A third ship sat on the flat lot now, an old model powerful enough to run from planet to nearest space station, but no farther without a rest and refueling. These XR class small freighters were far from the elegant private liners Nella took when transporting between stations, but at the moment the tiny ship looked better than the most fabulous yacht.
Nella was going home.
Or at least to Station 657 where Ariel had a consulate. They would arrange passage on a liner to take her to the Station 348, which was nearest Ariel.
Interspace liners and freighters traveled from station to station—space stations alone having the technology to hurtle ships hundreds of light-years. Breaking free from a planet’s gravitational pull demanded so much energy that a ship was already spent once it reached an area where it could jump to light speed.
Space stations had been set up outside each inhabited planet’s gravity well, so the interstellar ships could simply start there. Space stations had light speed “gates” which propelled the ship to the next station, and passengers then used sublight shuttles to move from stations to planets.
Nella had traveled all over the galaxy already, although this was her first visit to Bor Narga, a long way from Ariel. She was happy to be on her way home.
Rio strolled along beside her, Rees bringing up the rear. They walked casually like people out for a stroll. For appearance’s sake, they’d shopped a little in the market, in the middle of the village square, then wandered through the lanes that would take them toward the transports.
Rees had said the three of them alone would attract less attention, but two big Shareem, even swathed in robes, could not help but attract attention. Nella, too, was covered by robes, a hood drawn up over her beacon-red hair. The townspeople no doubt speculated about her, wondering what kind of woman would walk around openly with Shareem.
Nella did not care, as long as no one stopped them getting aboard the transport.
As they made their way through a crowded, narrow artery of a street, crammed between canyon walls, someone stepped in front of Nella and yanked the hood from her head. It was Linginian.
Nella stared at him in shock, and he stared back in almost as much shock.
Dimly she remembered that her eyes had changed color. He looked the same as always, black hair close-cropped, dark eyes narrow in a pale, narrow face.
“I found you,” he announced.
Rio stepped between him and Nella. At the same time, the street suddenly emptied of townspeople and filled again with patrollers in desert-colored coveralls, joining Linginian’s men, who were in gray.
“Shareem,” said the tall leader of the patrollers. “Tell me, what is your interest in the transport ships?”
Rio said nothing. He rested a hand on Nella’s shoulder, and she felt his calming Shareem touch slide through her panic.
The patrol captain’s eyes narrowed. “Answer me, Shareem. Or I have permission to terminate you right here.”
Nella found her voice. “You would kill him for walking through a street?”
“I would kill him for breaking the rules and trying to leave the planet. He’s Shareem. He’s only allowed to live if he proves he’s not a threat.”
Nella bristled. She knew this was no time to talk about Bor Nargan politics, but the woman’s treatment of Rio annoyed her. “He is no threat to you. Or to anyone.”
“Hey, don’t ruin my reputation for being dangerous, baby,” Rio said, voice tight.
“This man should be arrested, in any case,” Linginian said, “for kidnapping.”
“He did not kidnap me,” Nella said. “That was you.”
“We were Bonded. I was only taking what was rightfully mine.”
“The Bond never manifested, no matter how much you tried,” Nella snapped. “My Bond-mate is standing next to me.” She put her hand on Rio’s, where it lay on her shoulder, feeling the shimmer of what was between them.
“Yeah, so back off,” Rio growled. “There’s nothing in the rules about a Shareem taking a stroll through the market with his Bond-mate.”
“You are forbidden to marry,” the patroller said automatically.
“And aren’t you just grateful about that?” Rio asked.
Nella wondered why he was acting so nonchalant and badass, then she realized that Rees had disappeared. He’d slid away as soon as the street filled with patrollers. Rio was buying time for Rees to do whatever he would do.
Rio looked Linginian over from head to toe. The Shareem easily towered over every person in the crowd, including the tall patrollers and Linginian’s men. “He thought he was good enough to be your Bond-mate?” He poked Linginian in the chest. “He feels wimpy to me.”
Linginian’s men instantly trained weapons on Rio.
The patrol captain glared at them, outraged. “No firearms allowed in public places on Bor Narga.”
The stone-faced guards did nothing, but Linginian made a placating gesture. “Let’s follow the lady’s rules. No one looks like much of a threat here.”
Rio’s lips twitched, listening to Linginian insult Bor Nargan’s patrollers, who all carried stun rods and did not look one bit happy. Linginian’s men at least put away their weapons.
“You should arrest him for being stupid,” Rio commented. “Now, can we be on our way? Our friends are expecting us home for lunch.”
“Nella is coming with me,” Linginian said coolly.
Rio changed from quiet annoyance to animalistic strength in an instant. He had Linginian’s throat in his hand before the patrollers or Linginian’s men could react.
“She’s not going anywhere with the man who tried to force her and then kill her.”
Whatever the patrol captain felt about open weapons, she hated aggressive Shareem even more. She raised her stun rod. “Get away from him.”
The rod came down. Rio spun Linginian in his grip, letting Linginian catch the stun rod full against his back.
The smaller man screamed, his body jerking with the electric shock. His men drew weapons again. Rio tossed Linginian at the lead patroller, grabbed Nella’s hand, dove through an opening in the startled patrollers and ran.
His hand was like a band around Nella’s, his strength pulling her faster than she’d have been able to run herself. She heard pursuit behind them, patrollers shouting, Linginian’s men pounding along the street.
Rio dragged Nella around a corner, through the crowded market, and out through another street, this one quiet and deserted. It fed into the open area where the third ship waited.
Rees waited as well. The ship’s engines had started, filling the air with a roaring sound and the smell of burning fuel.
“I got him to wait, but he’s in a big hurry,” Rees said as they neared him. “He didn’t like the patrollers suddenly appearing.”
“He didn’t like it?” Rio said. “How does he think I feel?”
He softened his grip on Nella’s hand but did not let go. They followed Rees quickly toward the transport.
Three light bolts and two metal bullets flew past them, striking the dirt around them and sending up little rivulets of dust. “Fuck,” Rio snarled and ran faster.
Shots came again, this time striking the ship. Behind her, Rees grunted, and Nella turned in time to see him clasp his shoulder, red leaking between his fingers.
“Rees!”
“Go on!” Rees shouted.
Rio dragged her onward, his face set. He ran behind the ship just as a barrage of shot pelted it. Because of the ship’s spaceworthy hull, the bullets did nothing more than flake off bits of paint.
Then the boom of a pulse cannon sounded, and the ship shuddered and shook. A hiss of air exploded from a plate that spiraled out and landed with a metallic clang.
The pilot, a lanky man who was not Bor Nargan, appeared in the hatch, swearing and looking around wildly. He spotted Linginian’s men, all ten of them, winding up the cannon for another shot.
“Shit,” the pilot said. “Are you the cargo?”
/> “That’s us,” Rio said. “I suggest we go, fast.”
“Only one of you, now. That shot blew out the oxygen system. We’ll have to use enviro-suits and there’s only one spare.”
“Then we have to go get Rees and get back to Rylan’s,” Nella panted, her legs shaking.
“No,” Rio said. “You get on the transport and go.”
She shook her head. “Not without you.”
“You have to. I can deal with the patrollers. You need to be safe.”
She clung to his robes, feeling his firm body beneath them. “But they’ll arrest you. You’ll never get off Bor Narga.”
“There isn’t time to argue,” he said, his face harsh. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
Rio scooped her against him and kissed her, hard. She let her lips cling to his, wanting him, hungry for him, the Bond screaming to not let him go. She knew he felt it too, because pain flared in his eyes.
He set her on her feet and swatted her backside. “Get on that transport, princess.”
The Bond cried out, pulling her. “Rio.”
“You have to do this, Nella. It’s your only chance to be safe.”
She knew he was right. If she went back to Rylan’s, Linginian would find them. She could tell the Bor Nargan patrollers who she was, but she had no proof of her identity, and they’d likely argue that she would be better off with Linginian than a Shareem, in any case.
But leaving Rio behind scared her. Not only was she leaving a part of herself, Rio might not escape the wrath of the patrollers. It would take time for her to get back to Ariel and arrange help for him. And by that time…
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too, sweetheart. Now go.” He held her gaze with his hot, intense eyes. “Trust me.”
Nella smiled weakly, touched her fingers to his lips, then spun around and ran for the hatch of the transport.
It snapped shut as soon as she was inside, closing off the heat, Bor Narga, Rio’s face—and the tears in his Shareem-blue eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
The Gallery of Light
“Don’t move, Shareem,” the patrol captain said.
Rio ignored her. He watched the small ship climb up and up through Bor Narga’s perfect, blue, cloudless sky. The Bond between himself and Nella pulled at him, hurting like nothing else ever had.
The captain and her patrollers surrounded Rio. At the edge of the field, the outraged Linginian watched as his men were arrested for carrying weapons in a public place. Not only that, but for shooting at people—even Shareem—and a transport ship. Bor Nargans took their weapons laws very seriously.
“Go on, arrest me,” Rio said, looking at the patrol captain’s flat, angry face. “I really don’t care.”
* * * * *
The patrollers did arrest Rio, and he spent the night in a tiny cell with a surprisingly comfortable bed, fresh paint on the walls, cool, well-circulated air and a computer slot that provided exactly one meal.
Rio sat on the bed, leaning his back against the wall and did not eat. He wasn’t hungry, and he’d not lied to the patroller. He truly did not care.
He stayed in the cell only one night and was released the next day, while reporter bots circled the small trial house. It seemed that the patrollers could not produce one shred of evidence that Rio had been planning to take the transport off-world. He had been escorting Nella to the transport, that was all, and Nella, as a non-Shareem, could come and go as she pleased.
The judge, a thin woman with a long nose, had found out all about Linginian, including the bulletin from Ariel that he was wanted for kidnapping Princess Nella. Alarmed, she made recommendations for him to be expedited to Ariel for them to deal with. Plus she charged him an enormous fine for instructing his men to fire weapons in the quiet town of Canyon Roble.
Rio wasn’t sure how Rees and Talan had covered things to make it look like Rio wasn’t going anywhere, but they had. He walked back with them from the trial house to Rylan’s, knowing he should be grateful, but feeling only numb.
In Rylan’s living room, he stood staring out the huge glass windows, wondering whether Nella and the transport had made it to Station 657, and wondering if she’d send word to him when she did.
Rees, Rylan and Maia left him alone. Rio know that pain radiated from him, and being Shareem, they would be sensitive to his emotion, feeling it too. Not that he minded. He really wanted to be alone.
Talan, however, did not let anything stop her. She entered the sitting room behind him, the soft scent of her perfume and her light step alerting him to her presence.
“If you came to feel sorry for me, don’t bother,” he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. That’s all he needed, to turn into a whining fool.
“I do feel sorry for you.”
Talan came around him, blocking his view of the canyon, her blue eyes filled with sorrow. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him, hard.
Level threes don’t hug, he wanted to say.
Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her shoulder. There was nothing sexual about this caress, it was friendship alone.
“You love her,” Talan said.
“Yeah. Damn it all.”
Talan released him, keeping her hands on his shoulders. “She loves you. She’ll come back for you.”
“Maybe.”
“Or you can go to Ariel. I’m perfectly happy to pay for another transport for you. Rees can arrange it.”
Rio gently removed her hands from his shoulders. “Not for a while, he can’t. The patrollers will be watching me extra close, because they know I was up to something. They’ll watch you and Rees too. I don’t need him getting terminated for helping me.”
“Rees knows how to work it so he won’t get caught—”
“No.” Rio gave her an emphatic look. “We need to lay low for a while. I need to think about things.”
Talan nodded, though he knew she had not dropped the idea. “You’ll see her again, Rio,” Talan said.
“Sure thing.” He tried to sound like he believed it.
“You will.” She patted his arm, then turned to leave the room. “Trust me.”
* * * * *
Days lengthened to weeks, and Nella made no contact with Bor Narga. Rio knew she had returned to Ariel, because days after her departure, a news digital showed her, garbed in a filmy golden gown that clung to her curves, waving from a balcony with two older people who must be her parents.
A tinny voice from the digital feed said, After three harrowing months, Princess Nella of Ariel has at last returned safely to her family in her home city of Adrina. She had apparently been kidnapped and held hostage by a man called Lord Linginian, who has been arrested and transported to an incarceration satellite to await trial. Princess Nella escaped, unharmed, and using only the resources of her courage and intelligence, fled assassin bots to arrive safely on her home planet, to the relief and joy of her family.
Rio recorded the digital feed and played it over and over again, muting the inane voice and watching Nella. In the picture, she emerged onto a balcony between her parents, her beautiful face serene, her eyes emerald green and tearing with emotion.
She lifted her plump hand and waved at the people gathered to cheer her, looking so damn beautiful that his Shareem cock hardened.
From watching a recording of her light-years away, for the gods’ sakes.
At least Rio did not have to worry for her safety. She was home in her big palace with her family and all her guards. She’d be going to parties, the news people said, held in her honor. They speculated that there’d be plenty of men at those parties, and wedding bells might ring soon for the heroic and beautiful Princess Nella.
“Meanwhile,” Rio said, waving his hand to dissolve the holo-picture, “her Shareem former lover gets drunk and sappy thinking about what might have been.”
Rio had come home to d’Enela Street and Kamile’s shop and his own small flat cluttered with bon
dage paraphernalia. Not that he felt much like using any of it.
But Shareem had to have sex, or at least release, or they burned up from the inside out.
Six weeks after Nella’s departure, Rio showered himself, then stood naked in front of a slim mirror in his front room. He was still tall, still muscular, and still hung like the Bor Nargan god of love and sex. Only bigger.
“I’m Rio,” he told himself. “There are dozens of women out there who’d give anything to suck this cock. Three of them at a time, even.”
His cock was supposed to leap at the thought of three beautiful women on their knees licking him—maybe two in front and one behind. But not until one of them smiled at him with Nella’s smile and looked at him with Nella’s enhanced green eyes did it start to lift.
“Damn,” he said, and deflated again.
“I need to finish this,” he told his reflection. “No more nights with just me and a butt plug. It’s just sad.”
His reflection nodded back at him. “And what’s even sadder,” he observed, “is me standing here, naked, talking to a mirror.”
He turned away, dressed in his usual leather, tucked what he needed into his pockets, hung his breather on his belt and went to Judith’s.
Aiden and Ky were there. Rio sat down with them, glad he could at least spend the evening with friends. Of course, Aiden knew Nella, and the man kept shooting Rio sympathetic glances, which didn’t help.
Aiden and Ky were still full of themselves over how they’d diverted the patrollers’ attention so Rio could get to Canyon Roble without fuss. Rio didn’t blame them for the patrollers catching up to him—that had been Linginian’s fault.
The three Shareem talked and drank for a time. Ky got up and approached the bar for more ale, his tight leather-clad ass attracting the attention of every woman in the room.
“You tell him yet?” Rio asked Aiden.
Aiden’s face remained neutral, but Rio detected a flicker of unhappiness. “No. And you’re not going to.”
Rio lifted his hands. “Hey, I can keep a secret.”
“I don’t want him to be uncomfortable around me. If I can’t have anything more, then I at least want things to stay as they are.”
Rio Page 18
