Gamble (5 page)

He lay on his back, and she knelt on the bed next to him. He asked her quietly, “Did you want some help to start?”

She shook her head. “No. I am merely going over the documents in my mind. I would like to make sure that I get it right.”

He grabbed her fingers and brought them to his lips. “There is no right and wrong, there is only pleasure and a bit of teasing.”

She was fully clothed, and he was not. Only a drape of black silk covered his hips and kept her from getting extremely distracted.

“Why are you so willing to let me play?” She was nervous but an excitement was boiling in her as well.

“Because, everyone needs the opportunity to learn without fear. That is what I was given, that is what you shall have.” He released her hand and closed his eyes.

She sighed and ran her fingers over his chest with the lightest of touches. His skin was velvety under her touch, the texture was more noticeable with the lights on, and her vision focussed on the way her fingers left a slight trail before it faded.

There was a slight smile on his lips, and she moved her fingers to bracket his left nipple, casually trailing her fingers around him as she learned his textures. His erection tented the fabric, but release was not the goal today. This afternoon, she was learning his reactions to her touch, and so far, it was pretty gratifying.

His eyes were blue again, and he was so focussed on being relaxed that she could see the tension around his eyes. She stroked his forehead, nose and lips. The wide mobile surface of his lips curved under her fingers, and she kissed him, taking his lower lip between hers.

Her hands continued to stroke him, but he lifted his hands in defiance of his own rules and clutched her waist, lifting her over him.

She broke the kiss and nibbled her way down his neck. “I win.” She set her teeth and bit him carefully.

His groan was unmistakable. “Fine, you win.”

He arched his hips against hers and rocked until his cloth-covered member was lodged between her thighs.

Her senses spun when his hands started to stroke up and down her spine. The agreement had been to allow her full access to his body without him interfering. When he opened the front of her bodysuit, she had to admit, he was a gracious loser.

Being peeled out of her clothing by a lover’s hands was a strange sensation, but after the awkwardness passed and his skin was against hers, she felt magnanimous enough to enjoy being tumbled to her back as he slid into her ready heat.

He sat up and pulled her to his lap, holding her close as his thighs flexed and he rose and fell with his cock within her.

The image of a companion sex position formed in her mind, and she adjusted her position a little until the small discomforts disappeared.
Thank you, darlin’.

“Look at me, Kora.”

She opened her eyes and stared into his blue orbs as he slowed his hips, locking his gaze with hers as he wove his fingers with hers, palm to palm.

She smiled at him while they moved together; it could have been five minutes, it could have been hours, but all Kora knew was that she was going to remember this joining for the rest of her life. When she started to shake, he gripped her hands, and she moved faster until her eyes widened and ripples of pleasure ran through her system and a low moan parted her lips.

He was a moment behind her, baring his teeth and throwing his head back while his neck flexed with tension. She felt the vibration of his groan in every bit of skin that touched hers.

His chest was heaving as he dragged in breaths.

She chuckled and pulled his hand to her lips. Silence seemed the best option, so she leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed. She felt him press his lips to her head, and a satisfied sigh ran through her.

“Iomas Norilpo.”

She blinked and slowly looked up at him. “Pleased to meet you, Iomas. This is one helluva handshake.”

He smiled shyly. “Thank you. I wanted it to be memorable. Nothing worse than a mate who can’t remember your name.”

She breathed against his cheek. “Iomas.”

He turned his head and kissed her, releasing her hands to wrap his arms around her while he started to thrust inside her again.

The next three hours were spent on her knees, riding him and holding him close as he climaxed in her arms. By the time they had gone from introduction to full conversation, he was lying next to her on his belly, holding her hand and grinning. “I was very wrong.”

She blinked and wiped sweaty strands of hair from her eyes. “About what?”

“You can indeed exhaust one of my kind, and I have never been happier to be incorrect.” He squeezed her hand and closed his pretty blue eyes.

She ached, she was sticky, but it had proved one thing to her, if you could find a man you trusted, the sex was better than good.

Bots brought breakfast for two to her room, and they carried all of Iomas’s items as well. It seemed that the
Fairy
had spoken. He was moving in, according to the ship that guarded them from the cold of space.

Iomas sat up slowly, and he rubbed his eyes. “What am I seeing?”

“The
Star Fairy
is moving you in. Apparently, my quarters are now your quarters.”

He chuckled. “You are kidding.”

“Nope. You can use the guestroom below as your office if you wish, or you can even do consults there, but you are now officially a member of the crew of this transport. There is no getting away from it; if you are with me, you are with her.”

“I had no idea you were a package deal.” He grinned.

She snorted. She lifted her hands and pointed at the walls. “I thought the fact that this ship and I are joined on a biological frequency was rather a large clue.”

He shrugged. “I was blinded by your beauty.”

She touched the tangle of her hair. “I believe that blind might be the operative term. I am heading for a shower.”

“I will join you.”

She laughed. “Until we get into the advanced acrobatics, we are going to have to take turns in the shower. It is designed for one person only, and I always get to go first.”

“Of course. I shall wait my turn.”

He was as good as his word. He waited for her to step out of the solar shower, and then, he took her place. In a few minutes, they were both clean, and she was sitting on the edge of a chair, combing the two meters of hair that she sported.

He had finished his own grooming, and he slid a cup of caf in front of her. “How is it that your body was broken but your hair is so long?”

“It was the only thing that wouldn’t break, so I kept growing it, braiding it and wrapping it around my head. When I go on disciplinary pickups, I put a weight in the end of the braid as a last-resort weapon.” She chuckled and kept working on the length of hair.

She paused when she got to her waist and sipped at the caf. “Thanks for this.”

He grinned. “I asked the ship what your beverage vices were and got some surprising answers.”

Kora snickered. “I bet. I have eclectic tastes.”

“Your fruit juice fetish is fascinating.”

She laughed out loud. “I like fruit juice, no matter the result. Sure, some of them have side effects but most of them don’t.”

“Like the juice served at the brothel.”

She snorted and gave him a look under her lashes. “Yes, like that.”

His eyes were gold again, and he winked at her.

She finished her hair and felt the excitement building in the ship. They were nearly home.

He cocked his head. “What am I feeling?”

“You can sense that?”

“Yes, what is it?”

Kora was shocked. “It is the ship. She’s excited to be home.”

“We are heading to your home?”

“Not
my
home, her home. The transport ships were all launched from this station.”

“Where are we?”

She laughed. “I have no idea, the station travels in the empty spaces. The ships know where it is, and they can run home if they have to.”

“Why would they run home?”

She smiled and leaned forward, whispering in his ear, “If I died, she would go home or run to one of her sisters.”

The lights dimmed a little.

“Damn, she heard me.”

He placed his hand over hers. “I will keep you safe, and I will keep her safe in return. We are bound now. Your life is mine and mine yours.”

“That cuts both ways. Don’t think for a moment that you are going anywhere without me or a monitor courtesy of
Star Fairy
. You are not alone anymore, either.”

He paused for a moment as that sank in.

She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “You get used to it.”

Kora waited in the scanner as the team did a full workup. Each of the transport specialists had their own issues, so each exam was carried out with their own litany of equipment.

Iomas was watching and asking the team questions as they took blood, tissue and bone samples as well as checked on her power exchanger and the containment field that kept her bones from shattering at the lightest touch.

After the scanner, she tried to shoo him out of the room, but he stayed for her internal exam and asked more questions of the physician who was administering it. Ah well, by this point, he knew her lady parts better than she did, so what the hell.

She could feel the ship’s interest as the team swarmed over her and made some alterations. Kora knew exactly how that felt. The physician giving her the internal exam felt like he was installing an additional family room in her body.

“I apologize, Transporter Knox. We have to reset your birth control. Your body is attempting to enter a breeding cycle, and with the compression fields, that would not be a good idea.”

She exhaled with a blast. “Well, you could have warned me.”

“I apologize. Your mate’s presence is distracting.”

She looked over at Iomas standing in the corner, his arms crossed and his sleeveless jumpsuit fitting him in all the right places. “I will concede you that.”

He grinned at her, his gold gaze dancing with amusement.

Once the physician was done, Kora sat up and shifted her weight. “What is left?”

“Tomorrow, we need to run your stress tests, but today, you are done.” The physician winked at her. “Good to see you again, Transporter Knox.”

The only place they used her title all the time was here at the station.

She sighed, put her medical robe on and took Iomas’s arm with hers. “Let me show you around. We can get you a full wardrobe if you would like.”

He chuckled. “I thought this facility was set to serve you.”

“Oh, it is, but we have an experimental extruder here that lets you create anything you like to through a body scan. You stand on the plate, and it measures you, then you select any fashion choices they have listed from around the imperium. It’s really fun.”

She took him to the manufacturing zone, and she stood on the plate as it scanned her. Once it was done, she moved to the selection screen and said, “Female clothing.”

The images on the screen were manifold, so she scrolled through the bodysuits and selected skirt sets. Bandeau tops or halters were her preference for casual wear when her bodysuit just wouldn’t do. She made a few selections and smiled brightly at Iomas. “Would you like something? I yanked you out of the brothel with hardly anything at all.”

“You wrapped me in a sheet from the footage that was circulated to the imperium. Thanks for that.”

She blushed. “I didn’t know if you would come willingly, and I needed you to appear to be a bounty. It worked. Now, go ahead. The machine can make whatever you like.”

He grinned and flicked rapidly through the selections. He made some choices that were more suited to being a worker in a brothel than a client. His fingers moved so fast, she couldn’t stop him before he ordered several risqué articles of clothing for her.

His smile was serene. “You reminded me of part of the companion training that we all had to go through. Becoming aware of our bodies via clothing selection. It was an important lesson. You are going to learn the pleasure of dressing for effect.”

Iomas got on the scanner, and he stood while the machine measured him from head to toe.

When he finished, he nudged her away from the selection matrix and winked at her. “A man needs to have some mystery in his selections. You wait for yours, and I will choose what I need to replace my wardrobe.”

She scowled but stalked over to the dispenser where her three regular outfits were waiting as well as the first of the playtime clothing was waiting. She held it up and could not quite get her mind around the situation that she would be in if she wore the straps and buckles and nothing else.

The blush started and didn’t stop as the next few articles came off the extruder.

She tried to act casual, but the strange configurations were as baffling as they were intriguing.

When Iomas came to her side, she was holding one tangle of silk up and trying to figure out which end was up. He calmly took the garment from her hand and turned it at a right angle.

She snickered and nodded. “That makes much more sense.”

He laughed. “You were right, there was quite a selection. I was able to replenish a good deal of my wardrobe, including boots.”

“Good. As soon as you gather it all, you can meet me back at our hospitality quarters. I am making dinner.”

He nodded. “I look forward to seeing what you can do. In the kitchen, I mean.”

She laughed and left him to haul his own clothing back to the ship. The full tour would wait until she had prepared the outer-space equivalent of fried chicken.

She wore the bandeau and blue silk skirt on their tour after dinner. She needed to walk after the fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn. It had taken quite a lot out of her to prepare it all.

He offered her his arm, and they walked through the station, past the commissary, into the memorial hall.

She stood quietly as he looked at the images of the women as they had come from Terra. Kora watched him read the biography that had gotten her into this program. The capsule they had shipped her in was full of gel, but she had still arrived with nine broken bones.

“They outlined all of your procedures.” He spoke softly. “How did you survive that?”

She ghosted up next to him, and she whispered, “I wanted to live.”

She turned and gestured to all of the images of the women who had left the earth to turn themselves into experiments. “We all wanted to live. Surviving was our primary need and this was a chance offered that our people couldn’t offer, so when it was offered, we took the chance.”

“Did you know it would be successful?”

She nudged him with her hip. “It was just a gamble. I took a chance and let them put me in a pod to ship me across the universe. It was just a chance, but I am glad that I did it.”

He put his arm around her waist and caressed her hip. “I am very glad as well. I don’t think that your people would take kindly to my arriving on your world and demanding you.”

She snorted. “Until the Alliance arrived, we hadn’t had any exposure to alien races. In three years, we went from first contact to the Volunteer program. I think seeing a Selna would have been more than most Terrans could have imagined. I know that my heart stuttered when I saw my first Selna, and it skips a beat every time I see you.”

He chuckled. “Am I pleasing to your eyes?”

“You are. To my eyes, my senses and my heart.”

“Ah, Kora, without you, I have no heart.” He kissed her in front of the image of her badly broken body, her scans and the interview playing softly in the background.

“I suppose I want to Volunteer, because I have a chance at a future out there, somewhere. I can be useful and pretend to be normal.”

The interviewer’s voice said, “What if you can never be normal?”

“Then, at least, I can be something. Here, I am a burden, a drain of resources, and I have no chance at life. I want to take that chance.”

“It is quite a gamble.”

Her broken face twisted in a smile, “All life is a gamble if you do it right.”

He pulled away from her slightly. “What are they doing to
Star Fairy
?”

“They are fitting her with couple’s quarters. We don’t want to kill each other right away, and my bed is a little small for some of the acrobatics you are pulling.”

He grinned, and they saw the rest of the transporter displays before they walked to the oxygen factory or garden.

“I can’t believe that no one knows about this station.”

“It was built for a very specific purpose that thousands of planets abhor. It cannot be part of anything but the imperium itself.”

“Why?”

“Because, we would be destroyed. You saw the attitude that the Keylan Guardians pulled. That was nothing. I have been pursued, attacked and injured by Guardians in the past, all because I am a technological abomination. If they knew about the ship being sentient, all bets would be off and I would be dead.”

He paused as they entered the garden. “It is that dangerous?”

“Most places, no. Most places do not care, they simply see it as a kind of vanity marking, but some worlds fight against the integration of living tissue and machine and that is what I now embody.”

He lifted her hand to his lips. “I will have to become aware of it and pay attention. When I look at you, all I see is my amazing mate. I worship the whole, not the parts.”

“Worship?” She batted her lashes at him.

He lifted her up, and she wrapped her legs around him for balance. “Indeed, worship. My mate is my temple, and I am a devoted worshiper.”

She draped her arms around his neck and whispered an inch from his lips, “I believe it is time to prove your devotion.”

* * * *

Across the station, the
Star Fairy
watched through Kora’s eyes. Her human was enjoying her mate, and her sister ship had been right—it did vastly improve her symbiote’s temperament.

Across the star systems, she called the
Green Fairy
.

“Sister, have you put in your pilot’s information for a mate with Charm’s female?”

“I have. She has the portrait scheduled for later in the week. Why?”

“Well, you know how cranky my pilot is?”

“Of course. Her hostility is legendary.”

“She is calm now, laughing and smiling even when she is not speaking to me. Her heart is lighter, and the part of her soul that burned is calm now. This is good. You need to get a mate for your pilot. They relax them and even file their paperwork. It is win-win.”

Green
laughed. “You have to stop thinking of everything as a bet or a contest.”

“I try, but it is in my DNA.”

They both giggled together and reached out to their other sisters,
Blue
and
Golden
. This was news that needed to be shared. They did not like their pilots being lonely for other companions, and a single mate would solve their problems.

Of course, it might create additional problems, but they would deal with that when the time came. No sense borrowing trouble when help was just a male away. And if the male was no help, there was always the airlock.