Thrill-Kinky (2 page)

He’d definitely been tortured. Bastards. She didn’t know what this guy’s story was, but he couldn’t possibly deserve this. Even if he’d done something evil—and just because a guy was handsome didn’t mean he wasn’t a nasty piece of work—you didn’t torture people. Kill them before they killed you, if necessary, but you did it clean.

At least that was what Mik said. Personally, she tried to avoid situations where she might have to make that kind of decision. She’d gotten great at affecting quick getaways and dragging her more belligerent crewmates along with her. Sometimes she even managed to do it before someone got hurt.

“Please…” he repeated.

“Hush. I’ll get you to the hospital.” She reached for the com-pad at her hip, meaning to call for the emergency squad and the police.

Faster than she would have expected a Banjali to move in such high gravity, he grabbed her wrist. “No authorities. Please. Can’t risk it.” His grip was strong, the color of his skin extraordinary. Having ancestors who’d hailed from Old Earth’s every region, Rita was sometimes described as golden-skinned, but in contrast to his, her complexion was more of a light tan, pleasant but hardly exotic. His was actually the warm yellow of burnished gold.

“You in trouble with the law?” That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem. It all depended on what he’d supposedly done. What was fine on your home planet might turn out to be illegal somewhere else and get you into accidental trouble. And the
Malcolm
did its share of operating within the gray areas of interplanetary law, one planet’s perfectly legal cash-crop being another’s valuable contraband.

“Long story. I’m on the side of the law, but I need to stay undercover for now. My government sent me to San’bal on a joint mission, but they’re not ready for it to be public and neither are the San’balese.” He somehow managed to produce a roguish smile, swollen lips and all.

The smile was enough to set Rita’s coveralls on fire.

His story might be utter glaspoid crap. Then again, it might not be. Every nation on every planet had its covert operatives and undercover cops. Mr. Hot, Winged and Naked might be one. More likely he was a tourist who’d been in the wrong place, or a petty crook who’d gotten in over his head. But even so, she couldn’t just leave him in a recycling bin, injured.

Especially not when she was one legit job away from the petty crook designation herself and some of her crewmates couldn’t even claim that much legality.

Besides, a guy who came up with a story about being some kind of spy on the spur of the moment while tied up and injured in a bin full of industrial waste deserved her help for being clever.

She shifted position in order to untie his ankles.

This gave her a much better view than she needed of his cock. And stars, if it looked that thick and tempting now, it must be prime under more promising conditions.

She tried not to imagine it hard and teasing against her pussy lips while its owner wrapped his arms and wings around her and kissed her like a woman really wanted to be kissed. She utterly failed at not imagining.

She wondered what role, if any, those wings played in Banjali lovemaking.

Maybe she should have spent more of her dull morning daydreaming about interesting places she’d been and ones she still hoped to visit, and less daydreaming about interesting sex she’d either had or hoped to have.

She gritted her teeth and got back to untying him.

Just in time. He was sitting up, stretching, testing the extent of his injuries, when Rita heard the familiar whirring and shrieking alarms of a police flyer. “Time to leave! I’m turning on the antigrav. This is gonna hurt. The controls aren’t very precise, especially with the remote.”

“Get the antigrav on. I’ll take it from there.”

She realized what he had in mind, looked at the deep gash in his left shoulder near the wing. “Are you insane?”

“Probably. Just do it!”

And she did.

Seemingly relieved by the lighter gravity, the Banjali struggled to his feet.

He wrapped his arms around her, arms that were surprisingly strong considering he wasn’t a huge hulk of a guy. Despite the circumstances, she was all too aware of his nakedness, the beauty of his body, her own raw need. She couldn’t actually feel his cock through the coveralls, but just knowing it was there made her long-neglected nipples tingle, her pussy clench, then open.

He unfurled his wings—they brushed the sides of the big container —and rose as the gravity continued to lower.

Once they breached the top of the bin, he glided the few meters to the floater, positioned them, helped Rita ease them down as she turned the antigrav off.

“See, nothing to it,” her companion said. He folded his wings, tucking them neatly to his back. He still didn’t exactly fit into the seat.

Hoping to find another coverall, she rooted under the backseat.

A seedy purple trench coat with mysterious stains? Charming. Not only would Mik and Gan fuck anywhere, they’d leave clothes behind anywhere. But in this case, it was good. She fumbled it around him, muttering, “Should help disguise the wings.”

He grabbed her and kissed her.

Although saying he kissed her was kind of like saying a Dethrendi’s nose was rather large, or that a black hole presented a minor danger to space travel. For a guy who’d been groggy not too long before and was still in obvious pain, he was showing a lot of enthusiasm. Or maybe it was skill. Or both. All she knew was that he was making her head swim, her nipples ache to be touched, her whole body scream for more, more, more.

Just on time for the police flyer to arrive.

Instead of the snide remarks she would have expected, an official-sounding female voice apologized for “interrupting the spirit of Kenu Aram” before asking for ID.

Rita broke away with a show of annoyance that didn’t involve much acting, and hit the button that flashed
Malcolm
’s salvage permit from the floater’s computer to the cops’. “Very good, Ms. Anteres, Mr. Evans,” the cop-voice replied. (She had to stifle a giggle at the assumption that the Banjali was Buck. All bipedal humanoids must look pretty much alike to San’balese eyes.) “Sorry to bother you two, but we’re looking for an alien, a Banjali.”

“Haven’t seen one,” she lied. “Troublemaking tourist?”

“Not exactly,” the cop said. “He’s a thief specializing in jewels and antiquities.”

“Haven’t seen him,” she said. “He’s probably at the festival.”

The cop sighed. “Along with everyone on the planet except us, and at least you two can take kissing breaks. I’ll let you get going. The sooner you finish up your work, the sooner you can join the fun. Just call the police tip line if you see anything suspicious. The number’s posted all over the city and on Galaxinet.”

Rita made some polite response, and the officer went on her way.

Jewel and antiquities thief? Cosmic! Much more interesting than a petty crook or an unlucky tourist.

Had a certain romance to it, even.

Chapter Two

Once the cop flyer left, the Banjali twitched his wings, which must be the Banjali equivalent of a shrug. It made the tacky coat move like something out of a horror holo. “Hope you didn’t mind,” he said. “I had to do something to distract her, and the San’balese are suckers for sexy shenanigans, especially at this time of year.”

“Mind? I…” Probably safer not to say how incredibly little she’d minded, if he’d only done it as a distraction. “I understand. Where should I take you?”

He shook his head. “Somewhere safe. Preferably with food, a shower and pain blockers.”

Back to the ship, then.

A hospital would have made more sense, but she didn’t want to save his glorious ass only to get him arrested. Even if he really was an undercover operative of some kind, the local police
thought
he was a jewel thief. At least the ship had a well-stocked first aid kit, one of the few things they kept up no matter how broke they were. Between Mik’s side work, Xia’s sometimes ill-advised pranks, and Buck’s battle flashbacks, they needed one.

She accelerated the floater, navigating her way through the industrial park, back toward the seedy low-rent section of the docks where they’d eked out the money to park.

They were almost out of the industrial area when she realized they were being followed by someone in a small, black Fiero—a top-of-the-line personal flyer, a hell of a lot faster and more agile than a floater towing a load of slag.

Shit. No, worse than shit. Marl.

It wasn’t making immediate efforts to gain on them, but hey, someone who had jewels worth stealing could afford a Fiero
and
personal security. And why else would Mr. or Ms. Rich be in the industrial park during a planetwide holiday, when only hospitality grunts, unlucky cops and off-worlders on a deadline were at work?

Maybe an unlucky upper-management type stuck having a holo-conference with someone off-planet?

She turned randomly to test this hopeful theory.

The Fiero followed.

Double marl.

She pushed the floater’s speed up a notch and turned down an alley. It would have been fun, she thought, under other circumstances, pushing the floater’s limits this way.

Actually, she admitted to herself, it was fun now. Insane, scary and stupid—but fun. The kind of adventure that had lured her into being a spacer in the first place, and then convinced her to join the
Malcolm
instead of one of the established, steady cargo or passenger lines.

“It’s not just the police interested in you, is it?” she said.

“Not exactly. No.” Good work. He had answered the question she’d asked, just evaded giving any actual information.

Handsome or not, hurt or not, amazingly good kisser or not, that was annoying. “Who the hell are you anyway?”

“Drax Jalricki, at your service, although at the moment you’re more at my service. Thank you again.”

She had to learn to ask more precise questions, because she’d really meant, “What have you done to get into so much trouble with the locals?” But at least she had a name for her gorgeous maybe-criminal. Drax Jalricki. “Rita Anteres. Ship’s mechanic and back-up pilot on the independent freighter
Malcolm
. Plus whatever else the captain needs me to do—we have a small crew. Today, for instance, I was collecting cargo.”

The Fiero, unfortunately, had caught up with them again. Apparently realizing it had been spotted, it was no longer content to hold back and follow. It was pushing its speed, trying to gain on the floater. And of course, succeeding, because floaters were designed to, well, float, towing loads at low speed, and Fieros were top-of-the-line sport models.

“Dump the slag!” Drax barked.

“And lose the most lucrative contract we’ve had in eons? No marling way!”

Something whizzed past them.

Wonderful. Now they were being shot at. This day just kept getting more like an overblown, holo crime-drama. Exciting to watch. A little too exciting to experience firsthand. They were still out of range of the Fiero-occupants’ guns, but not by much.

“Dump the slag,” Drax urged again. “It’s just going to be recycled, right? Someone will clean it up.”

“The Blemondians are paying us about a bazillion credits for this slag, but only if they get the full load by tonight.”

Drax grabbed her wrist. “Blemondians? Who?”

She shrugged. Drax was obviously agitated, but between trying to make a fully laden floater respond like a sport flyer, dodging laserpistol shots, and watching to see if anyone was playing sniper on a rooftop or otherwise joining in the fun, she couldn’t spare a lot of synapses for him. “Captain made the deal. He said it was two Blemondian business types, a man and a woman, and a San’balese woman who didn’t talk much. Mik figured she was a rent-a-bodyguard in case the deal went south. I know the male Blemondian was good-looking and buff for a suit, because that’s the kind of thing my captain reports on, not their names or anything
useful
.”

“Any idea why they’re paying so much for industrial by-products that obviously aren’t in short supply?”

“Wondered about that myself, but they said they’d pay a premium because they needed to get their shipment loaded up and off-planet during Kenu Aram and local workers wouldn’t do it. They’re doing a big push with those new neurorelays, I guess.”

Drax cursed. Funny how curses were instantly recognizable as curses, even if you didn’t know the language. “We’re in this mess together. Your Blemondians, or at least the man and his San’balese hired muscle and a few nasty friends, are the same ones who nearly killed me last night. They intend to use your crew and the slag as a cover for moving stolen goods. Stolen goods that are the property of the government of Banjal. And they probably dumped me where they did in the hopes that your crew would be implicated in my death as well.”

Now it was Rita’s turn to curse, which she did in several languages, including Universal Sign so she could layer her obscenities. She loved Mik dearly, but if she ended up dead in a back alley on San’bal Prime because he was too busy admiring some Blemondian’s impressive shoulders to ask the right questions, she’d come back from the dead to kill him.

Then again, even if he’d asked the right questions, it wasn’t like he’d have gotten useful answers from a bunch of crooks.

They were still out of range of the laserpistols, but the shots were getting closer.

“At least the Fiero shouldn’t have built-in guns… They’re illegal for personal flyers here,” Rita said, determined to look on the bright side.

A gun port opened on the Fiero.

“Perfectly legal on Blemond, though, and they probably brought the flyer with them,” Drax said dryly. “Although I don’t think these clowns care much about legal. Kidnapping, assault, battery and attempted murder are illegal on most planets. Except Lysander, but Lysander’s unique. Luckily.”

The gun port pushed her over the edge. No point in keeping the slag if it cost them their lives.

And then she had an idea. “You know how to drive one of these beasts? Good!”

She didn’t wait for him to answer, just tossed him the steering control, then grabbed the lift and antigrav controls in the other. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him boggle as he figured out unfamiliar controls. It didn’t take him more than a second, thankfully.

She tipped the rear bin of slag, then immediately lowered the gravity around it, creating a mini asteroid field. One with a little momentum, even. Not as much as she’d like, but even the floater’s poky speed gave the slag a push.

She pushed another couple of bins off behind them, using them to block the narrow alley, tossed the antigrav onto the tow unit so the effect would keep going after they left, then hit the button to uncouple it from the flyer.

It would hold the Fiero off only briefly. Unless it got caught in the antigrav field itself and had its own gravity controls short out, or got damaged from flying slag, the agile little flyer would manage to evade the obstacles before long. But that might be long enough to get away.

She didn’t try to get far, just into an alley in the nebulous zone where the industrial district and the seedier fringes of the entertainment district met. Parked in the kind of place she made a habit of looking for, the kind that wasn’t really a legal spot, but where parking-bots wouldn’t check until the workweek resumed. “Let’s go!” she said, grabbing a few things from the floater, taking Drax by the hand and all but dragging him along behind her.

A few twists and turns into an alleyway too narrow for a Fiero to follow, and she stopped. “Put the trench coat on properly. Arms in the sleeves and everything.”

“You expect me to go around naked except for a purple metallic trench coat with suspicious stains on it? I’ll look like a boy-whore from Lysander.” He sounded less horrified than entertained by the prospect, and definitely like he’d done crazier things in his time.

Rita laughed. “It may have belonged to a boy-whore from Lysander.” At the Banjali’s look of disgust, she added quickly, “A boy-whore who’s now free and getting an education on a planet where slavery’s illegal. My captain and pilot have a little sideline in heroics. But it’ll hide your wings.”

“And then what?”

She grinned and pointed out toward the city. “Then we go join the party. No better place to hide than in a crowd. I’ll try to com someone on the crew, but if I can’t raise anyone, we’ll have to walk to the docks and send someone back for the floater.” (If the floater and its remaining cargo hadn’t been stolen, but she wasn’t going to contemplate that now. There were more exciting, zippy vehicles to steal, some probably parked by people who were too drunk to turn on the control password. On the off-chance there was a legit market for the slag on Blemond, they could come back. The street cleaners wouldn’t even be out until after the festival was over, and it wasn’t like there was a shortage of the stuff.)

She placed a quick com to the
Malcolm
. “Buck,” she said. “We have a problem. I’m going to need some distraction at the festival site as soon as you can organize it.”

“Job went south?”

“At warp speed.”

Buck was good at translating what she wasn’t saying on the unsecured com. “Please tell me when you say there’s a problem, you mean Xia’s kind of problem, not the captain’s. That someone snooty needs to be pranked, not that I need to get the weapons ready and prepare for a fast takeoff.”

“The other side wants to make it the captain’s kind of problem, but right now I just want to get out of here, and get someone else out of here, with as little bloodshed as possible.”

“Right. Sounds mysteriating—I mean interesting but confusing.” Buck must be both stressed and tipsy if he was slipping into his home planet’s dialect.

“Can’t explain more on the com. Track down Xia. Com me when you have a plan.” She realized Buck was gawking silently at a point just beyond her. “Yeah, that is a mostly naked guy. An injured naked guy who should see the medicos and can’t. So I’ll also need the med-kit waiting when we get back.”

On the com-screen, Buck nodded. “Know all about that. Be right with you, little sister.”

“I owe you a bottle, big brother.”

She shut off the com. Then she unzipped her coverall and began slithering out of it.

Drax laughed. “Rita, I’d like to repeat that kiss sometime because it may have started out as a distraction, but it was definitely fun, and I know some people are turned on by danger…actually
I
am one of those people and it would be weird and hot as a dozen suns if you are too. But is this the best time?”

“The guys in the Fiero are looking for a naked Banjali and a human in oversized orange coveralls. Instead, they’re getting two humans dressed—or undressed—to party at the festival.”

Drax made no move to arrange the trench coat properly, instead staring at Rita as she undressed. Despite the gravity of the situation, she couldn’t help feeling pleased he seemed to be staring in appreciation, not fascinated horror.

At least she matched. Both bra and shorts were red micromesh, less a nod to the holiday than a lucky chance brought on by how behind she was on laundry.

Rita thought Drax did the significant eye contact thing better than most. She’d almost forgotten how the right look could feel as hot and intimate as a caress, could move across her skin like a skillful hand, could reach inside her and pump at her like a cock. Her nipples stiffened, poking out through the thin fabric of her bra. She shifted her hands, hoping he wouldn’t be able to see any telltale moisture at the crotch of her undershorts. Or maybe hoping he would. It was probably the worst time ever for her libido to go into overdrive, but logic never had a lot to do with lust.

She already knew she was a thrill-seeker, knew she liked to try new things in just about every area and break a few taboos when it came to sex, but she hadn’t realized how much of an aphrodisiac actual danger was. Drax was hot as midsummer on Argos Seven, hot as Xylac goulash, hot as her wildest erotic dreams, some of which were outrageous enough they’d make Xia blanch under her fur if Rita shared them, and felinoids were known for a high sex drive and low inhibitions—but this was so not the time.

Not with both an armed Fiero and the local cops after them.

Except her body really, really thought it was the perfect time. For all it was a terrible idea, her brain didn’t completely disagree.

She had to pull herself together. Whether she wanted to or not.

“Come
on
!” she urged, letting the orange jumpsuit fall to her feet and stepping out of it. “We’ve got to move. Those obstacles won’t hold them long, and we’re still too close to where we left the floater and…what?”

“The Blemondians won’t anticipate this. And if you’re my pretend-lover,” he added boldly, “shouldn’t we put on a good show?” He leaned forward, put his arms and the coat around her, and then, under the cover of the coat, wrapped her in his glorious wings.

Definitely
something in the danger-as-aphrodisiac theory, because in a fetid alley, with the law and outlaws both after them and her no doubt out of both a job and a home when the guys found out she’d dumped the slag and abandoned the floater, Rita was getting more turned on than she ever remembered being. She’d been excitable to start with, from the kiss, and from simply being around Drax’s dangerous good looks, but now she could feel herself getting slick, hot, ready for the cock that she could now feel all too well against her bare skin.