by Olivia Myers
Jessa dropped, taking the same position she had in the bay on Lyra, using her low angle to take advantage of the disorganized pirates. Others were fighting too, mostly with weapons, but some hand-to-hand.
She caught a glimpse of TSE-938, her pretty face grim as she twisted a man’s neck until his spine snapped.
Jessa lost her in the crowd again. Everything was noise and blood and chaos. She kept firing, bracing her shoulder against Mack’s hip, keeping most of her body behind the bulk of his.
Her cy’s aim was deadly, dropping foes one after another faster than her eye could follow. But more and more seemed to spill from through the doors.
It seemed like hours, but was probably minutes, that she crouched there, shooting anyone in the pale strips of cloth the pirates wore. Her ears rang with the sound of shouts and shots. Her shoulders ached from holding her weapon up, but she didn’t waver.
Above her head, Mack’s voice was a deep rumble. “Cover me.”
“I’ve got you.”
A magazine dropped in front of her, smoking slightly from the speed with which he’d been firing. She heard the tear of him pulling a new magazine free but he didn’t immediately slam it home. Without looking, she didn’t know why, but she kept her eyes on the thinning crowd in front of her, taking out a scrawny man who clung to the back of an officer’s uniform and stabbed at him with a piece of broken pipe.
One of the pirates noticed Mack’s dilemma — whatever it was — and raised his weapon, aiming straight for her cy’s chest.
Jessa put her bead right between his eyes and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened. The dry click of an empty magazine pierced her like a shot of its own. Time seemed to slow as a feral grin spread across the pirate’s mouth, revealing sharp, white teeth.
She didn’t think, she just acted.
Pushing as hard as she could with her thighs, Jessa launched herself upwards and forwards, springing sideways across Mack’s broad body. She heard his startled, “Jessa, what —” before pain slammed into her chest and she crumpled to the floor.
Jessa had a moment to contemplate just how much trouble she might get in for disobeying Directive #97 before the blackness swallowed her.
***
There was a fire burning under her ribs. A warm little blaze. It sort of hurt, but also… tickled a little.
Jessa took a deep breath, and the fire flared. She groaned. The sound raked at her dry throat. Her body felt heavy, too heavy. She could barely move her fingers. When she tried to open her eyes, her lids only flickered.
Bright panic swelled in her skull, thumping like a hammer. Then a deep, soothing voice washed over her.
“Shhh. It’s all right, Jessa. Relax.”
She did, sinking back against what she now realized were very soft sheets. Where was she?
“You’re in the infirmary,” the rumbling bass told her.
A smile curved Jessa’s lips. She felt it. Mack. Her cy. He was the only one who knew how to answer questions she hadn’t yet asked.
Memories of the attack on the Ticonderoga flooded back. She groaned again. That explained the itchy, tickly pain in her chest then. She’d gotten shot, damn it. At least she’d managed to protect Mack, though.
That thought gave her the strength to pry her eyelids open.
Bright light blinded her, making her wince and intensifying the pounding in her head — which wasn’t panic but just a garden variety headache. She blinked rapidly as her eyes watered.
Slowly, her vision cleared. The first thing she saw was Mack’s intimidatingly perfect scowl. She laughed, the huff of breath making her ribs ache.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
“You violated Directive #97,” he said, lips twisting.
Jessa nodded. “I know.”
Mack’s hand covered hers, careful of the IV poking out of the back of it. “You could have died, Jessa.”
She laced her fingers through his. “I’m gathering that, from your thunderous scowl.”
It took some effort but she managed to lift her other hand and smooth it over his wrinkled forehead. Unsurprisingly, the creases immediately returned. She guessed he was probably going to be pretty ticked at her for awhile, but that was all right. She didn’t mind.
“I would have been fine.” He thumped his own chest with his other hand, as if to prove how impenetrable it was.
“Maybe,” she replied. “I didn’t want to take the chance. Now, tell me what happened after I passed out.”
“There was no chance,” he grumbled, but the corner of that sinful mouth twitched. “We got them all, including the ringleader behind all the inner station raids.”
Jessa sighed and shifted her shoulders against the pillows behind her. The quality of care in this infirmary was top notch.
“My plan worked, then.”
Mack nodded, his broad thumb rubbing over her knuckles. “Your plan worked. We lost some officers, unfortunately.” The scowl returned. “And you lost a lobe of your left lung.”
She flinched and rubbed her palm against her side.
“Is that what it was? Ouch.”
“You will promise me you are never going to do anything like that again.”
Jessa met Mack’s intense silver gaze and smiled. “I will not.”
Mack tilted his head, lips pursed. “You mean you will not promise me, not that you will not do any such thing again.”
With another semi-painful laugh, Jessa lifted his hand and pressed it to her mouth. She spoke against his skin.
“You know me so well.”
Her cy leaned over her, his mouth warm and sweet on hers as he kissed her. The pain melted away, filling her with tingling pleasure as his tongue slid against hers. She fisted her fingers into the fabric of his shirt and attempted to tug him up onto the bed with her, but the stubborn man remained as he was.
Growling into his mouth, Jessa nibbled his lower lip instead, enjoying the pleasant heat of arousal washing through her.
The sharp bark of laughter that interrupted a moment later was like a bucket of water over her head. She jerked away from Mack, who sank back into his chair, and scowled at the newcomer.
“Godfrey, what are you doing here?”
It was Jessa’s turn to scowl as the wiry mech tech waggled his eyebrows. He rubbed his hands together.
“You mean Mack hasn’t told you yet?”
Jessa’s gaze flicked between the two men.
“Told me what?”
“She’s only just woken up,” Mack said, taking her hand again.
Godfrey waved this explanation away. “She’s up enough for you to tickle her tonsils.”
She was surprised to feel the heat of blush in her cheeks and turned her face away from the annoying tinkerer. Which is when she became aware that there was a window across from her, through which was streaming bright, yellow sunlight.
Sunlight.
“Are… are we back on Earth?”
Mack squeezed her hand. Godfrey lifted one long finger.
“Point the first, you are back on Earth.” He lifted a second finger. “Point the second, you were fired for violating Directive #97 and nearly getting killed.”
“What? Fired?!”
That seemed a bit extreme to her, but Godfrey just shook his head and lifted a third finger.
“Point the —”
“Knock it off, God.” Mack’s voice was a deep, warning rumble. God huffed and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Fine, fine. Anyway. The long and short of it is, I negotiated a bit of a deal with good ol’ Cantra Corp for a new state-of-the-art lab here on Earth, to be headed by yours truly, and requested as my personal security two slightly defective units.”
He waggled his brows again.
“I am not defective. Nor am I a cy.”
The tech waved his hand as if this was of no consequence, and laughed. “Your boyfriend is. And he’s quite an interesting one, at that. But then, you know that, don’t you?”
Jessa refused to blush again. She lifted her chin and squeezed Mack’s hand.
“He’s much more than just an interesting unit to me,” she said, her voice acerbic.
Godfrey snorted and rolled his eyes. “Of course, of course. I’ll leave you two lovebirds to celebrate. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Then he was, thankfully, gone as abruptly as he’d arrived.
Jessa turned her attention to the cy — the man — at her side. She could feel the smile stretching her lips.
“So…”
Mack’s tongue swept along his full lower lip, drawing her gaze. She watched his mouth move as he spoke.
“There is something I need to tell you.”
Jessa forced her gaze back to his, drinking in the sight of those pale gray irises. His dark brows drew down in a vee above the straight line of his nose. She reached up and stroked her pointer finger between them.
“What’s that, baby?”
“I am in love with you.”
She ran her fingers up into his hair, feeling the heavy silk of it drift against her palm, tickling. The fire under her ribs was metaphorical now, and didn’t hurt at all.
“I know.”
Mack’s eyes widened. “You… Jessa…”
Jessa tugged at his hair. “Now, come over here and let me give you another one of those demonstrations.”
“You are injured.”
She pulled harder until he shifted forward, sliding a knee onto the bed beside her. Jessa wrapped her other arm around his neck and brought his mouth down to hers.
“Not that injured,” she murmured against his warm satin lips.
His hands caressed her hair, brushing it back from her forehead.
“I do not wish to hurt you.”
“You won’t.” She traced his lips with her tongue, tasting coffee and sugar and Mack. He groaned, stroking her shoulders and down her back.
“Jessa,” he warned. She kissed him, deep and slow and hot and passionate. When she pulled back, they were both panting.
“I love you, too. Now, come here.”
He did. And Jessa was once again thankful that her cy didn’t mind taking orders from a woman.
THE END
Here is a FREE bonus romance story called “Trouble” by Olivia Myers.
TROUBLE
Duke knew the girl was trouble the second she walked through the door. Not that Shotguns Bar was any stranger to trouble. Most of the men that came in to belly-up to the scarred walnut bar or play a borderline unfriendly game of pool were rough and tumble types, bikers and bad-asses, and Duke had to put his military training to use busting heads and rousting surly drunks pretty often.
But she was a whole different kind of trouble.
The late afternoon sunlight streaming through the dusty windows gleamed off her long, wavy blonde hair as she tossed it over her shoulder. She scanned the bar, slender, long-fingered hands propped on her hips, and her haughty little snub nose in the air.
She’d made an attempt to dress down, but if her faded denim mini-skirt with its frayed hem wasn’t ‘designer distressed’ or whatever they called that shit, Duke would eat his own jeans — which were ragged and worn nearly white in places because he’d had them for over a decade, not because some he’d bought them that way.
He didn’t smile as he took in the pink, glittery words on her tight black t-shirt — YOU SAY ‘BITCH’ LIKE IT’S A BAD THING — but his lips did twitch. He continued slicing limes, but kept half an eye on the new arrival as she sized up the few patrons scattered at the mismatched tables.
Once she’d taken the lay of the land, her gaze zeroed in on him. Her eyes narrowed a little and her pointed chin went up another notch. Duke dumped the limes into a plastic bucket and stuck it in the chiller, wiped his hands, and tossed the bar rag over his shoulder. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and waited for her to come to him.
Not many women came into Shotguns, and the ones who did were nothing like her. They were either as rough and hard as the men they were drinking with, or the kind of easy girls that hadn’t been pretty enough in high school and were used to getting attention on their back or their knees.
Blondie looked like she’d probably been head cheerleader and Homecoming Queen. Duke doubted she’d ever spent a minute on her knees in her whole life. Which was a shame, because the thought of her looking up at him with those pouty pink lips made Duke’s blood hot. Hot enough that he had to reach down and make a bit of an adjustment as she sashayed across the bare wooden floor, the heels of her cowboy boots (Jesus, they were pink) clocking loudly over the faint strains of Waylon Jennings drifting from the ancient jukebox in the corner.
When she reached the bar, she placed her hands on the edge and leaned in, one corner of her mouth curled up in a little smirk. The move drew his eyes immediately to the ample cleavage visible above the scooped neckline of her little black tee, which was no doubt exactly the response she was looking for. His suspicion was confirmed when he glanced back up and saw the triumphant glint in her blue eyes.
She knew the effect she had on men and she enjoyed toying with them. Duke put on his best ‘Don’t fuck with me’ look, furrowing his heavy brows, mouth in a straight line, hard eyes and flexing biceps. It was an expression he’d seen on more than one CO’s face, and even used a time or two himself on some grunt fresh off the plane.
Unlike them, Blondie didn’t even flinch. She cocked her head a little, sending all that blonde hair sliding down her arm, and her gaze crawled all over him. Sizing him up. When she got back to his face her little smile grew wider. Duke felt the skin on his forehead tighten as his scowl deepened.
Christ, trouble was right! They hadn’t even spoken a word to each other and yet he could feel the heat crackle between them. The warm, leather- and alcohol-scented air of the bar seemed heavy and oppressive, like the atmosphere just before a hell of a storm.
When his fierce expression didn’t relax, she rocked back on her heels, her smile fading a little. The challenge in her eyes didn’t, though.
“Sign out front says you’re hiring.”
She hooked a manicured thumb toward the door she’d come through, as if Duke was too stupid to remember where it was he’d put the sign. It had only been three days since he’d had to fire Barb. He’d hated to do it, because she’d been a hell of a server. None of the customers gave her shit because she was just as hard as they were. But he’d caught her with her hand in the till, and there wasn’t much Duke hated more than a thief. Except maybe a coward.
When he didn’t respond, Blondie gave an exasperated little huff. She crossed her arms in a mockery of his posture, but it didn’t quite work since she had to do it under the full swell of her breasts, pushing them up as if offering them on a platter.
“Are you or aren’t you?”
Duke had to give her points for the hard edge to her voice. It sounded all business, even if she looked all pleasure. He shrugged one shoulder.
“What’s it to you, Blondie?”
He pressed his lips together to keep from smiling as her nostrils flared and a muscle in her jaw jumped. He could practically hear her grinding her teeth.
“I want the job.”
Duke couldn’t help it, he snorted laughter. Her spine snapped straight and a faint pink flush stained her cheeks. He turned away to grab a longneck from the cooler, ignoring her as he popped the cap and slid from behind the long bar.
He felt her watching him, her gaze a hot press between his shoulder blades as he strode across the room to Buz’s table and set down the fresh beer. The bearded old biker gave him a brief nod and pushed his empty out of the way.
Blondie was still staring at him when he turned back, hands on her hips like they’d been when she first walked in. Her eyes were glittering with anger… and maybe a hint of hurt. She covered it well, but he could see it in the set of her slender shoulders. Duke sighed as he reached her, setting Buz’s empty on the bar beside her and leaning one elbow on the scratched surface.<
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“Look, no offense Blondie, but the kind of clientele we get in here… well, they’d eat you alive.”
She flashed him perfect, straight, white teeth in something halfway between a grin and a snarl. Her eyes snapped with blue electricity.
“Perfect,” she purred. “I love getting eaten.”
Lust hit Duke like a flash grenade, every drop of blood heading straight to his groin. He swallowed, shifting as his previously comfortable jeans suddenly constricted his half hard cock.
Her gaze dropped to his waist, took in the outline of his erection. The flush on her cheeks grew deeper and the glistening tip of her tongue poked out to slide along her lips. Duke stepped into her personal space, resting his right hand on the back of the bar stool behind her, caging her in with his arms.
She had to look up at him. She was tall for a woman, nearly 5’11 with the heels on her boots, but he had her beat by a good six inches still. He stared down into her wide eyes, taking in the dilated pupils. Her breath was a warm, mint scented puff against his chin.
“If you’re looking for a little rough trade, you don’t have to work here for that. Have a seat. I’ll get you a drink. If you hang out, I’m sure you can find someone who’ll punch your ticket.” Duke gave her cleavage a lingering look and then shrugged. “Hell, if you’re still here at closing maybe I’ll give you a go.”
He’d meant to piss her off, because in his experience princesses like her liked to play bad girl but they stormed off in a snit when things didn’t go their way. Once she did that, he could get back to doing inventory.
But he’d underestimated Blondie badly. For one thing, she moved quicker than he would have thought. Her left hand came up between them to shove at his chest with surprising force. It didn’t shift him, but it rocked him back a bit and gave her a moment of advantage while he gaped in shock.
The sound of breaking glass coincided almost exactly with the movement of her right arm. If he’d been another man, she might have managed to get the broken beer bottle to his throat before he could take action… But Duke wasn’t other men. His left hand shot out without him even having to think about it, the response smooth and automatic. He caught her slender wrist in his thick fingers.
