Authors: Joely Sue Burkhart
Swallowing to work some moisture back into his mouth, he drawled, “Are you going to fuck me after you just fucked another man?”
Trailing her fingers up his arm, she tapped his shoulder thoughtfully as though he were just a cup, a table for her to drum away while in thought. With a slow, wide smile that made cold sweat trickle down his spine, she swung a thigh over his and sat on his lap, facing him. Her robe hung open, revealing the sweet curves of her body that he was forbidden to touch.
“Yes.” She leaned down, deliberately letting the cursed locket hang inches above his chest. In response, his heart tried to crawl out of his ribcage. “I believe I am.”
For a man like Sigmund Regret, every experience was about life and death. She alone had the ability to give him life…and take it away…which he found so irresistible that he came back for a taste of death each and every Solstice. They’d taken a holiday that was meant to be about rebirth and hope for spring, and warped it into an act of depraved release.
Once, she might have been horrified that she found pleasure in such a thing. Her conscience might quibble over semantics all it wanted, but in the end, she was torturing—even killing—him while she had intercourse with him. That he found great pleasure in it, too, didn’t make it any less unforgivable but a whole lot more pleasurable.
As though she were in no hurry whatsoever, she calmly pulled the tail of his fine lawn shirt out of his trousers. Pushing his shirt up, she stroked her hands up the planes of his abdomen, already damp and hot with his rising need. When her fingers stroked over the scar on his chest, he dropped his head back against the chair and let out a low, deep groan that vibrated his body against hers.
To prevent herself from jerking open his trousers in haste, she forced herself to remember that horrible day when he’d almost died. In the explosion, shrapnel had flown off the hull to lodge in his chest, an ugly jagged piece of metal that had sliced his heart and punctured his lungs. Blood had sprayed from his mouth with each exhale, yet he’d managed to head the ship toward Americus while she’d raced to seal the breech.
Lurching and rolling through the atmosphere of the colony planet, the skiff had barely held together, even with her care. Before she’d ever set her risky escape plan in motion, she’d researched every last detail, including a full schematic of Regret’s ship and its technical capabilities. A shield generator spawned by a device she could hold in her hand was the only thing that had kept the ship from disintegrating before they ever reached the ground, and even then, the crash had broken the tattered force shield, sending her and her wounded pilot tumbling about the cabin.
She planted her palm firmly over the old scar, as she’d done that day to stem the fountain of blood. “I can save you,” she whispered, hovering above his mouth so her breath fanned his face, repeating the words from that horrible day. “If you want to live.”
“Too many regrets,” he gasped, just as he had at the crash site. “Let me die.”
She swayed slightly, letting the locket swing between them. The metal burned, casting off enough heat to cause her to hiss out a breath. She knew the agony that awaited him if she touched it to his body. If she recalled her assemblers…
“Do it,” he ground out. “Please.”
Guilt tightened her throat. She could give him what they both wanted without the full transfer, but he always insisted. If she’d had her laboratory, she could have done a better job of refueling the assemblers that first time, and he wouldn’t think it necessary. “They don’t truly need to be recharged. The last time I checked, they had evolved enough to draw energy from your body to subsist on your life without any additional energy from me.”
“I like knowing that they give my life to you while I’m inside you, and carry part of you back to me.” His deep blue eyes pleaded, dark like the midnight sky as the Solstice approached. “Only you can give my life back to me.”
Dreading the pain the transfer would bring him—yet relishing his response—she unbuttoned his trousers. His cock sprang free, long and graceful like his fingers, artistry and grace in the sleek curve. She lingered, running her fingers up and down his length, wrapping her palm around him. She knew what he wanted, knew he ached for it, but still she hesitated.
“Please,” he panted. “The wait is intolerable.”
“I despise hurting you.”
He laughed roughly. “No, you don’t. You merely hate that you find pleasure in it, as do I. Please, Charlie, I need this. I need you.”
Sig was right, and she hated him for it. But she hated herself more.
Maybe I’ve always had the arrogance to believe I could take and give life as I chose. Why else did I dabble in my experiments, if not to improve on what God had already done?
Fisting her hand in the sleek golden hair falling about his face, she took him into her body on a hard lunge that drove her breath out on low groan of bliss. She rocked her hips, driving their need higher, but she carefully kept the locket from him. He wrestled against his bonds, the tendons standing out in his neck as he fought to bring her closer, to take the pain and death he craved so very much. The chair creaked ominously but held.
Good, solid workmanship; she couldn’t help but be amused.
Beads of sweat dripping down his face, he gazed up at her with death hovering in his eyes. His muscles gathered, his breath growling in his throat. It was time. God help her.
She leaned down and allowed the locket to lie upon his scarred chest. His back bowed and he shuddered so hard she feared even the finely crafted chair would never hold, let alone the fragile silk belt of his bonds. To keep him from alerting every colonist in Queenstown, she planted her mouth over his and inhaled his scream, drinking his cries as she drank his life.
As her creations returned to their origin, the locket seemed to catch fire between them, molten metal searing her breast. Too tiny for her human eyes to see, her assemblers crawled out of his pores and cells. All year long, she wore the locket against her skin, allowing her body heat and life energy to infuse the battery cells within, so that if he ever needed a jolt, all he had to do was reach her. She’d also programmed her assemblers to emit alarms if his life energy ever ran too low, so even if he were too injured or weakened, she’d always be able to find him.
While she would mourn his death, she had an ulterior motive for such a detail—the tiny nanobots could never be allowed to fall into enemy hands.
He ripped his hands free, seized her hips, and slammed her down, holding her tight against him while he ground his pelvis against hers. Shuddering, she came, giving him her cries through their joined mouths, riding him until he slumped beneath her.
Gasping for breath, she pressed her fingers against his neck. Rapid but stuttering, his pulse began to slip away because his heart was too damaged to beat on its own. Only her assemblers were able to piece together the damaged organ and force it to beat. His face was ashen, his skin cold and clammy.
Worried, she flicked open the locket and examined the readings on the small display. So many. They’d managed to self-replicate as well as self-energize. Elated, but terrified of what she’d wrought at the same time, she tapped out a quick command to download the readings to her personal datapad and then keyed the nanobots to return to their host, freshly energized and carrying her commands.
She pressed the metal to his heart. With shaking fingers, she brushed his sweat-darkened hair off his forehead, nibbling on her lip while she waited. His breath rasped loud and uneven in the silence, the painful wheeze of someone dying, their cells starved of oxygen. “Why do you insist on coming so close to death?”
He made no answer, couldn’t, because he’d slipped into a temporary coma. She knew it was his body’s way of protecting itself from the invaders creeping into his bloodstream, but it still made her worry. What if he failed to awaken? What if her nanobots someday refused to return to their host? They weren’t sentient creatures, but they were evolving at a frightening rate.
They’ve likely invaded more of his body than his heart.
Her mind buzzed with possibilities. Had her research made him harder to kill? Given him faster reflexes? Sharpened his human senses? If she left Americus with him, she could study his responses at will.
And leave Gil behind to die in Queen Majel’s wrath.
Irritated at the tears leaking from her eyes, she dashed the dampness from her cheeks. Once she’d been trapped in Londonium, the honored yet imprisoned Queen’s Physician. She’d had no hope of rescue, even if her House had thought to defend her. She’d learned long ago that the only person she could ever count on was herself, and her mind was more than fearsome enough to plot its way out of anything.
Including the Tower of Londonium, a crashed ship, banishment on a poor colony, and years of isolation for fear of being found by the Queen’s Ravens. She would find a way off Americus without detection and without jeopardizing the few very precious friends she’d made.
Surely she could plot her way out of a love triangle without one of her men ending up dead.
“Charlie.” Sig moaned softly, his breathing returning to ease. “I need to go. Not safe for you.”
His words made her heart throb in sympathy with his. So that’s why he always left her in a hurry; he feared another bounty hunter would track him down and thus find her.
She hugged his head to her breast and he draped his arms around her, too weak to return her squeeze. “Come lie down for awhile. I want to hold you.”
She helped him stumble the short distance to her bedroom. He was too weak to even protest the mussed bed where she’d made love to Gil. Cradling Sig in her arms with his head over her heart, she stared up at the cold metal of her tiny cabin. She’d run out of silk before she could cover the ceiling. Besides, she needed a reminder now and then of where she was, and the danger that awaited her.
Here through the long, impossible winter months, she’d often laid awake through the darkest hours while winds howled about her cabin until they both shuddered with terror. She’d allowed a very dangerous fantasy play out in her mind.
Britannia’s global shields were the finest in the universe and always locked down tight. It would be no easy feat to breach the mighty shield. Lord Regret had managed to flit in and out of Londonium port before Charlotte’s planned death event, but since, he’d never dared attempt re-entry.
Even if one managed to slip inside the shield, Londonium now possessed an even tighter second shield, keyed, she suspected, to automatically scan DNA upon entry of every living creature. Once inside that shield, Raven Guards numbered in the thousands, and Queen Majel was rarely sighted outside Winsor, the most technologically advanced castle in the galaxy.
Sig breathed deeply and rhythmically, surely asleep so his body could recover the trauma of their annual exchange. So she dared whisper a question she didn’t really expect him to answer. “If I asked you to kill Queen Majel…”
“Yes.” His whisper was almost too low to hear, but she felt the word vibrate against her chest. “For you, I’d find a way.”
Chapter Five
One of the benefits of being a famous and well-paid assassin was definitely the toys…er…
equipment
. Back at his ship, Sig settled into a much smaller yet luxuriously appointed skiff to make a quick trip to York. Of course, one of the negatives of said fame meant he had to disguise himself to avoid bounty hunters and fans alike.
He needed information to confirm his hypotheses. Did Queen Majel truly suspect—or worse, know—that Lady Wyre hid on Americus? Despite the revolution, bustling York was more than big enough to house Royalists still loyal to the Queen, and as such, might be providing information to her. That river could flow both ways if enough pressure was applied, and he was an expert at finding points of weakness and pain.
Of course he might have been able to find such an informant in Queenstown, but that might have taken him longer to find a Royalist with high enough clearance. He was not merely flying to York to avoid the sheriff.
Sig grimaced at himself in the mirror one last time and called himself a fool.
Not at all.
The easiest solution, of course, would be to simply kill the competition. But then Charlie would probably never forgive him. On principle, she certainly wouldn’t then jump onto his catamaran and sail away with him to live happily ever after as he killed his way through the universe. So, cowardly avoidance it was, because he couldn’t afford to lose his temper and drop the bloody bastard with a bullet or blade to the groin.
Although he’d hidden his trademark golden hair, he dressed the part of Lord Regret, which meant nothing but the finest attire in the galaxy. No Royalist would ever stoop to confide in a man not dressed like a gentleman. Of course he needed to speak to the ladies, not the menfolk on this colony, for Queen Majel would have picked her top spies very carefully indeed. The colonists might have relaxed the rigid rules of Society Britannia had placed upon her citizens, but the aristocracy would never forget, and it was exactly a blooded House that he needed in order to get close to the Queen.
He especially needed a lady so desperate to return to Her Majesty’s good graces that she’d sell her own soul.
In the late hours of the morning, well-bred ladies could be counted upon to be browsing at the finest shops. As though he owned the entire district, Lord Regret flew directly to the East End where he paid a boy to wipe down his skiff and keep vandals and thieves at bay while he strolled the streets.
Within thirty minutes he was too disgusted to keep the curl of distaste from his lip. For a colony so determined to break free of Britannia’s tyranny, they had certainly casted themselves wholeheartedly into the role of the hated aristocracy. Not that Sig had anything directly against the blueblood of Britannia; how could he when his own parents had both been of powerful Houses? Even Lady Wyre carried herself with the same lofty pride and haughty airs that should have repelled him, but with her, he knew she possessed a lightning quick mind beneath the flimsy layers of artifice. She didn’t expect people to fall down and kiss her feet simply because she was the Duchess of Wyre.