“So you killed two birds with one stone? It’s paid off. Here I am, seduced. Putty in your hands. Tell me what you want, and it’s yours.”
“You’re just taking the piss!”
Raine smiled. “No, I’m not.”
Kit sighed and leaned back against the wall. He closed his eyes and spoke more quietly, seriously.
“Don’t do anything to help me escape. I don’t want you to sacrifice what you have here.”
“Why not?”
Kit opened his eyes, glared. “What, are you trying to drag a compliment out of me? Because I’m in love with you, you big fool. I can’t imagine why—you’re such a repressed, rigid, asshole bastard. I wish I wasn’t, and I wish you weren’t in love with me, because we’re both screwed up.”
“Love does that,” Raine said. “It’s something I’ve noticed. It’s supposed to make you happy, but in the end, it messes you up.”
Kit snorted. “You don’t have to tell me. How the hell do you think I ended up here?”
“I don’t think it was because you stole anything.”
Kit looked at him, expecting his face to be eager, thinking he’d finally ferreted the story out. But he only looked rather sad and sympathetic. Could now be the time to tell him? Kit knew he could trust Raine.
“I worked at one of the biggest corporations on Drexler. I was doing okay. I knew how to get ahead. Knew how to get promotions by being nice to the right people.”
He saw the look of shock on Raine’s face. At least it wasn’t disgust.
“It’s a game, Dan. You play the hand you’re dealt. I got dealt the pretty-boy hand. A player has to use all his cards.”
“Okay,” Raine said in his “I’m not judging you, except for the part where I’m totally judging you” voice.
“I started seeing a man, an actual board member. Quite a young guy, only a few years older than me. His family had a controlling interest in the firm. It sounds so stupid to say it, especially now I wish I’d never met him, but I thought I was in love with him.”
“Jeff?”
Kit stared. “How do you know that?”
“You’ve said the name in your sleep a few times.”
“Fuck. Sorry. That’s bad.” Though there were worse things. “Only in my sleep, though. Never—”
“No.” Raine cut him off sharply.
Relieved, Kit went on. “So there we were, thinking no two people in the galaxy ever loved the way we loved, when his family found out.”
“They didn’t approve of him being with a man?”
“They didn’t approve of him being with
this
man. Too low class. Fatherless. Not the right sort at all.”
“Snobs.”
“You bet. Even then it wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just a family matter. But they wanted him to go into politics, and then it would have mattered. Then they’d have needed someone more
suitable
.”
“Dicks.”
Kit looked at him and smiled. “You’re picking up bad habits from me. His dad warned me off, said I’d be fired. I didn’t care. Then the family tried to buy me off. I told them where they could stick their money.”
“Wow, it must have been love.”
Kit shot him a glare, though he knew he’d earned the dig with some of the things he’d said.
“So they set me up. Planted evidence I’d been embezzling and had me arrested. They had friends in the authorities who could make sure I’d have no chance in court.” He glanced at Raine, whose face had gone unreadable.
“But you escaped.”
“Jeff busted me out. He bribed the prison guards, got me to the docks, and then…” His voice faded. Because he couldn’t relive the moment. Though he no longer felt anything for Jeff, he couldn’t relive what he’d felt then.
“Please go on,” Raine said quietly.
It gave Kit courage. Someone should know. Whether Raine believed him or not, he should hear the truth.
“I thought we were going to run away together. But that wasn’t his plan. He said he was sorry for what his family had done to me and that he’d only expected his father to increase the buyout offer.”
“He knew about it?”
“Yes. From the start. He’d agreed to it. Guess he didn’t have the balls to end it himself. I don’t know what they think I’d have done if he had, but I swear, I’d never have bothered him again. I wouldn’t have gone to the press or anything.” He stopped. They’d taken a room near the docks to lie low waiting for the transport and had made up for the time apart. Jeff fucked him, then…fucked him over. Told him what the plan was. It had gone straight into the top five worst moments of Kit’s life. His mother’s death would always occupy the top slot.
“Either he didn’t love me, or he loved his ambition more, I don’t know. I couldn’t even argue. Too stunned. He gave me a bundle of cash and—”
“The cash we found in your hiding place?”
“Yeah. Gave it to me and left.”
Paid me off like a whore. Was I ever anything else to him
? “He’d arranged a berth on a transport for me, false name and everything, but I didn’t take it. I nearly tossed away the money but realized if I did, I’d be reduced to earning a living around the docks on my knees, so I hung on to it. I found the cargo being loaded onto this ship, and I managed to conceal myself and get aboard.”
“You could have ended up in an unpressurized hold.”
“Didn’t much care.” He shrugged. The numbness and despair had lasted a day before he’d noticed his stomach rumbling and had come back to his senses and started living again. “So, yeah. Like you say. Love messes you up.”
Did Raine believe it? Did he believe it only because he loved Kit? It was suddenly important to know one person believed it.
“Kit, did you think telling me this would make me
less
likely to want to help you? You’re the victim of injustice. If the captain and the company can’t find a way to help you, then my offer stands.”
“And my threat to kick your ass also stands.”
Raine smiled. “Understood.”
Raine didn’t press the point. He’d made his offer. Kit still had plenty of time to decide if he took him up on it, but he was determined he wouldn’t. He couldn’t ask Raine to risk everything. It wasn’t his problem. Except for the part where they loved each other, which kind of made each other’s problems their problems. But love didn’t have to mean a fairy tale, happy-ever-after-never-to-part. They would part. Nothing could prevent it. So they should make the most of the time they had together.
Time to start straight away on making the most. Kit crawled over the remains of the picnic and straddled Raine’s legs. Raine looked up at him, face flushed, eyes wide. He placed his hands on Kit’s waist as Kit pressed close, leaned down for a kiss, his loose hair brushing Raine’s shoulders and arms. They loved each other. The words were out, from both of them. And it added something to the kiss; extra spice, extra heat, extra intensity.
“We don’t have long,” Kit said softly.
“We have all night.”
Kit hadn’t meant tonight, but he suspected Raine understood. His response said they’d make the most of tonight and all the other nights before they were parted. Kit sighed and leaned into the kiss again, desire rising, need cresting. They should move, go back to Raine’s cabin, but he couldn’t stop the kiss, couldn’t let Raine stop touching him.
Raine had no time either, hard already and getting harder as Kit’s movement teased his confined erection. He started to groan, breaking the kiss, his head back, and Kit got busy, unbuttoning, unzipping. He pulled his shirt off over his head and then grabbed the cloth from the picnic, flinging the things off it. He shoved it between them, hoping to keep most of the mess off their clothes.
The rough texture of the cloth against his sensitive cock drove Kit to start pushing against Raine’s hard-on. He could go mad with the pleasure, he thought, rubbing harder, faster, glad again of the new strength in his legs. He held Raine’s shoulders for balance, gripped either side of Raine’s hips with his knees. Raine moved his hands from Kit’s hips to send them roaming instead over his bare chest and belly and shoulders. He leaned in to tease a nipple with his tongue.
A belated memory that they were in a public place, albeit hidden, kept Kit from shouting with pleasure. Kept him too from begging Raine to fuck him, wanting nothing more than to slide down onto the gorgeous cock dancing with his. But that really would be too messy. This would do for the moment. Later they could go back to Raine’s quarters, and then…
Then they had all night.
“Touch me,” Raine moaned. He writhed, giving a growl of frustration, his position not letting him move much, only able to push upwards a little. Kit reached under the cloth and shifted it around so it covered them but wasn’t between them, letting their cocks rub together, bare and hot. He wrapped his hand around the two of them as they slipped and slid, unable to do any more than hold on. But even just that felt so good, both the giving and receiving of the touch, sharing the touch.
Kit gasped when he felt Raine reach out to cup his hand, like a small embrace. With his other arm, Raine circled Kit’s waist and pulled him closer, to kiss and lick his chest.
Too good, almost too good
. Kit leaned down, sliding his free hand around the back of Raine’s head to pull him up as Kit bent down. Kissing. Raine kissed like he had fire in his blood about to burst out of him. So much control and so much passion under it. Best kisser Kit ever met.
Kit came quite suddenly, throwing his head back and giving a strangled-off cry of ecstasy. Raine followed quickly, climaxing while Kit was still over him, spine arched, hair in a wave down his back. His cum spurted on Kit’s belly and chest, warm and sticky and wonderful.
Kit flopped at last as his ecstasy ebbed and fell forward into Raine’s arms, holding him tight, safe, and warm.
“God, Dan, every time, I swear it’s—”
“Shh!” Raine hissed suddenly, head turning to look at the potted plants screening their little haven. “I hear someone.”
Kit looked too. Did he see shadows moving? So what if he did? Anyone coming to take a look after hearing the sounds they’d been making had no cause to be shocked. Raine looked back, and the pleasure had gone from his face, worry replacing it.
“Um, we maybe shouldn’t have…” he said.
“We can move to your cabin, if you like.”
“Should have done that ten minutes ago.”
“Hah! If we’d tried, you’d have ended up nailing me right in a corridor.”
Raine scowled and moved, forcing Kit to get off him. He rose, zipping up. “Some of us have a thing called self-control.”
Kit didn’t like the chill in those words. “Really? Tell me when you find yours.”
Chapter Fifteen
“This is not acceptable.” Preston glared at Captain Dryden, and Raine’s fists itched to put the bastard down. He’d better not. The captain wouldn’t like blood on her meeting room floor. “We’ll arrive at Saira fifteen days behind schedule.”
“And my company is prepared to pay the penalty fees,” Dryden said, staying calm, not rising to him. “Fifteen days is only three days into the penalty period.”
“The ship is travelling at only sixty-seven percent of its sustainable speed. If you speed up—”
“Mr. Preston, do you understand the concept of a convoy and that it can only travel at the speed of the slowest ship?” Her voice sounded innocent of sarcasm, but Preston bristled anyway.
“Then pull ahead of the convoy.”
The captain rubbed her forehead and sighed. She caught Raine’s eye when she looked up again, and he saw her exasperation.
“You want us to pull ahead of the convoy and the escort, leaving us alone and defenseless? If we do that, your ore might never get to Saira at all.”
“There’s been no pirate activity reported in the sectors between here and Saira for the past six months,” Sullivan put in. She had the contract open on her Link, though Raine felt sure she had it memorized.
“But there’s been a major operation against piracy in a neighboring sector recently,” Dryden said. “So they’ll be looking for somewhere quieter. Somewhere people will be careless because they think it’s safe.”
“Speculation,” Preston said with a dismissive wave. “They might move into any other sector.”
“If they want to steal space dust,” Raine said. “If they want to steal valuable cargoes, they’ll move into this one and wait for an unguarded ship to come by.”
Preston gave him a “who are you again?” look. “Why would pirates steal millions of kilotons of raw and processed ore?” he asked. “It’s hardly easily sold or transported.”
“The ship is carrying plenty of other cargo and stores,” Raine said. “All in bolt-on containers they could detach and tow away. We’re a tempting target.”
“Agreed,” Dryden said. “They might even take the entire ship as a prize, not only the cargo.”
“They’d have to have an army. There are hundreds of people aboard.”
Raine almost jumped in with his opinion of what he thought of the idea of the ore workers defending the ship against boarders, but the captain beat him to the punch.
“I can name five ways to neutralize the people in the ore plant without even thinking about it,” she said. “Give me a few minutes and it will be ten. I’m sorry, Mr. Preston; I don’t consider your factory workers to be an effective defense force against boarders.”
“No, that’s Mr. Raine’s job,” Sullivan said, glancing up from her contract. “If he isn’t too busy keeping a
close
watch on your stowaway.” She and Preston exchanged a smirk, and Raine bristled. Dammit, they even gossiped about him in the ore plant?
“I will not put my ship and crew in danger just to avoid three days’ worth of penalty fees.”
Dryden’s tone said,
Captain has spoken. Argument is over
. Back in Raine’s army days, if an officer had spoken in that tone, not a man or woman would have said another word but would have gone and carried out the orders with all speed. But Preston spoke.
“If the escort is the sticking point, then I’ll contact Commodore Wright and see what can be arranged.”
Dryden didn’t like it. Raine saw her eyes narrow. The ore-plant manager dealing directly with the escort was not the protocol. But he suspected that as a Chindran she didn’t mind the idea of a grubby bean counter like Preston bothering Commodore Wright.
“Go ahead,” she said. “He’ll tell you it’s entirely out of the questions. Are we done?”