Calder (14 page)

He tugged her hair. “Suck me, Katarina. Or I punish you.”

Excitement warmed her. She remembered Calder’s hand on her backside, the sting that opened her pussy and made her beg for him.

“
Suck
,” he repeated.

She licked again and he drew in a breath. “Damn you, Katarina. You’re making your punishment worse by the minute, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

Katarina’s heart pounded so hard she could hardly breathe. She rubbed her face on his cock, nuzzling it, playing with it with her lips before she finally opened her mouth wide and took it inside.

“Gods,” Calder whispered. He closed his other hand on her hair and rocked his hips forward.
Calder, the big Shareem with the hideous scars, who hid behind his facecloths, was murmuring his joy at Katarina’s playing. She loved his cock, every long inch of it. She loved its taste and its scent, the hot smoothness under her tongue.

She got the cock very wet and rubbed her face on it again. She liked the feel of the tip against her nose, the smell of him.

“I told you, you have five minutes to make me come. Time is marching.”

Five minutes? Katarina would gladly kneel here for an hour, licking, suckling, fondling him until her mouth was raw.

But someone might come in. Appointments would pile up, the receptionist or nurse would come to see what was wrong.

Katarina took him into her mouth again, and this time she suckled. Hard, fast, moving her tongue back and forth. He pulled her hair but she barely noticed the pain.

He ground his hips forward as if he were fucking her, and his breath came in strangled grunts.

It only took three minutes, by Katarina’s calculation. Calder whispered, “
Fuck
,” and then a wash of come rushed into her mouth.

Calder kept pumping his hips, sending more and more inside her. It tasted smooth, like cream with a little bite of salt. Calder said her name over and over while Katarina savored his come and swallowed it down.

Calder pulled her to her feet. His pupils spread black through his irises, which had widened to blot out the white. Shareem eyes, which changed when they were aroused.

He gave her a feral look, scars distorting his face. Before Katarina could say anything, he shoved her back onto the exam table, ripped down her leggings and pressed his mouth to her clit.

Calder’s tongue slid through the river of cream between her legs then he sucked, licked and teased her swollen clit. Katarina bucked on the table, her fist pressed into her mouth to stifle her screams.
His teeth abraded her, his tongue’s friction made her crazy. She came fast, her hips undulating, heels kicking the metal table. Calder didn’t stop. He kept lapping her clit and her pussy, holding her hips open when she wanted to close, to
squeeze
.

They had to stop now. Surely he’d cease, back away, let cool air touch her too-hot opening.

No. Calder did back away, but only to slide strong arms under her and turn her over. He leaned on top of her, his skin hot through her thin cotton tunic.

“You disobeyed me,” he said in her ear. “You didn’t take my come on your face.”

Katarina smiled. She’d drunk it down, which had been so much better. “You didn’t pull out of my mouth.”

“I told you what I’d do.”

“Not here,” Katarina hissed.

“Right here. You need to learn to obey.”

His hand came down on her backside. Like in the lair, he slapped then soothed the hurt away. His hand came down again.
Sting.
Other hand.
Soothe.

Each slap made her jerk her clit against the table and before she could stop herself, she was coming again. She moved her hips desperately, rubbing the sterile sheet beneath her. Her body wanted to fuck, so it fucked the table.

Calder kept going, knowing what he was doing. Her climax took her into a place of nothing—no light, no sound, just the feel of Calder’s hand on her backside and the table grating on her clit.

She screamed into the sheet, some part of her knowing she needed to muffle the sound. As she collapsed against the table, sobbing in joy, Calder ceased.

He lifted her in gentle arms and cradled her against his chest. He kissed her, his mouth hot and wet. She tasted him and herself mixed together, tried to match his kisses with her own.
Calder set her back down on the table. Katarina put her hand to her hair, trying to catch her breath. She must look a mess. But only a part of her cared. The rest of her sang, hummed, gloried in the ecstasy she felt.

“Calder.”

He didn’t look at her. Calder closed his leggings and took up her test tube. Working out the stopper, he scraped the unscarred part of his skin with the knife then put the stopper on the tube again.

He handed it to Katarina without a word, slid on his tunic, grabbed up his robe and banged out of the exam room.

Katarina let out her breath. She lifted the tube to eye level, though she could barely see the tiny scraping of skin inside.

Perfect.

*

Calder’s life officially became hell.

He needed Katarina. He needed her with every breath.

He’d let himself become the Dom with her, thinking if he put her in her place, he’d view her as he did every other sub. Needy upper-class women who craved sex came to him but only let themselves have it if they were punished at the same time. It was amazing how many of them begged for punishment.

But the pheromones in the exam room, mixed with the smell of her come and his, had driven him out of his mind. He’d been hot to the point of danger.

He’d tried to cool off in the pool at the bathing house Judith had set up for Shareem, but it hadn’t helped much. It didn’t help that Braden had been there to gloat that Katarina had gotten her way.
Asshole.

Calder’s clients continued bugging him. With the database wiped, there’d been no way for him to cancel the appointments. They’d arrive at their time and push the door
buzzer for an hour before finally understanding that he wasn’t open. The damn woman from Delta-Terra had her lackeys bang on his door for an entire day.

The spurned ladies joined Lady Demata in ranting messages until Calder stopped reading his mail altogether. His friends figured out that if they wanted to talk to him, they had to leave a message with Judith and hope he showed up at the bar sometime.

He wasn’t answering his door for them either.

Calder now had a quarter of the highborn women in Bor Narga and plenty from off world pissed as hell at him. But what could they do? The Bor Nargan ladies couldn’t very well admit that they’d made an appointment with The Beast, and the off-worlders who complained got little sympathy from the patrollers.

If you want to mess with forbidden Shareem, your disappointment is your own fault,
was the patrollers’ attitude. Unless a Shareem was committing rape—a thing Shareem were supposed to be incapable of anyway—the patrollers didn’t care.

But the very worst thing that happened in Calder’s world was that Katarina d’Arnal quit the Pas City clinic and retreated to her mansion in the Serestine Quarter.

She was finished with the slums, Braden reported. Tired of the dregs of society, tired of the dirt. She’d gone back home to be clean and well-bred again.

Fuck all highborn fucking bitches.

Calder became surly and withdrawn—
How can you tell the difference from the way he
usually acts?
Calder heard Ky ask Braden one day. Calder drank at Judith’s bar, but no amount of ale, no amount of consolation by his Shareem friends could take away the emptiness inside him.

He’d fallen in love.

Which was a stupid-ass thing for him to do.

He’d let his friends’ happiness lull him into thinking it might happen for him too.

Katarina didn’t mind his scars. She
liked
him. He’d allowed himself to believe that liking him might mean something.
Damn it, he should just rebuild his database, announce to the ladies that he was open for business again and go for it. Show them what The Beast truly could do.

Somehow, he could never make himself get around to it.

The day came when Calder couldn’t stand it any longer. He called Rees.

“Yeah?” Rees, on the monitor, looked tousled, tired and smugly satisfied. Six guesses as to what he’d been doing.

“I want to talk to Talan.”

Rees’ eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Do I detect suspicion and jealousy? Emotions to have been programmed out of Shareem?” Calder mouthed the scientists’ litanies at DNAmo. “I want to ask her a question.”

“Fine.”

Talan came on the screen, also looking tousled, tired and smugly satisfied. These two had been together for several years now. Couldn’t they get enough? Calder hoped not.

Calder asked his question, and Talan gave him the answer with delight.

*

Two hours later, Calder exited the Serestine Quarter train station on the mansion-studded hill above Pas City. No one walked these streets but servants, who dressed in household liveries. They eyed him curiously. Hoverchairs and hovercars moved past him in well-bred silence, but he felt watchers behind their black glass.

Did he look out of place or something? A nearly seven-foot-tall man in black leather and sun-blocking robes, facecloths and dark goggles?

Calder stopped at a set of solid metal gates in the middle of a solid stone wall. This was the house he was looking for, but he’d never have known without Talan’s directions. Rich people didn’t advertise what they had inside.
The gates, however, screamed that Calder was no longer in the slums. The metal didn’t have a speck of rust or dry rot on it and sand hadn’t stained the walls. In a city through which sandstorms rolled at least once every two weeks, clean walls were a miracle.

People here
paid
to have their walls washed after every storm. Crazy.

Calder eyed the gate, debating. What would happen when he pressed the buzzer?

Would she admit him with joy? Or have one of her servants send him away?

Humiliating choice.

“Well, well.”

The sneering voice of a patroller did not improve Calder’s temper. He turned to find three of them behind him, tall women in spotless uniforms. Like the houses, the difference between Serestine patrollers and Pas City patrollers was their cleanliness.

The annoying condescension that bordered on brutality was the same.

“A Shareem,” the leader continued. “On the hill.”

“As you see.” Calder fixed his eye-hiding goggles on the patroller.

She drew back the slightest bit. “Ident card.”

“I’m Calder.”

“I don’t care if you’re the god of singing spheres. Give me your ident card.”

Taking his time, Calder slowly parted his sun-blocking robes and pulled a strip from his belt. He held it out and she took it, being careful not to touch his fingers.

The patroller popped the card into her handheld and scanned the readout. “You’re a long way from home.”

Calder took the strip back from her and didn’t answer. Patrollers were the dregs of law enforcement, sent out to annoy people, especially Shareem, on the streets.

“What are you doing up here?” the leader went on. She must not have met her harassment quota for the day.

“Visiting a friend.”
The leader laughed. She rocked back on her heels. “This is the d’Arnal house.

They’re way too rich and
respectable
to be friends with the likes of you.”

Calder pushed the door buzzer, pretending he wasn’t sweating inside his robes.

The patroller stood on tiptoe to look over his shoulder as a monitor screen slid into view.

“Yes?” a bored-looking woman asked.

“Calder to see Dr. d’Arnal.”

“One moment.”

Damn it, Katarina, don’t pick this moment to dump me. These ladies will slap me in a cell
for even touching your gate.

The bored woman flicked on the screen again. “Welcome, Calder. Dr. d’Arnal will meet you in the main hall.”

The screen disappeared and the gates slid noiselessly open, no grating on dust.

Calder sketched a mock-salute to the patrollers and strolled inside, feeling satisfaction as the gates closed on their stunned faces.
Chapter Twelve

Calder was glad of the sun-blocking cloths over his face because he was gaping like a fool behind them. The gate led him not into a house but into a tree-lined garden.

Trees. In the middle of the flat Bor Nargan desert. Even the hill the mansions resided on was artificial, built up centuries ago so the rich wouldn’t have to walk on the same level as the poor.

These were towering trees, alien to this planet, smelling of rich wood. They couldn’t be real, could they? Holo rooms had gotten sophisticated—Calder used them himself— and the rich must be able to afford the best. He pulled off his glove and touched a tree, feeling the rough of real bark.

Amazing.

He looked up through the canopy of leaves to bright blue sky. There must be shielding overhead because no way could these trees survive Bor Narga’s harsh sun otherwise, not to mention the sandstorms.

It was cool in here, pleasant. A strange sensation.

The walkway led him to a gigantic stone and marble house, complete with columns and long windows. The whole place definitely must be shielded. No one turned a real window to the weather.

The tall, arched front door opened as he approached, and Calder stepped into a massive foyer. Walls soared above him, punctuated with fan-lighted windows. A staircase spilled from above like a marble waterfall.

Katarina skimmed down this staircase, hand on the wrought iron banister, the silk sheath she wore hugging every curve.

“Calder.”
At the sound of her voice, his whole body came alive. He could only think of her sweet tones begging him as he laid her back on the exam table in her office, her noises of pleasure.

His erection strained at his tight leggings. He wanted to take her here, on the stairs, in this cool, otherworldly luxury.

“You live here?” he asked.

“This is my house, yes.”

“Shit.”

Calder thought of his modest apartment, which would fit in a corner of this hall.