Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (20 page)

“Perfect. Day-drunk is exactly what I wanted to be right now.”

“Two drinks won’t do you in. You’re not
that
much of a lightweight.”

Jade yanked him along into the dusty street toward the town square, where Flotsam clustered its pubs, taverns, and vapor joints. Something struck Davin as off about all this. About Jade. She’d never seemed this interested in the past. For years, they’d been passing ships in the night, together only long enough to share a bed or shower or bathroom stall. This kind of thing, in public, wasn’t her style.

She led him down a dingy alley to a winking neon sign that read “Sulley’s”—her favorite low-tempo place for beer. Only a handful of patrons populated the bar at this hour, mid afternoon, off in the wing shooting billiards. Every minute or so, the crack of slick marble balls echoed through the dim, warehouse-like space. A feathery fog whirled in the air under naked LED bulbs. The stout, bald bartender leaned over the splintering wood counter.

“Couple old fashioneds,” Jade said. “Put it on my tab.”

The bartender grunted and got to work.

Davin always found it sexy that she drank manly cocktails. They could order the same thing every time and both be happy. They sat on barstools, and Jade rotated so that her feet rested on the bar under Davin’s seat. Seemed a bit fast for the moves, but Davin let it go. He had some motto about never discouraging a flirtatious woman, but the blood in his brain was diverting elsewhere, so he couldn’t recall it.

“Looks like business is booming at the scrap market,” Davin said.

Jade shrugged. “I make enough to get by, but scrap is scrap. I’ll never get rich owning a market. Recycling’s where the money’s at in this business.”

“Still scrap,” Davin said.

“Sure, but at least then I can sell to the big boys. One contract a year with a steel or aluminum mill, and I’d be doing a helluva lot better than I do now.”

The look on her face was too mischievous, her responses too quick. She was going somewhere with this, but Davin decided not to force it.

The bartender set the the tumblers filled with golden-brown liquid in front of them. They each took a sip. Sweet on the lips, wild going down—just the way Davin liked ‘em.

“Could you see yourself running a recycler biz?” Jade asked.

Davin took another sip, swirled it over his tongue. Of course he could see it. Swashbuckling got old for everybody, even him. But what wasn’t she telling him?

“I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. What are you getting at with all this? You’re going somewhere. I can tell.”

Her fingers touched his knee and stayed. Rough nails on the fingertips of her calloused hands—the hands of a Flotsam girl. “I’m just thinking about the future, you know? I mean, I don’t want
this
to be my peak.” She glanced side to side to indicate her surroundings. “
Or
yours.”

“You mean Flotsam?” Davin asked, being purposely dense. “Or this bar?”

“I mean this existence,” she said, stressing each word. “Living barely north of poverty, on a junk heap island, neighbors with dirtbags and psychopaths and addicts.”

“You really do want that house in the burbs, huh?” Davin tilted his tumbler back for a long sip.

She leaned closer and slid her hand halfway up his thigh without drawing attention, as if she didn’t notice herself doing it. “Maybe. Eventually. Who knows? But you can’t deny it’d be badass to run a recycler biz together.”

“Together?” Davin repeated, setting his drink down.

“Sure,” Jade said, hand sliding up and down his leg. “We’ve got the know-how between us. You could buy, I could sell.”

“Yeah, but you’re missing a somewhat important little item called
money
.” He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “Masher machines alone cost a shit ton.”

Jade smirked, not like a vulture this time. More like a grown-up at a naive little boy. Scheming. She was definitely scheming. And Davin had walked right into it, whatever
it
was. She kicked back the rest of her old fashioned and gulped it down.

“Come on,” she said and pushed off her barstool. “Let’s continue this at my place.”

Davin stayed anchored to his seat, panic rising in his stomach, quickening his heartbeat. “Tell me what’s going on. What are you up to?”

Jade’s smile grew. She moved closer to him and unzipped her leather vest down to the bottom of her breasts, showing curvy cleavage—big enough to press together but not so big she fell out. “Guess you’ll have to come with me to see what I’m hiding.” She winked, then flipped around and headed for the exit.

Davin clenched his teeth. “You’re exploiting my weakness!” he called after her. It genuinely angered him—almost as much as it aroused him.

Jade halted and cast her eyes over her shoulder, mischievous face framed by inky black hair. “Oh, you’re not weak, are you?” She allowed her fingers to hook daintily onto the split in her vest before walking out.

“Dammit,” Davin muttered. He downed the rest of his drink and went after her.

Davin felt his body ramping up as they closed in on their destination. Jade moved like a fox, legs long and toned from years of treading through the streets of Flotsam.

Her apartment building was a squat, sooty-gray concrete block with mostly intact windows, about as devoid of charm and life as a structure could be. Davin vaguely remembered it from previous visits, but prior to those nights he’d consumed somewhere between four and nine more drinks than this time. Even being his first sober trip, he didn’t think he could find his way back. All the buildings looked the same: four-story bricks with equally spaced windows acting as glass portals into the drab lives of their residents. All but the occasional overachieving
five
-story gray brick. It was an old industry district, where people burrowed into the carcasses of former factories.

The streets extended only a little wider than the average alleyway and were often choked by dumpsters or chained-up electrobikes. The smell of week-old trash hung in the air, and a low buzz emitted from trash bags leaning against a brick barrier. It almost killed the mood. Microfly bots munched lazily on the garbage inside, turning it into carbon dioxide or storing it for recycling. Old models, clearly. The microflies in Apex could gobble up a trash bag and be on their way to a repository in a couple hours. Modern technology.

Jade abruptly stopped. A pair of mopeds whizzed by, each carrying a thuggish mountain of muscle. The men looked silly on the tiny motorbikes, but their permanent scowls prevented Davin from snickering. Not enough room to jump out of the way if they wanted to run him over.

Davin followed Jade as she navigated up her grungy stairwell, littered with broken mopeds chained to the iron railing. He let out a sigh of relief once they stepped into Jade’s top-floor apartment. Despite the warehousey look, the place seemed like a four-star resort compared to the rest of Flotsam. Steel beams rose through a slick, concrete floor and into the high ceiling. The windows were reinforced, the door studded with deadbolts—a necessary precaution in this neighborhood.

But the spacious, open-air living room had fine furniture with plush pillows. Jade tapped a few buttons on a control pad embedded in the concrete, and a series of black panels on the walls lit up into a bright panorama of colorful hot air balloons over rolling green hills. Smooth, gently thudding music piped down from unseen speakers.

Davin crouched by the shaggy rug and ran his fingers through it. Pleasant memories came to mind. “I remember this spot.”

Jade headed for the kitchen, separated from the living room by a granite countertop and barstools. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t.” She returned with a pair of longneck beers—pale IPAs, bitter, hoppy, and strong. The worst.

Davin sat on the couch and took a swig, commanding his face not to scrunch. He wouldn’t let Jade outman him with the drinks. If she outmanned him there, she might get ideas of other ways she could dominate him. Davin wouldn’t let that happen. He had to change the subject before it went to the beer.

“Tell me,” he said, returning to their conversation at the bar. “What do you want from me?”

She lifted an eyebrow and crossed her legs, swirling the bottle in her fingers. “What do you mean? I want
you
.”

Davin set his beer on the glossy coffee table. “Jade. I’m not an idiot. Tell me what’s going on.”

Jade sighed. Her shoulders loosened as she reassessed the situation. “Look, I know about Sierra Falco.”

Dumbbells dropped somewhere in Davin’s chest. He felt like curtains had whisked open around him, like he had been unmasked. Silence swelled between them as Davin gaped.

“How?” he pushed out.

She smirked and took another sip. “We run in the same circles, Dav. Heard you found something valuable in a space yacht. Then I see on the news the prima filia’s personal ship blown to bits out near Owl, right where you happened to be. Put two and two together.”

Davin’s hand squeezed reflexively into a fist as he realized the culprit. “
Jimmy.
”

“You can’t blame him,” Jade said, brushing a ripple of black hair away from her eyes. “He was excited. You bring in good product.”

“Does he always blab about my haul?”

She shrugged. “When you tell him you’ve got something big, it usually means you do.”

Davin shook his head, mad at himself for giving away as much as he had. Should’ve been more discreet. “Does
Jimmy
know I’ve got Sierra?”

“If he does, he hasn’t told me.” Jade tilted back her beer for a long swig, then set the bottle on the coffee table by Davin’s. “But whether he does or not, he’s gonna get you a meaty check for that girl, sooner or later. And when he does—”

“You want in on it,” Davin said, connecting the dots. It all seemed obvious now. Painfully obvious. Embarrassingly obvious.

Jade leaned closer, letting the split in her vest display the smooth skin of her cleavage. But her eyes were fixated on his. It confused him—did she want attention on her eyes or her breasts? Davin didn’t want to care about either, but, of course, he did. Even with the feeling of betrayal building in his gut. Even with that sense that he was being used.

“
Davin
,” she said, snapping him away from his degenerating thoughts. “I don’t just want your money. I want
you
. I wanna be partners. Me and you. We could help each other.”

“Partners?” Davin got hung up on that word.

“
Yes
. Don’t you wanna stop jumping around through space from junk heap to junk heap? Don’t you want a normal life?”

“A normal life . . . with you?” The words escaped him. He tried to hold them in but couldn’t. A whirl of emotions pushed and pulled in his chest like a two-man saw.

Jade smiled. “Of course with me. Every day. I couldn’t do it without you.”

“Together?” The word carried a weight, a meaning, that Jade couldn’t ignore. The long lack of response confirmed it. But Davin needed to know. He waited, frozen in dread, feeling things he’d never felt before. Not for Jade, at least. There’d never been the possibility. The chance had never come to consider her as something more than a passing ship in the night. Until now.

Jade’s smile faded into open lips, on the verge of words that didn’t seem to come. She took a deep breath, and it stayed in her chest. “Dav . . .” She tilted her head with a forced smile. “You know what we are. I don’t even think I’d be capable . . . I mean, you don’t want
me
.”

“Don’t I?” Numbness spread through his chest, his veins, his limbs. Maybe he hadn’t thought this about her before, but in that moment, it felt as if he had.

Jade picked up Davin’s beer and brought it to his hand. “
Drink
,” she commanded, and he obeyed. “Keep drinking. I know you don’t like it. Finish it anyway.”

Davin let out a sigh and worked on the beer. Bitter. Hoppy. Skunky. Everything he hated in a drink. Jade wriggled closer, like a snake. Her hand massaged his thigh and her nose explored his neck under the ear.

“Finish it,” she whispered before kissing him on the jugular, then the earlobe. “It’s not what you want, but it’s what you need.”

He knew what she was doing. He knew her schemes. He knew she was tying him into a knot around her finger. He knew he was being manipulated.
Used
.

Oh, yes. He knew.

But he finished the damn beer anyway, then grasped the sides of her head and pulled her into a kiss. A long, hard kiss. Angry and passionate. She responded, moving closer and massaging between his legs. Their kiss evolved into more—lips locking and sliding apart, tongues pressing together, breaths growing heavier. Jade pressed in and straddled him. Her fingers found their way to the zipper on her vest and drew it down, down, down.

The hollowness lingered somewhere in the back of his mind.

But as Jade’s vest dropped to the shaggy rug, Davin resolved that it could wait.

It took about an hour for the hollowness to come back. Twenty minutes of that on the couch, another ten on the rug, maybe fifteen in the kitchen, the rest on the silky sheets of Jade’s bed.

Davin stared at the concrete slab suspended above him, wondering off and on about the structural integrity of the trestlework holding it in place, imagining what the experience would be like if it fell straight on him. Jade probably wouldn’t even wake up. She would die in blissful slumber as two massive chunks of cement crushed their bones and smashed them into one fleshy substance, like jelly between slices of bread.

At some point, he became aware of his own awakeness and slid out of the bed. Jade’s breathing stirred, and she mumbled something, then sighed and settled back into sleep. The cool night air drifted in from the cracked window as Davin rifled through dim lumps of clothing on the floor and slipped into his pants.

Back in the main room, the wallscreens still showed a looping panorama of hot air balloons drifting up and down. Davin found the remote control and started pressing buttons, too tired to read the array of tiny lettering across the front pad. One of the screens switched to a news channel. In the bottom corner, a rotating, tilted, three-dimensional spiral galaxy symbol bore the letters “SGN,” which stood for “Spartan Galactic News.” One of the top VN news conglomerates. A banner across the bottom read in bold, capitalized text: “CARINIAN MINISTER OF ARMS SPEAKS OUT.”