Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (40 page)

She raised a brow.  “You knew
they were Bouncers?”

“I heard them, when they flew
under us at the same time you tried to flatten me to the wall.”  He was
watching her too closely.  “I also recently had an unpleasant experience with
them…or had you forgotten?”

“Oh yeah,” Tatiana said,
flushing.  “Right.”

His eyes narrowed.  “Coaler, why
are we all still breathing?”

Tatiana looked up from the
viewfinder.  “You know that stuff you pulled off the racks?”

“My tools?” Milar said.

“Yeah.  That’s the thing about
Bouncers—they’re fast, but light-duty.  At their top speeds, they don’t have
the impact resistance to survive a collision with anything harder than a bird.”

Milar just frowned at her, his
golden hazel eyes confused.

“Your tools went through their
windshields,” Tatiana said.  “At about Mach Three.”

Milar continued to scowl at her. 
“Any tools you released from the hatch would have been traveling at the same
velocity as the ship when they were released.”

“I dropped them from forty
thousand feet, then ran the Bouncers into them at ground level.”

Milar’s eyes widened.  “No wonder
I passed out.”  Then he frowned at her.  “Come to think of it, why didn’t
you
pass out?”

Tatiana shrugged.  “One of the
great things about my little buddies is they keep the proper amount of oxygen
flowing to my brain, whatever the Gs.”  She glanced up at him.  “Bouncer pilots
have similar tricks, but they do it mostly with drugs and augmented organs.”

“So,” Milar said, sounding
unhappy, “What you’re trying to tell me is you just saved my ass again.”

“Yep,” Tatiana said.

“Get out of my chair,” Milar
said.

Tatiana gave the controls a
nervous look.  “But what if the Coalition—”

“Now, coaler.”  Milar grabbed her
by the top of her jumpsuit and bodily hauled her out of the captain’s chair. 
Then he put the ship into a landing sequence.  In less than a minute, he had
lowered them into a tiny swamplike clearing and powered down the ship.  With
the landing gear mangled, the ship rested at an angle on its belly.

“What are you
doing?”
Tatiana cried.

“Thanking you properly,” Milar
said, getting out of the chair.

Tatiana’s heart lurched and she
stumbled back, swallowing hard.

Milar saw her reaction and
grinned.  He went to the door and opened the hatch.  The dragons bunched on his
thick shoulders as he gestured.  “You gonna come with me or do I need to drag
you?”

Heart hammering in her ears,
Tatiana found she couldn’t move.

Milar sighed and grabbed her by
the hand, then tugged her out the cockpit hatch and down the stairs.  On the
wall nearby, Patrick was slumped against the harness, snoring.

“Um,” Tatiana said, as Milar
dragged her across the cargo bay, toward the crew quarters located on the other
side of the ship.  Every nerve was on fire in the hand where he was touching
her.  “This really isn’t a good idea.  They could still be after us.  What if
you didn’t fry all the tags?”

“We got them all,” Milar said,
“And waking up sleeping people is rude.”  He glanced at Patrick, then gave her
a demonic grin.

Tatiana swallowed, hard, and her
feet suddenly stopped working. 

As promised, Milar dragged her to
a closed door, then opened it and dragged her inside.

It was a bedroom.  Milar’s
bedroom.  Tatiana’s heart gave a little flutter.  “This really isn’t smart,”
she blurted.

“Uh-huh,” he said, shutting the
door behind them.  It closed with a solid mechanical
thump.

She swallowed again as he moved
closer, his massive body pressing her into the wall behind her.  “Someone
should be out in the cockpit,” she babbled.  “What if they find another way to
trace us?”

“They won’t,” Milar said.  He
leaned forward.  She felt the heat emanating off his naked chest, could feel
his body move closer, could feel his breath against her skin.

Surrendering, Tatiana closed her
eyes and waited for his lips to find her.

Something rustled on the shelf
above her head.

Blinking, she opened her eyes and
looked up.

Milar was pulling a locked wooden
box from the overhead compartment.  He latched the shelf again, then went to
the bed, completely oblivious to the fact that her heart had just been hammering
a million beats a second.  He opened the box and spilled little wooden pieces
onto the bed, whose pillows and covers were in a tumbled disarray against the
far wall, due to Tatiana’s maneuvers with the Bouncers.

“White or black?” he asked,
quirking an eyebrow at her.

Her back still pressed to the
wall, Tatiana’s mouth fell open.  “You…you…”  She jabbed a finger at him.  “I
was…” 
You were what, Tatiana?  Waiting for him to have his way with you? 
Make you beg for mercy?  Ravish you like a true pirate?
  She flushed so hot
her head felt like it was going to pop like a blood-blister.  Frantically
directing her attention to the board beside his knee, she managed, “…I was
thinking black.”

“White it is.”  He started
setting pieces onto the board, placing the white pieces opposite him.

Desperate not to look as
mortified as she felt, she sat down beside him.  She watched him place the
pieces, taking extra time to get them aligned just right.  As casually as she
could, she said, “So you’re gonna thank me by playing me a game of chess?”

“You’re the only one awake, so
it’s either play with you or play alone.”  He paused in placing the pieces on
the board.  His golden hazel eyes found her, and they were dancing with wicked
amusement.  He knew damn well what he’d just done.  The
bastard!
  “Why?”
he asked.  “You want me to thank you some other way?”

Yes!
her mind screamed. 
She’d never found it so hard to breathe in her life.  Yet, the way Milar was
watching her, his big hand poised over the board, a smug grin plastered on his
face, Tatiana couldn’t let him win.  “No,” she said, feigning boredom.  “Chess
is fine.”  She gave him what she hoped was a disinterested look.  “Why, did
you
have something else in mind?”  She said it as if maybe he had wanted to watch a
movie, instead.

Milar’s blindsided blink would
have thrown Tatiana off the bed in convulsive fits of laughter had she not been
trying so hard to keep a straight face.  Milar’s brow twitched in a slight
frown, and when she continued to focus her attention on the game, she felt his
shock and dismay tumble against each other in his mind. 

Ha,
she thought,
triumphant,
two can play at this game, collie.

Almost reluctantly, Milar started
placing pieces once more.  Tatiana watched his callused hands, swallowing. 
Despite herself, she became mesmerized as she imagined what those hands could
do, if only she would swallow her pride for two seconds…

“On second thought, I’ve been up
all night.”  Tatiana forced herself to yawn and then innocently stretched out
on the bed beside the board.   “Don’t play too long, and be sure to be quiet
when you go out, okay?  I’m a light sleeper.”

Milar’s face formed into a barely
controlled thunderhead.  “You’re
tired?
”

Yawning again, she shrugged. 
“Saving collie ass takes a lot outta a girl.”

For a long moment, he just
watched her.  She closed her eyes and listened to the minutes pass to the
thundering of her heart.  She let her breathing slow, her chest rising and
falling in the rhythm of sleep. 

She had actually started to feel
sleepy when Milar growled, “You’re faking.”

Without opening her eyes, she
allowed herself an evil grin and said, “How’s it feel, collie?”

The words had no more than left
her lips when she heard a roar and the chess board skittered off the bed to
crash on the floor with the wooden tinkle of pieces scattering.  Tatiana
squealed and tried to roll away as she felt Milar’s weight crush the blankets
beside her.  He caught her by the shoulder and dragged her back to the bed.

“Careful of the nodes!” she
cried, instinctively panicking under the grip.  It was why she hadn’t gotten
frisky with a non-operator in over six years—outsiders just didn’t understand
how sensitive they were.  She squirmed, straining to see if his fingers were
brushing one of her shoulder-hookups under the jumpsuit.  Then she realized
Milar was only centimeters away, watching her.

Milar leaned forward, until she
could feel the warmth of his cheek beside hers.  Into her ear, he whispered, “I
know where all the nodes are.”  Tatiana froze, the words making a tingling rush
down her spine.  Every molecule of her body was aware that he had closed the
distance between them to mere centimeters, and that she was pinned to the bed,
with nearly two meters of brawny muscle between her and the door.  She’d never
been this close to anyone of his size, and it left her acutely aware of why she
had never been drafted for the Nephyrs.  She met his eyes and forgot to
breathe.

“You do?” she whispered.

Milar nipped her earlobe.  “Oh
yeah.”

The words sent tingles of
pleasure straight down to her belly.  “Um…”

He stifled her next thought with
a gentle teasing of his lips upon hers.  He drew his fingers along her scalp
and she felt his thumb gently brush the node in the base of her skull.  Instead
of quickly moving his fingers somewhere else, as everyone else she had ever
bedded, he caressed it tenderly, sending waves of sensation up and down her
spine as he kissed her. 

In that one gesture, she was
his.  Never before had she felt so accepted as with that gentle touch at the
base of her skull.  Tatiana felt her body respond under him, felt her entire
being aching for more.

After a few more breathless
moments, Milar pulled back and touched his lips to her neck, just under the
jaw.  So softly she almost didn’t hear him, he whispered, “You wanna do this
now or later?”  He nipped her other ear.  She felt his husky breath against her
neck as her heart slammed against her ribs.

He leaned back and met her eyes. 
“Because, frankly, coaler, I’ve been waiting for this a really, really long
time, and I don’t wanna screw it up.”  She saw such honesty there, such trust
and longing…  It melted her very core. 

He continued to wait for her
answer.

She was flushed, panting, and
moving under his caresses like a schoolgirl.  Tatiana was so stunned that she
could only gape at him. 
Is he stupid?
she thought.  He was so
beautiful, so perfect above her…  Every nerve was calling for him to rip her
clothes off.

When she didn’t respond, his
confidence visibly shattered.  “Sorry, that was too fast.”  He started to pull
away.

“That’s
it,
” Tatiana
screamed, throwing him off of her.  Milar fell with a stricken look.  As he
fell, she crawled into his lap and met his startled mouth with a kiss.  “You,”
she said, nibbling his lip, “…are done teasing me.”

Milar’s eyes widened, but she was
already pushing him further into the bed, spreading her body out atop his warm
length, her hands tracing the dragons upon his chest as her lips found his
again.  This time, Milar’s big arm wrapped around her, pulling her close, and
his fingers settled gently around the node in the base of her spine.  Tatiana’s
whole body trembled with excitement as his fingers paused to caress it through
the cloth.  Then his other hand was moving up, finding the zipper to her
jumpsuit.

Oh yes,
Tatiana thought. 
She shivered as his big hands found the catch and tentatively tugged down.  She
sat up and shrugged her shoulders forward, allowing the material to slide from
her shoulders until she could feel the cool air against her back.

Looking up at her, Milar’s breath
visibly caught.

Tatiana froze. 
Here’s where
he realizes he’s getting it on with a cyborg.
  Dismay dragged painful claws
through her gut and she looked away.  Then,
Maybe he’ll still do it anyway.
 
She found herself disgusted at her own desperation.

Milar startled her by reached up
to trace a finger between her breasts.  When she looked, he seemed enraptured,
taking her all in.  His eyes meeting hers once more, he grinned a goofy,
innocent grin.

That is not the look of a guy
who is having second thoughts.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

Oh God,
Tatiana thought,
dropping back into the kiss.  She felt his warm fingers again find the node at
the base of her spine and settle there, holding her to his naked chest.  She
let her own fingers roam his body, following the slight bumps of the scars,
tracing the dragons as they wound over his shoulder and onto his back.  The
fingers of her right hand buried themselves in his hair and her other
impatiently slid the jumpsuit further down her back.  Then she sat up and
traced her fingers down his taut stomach.  She let out a little gasp as his
fingers tentatively found her breast.  The rock-hard bulge in his pants was
almost painful where it pressed against her thigh.  Giggling, her hands found
his belt and she began working the clasp loose.

Under her, Milar suddenly
stiffened.  She caught him staring at her like a dumbstruck starlope, his eyes
wide, swallowing hard.

For a horrible moment, Tatiana
thought she had pinched something in releasing the clasp, and he was trying not
to let it show.  She carefully tugged the belt away, cursing her clumsiness,
hoping it didn’t break the mood.

When he kept staring at her, stock-still,
as she started unbuttoning his pants, however, she realized it wasn’t pain that
was going through his head.

In that moment, Patrick’s episode
came back to her in full force, and she flinched. 
Aanaho, he’s probably got
some incurable collie disease.