Chase Me (24 page)

Racquetball
with
Andi
Woolf.
He’d been so addled earlier that he’d completely missed the fact that the wolf he’d smelled on Lorin was female.

He had it bad.

“What’s happening?” Now that he had his glasses on, Gabe saw the origin of the gamy smell surrounding Alka. The belt slung around her ample hips was made of bleached bones and an animal hide of some type. Yak? Antelope? With Alka, one never knew.

“A new find.” Lorin jacked her phone into her workstation, and with a couple of clicks, she played the short video clip Nathan had sent. His cheeks heated as they listened. He glanced at Alka and cleared his throat. “Did Nathan say—”

“—dildo? Yes, dear,” Alka said matter-of-factly.

Gabe leaned closer to the monitor. There, half excavated, lying not two feet from where Lorin had found the command box, was a… capsule?—whose color was a visual match for the metal of the box glowing on his table. And yes, it looked very much like a sex toy. A giant’s sex toy.

“Obviously Nathan thinks it’s cross-contamination,” Lorin said, laughing.

Gabe nodded. He’d worked with Alka and Lorin long enough to have heard them talk about how, even at ancient archaeological sites, it wasn’t at all unusual to find current-era items such as cigarette butts or plastic bottle caps.

“Mike sent pictures of it
in
situ
,” Lorin said, scrolling through a sequence of still photos that exposed more of the artifact with each click. “We need to update Elliott and decide what to do next.”

“We need to get it down here,” Gabe stated. “Fast.”

“Yeah,” Lorin agreed. “It’ll be safer down here. But I don’t want to alarm the crew.”

Alka glanced at her watch. “You could drive up to Isabella tonight, Lorin, see how things are going at the dig, and be back here with the find by tomorrow noon, easy.” She rested a hand on his shoulder. “I know you want to get your hands on it as soon as possible, Gabe.”

I
want
my
hands
on
your
daughter
even
more.

Lorin glanced at him, then at her mother. “Okay.”

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Lorin sounded as disappointed as he felt. He’d spent too many days out of her bed. He could manage one more night.

Couldn’t he?

“Shh. Be quiet,” Paige whispered.

Beddoe nodded as Paige tugged him along the shadowy side of the building. He’d met her at Tubby’s again, and after drinking raspberry cosmos together—tasty beverage, that; he’d have to offer them on board the
TonTon
—they’d walked, their arms wrapped around each other to fight off the chill, down the same tree-lined dirt road they’d sauntered down the last time they’d met.

But this time they walked the road to its end, and he hadn’t had to thrall her to do it. Shivering as they’d left the warm, smelly bar, Paige said she knew a private place nearby. Beddoe never imagined that he might be thankful for the bone-chilling temperature, but it provided the perfect excuse to access one of their buildings.

A man didn’t accomplish what he had without learning to trust his instincts. Something about the buildings down the road made his skin prickle. The
Arkapaedis
’s beacon—perhaps the
Ark
itself—was down here somewhere. Though currently quiet, the beacon could reactivate at any time.

He had to find it before it did.

Paige stopped at a darkened door. Despite the rough looking nature of the building—made of the stalks of the very trees lining the road!—he was glad there was shelter in his future. Here in the open, it was dark, dank, and colder than the rings of the Outer Pteralides. Though pleasure was definitely on the agenda, so was reconnaissance. He’d prefer to be warm and comfortable for both activities.

“Are we hiding?” he murmured against the delicate shell of her ear as he assessed his surroundings. The building he’d so carefully examined the last time he was here—the strapping woman’s residence—was dark, with soft textile coverings blocking the windows, but the bigger building across the open clearing blazed with lights. Through the window, he saw a group of people huddled around a glowing screen. On the screen, a handsome man and his fur-covered copilot navigated a beat-up ship through a field of stars.

If they knew about space travel, why did they use such ancient technology?

“Yes, we’re definitely hiding,” Paige whispered, tilting her head to the side so he had better access to her neck.

He licked his way down her tender vein.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Beddoe glanced at the other building again. Though muffled sound escaped, the windows were closed to the chilly night air. No one would hear them. He had plenty of time.

“No guests allowed.” Paige’s low, smoky laugh wrapped itself around his groin like a hand.

He tugged the tiny dangle of her ear adornment into his mouth, then worried it between his teeth. As he suckled on it, a near-silent moan escaped her throat.

His incisors tingled in his mouth.

“Come on.” Sidling away from his touch, she opened the door and disappeared inside.

He followed her into the building, quickly closing the door behind them. Though it wasn’t much warmer than it was outside, at least they had shelter from the wind.

A single dim light. A wall of shelves, some empty and some not. A long table bisected the room, its top littered with simple hinged comps, imaging equipment, papers and writing implements, shallow trays, picks, and brushes. Though nothing gritted under his feet, the room smelled distinctly of soil.

What was this place?

The question evaporated as Paige slipped her chilly hand into his. Lifting their joined hands to his lips, he ran his tongue over her knuckles. Paige sagged back against the table as he nibbled his way up to the delicate veins in her wrist.
So
very
tiny.
He could crush her using only a fraction of his physical strength.

“Robert,” she whispered.

Paige’s voice soothed him like a balm and maddened him at the same time—he, who’d slept with some of the most beautiful creatures in the galaxy. What was it about her? Was it her fumbling, eager hands? The way she touched him with more enthusiasm than skill? How her expression shifted from supplication to dark dawning delight as he drove her to the heights of pleasure? In his world, sex was an exchange of services, but Paige seemed to want nothing from him but pleasure.

It was a novel experience.

Lifting her slight body up onto the table, Beddoe brought his lips to hers, sinking into her tempting mouth. She was so small, so delicate, but her taste was temptation incarnate. When she craned her neck, exposing that delicious, pulsing vein, his teeth shoved down in his mouth. “Will anyone interrupt us?” he asked, scraping his incisor against her neck.

“No,” Paige gasped as she twined her legs around his hips. She lay back on the rough table, pulling his upper body down against hers with surprising strength. “Lorin and Gabe are gone, and everyone else is watching a movie.” Their eyes met in the dim light. “Kiss me, Robert.”

Her demand inflamed him. His incisors throbbed, and his staff surged to life under his rough pants. “Witch,” he muttered against her petal-soft lips, flicking his tongue against the tender upper bow. He pressed her arms over her head, held her wrists in his hands, and simply stared. Her extraordinary hair spilled over the table in a nimbus of light. Tightening her legs around his hips, she writhed, making a soft mewing sound in the back of her throat—as if being denied his lips, his touch, caused her physical pain.

He wanted to pierce, to plunge, to lose himself in the tight clasp of her body. To possess her with both teeth and staff—a pleasure he had not yet permitted himself. Beddoe raked his gaze over the bounty of her stretched-out frame. Her outer garments covered most of her arteries, but even in the dim light, he could see the delicate capillaries tracing her temples, and the tender veins branching her wrists. Blood pulsed in her neck, and a vulnerable slice of bare belly was exposed by her writhing.

After a tongue-tangling kiss, he tugged at the waistband of her shirt, lifting it up her torso, baring her skin to the air. Her body arched as he kissed each inch of exposed skin. Her breath came in shallow pants the closer he got to her breasts. He jerked the bundle of fabric up and inside out—covering her head, trapping her arms, and exposing her torso. He examined every pale, unblemished inch, not touching her, until she groaned under the layers of fabric, pushing her luscious breasts toward his mouth.

“Please,” she moaned from under the layers of fabric.

“Please what?” Her tiny pink nipples were hard, begging for his mouth. He lowered his head, his hot breath puffing against the tender curve of her left breast. She shivered violently, writhing against the constraints of her clothing. Under the layers, her head tossed back and forth. Her hips rolled against his staff, her torso arching even higher off the rough table, demanding a harder touch.

He gave the nipple a tiny lick, and then backed away. “Tell me what you want.”

“Robert,” she groaned.

Pulling back slightly, Beddoe waited. The lovers who came after him would thank him for teaching her to accept, and ask for, what her body wanted—but in the meantime, he’d train her well, and enjoy the fruits of his labors. Perhaps their liaison could continue after he claimed this territory.

With a groan, Paige shifted her weight and pushed the nipple into his mouth with unerring instinct. “Suck me!” she begged.

“Gladly,” he murmured, finally latching on to her pink, crinkled skin, the delicious nipple. He tested its hardness with his tongue, suckling strongly to reward her.

“Ah!” Her entire torso lifted off the table in response. Tools clanked as she thumped down roughly. Her wrist hit the rim of one of the shallow pans littering the table. Reaching over to push the pan out of range, he saw the familiar shape, the familiar glint of metal.

A cryotube? Here?

His thoughts raced. It was unmistakably a cryotube—an ancient one, given the rudimentary touch clasp on the blocky outcropping at the base. Such devices had long been standard equipment on ships making long-haul voyages. He rarely thought about his own seed and skin cells nestled in stasis alongside those of his command crew in a similar unit on board the
TonTon,
but in the event the ship went down and rescue wasn’t possible, the ’tube’s contents gave survivors a fighting chance to repopulate, to avoid extinction.

First a beacon with the
Arkapaedis
’s signature, and now a cryotube? No need to see the ship’s physical wreckage; he’d found the
Arkapaedis
’s final resting place.

Had Captain Noah Pritchard breached the ’tube? Did it still contain the captain’s own genetic material? Did his descendents, and the descendents of his command crew, walk this tiny, backwater planet? Beddoe swallowed hard. If he was clever—if he handled things very carefully indeed—he could be rich beyond measure.

Questioning Paige Scott was more important than ever.

Reaching to the waistband of her pants, he slipped the closure open, lowered the metal fastener, and delved his hand under the layers to touch her slippery, intimate heat. As she writhed, he gave a tiny mental push:
What
is
this
place? What do you seek here?

Paige reared up, scrabbling at the fabric covering her head.

Distract.
“You like being teased,” he purred, cupping her mound. “You’re burning up.”

She pushed the garment back down so she could see, blocking her precious breasts and all that fine-grained skin hidden from his view. In the dim light of the room, her sunset-colored eyes looked nearly black.

She nipped at the point of his chin with her tiny white teeth, a surprising sting that shrilled all the way down his spine.
Why
do
you
want
to
know?
She punctuated her mental question with a lithe stretch of her neck.

Nothing she could do would affect him more, and her low, knowing laugh meant the little witch knew it. He latched his lips onto that tender juncture where neck met shoulder.

Her throat vibrated against his mouth as she spoke. “I’ll answer a question if you do.” She snaked her hands under his upper body garment, stroking up his abdomen, his chest—“What’s this?” Her nimble fingers traced the barely discernible outline of his plant.

Dia.
He shouldn’t have allowed her to touch his body so freely. How could he explain? So far, he hadn’t seen any evidence of even the most rudimentary comporganic intelligence. “What a waste of a question,” he responded, scratching his teeth against her neck to distract her.