To Protect A Prince

by Candy Nicks

  He stood up so fast the stool crashed to the floor behind him. Already half-hard, heart beating fit to crack a rib. “Whatever happened to remaining a virgin for your future husband?"

  "That does not seem to matter so much right now.” Tilting back her head, Shula gazed up at him, lips slightly parted, eyes dark and knowing. “I have put myself into your hands. Will you put yourself into mine?"

  "You want me to give up control to you?” The idea was unbearably exciting. The timing, all wrong.

  "Only a little. With practice, I should be able to control the markers."

  "Practice?"

  "Their instinct is to run wild. We have protocols in place to avoid that. The Aluderian Mating Rules are probably somewhere on the web."

  He closed his eyes. Being sober made a guy all too rational. “If we get through this in one piece, I'd love to fuck you ‘till you can't stand. Too much happening right now for me to start thinking with my dick. Do you understand that, Shula?"

  "I could make you do it.” She stood too, pushing back her stool with a sharp scrape. The galley was three steps wide. Narrow enough for them to touch without moving. “I'm very good at getting what I want. Or you could simply trust me as I wish to trust you. Take my hand."

  Warily, he raised his palm and slid it against hers. “This isn't going to end well,” he murmured. She tugged him to her gently and placed his hand on her soft breast, moving slightly into his curled fingers.

  "See?” she said, her voice a mere wisp of breath. “It can be controlled."

  "You think?” He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan, looped one arm around her back and lifted her clear from the floor. “But who's controlling who, Sugar? Be very careful, you may not like what you start."

  "Let me be the judge of that."

  Her warm breath on his face made him shiver. Two steps and she'd be on the narrow table, legs wrapped around his waist. He'd come on the first hot plunge into her willing body. Then he'd want her over and over again until he forgot everything but the need to be with her, to be fucking her, kissing her swollen lips while she begged for more.

  "You think we can easily stop this? Walk away when the time comes to say goodbye? Just flick a switch and everything will be back to normal? Did you think of that?"

  "No.” The sadness, the loneliness in her voice made his heart turn over.

  Smoothing back her hair, he said, “If you want a bit of comfort, something to make you forget all this for a little while, I'll be happy to oblige, if you can get a hold on that marker. Add strings to sex and it gets messy. Believe me, you don't want to be saddled with a pussy-whipped drooling idiot who has no other thoughts but to get his hands into your pants. You deserve better than that. Right now, you need better than that."

  His speech did the trick. The tide of markers turned, the air thinned. A swift release in the shower would sort him out. Her? She stood forlorn, a little dazed. He wanted to fuck her, but not out of pity and not because he couldn't help himself. Not this time.

  "Go sit in the rec-room for a while. Sort yourself out. I'll be up front at the con."

  One day she'd thank him for his sheer bloody-mindedness. And for a valuable lesson learned. How could he put himself into her hands when he didn't know himself how this story would pan out?

  Better that she kept up her guard. He didn't trust himself to do the right thing, so why in hell's name should she?

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 5

  Dan was right. Trust couldn't be bought or sold. Its very nature made that impossible. Now she had the double problem of having to face him after her failed seduction and wondering why he'd refused her test of loyalty.

  A man like Captain Daniels lived life according to his own code. And she'd attacked him with all the subtlety of a rock through glass.

  If not for Cristan, she would have thrown herself into the garbage disposal and ended it all right there.

  "The compensators are out. Bumpy ride coming up. You might want to strap yourself and the baby in.” Dan sauntered into the rec-room wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He tossed a greasy rag onto the small central table.

  "I've done a bit of tweaking, but it's the best I can do ‘till we next hit port. Going to take a shower. It's hotter than a Gerig fire-storm up there."

  "Really?” She felt listless, probably sounded petulant. Hard to care what the captain thought of her. Less than a moon-cycle and they'd part ways. Never meet again. So why worry?

  "Something's come loose in the nocens, I think. Need to hire a tube-crawler to go see what's up."

  "A tube-crawler?” She still felt the imprint of Dan's hand on her breast. The way the fingers had squeezed and moulded themselves to her shape. The hard length of him pressing against her thigh as he'd held her to him. And all he could talk about was tube-crawlers?

  "Little folk who can get into the spaces brutes like me can't reach. It's cheaper than hiring a specialist tool. They'll usually do it for a bottle of brandy."

  "It sounds dangerous."

  "Nothing more than an inconvenient design flaw, really. Cover's fallen open most probably. It'll hold in clear-space. Rattle a bit when we get to the asteroid belt. Nothing to worry about."

  "Does anything ever worry you?” She'd brooded on her faux-pas for the best part of the day. Wrestled with her conscience over the use of unfair tactics in love and war. And Dan? Their encounter in the galley might never have happened.

  "Worrying is a waste of time and energy."

  No arguing with that.

  "And so is sulking."

  Dan's face remained deadpan, although a mischievous light twinkled in his dark eyes. She would have slapped him if it hadn't meant dragging a stool across the small room in order to reach that smug face of his.

  "On my home-world,” she said. “One lift of my finger and you'd be in chains for such insolence."

  The grin he'd been holding back escaped. “You gotta to stop fantasising about me and bondage, Sugar. I'm up for it, don't get me wrong, but we have a few more important things to worry about right now."

  "I know.” Head spinning from lack of food, legs trembling with exhaustion, she sat abruptly and waited for the cabin to stop moving.

  The grin faded from Dan's face. “Go up front, take the co-pilot seat. I'll fetch the kid."

  "You have a co-pilot?” Taking his offered hand, she allowed herself to be pulled up.

  "Had. These days I work alone.” He dropped his gaze to their still-entwined fingers. “Well?"

  She managed a wan smile of her own. Far more subtle than her own shameless request for him to mate with her. Deliberate touching could so easily unleash a storm from which he'd emerge a changed man, forever in her thrall. Keeping the markers in check was difficult, but not impossible when she thought about the consequences. He knew the ways of the galaxy, the places she might trip and fall, say the wrong thing. She did not. Nothing should be allowed to impair his ability to get her and Cristan to a safe port.

  At the con, the computer terminal sat tantalisingly within her reach, screen unlocked. Another incoming mail waiting to be read. A test? Or a decoy to put her off the track?

  She ignored it and snapped the seat-belt in place. The same dank air that pervaded the rest of the ship filled the cabin, overlaid with the stench of sweat from the damp underarm patches on her tank-top. Blushing made her sweat, releasing the marker made her glow. How would she survive without the chest of toiletries and potions that had kept her looking so sleekly and aristocratically groomed?

  Well, at least looking like this, she'd fit in with the company she would now be forced to keep.

  Her stomach clenched at the sight of the red mark staining the webbing directly in line with a repair in the viewing screen. Dan's seat appeared to be cobbled from salvage, since it didn't match anything else. So different from the Royal Yacht on which she'd travelled as a privileged passenger since birth.

  I do it willingly, she reminded her
self, keeping the mantra foremost in her mind. Necessity not choice forced Cristan and herself into hard-times, but they would endure.

  Dan ignored the flashing incoming message, instead, holding Cristan up to the viewing screen, the child's chubby hand clasped firmly about his smallest finger.

  "Going to be a wanderer, aren't you boy?"

  He winked and passed the child to her. Cristan regarded them both with his solemn, knowing stare and relaxed into her arms. Dan settled himself into the pilot-seat and changed screens.

  "Taking her through on manual. Fancy a bit of excitement?"

  "You'd put the child at risk for a thrill?” Horrified, she reached for the release catch, then remembered they had nowhere to go that was safer than this rickety seat in an even more rickety space-craft.

  "He asked me to. Didn't you, little fella?” Dan winked again, as if he and the child shared some secret she wasn't in on. Cristan looked back in what looked suspiciously like adoration. Shula made a mental note to keep him away from bad influences like Dan when they started their new lives.

  "Okay, he didn't,” Dan said snapping on his head-set. “But he would if he could. Let him experience life. You don't know it yet, but bringing him out here, showing him what it's really all about, that's what will make him into a real king. Not that nambying about learning manners and how to bow and look more superior than the next guy. One day, he'll thank you for more than saving his life, Sugar."

  She resisted the urge to cover the baby's ears. Cristan's gaze was still firmly fixed on the man who might be about to shoot them straight into the centre of the nearest asteroid.

  "My name is Shula. I wish you'd use it."

  "I kind of like Sugar. Hold on to him, here they come."

  The ride through the towering rock-giants lasted no more than sixty heartbeats; she knew that because she counted every single one of the attempts of her heart to burst through her ribs. Her stomach was somewhere on the ceiling as they dodged the last of them, but Cristan hadn't turned one of his silky hairs.

  Aluderia needed him and his strength. She prayed he would find a way back to claim his throne.

  The ship banked and resumed an even keel. Dan let out a triumphant roar and turned to her, eyes shining.

  "Now that's what you call living."

  "You fool, you might have killed us."

  He responded by hooking his arm about her neck and pulling her in for a swift, hard kiss that left her lips tingling and her senses in turmoil.

  "You've broken free. Get a life and live it to the full. Did you feel that?"

  The ride or the kiss? Both had left her reeling and disorientated. Unable to tell which way was up. And this time she couldn't blame the marker. Fear had effectively blocked its release.

  The scratch of Dan's stubble burned her chin. Her lips ached for him to kiss her again.

  She sucked in a much-needed breath and focused on the pinpricks of light, the swathes of transparent colour littering the viewing-screen. The space between worlds, gas-globes and lifeless lumps of rock was largely a featureless nothing punctuated by the unexpected. A change of trajectory and your whole life went with it.

  "Yes, I felt it,” she said. “Let me show you.” Leaning across the small space between them, she reached around Dan's neck to pull him down for a kiss that told him exactly how far she'd come in so short a time. A light grazing of skin on skin, tongues barely touching. His kiss was declaration of war, hers a promise of peace.

  "Thank you.” The snap of the seat-belt seemed loud in the silence following the kiss. She caught Dan's frown before gathering up the child and fleeing to the sleeping cabin. Saw him flop back into his custom-built seat, shaking his head, muttering under his breath.

  Back in the cabin, she placed Cristan into his make-shift crib, kneeling beside the drawer when he refused to release her finger from his sturdy grasp.

  If she could control the marker... Oh sweet goddess, a genuine kiss that asked nothing other than she kiss Dan back, and mean it. She wanted to learn how to do that. But how, without overwhelming them both?

  * * * *

  Minor adjustments to the flight-path were normal, but the Marium was way off course. Cut-price parts were never a good idea. Especially in a ship this age. Dan stilled and listened. Compensators whining. Nocens way off. He rubbed his face and kicked the console.

  Should have spent a little more of his cash on the machine rather than the black hole of insatiable pleasure.

  "Open first message."

  No extension, I'm afraid. The General wasn't having it, my boy. Seems someone got wind of your little liaison back on Rialto so do the right thing, old chap and turn in your cargo like a good man. And I'm a fool for telling you this, but there's an interceptor tracking your trajectory. And not the General's, either. My money's on bounty hunter from Stable Nineteen or, if your luck really has run out, Shoari. You may thank me for this information in your own good time. Love, as always, sweetie. Message will delete in ten, nine, eight...

  Interceptor? Dan switched to code-view and studied the read-out of figures. Easy to miss, the cloaked pursuit craft was as yet, out of range, sandwiched between a larger trading vessel and a flotilla of slow-moving pleasure-ships. Mercenary or Aluderian Imperial Navy craft? The ID codes didn't scan whichever way he punched them in.

  Second Message.

  Offering accepted. Rendezvous point, striking of ninth-sun on the Agu-dynasty temple. Keep him safe, my son. I must tell you that the oracle has already blessed the child with the Chi-Non-Tung. The honour of first marking is yours, Brother Daniels. This is indeed a joyous time for the order.

  The Chi-Non-Tung. Dan tipped back his seat and let out a long breath. The likes of that honour were seen once a millennia, if that.

  An uncharacteristic nervousness pinned him to the seat, the unsettling feeling of being in the presence of something too great to contemplate. Or, he thought, levering himself from the seat, it could be because he needed to tell Shula that he was about to draw an icon on her precious baby before he delivered it to a bunch of odd-looking monks who lived in a fortress on the the most remote plains of the ghost-moon Pasiphae.

  Pulling back his own sleeve, he took a long hard look at the mark, which, should he have finished his training, would have covered his entire torso and arms. Each year of study earned another piece of the puzzle that led, eventually, to the One True Enlightenment. The eye in the centre of the Chi-Nung-Tay stared back at him. The oracle had blessed him with the title, Child of Weary Mothers, much to his disgust. His subsequent tantrum at the revelation, after years of training still made him cringe with embarrassment, but over the years he'd learned to live with the mark. Even grown to like it at times.

  He'd been too-easily bored. Too eager to see the universe in all its glory, rather than be told about it by some grizzled old monk who droned and lectured until he fell asleep dreaming of escape. Fifteen zulan-years after his induction, he'd stolen six caskets of communion wine, a shuttlecraft and aimed it straight at the nearest brothel.

  Cristan wouldn't last the distance, either. The child already had a spirit of adventure that would keep him on the move, spur him to action. But for now, The Fortress was the best place for him. A place where he'd stay alive, learn and hide from those who meant him harm.

  A place where no woman was allowed to step.

  Something else Shula wasn't going to like.

  * * * *

  Cristan needed a father. Someone who would walk him through the world and teach him the ways of men. That duty should have fallen to her counterpart, his male birth-guardian, but despite the blood-oath, the bastard had been bought off with all the others.

  "Should I marry?” she asked the child. “Provide you with a daddy who will teach you to ride and to hunt and to change a blast-stabilising couplet?"

  She frowned. Blast stabilizing couplet? Where in the blazes had that thought come from?

  Cristan hiccupped and continued sucking his thumb. The innocence didn't fool
her.

  "Just what has Captain Daniels been teaching you?” she said, tickling his foot until he squirmed and giggled. “And no, he is totally unsuitable daddy material. Don't even think it. Instead of lessons, he'd be dragging you half-way across the universe on wild adventures, taking you star-jumping and teaching you to out-swim the giant gorindas of Seti 4."

  "Sounds like a good life, to me.” Dan ducked into the rec-room and threw himself onto a bench, legs splayed. The stench of lubricant followed him. “Afraid I'm going to have to make an unscheduled stop. Get the nocens seen to. We're barrelling and that's not good news. If I can get us in under a fake id, we should be untraceable."

  Shula wrapped Cristan more securely in his blanket in an effort to contain his exuberance. She'd always known he'd be a fast-developer, but his acceleration since coming aboard the Marium stunned her. Particularly since he'd started taking an interest in the Captain.

  "Would I fit into the tubes?"

  "I guess so. You want to try it?"

  She turned Cristan so he could stare at his hero and hopefully settle for his nap. “If you'll take Cristan. He's fighting sleep, but he might go for you."

  Dan wiped his hands on his soiled pants. “Okay, hand him over."

  "Wash first, you're—"

  "Stop coddling the kid,” he said and rose from the bench. “A bit of dirt isn't going to hurt him. And don't hover, it's annoying. I'm not about to drop him."

  "Drop him and I'll smother you in your sleep.” She placed the squirming bundle into Dan's giant paws and backed away, never taking her eyes from him. Cristan immediately reached for Dan's stubbled cheek, which had been a source of endless fascination to the child. When Dan blew a raspberry onto Cristan's forehead the child burst into a round of hysterical giggles that did not bode well for sleep.

  "You're over-exciting him."

  "And you're nagging me. Go find yourself some of my old clothes, the tubes are pretty greasy. I promise not to corrupt the infant while you're gone."