Rio Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Rio

  ISBN # 1-4199-0566-X

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Rio Copyright© 2006 Allyson James

  Edited by Heather Osborn.

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book Publication: March 2006

  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.

  Warning:

  The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. This story has been rated E–rotic by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

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

  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. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as “fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature.

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

  Tales of the Shareem:

  Rio

  Allyson James

  Chapter One

  Rescue

  He was an unlikely rescuer, more than six and a half feet tall, black hair to his waist, black leather covering a huge, muscled body, and eyes so blue Nella swore they were trying to suck her into him.

  He stood between her and the hovering ball of the assassin bot, close enough to her hiding place that she could smell leather and his sharp, male scent.

  His black hair hung in a shining mass to his taut, leather-clad backside, and for some strange reason, Nella wanted to wrap herself around his massive thighs and hang on.

  The man didn’t know that Nella hunkered behind a dry-rotted crate inches away from him. His attention was fixed on the foot and a half round sphere of the assassin bot, which had attacked him when he’d walked innocently into the alley.

  It wouldn’t try to kill him—Nella knew it was programmed to kill only her—but it would hurt him if he got in its way.

  The bot hummed like an angry mosquito and smacked itself against the tall man’s chest. A normal man would have been flattened by its powerful strike, but her rescuer only eyed the shining sphere in irritation.

  “Get out of my way, you gods-fucked machine.”

  The words translated harshly in the implant in Nella’s brain, but the voice that spoke them was smooth as satin, warm and rich. His voice made her want to stop and listen, as scared as she was.

  The bot started to back away, then made a sudden dart around the man toward Nella’s hiding place.

  The man swung his huge fist, and the bot spun crazily into a wall with a loud boing. The bot bounced back, wobbling a little.

  Time to run, Nella thought. But she crouched in place, torn between hiding and fleeing. If her rescuer realized the bot was after her, would he step aside and let it have her?

  Assassin bots were programmed by people who didn’t want murder traced to their doorsteps. After the bot shot its killing dart into Nella’s body, it would disintegrate, leaving no evidence of where it came from and who sent it. Linginian knew how to cover his tracks.

  The bot wouldn’t hurt the man unless he tried too hard to get in its way. Nella knew she endangered him, but then, she might be able to get away while he kept the bot busy. If she leapt onto a transport ship and got out of here, she’d be safe. The bot could not travel through space to find her.

  That wouldn’t stop Linginian from trying again, of course.

  The bot struck the black-leather-clad man again. Growling, he caught the sphere in his hands, but the bot crackled with electricity, covering the man’s fingers and wrists in a wavering blue field.

  “Fuck!” he cried and let go.

  The bot’s hum increased. Bots had no feelings, not even a computer brain like androids. They sought and destroyed, that was all.

  But Nella swore this bot was annoyed. It wanted to teach the man a lesson before it got down to the business of killing Nella.

  The man glared at it, then a gleam entered his eye, and he tapped his chest with his fist. “All right, you hunk of junk, come get me.” He sounded irritated, but at the same time, elated, like he was having fun.

  A man who had fun fighting an assassin bot?

  He led the bot backward, step by step. It followed him, and he laughed, one of the finest sounds Nella had ever heard in her life. A girl could fall in love with that laugh.

  But any moment now, he’d fall over Nella’s hiding place, and the bot would get them both. She held her breath.

  At the last minute, the man stepped through a narrow doorway into an empty warehouse. The bot skittered into the shadowed opening, then it stopped, as though confused.

  The man ducked out and slapped his hand against the wall. A huge metal door slammed down, carrying the startled bot with it. The heavy slab of metal smashed the bot into the floor.

  Plastic and metal and gold bits flew every which way, clattering against the rusting walls. Then with hiss and a pop, the pieces disintegrated. The man chuckled. “There. See how you like it.”

  But the bot was programmed to kill, no matter what. At the last moment, one of its darts released, lightning fast, straight at Nella, programmed to seek and find her DNA signature.

  She felt the sting in her bare leg. The poison was fast-acting, and her vision instantly blurred.

  Through a fog, she saw the big man standing over her, concern in the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. He had the dart clenched in his fist, which he’d pulled out of her almost the instant it went in.

  She heard him say, “Are you all—?” and then, there was nothing.

  * * * * *

  “Rio?” Dr. Laas came out of her laboratory and stared at the unconscious young woman in his arms. “Who is that? What happened?”

  “No idea.” Rio carried the girl past the professor and into the softly lit room. “Some floating ball was chasing me, and it shot her. I snatched the dart out, but it might be too late. I can’t wake her up.”

  Dr. Laas was one of the original inventors of Shareem, men created in the laboratories of DNAmo to be tall, tight-assed and long-cocked, and know every way to bring a woman to ecstasy and keep her there. For days.

  Dr. Laas, a genius at twenty, had been in the thick of the experiments. She and her fellow scientists had mined genes from the very best stock of many worlds, combining them to create Shareem.

  Angelica Laas had been beautiful at twenty, and at fifty, she was still voluptuous and pretty. Because Shareem aged slowly, Rio didn’t look all that much different from the day he’d left DNAmo with her, twenty years ago.

  When DNAmo shut down, and the paranoid government of Bor Narga outlawed Shareem, any related research and the scientists who’d made them, Dr. Laas had gone underground—literally. She now existed in a compound built under the warehouse district of Pas City, hidden and secret. Only a privileged few knew how to enter it.

  The Shareem themselves ha
d been allowed to live—a close vote in the Senate when many people had clamored to terminate them.

  Shareem could live, the Senate decided, as long as they didn’t leave the planet, procreate and spread their outlawed genes, or have anything to do with the sex-loving scientists who’d created them in the first place. They would be regulated and controlled by the Ministry of Non-Human Life Forms, and kept under strict surveillance and control.

  Rio had long ago broken rule three and was about to break rule one. Rule two he’d kept only because he was forced once every six months to take inoculations against sexual diseases and impregnating women. He could be a sexual machine, but never a father.

  Shareem had been cleaned of all diseases when they’d been made, but the Ministry trusted nothing. Rio and every other Shareem were subjected to a series of painful inoculations every six months. The penalty for not reporting in and taking them—termination.

  Rio had been on his way today to break rule one, to board a transport to Station 657. His friend Rees, another Shareem, had set it up for him, using his connections to get him a berth. Rees’ new lifemate, Talan—sweet, beautiful lady—had paid for it as a gift.

  Rio had a contact on Station 657, another Shareem who would help him find a world where people couldn’t care less whether a man was a Shareem or a human or a six-armed Venusian. Somewhere a Shareem could lay back and enjoy life, maybe even have a family.

  Rio had started to want that bad, especially now that he’d seen Rees—Rees, for the gods’ sakes—fall in love and cleave himself to one woman. Rees, an experimental Shareem who’d been put through hell at DNAmo, was now relaxed and at peace with himself.

  Talan, the pretty woman for whom he’d fallen, had brought him that peace.

  Plenty of ladies wanted Rio—he was a level three Shareem after all, which meant bondage, domination and dangerous games, in which Rio was always master. His motto was, have whip, will use it, anytime, just ask me, sweetheart.

  Women grew instantly wet simply looking at Rio. They begged for him to do whatever he wanted—tie them up, spank them, fuck them, force them to pleasure him.

  Not that Rio didn’t enjoy being a Dom, because he did. It was what he was. But maybe out there in the stars, he could find something more.

  Rio quickly laid the young woman on the table Dr. Laas indicated.

  “Who is she?” Dr. Laas asked again.

  “Hell if I know. She was hiding in an alley.”

  They looked the young woman over. She had a flowerlike face surrounded by flame-red hair. The hair was tangled and dirty, but when she cleaned up, Rio thought, it would flow like living fire.

  She wore only a tight, translucent tunic, torn and dirty, that covered her from neck to thigh, the garb of a servant. Her bare legs were sweetly rounded, the shoes on her feet, too big.

  The tunic shaped itself to a lush body—full breasts, round hips, a belly she probably thought was too ample. A sweet, lickable woman who’d look good naked, kneeling, her hands bound behind her.

  Right now, her face was pasty white, her breath shallow and her limbs ice-cold.

  Dr. Laas, ever practical, asked, “What was she shot with?”

  Rio took the dart from his bag. He’d wrapped it in cloth to keep safe from the point. “Careful.”

  Dr. Laas took it to the computers across the room, where she had a terminal built into a round table. Rio didn’t know one end of a computer from the other, but he knew Dr. Laas was a genius with them. She touched them and purred to them, and they did anything she wanted.

  When she unwrapped the dart, her eyes widened in alarm. She eyed the fine-pointed needle a moment, then scraped it against a plastic slide. She dropped the slide into a slot on the table, then picked up her light wand and touched a few pads. “Mmm. Not good.”

  Rio took the girl’s hand in his. Her fingers were cold but her palms were slick with sweat. “What?”

  The computer voice that Dr. Laas called Baine answered the question. “An alkaloid poison. Old-fashioned, but effective. It kills by asphyxia.”

  “That’s why she can’t breathe,” Rio said.

  Dr. Laas nodded. She touched more light pads, muttered to herself and finally stood up. “Be right back.”

  She stepped to the lift tube at the end of the room and disappeared into it.

  Rio looked down at the young woman. “Hang on.” He circled his thumb over the backs of her fingers. “I don’t want you dying because of me.” He flicked his gaze along her fine-curved body, which lay limp and unresponsive. “You’re way too cute to die.”

  Shareem, the theory went, were programmed to not have strong emotions—hate, rage, fear, desperation, joy, love.

  That’s bullshit.

  Rio desperately wanted this woman to live. He didn’t know why he cared so much. He didn’t know her—she’d never even said a word to him. But he felt a pull to her, an invisible bond that went beyond compassion.

  He wanted her to open her eyes and look at him, to smile at him, to live and walk and talk. He wanted to have sex with her. He wanted to know everything about her.

  Why he wanted this so bad, he had no freaking clue.

  The lift whirred open. Dr. Laas scuttled across the floor, the slit in her coverall showing a shapely leg from ankle to hip.

  She had a syringe in one hand. She tapped it, then plunged it into the curve of the girl’s arm. “That should do it.”

  The girl gave a few ragged gasps, then suddenly her body relaxed. She drew a long, deep breath and went limp into a natural-looking sleep.

  Rio also drew a breath, relieved, surprised to find himself shaking all over. She would live.

  He kissed her warming fingers and laid her hand at her side.

  Chapter Two

  In the Lair of Dr. Laas

  Nella opened her eyes and realized she was naked.

  It was a relief to be out of the dirty, sour-smelling tunic she’d stolen, but a bit unnerving to wonder who’d taken it off. A kind stranger? A doctor in a hospital? Or Linginian?

  Nella assessed her surroundings. She lay in a small room with no windows, lit with soft, artificial light. The bed was the only piece of furniture in the sparse room, and to her right, an open door led to what looked like a bathroom.

  The recirculated air carried a faint scent, a warm, spicy smell. A sheet covered her naked body, and there was no sign of her clothes.

  It did not look like a hospital room, which would have rows of blinking computers to monitor the patient. At least, they did on Ariel. She had no idea what hospital rooms looked like on Bor Narga.

  If she were a captive, her captors were being gentle with her. Or perhaps hoping she’d relax and trust them.

  Had Linginian succeeded in capturing her again, after all? Had she been taken back to his luxury liner, or even to his huge house on the southern continent of Ariel?

  After she’d escaped him and his pretense that the two of them had run off together, he’d done his best to kill her. If Nella were dead, she could not tell one and all that he’d kidnapped her and tried to form the Bond by artificial means.

  But, if Linginian had her, why would he put her in this pleasant room with scented air and a soft bed?

  She had no idea. Her brain was filled with confused images, and her bladder was full, making the bathroom inviting.

  Nella hopped off the bed and stretched. She felt well and rested, better than she had in days. This could not be Linginian’s work—he had denied her all comforts when she refused him, hoping to break her. But Nella was made of sterner stuff than that.

  She relieved herself in the bathroom, then looked at the shower that lined the wall. It was a water shower, with five jets positioned over a long bench. A person could lie there, naked, and let water fall all over them.

  The sensuality of it made her skin tingle. Most people these days used sterilizers to get clean. This shower was for someone who liked the feeling of hot water trickling against naked skin.

  The bench was wi
de enough that two people could lie down very close together. Or on top of one another.

  She dragged in a breath. It was a wicked idea, one she was surprised she’d thought of, but for some reason, she liked it.

  Nella couldn’t resist—she was unwashed, her hair in nasty tangles. She studied the controls at the end of the shower and adjusted for water temperature and pressure.

  The showers jetted to life. She walked under them, pulling her hair back to scrape the wonderful water through it.

  She glanced at the bench. She could just soap herself down and turn off the water, but—why not? If her captors wanted her to enjoy her shower, then she would. Even if they killed her later, she’d be clean and comfortable. She was tired of being otherwise.

  Nella lay down on the bench, face up, closing her eyes.

  The shower poured down on her like a warm waterfall, like being caught in a summer rain as a child. Except now she did what she’d always wanted to do, spread her naked arms and legs and let the water flow over her.

  The shower beat softly on her skin, tingling on her breasts. Her nipples rose in response to the gentle massage.

  She spread her legs a little more, wanting the same massage between them. It felt good. She had never been with a man—she would not until she found her Bond-mate—but she’d touched herself experimentally. This felt much better.

  The water tapped her clit and flowed down the folds of her quim. She wondered if a man’s tongue would feel like that. She groaned a little, thinking of it.

  She suddenly remembered the tall man fighting the assassin bot in the alley, and her heartbeat sped. That hadn’t been a dream. He’d been real, and he’d smashed the bot. She couldn’t remember anything after that.

  Had he carried her here?

  And why?

  To let her lie under the water and wish his tongue lapped her? Because he would be the exact man she’d want. He’d look at her with those strange blue eyes, laugh that silken laugh and run his tongue through her folds until she screamed with joy.