Reckless Bounty (Intergalactic Justice Book 1)

by Marly Mathews

  “Lucy, have you downloaded all of the coordinates into my tablet?” she asked.

  “Yep. I did that an age and a half ago. And if you don’t get your butt moving those bad dudes will be gone by the time you reach your destination,” Lucy pointed out.

  “Please. Tell me that we don’t have to ride in your oversized excuse for a car!” Samantha rubbed her forehead.

  “No, though I don’t see the problem with my hover limo,” Lord Devlin remarked.

  Samantha stopped, arching her left brow at him. She pointed down to the docking bay and muttered, “Oh, you can’t be serious!”

  She felt like screaming.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “It’s ugly,” Samantha said, moving toward it. “What the hell is it anyway?”

  “It has the latest in technological advancements, for a hover car. It can transform itself into a submarine or a space shuttle. It’s very useful,” Devlin remarked.

  Giving her a sly wink, he shouted a command at it. It came to life and transformed in front of her very eyes. It changed colour and shape and now resembled something close to a hover car.

  “As soon as I brought it in here, it camouflaged itself. That’s why you didn’t notice it, until I pointed it out to you.”

  “Yes, well I also had a few things on my mind, and I can tell you, I wasn’t expecting you to be on my ship.” Samantha turned at the sound of Johanna’s voice and smiled at her.

  “Go get them,” Johanna encouraged, even as her eyes began to widen. “Pinch me because I think I’m dreaming. Oh, I have to come with you! I’ve wanted a Faerie Cruiser ever since they were invented. I want to drive it! And being nearly strangled isn’t going to hold me back.”

  “Johanna, snap out of it. You have to stay here with Dylan, remember?” she asked, closely watching her sister’s face transform from her normal placid expression to one of pure joy. She was in heaven that was for sure.

  “Oh, I have to touch it!” Johanna breathed eagerly, walking down the gangplank. “It’s beautiful!”

  “I thought that it was ugly when I first saw it,” Samantha remarked, following her sister.

  “Do you know what this baby can do?” Johanna asked, running her hand over the shiny exterior. “It can do anything!”

  “What do you mean? It’s just a piece of junk that can fly,” she sighed. Her sister’s infatuation with cars never did make any sense to her.

  Devlin looked angry at her comment, and Johanna was too busy to care.

  “I am not a piece of junk,” a female voice boomed out. Suddenly, the thing moved, as if by its own accord. Samantha jumped back, completely freaked out by it, and rested her hand on her pistol. “Take your hand off of your weapon. There is no need for that! You are on your own ship.”

  “Holy shit!” she breathed, continuing to edge away from the car. “I’m not getting into a hover car, that’s smarter than you, Devlin.” Samantha slowly reached to activate her jet pack.

  “If we don’t get moving soon, the trip will be a waste,” the hover car said impatiently, as its doors opened, and the inside lit up. She tried swallowing past the lump in her throat. She wasn’t exactly the Queen of Technology, but this hover car sure took the cake.

  “Her name is Eleanor,” Lord Devlin announced, pride carrying into his voice. He patted Eleanor, and then climbed inside.

  “How do you do, Eleanor,” Samantha muttered, moving around to the other side of the vehicle.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Eleanor answered, which made her eyes almost fall out of her head.

  Samantha couldn’t believe she was interacting with the hover car. Even Aggie wasn’t this sophisticated.

  “Johanna,” she muttered, as the seat molded to her body shape, “You should probably go and check on Dylan. He might be waking up by now.”

  “Hmm…” Her sister murmured dreamily, not lifting her eyes from Eleanor’s sleek exterior.

  “She said that you should go and check on Dylan,” Eleanor clarified, earning a delighted sigh from Johanna.

  “I’m going…” Johanna sighed, her eyes meeting Samantha’s. “I’m going…really I am!”

  “God! Eleanor, I think my sister might love you more than she loves me.”

  “Probably. I am much cuter,” Eleanor retorted.

  Samantha had to fold her hands in her lap to herself from hitting the dashboard. This car was going to drive her batty by the time they reached wherever they were going. Pulling her tablet from her bag, she groaned when she realized where they had to go.

  “So, where to?” Lord Devlin asked.

  “I can’t believe this,” Samantha stuttered. “So Devlin, who was the brilliant mastermind of Atlantis City?” she asked, almost barfing up the energy bar she’d shoved down her throat not fifteen minutes earlier.

  “I was.” The pride in his voice was unmistakable. He tilted his head to glance her way.

  “Freaking wonderful! Because now, I’m going to have to kill you.”

  “Promises. Promises,” Lord Devlin teased. “You make threats to kill me in almost every breath you draw. It’s your way of saying you love me.”

  She groaned. “Yeah right.”

  Samantha tried shifting in her seat. She tried again and then let out a frustrated snort.

  “Hey, Eleanor, give it up. I want to move, and you can’t keep my butt snuggled in forever.”

  “Be thankful that Eleanor has such extensive safety precautions. If we crashed, you’d be held in tight,” Devlin remarked.

  Eleanor’s engines thrummed to life.

  “Yeah, but is that a good thing or a bad thing? Hey, you know I could drive. With Johanna, I usually ride shotgun but with you…”

  “I do most of the driving. Lord Devlin is merely a guide. He is here in case of an unforeseen consequence,” Eleanor retorted primly.

  She let out another dragged out sigh, and then decided to go with the flow, for the moment at least.

  They soared up high into New Monaco’s clear afternoon sky.

  “Yes, I could let her do all of the driving and you and I could continue where we left off in the shower,” he mused.

  Her stomach flip-flopped as she berated herself for getting into a car with Devlin.

  Here she was, sitting with a man who usually got his own way when it came to becoming intimate with her. She pressed her legs together and heard him laugh.

  “You’ve always had a hard time resisting me…I was your first and I’ll damn well be your last, Samantha,” he murmured. “Do you still remember our first time together? I do,” he murmured.

  Her cheeks flamed. “I do...” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “You were a good considerate lover, and I couldn’t have asked for a better man to be with that first time.”

  He smiled at her. “Like I keep saying, we’re meant for each other.”

  “This thing is intelligent…if we did that in here, we’d have someone watching us,” she said.

  “I can program myself so I can only see outside, and anything you do while inside won’t be monitored. It’s called privacy mode,” the car said, freaking Samantha out even more!

  She had to remember what he’d said to keep her passions cooled. He had threatened her with a public execution of Tyler and she was smart enough to realize that Devlin was a man of his word, when it came to such terrible matters. It was a shame he didn’t apply that honour to other parts of his life. She scowled at him.

  “I can say no to you. I just don’t usually want to,” she whispered. “Fine, have this thing set itself so it can’t watch us, and I’m game,” she whispered.

  “You heard the lady, Eleanor,” Devlin said, pressing a button so the entire interior of the car changed and the windows went black so no one could see into the interior of the car.

  He reached for her and she let him take her into his arms. She shimmied out of her leather jacket, and felt his hands on her bare arms.

  “I don’t get why you can do this to me—you make me want to
scream because all of my sensibility disappears…” she couldn’t finish her sentence because he was kissing her—hard. She melted against him.

  Damn, he muddled her mind. The only thing she could think with when near him was her heart and her body because her body always reacted instantly to him. He could make her wet with just one glance of his baby blue eyes.

  “You know, I really wish you wore a dress,” Devlin said, as he worked at her leather pants and pushed up her shirt.

  “I’m going to look like I’ve been to hell and back by the time I get to where we’re going,” she muttered, as he kissed down her neck and his hands moved up her shirt to cup her breasts. “No…no,” she whispered. He stopped his advances. She sighed. “Bad choice of words. I didn’t mean no to what we’re doing, I meant leave the clothes on as much as possible, or this is going to be hell to get everything righted in time. I should say no, to you,” she mumbled. “But I’m not,” she sighed.

  He chuckled. “I’m sure you could…you did say no to marrying me…after you said yes. You like to change your mind a lot, don’t you?”

  “You’re lucky, I’m not in the mood to change my mind, right now,” she muttered, as she unzipped his pants and moved to straddle him. He entered her quickly and she moaned as she savoured the divine moment.

  “We’re good together, Samantha,” he said, as she rode him, “and the sooner you admit that,” his voice grew even huskier, as he forced to get the words out, “the better off we’ll both be.” She didn’t want to listen to him anymore so she smashed her lips against his, and kept his mouth occupied as she continued they continued to give each other pleasure.

  She broke their kiss and kissed his chin, and then took a moment to stare down into his eyes. He watched her closely as her orgasm shuddered through her and he was falling fast into his own release.

  “That was…” she said sighing. “That was great.” She smiled at him, and he grinned back. It was true, sex with Devlin was better than with Tyler.

  Their breathing ragged, she sagged against him, and sighed. She didn’t want this to end but it had to. She slid off him, and they helped each other to get their clothing back to where it had to be.

  She wiped at his face. “You have my lipstick on you,” she muttered.

  She sighed heavily. Now, she had to take control of the situation and steer them back to the mission at hand.

  “Let’s just get one thing straight, before we go into the casino in Atlantis City. I will be the one doing all of the fighting. You will stay the hell out of my way, your presence will only be an unwanted pain in my ass.”

  “So we’re going to go back to acting like we hate each other now?” Devlin asked.

  “No…I mean yes…I don’t know, Gabriel. We both know we can’t act on our feelings for each other in public or people will start to wonder. Dylan already had to defend my honour when one of your people called me a slut.”

  “They did what?” Devlin raged. He looked like he was ready to do some serious damage.

  “You heard me. Apparently, I’m a slut and I cheated on you with Tyler. And I don’t really want you with me today because I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She didn’t want him in harm’s way. She didn’t want her nightmare to ever come true.

  She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye and noticed his jaw twitch slightly.

  “If I ever hear any one of my subjects call you a slut…they’ll be doing hard time, that’s all I can say.”

  “So, where are your manly women and your girly men?” she asked, hoping to bait him further and get his mind totally off of what they’d just done and what she wanted to do again.

  “Eleanor, you may come out of privacy mode,” Devlin said.

  This time his eye twitched and she congratulated herself with a slight smile.

  “Samantha, you make my ass twitch. I don’t always need my security personnel to watch over me. I can handle myself quite nicely, please and thank you.”

  “Well, if that’s the way you like it. Personally, it’s a little too much information for me,” she snickered. She watched his face turn a shocking shade of red.

  Touch down.

  “Well, I don’t need them right now, do I? I have you to do that for me.”

  Now her cheeks were flaming red. She looked out the window to get away from looking at him.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said.

  “No, it’s fine. I deserved it.”

  “No…you didn’t,” he muttered.

  Just then, a hover car began tailing them.

  “Heads up!” Samantha muttered, trying to crane her neck around to stare at the hover car behind them. This couldn’t mean good things. “Looks as if we’ve got company. Do you recognize the car?”

  He gave her an impatient stare. He shook his head.

  “They’re charging up weapons. Might I be so bold as to suggest that we blow them from here to kingdom come?” Eleanor asked.

  In a startling array of light, the weapons board lit up in front of Samantha.

  “Eleanor, I like your style. You are one kick ass broad,” she murmured, secretly wondering what such an esthetically pleasing sissy ass hover car, could possibly have in the blow them all the way to Timbuktu department.

  She heard the weapons charging and grinned as Eleanor’s safety conditions allowed her to move her butt in the chair, so she’d have a clearer view of the action. Mesmerized, she watched as the hovercar behind them shot out two laser bolts.

  Eleanor defensively intercepted them, and then shot out two bright lights that looked remarkably like mini torpedoes. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. The torpedoes hit the hover car, and then the hover car exploded.

  Ordinarily, Samantha would have been against such cruel violence. But if the men inside had been involved in the attack against her sister, she didn’t give one rat’s ass about them. She turned back and sat upright in her chair. Devlin peered curiously at her.

  “Oh, man! I have got to get me one of these!” Samantha sighed, unconsciously caressing Eleanor’s front control panel.

  “I am a rare breed, Samantha,” Eleanor said snobbishly. “I am among only fifty created,” Eleanor stated matter-of-factly. They were quickly approaching Gyniss Sea Harbour.

  “Guess you’d cost me a small fortune then,” she muttered.

  “Yes. One that you don’t have,” Lord Devlin pointed out, earning a huffy snort and a blazing frown from her. “It has to smart when you think about what could have been, doesn’t it?”

  “Now see here, Dev. My mother always told me never to talk to dumb animals, and I think I’ve gone against her advice enough for one day.” She knew why he’d said it. She would have had everything if she’d married him.

  Falling silent, she once again mulled over her lot in life. So much would have been different had she married him. She hated herself every single day and regretted that moment every single time she woke up and he wasn’t beside her.

  She stuck her face up against the glass of the window, and nearly fogged it up, as she scanned the harbour.

  “Son of a bitch!” she cursed. “That’s my Aggie!”

  Veronica was in for an earful.

  “That piece of junk is the vehicle that you travel in? It’s not safe…it’s…it’s a wonder you’re not dead already,” Lord Devlin exclaimed, following her gaze.

  “Lay off of my baby!” she shot back, fidgeting restlessly in the seat.

  Aggie had been in the family for years. Aggie had seen them through many trying times, and over the years she’d earned Samantha’s respect.

  “Have you got ants in your pants, or do you need to relieve yourself?” Devlin inquired.

  Eleanor slowed down. The Harbour Master met them. The man was rail thin and he had shifty eyes. Or at least Samantha thought he had shifty eyes.

  The Harbour Master admitted people to Atlantis City and made sure they found their way to the proper shuttle. From there you were taken down to Atlantis C
ity and allowed to roam around its wonderful settlement for as long as your heart desired. She’d heard long tales about the water city but had never visited it. It was even rumored that underwater mermaids lived in this ocean, living in a secret location, which was invisible to the human eye.

  It was said that Atlantis City was even more sinful than New Monaco’s many land formed haunts. And that if you really wanted to have one hell of a good time then you had to visit The City of Atlantis.

  The tall Harbour Master made his way over to Eleanor. His jaw fell onto the pavement, when he recognized Devlin. Samantha raised an eyebrow. From the look on the guy’s face, whatever he was about to say would be worth the wait.

  “My liege.” He bowed quickly.

  She made a horrid noise out of her mouth, resembling that of a drawn out fart.

  “Asshole,” she muttered beneath her breath. Devlin flinched.

  Liege? The people of New Monaco were even nuttier than she’d originally believed.

  “You may go down, I see that you have a Faerie Cruiser, you won’t need any of our shuttles. It has been an honour, my lord,” he said again, bowing deeply.

  “Honour, my ass!” she muttered.

  Devlin gave her a scathing glare. She smiled at him.

  “Oh, Eleanor, you don’t happen to be equipped with one of those handy little barf bags, do you?” Samantha asked, smirking. Her face widened in amazement, when Eleanor sighed, and a small white bag appeared in her hand. “Holy shit, now I’ve seen everything.” She lightly hit her forehead. She gripped the edge of the door, as Eleanor altered her appearance.

  “You don’t need to hold your breath, Samantha,” Devlin advised chuckling. “There’s enough oxygen in here for you even with that gigantic mouth of yours running.”

  “Yeah. Are you sure? Because you’re a bloody windbag,” she retorted. Her eyes darted to a mirror. She’d begun to lose what little colour she still had.

  Great, Samantha, get a hold of yourself. You can’t have him thinking you’re afraid. You’re not afraid of anything. You are not! Sure they were going under water. But she was still safely inside of a hover car. She was in control. Everything would be fine.