Braden (3 page)

Back down, up again. More lube. Stroke, pull, squeeze.
Stroke, pull, squeeze.

“Elisa.” Gods, what a beautiful name. Just saying it made
him want her.

“I have your mouth all over me, sucking and licking, making
me come. My come is all over your face, and you’re laughing. I bend you over
and spank your ass for laughing at me. It’s so red. It feels so good, your
tight, sweet ass under my hand.

“I’m shoving you against the wall and you’re still smiling
at me. Your pussy is so wet, your come trickling over your legs. I stick my
cock right into that wetness, going up into your pussy until you stop laughing.
You tell me how big I am as I wedge into your tightness. You don’t know if you
can take me.

“But you do take me, more and more. You’re so hot and wet
that you open for me, and take my twelve-inch Shareem cock as far as it will
go.

“Then you start moaning, making all those beautiful noises
you’d make when you’re fucked. My whole body presses against you, your breasts
hard on my chest, your nipples scraping me. Your nails rake down my back, your
feet press my ass as you hang on.

“I’m fucking you, fucking you so hard, so good, and you are
so damn tight. So damn, damn tight, my Elisa…”

Words faded as Braden’s mind went blank to all sensation but
friction on cock. His body knew it wasn’t Elisa, so it was nowhere near as
good. But hell, right now this was all he had.

Braden’s cock got tighter, harder, his body hotter than
hell—or Bor Narga, whichever was worse. He felt the come, the jerking pulses,
the need to squirt all over Elisa and inside her.

“Damn, woman, I want your pussy,” he moaned.

Then he screamed, “Elisa!” And came all over the place.

Braden braced himself on the wall, nearly sobbing with the
relief of his orgasm. Ropes of come circled his fingers, the cream of a man who
was dying for a woman. He was breathing hard, fast, panting. Braden threw his
head back, his hips moving faster.

Fuck, fuck.
Fuck!

And then it was over. Braden fell against the wall, panting
in release.

He felt a tiny bit better but it wasn’t as good, not nearly
as good, as being inside Elisa. Elisa would be perfection.

Once Braden could walk again he staggered into his bathroom.
A towel beckoned from the rack and he grabbed it, wrapping it around his
too-sensitive cock.

Braden groaned. He daydreamed of Elisa’s slim fingers, so
efficient on the library terminal. What would they feel like gently cleaning
him off with the towel?

Aw, damn it.

His cock was rising again. Braden slammed on his water
shower, stepped under the hot stream and let his hand have its wicked way with
him again.

* * * * *

Braden checked the time readout on the train platform for
the zillionth time. A quarter of an hour to midnight, and Elisa still hadn’t
shown.

She wasn’t going to—Braden had figured that by now. He’d
have to go home again, back to his fantasies, back to another shower and
another bottle of lube. He’d jerked off so many times his hand was going to
start demanding candy and jewelry.

The last train left at midnight, and if Braden didn’t get on
it, the two female patrollers who wandered the platform would arrest him. Maybe
stun-gunning him just for fun.

Patrollers were trained to resist the calming effect of
Shareem pheromones, some patrollers better at it than others. Rees, the master,
rendered their resistance training useless—Rees could make the patrollers not
take notice of him or forget what they were about to ask him. They always
neglected to demand his ident card, the shit. When another Shareem was with
Rees, he could extend that fuzzy forgetfulness to both of them, but Braden was
on his own tonight.

These patrollers had been eyeing Braden since he’d arrived,
watching him lounge on a bench drinking coffee as hovertrain after hovertrain
went back to Pas City without him.

They moved toward Braden now, ready to be pains in his ass.

“You’ve been here a long time, Shareem,” one said.

She spoke in the sneering, condescending tone that all
patrollers used. They must take seminars in sneering.

“Yeah?” Braden said. “So have you.”

“It’s our job to be here,” the second said. Yep, same
seminar.

“Must be rough having nothing to do but follow a man around
a train station,” Braden said.

“You’re not a man,” the second one said.

Suck me, woman.

The first one held out her hand. “Let me see your ident
card.”

“Why? You can look me up in the database. My picture’s in
there. Not my best shot, but you get the idea.”

“Ident card.”

Fuckers. A Shareem refusing to give a patroller an ident
card would be immediately arrested. If Braden got hauled off to the nearest
patrol station he’d miss Elisa, who still had ten minutes.

Braden tugged a piece of plastic from the belt that also
housed his breath mask and slapped the card into the woman’s hand. Without
thanking him, she tucked the card into her handheld and frowned at the readout.

“You’re the one called Braden.”

“So glad you can read.”

“Looks like you’re due for your inoculations soon. Why
haven’t you gotten them?”

Because Braden hated his six-month inoculations and put them
off until the last possible minute. Back at DNAmo he’d never known exactly what
they were going to shoot into him, and sometimes they’d had to hold him down to
do it.

The only medic he went to now was Katarina, his best
friend’s lover and a friend in her own right. Katarina mixed the concoction
herself and told Braden exactly what was in it, and he trusted her. But
Braden’s old fears died hard.

The inoculations were redundant, because every known disease
had been programmed out of Shareem genetics from the get-go.
All
diseases, not just sexually transmitted ones.

The shots also kept the Shareem from reproducing, which, to
Braden, showed a big flaw in the “Shareem aren’t human” idea. If Shareem
weren’t human, why were humans so worried about Shareem making babies? Even if
a Shareem managed to make a child, then logically—if Shareem weren’t human—that
child would be sterile. Like mules. Automatic end of problem.

But the Ministry of Non-Human Life Forms was inflexible.
Sterility drugs it was.

The patroller handed Braden back his card. “You know that if
you miss your shots, it’s instant termination.”

Braden let his eyes widen. “It is? Damn, I’m so glad you
told me.”

“Here comes your train,” the patroller said. “Get on it.”

The train was early. Braden glanced at the clock, noting the
librarian had seven whole minutes left to get there.

The hovertrain slid smoothly into the station, sending displaced
air over Braden and the patrollers. The damn women were going to stand there
until he boarded.

The train doors opened but not many people got on. Few
highborn wanted to go to the gritty part of the metropolis this late, and most
had private transportation anyway. Workers from Pas City who had jobs up here
had departed hours ago.

“On,” the first patroller said. Both had hands on their
weapons.

Braden gave them a wave and a grin. “It’s been sweet
chatting with you. Ta-ta.”

Ignoring their ugly looks, Braden stepped onto the train,
walked down the mostly empty car and took a seat alone. No one gave him a
second glance—Pas City people were used to Shareem.

The doors slammed. Braden saw no flutter of robes from a
highborn woman running to catch the last train, no feminine voice shouting his
name, nothing.

The few men and women around him closed their eyes as the
train jerked forward. The train paused, hovered silently for about a minute
then jerked like hell again as it left the station. Stupid hovertrains.

The train picked up speed and dove down the hill, starting
its journey back to the lower city and the slums.

It didn’t matter, Braden thought as he looked out the window
at splashes of lights in the darkness. He’d go to Judith’s bar. His friends
would be there. He could get very drunk and forget all about meeting a
librarian with brown, lively eyes flecked with green.

* * * * *

The train lurched forward barely a second after the doors
closed behind Elisa. She’d dashed into the station just as the train had started
away, and the train’s conductor, seeing a highborn lady in expensive robes, had
ordered the train to halt.

Elisa pressed a tip into the conductor’s hand as she leapt
breathlessly onto the last car. “Thank you.”

“At your service, my lady,” the conductor said. “May I find
you a seat?”

The car was empty so the offer was a bit silly, but Elisa
thanked him again. “No, I’ll be fine.”

The conductor retreated into his rear compartment and Elisa
walked unsteadily down the train to the next car.

What if Braden weren’t on the train at all? This was the
last train down and Elisa was pretty certain that none would be coming back up
tonight.

She’d be in Pas City, alone, without escort, her robes
marking her as way out of place. Elisa could call a taxi, of course, but then
she’d have to wait for it. Alone. In Pas City.

She opened the door of the third car along and stopped.

Braden lounged in a seat at the end of the car, his arm
stretched across its back, his head against the window, his eyes closed.

When Braden had first walked into her library, Elisa’s
tongue had stuck to the roof of her mouth and stayed there. Seven feet tall,
black hair bound at his nape, Braden had worn a sleeveless tunic that bared his
massive shoulders and tight, muscular arms. The black chain on his right biceps
announced what he was—all Shareem wore them.

His face was handsome but stopped shy of perfection, giving
him a hard strength that most Bor Nargan men lacked. His eyes were blue, a
color no other native Bor Nargan had, a color that mesmerized her and drew her
in.

With his eyes closed now, Braden looked almost harmless.

Almost. His long legs stretched out into the aisle, his body
barely fitting on the seat, giving him the look of a wild beast at rest. A
desert lion from the hills, maybe, sprawled in seeming quietness but ready to
pounce.

Elisa pictured Braden stretched out like that in bed,
smiling and warm, waiting for his lady. She shivered.

She also noticed one more thing about him. Braden looked
lonely.

Elisa wasn’t sure where that impression came from—maybe from
the fact that he sat alone, that no one else was near him or even wanted to
look at him. But a Shareem lonely was a strange idea.

She walked toward him before she could talk herself out of
it. Gathering her robes around her, she sat down in the small amount of room
he’d left in the seat.

Braden’s eyes popped open in surprise. Then he smiled. That
smile was all for her, his blue irises expanding as his focus switched to Elisa
and Elisa alone.

Being the object of his Shareem gaze made her feel
strange—beautiful, sensual, wanted—all the things that no man had ever made
Elisa n’Arell feel.

“My librarian,” Braden said, his voice warming her to her
toes. “Damn, but it’s nice to see you.”

Chapter Three

“I’m sorry I’m late.” Elisa should have caught her breath by
now, but for some reason it lodged in her throat. “I had to—”

“No.” Braden’s fingers touched her lips. “No explanations.
Leave it like this. That was one hell of an entrance.”

His fingers were warmer than any human’s, the same as when
he’d brushed the back of her hand in the library. The touch was soft but
strong, mastering.

Elisa was happy not to talk about how her boss had called
her to an unscheduled meeting to discuss an event the library was putting on
with the art museum. The minutiae of making certain members of the ruling
family were seated in the correct order, without snubbing the heads of the
library or the art board, had made her insane. The details had taken several
hours and Elisa had been lucky to get away at all.

Braden moved his fingertip across her lower lip, wetting it
with moisture from her own mouth. “What are you thinking behind those beautiful
eyes, my librarian?”

That she was bold and sensual, no longer a good celibate in
the Way of the Sky. “Questions I want to ask you,” she said.

“Questions about you, me and whipped cream? You know we’re
headed for Pas City, right?”

“Yes.” Elisa glanced out the window but could see little
beyond her own reflection. Though she’d lived in the metropolis all her life,
she’d never been to Pas City. “A new world for me.”

“A shitty world.” Braden took his finger from her lips, to
her disappointment. “I’ll show you my world if you want me to, sweetheart. But
not with you in those robes.”

Elisa looked down at herself. Her fashionable robes both
blocked the harsh Bor Nargan sun and proclaimed her status and rank.

Braden put his lips to her ear, his breath making her hot
all over. “Take them off.”

“What?”

“You don’t need sun protection at night. Besides, if a woman
in celibate robes is running around with a Shareem, people will talk. They
might tell the patrollers I abducted you.”

An amused twinkle lit his eyes, but Elisa sensed his
tension. He was right to worry—Shareem didn’t have many rights. The slightest
transgression could mean incarceration, interrogation, termination.

Elisa unfastened the fabric lock at the back of her neck and
drew the robes off over her head. She wore a sleeveless silk sheath underneath,
body-hugging but not too tight, comfortable in the night air.

Braden’s eyes went bluer as he looked her over. “Nice.”

Elisa tried to fold her robes, but the train was swaying
like crazy as they barreled into the inner city. Braden took the robes and
folded them in competent hands, hiding the symbols that proclaimed her
celibate. He held the robes on his lap, not giving them back to her.