Aiden and Ky Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Aiden and Ky

  ISBN # 9781419908880

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Aiden and Ky Copyright© 2007 Allyson James

  Edited by Heather Osborn.

  Photography and cover art by Les Byerley.

  Electronic book Publication: January 2007

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Content Advisory:

  S – ENSUOUS

  E – ROTIC

  X

  –

  TREME

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (Erotic), and X (X-treme).

  The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. This story has been rated E–rotic.

  S- ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

  E- rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. E-rated titles might contain material that some readers find objectionable—in other words, almost anything goes, sexually. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry in terms of both sexual language and descriptiveness in these works of literature.

  X- treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Stories designated with the letter X tend to contain difficult or controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

  TALES OF THE SHAREEM:

  AIDEN AND KY

  Allyson James

  Allyson James

  Chapter One

  Encounter

  The Shareem on the other side of the coffee bar swirled his tongue over the cream at the top of his cup and pulled it into his mouth.

  Brianne d’Aroth went weak in the knees. She sat in a cooled room under cooled robes and still she wanted to melt into a puddle on the questionably clean floor.

  He dipped his tongue into the cream again, coating the tip before drawing it into his mouth. He closed his eyes to savor the taste, a little smile on his face.

  Every woman in the coffee bar leaned toward him as he swallowed, the hollow at his collarbone damp with sweat. His loose robes revealed a V of strong chest and light-colored curls licking sun-kissed skin.

  His mane of blond hair was gathered at the base of his neck and flowed all the way down to…probably his backside. Too bad the table blocked her view.

  Oblivious of every female growing wet between the legs for him, he licked up another dab of cream. This time a drop lingered on his lips. Smiling, he slid his tongue out to clean it up.

  This should be outlawed, Brianne thought over the rapid beating of her heart. Maybe she should call the patrol.

  But the Shareem wasn’t actually doing anything. He was sitting alone, sipping his coffee.

  The way he sipped it, that should be outlawed.

  The Shareem opened his eyes and looked straight at her, deep blue eyes pinning Brianne in place.

  Not that he could see much of her. Brianne had covered herself from head to foot in plain robes so no one would know who she was. She’d taken off her face veil so she could enjoy her coffee but was careful to keep her head down and not reveal her features.

  The Shareem looked directly at her. All over. She might as well be sitting there stark naked.

  His smile widened, as though he knew what she thought. Gods, sitting stark naked in a public place while he did nothing but look at her made her feel…

  Mmm.

  Shocked. Of course. Horrified. Amazed at his audacity. She should shield her face from his unwelcome scrutiny, turn her back and walk away in a huff. She should snap her fingers for one of her bodyguards to come and teach the Shareem his place.

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  Aiden and Ky

  And have him stop looking at me like that?

  Forget it.

  She did the boldest thing she’d ever done in her life. Brianne looked straight back at the Shareem and sent him a little smile.

  Contact.

  Adrenaline raced through her body, hot sensation pooling at the base of her spine.

  The Shareem acknowledged her smile with a sly quirk of his lips. Watching her, he dipped his tongue into the cream again.

  She realized with startling clarity that he was picturing lapping the cream between her legs. Shareem could do that—make a woman think of nothing but him pleasuring her.

  I’ m going to die now.

  With a smile on my face.

  This could go no farther. Brianne should not be down in Pas City even if her bodyguards had stationed themselves casually around the back of the coffee bar. She should not be enjoying the surprisingly good coffee in the shabby bar with common workers and—dear gods—a Shareem.

  She’d come out as she sometimes did to see how people really lived, the women and men she spent her life trying to help. It was difficult to see what they were like from inside the huge compound that was the ruling family’s home. So on a regular basis Brianne dressed like an ordinary middle-class woman and wandered the streets, looking around, protected by a dozen discreet bodyguards in case of trouble, or worse, reporters.

  She’d never expected to see one of the genetically enhanced Shareem. Shareem were more or less outlawed on Bor Narga, allowed to live if they kept themselves to themselves, if they didn’t try to procreate or leave the planet, and if they subjected themselves to a barrage of inoculations every six months.

  Brianne had just popped in on a whim to try the local coffee. And there he was.

  She’d heard they could sense when a woman wanted one and contrive to be where she could find him. She wondered which woman in the coffee bar would be lucky enough to take him home today and felt a twinge of envy.

  Her smile turned regretful. She’d go home and deal with her upcoming wedding to Dranis, who was boring and stuffy but had good DNA. Their children, who would be incubated at the Ministry of Families, would be healthy, look good on the digital feeds and have a fairly good IQ—not genius level, but enough intelligence to deal with being part of the ruling family of the planet.

  Brianne had already had her hymen removed in a nice little celebration when she’d come of age. She’d be spared the embarrassment of sexual encounters because Dranis had no interest in sex, one of the reasons she’d chosen him. They’d give their DNA to the Ministry’s lab and never share a bed.

  5

  Allyson James

  Sex was for the lower classes, and even they strove to put their basic urges behind them.

  The warm look in the Shareem’s eyes said, It’ s not embarrassing, sweetheart. It’ s the best thing you’ ll have in your life.

  She gave a tiny shake of her head. Maybe another woman could indulge, and a few upper-class women did, but not Brianne d’Aroth.

  He understood her signal. He made the barest shrug as he leaned forward to sip more coffee, as though to say, Hey, your loss, it could have been good.

  Probably it would have been very, very good.

  Her heart still racing with awakened needs, she sent him another small smile, thanking him for being so utterly gorgeous to look at. His answering grin made her body temperature soar again, and a dark tingling began in her breasts. She needed to get out of there before she gave in to the temptation of him. She was already sweating.

  She flung her veil over her face,
slid from the stool and hurried from the coffee bar without a backward look.

  As she half ran along the bazaar shaded with colored canopies she did not notice a detachment of her guard charge in the back way of the coffee bar and arrest the Shareem. Their monitors had registered Brianne’s rise in adrenaline and temperature, then they’d seen her run out faster than they’d ever seen her move before.

  Their orders were to arrest and confine any who dared assault their lady. When they entered the coffee bar they saw the Shareem and—well, everyone knew what Shareem did.

  So Aiden found himself manacled and shackled and thrown into a ground transport before he could even finish his damned coffee.

  * * * * *

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Ky,” Ky answered impatiently as the patroller in dusty leggings, a loose tunic and scarred boots checked her handheld one more time.

  “Yes, there you are.” The patroller looked proud she’d located Ky’s information from the central computer at the Ministry of Non-Human Life Forms. “And you’re looking for…”

  “Aiden,” Ky said for the third time. “He was arrested in a coffee bar and I want to know why.”

  “I can guess why.” The patroller pushed buttons on her handheld, moving slowly.

  “He’s a Shareem, isn’t he? Here it is. He was taken to the jail block in Senoda.”

  “What for?”

  The patroller peered at her handheld. “Sexual assault.”

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  Aiden and Ky

  Ky stared at her a stunned moment. “That’s bullshit. Shareem can’t assault a woman. We’re programmed not to.”

  The patroller, a tall woman only about five inches shorter than Ky, gave him an evil look. “You’re the one who’s full of bullshit. You Shareem put women in manacles. You whip them and pretend they like it. That one called Calder chases women through a pleasure palace of some kind. I’ve heard.”

  “And the ladies pay Calder a frigging fortune to let him do it. What happened, he turn you down?”

  The patroller’s face turned three shades of red. “Shareem are menaces and should have been terminated years ago. At least Aiden will be terminated tomorrow.”

  Ky’s heart nearly stopped.

  Ky and Aiden had been friends since the fall of DNAmo, the defunct factory that had set out to make the ultimate male to pleasure women. DNAmo had done the job a little too well, and the paranoid women who ruled the planet shut down DNAmo and outlawed the making of Shareem. Wouldn’t want women lusting after sex and possibly going back to the time when women had been completely submissive to men, would they?

  Only a few votes had kept Shareem from being terminated wholesale after DNAmo closed. Aiden and Ky had survived by helping each other during the chaos of the company’s shutdown, and once the decision had been made to let Shareem live, they’d continued to share lodgings.

  “Aiden didn’t do anything. He can’t. He’s a level one.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Whips and manacles are only used by level threes, like me.” Ky leaned over her, six-feet-seven-inches of black leather and powerful muscle. “You want a little bondage, you come to me. Aiden is a level one. He’s all scented oils and massage and sensual pleasures. He can make a woman come just by feeding her strawberries.”

  “Well, apparently he went a little farther than strawberries.”

  “Which I’m telling you is bullshit. He can’t force a woman to do anything she doesn’t want to. Not even Calder, as exotic as he gets.”

  “It’s what’s in the report.” She flashed the handheld at him.

  This was damned stupid, and yet the government of Bor Narga could easily terminate Aiden’s life because everyone feared Shareem and sexuality.

  “Who accused him?” Ky asked.

  He didn’t think the patroller would tell him. She’d bleat about confidentiality and all that shit.

  She smiled. “That’s what’s going to clinch this. His accuser is Brianne d’Aroth.”

  Ky stopped in astonishment. Brianne was one of the many high-powered women of the ruling d’Aroth family. About fifty years ago the governor and her husband had 7

  Allyson James

  produced ten children and all those siblings had produced another five or six each, mostly female. Their family reunions looked like mob scenes on the digital news feeds.

  The d’Aroths had been largely responsible for shutting down DNAmo and making the Shareem second-class citizens. That had been twenty years ago, and now one of their number was accusing Aiden of assault? It was too much.

  From what he’d seen on the digitals, Ky had thought Brianne, with her sun-streaked brown hair and large brown eyes, didn’t seem as bad as the rest of them. She was tall—all the ruling women had tall children—and her figure was what the digitals called lush and Ky called delectable. She was not in line to inherit anything, but she ran a lot of charitable projects and basically helped the ruling family look good.

  She’d seemed more kindhearted than the other women in her family, and whenever Ky saw her on digitals he let himself have one or two cock-hardening fantasies about her.

  Showed him how much he could trust reporters and digitals.

  “What the hell is she talking about? How would Aiden even get near Brianne d’Aroth?”

  “She was slumming?” the patroller suggested with a sneer.

  “Fuck this.”

  Ky swung on his booted heel and strode off into the sunshine.

  “Where are you going?” the patroller called after him.

  To figure out what the hell is going on, Ky kept to himself.

  Aiden was his best friend. When they’d first fled DNAmo ahead of the rampaging, trigger-happy patrollers, they’d hidden out in an abandoned shack that wasn’t fit for weevils, and they’d taken turns going out scavenging food and water. They’d waited out sandstorms in the place, huddled together to keep off the worst of the dust, barely able to breathe.

  Shit like that made a man your best friend, and you didn’t let him get terminated because of some bitch’s fantasy.

  He strode into a train station and got on a train to go uptown, where the rich lived all clean and protected. Damn it all to hell.

  Three hours later, the patrollers locked his struggling form into a cell in the Senoda jail block, generously letting him share the six-by-six space with his best friend Aiden.

  8

  Aiden and Ky

  Chapter Two

  Incarceration

  Aiden looked at Ky with the scowl he only wore when he was truly pissed off.

  Slowly and clearly, he said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Trying to get you out.”

  Aiden pointed through the transparent, foot-thick wall. “You’re supposed to be doing that out there.”

  The jails on Bor Narga were the cleanest and most efficient in the system—and the most demoralizing. Each cell was backed by a white wall, and that was all the prisoner got for privacy. The other three walls were made of thick transparent plastic built to withstand several thousand tons of explosives.

  Prisoners had nothing, not even a place to sit down. Food was delivered at certain hours, and a toilet lowered from the back wall when needed. Prisoners were sterilized by sonic beams once a day. Everything was scrupulously clean.

  Not that prisoners remained in these cells long. This jail was a waiting area in which unlucky detainees paced while their trial was prepared. These cells were for the worst offenders, those who usually ended up terminated. Termination was quick and painless, so Ky had heard.

  Aiden and Ky were the only two in the block today. There were no guards in the corridor because there was no need for guards. They couldn’t escape.

  Ky folded his arms. The jailers had taken their clothes but left them with the loincloths Shareem usually wore. Ky’s was leather. The black chain on Ky’s right biceps tightened.

  “I went to the house where Brianne d’Aroth lives,” he
said.

  Aiden’s ultra-handsome face took on a look of amazement. “What for? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Couldn’t get past the front gate. I just wanted to know why she decided to accuse you of assault.”

  “Is that who accused me?” Aiden looked amazed. “Why? I’ve never seen the woman before, except on digitals.”

  “She was in the coffee bar today.”

  “Ah.” His eyes softened as he recalled the incident. “So she was the female under all those veils.”

  “What happened?” Ky asked impatiently.

  “She smiled at me. I smiled back. Then she walked out.”

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  Allyson James

  “So you never touched her.”

  “I never got near her. Closest was about twenty feet.”

  “That’s not how her bodyguards tell it,” Ky said. “Anyway, I got pissed off, and they arrested me too.”

  “Great.”

  “Yeah, I’m an asshole. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Aiden leaned against the transparent wall. He had been face-sculpted before birth, an experimental technique at DNAmo. The result was that he had a perfectly symmetrical face, almond-shaped blue eyes and a handsomeness that was almost blinding. Women stopped in their tracks when they saw his face.

  Ky had a face that could charitably be called plain, but it wasn’t his looks that made women follow him. Ky was a level three, made a little stronger, a little bigger in the body than the level ones and twos.

  Ky rumbled on. “And now no one knows we’re in here, and we’ll both be terminated and swept under the rug. The Ministry of Non-Human Life Forms likes to keep Shareem problems quiet.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone?” Aiden asked. “Not Judith or Braden?”

  “Didn’t have the chance.”

  Aiden said nothing, but Ky knew he’d blown it. Braden could have put them in touch with Rees, who had taken a rich woman to be his lifemate. Talan d’Urvey was not as powerful as Brianne d’Aroth, but she still had some pull. For a shy little lady she had a core of steel.