Blowback (23 page)

Tom pulled off his shirt and dropped it to the floor before
sitting on his bunk. It felt like a world had gone by since he’d been in this
room. At the time, he thought he’d do most anything to get out of the room, and
now it felt good to get back into it.

He couldn’t stop cycling through images of the past few
days—Da’shay sitting on his lap and shaving him, Ramsay’s gaze darting down to
the slave mark, Becca’s wide eyes when the leash had gone on. He scratched his
slave mark. Ramsay wouldn’t ever look at him the same and he had no idea what was
going on with Da’shay. If he believed Becca, it was some
genta
thing to
try to gather followers, and Ramsay clearly thought Tom should get away from
her and stay away. However, Tom really couldn’t figure out what he was feeling.

He pulled his boots off and tossed them on top of the shirt
before lying down in the middle of his bunk, his stocking feet propped up on
the wall. Years ago he’d decided to trust people just so far and that usually
meant not trusting them at all. It had served him well. He moved from ship to
ship and did his job. If he was unpopular while he was doing it, he didn’t much
care. Tom preferred being disliked—it was easier. If people hated you up front,
there weren’t any surprises later on—no struggle to figure out where you
screwed up.

Like with Ramsay. Getting the mark clearly made him real
unhappy with Tom. The man had a narrow view on certain topics, like women and
victims, and now Tom had neatly slipped into that last category in Ramsay’s
mind. He could see that as if it were carved on Ramsay’s face. Maybe he should
cash out his retirement and go work for Carla. His pension had a lot of credits
sitting in it and Tom wasn’t a fool who would run through all that money in one
year. He could set it aside for emergencies or to pay the bills when he was too
old to work and he could live on the salary from the doxyhouse.

Tom’s hand stilled over his slave mark. Carla had suggested
that some women would pay to have him in their beds and he wondered if the
slave mark would change that. Some people never knew how to talk to someone
who’d been slaved and it wouldn’t matter if Tom explained that it had only been
for a case.

A crack of light darted across the floor and Tom rolled to
his side to watch his own door come open even though Tom had locked it. He
reached for his gun, pulling the hammer back and waiting for the intruder to
show himself. If the
Kratos
had been invaded, he should have heard the
alarm, but “should” and “did” weren’t always the same.

A hand wrapped around the edge of the door. Tom shifted his
aim. Black hair appeared a second before Da’shay’s face peeked around the
corner.

“Da’shay?” Tom uncocked the hammer on his gun and slipped it
back into the holster. “You gonna get dead sneaking up on a man in his bunk.”

She slipped inside and pushed the door closed before walking
over to the side of the bed. The low light that marked where the wall and floor
met let him see her standing there, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Her
nightgown was cut low enough that he could see the top of the darker skin where
the blue stripe between her breasts started. “What are you doing here?”

“Too many. Lights like prisms, diamonds spinning across the
ground. Sunlight refracted into a million pieces.”

Tom sighed and sat up. “You and your diamonds.”

“Yep,” she whispered. Moving closer, she let her hand brush
over Tom’s arm, fingers tickling him.

“So, your diamonds are bothering you, so you come here?”

She nodded. Tom sighed, not sure what to think. If this were
just about her wanting to control him, he suspected she could have reached that
goal without too much fuss. The fact was, he liked being led around by his
dick. He liked it so much that he had to be careful about when to allow himself
to indulge in that particular pleasure.

His first year in the Corps, he’d misjudged a woman and had
spent a night tied to a bed while her and her partner had spent every credit
off his ident card. Then, when they figured out that he really was as broke as
he claimed, they’d come back to give him a good beating before tossing him on
the street. That time Tom had passed it off with his captain as a rookie trying
so hard to impress the Corps that he’d gone in chasing a vague rumor and gotten
himself in trouble. This time, Tom wouldn’t have that excuse. If he fell for Da’shay
and she turned on him, he wouldn’t convince anyone that he’d made some rookie
mistake. Even knowing that, Tom wanted her.

Da’shay ran a finger up and down his arm. She smiled and
straddled his legs so she could sit on his lap and face him. Tom groaned as his
cock hardened. Reaching down, she unbuckled his gun belt and pulled it free.
Tom had a real strict policy about others not touching his gun, but something
in her gaze caught him. He studied the tilt of her head and the way her
nightgown rode up on her thighs. After pulling the gun belt free, she gently
lowered it to the ground. “Gave me a gift,” Da’shay whispered. She pushed his
shoulders, urging him to lie back on the bunk.

Tom struggled to stay upright since he didn’t want to talk
about that when he was on his back; however, she was just too strong. He ended
up on his back looking up at her.

Running her thumb across his lips, she leaned in so that her
cheek pressed to his, her breath stirred his hair. “Saw me—saw
genta
girl and not crazy girl—and all the red diamonds turned white. I was trapped
and then I was free.”

“That ain’t—” Tom tried to push her aside, but she easily
held him in place. “I’d be more willing to talk if you’d let me up for this
conversation,” Tom said calmly even though his cock was getting all kinds of
excited about a woman strong enough to push him down and hold him down.

“Ramsay brought you calm. Steel strong enough to chase the
fears away.” She caught his wrists in her hands and pinned them with her
genta
-strength.
“We all would have died in fire, fire starved by space, torn bodies turn to
ice. Little nanowiring whispering in the black.”

Tom stopped breathing. Fuck. She knew. She pulled back just
enough to give him a small smile. “It was a gift. I lost my first gift from you.”

That made Tom frown. “Wait. You like that I tried to stab
you in the back?”

She looked down at him, her fingers tight around his wrists
and she nodded. “You saw me. I was so lost in Becca’s swirls of yellow, all
numbers like teardrops of color.” Da’shay leaned in and brushed her cheek
against his again. “Washed it away. You saw me as the threat. You let me find
part of myself that the vultures had picked out with the scabs.” She pressed
herself back so she was sitting right on his cock, and Tom groaned and arched
his back. She gave him a wicked smile. “All lust,” she whispered in his ear,
her warm breath tickling across his skin. “You’re so sure.”

“Being sure ain’t the same as being right,” Tom pointed out.
Da’shay shifted around until she could put her knee into his crotch and then
she pressed up, forcing him farther up onto the bed. Since he liked his
genitals right where they were, he cooperated. Da’shay smiled at him and
released one of his hands long enough to run a finger over the slave mark. Tom
shivered.

“White. All white.”

A little part of him cautioned that he was seven kinds of a
fool for letting this go any farther because he was already tangled up in his
head and he knew it, but he just watched her, waiting for her move. She pulled
back and smiled at him and Tom could only stare up at her. He strained against
her hold on his wrists, and her smile grew feral. “Nope. Not strong enough,”
she said. She started to rock forward and back, torturing him by mimicking the
motion of riding him while his cock was still trapped in his pants.

“Fuck. Just let me get my pants off,” Tom begged.

She stopped riding him, but she didn’t move as she stared
down at him. “Nope,” she said, her voice almost playful. Tom let his head fall
back onto the pillow as he groaned. Shit. Plenty of times he’d negotiated
something very like this with a doxy, but there hadn’t been any negotiations,
just Da’shay taking what she wanted. Tom was pretty sure he was going to come
in his pants.

“Over,” she said, releasing his wrists.

He brought his hands up to feel her strong thighs, the silky
fabric of her nightgown cool under his palms. “Can do it better face to face.”

She leaned down, resting her hands on either side of his
face as she brought her lips right up to his ear. “Over. You’re mine. My toy to
enjoy and protect.”

Tom froze, his hands still on Da’shay’s thighs as her words
sank in. He sure as hell didn’t need anyone to protect him, not from anything
except his own mistakes maybe, but the way she traced fingers over his skin, he
wanted to lay down for her. He wanted to give her the power and let himself
slip into the role of the toy. That’d been about his earliest fantasies. And
all he had to do was follow her orders. The world seemed to pause as he looked
up at Da’shay, struggling with a need to obey and the fear that he was being a
fool. However, worse came to worst, he’d been a fool before.

She sat up and waited. With her straddling him, it was
awkward, but he grabbed the edge of the bed and squirmed until he got himself
face down. His room was small enough that he could press his palms against the
cool metal wall at the head of the bed while his toes could just brush the wall
on the opposite end. She ran her hands over his back and shoulders, her fingers
trailing down his spine and catching the waist of his pants and tugging. They
came off, but not without scraping over the skin so that the marks heated the
skin like the rug burn he’d get as a child. Tom could only grunt and fist the
sheets as his cock complained about the treatment.

She shifted around, pushing at his legs, and Tom spread
them. Her knee pressed up into his crotch, and Tom fought an almost unbearable
need to turn around and grab her. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss her
or throw her off the bed, but lying under her took every bit of self-control he
owned. The bunk was narrow, and she lowered herself onto him, her warmth
soaking into his back and her fingers trailing over his arms. “Always watching,
watching. Vigilant. See danger in every turn of a wrist. So very focused. Can
only be all on or all off. Want to turn that vigilance all off.”

She let her hands slide down his arms, lingering over a
knife scar near his left elbow that Tom never bothered to have it cosmetically
fixed. When she encircled his wrists with her hands, she was lying down on top
of him, her breath against the back of his neck, and Tom shivered despite the
heat.

“Mine,” Da’shay whispered and Tom hissed. His cock wanted
this, but this wasn’t some doxy holding him down, and as much as he wanted it,
he could feel fear circling right under that desire. Da’shay kissed his
shoulder and then ran her teeth over the warmed skin.

“Fuck.” Tom bucked and tried to thrust down into the bunk,
but Da’shay had him pinned and the bunk just wasn’t wide enough for too much
squirming around.

“Can see you,” she whispered into his ear. She ran her
tongue along the edge of his ear and then he sucked in a fast breath, expecting
the quick nip that followed, just hard enough to really sting, and Tom couldn’t
bring his hand up to rub the sore away with her holding him. She pressed a kiss
to his shoulder and then scraped her teeth over the skin again and Tom pressed
his face to the pillow and groaned.

“Stay,” Da’shay ordered. She shifted toward the edge of the
bed and Tom went to turn his head and see what she was up to, but hands caught
either side of his head, holding his face down toward the pillow. “Stay,” she
repeated. Tom shivered. If she meant that literally, he wouldn’t be able to see
anything she was doing. He curled his hands into fists and she moved to pin his
wrists down against the mattress. “Stay.”

Tom sighed into his pillow. Shit. He was laid out and blind
and his cock was so hard it was starting to hurt. She moved away and Tom could
hear her exploring his quarters. The familiar snick of one of his sniper rifles
told him she was inspecting the weapon, and for some reason, that made Tom feel
much more vulnerable than anything she could have done to his body. Drawers
opened, metal sliding against metal, and Tom struggled with a need to move.
When Da’shay was on him, it was easy to let her take control because she was
physically stronger, but laying helpless when she was on the other side of the
room left him trembling as his body fought every instinct that had kept him
alive so long.

Her warm hand stroked his arm and Tom could feel the knots
in his stomach start to ease. She straddled him again, her thighs squeezing
him, and Tom took a deep breath as he waited for her to do something. He was
good with his mouth and his hands, but she wasn’t letting him prove that. She
rocked against him, her hands stroking up and down his arms and shoulders until
she finally lay down on him, her heat soaking into his skin.

“So good. Be mine,” she whispered. After a few seconds of
tracing circles against his side, she sat up. Clinking warned him that she’d
found the chains Tom kept for prisoners. He wasn’t fool enough or desperate
enough to use them on himself, but sometimes he would sit on his bunk and
finger the cool metal. She ran the links over his back and he shivered as the
metal stole the heat from his body. Placing a kiss right between his shoulder
blades, she lay back down.

Now she was running the thicker cuff metal over his skin and
Tom’s arm turned to goose flesh as she closed in on his wrist. She wasn’t
hurrying. Tom wondered if she was waiting for him to do something, but before
he could wonder what, she’d closed the cuff around his wrist and a quick tug
told him she’d magnetically locked it to the wall.