IGO: Sudden Snow (9 page)

Fear rushed him to the point he shot up to a sitting position, his hand searching in vain for his weapon. With wide eyes he investigated the quarters with a hasty sweep. Where the hell was she?

“Cricket?” he called, voice dangerously close to going into security chief mode. “Cricket!”

“Yes?” she called back, emerging from the dark shadows to the right of the plasma display. With her face a scowl, she stepped in front of the screen’s illumination. Her hair fell free across naked shoulders. A sexy silhouette against the plasma screen’s rays, she blocked a ton of text windows cluttering the surface.

“You gave me a start,” he said, slowing his breathing. “I’m supposed to protect you.”

“I know, I…” She faltered into silence. “There’s so much data and so little time.”

“Don’t do that to me again,” he said, irritation rippling across his person. “Ever.”

“Oh, okay, sir,” she whispered, crossing her arms over her chest -- which he saw was nude.

The quiver in her voice unnerved him. He didn’t like the sadness reverberating through her words. And he wanted nothing more than to erase it from her being.

Darryl pushed the covers from his equally nude body, and he got out of the bed. The sight of her stirred him again, despite the numerous times he found himself buried balls deep inside her hot tunnel throughout the night. The sheer sight of her nakedness enthused him. He’d lost count of how often he awoke to find his cock still inside her as if reluctant to vacate her well.

Closing the distance between them in mere steps, he reached for her and tilted her head back. His lips met hers and he kissed her, long, deep and with cravings. She moaned from the back of her throat and he kissed her neck as if drinking from a well of spring water.

“When you make that sound, I want to take you back to the bed,” he confessed against her ear. He licked the lobe and nibbled there. His hands glided up to her breasts. They closed over the full mounds and he kneaded them, feeling the tips turn to pointed stones. Guiding her, he spun her around to face the screen, and pressed his stony cock between her ass cheeks. He poked at her moist entrance, impatient to be inside her. His breathing lowered until it escaped in ragged wisps.

“Darryl,” she groaned, pushing back against his hardness, making him suck in his breath. “I’m working.”

“I know, but I can’t help it,” he answered, the tip of his tool slipping into her tunnel. “If you want to work, don’t walk around without any clothes.”

She spread her legs wider -- accepting his touch, and bent over, using the wall for support. Her eyes were closed and her head had been thrown back in growing arousal.

She smiled.

Darryl sighed. Damn, she was so fucking incredible when in the throes of desire. Instead of being concerned about his duty -- he had no idea what time it was -- all he wanted was to be nestled inside her warmth and feel her muscles clenching his shaft as she came over and over again. He loved to hear her shout his name as she gushed all over his member, and each naughty word she crooned drove his libido higher. Nothing could compare to her throaty voice begging him to take her. Nothing.

Being with her felt so right he had to seize this chance to be happy.

“Darryl,” Cricket bemoaned, wiggling her generous ass. “Don’t make me beg.”

“Never,” he panted and slipped his entire length into her again. At once he quivered at the sheer heat of her tunnel. Damn, she was driving him crazy. Her muscles massaged his stony tool. Unable to tear himself away, he began to slowly slip in and out of her with a rhythm so deliciously slow.

Cricket bit her lower lip. “Mmmmm,” she moaned.

Unable to withstand the sweet torture, Darryl soon sped up. His cock couldn’t wait, and apparently neither could Cricket’s own desire. She stole his rhythm and pumped him harder, faster, plowing into him, her wonderful ass against his torso, making him growl in lust.

“Cricket…” He locked his hands around her waist. “If you keep… this… up… I… I…”

He peered down at her and she glanced over her smooth, supple shoulder with lust making her eyes smoky. She rotated her hips so deliciously deliberately his cock nearly spilled its load.

“Yes, I know,” she said, shuddering. “Hmmm, you feel so good.”

“Cricket,” he coughed out and tried to slow her down. “Baby, if you don’t… oh, shit…”

She giggled and it came deep from the back of her throat. “Give it to me! All of it!” she ordered, all aspects of humor gone. “I want to hear you scream
my
name.”

Darryl rolled his eyes and groaned. She took over and he let her. He couldn’t speak anything intelligible anyway. She pumped his cock mercilessly. He remembered the first time he spied her ass and how he couldn’t wait to feel it pressed against his member. Now that it was, he squeezed his eyes shut at the threatening tide of pleasure growing from his lower abdomen. He could stand it no more.

Even though he knew he was close, the actual orgasm ripped through him, tearing the shout from his throat and out into the heated air. He descended to his knees, taking Cricket with him to the floor. Waiting for the ceiling to stop spinning, Darryl curled around Cricket’s softness. She dropped kisses along his arms and he sighed.

The room audio crackled with static before clearing. It shocked Darryl. He leaned up on his elbows, listening intently. His heartbeat increased to a gallop.

“Sergeant Snow, report to the ’shoe. Sergeant Snow, report to the ’shoe.”

“That’s your call,” Cricket said warmly, unwrapping herself from him.

The moment she left his arms, the emptiness made him growl. He wanted her back. But duty called and he reluctantly got up. He reached for the bedside shelf and slung his earpiece over his ear. He pressed the green button. Taking a deep breath, Darryl awaited the verbal lashing Commander Taylor would no doubt pay him for his tardiness.

“Good morning, sergeant. You’re on duty in ten minutes, sir. You’re usually twenty minutes early, so, uh…”

“Thank you, Kovacs,” Darryl rumbled. “I will report by zero two hundred hours. Snow out.”

Darryl’s eyes held Cricket’s as he spoke. She tensed visibly, but it was gone as swiftly as it appeared. When he winked at her, she met his eyes with a soft smile on her face.

Cricket paused in the entranceway, her dreadlocks spilling over her shoulders, obscuring the view of her breasts. She blew him a kiss and tilted her head sideways. “You look so yummy in that uniform,” she said, sighing like a little girl. “I can’t decide if I like you more in or out of it.”

“I like you both ways.” Darryl smirked. He hurried about as he picked up his clothes, urgency flowing fast into his body. He pulled on articles as he moved. As he zipped the jacket, he sighed in defeat. He didn’t want to leave her.

“Thank you,” she replied. “Don’t look at me like that, Darryl. It’s too much. You’ll never make it to your duty station.”

He laughed, loving how she made him feel wanted and worthy. “You going to be all right?”

She shrugged. “I’ve got work to do too. I’ll see you later?”

He stared at her, naked and delectable. All he could think about was stripping out of his uniform and following her into the shower, pressing her against the plastic and plunging into her core once more, plundering her succulent treasure until she stole his seed again. Darryl swallowed the ache rising in his throat. Damn, he didn’t seem to be sated. All he wanted was to please her in every way he could.

“Yes,” he replied, watching her physically relax. “This is no casual thing between us, Cricket.”

“No,” she managed. “It isn’t.”

He heard the sound of the shower going as he stepped through the exit doors. Smiling, he let his long strides carry him the length of the corridor in hurried time.

* * *

Cricket turned the knob to air dry and closed her eyes as the hot air blew through her wet hair and across her soaking body. No amount of forced heat could cool the dampness in her pussy. Like a tap which had been switched on, her libido poured out wave after wave of passion for the handsome sergeant. Even now, her well clenched with longing for him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so soundly. Cricket stepped from the automated dryer with her mind settled firmly on Sergeant Snow.

Already the furnace at the juncture of her thighs burned for Darryl. But she’d indulged her wants long enough. She sighed as she pulled on a pair of jeans and an orange long-sleeved shirt. With a swoop of her rubber band, she secured her damp dreadlocks into a ponytail as she moved to the plasma screen. The room reeked of sex and of Darryl. Sighing in longing once more, she mentally struggled to focus on the text.

What had Wang seen in this mass of information that spoke to commercial application?

She rubbed her bleary eyes. Though Darryl had slept, she had been up for nearly three hours reading over the text. Doctor Savage’s email from two days ago noted a recent spike in one of Io’s volcanoes she called V#23. The chemical compounds hadn’t been dissimilar from the others, but the concentration had been tighter, heavier.

There lay the only difference in the data she’d combed through thus far. Nothing about those concentrations should or could be of interest to Wang. Cricket couldn’t even fathom what he would use them for -- weapons? Anything could be used as a weapon, and she didn’t think Kem Core Industries was interested in weaponry. The IGO wanted to harness the lava flow and eruptions to try to cull a power source for them and their spacecrafts. Still, the team had no clear-cut data that pointed to their success or their failure. It didn’t make any sense.

Cricket gently put her head against the plasma screen. “What happened, Bob? Sandra? What happened that made this all fall to pieces?”

It sounded surprisingly like a prayer, but she didn’t care. She needed all the help she could get.

Chapter 10

“Sergeant Snow, we’re approaching the EPSS,” Kovacs reported. Clear-eyed and well-rested, Kovacs sat rigidly in his chair.

It seemed the curfew Darryl had instituted for Kovacs had worked. It was either the curfew or an official red mark in his file. Captain Reyes, the leader of the entire unit to which
The Discovery
was dispatched, wouldn’t be nearly as kind as issuing a curfew for the private. No, the captain would’ve sentenced the private to Mars Outpost duty and caused him to remain locked on the main spaceship, cleaning up the muck of others.

“Excellent,” Darryl replied brisk and firm -- completely in command mode. “I’ll let the commander know.”

Darryl pressed the small green button on his earpiece and waited.

Commander Taylor’s deep voice creaked through to his ear.

“We’re here, sir,” Darryl said.

“Coming,” Commander Taylor said, strained and taut.

Energy flowed over him and Darryl realized he was squeezing the chair’s armrest. He released it and watched as the Earth Prime Space Station grew larger in the window. Before long the docking clamps jostled the vessel, but Darryl’s stomach was already choppy from the fact that this was the halfway point to the Mars Outpost Station 1 and
The Discovery
. Once on board, Cricket would be taken from his protection and into long interrogations with Alpha Team. He didn’t know if he’d see her again. If the Alpha Team wasn’t done before his team’s next assignment, he’d be forced to leave her for Saturn knew how long. Something the last few days made harder for him to do.

The lift’s doors slid back, and out he came. Commander Taylor’s brow was furrowed. Darryl got up and went to the security console, sending Rojas to the navigation seat.

“Kovacs, let them know we’re here to refuel and be on our way,” Commander Taylor ordered, and then turned to Darryl. “The crew can scamper off to replenish whatever they need, if they have the funds.”

Darryl nodded. He remained at the station, running a brief diagnostic of the security system. With a chance to go shopping, many of the crew would leave the vessel in favor of cashing in their credits. Sometimes pirates and thieves found a sparsely populated spacecraft was easy pickings for hijackings. Not on his watch. The system came back as operational and up to optimum performance. Good.

“Uh, Commander Taylor? Dr. Moore is requesting to go aboard the space station,” Kovacs said, forcing the entire ’shoe’s murmurings to fall into strained silence.

All eyes appeared to be on the commander, but his icy blue orbs were burrowing into Darryl’s. His grim expression didn’t make Darryl feel any better about the request. He was chief of security. Normal operations required him to stay on
The Inquiry
.

“Permission to escort the doctor,” Rojas said, bolting from his seat and saluting the commander.

A flash of angst rushed through Darryl. For a moment, all he saw was shades of scarlet. Though he and Cricket hadn’t discussed it, he felt Cricket was
his
. The thought of another man escorting her around the cramped space station’s snug corridors with its sweeping views of Earth Prime and star glitz sky burned him. His fingers ached from gripping the console so hard that he had to remind himself to breathe, to relax.

When Darryl moved his eyes back to the commander, he found his superior staring at him. Embarrassed, he shifted his eyes back to his console and pretended to be reading the flashes of text scrolling across the monitor. Sweat coursed down his face, but he fought the urge to wipe it away.

Come on, Commander. You ordered me to protect her, let me do that. Rojas wouldn’t last two minutes against anyone, hell, even her
.

Darryl’s skin crawled and he looked up to find the commander’s gaze still focused on him. The corners of his mouth twitched, and Darryl realized his feelings must’ve been apparent on his face.

“That won’t be necessary, Rojas,” Commander Taylor said at last, looking away from Darryl. “Sergeant Snow, report to Dr. Moore’s quarters and escort her aboard the EPSS. See to it that she is kept from harm.”

“Yes, sir!” he barked, falling into a salute.

Rojas’ face crumpled but swiftly shifted to the stony, blank visage soldiers used to hide their emotions. Darryl had witnessed the young private staring at Cricket when she ate in the commons area, or when she strolled through the observation deck. So consumed by his own feelings for her, Darryl only recognized now the mirror image of lust and want on Rojas’ face.