Justin Page 5

  But he was beginning to like this feisty little patroller. A day with her, teaching her everything she needed to know about Shareem . . .

  Justin’s level-two instincts knocked. He could lock her hands behind her, strip her bare, run slow fingers over her body, then kiss her, lick her, bite her, and show her that a little spanking between friends could be fun.

  Deanna was ready, he could feel it in her. Her skin temperature was rising, face now a sweet pink. Her need was filling her, probably surprising her, and Justin had to talk fast.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “You let me teach you about Shareem—what we really are, not a bunch of crap in your database. Let me teach you, and maybe I’ll tell you what I was doing up on the Vistara.”

  He let the lie come to his lips, without stirring up the pain and sweat that other Shareem went through.

  Half-lie, actually. He wouldn’t tell her about Sybellie, but he might help Deanna save her job—somehow. It was important to her.

  Deanna leaned to him. Her lips parted, her breath touching his fingers, and her mouth started to form the word Yes.

  “No,” she said.

  A hard, emphatic No.

  Disappointment kicked him in the gut. He’d been looking forward to taking her by the wrists and tugging her with him into his bedroom. Right now.

  Justin could still do it. He’d broken his programming. He didn’t need her permission.

  “No?” he asked softly.

  “I’m not a whore, thank you very much. No learning about Shareem in exchange for anything.”

  Fair point. “All right. How about learning about Shareem for the hell of it?”

  That stopped her. Deanna wanted it—everything about her screamed it. Her body was tight under his touch, nipples pearling against her coverall.

  Deanna took a firm step away. “No.”

  She had to drag the word out, but the woman had guts. Not many females could resist a Shareem when they poured it on.

  “No,” she said again. Deanna managed to slide herself along the wall toward the door, though she couldn’t look away from him.

  Justin let her go. He could take her, sure. He could make her like it so much that she never told a soul and kept it her secret pleasure forever.

  He could do anything he wanted, but Justin had the feeling that if he coerced her into it now, this would be their one and only time. As much as he could make her like it, Deanna would be ashamed, and she wouldn’t be back for more.

  But it hurt, oh, it hurt, to watch her go.

  “Stay here,” she said, her voice stronger the farther she made it from Justin. She touched the door controls. The door flung itself upward, as though it too was in haste to get her out of there. Hot air boiled in at them. “And stay the hell off the Vistara.”

  Deanna walked out. Almost ran out. She gave Justin one last look over her shoulder—her longing burning him as her veil glistened in the sunlight—then the door closed, and she was gone.

  “Shit.”

  Justin ran his hands through his hair, his body sweating, though the cooler tried to staunch the heat. He was going to burn up and die.

  He wanted to run after Deanna, haul her back in here, take her against the wall. To drown in her scent, to taste every inch of her—he needed it.

  Damn her.

  Justin collapsed to the sofa, scrubbing his hands through his hair, trying to stop the tingling all over his skin. He needed to release. Shareem genes were taking over, and he needed to release, now, now, now.

  Oh, right, I broke my programming and can live like a normal human.

  I’m Shareem, and I always will be.

  It was time to see Sybellie. But Justin couldn’t sneak to the Vistara and the coffeehouse where she met her friends when he was burning up like this. He’d never walk three feet with this hard-on.

  Judith was next door, a woman who made no secret that she loved Shareem—four or five at a time when she could manage it.

  But as she’d indicated when Justin had squeezed her ass the other day, she was holding off Shareem. She liked Mitch, Mitch had asked her to be exclusive, and who was Justin to come between a budding relationship?

  Justin occasionally still joined Braden and Elisa for a little ménage fun, but right now he needed mindless fucking, and he didn’t think Braden would stand back and let that happen. Neither would Elisa, and anyway Justin didn’t want to use Elisa that way.

  That left his handy hand.

  He didn’t have time to make it a formal ritual or even grab some lube. Justin ripped open his leggings, wrapped his hand around his hard and unhappy cock, and yanked.

  *** *** ***

  Deanna didn’t catch her breath until she was halfway down the street. The veil had sunblocking material woven into the silk, which shielded her from the worst of the sun, but her body was scalding from the inside out.

  She still felt Justin’s mouth on hers, his skilled kiss, his fingers gentle on her face. Her body was burning to its core, her need making her hotter than she’d ever been.

  Even Deanna’s dream about him hadn’t gotten her this bothered. But that hadn’t been real, and Justin’s searing kiss had been. While she’d stood against him, taking the kiss, she’d wanted to grab his big hand, thrust it between her legs, and beg him to pleasure her.

  When he’d offered to tell her what she wanted to know in exchange for teaching her, she’d nearly screamed Yes!

  Deanna’s hasty claim that she wouldn’t make a whore of herself for him had been a huge lie. She’d wanted to. Justin made her want to. And when he’d suggested they do it for the fun of it . . .

  Good thing she’d gotten herself out of there.

  Deanna leaned against the wall in a nearby alley, trying to let the heat of the sun-baked brick restore her equilibrium. As she waited, she forced her common sense to return.

  In spite of the way he wooed her today, Justin was still up to something. He’d returned to Bor Narga for a reason, and he’d gone to the Vistara for a reason, and that reason was costing Deanna her job, her career, and her life.

  She damn well wanted to find out what that reason was. And she would—no letting him distract her with buying her gifts and promising her pleasure.

  Deanna wasn’t certain how long she stayed in the alley, watching and waiting, trying to calm down, but the sun moved higher, and plenty of people passed by.

  She came alert when a sleek hovercar pulled up in front of Justin’s door. The car was expensive, if Deanna were any judge, barely making any noise as it rocked on its cushion of air.

  The car had a driver’s compartment separate from the passenger’s—the type of car its owner would never drive herself. A highborn woman lurked behind those tinted windows in the back, Deanna was certain, a chauffeur in the front.

  After about five minutes, the door to Justin’s apartment opened. Justin strolled out, cool and collected, his sunblocking robes pulled over his head and across the lower half of his face. The back passenger door opened politely for him, and Justin slid inside.

  The door closed, and the car slid forward, heading straight for Deanna.

  Deanna ducked back into the shadows of the alley. As soon as the car passed, she came out of hiding and followed.

  The streets down here were full of people, slowing the hovercar, so Deanna easily kept up with it, and the driver didn’t seem to be in a hurry. The car wove patiently through the pedestrian traffic and didn’t pick up speed until it found a main thoroughfare. Deanna stepped back as the car turned the last corner and darted into the stream of traffic flowing uphill.

  “Damn him,” she said out loud, the vestiges of her longing washed away by anger.

  The thoroughfare was the direct route to the Vistara, the hill upon which upper middleclass and aspiring upper-class women bought homes, raised children to be as snobbish as they were, and dreamed someday of moving on to the Serestine Quarter.

  Growling in rage, Deanna sprinted back down the street, never minding the heat.
She used her badge that she carried on duty or off to rush past the turnstile at the nearest station, and leapt onto the first train heading up to the Vistara.

  Chapter Six

  Justin barely made it. He stayed well under the shadows of the passage across the street from the coffeehouse, and looked over at the four girls at their usual table inside.

  The other three young women were daughters of local well-off families, and they all went to the nearby university graduate school with Sybellie. Sybellie was studying techno-finance, he’d had Elisa look up. He was proud of how smart she was.

  As Justin watched, Sybellie lifted her coffee to her lips then threw her head back and laughed at something one of her friends said.

  She robbed him of breath every time he saw her. She looked much like her mother, Lillian, but Sybellie had also gotten Justin’s genes, which had been engineered to produce strength, physical beauty, stamina, and robust health.

  Sybellie glowed with beauty. Her hair was soft brown, her eyes brown—happily Lillian’s dominant Bor Nargan gene had not betrayed Sybellie by giving her blue eyes. The young woman laughed readily, her pink cheeks matching the rose-colored veils she liked to wear.

  In short, she was a twenty-something-year-old woman, happy with her friends, poised to take on life.

  Justin had never met her and had never spoken to her. He could only stand here day after day and gaze at her, wishing like hell he could walk to her, take her hand, sit down next to her and say, “Hello, Sybellie. I’m your dad.”

  He never could. Shareem in theory, weren’t able to reproduce. But Justin had managed it with Lillian. A fluke, a lucky shot.

  A beautiful lucky shot, there with her friends, so happy.

  Someone punched him in the ass. No, not punched, shoved a pistol onto his right butt cheek.

  “I told you what I’d do if I found you up here again.”

  Deanna had a bedroom voice even when she was threatening him. She was still wearing the silk veil too.

  Justin turned abruptly, grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the pistol, and flattened Deanna to the wall.

  “Shut up,” he said in a low, fierce voice.

  Deanna’s eyes widened, but in fury, not fear. “Let go of me.”

  “Keep it down.”

  She struggled. “I yell once, and every patroller on the Vistara guns you down.”

  “That’s why I need you to shut up.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “I don’t give a shit. Don’t say a word.”

  The door of the coffeehouse slid open, and the four girls came out, talking together. They pulled silken veils down to keep out the heat, but didn’t stop their chatter, which they all seemed to be doing at once.

  Justin did his best not to look. He tried not to turn his head, to not so much as move an eyeball.

  But he couldn’t help it. Sybellie tossed her veil around her throat, her clear voice touching Justin like a caress.

  Deanna glared at him. “You’re up here to watch them, aren’t you? Aren’t they a little young for you?”

  “I wasn’t watching them.” Justin had gotten so good at lying.

  She ignored him. “Are you stalking one of them? Was she who you were coming up here to meet? If she’s underage, you are so screwed. Tell me, Justin. I’ll find out anyway. Or was it all of them together?”

  Justin pushed her harder into the wall. “You leave them the hell alone.”

  Deanna’s eyes widened again, this time with a look of pain. “Oh, gods, Justin, you really are stalking them.”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Then why are you up here? Why are you risking your life?”

  Justin let go of her, fear swirling through him. “All right, all right.” He raised his hands, pretending to be cool, when his heart was pounding so hard he wanted to die. “It’s true,” he said quickly. “I’m a perv. I like young, soft flesh.”

  Deanna’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”

  “Shareem can’t lie.”

  “But you’re doing it. Again.”

  Fuck.

  Her pistol came up. It was a stun pistol only, but she could drag him anywhere if she knocked him out.

  “You are going to tell me every word of what’s going on,” she said. “Or I’ll arrest you again, and I don’t care how many d’Aroths gang up on me to get you out.”

  “Fine.” Justin reached into his robes. Deanna’s trigger finger tightened until Justin pulled out his handheld. “I’ll call my ride. It’s more comfortable than a patrol car.”

  “Why not watch from the car, then, where I couldn’t find you or shoot you?”

  Justin pushed buttons that summoned the chauffer. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Bor Nargan glass tended to be very thick and full of shielding. Looking through the shielded glass of Brianne’s car to the heavy windows of the coffeehouse rendered the coffeehouse’s windows an almost opaque gray. If he stayed in the car, he wouldn’t get a clear view of Sybellie.

  The car slid to a silent halt at the other end of the alley. Justin grabbed Deanna’s hand and towed her along with him toward it.

  The car’s back door slid open. Justin all but shoved Deanna inside and climbed in behind her, dropping onto the seat with her before the door closed again.

  The chauffer turned and looked at them through the window of his compartment. Deanna’s gun was obvious, but Justin shook his head.

  “It’s all right,” he said through the speaker.

  The chauffer, used to Shareem by now, turned away and darkened the window between passenger and driver compartments.

  The car was a bubble of privacy and luxury. Cushions softer than any bed Justin had owned cradled his backside. The air was cooled and lightly scented with the odor of meadow flowers. Justin had walked across real meadows on Sirius, and knew that they smelled of mud, decayed grass, and the last passing cow. But none of that would do for the highborn ladies on Bor Narga.

  “How did you afford this?” Deanna asked, looking around in wonder.

  “I didn’t. It’s a friend’s. She loaned it to me for the afternoon.”

  “What friend?”

  “Brianne d’Aroth.”

  Deanna made a noise of exasperation. “I might have known. She’s been very helpful, hasn’t she? Is she one of your . . . clients?”

  “No,” Justin said with emphasis. “She’s just a friend.”

  “Why should I believe anything you say?”

  “Why are you trying to make my life hell?” Justin countered.

  They faced each other, Deanna breathing hard, red-faced, and still sexy.

  “Why did you come back to Bor Narga?” Deanna asked.

  “Why is it any of your damned business?”

  “Because it’s my job to protect women from people like you!” Her voice rang in the small compartment.

  “Oh, right, to protect the women who make so many rules that my friends and I can barely exist? The same women who hire us in secret to make them orgasm all night? You’re protecting them from me?”

  “You didn’t have to come back here,” Deanna said hotly. “You lived on Sirius, for the gods’ sake. You left there to come back to this hellhole. You’re up to something. I need to know what.”

  “Nothing that’s going to hurt you or the precious women you’re protecting.”

  “How the hell can I know that?” Deanna shouted. “Shareem aren’t supposed to lie, but you’re doing it. Shareem can’t touch a woman without her permission, but you grabbed me and shoved me around without a flicker of pain. Has someone been messing with you inside? Did they break your programming? Who was it, and what does it have to do with those girls?”

  “I broke it.” Justin grabbed her wrist again without mitigating his strength and twisted the stun gun from her hand. “I broke my programming myself. It has nothing to do with anyone on Bor Narga. With more than twenty years on Sirius without the stupid inoculations, I had plenty of time to practice.”
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  Deanna stared, openmouthed, as he clicked on the stun gun’s safety and tossed the gun to the other side of the car. “I could have you terminated for doing that.”

  “Fine. Then do it.” Justin shoved his handheld at her. “Call your patrollers. Arrest me. Terminate me. Hell, I don’t care anymore.”

  He did care, but Deanna was right. He shouldn’t have come back to Bor Narga. But after Shela had died, his craving to see Sybellie wouldn’t leave him alone.

  Now he realized his selfishness. Deanna wasn’t stupid. If she figured out what was going on, if she reported it, he might as well have killed his own daughter.

  Deanna took the handheld, but she rested it between her fingertips and didn’t turn it on. “I don’t want you terminated, Justin.” Her voice was low, that bedroom silkiness again. “I told you that when you were in the cell. I would have helped you out of there, without you having to bother Brianne d’Aroth. Why didn’t you believe me?”

  “You’re a patroller.”

  “You’re a Shareem.”

  She continued to rotate the handheld between her fingers, not making any move to use it.

  “That means we’re always enemies?” he asked her.

  Deanna’s eyes were soft. “I don’t want us to be.”

  Justin didn’t want them to be either. Not enemies. In different circumstances he’d be happy to get to know this lady. She had beauty, strength, and grit, as the plain, hardworking folks on Sirius liked to say.

  As Deanna continued to turn the handheld, Justin scooped the veil back from her face. He caressed the corners of her mouth with his thumbs, parting her lips, studying the red, moist heat of her mouth.

  Justin leaned closer, her breath on his skin as soft as the silk veil. Her hands came up to rest against his chest, the corner of the handheld pressing his tunic.

  Justin parted her lips a little more before he slanted his mouth across hers.

  He tasted the heat of her as he stroked his tongue inside her, felt the pulse pounding in her throat as he slid his fingers down her neck.

  Deanna opened her lips to his, trying to imitate what he did. The flicker of her tongue was erotic as hell, making his already hard cock that much more rigid.