Thrill-Kinky (7 page)

Knowing Belesku was involved meant they’d have to revise their plan. Find more weaponry, unless the
Malcolm
’s crew was better armed than it looked like they could afford to be. Call his San’balese counterparts, even if it was a bad idea on an unscrambled channel.

Pray to every deity he’d ever heard of. Not that he expected much support from the gods, considering the number of divine ordinances he’d violated over the years. (All of them, basically, except for the one about goats, and violating that one had never been useful or profitable, and certainly not entertaining.)

Then a thought struck him. A terrible thought he didn’t want to follow to its logical conclusion, but knew he must. A thought that would probably prove fatal—but might save Rita’s life and the lives of her friends.

Chapter Seven

“Belesku’s involvement changes everything,” Drax said slowly. “I have to deal with this on my own.”

Drax’s mouth was set in a narrow line and for the first time in this wild, dangerous day, his beautiful eyes were afraid.

“And this sounds like a good idea why? We’re good enough for a little breaking and entering, but not good enough to take on one crazy woman? But you are, even in your condition?” Rita knew the words were coming out all wrong, but a toxic combination of terror and anger was short-circuiting her brain.

Drax put his arms around her. “Honestly, no. On both counts. I’m sure you’ve run into violent people before, but nothing like her. She’s not a crazy woman, not a thug, not a petty criminal pushed to the edge. She’s brilliant, cold, ruthless and thoroughly professional, and she’s been trained to kill people since childhood. I have no intention of taking her on directly. I’d die, even on my best day, and this isn’t my best day. Well, except for a few all-too-brief minutes of it.” He smiled at Rita. Couldn’t help it, even now, facing a confrontation with Nitari Belesku that would most likely kill him. “But I can distract her long enough that you all can get off-planet.”

Rita couldn’t speak around the lump in her throat. As an intelligence operative, Drax probably had the skills to do what he said. If he had weapons and tools and, oh, wasn’t injured, wacked on pain blockers and on a planet where he couldn’t fly to avoid danger.

Mik managed to get out, “Hey, wait a flash…” before Xia interrupted him.

When she spoke, everyone in the cabin turned to stare at her.

Xia still sounded like a slightly demented little girl, but for the first time Rita could remember, she was all seriousness. “We can still help you, pretty-pretty man, but it’s time for a change of plans. Dad, don’t you dare interrupt. Rita goes in through the skylight. She’ll need rappelling gear for the climb, but she has it. We rock-climb when we’re dirtside and she’s almost as good as me.”

“Uh, thanks. I think.” She didn’t want to ask what Xia would be doing.

Xia put one hand on her hip. Her posture and attitude changed from the familiar playful sex kitten to a large carnivore. The large carnivore happened to be curvy and pretty, dressed in a short skirt and a bright red crop top, and sporting a matching red bow on her tail, but that somehow made her scarier. “Belesku isn’t the only person around here trained in wetwork. I’m out of practice and until right this minute I’d hoped I’d stay that way, but I’m a natural predator. No matter how good she is, Nitari Belesku is just a human.” She smiled a sharp, toothy smile. “No offense to humans. But your species has to
learn
when and how to kill. We have to learn when not to.”

The silence of deep space filled the room until Rita expected to see the swirl of distant galaxies. Then everyone started shouting at once.

Mik’s voice wasn’t loudest, but the anguish in it cut through all the noise. “Xia, sweetie, you haven’t…?”

She bounced over to him, looking as adorable and harmless as if she hadn’t just announced she was a trained assassin, and threw her arms around him. “Dad! Of course I haven’t! You said I shouldn’t, except for things that are food, so I haven’t. Not since the night you and Gan rescued me.”

Mik, frozen at first, drew Xia closer. “And that pervert thoroughly deserved killing. You were no more than a kitten.”

“That was why the syndicate sent me. Wouldn’t let an adult get that close to him and the only time he’d let his guard down was…” She buried her head in Mik’s shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered.

Drax shook his head. “Brilliant in an entirely evil way. Sentient predator species have to be taught as children what’s appropriate prey. And everyone forgets felinoids
are
predators because they’re so darn cute.”

Xia peeled herself off Mik and shook herself. “You think I’m cute? Thank you! I think you’re insanely sexy, but Rita found you first.” Her tail twitched angrily despite the attempt to flirt, and her characteristic bounce and grin looked forced.

Almost as forced as Drax’s soft smile at the cat-girl. “You sure you want to do this? You have natural advantages as a felinoid, but Belesku kills for a living.”

“If she needs to get paid for it, she doesn’t love it enough.” The harsh words sounded even worse in Xia’s sweet, lisping voice. “You take prey because it’s fun.”

“Xia,” Mik said sternly.

“Oh, Dad! I know people aren’t supposed to be prey, but she’s a threat to Gan and Buck and Rita and that pretty-pretty Mr. Drax and especially you, Dad. That changes everything.”

Buck took a big gulp straight from the bottle.

If Rita didn’t have to scale the side of a building in the near future, she’d have snatched it out of his hand and tried to find some soy whiskey-flavored oblivion herself. She’d always suspected that Xia was one of Mik’s rescued street-children, but no one ever talked about the details. Now she understood why.

She also noticed that of all the people Xia hoped to protect by eliminating Nitari Belesku, she didn’t include herself.

That settled it. Rita was going in through the skylight. And she was going in armed somehow. If Drax needing her help wasn’t enough, and it was, Xia needed back-up. She suspected Xia didn’t care enough if she lived to survive without back-up. And she’d be spaced before she let her friend die in some subconscious attempt to atone for something she’d done as a desperate child.

Buck had told her something once during a rare sober moment that had stuck with her: it was all very well to die for your planet, but it made a lot more sense to live for your planet and make sure the other guy died for his. She hoped no one would be dying at all tonight, but it seemed more useful to live for your friends than to die for them, and see to it that the bad guys regretted messing with them.

That was as much as a plan as she had at the moment.

Chapter Eight

They wouldn’t attempt breaking into the museum until the middle of the night, when the Kenu Aram festivities moved toward a stadium at the edge of town for fireworks.

That left everyone with way too much time on their hands. Time to worry. Time to think. Buck and his bottle settled down to check over the
Malcolm
’s weapons. Xia disappeared into the ship’s hold to “limber up”, which she said in a way that Drax found downright disturbing.

Mik pulled Drax into planning for longer than he really wanted to be involved with it. He found himself impressed by the questions Mik asked, the way the man put things together and could figure out the best way to use his crew’s eclectic skills in the situation. When he’d first met Mik, the human’s rough persona made him wonder about Rita’s hints of heroism and daring rescues, but the more they talked, the more Drax could believe Mik had both the heart and the skills to pull off things that were on the side of good but not necessarily on the side of the law.

But when it seemed the planning would never end, Gan walked behind Mik and put his meaty arms around him. “Enough talk,” he said in that big, rumbly voice. “I’m going to have to let you out of my sight tonight. It makes sense, but I don’t like it.”

Mik leaned back into Gan’s embrace. He wasn’t a particularly small human, but he looked it against the big Furagi. “I think this meeting’s done,” Mik said, a low purr in his voice.

Drax couldn’t be more pleased to be dismissed.

Especially when Mik tacked on, “Rita’s in her cabin—second door on the right—getting her climbing gear together.”

For some reason he hesitated outside the door of the cabin, shifting his weight from foot to foot and feeling like the nervous teen he hadn’t been for many years.

He wasn’t worried Rita would turn him away. He supposed it was always a possibility, but though some people didn’t like sexual distraction before a dangerous job, he’d guess that Rita, like him, was the sort who craved it. It was more that he didn’t want to appear too eager. Needy eager. Scared, pathetic eager.

He was scared about tonight. Okay, he was more like terrified about tonight. The odds of dying and taking some of his new allies with him seemed way too high. Yet the fear, rather than making him feel clingy and pathetic, aroused him. If this was going to be his last night, he might as well end his life on a good note.

He buzzed at last, hoping his face and body language reflected all the lust he felt and none of the panic underneath.

When the door opened, Rita pulled him into the cabin so quickly he didn’t have time to speak. She rose onto tiptoe to kiss him, her strong, small hands roaming everywhere. With a groan deep in his throat, he pulled her closer, lifting her off her feet. She wrapped her legs around his hips, the way she would if they were taking a mating flight, and his already taut cock stretched, thickened, grew impossibly harder. She was back in coveralls similar to the ones she’d been wearing when they met, but he could sense her heat, her moisture, through the loose fabric.

He felt like his cock was about to tear the snug pants Mik had loaned him. Mik would probably think that was funny, but he should probably see about getting naked as soon as possible.

Not like he wasn’t planning on doing that anyway.

The cabin was small, the bunks taking up most of the space. He took a wild guess that Xia used the top bunk and headed for the bottom bunk, Rita in his arms, pressed against him. He couldn’t tumble onto the bunk as he would an ordinary bed—Xia’s bunk was too close, and he didn’t want to risk bashing Rita against it. But he sat, with Rita straddling him, and from there they were able to fall back.

Rita broke away from the kiss while undulating herself against his cock. “What took you so long? I was starting to think you’d chickened out on me.”

“Mik wanted to talk strategy. It seemed like a good idea.”

“Probably was a good idea,” she conceded. “I’m surprised Gan let him, though. Gan gets possessive if Mik’s going to do something dangerous without him. Did he break up the meeting and drag Mik off to their cabin?”

“We were trying to be responsible, but Gan wasn’t going to take that any longer.”

Rita laughed. “I think you were responsible just about long enough. If I hadn’t been pretty sure Gan would take care of it, I would have marched out myself and dragged you away. Only a Furagi doing the dragging’s a bit more convincing.” She rolled her hips again. “Think we’re overdressed for the occasion. Unfortunately that means we’ll have to move.” She rolled off Drax and began to unzip her coverall.

He slid out of the bunk and went to work on the narrow pants. Just as well they hadn’t found a shirt that would work with his wings.

Naked, he stretched. There was enough room he could unfurl his wings completely. Rita made an appreciative sound and said, “Didn’t expect that. You might be able to become airborne in here. Probably a bad idea right now,” she added hastily, because Drax couldn’t help gathering his energy to take off, imagining Rita’s legs around his hips, Rita’s pussy around his cock. “Don’t want to strain your shoulder.”

“I plan to give it
some
exercise. Being on the bottom doesn’t work well unless it’s in a Banjali bed.”

Rita grinned and lay down. He’d never known a woman who could make lying on her back look more inviting and less passive. She was a woman who’d ride you even if you were on top.

And he was just aching to prove that theory.

He tucked his wings close to his body, eased onto the bunk and lay over her. “I want to touch you everywhere,” he said. “Want to kiss every inch of you.”

Confined by the bunk, this was easier to say than to do, but he planned to do his best.

He started with her lips again. They were addictive, and the way she grabbed at his hair with one hand and cupped his ass with the other even more so. She moved against him, a slight rippling of her body as if his weight, or even gravity, wasn’t enough to hold her down.

He traced the line of her throat with kisses, ran his tongue along the fine line of her collarbone and along her sternum, between her breasts. Each small, perfect breast merited its share of nips and bites and kisses, but he worked around the big, rosy nipples until she buried both hands in his long hair and took control, moving his head where she needed him to go—not that he was putting up a fight. Stars and wind, a woman who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to demand it was hot. And the way she reacted, arching her back as if she wanted to give him even more of herself, whimpering and cursing under her breath, was hotter yet. Her nipples were hard, tight, ripe as midsummer berries. If he could, he’d have spent hours devouring them.

But tonight they had only so much time. And he had to cram a lot of living into this stolen time on the very real chance that Xia’s scheme wouldn’t work and they’d all wind up dead.

That thought should have been a buzz-kill, but it only made him more determined to seize the moments they had.

He kissed his way down her body, reveling in the hard muscles under her soft skin. A lot of spacers got a bit flabby, since there was no need to move around much on a spaceship and there often wasn’t space for a gym onboard, but Rita seemed to take the conditions as a challenge and then met the challenge. He appreciated that more than he was taking the time to show, because the smell of her arousal was driving him crazy and he couldn’t bring himself to linger.

He ended up sprawling off the bunk and onto the floor. Not the world’s most comfortable position, but it didn’t matter because his head was between Rita’s strong thighs and she was pushing her hips up to bring her sex closer to his tongue. He tucked his hands under her ass, raised her to his mouth, and before long he was getting drunk on her heated musk, on her soft cries, on her spicy tang. “I was so anxious, thinking about tonight, but so hot thinking about climbing that building, and how much better it would be if you could meet me on the roof, and I’m going to…” She broke off in a moan, her hips rolling, pushing her sex against his questing lips and tongue. He moved one hand from under her buttocks, slipped a finger, then two fingers, inside her sex. Wind and stars, she was gripping, but at the same time, so slick and open. His cock ached, yearning to be where his fingers were. He flicked with his tongue as he fucked her with his hand. Suddenly she stiffened, convulsed around him, crying out something that started out as his name and wound up as a ragged wail.

Rita was still shaking when she tugged on him and said, simply, “Please. Now.”

He held himself over her for a second before he ended. Her green eyes were wide, the blackness of the pupils almost overtaking the color. She looked a little afraid, and very turned on despite the fear, and Drax said, “You are so beautiful,” because she was and she deserved to hear it. She’d always deserve to hear it, especially now, because thrill-kinky was one thing and deliberately heading into potentially life-ending danger to help
his
planet was another.

His heart was weighted with emotions he couldn’t name, and Rita’s eyes said hers was too, but all she said was “So are you.”

Then she wrapped one leg around his hips and pulled him down and the hot, wet nebula of her sex drew him in, and it became impossible to think about anything except the fusion of his cock and her pussy. He tried to take his time, but it felt too good and she had both legs around him now and obviously didn’t want him to take his time because she had a rhythm of her own going, a rhythm that was much closer to what his body craved than the slower pace he thought he should set for his partner’s sake. As he’d imagined, she moved under him, fucking him as much as he fucked her, using the impressive strength of her deceptively slight body. Before long, they’d found their pace, one that might leave him aching in funny places, assuming he lived long enough to find out.

And the hell with worrying one way or the other about that possibility. Time enough to think about that when he had detangled himself from Rita’s sweet, sexy body. Right now he was as alive as he could be and so was she, and
right now
was all anyone was promised, even nashbets who sat on their fat asses in offices and never risked their hearts, let alone their lives.

Then Rita added a clenching and release of her inner muscles, rhythmic contractions that enhanced the already amazing sensation of thrusting into her rippling sex. Her hands caressed his back, his ass, his wings. All the time, she made frantic noises that gained in volume, and the noises, too, seemed to stroke his cock.

He bit his lip, determined to hold out a little longer. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t stay hard for as long as she needed him to, and probably come more than once on a night like this, with so much tension in the air, but it was always sweetest to come together the first time. She brushed her hands down his wings, though, a river of sensation as each feather rippled and rustled at her touch, and he couldn’t hold back anymore.

He cried out as he came, a curse in his own language, so old that it didn’t have an exact meaning anymore.

“Gotcha!” she teased.

Then her eyes widened and her cunt narrowed and she began to spasm around him. The strength of her passion drew him from one orgasm straight to the next, and that drove her over the edge again too, or kept her on that same sweet edge, coming and coming.

If Drax’s body cooperated, he would have been happy to keep going until it was time to leave. Unfortunately, his injured shoulder decided it had had quite enough of supporting his weight. He collapsed with an “Ooof” onto her, then apologized. “Worked my shoulder a little too hard.”

“I’m not surprised. Worked parts of me pretty hard too, but not too hard. Just right.” She kissed his nose. “We have a little while. Get some rest. It’s going to be a long night.”

Drax could never relax before a job, let alone nap. He was always too keyed up, too busy thinking through all the permutations and possibilities. But now, facing what might be the most important and dangerous job of his career, he found himself drifting off to sleep with Rita pressed against him, closer to the wall, his arms and one of his wings cupping her close.