Blowback (17 page)

She started to slide back and he tried to hold her. She
braced her feet on the chair and pushed. Tom struggled. He could feel his arm
muscles bunch and he started sweating with the effort of holding her close, but
in the end,
genta
strength won and she settled herself on his thighs—far
enough away that Tom’s cock felt the neglect.

Without commenting on Tom’s touch of rebellion, Da’shay
picked up a cloth and ran water over it before wiping away the last of the
soap. About halfway through, she paused to tangle her fingers in his hair.

“About time for a cut,” Tom said. He knew he sounded inane,
but the silence in the small room had grown too heavy for him.

“Like it shaggy. Unruly. Like Tom.”

“I thought you wanted me to play at being a rule-following
slave?”

She went back to wiping his face and then his chest and
shoulders, either cleaning specks of soap or just wiping off the beads of
sweat. “Want you to play Tom-slave.”

Da’shay sounded almost coherent, but Tom wasn’t sure he
still had enough blood in his big head for three brain cells to fire at the
same time. “What exactly are the rules for that?”

She reached for the last jar and stared at the clear gel
inside for long seconds. “Be Tom.”

Tom snorted. “In case you ain’t noticed, I’m not good at
being a slave. I keep glaring at people and then I keep expecting you to get
upset with me for glaring at them.”

Da’shay looked up at him, her unnaturally large eyes
studying him. “You’re not their slave. Glare at them. Threaten to shoot them.
Search rooms for listening devices. Hit people. Whispers of people telling me
to be someone else. I don’t like that so I won’t whisper to Tom. Da’shay acts
like Da’shay and Tom acts like Tom.”

When she stroked his cheek, Tom jumped in surprise as the
cooling gel soothed his face. “Hands!” she said sharply. Tom hadn’t even
realized he’d moved them, but he put them back where she wanted and waited as
she let her fingers stroke over his cheeks and neck again and again. The cool
was enough of a shock to take a little of the edge off his need to come, but
not much. If they got on the
Kratos
tomorrow and flew back to government
space, Tom was going to be masturbating to this memory for the rest of his
life. And the fact that she wanted him to be himself was going to figure into
that fantasy.

“Wait. Who tells you to be someone else?”

Da’shay sighed. “Whispers in diamonds until they scream
about how wrong I am,” she said with such sorrow that Tom was feeling more
sympathy than he was used to. She finally seemed to get enough of stroking him.
Twisting around in his lap, she reached over to wash her hands without getting
off.

“So, how is Tom-slave different than Tom?” he asked as she
dried them.

Again, she looked at him for a long time. With one finger,
she traced the swirls of his slave mark for a while. The skin was still
sensitive and Tom struggled to keep his hands where they were supposed to be.

“Tom-slave should believe that crazy
genta
girl can
swim, even if the words are all tangled in her head.” Her gaze drifted from his
mark up to his face. “Tom-slave should follow so I can get him back to the
exit.”

“And the totally and completely fucking crazy people?”

Da’shay pursed her lips, a gesture that made her look even
more alien. “They think their vultures picked out all the scabs, skin sticking
to them. Think to swim in diamonds and not get cut.” She leaned back.
“Tom-slave following, I can swim hard enough for both of us. Show the captain
the totally and completely fucking crazy people—rip the masks so that all the
mice will eat their feet.”

Only about a third of that made any sense to Tom, but if
there was some group of psychos out there, showing Ramsay their true faces
sounded like a good plan to him. It was a little short on detail, but then he’d
spend six years following Ramsay when the man tended to come up with plans that
included directions like, “don’t get yourself dead” and “figure it out.” He was
actually pretty fucking good at handling vague directions.

“So, you want me to follow you the way I do Ramsay?” Tom
asked.

She blinked and seemed to think hard on that. Then she
leaned forward. Tom groaned. “Like to touch,” she said. She pressed a kiss to
his shoulder and then the side of his neck as she trailed fingers up and down
his arms. “Only touch. Taste. Such good tastes. Diamonds on my tongue.” She
whispered the words against his neck, her warm breath ghosting over his hot
skin. “Slave-Tom lets me taste.”

“Taste as in?” Tom held his breath and prayed to any god
that would listen that she was going to do something—rip his towel off and ride
him, take him in her mouth, wrap long fingers around his shaft and pull at him
until he came. He didn’t care. He knew that he needed more and he was stuck
with his hands on her hips.

“Touch. Only touch.” Da’shay stood up, and Tom grunted with
need, but he kept his hands in place as she stood over him. She stroked his
hair until he couldn’t help but squirm some, the need to come quickly
overwhelming his need to follow her orders. Just as he was about to grab
himself and jerk off, her hands caught his wrists in a grip of iron as she
studied him, and all he could do was squirm as the towel came untucked and part
of it fell away.

“Should have an orgasm and then come to bed,” she said as
calmly as if she’d been discussing the sunshine. Then she let him go and turned
to head back into the bedroom. She hadn’t even vanished from sight before Tom
swept the towel away with one hand and jerked himself off with the other. His
cock was hard and hot under his hand as he squeezed it, thrusting his hips up
into his grasp. With a gasp, he came, white come splattering over his hand and
the towel as he sagged back in the chair, his muscles shaking. He’d paid good
money and never come that hard, and she hadn’t even given him sex. Hell, his
head really was screwed on backward.

His legs still shaking, Tom pushed himself up and wiped his
hand off on the towel before dropping it to the ground. He still didn’t have
any clothes, and she’d made him ruin the only full-sized towel.

Tom walked out of the bathroom buck naked and stopped.
Da’shay was on the bed, naked, her head thrown back and her face twisted into
that wonderfully ugly face women made when they came. Her chest heaved as she
gasped for air and she had ripped the bed covers loose.

She opened her eyes, and they were pure black. Holding out a
hand, she called him. “Come.”

“Was looking for clothes,” Tom said. He’d never seen a woman
orgasm except when he was right there lost in the middle of the lust with her
or when he’d been watching some vid. He suspected both were faked as often as
not, but Da’shay’s whole body had been tight and twisted with her orgasm.

“Time to sleep. Want to touch.”

Da’shay pulled the sheet aside and then squirmed over to get
under it before holding it up for him to join her. The very fact that Tom
wanted nothing more than to slide between those sheets should have sent him
running the other direction. He could feel himself slide into this comfortable
place where he was content making her happy and that was an unsafe place to be.
Comfortable, but unsafe.

However, he also didn’t have a lot of choices. He’d agreed
to playing slave, and even if he hadn’t, he was starting to suspect she could
make him a slave easy enough. He fingered the slave mark she’d chosen and put
on him as he moved closer to the bed. She watched as he sat on the edge and
then slipped his feet between the sheets and shifted around to lie on his
stomach.

“We doing something about those totally and completely
fucking crazy people tomorrow?” Tom asked. He realized that he couldn’t do
anything if she said “no,” but there was some part of him that needed
reassurance that he wasn’t just putting his neck in a collar here. He needed to
know that the damage his psyche was taking served some cause other than
Da’shay’s.

“Yep. Start with Hou. Make sure totally and completely
fucking crazy people know that Ramsay’s story tastes true. We only came to
demand money, make claims.” She shifted closer and pulled the sheet part of the
way off Tom’s back so she could lay draped over him. She rested her head on his
shoulder so that her hair tumbled down and tickled him. “After Hou, we go and
find Ramsay.” She whispered the promise, but Tom clung to those words and
prayed that Da’shay wasn’t one more person who was going to let him down,
because the mark and the collar meant he couldn’t just walk away this time.

Tom walked through the crowd in Palapa Tower, this time with
Da’shay instead of Ramsay. He rested his hand on the end of the gun Da’shay had
handed back to him this morning and glared at anyone who dared to look at him
for too long. Unfortunately, too many people were. Da’shay had put him in a
filmy silk shirt that caught the light, but did nothing to cover him. His slave
mark and every muscle were clear for the world to see. He looked like a fucking
rent boy.

The collar yanked against his neck and Tom turned to look
behind him. Da’shay was staring off at one of the windows, her gaze blank;
however, his leash was still wrapped around her fist. He reached out and caught
the taut chain to give it a sharp pull. “Hey, princess,” Tom called. Da’shay
blinked and stared at him as if she wasn’t sure who he was. He was seriously
starting to doubt that she could deal with Hou without getting them both
killed, but then aliens had their own logic and it was never logical. He’d
given his word, and he’d live by it. Or he’d die by it. One or the other.

Turning back toward their destination, he started walking
again. His collar dug into his neck as he dragged her for the first few steps
and then she was back with him, following behind as he pushed through the
crowd. This time, if Veska Hou tried blowing them up, he had permission to
shoot the bastard. Tom never had been a forgiving soul, and having someone blow
him up not once but twice was grating on the nerves.

Da’shay moved to his side, wrapping her hand around his arm
when they reached an escalator. Instead of standing on her own step, she crowded
in with him and leaned against his arm. “Dish with too many spices. Diamonds
spilling out onto the floor.”

He looked at her. “I know you think I’m going to figure the
diamond shit out, but I think you’re overestimating my ability to figure out,”
he warned.

She looked at him. “You know how to not get lost in all the
sparkles. That’s more than I know.”

He didn’t understand a word of that, but he could see her
sadness and the shame that she had failed in some way. He reached over and let
his fingers push back her hair from her face. It was cool and slick, smoother
than a human’s and thick. He leaned close to whisper. “Princess, are you okay
doing this today? If you’re not tracking with reality, this ain’t the time to
walk into enemy territory.”

She leaned into him and stared back at the level they were
leaving behind. Shops lined the wall and the sun was starting to come in the
tall windows. “I don’t have to taste all the flavors.” She straightened up and
smiled at him. “Going to inform Veska Hou that he violated my shipmates.”

“Say it that way and it sounds a little worse than him just
blowing us up,” he complained.

“Yep,” she agreed with a fierceness. The escalator reached
the top and she took off before him so that now he followed her.

Now if she could just keep feeling fierce as they talked to
Hou, they might get out of this without getting blown up or arrested again. It
did seem unfair that Hou had set off low level explosives and Tom had been the
one charged. Actually, the paperwork Da’shay had shown him when they’d gotten
up said that Tom Frieden and Jonathan Ramsay were co-conspirators, but the fine
had been paid and Tom had been sentenced to slavery, so for some reason that
got Ramsay off the hook. Da’shay had tried to explain local laws, something to
do with superiors and subordinates, but Tom didn’t care much about even Corps
law, so slaver law was just so many worthless words to him.

“Mice in the cat trap.” Da’shay pointed at the glass wall
that marked the beginning of Hou’s territory and Tom was having an
uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. Hopefully this time he wouldn’t get blown up.
Da’shay stopped.

“We waiting here?” he asked. Inside, the same secretary that
had tried to stop him and Ramsay was coming out from behind his desk with an
alarmed expression on his face. Fucking right, he should be alarmed.

Da’shay looked at the secretary and then at Tom. “I’ll break
him into little pieces if he says ‘no’ while diamond slices like little
papercuts,” Da’shay said. Tom didn’t understand most of that, but it did seem
like killing the secretary might be a bit much. When Tom killed, he preferred
to target the bosses. Some little slave who did Hou’s paperwork sure as hell
hadn’t been the one to set either bomb.

“Then let me deal with the little rat,” Tom said. Turning
toward the door, he gave the secretary a hard stare as he opened it.

“You are not allowed to come in here. Mr. Hou does not have
time for more interruptions and last time you blew his office up.” The man’s
hands were up as if he could push Tom back out. Da’shay wandered in after him,
Tom’s leash still wrapped around her hand as she looked at everything except
the secretary.

“I didn’t blow shit up. I got blown up. Twice. And me and
Hou are going to discuss that.” Tom pushed past the secretary and headed for
Hou’s office.

‘You can’t go in there.” The secretary chased along after
him until Tom caught sight of Hou’s new door. Fuck. It had a biorecognition
lock. Tom could override one of those if he had about an hour and a shitload of
equipment. He didn’t.

Tom turned to the secretary. “Open it.”

The man started shaking his head and backing away. Tom eased
closer to the man, trying to keep him from running, but the secretary dashed
away. Not remembering the collar, Tom raced between desks, shoving shocked workers
and slaves as he followed. When the secretary tried to dart through a door and
close it behind him, Tom slapped the door open and sent the guy falling on his
butt.

“Don’t piss me off,” Tom warned as he reached down and
caught the guy by the shirt and hauled him up.

“Mr. Hou can’t see you!” he squawked as Tom dragged him
back. Da’shay had dropped the leash and now Tom headed back through the office
with the chain rattling against the floor. The noise was like fingernails down
a chalkboard, so that by the time they got back to Da’shay and Hou’s door, Tom
could feel his temper fraying.

Da’shay walked over and looked at him for a long time before
she fingered his leash, slowly pulling it up off the floor and winding the end
around her fist.

Since he couldn’t bark at Da’shay, Tom turned to the
secretary who was still squirming to get away despite the fact that Tom had a
good hold on him. “Open it.” Tom slammed the man’s back into the wall for
emphasis. His hands came up and grabbed at Tom’s shoulders.

“Mr. Hou said—”

“Open it or I will cut your hand off and use it on the damn
lock,” Tom warned. The secretary’s eyes got large, but he went silent and Tom
took that as agreement. Pushing the man closer to the door, Tom kept a grip on
his shoulders as the secretary slipped his hand into the reader and let the
laser scan his eyeprint. The door opened.

“Thank you,” Tom said before he shoved the guy back and left
him to stumble his way back to his desk. Da’shay walked in before him and Tom
let his hand fall on the butt of his gun as he followed. If he got blown up a
third time, someone was dying.

Hou barely glanced up from his work. With a slight grimace,
he started the fast, hissing sounds of
genta
.

“No!” Da’shay spoke so sharply that Hou stopped mid-click.
“English.”

He made an odd bobbing gesture with his head while Da’shay
went to sit in the chair where Ramsay had sat not so long ago. She deliberately
unwound Tom’s leash from her hand and lowered it to the carpet. Instead of
retreating to the far wall, Tom stayed beside Da’shay, watching the big
genta
as he seemed to think.

“Why English?” Hou asked.

“Damage to the pars triangularis and pars opercularis.”

“Operable?”

Da’shay paused for less than a heartbeat, but in their
fast-paced conversation, even that slight pause stood out. “Potentially
damaging.”

“Limitation language specific?”

“Minimal functional impairment in human languages.”

“Human languages lack specificity.”

“Specificity is present enough to discuss the damage done to
property which I claim rights over.”

Like most people who had worked ships and docks, Tom had
spent time listening to
genta
specialists talking to the aliens.
Genta
took jobs on human ships and human shops all the time, but if you really wanted
to have a complex conversation with one of them, you had to go to someone who
could talk
genta
-like in English or just talk
genta
. Some people
either trained or had a natural talent for understanding the kind of illogic
that
genta
specialized in. Those folks, even when they spoke in English,
would throw around so many big words so fast that they might as well have been
speaking a foreign language. However, even those
genta
specialists never
talked as fast as these two.

Tom couldn’t rightly say he understood anything they were
saying, so he largely ignored the conversation as they threw around words like
“culpability” and “assets” and “incrimination.” He started circling slowly
around to the side of the desk, his eyes on Hou’s hands. He wasn’t going to
blow them up a third time, that was for damn sure. Tom rested his hand on his
gun and watched for any twitch.

Hou was leaning forward, his hands resting on his desk as he
started rattling off numbers, and Tom circled behind him. A human would have
thrown a fit by now, but Hou and Da’shay were off babbling about brains so that
Hou ignored the inherent danger in having an enemy at his back, and Tom was his
enemy.

“Illogical!” Hou insisted, slamming both his palms down on
his desk before he swung his chair around to look at Tom. Tom stared back, his
hand tightening on his gun. If this
genta
was going to start something,
Tom was going to put a bullet through his head before he had a chance to finish
it. “Standard genetically homogeneous human. Replace.” Tom frowned. Was he
suggesting Da’shay replace him?

“Sexually preferable than any human.”

“Training ameliorates.”

“Unacceptable training period.”

“Unacceptable costs. Minimal damage.”

Tom blinked. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought that
Da’shay had just called him sexy. He wasn’t understanding anything about the
training bit, and quite frankly, he didn’t want to understand. If she started
trying to sexually train him, he was going to shoot more than one
genta
in this room.

Hou leaned back and reached for his drawer. Tom pulled his
weapon and targeted the base of the
genta
’s head.

“Previous behavior dictates that you will not pull that
trigger,” Hou said. He slowed his words now that he was talking to Tom, but he
slowed them so much that Tom had the sudden feeling this guy was calling him
stupid. Considering that Hou was insulting the man who had a weapon aimed at
him, Tom wasn’t the only stupid one in the room.

“Target limbs,” Da’shay told him. Tom didn’t even think
twice. He put a bullet right into Hou’s right shoulder where the two bones met.
That would cause him a little more trouble than a simple flesh wound. Hou’s
mouth puckered into a tight point as he sucked in a breath. Smoke slowly
drifted up from Tom’s gun while blood seeped out of Hou’s wound. A human would
have been screaming and rolling on the ground, but Hou reached up and touched
the entry point of the bullet, pulling back his fingers to look at the red
staining them. Tom felt a little fluttering of fear in his stomach because
making a fuss in this
genta
’s office got him blown up and enslaved last
time he’d been here. Well, if it went wrong this time, at least he’d gotten to
shoot the son of a motherless bitch.

Hou turned his chair to focus more on Da’shay. “Better
response times.”

“Clarification of the hierarchical structure yielded
improvements.”

Hou leaned back and studied Da’shay. She stared right back
at him and Tom kept his gun targeted at the base of Hou’s head.

“One hundred credits,” Hou offered.

“Seven hundred.”

“Unacceptable. I lost embryos and payment.” Both
genta
had slowed down some now and Tom wondered if that was because they were getting
upset or getting less upset or trying to include him in the conversation.

Da’shay gave Hou one of her really annoying smiles. “Your
fault.”

“Human captain’s fault. Illogic of humans surpasses all
others. Explosives do not improve bargaining position.”

“Captain is dead. You are the next in the hierarchy.”

“Messa Tyles next in hierarchy,” he disagreed.

“Messa Tyles is little more than exile. No hierarchy. You
use him.” Da’shay leaned forward, her long fingers braced against his desktop
to make a strange sort of steeple.

“I use all humans,” Hou said. A human would have shown some
shame if saying something like that. Well, shame or pride, it depended on just
how selfish they were. But Hou made the statement as factually as if he’d been
describing sky color.

They argued numbers more, and Hou was starting to get a real
unhappy look on his face, and Tom took a deep, careful breath, centering
himself as he focused on his target. He’d grown up shooting rabbits darting
through bushes, so he had no doubt that he could hit the brain stem before Hou
could attack him. Well, maybe at the same time. If Hou lunged for him, momentum
could keep him moving even if Tom took the kill shot. If that happened, Tom was
going to be bruised for a long time, but Hou was going to be dead a whole lot
longer.

“Four crew. Two hundred each,” Hou countered. “Exclusive to
costs.” Considering a doxy cost thirty or forty credits, Tom figured that was
just about a fortune.

“Seven hundred for Tom,” she said, repeating her same offer
for about the ninth or tenth time.