Tales of the Shareem, Volume 2

by Allyson James

  “You disobeyed me,” he said. “You didn’t take my come on your face.”

  No, she’d drunk it down, which had been so much better. “You didn’t pull out of my mouth,” she said.

  “I told you what I’d do.”

  “Not here,” Katarina said worriedly.

  “Right here. You need to learn to obey me.”

  His hand came down on her backside. As he had in the lair, he slapped, then soothed the hurt away. His hand came down again. Sting. Other hand. Soothe.

  Each slap made her jerk her clit against the table. The friction was hot and grating. She moved her hips desperately, rubbing the sterile sheet beneath her. Her body wanted to fuck, so it fucked the table.

  Calder kept going, knowing what he was doing. Katarina went to a place of nothing—no light, no sound, just the feel of Calder’s hand on her backside and the table against her clit.

  She felt something else, his finger, cold and slick with lube, pressing between her buttocks, touching the opening there. It opened her, shattered her.

  Katarina screamed into the sheet, some part of her telling her she needed to muffle the sound. Calder kept spanking, and in between, he eased his finger farther inside.

  Everything was hot, dark, one point of feeling. Nothing else existed.

  And then it was gone. Calder pulled back, his lovely finger slid away, and the slaps ceased. Katarina collapsed against the table, sobbing in joy.

  Calder lifted her from the table, turned her around, and cradled her in gentle arms against his hard chest. He kissed her, his mouth hot and wet, rocking her a little. Katarina tasted him and herself mixed together, a strange sensation she should shun, but right now, it was beautiful.

  Calder set her back down on the table and stepped away. His face was flushed, eyes still deeply blue, his chest rising swiftly.

  Katarina put her hand to her hair, trying to catch her breath. She must look a mess. But only a part of her cared. The rest of her sang, hummed, gloried in the ecstasy he’d given her.

  “Calder.”

  He didn’t look at her. Calder closed his leggings and took up her test tube. Working out the stopper, he scraped the unscarred part of his skin with the knife then put the stopper on the tube again.

  He handed it to Katarina without a word, slid on his tunic, and banged out of the exam room.

  Katarina let out her breath. She lifted the tube to eye level, though she could barely see the tiny scraping of skin inside.

  Perfect.

  *** *** ***

  Calder’s life officially became hell.

  He needed Katarina. He needed her with every breath he took.

  He’d let himself become the total Dom with her, thinking if he put her into her place, he’d view her as he did every other sub.

  Needy upper-class women who craved sex came to him, but they only let themselves have the sex they craved if they were punished at the same time, assuaging their guilt. It was amazing how many of them begged for punishment.

  But the pheromones in the exam room, mixed with the smell of Katarina’s come and his, had driven Calder out of his mind. He’d been hot to the point of danger.

  He’d tried to cool off in the pool at the bathing house Judith had set up for Shareem, but it hadn’t helped much. It didn’t help that Braden had been there to gloat that Katarina had gotten her way. Asshole.

  Calder’s clients continued bugging him. With the database wiped, there’d been no way for him to cancel the appointments. They’d arrive at their time and push the door buzzer forever before finally understanding that he wasn’t open. That damned Lady Demata from Delta-Terra had her lackeys bang on his door for an entire day.

  The spurned ladies joined Lady Demata in ranting messages until Calder stopped reading his mail altogether.

  His friends discovered that if they wanted to talk to him, they had to leave a message with Judith, and hope he showed up at the bar sometime to get it. He wasn’t answering his door for them either.

  Calder now had a quarter of the highborn women in Bor Narga and plenty from off world pissed as hell at him. But what could they do? The Bor Nargan ladies couldn’t admit that they’d made an appointment with the Beast, and the offworlders who complained got little sympathy from the patrollers.

  If you want to mess with Shareem, your disappointment is your own fault, was the patrollers’ attitude.

  But the very worst thing that happened in Calder’s world was that Katarina d’Arnal quit the Pas City clinic and retreated to her mansion in the Serestine Quarter.

  Finished with slumming, Calder surmised after Braden told him she’d gone. Fine, if Katarina wanted to run her ass back up the hill, tired of the dregs of society, tired of the dirt, she could. Screw her. She’d gone back home to be clean and well-bred again.

  Fuck all highborn fucking bitches.

  Calder became surly and withdrawn—how can you tell the difference from the way he usually acts? he heard Ky ask Braden one day. Calder drank at Judith’s bar, but no amount of ale, no amount of company of his Shareem friends, could take away the emptiness inside him.

  Calder had fallen in love.

  Which was the most stupid-ass thing he’d ever done in his whole messed-up life.

  Watching Talan and Rees, Brianne with Aiden and Ky, had lulled him into thinking something like what they had might happen for him too.

  Katarina didn’t mind his scars. She liked him. Calder had allowed himself to believe that her liking might mean something, as that whispered, I love you, when she’d come under him in his bed. Which he couldn’t stand sleeping in anymore, because it reminded him of her.

  Fucking idiot.

  Damn it, he should just rebuild his database, announce to the ladies that he was open for business again and go for it. Get it out of his system, show them what the Beast truly could do.

  Somehow, he could never make himself get around to it.

  The day came when Calder couldn’t stand it any longer. He called Rees.

  “Yeah?” Rees, on the monitor, looked tousled, tired, and smugly satisfied. Six guesses as to what he’d been doing.

  “I want to talk to Talan.”

  Rees’ eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “To ask her something. Why the hell do you think? I can’t screw her through the monitor, can I?”

  “All right. Calm down.”

  Rees turned way, and after a minute or two, Talan came on the screen, also looking tousled, tired, and smugly satisfied. These two had been together for a couple years now—couldn’t they get enough? Calder hoped not.

  Calder asked his question, and Talan gave him the answer with delight.

  *** *** ***

  Two hours later, Calder exited the Serestine Quarter train station on the mansion-studded hill above Pas City.

  No one actually walked on these streets except servants, who dressed in household liveries. The highborn rode, hidden and protected, in closed hoverchairs and hovercars. The vehicles moved past him in well-bred silence, but Calder felt watchers behind their darkened glass.

  Did he look out of place or something? A nearly seven-foot-tall man in black leather and sun-blocking robes, face cloths, and dark goggles? Out of place? Calder?

  Calder stopped at a set of solid metal gates in the middle of a solid stone wall. This was the house he sought, but he’d never have known it without Talan’s directions. Rich people didn’t advertise what they had or where they lived.

  The state of the gates, however, was palpable proof that Calder was no longer in the slums. The metal didn’t have a speck of rust or dry rot on it, and likewise, the walls weren’t stained with sand. In a city through which sandstorms rolled at least once every couple of weeks, clean walls were a miracle.

  People here paid to have their walls washed after every storm. Crazy.

  Calder eyed the gate, debating. What would happen when he pressed the buzzer? Would he be admitted with joy? Or would Katarina send one of her servants out to tell him to go away?
>
  Humiliating choice.

  “Well, well.”

  The sneering voice of a patroller did not improve Calder’s temper. He turned to find three of them behind him, tall women in gray coveralls.

  As with the houses, the difference between Serestine patrollers and Pas City patrollers was their cleanliness—their uniforms were spotless, their side arms gleaming. The annoying condescension that bordered on brutality, though, was the same.

  “A Shareem,” the leader continued. “On the hill.”

  Calder trained his eye-hiding goggles on the patroller. “As you see.”

  She drew back the slightest bit. “Ident card.”

  “I’m Calder.”

  “I don’t care if you’re the god of singing spheres. Give me your ident card.”

  Taking his time, Calder slowly parted his sun-blocking robes and pulled a strip from his belt. He held it out, and the patroller took it, being careful not to touch his fingers.

  The patroller popped the card into her handheld and scanned the readout. “You’re a long way from home.”

  Calder took the strip back from her and didn’t answer. Patrollers were the dregs of law enforcement, sent out to annoy people, especially Shareem.

  “What are you doing up here?” the leader went on. She must not have met her harassment quota for the day.

  “Visiting a friend.”

  The leader laughed. She rocked back on her heels. “This is the d’Arnal house. They’re way too rich and respectable to be friends with the likes of you.”

  Calder pushed the door buzzer, pretending he wasn’t sweating inside his robes. The patroller stood on tiptoe to look over his shoulder as a monitor screen slid into view.

  “Yes?” a bored-looking woman asked.

  “Calder to see Dr. d’Arnal.”

  “One moment.”

  Damn it, Katarina, don’t pick this moment to completely dump me. These ladies will slap me in a cell for even touching your gate.

  The bored woman flicked on the screen again. “Welcome, Calder. Dr. d’Arnal will meet you in the main hall.”

  The screen disappeared and the gates slid noiselessly open, no grating on sand. Calder sketched a mock salute to the patrollers and strolled inside, feeling satisfaction for the first time in a long while as the gates closed out their stunned faces.

  Chapter Twelve

  Calder was glad of the sun-blocking cloths over his face, because he was gaping like a fool behind them as he walked through a tree-lined garden toward the house.

  Trees. In the middle of the flat Bor Nargan desert. Even the hill the mansions resided on was artificial, built up centuries ago so the rich could walk around, high above the poor.

  These were towering trees, alien to this planet, smelling of rich wood. They couldn’t be real, could they? Holo rooms had gotten sophisticated—Calder used them himself—and the highborn must be able to afford the best.

  Calder pulled off his glove and touched a tree, feeling the rough of real bark. Amazing.

  He looked up through the canopy of leaves to bright blue sky. There must be shielding overhead, because no way could these trees survive Bor Narga’s hammering sun otherwise, not to mention the sandstorms.

  It was cool in here, pleasant. A strange sensation.

  The walkway led him to a spreading stone and marble house, complete with columns and long glass windows. The whole place definitely must be shielded. No one turned a real window to the weather.

  The tall, arched front door opened soundlessly as he approached, and Calder stepped into a massive foyer. Walls soared above him, punctuated with fan-lighted windows high above. In the middle of the vast space, a staircase spilled from a balcony like a marble waterfall.

  Katarina skimmed down this staircase, her hand on the wrought-iron banister, the silk sheath she wore hugging every one of her curves.

  “Calder.”

  At the sound of her voice, Calder’s body came alive. He could think only of the same voice sweetly begging him as he laid her back on the exam table in her office, and her noises of pleasure. Then her scent, her face softening as she came.

  His erection strained at his tight leggings. Calder wanted to take her here, on the stairs, in this cool, other-worldly luxury.

  “You live here?” he asked.

  “This is my house, yes.”

  His modest apartment would fit into a corner of this hall. “Shit.”

  “Is that why you came? To ask me if I lived here?”

  Katarina remained poised on the last step, her hand on the railing, as though reluctant to step down to his level. Just as the houses on the hill held themselves aloof from the slums of Pas City, so Katarina was holding herself aloof from him.

  “I came to ask you where the hell you’ve been,” Calder said.

  “Here. Working.”

  Like hell. “You have half the Shareem in Pas City totally pissed off. The assholes like being examined by you.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  Too busy to call or send a message? Gods, he was pathetic. “Whatever.”

  Katarina’s fingers tightened on the railing. “The last time I saw you, you gave me the impression you wouldn’t care if I left.”

  “Baby, the last time I saw you, I sucked you raw. I don’t do that to women I never want to see again.”

  Katarina swallowed, but she shrugged, the silk moving on her body. “You were angry at me.”

  “You wanted a piece of my skin. I don’t like being treated like a lab experiment. I got enough of that at DNAmo.”

  “I was trying to help you.”

  “Yeah, they all try to help. Every medic, every doctor I’ve ever seen. They all think they have the miracle cure. None of them do. Their techniques improve, but my body doesn’t, and I refuse to become a cyborg.”

  “I don’t want you to become one either.”

  “Then leave me the hell alone.”

  Katarina finally stepped off the last stair. “Is that why you came all the way up here? To tell me to leave you alone?”

  I was worried about you. I thought I’d never see you again.

  “I came here . . . Shit, I don’t know why I came here.”

  Calder swung away. The door was still open, letting in the cool breeze from the garden. Everything here was unreal. Maybe Katarina was too. Maybe everything he felt for her was unreal.

  If that was true, why did it hurt so damn much?

  “Calder, wait.”

  Calder stopped on the threshold. He heard her move toward him but she stopped, still too far away.

  His cock ached. Here he was, a level-three Shareem, the Beast, close to falling on his knees and pleading her to take him.

  Right now, right here in her beautiful front hall, with the breeze and tree scent wafting in. Please, love. Have pity on me.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said quietly. “I’d planned to go to your apartment, but it will be better here. My house is more comfortable.”

  Calder turned. Now she stood a foot away from him, her scent, her pheromones touching him. The silk sheath was thin, her nipples firm little points behind it.

  He pictured himself lounging in a large, white-sheeted bed, a boy toy for a rich lady. Not a bad scenario. Especially when the rich lady was Katarina d’Arnal.

  “Will you stay?” she asked.

  Calder made a show of considering, while his brain screamed at him to take her, take her! Then he shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Good.” Katarina stepped forward, raising her hand.

  He saw the hypo too late. Calder growled and twisted away, but she’d already jabbed his neck and injected her concoction.

  *** *** ***

  Calder’s glare could have crumbled Katarina’s big house and the vast gardens around it into dust. He stood over her, hands clenched into massive fists, his blue eyes filled with outrage. And behind his anger, fear.

  “What the hell did you just do to me?”

  “This will work, Calder,” Katarina
said quickly. “I swear it will.” She bit her lip. “I’m pretty sure it will.”

  The nano-protein combination started taking effect immediately. Sweat poured down Calder’s face, and he clawed at his clothes. “What the fuck?”

  He ripped open his tunic and flung it away, then his boots and leggings. His body was covered with sweat, and he tore away the loincloth as well, then straightened up, naked.

  Calder’s scars were stark and angry in the soft light of the hall. He didn’t belong here, a giant of a man, roughhewn like desert rocks, in Katarina’s house of elegant softness.

  He raked his hands through his hair and shuddered, his skin reddening under the dripping sweat.

  Katarina darted forward, another hypo ready. Calder swung from her, his rage cutting.

  “Stay away from me!”

  “This will ease the pain.”

  “It doesn’t hurt . . . Aw, fuck.”

  He shuddered again, violently, his face losing color. Calder grabbed Katarina, jerked her to him, grabbed the hypo out of her hand, and injected himself.

  After a second or two the tight lines around his mouth relaxed, but he clenched the delicate hypo so hard it broke.

  Katarina touched his face. “I love you, Calder. I know you hate me right now, but I want you to know how much I love you.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  His shivering escalated, his eyes closing in agony. His lips formed another fuck—then he went down.

  The crash on her floor brought the servants running. Katarina had told them to stay away until she’d managed to inject him, alerted by Rees that he was on his way up to see her.

  Her housekeeper had brought a sheet, and Katarina got to her knees beside Calder, covering his nakedness. She checked his vitals, finding his heart racing, his skin hot, his blood pressure high.

  She kissed his damp forehead then got to her feet and ordered her servants to carry him upstairs to one of her spare bedrooms.

  *** *** ***

  For the next few days, Katarina didn’t leave Calder’s side. He swam in and out of consciousness, but he was never coherent. Katarina had hooked him up to machines to keep him hydrated and fed, and these beeped softly in the background.