching my back again.”

Nell looked from one to the other.

“Just who
are
you two jokers?” she asked, waving to the barman for another drink.

“Just the usual,” said Rowe, holding up one hand to signal that three drinks should be brought over to their table. “Two people who have known each other for an awful long time, and who would have done better to have listened to each other before listening to other people.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Angel held his glass high and drained it dry. “The far Eastern sector is getting reckless. They’ve been asking repeatedly where you have gone, and the emergency council that has been set up in your absence has blanked them repeatedly. In fact, the colonies in the delta quadrant have simply stopped sending ore for processing. They are stockpiling it until they get their answers.”

“Gotta love those difficult bastards in the delta quadrant,” Rowe said, not without affection.

Nell thought they sounded like awkward little shits.

“If you return now and show your face, it’ll be obvious that the emergency council have been up to something and there will be an all-out war. People are already angry,” Angel informed Rowe, his face grave. “It’s going to be one hell of an ugly fight, and might give other factions the opportunity to annex large portions of the Eastern Complex for themselves. I would guess Gordon would be first among them.”

“Gordon?” In her head, Nell echoed Rowe’s question to Angel.

“Fleet Sector Commander Gordon.” Angel replied, with a quick glance towards Nell.

A GEF Sector Commander?
Nell stifled a groan.

“Then it’s back to the Council, or war.” Rowe looked up at Angel. “I thought you had betrayed me.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

“It was something Gordon said.”

“Bloody Sector Commander Gordon,” Angel growled. “Everything leads back to that greedy bastard.”

Nell kept quiet and stared at her hands, listening. She still did not quite trust Angel as far as she could throw him, but the involvement of an officer of the Galaxy Elite Fleet made her role in this all the more difficult.

Gordon.
Nell had heard of him, and none of it had been good. It was a well-known fact that he had harboured a deep, abiding grudge against the Thorn family for some years, and that was one reason why Nell had barely reacted to the fact that the assassin on her ship had been tattooed with the insignia of Gordon’s personal guard. It would not be the first time that supporters of various factions within the Fleet and the Inner Galaxy Worlds had used violence against the Thorn family as a means to ingratiate themselves with their leadership. However, it would appear she had been complacent. The real target of the assassin’s attack must always have been Rowe.

She had been careless.

Angel rubbed his face in his hands before he asked Rowe, “Have you any suggestions?”

Rowe emptied his glass of its contents and banged the empty vessel back down onto the bar table. “Yes I have. Let’s forget all the crap and have sex.”

“What?” Nell looked from one to the other and remembered that she had seen Rowe lip-locked with Angel way before her own mind-blowing encounter with him. It seemed fair to say that Woodson Rowe believed in spreading as much joy as he could, as quickly as possible.

She told herself to be an adult, brutally squashing the jealousy that rose in her chest when she intercepted the look that passed between the two men. None of this was really about her, it was about them, she thought enviously. They had been separated for some time and finally they were coming back together.

“How long do you think you’ll be?” she managed to ask in a fairly normal voice, whilst calculating how long she would have to wait for them to finish up before they could leave. She might then get back to Fleet space, where you didn’t get dumped quite as quickly as you did here, when a man’s boyfriend turned up.