Captured Rapture: 3 (Mercy) (8 page)

The perp’s hand moved closer to his
hip, and I slowly slid my disruptor from its holster. “
Fuckin’
Bo’aas,”
I heard him mutter before his hand dipped into a concealed pocket.

I targeted my weapon directly on
the back of his neck, right above the edge of his armored jacket. If he pulled
a gun, his head was going bye-bye.

He withdrew his hand, and I let out
a silent breath. A credit chip. Shiny one. “How much?”

Fraz snorted, folding his arms
across his wide chest, his orange scales shimmering with a contemptuous red
sheen. “Two things, my good buddy. This isn’t Level Seven, credit chip’s not
going to cut it. And the price is eight seventy-five.”

The perp’s hand froze. In fact, his
whole body seemed to suddenly snap into a statue. A fat-assed, scum-bastard
statue. “You’re kidding?”

Fraz shook his head. “You want
ultimate ass pleasure, you pay ultimate credit.” He uncrossed his ankles and
leaned forward just a tad, as if sharing a secret. “You do know the thing’s
illegal, don’t you?”

Our spice dealer snarled. But he
didn’t move and I couldn’t help but smile. He wanted his anal probe bad. Time
to reel him in.

Fraz shook his head again and
pushed himself from the viewing wall, sliding the syntho-silk-wrapped object
back into his trousers. “Too slow, my good buddy. You don’t want it, someone
else surely will.” He gave the perp a lipless smirk. “Especially one of this
quality.”

That was my cue. I shoved my disruptor
into its hidden holster and stormed forward, making my breath shallow and rapid
as I did so. I smacked into the dealer’s shoulder, bounced off him a little,
feigning complete ignorance of his existence as I locked my wide, wild-eyed
stare on my partner. “You fucking selfish prick!” I yelled, punching him square
in the chest with my palms. “You fucking used the last of the spice!”

“
Shyte
, you dumb cunt,” Fraz
snarled, shooting the dealer a harried look. “Shut your fucking mouth.”

I flung the perp an indifferent
glance over my shoulder, hoping my eyes portrayed desperate insanity. The scary
thing was, I knew they did. I was drawing the wild emotion from a place deep in
my soul that I suspected would rule me for the rest of my life. I was an addict,
but spice wasn’t my hit.

I turned back to Fraz, slapping my
hands against his chest again, a dark part of me knowing my aggression was born
from bleak frustration.
Damn you, Torr
. “That was our last stash, you dick,”
I whined. “I needed it. I need—”

Fraz struck me. Hard. With the back
of his hand. Right on my cheekbone.

I saw stars and fell to my knees,
the coppery taste of blood sliding over my tongue.

“I
said
, shut the fuck up.”

“Hey!” the perp burst out, and I
hid my smile in my trembling hand.

We had him. Hook, line and—

“I know you!” His voice rose an octave
and from the corner of my eye, I saw his feet scramble back a step.

My heart slammed into my throat and
I bit back a hiss. Not good. Not good.
Shyte
, this was not good.

“You’re the cunt Enforcer who took
out Eop’s child slavery ri—”

Four things happened
simultaneously.

The memory of the Mendovian’s
violent arrest smashed through my head.

Fraz pulled his de-atomizer.

I leapt to my feet.

And the perp pulled a de-atomizer
from who knows where.

Then everything did, as I feared,
go pear-shaped.

The dealer shot Fraz. Just like
that. In the space of half a heartbeat, the bastard shot Fraz. In the chest?
The throat? The shoulder? I couldn’t tell. The stench of ozone burned my
sinuses and a split second later, I saw my partner fall, his eyes wide with
shock and pain.

I yanked my disruptor from its
holster and spun to face the perp, leveling my weapon slap-damn in the middle
of his greasy forehead. “Drop it,” I snarled.

The spice dealer’s de-atomizer
locked on my face and he grinned at me, yellow teeth glistening with saliva.
“Not a chance, cunt.”

My aim on his forehead didn’t
waver. I could hear something raspy at my feet and when I sucked in a quick
breath, the coppery stench of blood filled my nose. Fraz’s blood. Fuck.

Fury rolled through me. Thick,
black fury that felt like flames of incinerating heat. Fraz was the closest
thing I had to family and this scum-bastard criminal had just shot him. I was
going to make him hurt. “You’ve got two choices, dickhead. Drop the de-atomizer,
or keep it aimed at me and find out what it’s like to have that ugly-as-shit
face of yours explode in a puff of disintegrated matter.”

The perp laughed, the sound snide
and way too confident for my liking. I wanted to shoot Fraz a quick look but I
didn’t dare. The spice dealer with the anal sex fetish would squeeze his
trigger the second I broke eye contact, and there was no way I wanted to die.

Not when I’d only just begun to
live.

Mine to claim.

The disconnected thought whispered
in the depths of my mind and I gritted my teeth. When this was all done and
over with, I was having a long conversation with Torr about staying out of my head.
I may be his destiny, but—

I swallowed, the absurdity of the
situation hitting me. I was staring down the barrel of a highly lethal, highly
illegal weapon, wielded by a criminal with a highly violent track record, my
partner shot and most likely dying at my feet, our arrest gone to hell in a
friggin’ handbasket, and I was thinking of my lunatic man in the moon?

You’re not just
talking
to
Torr when this is done, y’know that, don’t you?

I bit back a sigh. No, when this
was done, I wasn’t just talking to Torr. I was throwing him on the nearest
bed/bench/rock and making love to him like there was no tomorrow.

Mine to claim. Mine to fuck.
Mine to—

“Throw away your weapon, cunt,” the
perp snarled, his eyes a crazy mix of glee and rage. “Or I’ll shoot you in the
mouth and fuck your dying body as your brains dribble out of your head.”

“Try it.” Oh yeah. This bastard
deserved to die. I was going to kill him. In exactly five seconds.

Five, four, three, two—

“Shoot me and we all die, cunt.” He
jerked up his left hand. My stare snapped to what he held and my stomach
dropped. Ah fuck. No wonder his eyes were crazy.

A tiny red glow on the small metal
ball he gripped told me the neuron detonator was active. With a simple release
of pressure, he’d turn every living being within a two-mile radius into a
brain-dead vegetable. Pretty much everyone on Port Mercy. He gave me another one
of those snide, smug laughs. “You don’t think I was suspicious about the
Bo’aa?”

He stepped closer to me, detonator
held out as if it were the most wonderful present I could ever hope to receive.
I stood my ground and glared at him. I had nowhere to go. Behind me was the
viewing wall.

“
No one
trusts a Bo’aa
unless they’re stupid,” he spat.

Another wave of black fury rolled
through me. A wall of heat hotter than a furnace. The tips of my fingers
tingled, as if I’d plunged them into an open flame. “Stupid?” I cocked an
eyebrow at him, not even remotely trying to hide my contempt. “Who’s holding
the neuron detonator, dipshit?”

“I’d rather take out everyone on
this hole of a spaceport, including myself, than spend the rest of my life in a
GU prison.” He laughed again, taking another step closer. Close enough for the
end of my disruptor to press against his forehead. Close enough for me to smell
his breath. Ugh. Crazy-ass masturbating criminal and oral-hygiene deficient. A
winner all around. “So you’ve got two choices, cop,” he went on, lifting his de-atomizer
up to my face and tapping the tip of its barrel against my bottom lip. “Open up
and say ‘ahh’, or turn everyone on this hunk of metal to—”

He stopped talking.

His mouth fell open, his eyes grew
wide, practically bulging from his head, and he staggered backward, gaping at
something over my right shoulder.

Something beyond the unbreakable
glass.

Something—by the expression on his
face—absolutely terrifying.

Mine to claim.

I heard the thought before I felt
the tingle in my limbs, the swelling throb in my sex.

An ear-piercing screech shattered
the air. The viewing wall behind me rattled. The floor vibrated. I didn’t have
to turn to see what was outside. My body—no, my heart and soul—told me.

Torr. My Wyvernian had come for his
mate.

“Gods, gods!” the perp gasped,
backpedaling like crazy. “What is that?
What is that
?”

I aimed my disruptor right between
his eyes. “That,” I said quite calmly, “is my boyfriend.”

The perp squealed, his eyes bulged
some more and, just to prove how completely fucking insane he was, he lifted
his left arm higher, the one holding the brain-liquefying bomb, and swung it
forward.

He was going to throw the neuron
detonator.

There comes a point in every tale
when the narrator—in this case, me—just has to admit to not having a bloody
clue what went on. This is that point.

I saw the spice dealer swing his
arm. I saw the blood flow back into the tips of his fingers as he began to
relax his grip on the small metal sphere. I saw the detonator’s tiny red glow
flicker green. And then I heard one simple thought.

Mine to protect
.

It was
my
thought.

And before I even knew what I was
doing, let alone how, I drew all the molten, blazing fury burning through me
into one thick spear of untouchable heat and sent it out. Incinerating the
neuron detonator to ash before the perp’s fingers could release it.

Incinerating the perp’s hand at the
same time.

The bastard screeched, the end of
his left arm a scorched, blackened stump, and swung up his right arm, leveling
his de-atomizer directly at my chest. “Die, cu—!”

His head exploded in a puff of
disintegrated matter.

“Ah, shut up, fucker,” came a
barely audible croak near my feet.

I started, jerking my stare down to
the bleeding, wheezing lump of Bo’aa on the floor. “Take your bloody time,
partner.” I dropped to my knees beside Fraz. The perp had shot him in the
shoulder, charring and melting part of his upper arm and throat and the side of
his head. He looked bad. Real bad. And for a Bo’aa, that meant he looked
positively hideous.

“Hey, I came back from the dead…to
save your ass, Enforcer Mynn,” he wheezed back, bright blue blood oozing from
the corner of his mouth. I gave his chest a quick once-over, biting back a sob
of joy at the sight of his rarely worn, armored combat vest beneath his jacket.
At least his heart and lungs was protected from the blast. Bo’aas weren’t known
to be all that bright when it came to common sense, but then Fraz wasn’t your
typical Bo’aa. Well, most of the time. He’d survived, but he wasn’t gonna win
any beauty contests. Not that he ever had.

He turned his gaze from me to the
viewing wall, and I followed his line of sight, for the first time letting
myself look at the creature beyond its unbreakable glass.

“That the guy,” he rasped, voice
gurgly but growing stronger with each word, “you been having all…that sex
with?”

I studied the magnificent dragon
gliding through the blackness of space, mesmerized by his beautiful golden-red
scales, his massive translucent wings.
Shyte
, he really was glorious. I
smiled, a warm, steady pulse awakening between my thighs. “Yeah.” I turned back
to Fraz, giving him a grin. “It is.”

He kinda chuckled, kinda coughed.
“And that was
you
who…cremated…the brain-bomb?”

I nodded, my throat thick.
Cremated. Good word.

He chuckled again, and I noticed
with sheer relief the blood oozing from his mouth had turned to a trickle.
“Always knew…you were…a freak.”

I laughed. “Fuck you, Bo’aa.”

He closed his eyes and snorted.
“Every minute of every day, partner.”

A kerfuffle to my left dragged my
attention from Fraz, and I stiffened. Five pissed-off looking people were
running toward us down the dim passageway, one of them Port Security Commander Scott,
another the walking mountain that was Steam’s head bouncer, Corvan Jareth.

An ear-piercing screech sent
shuddering vibrations through the area, and as one, all five turned to the
viewing wall.

“Wyvernian!” Scott gasped, her face
running white. I looked at the dragon flying through the blackness beyond the
glass. Felt his smoldering gaze stroke my soul.

Come.

I turned back to Fraz, chewing on
my bottom lip.
Shyte
, how do I do this?

“You have to go,” he said, and I
realized he was doing it for me. “Before the shit hits the fan.” He flicked a
look at the dragon. At
my
dragon. My destiny. “Or the flying lizard turns
us all into extra crispy.”

Throat tight, chest heavy, I gave
Fraz a heartfelt if somewhat hurried look. “I owe you a Bo’aa blade.”

He coughed and waved a dismissing
hand. “I’ll take it out of your skinny-assed hide later.”

I smiled at him, my chest heavy.
Damn, I was going to miss him. “Keep pissing ’em off, partner.”

He gave me an evil, lipless grin.
“Every minute.”

I pushed myself to my feet in a
fluid move and stroked my fingers against my right inner wrist. A soft
prickling sensation razed the flesh there as my GU Enforcer ID tattoo
materialized. I stormed toward the five newcomers, flashing my wrist at Scott.
“Galactic Union Enforcer business,” I snapped. “My partner’s down. He’s been
shot with a de-atomizer by a wanted spice dealer.” I flicked Fraz a quick look
over my shoulder and, even from this distance, I’m positive I saw him
chuckling. “He needs medical care immediately and I need to get my kit from our
quarters.”