“He’s not beautiful,” Aiden said. “But he’s fucking sexy. And I’m not going to tell you who.”
“Is it Rees?” Rio asked.
He knew that Bor Nargan human men sometimes took other men as lovers, and with women so uptight about sex, who could blame them? But he’d never heard of a Bor Nargan man being with a Shareem, or a Shareem on a Shareem. It was forbidden, and truth to tell, Rio had never really thought about it.
He’d done plenty of two Shareem men on one woman, a few times even three on one, but he and the other Shareem had been busy pleasuring the woman, not each other. Once a woman had asked Rio and Rees to let her lick both their cocks at once. She wanted them to stand facing each other, tips touching, while she licked her way from one end to the other.
They’d done it, but Rio had been too far gone in pleasure to notice Rees’ hands on his shoulders and the tip of Rees’ long cock rubbing against his. He’d not had any desire to take Rees aside and kiss him, or anything.
Aiden shook his head. “Not Rees. Don’t try to pry it out of me, because the last thing I want is him jumping on a hover train out of Pas City never to be seen again.”
Rio held up his hand. “All right. I’ll let it go. I was going to ask you to come over and help me learn level one on my lady, but if you’d rather hump a Shareem…” He shrugged.
“I’d be happy to,” Aiden said. “You’ll probably get it wrong anyway.” He turned to where Judith was still staring at them with a dazed expression. “Judith, any chance of another ale?”
“Sure,” Judith said. She automatically filled two more self-cooled containers and brought them over, her gaze riveted to Aiden. “On the house,” she said. “For both of you.”
Chapter Nine
The Story of Rio
When Nella went back down to the main sitting room, after showering and resting, she saw a tall man breezing through it. So intent was he on making the lift that he nearly ran into her.
At the last moment, he stopped, then he beamed a dazzling smile on her. He was definitely older than Rees and Rio, and he was no Shareem, but he was handsome of face and had a well-built, muscular body. His hair was iron gray, thick, and pulled back into a long tail, similar to the way the Shareem wore theirs.
Also, unlike Shareem, his eyes were brown, but just as wide and warm, and well, sexy. Whenever Shareem got around to aging, they might look much like him.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m Dr. Ralston. You must be the specimen—I mean Nella.”
Nella didn’t quite know how to respond to this, so she settled for politeness. “How do you do?”
“Excellently well. This problem has challenged me in ways I haven’t been challenged in a long time. Frankly, I was getting bored figuring out how to make cave-root bats better at fertilizing underground vegetables.”
Nella had to smile. “Do you work for your planet’s agriculture ministry?”
“Good gods, no. I and my work were outlawed when DNAmo closed. Foolish, you know, because everyone needs a good geneticist. But no, I work in secret, and furnish people with research and ideas. Other people get the credit, unfortunately, but I don’t really mind. It’s the work I love.”
He brightened. “And I get to work with Dr. Laas, who is a true genius. I am good—I am one of the best geneticists ever born—but no one can touch Dr. Laas. I keep trying to get her to run off with me, but she enjoys being buried down here, working on her machines, arguing with Baine. And, truth to tell, she’d never leave her Shareem. She likes looking out for them.”
He ended this speech only because he ran out of breath. Before Nella could respond, he turned away and moved toward the lift. “Come down to the lab with me. What she’s doing now is absolutely marvelous. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The lift doors opened. Nella hesitated, but Dr. Ralston seized her by the arm and dragged her into the lift. “I’ve got to show you,” he said. “You’ll love it.”
Nella opened her mouth to point out that she likely would have no understanding of what Dr. Laas was doing, but Dr. Ralston started up a monologue on why cave-root bats were difficult little buggers to grow from a genetic vat, and did not stop talking all the way down to the lab. Even Baine could not interrupt him.
The lift spilled them out in the lowest level of the compound. The lab was little more than a large, comfortable room with an arrangement of sofas, chairs and occasional tables positioned before a moving mural of a tropical beach. At the opposite end of the room a bank of computers with blank faces lined the walls, flanked by a console table over which Dr. Laas bent.
Dr. Ralston joined her, sliding his arm around her and kissing the top of her head. Dr. Laas returned the kiss absently, then they both bent over the console, heads and elbows touching, completely forgetting about Nella.
Nella smiled to herself and wandered back across the room, drawn by the tropical mural. The mural not only looked like a beach, it smelled like one, and a soft breeze wafted from it.
She wondered where Rio was, and if he had finished teaching her to trust. She hoped not.
Perhaps she should pretend that she still did not trust him, to see what he would do. She shivered, imagining his eyes going still, and the dangerous tone entering his voice when he told her to strip and be punished.
Having him in her mouth had been a heady experience. She remembered the exact shape and taste of his cock against her tongue, and the smooth flavor of his seed. She had happily lapped it up, liking it and wanting more.
Baine’s voice sounded softly near her head, and she jumped, blushing at her own thoughts.
“Would you like refreshment?” Baine asked. “I can offer you seven kinds of wine or five varieties of sparkling wine, or would you simply prefer a ginger mint?”
Nella exhaled, trying to push aside the vision of Rio straddling her on the bed while she sucked his cock and he licked her pussy. “Just water, if you have it.”
“Oh.” Baine sounded disappointed. “Sparkling or still? Flavored with lemon, lime, strawberry, goolberry, diamondberry or mango?”
Nella tried not to laugh. “Still water, no flavor.”
Baine sighed. “Very well.”
A small panel slid back in the wall near the mural, revealing a crystal glass of pure water. “Thank you,” she told the panel.
“You’re welcome,” Baine said.
When Nella turned around, glass in hand, Rees was standing near the sofa.
She jumped and nearly spilled the water. She’d never heard him enter, never even heard the lift doors.
The breeze from the mural stirred his hair, which he’d pulled back into a tail. He wore a sleeveless white tunic that strained over chest muscles and ended at mid-thigh, and nothing else but his Shareem chain. He was barefoot.
She craned to look behind him, but no one had entered the room with him, not Rio, not Talan.
“Nella,” he said. He glanced at Dr. Laas and Dr. Ralston, still bent over the console, lost in their own world. “May I speak to you?”
“Of course,” she said politely.
Rees motioned her to a chair, then sat on the edge of a sofa facing her, resting his forearms on his knees.
Nella sank into the chair he indicated and took a sip of the water. It was clean and clear and very good.
“Where is Rio?” she asked. “And Talan?”
“Rio went out. He didn’t say where. Talan is asleep. She needed to rest.”
Nella stopped herself from saying, I wager she did. Then she blushed, remembering how she’d obediently stripped while Rees had watched her and touched his wife.
Rees looked at her, eyes calm. “Nothing about sex embarrasses Shareem, Nella. We see no shame in it.”
Nella was pleased to hear it, but she was still embarrassed at the way she’d so eagerly fallen at Rio’s feet.
Rees went on, “That is why Rio had you obey him in front of Talan and me. To rid you of fear.”
“Is that why?” she asked. “It had nothing to do
with getting excited himself?”
Rees grinned suddenly, warm and sensual. “Well, maybe that too. And it didn’t hurt me and Talan.”
“No, you seemed agreeable.”
The smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, making him devastatingly handsome, then he grew serious again. “I want to talk to you about Rio.”
The chair was trying its best to caress Nella’s shape. She squirmed against it, not really approving of the furniture trying to turn her on. It got the idea after a few shoves, gave her butt one more stroke, and settled down.
“What about Rio?” Nella asked.
“He’s Shareem. Level three. Do you understand what that means?”
She nodded. “He likes bondage. He likes to be master.” She thought of the way he’d enclosed her hands in the metal cuffs, how she’d easily submitted to him, how much she’d wanted to submit to him.
“Being level three means that women desire him,” Rees said. “Almost every woman he looks at wants him—a lot. It’s in his nature to oblige them. He can’t help it.”
She turned the glass in her hands. “You are saying I should not develop feelings for him, no matter what he’s done for me. Because his Shareem genetics make me want him, and he looks at me the same as he would any other woman.”
“No,” Rees said slowly. “Because he’s looking at you in a way different from the way he looks at other woman. Shareem were manipulated to remove all strong emotion, including, and especially, love. It’s a crock, because the removal of emotion didn’t work. We pretend it did, and our bodies try to adjust to it, but it’s not gone.”
His Shareem eyes were cool and neutral. If she’d not seen the way he looked at Talan, she would believe him to be untroubled by any emotion.
She set the glass of water aside. “Then I do not really understand what you want to explain.”
“About ten years ago, Rio fell in love. He says he didn’t, but I know he did. The lady was an upper-class woman named Serena, and she liked Shareem. Rio was special to her. She had a wild streak, and they did a lot together, tried all kinds of things. He never said anything, but I know he assumed they’d always be together. She had him live with her in her house, something no highborn woman would dream of doing, but she didn’t care. He thought this state of things would go on.”
“But it did not,” Nella finished. “Obviously.”
“No, it didn’t. She didn’t even tell him goodbye. One day, he went to her house and couldn’t get in.” His look turned grim. “She’d changed the palm lock to shut him out, and her servants wouldn’t open the door. He found out later, by watching a digital feed, that she’d gotten married and left Bor Narga with her new husband.”
“Oh.” Nella was indignant. “That was low.”
Rees nodded. “I thought so too. Rio never said anything about it. Later, he got a voice message from her, which he let me hear. In it, she said that she’d decided to marry so she could settle down and have children and carry on her family name, etcetera, etcetera. She’d picked out a husband who came from a good family and had some money to combine with her own riches. They’d chosen to live in a house off Bor Narga to raise their family. She had decided the best way to let Rio go was a clean break. It had been fun, and she knew he’d understand.”
Nella stared, openmouthed. “Poor Rio. How cruel.”
“Rio shrugged it off. Shareem don’t love, he said, and she was just another woman. He said that there were plenty more where she came from, and he didn’t mention her again for ten years.”
“But he did love her,” Nella said, compassion in her heart. “That must have hurt him terribly.”
“Shareem don’t hurt.”
“Oh yes, they do. How can you say otherwise, when you love Talan so much?”
His severe look relaxed, and he smiled. “Does it show?”
“Every time you look at her. And in her whenever she looks at you.” Her observation gave her a lonely feeling.
“I was lucky,” Rees said. “When Talan first met me, she saw a man, not a Shareem. It took her a long time to convince me of that, but I finally let her.” He watched Nella closely. “What did you see when you first saw Rio?”
Nella thought back to the alley, tasting again the panic as she crouched behind the abandoned crates, knowing the bot would find her no matter what. She remembered when Rio had come striding through, getting between her and the bot.
“Tall,” she said.
Rees gave a short laugh. “True. What else?”
“Strong,” Nella mused. “I was terrified, and I felt like he could protect me, even when I didn’t know him. And then he fought off the assassin bot.” She smiled at the memory. “He outsmarted it and crushed it to bits. I’d like to think he did it for me, but I realize he didn’t know I was there.”
“He might have known. Shareem can see much without seeming to.”
“I didn’t know he was Shareem at the time. I’d never heard of Shareem.”
“You must have been sheltered on Ariel. I thought everyone knew about Shareem. DNAmo even exported a few off-planet for huge amounts of money before they were shut down.”
“Exported a few,” she repeated the phrase, marveling that he could say it in such a calm tone. “You mean slaves.”
“Shareem aren’t slaves. DNAmo didn’t force them to go and even gave the Shareem a percentage of the money.”
“It’s still human trafficking,” Nella said. On Ariel, it would never be tolerated.
“But Shareem aren’t human.” A glint of humor entered Rees’ eyes. “When I say that to Talan, she gets put out with me. Sometimes I say it just to rile her up, because she’s pretty when she’s riled.”
“I am certain she’d be happy to hear that,” Nella said, pleased that the muscular and unpredictable Rees enjoyed gently teasing his wife. “When DNAmo was forced to leave, did they start production again on another planet?”
“If they did, I never heard of it. They might have changed their name, but they probably never made more Shareem. They lost a lot of money and most of their research notes. The best scientists, like Dr. Laas and Dr. Ralston, stayed here. DNAmo screwed them over almost as much as they did the Shareem.”
“What happened to all the Shareem?” Nella asked. “When you were suddenly free, what did you do?”
“We weren’t all that free,” Rees said. “The government of Bor Narga talked about terminating the experiments, permanently, when they walked into DNAmo. The Shareem heard about it pretty quick and got their asses out of there. I actually escaped before DNAmo was shut down, but not long before. I helped Shareem go to ground—we were created to be imaginative and resourceful, so we put that to use hiding instead of thinking up sexual games. Well, we still thought up sexual games, but first we hid and survived.”
“You helped Rio.”
“I knew how to live in the city without anyone noticing me, and I kind of showed him around. He figured out who I was, the experimental Shareem on the loose, but he never told anyone. He’s a pain in the backside, but he’s a good friend.”
“You are telling me all this, because you are afraid I can hurt him,” Nella said. “I think you are wrong. Maybe, because I’m not Bor Nargan, I intrigue him a little, but he knows I’ll go back to Ariel and we’ll be finished.”
Tears filled her eyes as she spoke. She brushed them away, thinking she must simply be tired and worried. She wanted to go back to Ariel with all her heart—why could she not be happy with that?
She could offer Rio sanctuary on Ariel, where he could live equal to any other being, but she would not obligate him to go on seeing her. She imagined that when he found himself free of Bor Narga’s restrictions, he’d live life to the fullest, and that life would likely not include her.
Rees watched her closely. Nella wiped away her tears with her thumb and gave him a feeble smile. “I am overly tired. It has been an ordeal.”
“It has.” Rees’ eyes gave away nothing, but Nella sensed that he saw much. “
I’m working on getting you a transport back to Ariel. You won’t travel in style, but you’ll get there.”
“I am grateful. I keep bleating that, I know, but you’ve done so much for me. I can’t ever express what it means to me.”
Rees shrugged, rose, and helped her to her feet. “Give us a tour of your palace, or something, when you’re back to being a princess again. That’s what friends are for.”
He led her out of the room, telling her he’d take her to the kitchens while Drs. Laas and Ralston were busy making love to their computer data.
As she followed him, Nella felt a warm swelling in her heart. She had friends. They were odd and unexpected, but for the first time in a long time, she relaxed a little. She was not alone.
* * * * *
Rio wasn’t alone either, but not in the way he wanted to be. He came out of a shop where he was buying presents for Nella when six patrollers surrounded him.
Patrollers were always women, tall and blank-faced, with hair scraped back, wearing nondescript gray coveralls. They carried stun rods and various equipment on a belt, all designed to intimidate.
“Ident card,” the leader said to him.
The women were tall, but Rio topped the tallest by a good half foot. She did not like that, and narrowed her already flinty eyes.
“My hands are full,” Rio said.
The leader glared at three of her subordinates. They quickly took away Rio’s packages, and he grinned and let them. He withdrew his ident strip from his pocket. “I’m Rio. We’ve met.”
The leader impatiently held out a small computer. Rio pushed the ident strip into its slot. “And don’t tell me my inoculations aren’t up to date, because I’m good for another five months.”
The patrol captain studied the data and looked sour, because she knew she couldn’t call him on it. Rio had made damn sure he couldn’t be arrested on some stupid technicality that would endanger his plan to leave Bor Narga.
“You haven’t been home in a while,” the leader observed, giving him back the strip.
Rio Page 10
