Justin Read online

  Deanna snapped off the handheld. When she looked at him, the sympathy in her eyes had been replaced by a hard, angry glare. “You have friends in high places.”

  Justin had no idea what she was talking about. “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been ordered to let you go, all charges dropped.” And didn’t she look pissed off about that?

  “I guess it’s not your lucky day, darlin’.”

  Deanna’s voice went crisp. “The order comes from none other than the ruling family. Is one of them another client of yours?”

  Justin said nothing. If the order came from the ruling family, he had a pretty good idea who’d told them to do it. He knew only one member of that family, a pretty lady called Brianne, who’d hooked up with not one, but two Shareem. Looks like it helped to have Shareem friends who were regularly fucking powerful women.

  “Yes, yes, I know.” Deanna sounded disgusted. “You don’t kiss and tell.” She pushed buttons on her handheld. “If this holds up my promotion, Shareem, I swear to the gods I will make your life hell. I might make your life hell just for the fun of it.”

  No more, Please, Justin, no more first names.

  Too bad. The sincerity in her eyes had been there. The anger she showed now was outrage that someone had stomped on her authority and made her look stupid. Justin could almost feel sorry for her.

  Almost.

  Justin pressed a wet kiss to the glass and laughed when she whirled around and strode away.

  “I’m looking forward to it, sweetheart,” he called after her.

  *** *** ***

  “Brianne,” Justin said many hours later as he lifted yet another glass of ale. He was drunk, unsteady, and didn’t care. “Let me kiss you. Can I kiss you?”

  Brianne d’Aroth, granddaughter of the woman who ruled Bor Narga and advocate for Shareem rights, glared up at him. “No. Justin, you idiot.”

  “Sounds like my baby’s pissed at you.” Aiden, Brianne’s asshole level-one Shareem lover, stopped and grinned at Justin. Blond Aiden had been face sculpted, and his features were a work of art.

  Aiden slid his arm around Brianne and kissed her cheek. “You do not want to get this lady mad at you, Justin, trust me.”

  “Why not?” Justin slurred. “She won’t go down on you when she’s mad?”

  “Nope, she can be a real bitch about it. Won’t even watch Ky do it to me either.”

  “Aiden, my friend, your life is pure hell,” Justin said.

  Justin was a little more sanguine than the other Shareem about the relationship between Aiden and Ky—two Shareem who’d gone from being best friends to being lovers. On Sirius, all kinds of relationships were accepted, fully legal, and not considered shocking, as long as everyone involved was adult and consenting.

  Brianne heaved a sigh. “Will you two be serious? I had to pull every string I had to get you out of prison, Justin. If I hadn’t, you’d be marching to the termination chamber even now. I had to give my word that you’d never go up to the Vistara again. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand.” Justin took a last slurp of ale and stared morosely at the bottom of the glass. “Days like these I miss Sirius, boring as it was.”

  “So why did you come back here?” Aiden asked. “You never have come up with a good explanation.”

  “Because it’s none of your damned business.” Justin had to keep saying that. Maybe someday someone would listen to him.

  “That’s true,” Aiden said. “But you’ve got us curious.”

  Red-haired Judith, who owned the bar, snatched Justin’s ale glass from the table but didn’t give him another one. “Leave Justin alone. He’s had an ordeal.”

  Justin slid his arm around Judith’s waist as she cleared the table. “This is why I came back to Bor Narga. Because I heard about this great bar owned by a sexy lady named Judith.”

  “Bullshit,” Judith said, but she smiled.

  Justin slid his hand downward until he could give her ass a little fondle. Judith pulled away, but not in anger.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Mitch doesn’t like it.”

  Aiden, Justin, and another Shareem called Braden, who’d strolled up, said “Oooo,” at the same time. Aiden added, “Mitch doesn’t like it.”

  Judith blushed while they laughed. Mitch was a human, off-world pilot who’d taken to coming to Judith’s bar. He’d also taken to Judith. Justin hadn’t heard that Mitch had asked Judith to be exclusive, but good for her.

  Braden, the black-haired Shareem who’d just arrived, slid himself onto a stool at Justin’s table. Justin had shared an apartment with Braden when he’d first returned to Bor Narga, but had moved out when Braden’s new lover, Elisa, moved in.

  “I’m glad for Judith,” Braden said as Judith walked away. “She deserves someone special after having Shareem manhandle her for years.”

  “Not that I ever heard her complain,” Aiden said.

  Justin said, “But does Mitch keep his hands off other ladies when he’s not here? He needs to play fair.”

  “I say we ask him,” Aiden said.

  “Good idea,” Braden said. “We need to make sure he’s good enough for our Judith.”

  “Excuse me,” Brianne said loudly. “I notice how deftly you all managed to change the subject. I need to know why I had to pull rank to get Justin out of jail this afternoon.”

  “Let it rest, Bree,” Braden said. “It was a patroller getting her panties in a twist and taking it out on Justin. Besides, Justin’s not used to taking orders. He actually got to live like a human being for a while. He probably pissed off the patroller by not kissing her ass when she told him to.”

  Justin nodded, as though Braden had nailed it.

  Braden and Elisa were the only people on the planet, besides Rees, who knew the true reason that Justin had returned. They’d all kept it quiet, even from the other Shareem, understanding that the less their friends knew, the safer it would be for all concerned.

  Brianne made another noise of annoyance but gave up, and Justin let out his breath in silent relief.

  Aiden pulled Brianne against him and kissed her hair. “You know, baby, I’m in the mood for some rough play. How about we go find Ky and let him have his way with us? Then when he’s done, I’ll soothe it all better.”

  Brianne blushed, but she looked ready for what he wanted. Aiden was a level one, pure sensuality—scented oils, massages, slow sex. Ky, on the other hand, was a level three, which meant bondage play—varying from easy to hardcore, depending on what the lady wanted. Aiden and Ky balanced each other perfectly, opposite and complementary at the same time.

  Aiden led Brianne out of the bar, and Braden and Justin watched them go.

  “Sometimes I wonder what the three of them do together,” Braden said. “And sometimes I just don’t want to know.”

  “Hey, it works for them,” Justin said.

  “And I’m good with that.” Braden took drink, wiped his mouth, and leaned in to Justin. “But seriously, why did you go up to the Vistara again?”

  Justin’s head started to ache. “I wanted to see her.”

  “If you get yourself executed, my friend, you won’t see her at all.”

  “I know.” Justin tilted his chair back on two legs and leaned against the wall. “I want so bad to see her, and at the same time, it kills me to.”

  Braden gave him a sympathetic look. “You found Lillian, yet?”

  Sybellie’s mother. Justin had returned to Bor Narga to find them both. “No. Nothing.”

  “Elisa hasn’t turned anything up either,” Braden said. “But don’t worry. Elisa’s the best librarian on the planet. If there’s a record, she’ll find it.”

  “It’s getting bloody impossible.”

  “Don’t give up yet, my friend. We’ll find her.”

  Braden could afford to be optimistic. He’d paired off with Elisa not long after Justin’s return. Justin was glad for him, but their happiness gave him a lonely feeling. Justin had lived with a woman on Siri
us—Shela—for fifteen years, and they’d been lovers and best friends. He missed her like crazy.

  Justin needed to change the subject. “What’s it like for your lady, living with you and your jokes all the time? Who ever heard of a cheerful Dom?”

  Braden grinned. “Hey, she loves me. Anyway, isn’t that what level twos do? Spank and laugh?”

  “Fun and games. Whipped cream and furry handcuffs.”

  Braden shook his head. “Boring. Fake bondage.”

  “Bondage-Light,” Justin corrected. He pushed himself out of his chair. “I’m outta here. Judith has cut me off, and I need some sleep.”

  “Take it easy out there,” Braden said, expression serious. “Brianne can’t always be around to cover your ass.”

  “Don’t worry. I learned my lesson.”

  Like hell he had.

  Braden watched with a skeptical look as Justin said good night to Judith and got himself out of the bar. Justin had taken the apartment next door to the bar—with Judith’s help—a tiny place, but there he could shut out the world and get some peace.

  Justin went inside, stripped off, showered, dried himself, and landed facedown on his bed. The excess ale sent him quickly to sleep.

  He dreamed of a patroller with pretty eyes and sexy ankles threatening him with a gun loaded with whipped cream. He was naked, and so was she.

  The whipped cream dripped coolly across his back and down his body. He felt a hot tongue licking and licking, teeth on his ass, as she ate the whipped cream from him, dollop by dollop.

  Then the patroller with the big brown eyes turned him over and smiled at him, right before she wrapped that beautiful mouth around his cock.

  She suckled and stroked, tongue tickling the underside and driving him crazy. Justin got harder and harder, his hips rocking as she suckled him. Gods, it felt good. Harder, baby, harder.

  Justin wanted to taste her in return. He’d spread her legs, dribble the whipped cream across her pussy, bury his face in her, and lick her clean.

  In his dream, he heard the click of handcuffs, felt the familiar velvet of his lined ones around his own wrists. She put the loaded whipped cream gun against his temple.

  “No, Shareem. I do this my way.”

  Her way meant squirting whipped cream all over his chest, then licking down to his cock. Swirling her tongue around the tip, the heat of her mouth closing around him. Squeeze, suck. Yes.

  Come. I want to come. Justin wanted to mark her with his seed, so she’d know she belonged to him.

  And then she’d arrest him. She already had him in cuffs. Maybe she’d swat his ass, making it sting, before she cooled it down with whipped cream. Then she’d lick him again. He’d like that.

  Justin would break free, and he’d catch her when she tried to get away, and do it all back to her . . .

  A heavy buzzing cut through his dream. What the fuck? Maybe the whipped cream gun was overloading.

  Another buzzing, sharper, more insistent. It shattered the dream like glass, and the pleasant sensations vanished into smoke.

  Justin opened his eyes. He found his hand around his throbbing cock, his head pounding just as hard. He peeled his aching hand from his penis and reached for his hangover pills.

  Another buzzing. The front door. Shit.

  Justin rolled out of bed, pulled a tunic over his nakedness, and stumbled into the front room. He slammed the door open. “What?”

  He’d expected Braden, or maybe Rees. What he got was his sexy patroller, Deanna, who walked right in past him.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  Chapter Three

  “Come in.” Justin said to the open door. “Make yourself at home.”

  Deanna looked around the small living room strewn with Justin’s clothes and other junk. Shela had always yelled at Justin to clean up, but without her to motivate him, Justin had lost interest.

  “You live here?” Deanna asked.

  Justin let the door slam. “No, I stand in the middle of this room for the hell of it.”

  Deanna peered into the corner kitchen then at the alcove that led to his bedroom and bathroom.

  “It’s very small.”

  “It’s claustrophobic. But I didn’t have a choice.” Few wanted to rent to Shareem. He’d been lucky to get this.

  “My superiors came down hard on me about you,” Deanna said. “Getting a call from on high to let you go embarrassed them. So, they’re taking it out on me. Unless I can prove I had good cause to arrest you, my promotion is off, and I might even be demoted. I make another mistake, and I’m out.”

  Stupid Bor Nargans. They trained their patrollers to be major pains in the ass, and then got mad at them for doing their jobs?

  “Not your fault, sweetheart,” he said. “Shareem are shitheads. Everyone knows that.”

  She shot him a wry smile. “I don’t think that will be good enough for my superior.”

  Her voice, even agitated, was sexy. Maybe she really did have whipped cream in her stun gun.

  “What do you want me to tell you? That I went there to climb through a woman’s bedroom window to ravish her senseless? So you can arrest me for real and make it stick?”

  “I’m not going to arrest you at all. I only need to prove that you were let off because of favoritism, not incompetence on the part of the patrollers. Particularly incompetence on the part of Patroller First Class Deanna Surrell.”

  Justin never thought he’d feel sorry for a patroller, but with his mind full of the dream, Deanna’s dismay aroused Justin’s sympathy.

  In the three months Justin had been back on Bor Narga, the patrollers had followed him, carded him, harassed him, watched him. They’d done the same to his friends. They were a body of condescending, sneering bitches in coveralls.

  Deanna’s uniform was tight on her body, and again she wore her dark hair in the severe bun all patrollers did. But with her eyes holding anger and worry, she looked almost human.

  Justin gathered up clothes from the couch, dumped them in a corner, and gestured to the battered sofa. “Sit down.”

  She sat but scooched to the end of the couch when Justin sat right next to her.

  He laughed. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “No.” Her eyes betrayed the lie. “I have my stun gun.”

  Justin went hot. “Did you load it with whipped cream?”

  “What?”

  “I had a dream about you last night. You and furry handcuffs.”

  Now panic warred with her interest. “You put me in handcuffs?”

  “No.” Justin stretched his arm across the back of the couch, letting his fingers dangle an inch from her shoulder. “I was in the handcuffs. I guess deep down I wanted to play some games with you.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “In my dream, you locked my hands around my bedpost, and you bit my bare ass. Then you squirted whipped cream all over my cock and sucked it off.”

  Deanna’s eyes went wide, and he sensed her body warming. “I could arrest you for even saying that to me.”

  “Little tease. Did you bring real handcuffs? Maybe I could turn the tables and put the cuffs on you.”

  “I’m warning you, Justin. I can throw your butt in jail just for talking to me like this.”

  Justin leaned closer, his blood heating in a way it hadn’t in a long, long time. “Then my friends in high places will get me out again, and you’ll be back here in my apartment trying to save your job. Full circle.”

  Her anger flashed. “That doesn’t mean you can get away with anything you want.”

  “Sure as hell sounds like it to me, sweetheart.” Justin moved his fingers closer to her, letting them rest a fraction of an inch from her coverall. “If it makes you feel better, it’s programmed into Shareem that we can’t touch a lady until they give us permission. We can cajole and talk and promise, but until you say yes, we can’t do anything.”

  Deanna let out a breath, warm on his hand. “That’s true.”

>   “So you’re safe from me, Patroller. Don’t worry.”

  Justin didn’t mention that he’d learned to break that programming during his years on Sirius. He’d had no intention of forcing a woman, but Shela, a workaholic, had kept ignoring Justin’s blatant hints that she should start a sexual relationship with him.

  Shela had been so good at playing hard to get that Justin had trained himself to make the first move. He’d spent nights of sweat and pain before he’d convinced his body to let him do it. And he’d done it, to Shela’s surprise and delight.

  “So as soon as you want me to get the furry handcuffs, you tell me,” he said.

  “No.” The answer was clipped.

  “Damn, I hate when a woman is all business.”

  “Live with it. And tell me why you went to the Vistara.”

  Justin propped his elbow on the back of the sofa, head on his fist. Keeping your hands near your face distracted people, he’d learned. They didn’t watch your eyes.

  “See, Patroller, the reason ladies like Shareem is . . . we’re discreet.”

  Deanna’s gaze sharpened, and Justin could almost feel the click of the cuffs. “You’d go to jail to protect this woman’s identity?”

  “Why not? I already have once.”

  “She must be some woman.”

  “Must be, yeah.”

  Was that envy in her eyes? He hoped so. His patroller wasn’t bad. Now if he could get her to take down that bun of steel and relax.

  “So you did go up there to visit a woman,” Deanna said.

  “I never said that.”

  “She invited you?”

  “Never said that either.”

  Deanna folded her arms, which pushed up the cleavage that would show if she undid the coverall. “What you’re telling me, Justin, is that you violated two warnings to stay out of the district in order to meet an unknown woman at an undisclosed place. You should have explained to her that you weren’t allowed to go up there.”

  Justin rubbed the wall next to his head. “See, the tricky thing is, if I tell you I went to ravish a Vistara woman, so yeah, you were right to arrest me—then I’ll be back in my boring cell. It’s not in my best interest to help you.”