Thrill-Kinky (15 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Drax’s face smarted, but the sting underscored his euphoria. Sky and wind, Rita was beautiful. She wore a spectacular red confection of a dress and flat, thick-soled brown boots, dusty and scuffed. The combination worked for her. Her face was still discolored—no point in doing regen for such a minor injury—but he’d never seen anything as gorgeous as the look on her face when she’d spotted him, a mixture of delight, confusion and sheer lust. Both the bruises and the beauty were real, were Rita, like the fancy dress paired with worn, practical boots. And when she touched him, he knew he’d been right to find her and wrong to try to make it a surprise so he could pretend it was all in the line of duty if she blew him off. He wasn’t imagining the tenderness, the intense connection, as if his soul had poured into her palm as she cupped his face.

Now his ears rang and his head swam from the force of her slap. And that was real too. That was Rita.

Never mind what he’d said to Toor about it being too soon. That had been a reasonable-sounding lie and he’d known it even as he said it. He loved her.

And maybe she loved him, or something close to it. Why would you bother to slap someone you didn’t care about?

But he was going to keep his tone light at first, just to make sure he wasn’t reading too much into it. Wasn’t pushing his own tangled feelings onto Rita.

“I deserved that,” Drax said. “You’re even stronger than I remembered. That’s hot.”

He realized people were staring at them. Wind and stars, even the shop-bots were staring at them, and shop-bots weren’t supposed to think beyond their job. Although the dress Rita wore was still tagged, so maybe they were keeping track of the dress rather than its wearer.

“You disappeared. I knew you were…” Rita started out on a shout, but dropped her voice to a husky whisper before continuing, “You were working that night and things were getting crazy. I was worried.”

He opened his mouth but she shook her head and made a small gesture he interpreted as “be quiet and let me get something out”.

“I understand you might have had to leave right at that second, especially with that other guy, the one who acted like your boss, showing up. But then I never heard from you. You never checked in to see how Xia was doing. She almost died for you.”

This time, he had to defend himself. “I got reports every day, on her and the rest of you. I didn’t dare to contact you or the hospital directly, and I couldn’t let you know I was on my way. Someone commed the hospital, and the hospital then commed Xia. She met up with me and I gave her the flowers earlier. I’m surprised she kept the secret.”

“She was awfully insistent we go shopping, even for her.”

“It was too dangerous to go about it any other way. It’s a long story, which I’ll explain as soon as we have more privacy.”

He waited for something along the lines of a sarcastic “I’m sure”. He was asking for that response in the same way he’d asked for the slap: by being a man who most of the time could be honest only about the fact he couldn’t be completely honest. By being Drax Jalricki, BIC agent.

He wasn’t going to be that man anymore, but he still couldn’t tell Rita the whole story in a shop full of customers.

Instead, Rita nodded. “Your life’s not like other people’s. Mine’s not like someone who lives dirtside with a steady job. But your world takes crazy schedule issues to a whole new level. Makes it hard to have friends, let alone anything more, doesn’t it?”

“You’re not supposed to be so understanding.”

Rita smiled, and he wanted to start singing and dancing like the characters in a San’balese romantic comedy when the black moment passed and everything started looking up. “Would you rather have me hit you again?” she said. “Part of me still wants to. But I know it’s life I want to hurt, not you. I just can’t handle having you turn up as if this—whatever this is, and it
is
something more than just us wanting each other or you wouldn’t be here in the first place—could ever really mean anything.” Her face almost as red as her dress, she turned away, staring at one of the shop-bots with an expression just as blank as the ’bot’s. The other customers were occasionally glancing their way, Drax noticed, but were making an effort to pretend they weren’t listening to the drama erupting in their midst.

“As if,” she added quietly, “you weren’t going to just disappear again the next time…well, you know the next time you need to. I don’t like being disregarded. No, that’s not what I wanted to say. Of course I don’t like being disregarded, but I know that’s not what happened even if it felt that way for a bit. What I really don’t like is not knowing if you’re alive or dead.”

He took a step toward her, holding the bouquet between them like a shield. “What if I could promise you it won’t happen again?”

If he’d expected she’d burst into tears of joy or fling herself into his arms, he’d have been disappointed. But he’d had a feeling that wouldn’t be Rita’s style, and he was right. Instead, she turned back toward him. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears but her expression was neutral. “I want to hear more, but I bet you can’t explain here. Not without compromising several planets. Let me change out of this dress and we can go back to the
Malcolm
. It’s safe there, other than being mugged by Xia.”

Even with the tense situation, he’d noticed how the plunging back of the dress showed off Rita’s strong muscles, the ones he liked so much. “I have a better idea. Buy the dress and we’ll go to my hotel. At the very least, I owe you a good dinner. And maybe an outfit as well, since I’m sure your clothes from the other night were ruined.”

“I’d like to say you don’t owe me anything, but realistically…” Rita touched her own bruised face. “Realistically a dinner’s a fair trade. I was buying the dress anyway. But I don’t have shoes to go with it and I really don’t feel like going shoe shopping now.”

“You’ll start a new fashion trend. Not smoothstyle, not flash, but Ritastyle.” His voice dropped to an intimate whisper. “But as much as you’d grace the dining room in that dress, we could get room service. I made you promises the other day that I’d very much like to keep, if you’re still interested. The ceiling’s not that high, but the grav-control is excellent.”

“Interested, yes. Convinced it’s a good idea, no.” She stretched up and kissed him, not on the lips, but on the cheek that still felt like it bore a faint imprint of her hand. “So we’ll eat in the restaurant and you tell me your story. Then we’ll see about those other promises.”

The restaurant might have been the most brilliant one on New Tokyo—certainly it was fancier than anywhere Rita would normally eat—but it was hard to pay attention to the food when simply watching Drax’s mouth move was so fascinating. She ate. She even took a few notes on her com-pad so she could tell Mik about the meal later; he’d teased her when she’d let him know she’d be eating with Drax instead of joining the crew’s celebratory dinner that her meal couldn’t possibly be as good as the one they’d be enjoying, “but her company was tasty enough to make up for it”. She knew the fish was incredibly fresh, and real, not synth-fish, which might be chemically identical, but didn’t have the same texture no matter what they did in the lab. She recognized the preparations and presentation were upscale and refined. She knew the restaurant’s décor was elegant and she realized, because there was something about it on the menu, that it reflected the traditions of the area of Old Earth where the ancestors of most New Tokyo residents originated.

Yet, none of that mattered. Not with Drax sitting across the table from her, holding her hand whenever he could.

Not with the story he unfolded.

“You’re insane,” she concluded. “You quit an important job, a job where you were doing good for your planet, because of me.”

“Yes. Partly, at least.”

“You’re going to regret it. You realize we live pretty close to the bone, don’t you? I doubt you’re used to being poor.”

“I wasn’t wealthy working for the BIC, but I did have a generous expense allowance—and I was rich, at times, in my old line of work. Your safety is worth it. Not to mention my own.” He smiled as he said the latter, a soft, lazy smile with a blade inside it. She suspected he was turning that blade on himself.

He kissed her hand. Rita shivered as his lips brushed her knuckles, feeling the contact down to her core. “Not to mention your own,” she made herself echo. She had to keep her cool. Even if Drax was telling her the truth about quitting the BIC, he wouldn’t stay with the
Malcolm
for long. Wouldn’t stay with her. Oh, he might meet up with them from time to time. But he was smoothstyle, used to the good life. They weren’t space trash, but they might as well be compared to a guy like him.

A shrug rippled his wings. “Not to mention my own. But if the assassins weren’t after you and your friends, I’d have stayed on at the BIC. As a Banjali operative, I had resources to protect myself, access to information that I’ll have to dig up the hard way now. And while I’d rarely done so, as an agent I was licensed to kill, which I’m certainly not now.”

She gaped. That concept wasn’t something within her normal frame of reference.

“You want to know the truth? The truth is the day and night I spent with you was the most alive I’d felt in years. I need the edge I was on that day. Need to live by my wits. My job used to give me that, but it wasn’t working anymore. I was taking stupid risks just to stay awake. I love my planet and I knew the work was important, but that wasn’t enough.

“The other day, with you, was enough. And it wasn’t just that the day was insanely dangerous and erotic, and until the very end when I was certain we were all going to die,
fun.
It was that you shared it with me and it was the same for you. I don’t know if we’ll turn out to be a star-made match or friends who share adventures and sometimes sex. But we’re alike. We’re wired the same way, a way most people don’t understand. I like you. And that’s enough to make me want to stick around and see if we can make this work.”

Rita squeezed his hand between both of hers. “Sounds like we’re in the same place. It’s too soon to know I love you…but I feel like I could. And I’ve never felt that about anyone else. That’s scarier than knowing my best friend killed someone when she was seven or that we have not one, but two assassins after us. Black-hole level scary.”

Drax’s grin could light the darkness of space. “I feel the same way. Thinking I could love you, that I might be falling for you already. It’s insanely terrifying. And you know what?” He leaned across the table and whispered in her ear, “That makes me hard.”

His warm breath against her skin made her shiver with need. “I want you so much it hurts.” She didn’t bother to whisper, knowing they’d turn heads in the quiet dining room and finding that hot too. “Let’s go to your room.”

“I have a better idea. The gravity here isn’t as low as home…as Banjal…but it’s low enough. And we’re not far from the ocean.”

She could picture it: the sound of the ocean augmented by the darkness, the lights of the city mingling with the light of the planet’s three moons. “The waterfront park is part of the city. People will see us,” she said, lust making her voice breathy.

“Is that a problem?”

“I’d call that a feature.”

Chapter Sixteen

Late February was early summer on New Tokyo, and the air was warm and lightly humid, freshened by a breeze off the water that carried away the smells of the city. Rita would have expected the oceanfront park to be crowded on this lovely evening. Instead, it was almost deserted. “The hotel concierge said it’s not safe after dark,” Drax confided. He had his wing wrapped around her, as well as his arm, which felt very intimate. “People getting high on chillpills, mostly. Pill dealers. Pickpockets preying on people who are too chilled to notice. Very dangerous,” he added solemnly, in an obvious imitation of the concierge’s concerned voice.

After rappelling up a public building, dealing with spies and assassins, and then nearly being murdered in the hospital, the idea of pickpockets and blissed-out chillheads being “very dangerous” made her laugh and snuggle closer to Drax. They’d left the Vicarian lilies in his room, along with her underwear, but the smell of lilies clung to him. She wouldn’t usually think of a floral scent as manly, but Vicarian lilies smelled like spice, fresh air and springtime on an unspoiled planet, like Drax smelled anyway only more so. She wanted to lick him all over, wallow in that scent, take her time exploring his body as she hadn’t been able to do before. But first, she wanted to fly in his arms, his cock inside her. The slow and sensual approach would wait.

Knowing the two of them, it might end up waiting a long time. But that was all right. They had the time, to the extent that time was promised to anyone.

Okay, considering Nitari Belesku and the San’balese chick who wasn’t really Agent Gentria, and the way she and Drax seemed to find plenty of ways to endanger their own lives just for the fun of it, without the help of professional assassins, maybe they shouldn’t put it off too long.

Tomorrow or the next day, maybe, when they left New Tokyo. There was always time during long flights.

That would be one thing about being with Drax. They wouldn’t waste a minute.

Once they reached a gardenlike spot where the ocean boomed nearby and a subtle smell of flowers and herbs hung in the air, Drax slipped the dress off her shoulders, baring her breasts to the night. Her nipples, already tight and hard, crinkled at the exposure, at the touch of the air. She arched back and cupped her breasts in offering. She’d never felt the urge to do that before. But Drax had said her breasts were perfect, and while she’d like to think of herself as self-defined, not needing a man’s approval to make her beautiful, it helped to know that Drax loved a part of her that she’d always figured was not her best feature.

At least not her best visual feature. When Drax bent and took one nipple between his lips, she remembered how her breasts made up for their size by being super-responsive. She sighed at the warm lips and it turned into a moan as he began to swirl his tongue over the sensitive bud of flesh. A soft caress of feathers on the other nipple turned the moan into a loud groan. She released her breasts, figuring Drax had them well in hand, and gripped his fine ass to pull him closer.

He was definitely overdressed for this party. She wanted to feel the silken life of his skin, wanted to feel that Banjali heat all over her. But she didn’t want him to stop what he was doing, and he’d have to in order to strip. Damn smoothstyle fashions! She couldn’t fit her hand more than a little way into his waistband. Her fingertips could reach the top of the valley between his ass cheeks, barely enough to tease both of them. At least his shirt was loose, and wrapped in the back in some complicated way to accommodate his wings.

She slipped one hand under it. No. The design only seemed complicated. It fastened with tear strips, which made sense, she supposed. She could manage those, even distracted by the sensations flowing from her nipples to flood her body. One good tug and the shirt hung loose from waistline to wings. One more good tug, this time reluctantly removing the hand from his ass and getting it involved too, and the section from wings to neck opened and the back portions of the garment fell away entirely. The front was still trapped between their bodies, but sooner or later, it too would drop, letting her feel his chest in all its naked glory.

Drax raised his head long enough to laugh and say, “Impatient. I like that.”

“Life is short. Maybe ours more than other people’s. Speaking of which, I have plans for you if you’re really going to travel with the
Malcolm
. Our next stop is—”

He stopped her words with a kiss that came close to stopping her brain as well. His wings and hands caressed her breasts. She gave herself up to the kiss.

She traced the lines and ridges of his muscled back. So different from anyone else she’d been with, because of the wings. So right. She’d only seen him fly for a few minutes, and that awkwardly, dragged down by injury, but those muscles told the story. The muscles and the wings, all those soft yet surprisingly stiff feathers covering still more muscle. He was so strong. He would be magnificent in flight. And soon, she’d be flying with him.

She made a strangled noise into his mouth as their tongues explored each other’s mouths. No, not explored, ravaged, like early explorers pillaging a virgin planet, but with finesse rather than ignorance. Those wonderfully textured and surprisingly agile wingtips danced over her breasts. She couldn’t remember the last time her nipples had felt like this, like tiny nubs of living fire.

She could remember the last time she felt this alive, but that was because it wasn’t long ago. That awful, wonderful, nearly fatal but definitely magical day and night on San’bal. Only this was better because the odds were good it would happen again.

She hated to stop touching the wonder that was Drax’s back. But there was so much more she wanted to explore. Wanted to find the hardness of his cock. Stroke it. Taste it. Guide it inside her. What size would he give her tonight? Not that it mattered, because he’d make it good. Perfect.

His hands moved off her breasts, but she barely had time to register disappointment. Drax raised her skirt to stroke her thighs and ass but not stroke her aching clit or fill her cunt, which was starting to feel as lonely as the vast emptiness of space.

She broke from the kiss. “Please. Now. Please help…”

“Help?” In the dim light, Drax’s eyes glinted with mischief.

“Help me undress you.” She was trying to work on his pants, but her usually excellent coordination was failing her. “All my mechanical skills, and I can’t manage your marling pants right now.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said as he came to her aid. “After all, you figured out the shirt and that’s a bit of a stumper.”

He toed off his shoes, then worked the pants off one excruciating inch at a time. It was a performance, Rita realized, a performance worthy of a stage or holo-screen. He was not just aware of how her gaze was riveted to him, he reveled in it, showing off for his audience of one. Exposing that beautiful, golden flesh, those delicious muscles in the most teasing way he possibly could. Rita realized she was biting her lower lip, partly in anticipation, partly to keep from crying out, “Hurry up!”

She wanted Drax naked, about as much as she’d ever wanted anything in her life. But at the same time she wanted to enjoy the spectacle, the way he was making himself into an object of desire for her. So many men ogled women, but forgot that women liked to ogle back sometimes. She liked that he took it for granted she’d enjoy watching him as much as he’d enjoy watching her. Maybe it was a cultural thing. Maybe it was just Drax.

But much as she liked seeing his body emerge from the clothing, millimeter by perfect millimeter, she wanted him to finish. Wanted him to be naked and ready to impale her on his cock before they took to the skies. Some touching, kissing, licking and sucking first would be great, sure, but she didn’t even need it. Just being here with him, in the dark park, occasional voices in the distance—the mellow drawls of chillheads, the rougher voices of their dealers and other petty criminals—was enough to make her wet, even without knowing they’d be flying soon.

Sex on the wing.

But right now Drax was sex on the ground, pure sex, in a tempting, teasing way.

He wasn’t wearing anything under the pants. Those fitted smoothstyle trousers didn’t really leave much room for underwear, though they weren’t as extreme as the skintight pants Mik fancied. But he allowed Rita only a glimpse of his cock—already hard, deliciously large and thick, as if he remembered just how she liked it—before angling his body away.

Not that the view of his ass and legs was anything to sniff at. In the light of the three moons, his flesh almost gleamed, and the dramatic play of light and shadow accented his physique. Rita couldn’t help herself, though. Just after he turned, she circled him, bringing herself in line for a good look at his cock. “I want you,” she said, simply. Leave the poetry for another time and place. The night, and Drax’s body, were poetry enough. “I want your cock inside me. I want to fly with you.”

“Yes.” It came out as a deep groan, as if the word was torn from Drax’s body.

“But there’s something I want to do first.”

She walked up to him, hyperaware of everything around her: the soft, spicily fragrant sulgrass cool and greenly fragrant under her, the surprising cleanliness of the park, the soft shushing of the ocean, the moons reflecting softly on the water and the few stars that could compete with the blaze of light from the city overhead, and the sounds of the night—faraway flyers, people in the distance, something she thought was a bird but might have been something more curious. Hyperaware, most of all, of Drax’s hard, lean body, his straining cock.

Deliberately, she ran her hands over his torso, over his jutting hipbones, down to caress his heavy balls, stroke the length of his cock.

Then she knelt on the grass at his feet and took him deep into her mouth, cupped his balls with one hand. Drax let out a half-strangled noise that might have been her name, or a curse, or a prayer.

He tasted different than a human. Spicy and sweet and herbaceous, like Vicarian lilies with an undertone of musk, and she tasted him almost immediately, copious, thick pre-come. It tasted like it could be dessert in some exotic, tropical cuisine, sweet and sharp at the same time. It was delicious, and it underscored his difference, that he was alien, unknown in some ways.

His hands fell where a human man’s would, one on her shoulder, one tangling in her short dark hair, and that felt familiar in a good way. But then his wings folded around her, hiding her in a sweep of gently rustling feathers so she was both hidden and in some ways more public, more obvious than before, because why would a Banjali pose that way, especially bare-assed, unless he was embracing someone on her knees before him.

Even though there was no one at the moment to see, the knowledge of the tableau they’d created together aroused Rita even more.

Which was saying a lot, because the taste of Drax’s come, the way he moved with her so he was fucking her mouth but never too much, Drax’s growly, delightful, decadent noises, Drax’s feathers brushing her naked skin, were conspiring together to push her arousal to the ionosphere or beyond.

She forced herself to stop. “How soon can you get hard again if you come now?”

Drax sounded puzzled as he answered, “I’m not sure I understand. I stay hard until we’re both satisfied. Isn’t that normal?”

“Not for my species.” She grinned. “I feel like one lucky human.”

“On a night like this, with the moons full and a beautiful lady to fly with me, I could last for hours if we both wish it.”

Obviously she’d chosen well by hooking up with a Banjali—specifically with this particular Banjali—but how come Banjali proclivities and staying power weren’t gossiped about more? “If I’d known that, I’d have been looking for Banjali men years ago.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” He sounded surprisingly fierce. “What if one of them had flown away with you before we had a chance to meet?”

Hidden by the wings, Rita pumped her fist in glee. “Oh, I expect you could have seduced me away from him with your wild ways.” Then she wrapped her lips around him again.

And this time, knowing he could come more than once, she set out to make Drax explode in her mouth.

She caressed his taut balls, which became even tighter as she touched them, and swirled her tongue around the sensitive head of his cock before taking him deep again. His cock swelled, and she thought maybe he was letting loose, allowing his cock to get bigger because he sensed she’d like it. His wings pulled her closer, his grip on her hair tightened, and his hips began to work back and forth, forcing her to take him deeper into her throat. Not that she minded. It felt good. Felt right. Felt intense and a little edgy and that was how she wanted it to feel, after the fear and the anger, the exultation when she realized that he was all right, the dull despair when it seemed their lives would keep them from even getting in touch again, let alone anything more. Her face ached a little now, between the lingering bruises and Drax’s girth and the way he was using her—the way she was using him—but it was a good ache, an ache that washed away heartache.

As she sucked, she stuck two fingers into her pussy, slicked them with her juices. Then she reached between Drax’s ass cheeks to tease at the tight opening there. “Yes,” he moaned, his voice echoing in the quiet dark. “Please, Rita. Do it.”

Rita’s nails were short, a necessity with her work, and filed smooth, her preference. Perfect for the task at hand, as it were. She started with one finger and was startled by how greedily Drax’s ass sucked her in, not just accepting her, but gripping, fucking against the invading digit. The flow of delicious pre-come became richer, more copious. She smiled to herself, fucking Drax’s ass with one finger as she sucked him. He really was adventurous. A lot of men enjoyed this sort of play, but in her experience, only the bravest acknowledged it, let alone asked for it with a new lover. Even if they knew it had nothing to do with being queerbent—hell, even if they bent a little queerward and you knew it and thought it was intriguing—they had trouble telling a woman they liked something in their ass.