Part 17 (1/2)
She twisted fiercely. ”Jesti-you're hurting me!”
”I know! I said answer me!”
Yahna's control gave way. With a sidewise twist she brought up a foot and raked it down his s.h.i.+n, with force.
Jesti let out a yell, let go her arm, and struck. At the last moment he remembered to pull his blow so that he only cuffed her-and she seized that hand in her teeth. When he tried to jerk free, she hung on while letting her legs go limp. Already offbalance, he was dragged to the floor with her.
Cursing, he let go her other arm and seized her by the hair. He wrenched her head backward. Pain popped her mouth open to scream and his released hand leaped to her throat. The scream died in an ugly gagging sound.
”Answer me, d.a.m.n you! For onCe don't challenge and sneer-answer!”
Her eyes bulged and she sobbed for breath. He eased up on her throat. She swallowed twice before she snap-gasped her reply.
”d.a.m.n you, I told you Hieri had a caller and silent siren too! All he had to do was tune in to your grid-line 170.
and listen to my transmission. You said you'd be wearing that stupid robe-he heard you! He didn't need me to betray you! But since he thinks you're stupid, he saw he could cause more trouble by making you think he and I had struck a bargain. I'm the one stupid enough to think you weren't that stupid, d.a.m.n it, oh d.a.m.n d.a.m.n you!”
What came next was a foregone conclusion. It went with pa.s.sions up and blood running hot and bodies writhing, on the floor.
He ruined the halter to paw and chew at her warheads, got the robe out of the way and his coverall open, and discovered that he didn't have to ruin her shorts or get them off. A tug lowered their crotch enough to allow his invasion of them and her. Impaled, she lurched violently and forced him to grab her flailing arms.
He forwent telling her that she was wet as a lake; excited, as usual, by violence and force. He thrust forward with all his might, powering into her from the tips of his straining toes. Violent spasms of shuddering leaped all through her and she writhed in little undulations that grew into bigger ones as she bucked under him. Filling herself. Her freed b.r.e.a.s.t.s became loose b.a.l.l.s dancing on her chest, rippling and swaying. Spreading inner warmth turned her cleft into a humid mora.s.s of seething l.u.s.t that oiled itself and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h at his impaling shaft.
Their sweat-s.h.i.+ning bodies ground together. She was jerking her hips in spasms now. Twitching and moaning beneath him while need sluiced throughout the length of her squirming long body. His presence inside her was an internal fuse that sputtered heat into her very womb. It flared, exploded.
They lay still for a long while, still panting. Eventually he moved, to lie beside her. He chuckled.
”So that's what you wanted, you sly s.e.xpot. I should have known a psychist would sneak up on my off-side!”
”Why you-d.a.m.n you, d.a.m.n you, you d.a.m.ned . . . Eilan!” She beat at his chest.
”Lord, the positively awful name you call me!” He smiled, watching the way her b.r.e.a.s.t.s danced and jumped with her exertions. Then she blinked, stared.
171.
Realizing belatedly what he'd meant, she said, ”Oh.”
”As in 'Oh how right you are, Jesti you rapacious stud?' ” He grinned and cupped her breast . . . with, almost incredibly, real tenderness.
”Uh. Those toothmarks'll be sore for days.”
”Hope so. But I'll lick 'em to make the hurt go away.”
”Oh, Jes, d.a.m.n it. . . .” She looked away, then back. ”Listen. The last word we got on the reader/coder is that your man Hajji Kalajji was slated to meet CongCorp. Might be worthwhile to see what happens, don't you think?”
”Ah!” But he grinned. ”Sure you don't want to rile me up again, brat?” (She hit him.) When he started to rise, his ”uh” was in recognition of pain. He examined his s.h.i.+n. ”Glad you don't wear spike heels. Couldn't we just, uh, screw every now and then, Golden?-take it easy on each other? Just for a change.”
She hit him. Not hard. ”Oh d.a.m.n. You've ruined Twil's halter.''
”You should be delighted, Yahna-psychist ma'am. It's a sin to cover that beautiful set of inhalation halators of yours. Why not make a deal with Twil . . . both of you just go bare-topped. Tell you what-I will too!”
He grunted as he got to his feet, then turned to offer a hand to her.
She batted it away and bounced up-to catch him watching the further exuberanterant bounce of her ' 'inhalation halators.” Putting on a grim face over the smile that started, she crossed her arms over her outstanding attributes.
”I could make a nice top from that robe,” she said reflectively.
He had taken it off and was opening the comm-waste coverall. ”Uh, well, I'd like to keep it intact. It served me well, and might again. Here.” He found and handed her his old tunic. She saw the stopper in his coverall--Hieri's.
That wasn't why she stared, blinking, with both of them thinking she was about to start leaking tears. At last she swallowed and got words out: ”First thing you ever offered me . . . can we ... can 172.
we stand such an encroachment of creeping tenderness into our pardon-the-expression relations.h.i.+p?”
Jesti chuckled. He also took back the tunic and started to put it on.
”Here, gimme that!” She s.n.a.t.c.hed it and headed for the reader/coder. ”Got a good chest and shoulders on you, you know that . . . pirate?”
The minutes after that were baffling. The machine pulsed with top-priority CongCorp communications. C-C had made a tentative deal with the mysterious Hajji Kalajji. If it went through, a small s.p.a.cer with the payoff would pick him up in the vicinity of an abandoned satellite. Enter fortuitous circ.u.mstances: from Slicer, hidden in its cavern on The Sponge, Yahna and Jesti were in a superb position to watch the whole affair as if they watched an episode of a holomeller. They watched, an amazing clear picture.
A charter carrier came onscreen. Close by the dead satellite, it rendezvoused with a little speeder already there. Some sort of business went on between the two craft. Eventually the carrier unlocked and swept away. Just as Yahna began her ”Is that all?” another carrier moved, onscreen.
This one departed from the XN-sat, cruised to the System Speeder as the first had, and locked on. Almost immediately came terror! It burst luridly out of the speeder's transmission screen: the face of a man with a single eye. Teeth bared, he glared and roared out a challenge. The sight of that awful green scar running from eye to mouth to ear was itself enough to chill blood. The man must have chosen to leave it there; why else, when scars were so easy for daktaris to get rid of? And that rubicund optic replacing his other eye!
Jesti reacted with a shocked identification: ”Dravan! Dravan the Marked! We've heard of that devil even on Eilong!”
Yahna could only s.h.i.+ver and wish she were being held by the powerful man beside her. How could she, from her background and with her intelligence and talent, have come to this? Trapped in a nether world of pirates. Murderers. Madmen. Outlaws. Engulfed in terror and even 173.
draped in a nowhere male tunic. Swept from one whirlpool of panic/excitement/pa.s.sion to another.
(And loving it. Loving every pulsing, petrifying moment of it.
(When I'm not too paralyzed with fear to know how I feel about it, that is. All those Akima Mars dramas she'd worked on-people thought they were exciting and fraught with peril and violence and derring-do!-not to mention rape. . . .) They saw the rest of it. The attack on Dravan of two s.p.a.cers zooming in out of the purple abyss. So much for Dravan the Hideous, Yahna thought . . . and then the System Speeder vanished from screen and from s.p.a.ce.
That incredibility came as a shock that left Yahna gasping, staring. Nothing wrong with the scanner disguised up above their cave; the two attack craft were still there.
Jesti stood frowning at the screen too, with narrowed eyes. Abruptly he gave his head a jerk and headed for his clothes. ”I'm going back down.”
”Down? To Jasbir?''
”Firm.”
She had to scramble up and follow him out the door. ”Why? You saw what happened. That speeder simply . . . vanished. Disappeared.''
”Uh. Had to be Forty Percent City. Hieri told me about it,” he said, striding to collect the discarded robe. ”What you call it when someone uses the tachyon converter- bam, just like that-without waiting to make sure it's safe. Odds are forty-something per cent that you won't live through it.”
”Yes, sure, I know about jam-cram,” she snapped, walking (rapidly, to keep up!) a tightrope between confusion and irritation. ”But what's that got to do with your going back onplanet? You're not going to find Dravan there!”
”Dravan's the least of my concerns, Golden One!”
''Then what-Jesti-i-!''