Only Superhuman (20 page)

Psyche chuckled, writhing languidly against Emry’s body. “So? It’s not like you’re married to him. Come on, Emry, stop making excuses. I gave you what you wanted,” she said, glancing at the pile of naked men on the bed. “Now let me give you what you need.”

Emry gazed into Psyche’s shimmering silver eyes, seeing prismatic colors within them. Suddenly it all seemed so simple. This time it was she who initiated the kiss. It was many minutes before their mouths parted, and that was only to begin devouring the rest of each other’s bodies. Their fatigue vanishing, they wrestled fiercely, playfully jockeying for dominance, enjoying their defeats as much as their victories. Psyche was every bit as strong as she claimed, and Emry reveled in the freedom to let herself go in a way she’d rarely been able to do with another woman. Both women would have interesting bruises in the morning, and much of Psyche’s furniture would never be the same.

But in due time, the ferocity of their passion gave way to tenderness, gentle intimacy, and the sheer joy of exploring one another. The lovers reveled in their contrasts, not only of body but of approach, raw impulse and appetite versus expert pleasuring and generosity. But Emry was no slouch with technique and Psyche responded with undeniable passion. They brought out the best in each other. Sex with a woman had never felt so perfect to Emry. Sex with anyone had rarely felt so perfect.

And it wasn’t just the sex, she realized between orgasms. It was the company. She felt completely at ease with Psyche, as though they’d been best friends her whole life. True, Psyche’s chemical signals had to be a part of it, but there was more. Psyche
understood
her. She sensed her needs and responded to them selflessly. And she let Emry see her own vulnerability, her own need to let someone get close without the games and seduction. After a while she stopped trying to impress Emry with her prowess and simply let it happen spontaneously, technique giving way to raw hunger and joy.

As Psyche’s lips devoured hers again, as her hands cradled and kneaded Emry’s head, Emry felt herself letting go, feeling more at peace than she could remember being in the past decade. Was that smart? Was she forgetting her mission, her assignment to spy on these people? Right now, she didn’t care. All she knew was that Psyche was her friend, and she was beautiful, and she made Emry happy.

And then the next orgasm came, and Emry knew nothing at all after that.

9

Thornes of a Dilemma

Emry awoke to find daylight streaming through the windows. Psyche stood over her, clad in a t-shirt and tight blue shorts and with her hair in a gleaming Rapunzelean braid. After kissing Emry good morning and passing along the good-bye kisses of their guests, Psyche wrinked her nose and said, “Umm, honey, you smell like six sweaty people. You better take a shower before you come out for brunch.”

“Brunch? I slept that long?”

Psyche swatted her rump. “Sign of a clear conscience.” Emry didn’t let Psyche see her face as she hurried to the bathroom.

The shower was heaven. It was hard to find a shower head that could spray forcefully or scaldingly enough to pummel the tension and fatigue from muscles like Emry’s. Most showers weren’t equipped for it, due to safety concerns.
Zephyr
’s shower tube suffered from the vagaries of water pressure at shifting accelerations, and in free fall the water flow had to be kept low enough not to overwhelm the tube’s suction draining. But Psyche’s shower could be used for crowd control. Thank the Goddess the Vanguardians were a robust people.

She would’ve gladly stayed in the shower indefinitely, but she was starving. She availed herself of its air-dry mode, though she still needed to wring water out of her thick mane and towel it off before blow-drying could commence. As she emerged from the bathroom, she heard Psyche calling from the doorway, muffled by the thick towel around her ears. “Emry, could you come out here for a sec?” Still toweling her head, Emry followed Psyche’s voice out into the living room.

Only to be confronted by the sight of Eliot Thorne, who stood by the sofa, calmly sizing her up.

Emry gasped. She’d always found this man spectacularly gorgeous in images, but standing mere meters away from him was a whole different matter. He was over two meters tall, powerfully muscled, and even standing still he showed the grace of a panther. His black and burgundy garment was elegant and businesslike, but it hugged his awesomely sculpted contours and was cut in a deep
V
that bared most of his chest and midriff. His face was strong, unyielding, and deeply beautiful. His eyes were the deepest, most colorful black she’d ever seen. His tightly curled hair was shorn in a close, utilitarian style, and a faint, dignified frost of gray around his temples was the only indication of his seventy-three years. His skin was a brown so deep and saturated that it shone like burnished iron.

Emry had been fantasizing about this man since she was twelve. Yet it hadn’t prepared her for the stunning reality. He radiated charisma and sensuality more powerfully than any three other men she’d ever known.

And he was looking right at her and she was completely naked except for a towel around her head. Once that sank in, she let out a yelp and hid her body behind the towel.

Psyche laughed out loud, earning a glare from Emry. “I’m sorry,” Psyche said between giggles. “I couldn’t resist.”

Emry sidled over to her. “Where are my clothes?” she hissed.

“Oh,” Psyche said in a normal tone, “I just put them in the laundry unit. They should be ready in, ohh, ten minutes or so.” She was still giggling. At Emry’s continued glare, Psyche moved in to whisper in her ear. “I just thought I’d help make a fantasy come true.”

Thorne himself took a step closer. “My apologies, Ms. Blair,” he said in the deep, mellifluous voice she knew so well from the history tapes. Her legs almost melted at the sound of it. “My daughter enjoys her practical jokes. And I am sometimes too quick to indulge her. I assure you, no harm was meant.”

After a moment, Emry had to question her own burst of unwonted modesty. Usually when she was naked with a man, it put
her
in the more powerful position. But Eliot Thorne wasn’t just any man. He was indeed a fantasy come to life, and that made her vulnerable. She wasn’t comfortable leaving her body exposed to him right now, letting him see exactly how it was responding to the sight of him, the
scent
of him.

Then again, she reminded herself, the Green Blaze wasn’t just any woman. And acting so modest was itself a confession of vulnerability. Gathering herself, she smiled. “That’s okay,” she said, lowering the towel and taking her time wrapping it around her waist like a skirt. “You just took me a bit by surprise, is all. My hair must look a mess. And I haven’t eaten yet,” she added, turning to Psyche. “You said something about brunch? I’m famished.”

She let Thorne escort her to the dining room. He chuckled. “Proud and stubborn. You are Richard Shannon’s child.”

She wanted to glare at him, but was hesitant to meet his eyes. Instead she focused on helping herself to some fruit. “My father was a very selfless man,” she said. “And if he was stubborn, it was only about the good of other people.”

Psyche, who had gone back into the bedroom for a moment, returned with a dressing gown that she helped Emry don and a hairbrush that she deftly applied to Emry’s ginger tresses as an apology for her prank. Thorne went on in the meantime. “True enough. He was quite the crusader.”

She managed to meet his eyes this time. “So were you, once upon a time.”

He studied her. “I was never an idealist. Merely someone who decided that the state of affairs on Earth was untenable and that we were capable of doing something about it.”

“Yeah. Whatever happened to that?” She was practically trembling at daring to talk back to him this way. But her memory of her father’s resentment toward the Vanguard gave her the strength.

Thorne remained unfazed. “I’m tempted to say I outgrew it. But that would be disrespectful, considering how you’ve followed Richard’s example.” His chiseled brow furrowed. “Indeed, I find it surprising that he never became a Troubleshooter himself.”

“He was no fighter,” Emry replied. “He helped in other ways.”

“And yet he condemned my refusal to become involved in the Belt’s turmoil … even though he knew what form such involvement would take.”

“You could’ve done rescue work, like he did. Or used those great minds to negotiate a peace.”

“We tried that at Earth, and only alienated both sides. Would any of the sides here have accepted us as representatives? The newcomers blamed us for their exile, and to the Striders, we were just one more set of immigrants. And what did we—”

He broke off. “No. There is nothing to be gained by rehashing a decades-old argument. The truth is, Richard may have been right. People with the power to make a difference should not stand by while chaos looms. Things have only grown more dangerous in the decades since—organized crime, inter-habitat strife, terrorism, all exacerbated by the abuse of human modification.”

“Hey, we do our part!”

“No question, the Troubleshooters have saved many lives. But have you really made any headway against the root problems?”

“We’re working on it. We’ve been expanding our operations, getting into preemptive crisis management, diplomacy, the whole deal.”

“Ahh, yes, the initiative spearheaded by Mr. Gregor Tai and his Cerean consortium.”

“You’re not so out of touch after all.”

“Oh, I’ve made a point of becoming familiar with Mr. Tai’s activities. Particularly since he sent one of his pet Troubleshooters to spy on my people.”

Emry choked on her orange juice. “Wha—excuse me?”

Psyche stopped her brushing and put an arm protectively around Emry’s shoulders. “Dad, what are you saying?”

“I didn’t want to believe it either, my dear. But don’t let sentiment blind you. Tai sees our conference as a threat, a power play. He doesn’t trust the Neogaians, the Zarathustrans, us—anyone who wouldn’t readily play along with his idea of utopia.” Thorne’s voice grew harder as he spoke, and he rose to his full two-and-a-sixth meters’ height. “So he sent in a mole. One of our own who could exploit her family ties to gain our confidence—all the while reporting to her new master, an agent of the very world that hounded us into exile, to give him fodder for a new witch hunt!”

Emry had risen to face him, insofar as she could at three-quarters his height. “I don’t know what book of fairy tales you’ve been reading. But I don’t have to sit here and take this kind of suit-fart.” She strode toward the laundry unit to retrieve her uniform, trying not to make it look like a retreat. But she might need her light armor, from the look of things.

But Thorne followed, caught her left arm, and spun her around—not violently, but with irresistible force. “Were you watching her microexpressions, Psyche?”

His daughter grew sad as she gazed at Emry. “Yes, Dad. They weren’t very subtle. She’s lying.” Emry winced. She’d been through the training to repress her microexpressions—the split-second “tells” that showed on the faces of even skilled liars. But it wasn’t an area she’d scored highly in. She should’ve known she couldn’t fool someone with Psyche’s enhanced social perceptions.

“Good girl.” He turned his gaze back to Emry, his grip still firm around her arm. “You aren’t a very good bluffer, Emerald. Tai should never have assigned you to a mission like this, even with the advantage of blood ties. His mistake was defining you too much by your genes.”

Emry struggled to wrench her arm free, but his fingers only clenched it more painfully. She shot out her right hand at the nerve cluster that should weaken his grip, but in a flash he caught her right arm with his other hand. She tried to sweep a leg around to take his out from under him, but he yanked her into the air by her wrists. She swung back and started to pull up her legs to kick at him, but he spun her around and tossed her clear over the couch.

“Dad!” Psyche cried. “Don’t hurt her!”

But Emry was back on her feet, and she was grinning. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said confidently. “He won’t.” She ran forward … only to find herself flung back the way she came, this time landing
on
the couch.

Emry was disoriented, and not just from being tossed around. She hadn’t been overpowered this easily since she was ten. But as her stomach settled, she reminded herself that she enjoyed a challenge.
Sure—this is just starting to get interesting.

But she wasn’t going to attack recklessly again. Coming to her feet, she circled Thorne, sizing him up while she called subvocally for Zephyr. Only static returned. “My ship. What have you done to him?”

“Merely locked him in his docking bay and jammed his comms,” Thorne told her. “We have no wish to harm anyone. You are the aggressor here.”

“And why should I believe that?” she countered, engaging him verbally to keep him occupied while she readied her next move. “First you abandoned the Belt when it needed you … now you get in bed with militants, murderers, and terrorists!”

“And whom have you been getting in bed with?” Thorne replied coldly.

“You don’t get to be holier-than-thou, mister—not the way you pimp your own daughter!”

Psyche let out an indignant “Hey?!”

Thorne’s eyes darted to her for a split second, and Emry took the opening to strike at his blind side. But Psyche interposed herself, a hand extended to block each of them. “All right, that’s enough! Stop this!” Her usually gentle, warm voice took on a striking air of command, bringing Emry to a halt as effectively as her physical intervention.

“Psyche,” Thorne began.

“No, Dad! This is my home, and we’ll do this my way.” She put her hands on Emry’s shoulders. “Emry? It’s true, then? You were sent here to, to gather evidence against us? All this, it was just an act?”

The sadness on her face, in her voice, was wrenching. Emry hated the idea of betraying her. She tried to remind herself that she hadn’t really done anything wrong—and that Psyche was hardly in a position to judge her for employing a little seduction. “Look … it’s not like that. I was just sent to observe. To find out if the conference was really about what you said. As long as you weren’t up to anything bad, we weren’t gonna get in your way.”