Thrill-Kinky (4 page)

If that was the case, though, she was still on Drax’s side, because the Fiero’s owners weren’t very bright. Hold a would-be crook until the cops came and you’re a hero. Nearly kill him and you’re a criminal too, at least on a peaceful planet like San’bal. It wasn’t Improved Texas or the Xylac system, after all. San’bal was
civilized.

Drax spat out a word that Rita didn’t recognize, but had to be a curse. Then he took her arm. “We will not run,” he whispered. “That will make us stand out. We are tourists. We saunter, but with purpose, stopping at a vendor who’s selling crazy hats.”

Rita nodded. It sounded like Drax knew a bit about evasion, even if he’d been caught last night. Hats were a great idea. At least a quarter of the crowd had on some kind of goofy green and purple headdress, some with masks or veils. It would help them blend in, and make it harder to get out an accurate description. Especially if she picked one of the staggeringly tall ones, since she was on the small side for a human female, and he got one of the particularly silly striped ones with horns and a mask. “I hope they’re cheap silly hats,” she muttered as they strolled off, heading northeast while their pursuers left a trail of havoc heading south and west. “My credit chit’s close to maxed.”

Drax leaned down and whispered in her ear, “At least you know where your chit is. Mine was in my jacket pocket, and I don’t know where my clothes ended up. Probably some driftdwell is entertaining his lover on my credit chit.”

His warm breath, the way his lips nuzzled at her ear, his proximity, all made her shiver. Her nipples perked and her pussy took its cue from them, turning slick and responsive.

Which would have been lovely if she could have afforded the distraction, but right now she needed her wits around her. So she forced herself to ignore the lovely sensations, ignore how sexy the man holding her was, ignore the erotically charged atmosphere. She forced herself to look around the partying, playful crowd. “I bet you’re not the only person who misplaced his clothes last night,” she joked. “Although you probably got more bruises in the process than most.”

He grimaced. “Or at least had less fun getting the bruises. It’s not my thing, but some people think looking like you were dragged a couple of kilometers by a zipbike is the perfect way to end a date. Who am I to judge?” In a slightly louder voice, he added, “Come on, babe! Time for silly hats.” He slipped his arm around her waist.

Chapter Four

Drax was impressed.

He’d thought at first that the chance-met Rita Anteres was just a compassionate trash recycler. An attractive human, certainly, with big green eyes, short, tousled dark hair, and a slim, strong body, but a random person who’d help him out of the trash bin and be on her way.

He didn’t expect her to be so persistent in helping him, or so clever. Most strangers would have run off when they realized he was in all kinds of dangerous trouble. Hell, many strangers would have turned him over to the surprisingly pleasant police officer once they realized he was “wanted”.

Which might not have been the worst thing, if Rita hadn’t been around to help. At least the police might have a lead on the troublesome Blemondians. They’d give him medical attention at the police station. Not to mention clothes, though not his own, with his high-limit credit chit and a variety of handy tools in various handy hidden pockets.

But Rita got right into the spirit of the thing. Whisking him away. Going along with it when he insisted he couldn’t go to the hospital. Letting him kiss her for cover.

And then letting him bury his worries, his fears, his pain in her tantalizing little body. Although “letting him” was too mild a way of putting it. Rita didn’t just go along with him craving sex, but reveled in it, despite the rough-and-tumble setting, or maybe because of it. While he’d been the one who actually initiated the action, he suspected she’d only held back from making a pass at him because she didn’t know how quickly his people healed, or how “flying” through sex would restore his bruised spirits and shattered nerves almost as much as actual flight would.

Of course sex on the wing would be better yet. And pin-feathers, he wanted to fly with Rita in his arms, his cock in Rita’s wet, gripping sex. Not something he’d normally want to do with a chance-encountered lady of another species. Too romantic, too significant from a Banjali point of view. But something about Rita made him forget she didn’t have wings of her own.

He mentally shook himself, then made himself study Rita’s back. She was in line at the hat booth now. Considering the outfit she was almost wearing, he had a great view of her shoulder blades. Where her wings would be if she were Banjali, but definitely weren’t. A lovely back, graceful and lean, but without the well-defined muscles that were a mark of beauty to a Banjali, the musculature particular to strong, uninhibited flight.

It was fine to have a fling with a sexy alien, and Rita definitely was sexy. But that was all it could be, a fling.

Anything else he thought he was feeling was an endorphin-filled delusion. Danger made sex better, made attraction flare brighter. He’d always been thrill-kinky, and this kind of infatuation had struck before in the middle of a mission.

But, he admitted, looking at Rita’s lovely back, not as hard as it had this time.

There’d been women before. There were
always
women. Women of most species seemed to be attracted to bad boys and he was glad to oblige, sometimes as part of his cover, sometimes simply for mutual pleasure. The impulsive sex with Rita had been more than either, though it helped their cover and certainly had been mutually pleasurable. He’d come close to dying last night. Sex was the best way he knew, other than flying, to celebrate being alive despite the odds.

That all made sense.

What made less sense was that he liked Rita. Really liked Rita, and not like the way he’d expect to like a random attractive woman he’d only see again if they happened to wind up in the same place by chance and he wasn’t undercover as someone else.

He liked Rita the way he’d like an old friend who was also a lover. Part of the liking was her sexual openness, the fact she liked to play some of the edgy ways he did. But she was more than sexy. Or rather, she was sexy for reasons beyond her tight body, pretty face and willingness to get down and dirty in an alley.

He was having fun being on the run from Blemondian criminals through an octolimbed sexfest and it was because of Rita. Despite the very real danger, Rita was smiling, soaking up the atmosphere, dancing to the band, tasting new foods and drinks. Literally laughing at danger.

A lot like him when he was younger and less jaded, before theft and the Great Game stopped being fun and became simply jobs, only ones with “possibility of death in awful ways” as a downside.

He’d told her his real name and hinted at both his real professions, and she was cool with it.

He definitely liked her.

Rita turned back toward him. She had a tall hat on her own head, with three stuffed stripy horns, and a set of tiny fabric wings that attached with shoulder straps. A rather fetching purple-and-green-striped half-mask completed the ensemble. The hat was an offense to his aesthetic sensibilities, especially when what little clothing she wore was bright red. But her grin was infectious. “Ghastly, isn’t it?” she said. “My only consolation is yours is even tackier.”

She held out something that resembled a sequined purple and green sea anemone perched on top of a stripy bag. Rita was right. It was even uglier than hers. Still, he gamely plunked it on his head, if only because anyone who knew him by reputation would never believe he’d wear such a monstrosity. Drax Jalricki was elegant, smoothstyle all the way.

Whoever he was today could justly be accused of lousy fashion sense by a Lysandrian pimp.

“Bend down,” Rita said. He ignored her until she stood on tiptoe, kissed him, then asked again, wheedling like a real girlfriend might. “I think it’s supposed to sit like this.” Rita fussed with the awful hat, tucking his long hair underneath it as she did. As a final touch, she removed her mask and put it on him. It clung to his face with static, a strange but not entirely unpleasant feeling.

Clever woman
he mouthed. His hair was distinctive, an unusual color even on Banjal and unknown on most planets, and hiding his hair changed his appearance.

She smiled at his silent praise. “Now you’re in the spirit of the holiday!” she teased. “Turn around and I’ll fasten on your wings.”

Really clever woman.
No one who knew anything about his culture would imagine a Banjali would pin hideous costume wings over his handsome real ones. It would be a scandal if people at home heard about it, but thanks to Rita’s quick thinking, he was more likely to make it home to worry about stupid things like that.

She attached the wings, a larger set than hers, to his coat, then clapped her hands. “You look wonderful. I wish I had a camera but the one on my com-pad is broken.”

“People have died for less.” He wheeled around shaking his fist as he said it, but also smiled to let her know he didn’t mean it.

This reminded him too much of the old days, when his work was still exciting. He loved the idea of getting into disguise in the middle of a crowd. Cheeky. And who’d believe an experienced operative would do anything so crazy? Anyone looking on would just assume he and Rita were two more tourists having fun with the spirit of Kenu Aram.

He pulled his new human friend close and kissed her. He meant it to be quick and playful, the kind of kiss a man would give a woman who’d just gifted him with the ugliest hat in the galaxy and a pair of ridiculous wings, but who was also cute as can be and wearing nothing but scraps of red micromesh, her own goofy hat and a pair of wings.

Her lips tasted of that strangely pleasant fizz, and of water, and distant stars and adventure. Or maybe Rita, but he’d stand by the notion of stars. He groaned deep in his throat, pulled her tight against his body, kissed her deep and hard as he let his hands roam over her smooth, bare skin.

She straddled his thigh, swaying not to the music that surrounded them but a music all her own. Her wetness startled him at the same time it turned him on. He wasn’t used to meeting women who were like him, drawn to the eroticism of danger, to thrill seeking, to exhibitionism and endorphin rushes, at least off his home planet. Banjali were wired to crave sex in flight—it was gravity-defying, somewhat risky, but also when they were most likely to conceive—so it made sense that his people got turned on by things other races called thrill-kinky. Usually women of other species, though, needed cajoling and persuasion to behave in ways that came naturally to him.

Not Rita.

He grasped her hips, moving her slight, strong body against him. At the same time, she unbuttoned one of the few buttons he’d bothered to fasten on his coat, slipped her hand inside the opening, and grasped his cock.

Wind and sky, her hand felt amazing—small, but hard and strong, with calluses as if she worked with her hands more than most women did. She gripped him firmly and began to stroke. So hot. So good.

He wondered if he could pick her up and lift her onto his cock without a wall for support. She was petite, but muscular for her size, probably weighed more than she appeared, and the gravity was high for him. The injuries the Blemondians had inflicted weren’t nearly as bad as they might have been, not nearly as bad as they would have been if he weren’t Banjali, but he’d been tortured and severely beaten last night. Nearly killed.

His cock had all kinds of wonderful ideas, ideas that Rita was certainly encouraging, but he was pretty sure the rest of him couldn’t keep up. He’d already run up debts he wasn’t convinced his body could pay. Not when he might have to go into fight or flight mode, without the option of actual flight, at any minute.

Reluctantly, he pulled away from Rita. “Later,” he promised, hoping he’d have a chance to fulfill the promise. “We need to get going. Meeting up with folks at the theater, remember?”

It was completely off the top of his head, but Rita didn’t miss a beat. She slipped her hand out of his coat, slid off his leg and buttoned him up again. “Later. Definitely later. And if we’re lucky, Malia and Gorup will be feeling adventurous after the show.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Or during it.”

He led her away, saying loud enough that people could hear it, “Last time we played with those lunatics I was walking funny for three days.” Drax was amused to see that raised a few eyebrows, even during Kenu Aram.

Maybe
walking funny
or just thinking about a foursome with their entirely imaginary friends exhausted him, because suddenly he stumbled. The weight of the last day and night fell on him all at once. Putting one foot in front of another seemed like more work than it was worth. His mind fogged and his knees buckled.

Rita caught him before he collapsed. “Steady there, lover,” she said, loudly. “Told you to go easy on that green bubbly booze on an empty stomach. It may look like champagne, but it kicks like the hard stuff.” He was surprised by how strong she was. She looked like she’d crumple under his weight, but she supported him seemingly with ease.

People were staring. He could feel their eyes. Even in the middle of a festival, a guy apparently passing out this early in the day attracted some attention. And as people were staring, someone was bound to notice his injuries. “Especially after last night, I guess,” he improvised loudly. “And this morning. That new toy…”

“Hush!” She smacked him smartly on the ass, which, he figured, is something she’d do if she actually liked playing the kind of sex games that would leave a man bruised and cut and sore, while still smiling. “Behave or I’ll do worse when we get back to the hotel.”

“Threat or promise?” He managed to grin theatrically, projecting his words so passersby would pay attention to them and not to his battered condition.

She put a bottle of water in his hands. “Which would you prefer?” she purred, and for all he felt like he’d been dropped from a flyer with his wings bound, not to mention that he wasn’t especially interested in either giving or receiving the kind of rough play they were hinting at, he felt a surge of lust at the weight of suggestiveness in that voice.

“Promise, please.” He took a big slug of water and swallowed it. “With a side order of threat.”

“Just the way I want it, and just the way you’ll get it. But I’m starving and you need to eat before you pass out. Come on.”

It might look to a casual observer that Drax was being dragged along by a girlfriend eager for some alone time. He
hoped
it did. That wouldn’t raise any eyebrows in this setting, not that San’balese had eyebrows to speak of. But if Rita was dragging him, it was because he staggered if he tried to walk too far on his own.

And they needed to keep moving. Moving targets were harder to spot, let alone hit.

Where were they going? Rita seemed to be heading away from the heart of the festival, toward the north boundary of the huge site. She was moving casually, but briskly, only occasionally glancing over her shoulder in an obvious way, but still, he thought, keeping an eye out for anyone who seemed to be paying too much attention. He was doing his best to stay alert, to focus on possible danger, but it wasn’t working so well. The bottle of water he’d drained had helped some. He thought he could walk on his own if he had to, though he’d be slower and more awkward than he’d prefer. Yet he still felt every injury, every sore muscle strained by high gravity, every centimeter he’d run today, and the aftereffects of his short flight.

Behind them to the left, he spotted another disturbance in the crowd, as if people were pushing their way through with purpose and without manners.

And somewhere in the distance, he heard, over the music, over the laughter and shouting, the unmistakable sound of a well-tuned Fiero.

“Hurry!”

“Running will only call attention to us!” Rita’s voice was a harsh, urgent whisper. “Besides, I have a plan now. My friends commed when I was in line for the hats.” She was moving briskly now, but not running, and Drax had no choice but to try to keep up. Whoever was pursuing them on foot seemed to be catching up. The Fiero hovered over the square. He thought he and Rita were the only people who pointedly
weren’t
staring at it. The immediate festival area was closed to air traffic, as well as to zipbikes and other ground and just-above-ground transportation, so it was causing a bit of a ruckus by circling overhead.