“She’s a beautiful woman, Rio. You get her to trust you all the way, and you’ll make a fine pair.”
“Yeah, that would be special, wouldn’t it?” He tried to sound offhand, but Aiden’s eyes sharpened.
“Don’t give up on it, Rio. You get off-planet, where you’re not regulated to death, and it will be different.”
“Maybe, but I’ll still be Shareem, won’t I?”
Aiden gave him look. “And this is a bad thing?”
“I’ll always be driven by my cock. Great for a woman wanting sex, but what about for a woman wanting more than that?”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve seen how she looks at you.”
“Women always look at me like that,” Rio said. “Hell, I saw you looking at me like that.”
“I was looking at your ass. She’s looking at the whole you, inside and out.”
Rio kept his emotions in check, having been down the road of hope before. “My friend, Nella’s a princess. When she gets home she’ll marry some prince, and Rio the sex toy will be put away. Maybe we aren’t slaves legally, but that’s what we are. Born and bred. That’s why we wear these damn chains.”
“Rees found Talan,” Aiden pointed out.
“Rees was fucking lucky. And Rylan found Maia, but she was already Shareem, and they were making it back in DNAmo. The rest of us…” He made a vague gesture, then dropped the subject. He was tired of getting maudlin about being lonely.
“Yeah, the rest of us have to make do with sex,” Aiden said, his eyes glinting with amusement.
Rio took a step closer to him, his Shareem genes quickly relieving his morose mood. “Just between you and me, since I’ll never see you again—what Shareem are you fantasizing about? Is it Ky?”
“Of course it’s Ky,” Aiden answered. “Who else?”
Rio thought about the gruff, good-natured Ky, the drinks they’d shared at Judith’s bar, the jokes, and the ladies they’d pleasured together. “Sorry, I just don’t see him that way.”
“You’re blind then. He’s damn sexy, and he doesn’t even know it.” Aiden paused, a strange light in his eyes. “If you tell him, Rio, I’ll break all your fingers.”
“I’m leaving, remember? So he doesn’t know what you’re thinking?”
“No. I don’t want him to know.”
“Huh.” Rio tried to wrap his mind around this new idea. He could understand why women would think Ky sexy, but Rio’s own cock had never leapt at the sight of him. “You want to be his Dom?” He couldn’t imagine calm, collected Aiden being anything but dominating, even if he wasn’t level three.
“Hell, no. Are you kidding? I’d give anything to be his sub.”
Rio folded his arms, amazed he could talk about this so comfortably. “You don’t seem the sub type.”
“I would be with Ky. It would be refreshing not to have to think, just to obey him. To have the manacles on me while he told me to get ready for his cock.”
Rio held up his hand. “Stop. Don’t tell me any more. Just say goodbye to him for me, will you? I’ve got to go.”
Aiden grinned, as though he’d deliberately been trying to bother Rio and was happy he’d succeeded. “Good luck, Rio.”
Aiden shook his hand and clapped him on the shoulder. Rio clasped his hand hard, grateful. Whatever weirdness Aiden had in his head, the man had been a good friend.
He left him and joined the others, who waited for him near the lift.
* * * * *
Nella had donned the sun-blocking, ankle-length robes Talan had bought for her, but underneath, she still wore the leather dress and collar. She wanted to feel like she belonged to Rio, if only for the short time they had left together.
Her throat went dry as they exited the compound into what seemed to be a deserted warehouse. The heat of Bor Narga hit her again as they emerged through the hidden door, even through the protective robes. She had forgotten, in Dr. Laas’ climate-controlled, every-need-met compound, how harsh the weather of Bor Narga could be.
The first thing she saw as they emerged from the warehouse was a shining silver globe of an assassin bot.
She shrank back against Rio, and he put his arm around her. “Dr. Laas is a genius,” he said, his Shareem voice reassuring. “It will be all right.”
Talan flashed Nella a nervous glance, obviously not as sanguine about Dr. Laas’ talent as Rio.
Rees led them out, his hand in Talan’s, strolling as though they were taking a shortcut from one busy street to the next.
The assassin bot floated silently along the street, which was busy and colorful today. Vendors lined the alley that had been deserted yesterday after the sandstorm, setting up wares for a weekly market. The assassin bot floated behind the booths, moving discreetly, searching.
Nella’s limbs tingled, urging her to run. Rio seemed to sense her panic, because he leaned down to her. “If we run, it will chase us to see why. If we walk, it will just look at us and move on.”
“How do you know so much about assassin bots?” Nella asked him.
“Dr. Laas told me. She knows about a lot of things. Let’s walk.”
They moved toward the line of vendors’ booths, temporary structures that could be pulled up quickly in case of a sandstorm or patrollers with mean looks in their eyes.
Nella was soon assaulted by smells of spices, fruits, flowers, machine oil, warming plastic and metal robotic parts slowly baking under the sun. Over all this was the smell of humanity that all the technology, genetic engineering and chemical products could never quite erase.
The assassin bot noted their approach and slid gently over to them. The people on the street seemed to ignore the bot—either they assumed it was a holo camera for a news feed or they did not see it hovering just above the normal line of sight.
Nella was very aware of it, and strained her muscles to simply not look. Her hand in Rio’s grew slick with sweat.
The bot moved a little lower, as though assessing each of them. It passed over Rees, then Talan, then Rio and finally Nella.
Was it her imagination, or did the bot hesitate as though thinking it had found a match? Had they been programmed this time with visual recognition, even though the hood of the sun robe partially blocked her face?
Rio’s hand tightened on hers, and she felt his pulse through his fingers, already higher than a normal human’s. She willed herself to calm, wondering whether the bot could detect fear.
The bot swung lower, as if debating. Then suddenly, it popped up again and drifted away, losing interest.
Nella let out her breath, her limbs shaking. Rio shot her a smile, squeezing her hand reassuringly, letting his Shareem chemicals relax her.
Rees, without changing expression, led them at a leisurely pace through the market. Nella still wanted to run, but she forced herself to walk behind him and Talan, stifling her impatience when one or both of them would stop and pretend to look at wares.
Rees bought Talan a colorful scarf, and Rio stopped to purchase a pretty braid of leather, which was meant to tie back hair. He winked at Nella and slipped it into his pocket, daring her to guess what he’d use it for.
At last, at last, they left the bazaar and stepped aboard a slow-moving hover transport that took them to the nearest city-to-city shuttle station. Talan purchased four tickets on a craft that would take them to the other side of the sand sea, and rather haughtily requested a private waiting room, as befitted her rank.
The station master, a woman, gave the Shareem a startled glance, then a slightly disdainful expression crossed her features as she looked at Talan and Nella—highborn women obviously no better than they ought to be. But she directed them to the cooled, tiled, pleasantly decorated waiting room for upper-class women, and left them alone.
They were the only four in the room. Nella sat down, heaving a relieved sigh, and loosened her robes.
“One hurdle navigated,” Rio said. “Now let’s hope Aiden and Ky distract the patrollers before they decide to investig
ate which Shareem have been reported taking a trip to the other side of the planet.”
“You’ve visited Rylan before,” Rees pointed out.
“Yes. But not after I’d been fingered by patrollers as possibly trying to leave Bor Narga. And I don’t like the way the station master looked at me. They might have put out a watch for me.”
Nella glanced at him. “I’ll not let them take you.”
“You might not have a choice, darling.”
Nella reached for his hand, and he sat down next to her, his leather-clad thigh touching her robes. “I’ll not let them take you,” she repeated. Then she smiled. “Trust me.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Cavern Pool
The way Aiden and Ky had decided to distract the patrollers, even though Rio didn’t hear about it until a long time later, was a thing of beauty.
The two Shareem, level one and level three, respectively, specialized in the two-on-one scenario. They had had built up a devoted following of ladies, highborn and low, who would do anything for them. These ladies, apparently, were happy to assist them in their scheme.
What Aiden decided to do was put on a collar and have Ky pretend to sell him at an impromptu auction in the middle of the street near Judith’s bar.
The ladies who liked these two men turned up in droves, eager to bid on Aiden. Judith watched from the doorway of her bar, amused. The commotion of the women and the titillating sight of the Shareem, one standing on a box wearing nothing but a collar and a loincloth, the other in leather, holding Aiden’s chain, was nothing less than sensational.
When the patrollers came to arrest the Shareem, the women began to riot. Passersby on the street joined in, enjoying the opportunity to throw things and taunt patrollers, no matter what the cause.
The result was that every patroller in the city was called to haul in the Shareem for creating a disturbance and breaking the rules about being discreet. A transport carrying two Shareem across the sand sea was never noticed.
Aiden and Ky did get themselves arrested, but a dozen wealthy women happily paid their fines and pulled in favors within the Ministry of Non-Human Life Forms to have them released. Aiden and Ky spent a long time repaying this debt to their female friends, and enjoyed every minute of it.
* * * * *
On the other side of the sand sea, Rio led Nella from the transport with his arm around her. As though they were doing nothing more than visiting friends, they took a small hovercraft from the tiny shuttle dock to the house that Rylan had built for his lifemate, Maia.
The landscape of Canyon Roble was different from the area around the flat capital city they’d left behind. Jagged mountains, red with iron ore, rose in blunt cliffs from the desert floor, and a river, swift and shallow, poured down the mountains to form canyons and arroyos. Pungent, twisting pines and bright wildflowers clung to the canyon walls.
To Nella, used to the lush meadows and forests of Ariel, the red canyons, dark green trees, soft blue sky and crimson and violet flowers were a palette of stark beauty.
Rylan and Maia’s home incorporated some of that beauty. It was built into a crevice in a canyon, shadowed by trees and giving a view of the burbling river and the town in the valley. Floor-to-ceiling windows, made of glass that would protect from the sun, lined every front room, rendering the landscape part of the decor.
Rylan had decorated it simply, with low couches, few tables, mat floors and one or two pieces of artwork that complemented the natural picture outside the windows. After Dr. Laas’ overly sensual compound, Nella found Rylan’s home refreshing and calm.
Rylan had a Shareem body and wheat-brown hair, and like Aiden, he’d been face-sculpted. He was not an exact copy of Aiden, however, his face being slightly heavier and more square. Also, Rylan’s own personality had been stamped onto his features. Rylan was level two, games and wicked fun, which could mean anything from tickling to spanking to bondage.
Nella read more than that in him, though. She saw a man who’d been through grief, but had finally found happiness with his lifemate, Maia.
Maia, the only female Shareem ever created, was a beautiful, lush woman with black hair and round blue eyes. She’d been an experiment, a prototype, lost for years after DNAmo’s closure, before Rylan—who was obviously insanely in love with her—found her.
Maia greeted Talan and Nella with a slight awkwardness, although Talan tried to put her at her ease. Maia seemed perfectly comfortable with Rees and Rio, whom she hugged tightly and exchanged banter with, but seemed at a loss with the women.
She told them, later, when Rio, Rylan and Rees had gone to see about final arrangements for the transport, that she’d never had a woman friend before.
She took Talan and Nella to Rylan’s workshop on the second floor, which also had floor-to-ceiling windows, to show them the singing spheres Rylan crafted from raw mountain crystals.
“Most women do not like to be around me,” she said shyly, touching one of the ruby-colored crystals that sat on Rylan’s work table.
“They are jealous because you are so beautiful,” Talan said with conviction.
Maia shook her head. “It is because I am Shareem. I can’t help releasing my pheromones, you see. Men react to it, and their women don’t like it. I don’t much like it myself.”
“Well, I know you love Rylan,” Talan said. “And he loves you. So everything is all right.”
Maia did not look convinced, but she seemed a little more cheerful as she showed them the singing spheres. “Rylan makes them,” she said proudly. “I help, but he is the true artist.”
The spheres ranged in size from a few inches in diameter to as large as a foot across, and were mainly ruby-colored or clear glass. The crystals, when harvested, Maia explained, were either blood red or opaque white, with a few rare rainbow-colored ones.
The one rainbow sphere in the workshop, unfinished, danced with light, the colors meshing and changing seemingly on their own.
Maia brushed her hand over one of the finished spheres. Immediately, a shimmering musical note wafted from it, growing louder as the tone built, then softer as it dispersed in the room.
“How beautiful,” Nella breathed.
“Would you like to have it?”
“Oh.” Nella studied the sphere cradled in a wrought silver stand. “It must be very valuable. You and Rylan will want to sell it.”
Maia shook her head. “We can make more. Please, take it.” She flushed. “I’ve never had a friend before.”
Nella realized she could not hurt the young woman by refusing. “Thank you. It is a wonderful gift. I might have to leave it here, and send for it later.”
“That’s all right. We’ll keep it for you.”
Maia smiled, happy. Nella sensed some of the woman’s pheromones in the air, probably because she was pleased, but they carried no sexual overtones.
Rio was nothing but sexual overtones. Nella remembered again the fullness inside her when Rio had slid into her ass, making love to her the only way he could. He could have hurt her, or rushed her, but he hadn’t.
He’d taught her that being with a level three was not necessarily about receiving pain. It was about accepting pleasure, and about him teaching her to surrender to it. She felt profound gratitude to him for that.
Maia took them all over the house, which Rylan had built with her in mind, putting in everything he knew she’d love. She even showed them their bedroom at the very top of the house, with a windowed wall and a large, low bed that took up most of the room.
Shareem lovers, Nella thought. They must need special cooling units to keep the air from overheating.
A few toys were strewn casually about the bedroom, a pair of manacles with a chain between them hanging from a bedpost, a long, polished dildo in a velvet-lined case on the table next the bed, and a stand full of whips in a corner. Talan blushed when she saw everything, but Maia behaved as though they were nothing out of the ordinary.
Maia wore only a thin sarong tha
t bared most of her body, but she seemed comfortable with her nudity, just as the three Shareem males were comfortable with theirs.
Last, Maia took them all the way to the bottom of the house, underground, where a natural cavern was etched into the rock. A pool, fed by a trickle of a stream, shimmered under soft, computer-powered lanterns.
“Come and swim,” Maia said. “You must be hot and dusty from the journey.” She stripped off her sarong, tossed it to a latticed bench near the pool, and deftly dove into the water.
Nella was hot, and quite tired after the trip. She removed the robes Talan had lent her and laid them carefully across the bench. She took off the collar and the leather dress and folded them just as carefully, then slid into the water.
Maia surfaced and stood with the water lapping her breasts. “Are you using Rio?” she asked Nella.
Nella started. “Using him?”
Maia nodded as though she’d said nothing strange. “Yes, to pleasure you.”
Talan had taken off her clothes and now joined them, although she hid her body from them until she was fully in the water. This amused Nella, as she remembered that she’d first seen Talan stark naked on her hands and knees while Rees took her from behind.
“No,” Nella said. “Not using him. I—he—he’s teaching me. That’s the only way I know how to explain it.”
“You do not have to be embarrassed, Nella,” Maia said. “Women use Shareem all the time. It is what they were made for.”
“Yes, but—” Nella could not explain, and she noticed that Talan watched her closely. “I am not with him because he is Shareem. I am with him because he is Rio.”
Talan relaxed, as though Nella had said the right thing.
“You like him, then?” Maia said.
“Yes, very much.”
“Do you love him?” Talan asked.
The question left Nella speechless. Love him?
You do, came a voice inside her. You feel the Bond. You’ve denied it and tried to make it go away, but it’s there.
“It should not be difficult to answer,” Talan said, sternness in her blue eyes.
“Yes, it is.”
Rio Page 15
