by Linda Gayle
Ulvik drew down his mask, revealing scowling lips. “Shoulda thought of that earlier, Cap’n. Besides”—he lovingly stroked his gloved fingers over the naked skin of Sayal’s lower back—“she’s not just any girl. She’s an exquisite canvas, flawless and valuable. Each time she comes, she’ll show all the SenVerse my art, my beautiful craft, and they’ll know it was Ulvik Tor what inked her. Also”—he glared at Kels—“you ain’t nothin’ but a washed-up smuggler. No one’s gonna care what’s on your skin, only that you keep your dick hard.”
“Saints,” Elion muttered.
Kels dragged on his lower lip and said nothing. He didn’t give a fuck what the old man thought of him.
The inkman tucked the mask back over his face. From beneath the table, he produced the needle that would ink her. He attached the golden bottle and bent to his task.
Elion, biting his thumbnail, leaned into Kels. “If she starts screaming, I won’t take it.”
“Me neither.”
“Quiet over there,” Ulvik snapped.
Kels sensed Elion held his breath along with him as the needle went to work on Sayal’s smooth skin. Her fingers extended, then hooked as her body tensed. She made not a sound, and only the devilish whirring of the needle filled the room. Sweat sprang on Kels’s brow.
“How long’s this going to take?” Elion whispered.
“We should have asked, mate.” The skin on his back crawled and his nerves bit, as if he could feel her pain. Strange sensation, but he couldn’t help it. He hated to think of what she endured for his ship, for his lousy luck at gambling.
After several long minutes, Sayal began to moan, a stifled whimpering barely audible over the needle’s growl. Kels leaped to his feet.
“Stay there,” Ulvik hissed, not lifting his gaze from his work.
“The hells I will.”
“I’m all right,” Sayal said, her face turned away from him, her voice tight. “I’m all right.”
Ignoring Ulvik’s warning growl, Kels went to her and held her hand. Her delicate wrists strained against the metal bands. He clasped her fingers, and she latched on to his with surprising strength. Now he could see her face, scrunched with pain. Not knowing what else to do, he crouched and smoothed the hair back from her brow. “I’m sorry, luv. I never should have let you go through with this.”
“She’s almost done,” Ulvik muttered, his full concentration on the needle’s dancing arc. Sayal’s flesh beneath it swelled in ridges that hinted at the final design, but Kels just wanted it to end. The skin at the base of his spine burned like fire in sympathy, though it was the strangest thing, not anything he’d experienced before. Something about this bird really got to him, he thought, stroking her hair, hoping it soothed her.
“You help me bear it,” she ground out.
“Anything I can do, princess. You just say it.”
“Keep holding my hand. That’s enough.”
Finally, Ulvik flicked off the needle and sat upright on his stool. After he swabbed Sayal’s skin with a biodeterrent, he pulled off his mask and let out a heavy breath. “Done.” He traced the welts lightly with his fingertips. “The lume is just beneath the skin. I included a subderm-plastic filler that should prevent it from entering her bloodstream, but it might also delay the bloom.”
“Bloom?” Sayal asked.
“The time it takes for the full design of the tat to show.” Resting his hand casually on Sayal’s butt, Ulvik said, “I haven’t worked with this blend long enough to tell for sure, but I’d guess it’ll take a few days before it’s fully visible. In the meantime, there’s nothing special you need to do ‘cept watch for signs of seepage.”
“What might those be?” Kels asked.
Ulvik busied himself putting his equipment in the sterilizer. “If it breaks into her veins, she’ll likely grow feverish, delusional. Then…well, it’s from a crustacean, so I’d imagine her skin will thicken and her hair will fall out.”
Kels thought he might puke, or kill Ulvik. “Why didn’t you say this before?”
“You didn’t ask for specifics. You knew the general risks. There always are those with biolume. ‘Sides, she took it fine. I’ve never seen anyone tolerate the pain so well.” He slapped her ass as if she were a racehorse who’d crossed the finish line first. “How’re you feeling, chicky?”
Sayal groaned. “Like I took a laser blast in my spine.”
Kels said, “Let her out of these restraints.”
Ulvik did, and Kels helped her gingerly roll over and sit up.
“What’s it look like?” she asked, thumbing the hair from her eyes.
“Nothing yet. Just swollen and a bit bloody.”
“Swelling won’t last more than an hour. Put ice on it if it starts to burn. Other than that, take it easy, have a drink. Go fuck.” His teeth bared in an unpleasant grin. “Get plenty of practice. If you don’t win in the high games, I’ll have wasted my time and my precious ink. Oh, and don’t try to draw the ink out. That’ll nix her quick. Last thing I want is for my blend to fall into another inkman’s hands, so I put a little something special in there to ensure it’s safer to leave it where I put it.”
Kels’s fingers itched to close around the inkman’s throat, but what was done was done. Now that it was over, the burning in his back had eased, and he helped Sayal swing her legs over the edge of the table. It hardly mattered that her full breasts swayed with the movement, or that they were firm and round and would fill his palms nicely, or that her nipples were a sweet shade of dusky rose. No, that didn’t matter at all. He motioned to Elion to throw him her shirt, and his mate stared at him, or rather at her, or more precisely at her tits, a moment before he did so.
“Now, luv, we’ll get you home and settled in. No more for today. You’ve done enough.”
Wincing, she eased her arms into the shirt he held for her. As she fastened the closures, she looked over her shoulder at Ulvik tidying up. “Tonight, then, the jarouk game?”
“Yeah.” He peeled off his gloves with a snap. “But if Havoc loses, I get to tat his mate.”
“That was never part of the deal,” Kels growled, swinging around her to square off with the inkman.
“It is now,” Ulvik said. “Take it or leave it.”
“It’s all right,” Elion said. He’d come up behind Kels and put his hand on his shoulder. “If she can do it, so can I. Besides”—he looked at Kels wryly—“you’ll win, or else we’re all fucked.”
Sayal leaned on Kels’s side as he guided her back through the crowded corridor toward her cube. “Really,” she said for the third time, “I think I can walk on my own.”
His supportive arm didn’t budge. In truth, his body heat and strength might have been all that was holding her upright. Her body stung from her calves to her crown, and flushes of heat rolled over her face.
Elion, watching her worriedly on her left, said, “You can’t leave her. Look at her. She’s all in a sweat and glassy-eyed.” He pressed his hand to her forehead. “No fever yet.”
“Crack and ruin.” Kels hitched her up against his side, the movement sending a sharp bite through her, and she swallowed down a moan. “Sayal, that’s the last time you talk me into anything like that.”
“No worries. I don’t think I’m up for any more tattoos.”
Kels felt guilty, horribly guilty, for putting her in this position. She’d widened the slender bond she’d begun to build with him, stretched it a bit more when she’d used him to bear part of the pain of the inking. She couldn’t read minds, couldn’t enter the psyches of other beings as her mother could, but she was better than an aura reader. The problem was, of course, that her plan to bolster him through the jarouk game was jeopardized by the inking. Not just the pain affected her, for she sensed that would fade. She worried how the alien biolume would mix with her body’s chemistry. She wasn’t fully human, and it was impossible that Ulvik had practiced on a Prime alien. Primes like her creator, Sorush, dealt with humans only in business and war, and while they were a
rrogant and beautiful, vanity was not one of their faults. Lume tats would not be high on a Prime’s list of priorities.
She sucked in a breath against a pinch of pain as Kels guided her toward the lift that would carry her to her cube. Perhaps her Prime blood would protect her. That was what she’d convinced herself of before she’d gone under the needle, in any case.
“I’m fine now,” she said, thinking that perhaps she would be soon and straightening out of the curve of his arm. She smiled at him, into his worried hazel eyes. “I’ll meet you tonight at Ulvik’s.”
“The hells you will,” he said. “I’m coming in to care for you. That’s what gamespartners do. I nursed Keeva through a few of these tats. I know what I’m doing.”
On her other side, Elion put his hand on her shoulder. “Better listen to him, Sayal. There’s nothing you can do or say to put him out of his nursing mode. Besides, he’s a half-decent bonesman. Got me through a few bang-ups.”
He and the captain exchanged glances that spoke of an eventful past between them. Already Sayal missed the warmth of Kels’s arm and the comfort of his body against her side, and already the pain was beginning to lift, miraculously. “All right, then. Elion, would you care to come in as well?”
Elion shook his head. “Nah. Don’t want to be a third wheel. Kels’ll take care of you. I’ve got other business of my own to tend to, besides. He’s not the only one trying to scrape up iron to get us off this saints-forsaken shit pot.”
She smiled a little but found she’d be missing him too, and his serious pale blue eyes. “Well, maybe next time.”
This time, he dropped his gaze, which opened up a whole world of questions inside her mind. He said, “When d’you want to meet up before the game, Kels?”
“Quarter of nine-hour,” he said.
“Right. Ta till then.” With a hand raised in farewell, he left them at her doorstep.
Once he was out of earshot, Sayal said, “He’s a very sweet man. I thought he didn’t like me, but I think he’s just cautious.”
“Yeah, like I told you, he’s the sensible one, and he is a good man, good man in a fight, believe me.” There was admiration and affection in his tone, which made her mind wander ever further into uncharted territory.
“Well,” she said, fishing her omnikey out of her belt pouch, “here we are.”
“Wait a sec.” Kels pinched the key from her fingers. “What’s this? That’s how you got into my cube last night, eh?”
“Yes.” She felt her cheeks heating.
“Stole this too, along with that knife you had no business carrying?”
“Yes. Where is my knife, by the way?”
“In my weapons locker, safe away.” His gentle scolding made her feel as incompetent as she truly was. The nuances of thievery evaded her; she’d had to resort to drugging a strange woman’s drink to get those items, and now she prayed he wouldn’t inquire further as to how she’d acquired them.
“Since you seem set on keeping my knife, can I at least have my key back?” She held out her hand, and after he held it away for a second, teasing, he dropped it into her palm. Sayal breathed a sigh of relief and swiped it over the pad. The door whispered open, and they stepped into the cube.
“Not bad,” Kels said, assessing the place with his hands on his hips.
The door smoothed shut. “It’s small,” she said apologetically.
“Aren’t all cubes?” He strolled around as if he owned the place, sticking his head through the open doors that led into other rooms—two sleeping rooms, a dining area, a cleansing chamber, and the social area into which they’d entered. The white carpet absorbed his boot falls as he wandered. In the stark white and steel interior, he looked large and dangerous, a roving predator, his deep brown hair scruffed by his fingers, his swarthy skin and dark clothing an ominous contrast to the brightness of the decor.
Sayal found she held her breath as she watched him. She also found that she wanted him very badly. Her lips burned for another kiss.
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked. He must have noticed her staring. Of course he did. She was a stupid moon-eyed dew-puppy, yearning for sex that, for the first time, wasn’t demanded of her, that came from her own choosing.
“Yes, actually. My back is feeling better. It’s as if the pain is lifting away.” She started to walk past him to the dining area, but he put his arm up like a bar, stopping her.
“Sayal, look at me.”
She did, to see the concern in his eyes. He was considerably taller than she, broader and far stronger, and when he took her face between his palms, she felt the controlled strength in his grip. “It’s all right to ask for help, luv. That’s why I’m here. If we’re truly to become gamespartners, we need to start bonding, caring for each other. Keeva and me, for instance—we’re real tight. That’s why we’re so good together.”
That name again. That other woman. “How can you be my gamespartner, then, if you still care for her?”
He smoothed his fingertips over her temples. “You’re not limited to one partner. If we were in a steady triad or a troupe, for instance, we’d all care for one another. It’s just the way it’s done. Do you believe me?”
She licked her lower lip nervously, enjoying his touch but too uncertain to show it, and still slightly, irrationally peeved at the mention of his old partner. “Yes. You know more about it than I do, I’m sure.”
“Your research didn’t tell you?” Now his hands settled on her shoulders, warm, steady pressure.
“I’ve seen the high games, from a distance. I watched you and…Keeva and the others in the Dome, but how you work the personal end of things—no, I don’t know much about that.” Gingerly, she put her hands on his hips. “Will you teach me? You’re right. I do need to—”
His mouth came down over hers, swallowing her words and the small squeak of surprise. His lips were firm and hot, sucking; then his tongue quested between them to slip along hers. His kiss was as forward and bold as the man himself, thorough and commanding. The edges of his teeth slid over her lower lip, and she did her best to keep up with him, turning her head, twining her tongue around his, pressing her aching breasts against his chest. He kept his hands away from her newly inked back but cupped her hips and coaxed her against his hard cock.
Sayal let out a murmur of pleasure as he pressed the rigid length right where she wanted it. Her clit already swelled, and a drenching heat swirled through her pussy.
He lifted his head and looked down at her with deceptively drowsy eyes. “Don’t ever doubt that I want you, Sayal. But I see how your eyes spark when I mention Keeva.” He shook his head, wiping his thumb across her damp lips. “Jealousy can make us run hot in the games, but it’d be hell to live with outside the Dome. I can’t tell you how to feel about me. You’ll have to sort that out yourself.”
“Is it just business, then?”
“It’s a complicated thing, competitive fucking. You’re always walking the fine line between financial gain and falling in love.”
How easily he tossed out that word. She knew little of it. Even her mother’s love had been tempered with discipline, strengthening her for the demands of Sorush. Sayal felt incapable of that human emotion, for hatred and revenge had filled her heart for so long.
She moved away enough that her clit lost contact with his cock. “Have you had many partners?”
Now he widened the space, stepping back. “Let’s take care of you first, and then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
He took her by the hand and led her to her sleeping chamber, again as if the place, and she, belonged to him. In fact, he turned to her and said, “How’d you afford this spankin’ cube? Thought you were broke.”
“Well, no one was living here…”
He glanced at her with an eyebrow raised. “Stole this too? You little minx.”
“The complex was built for humans, but it’s become mostly a Quitza district. I noticed the rental notices in the newsfeed and wondere
d why these units were so cheap.” She lifted a shoulder as they stopped beside the roomy bed. “With my omnikey, it was easy enough to let myself in, and I discovered that as long as I look like I belong here, nobody questions it.”
“Clever girl. How’s about we start a thievery ring? That way El can get in on the action too. He’d like that.”
She bet he would too, though not in the way he implied. Since she’d tapped into the first mate’s emotions, her mind had spun with images of her and Kels and Elion together, pale skin against swarthy skin against her own golden bronze tones. Her pussy clenched, still slippery wet, growing even more so as Kels sat her on the bed so her face came level with the ridge in his pants. “I doubt I’d be any good at it,” she said, forcing her gaze upward to his eyes. “It makes me too nervous.”
He dropped beside her, his weight sinking the mattress. He was a lean man, all muscle, as she’d discovered when she’d had to shove over his unconscious body back in his cube, but still substantial. “You don’t think you’ll get the jitters going in front of an audience to fuck, though?”
Her gaze fell to her hands folded in her lap. How much to tell him? “I…I have had to perform in front of others before.”
“Yeah?” His gentle fingers tucked her long, loose hair behind her ear. “When? Where?”
Her alien creator’s hands had not been gentle like Kels’s. They’d been cold, blunt, parting her thighs, probing her, testing her while the others watched, reptile-eyed, from wallvids. She’d been barely more than a girl, wanting to please her master, for the Prime had always been indulgent of her. He’d informed her that her performance was vital to the continuation of his project, that it would please him immensely if she honored him with her body, and oh, how she’d wanted to. Around his impersonal fingers, then his cock, she’d come and come and come…
Sayal shuddered. Kels turned her face to his, his brows drawn with concern. “Easy there. I don’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“It’s nothing. It…wasn’t a very good experience, I’m afraid.”
“Were you forced?” His voice was quiet. She sensed restrained anger behind it.
