Brandi Whyne Chapter Two

by Celine Chatillon

  “Aaaagggghhhh!”

  I jumped to my feet and stomped toward the exit in disgust. Robin reached out and grabbed me about the waist as I passed him, pulling me into his lap.

  “I thought you said you wanted us to act professionally in public?” I teased, slipping my fingers beneath the wide-open neckline of his forest green tunic to stroke his chest hairs.

  “I do.” He kissed me soundly on the lips. “But I don’t want you storming off the bridge in a huff over something as mundane as knowing the exact location of our secret hideout.”

  “But why can’t I? Won’t I be living there? Won’t I be piloting the Parsnip to and from there?” Teardrops gathered in the corner of my eyes and my lower lip quivered as I delivered the killer statement, “Robin, don’t you trust me?”

  A sudden look of pain crossed his features. It was that bitch Marian’s doing again. She’d done this to him… Made it impossible for him to trust another woman. I thought I’d broken through some of Robin’s emotional defenses, but I could see now that I hadn’t yet penetrated the hard shell surrounding his heart. I blinked my wet lashes several times and sniffed loudly.

  “You don’t trust me!” I cried.

  “No, it’s not that. It’s…” He squirmed in his seat, avoiding direct eye contact. “Oh, all right. I guess I can trust you. I can trust Brandi—right, Will?”

  “Oh, definitely.” The red-faced second in command stood and saluted us both. “I’d trust Brandi with my life. In fact, I did so just this morning when I let her suck my cock. Hmm… And I’d trust her to do so again—and again.”

  I blushed at his obvious desire poking out from under his tunic. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Will.”

  “You’re more than welcome. My door is always open should you need any of my particular ‘expertise’ in the future.”

  I bit a nail and flashed him a saucy grin. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Robin abruptly stood, knocking me off his lap and onto my ass. I rubbed my bruised buttocks and winced. “Ow! What did you do that for? You told me I was welcomed to visit my crewmate’s quarters whenever I felt like it.”

  “So I did. And now I’m going to show you the coordinates for the hideout. John Thomas, can I borrow your console a moment?”

  “Okay, Robin. If you say Brandi can see the coordinates I’ll show her.”

  I scrambled to my feet and dusted off my backside with my hands. “Thank you very much. I appreciate it.”

  John Thomas demonstrated how to program the exact coordinates for Robin’s secret hideout into the navi-puter. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. I must be seeing things. The numbers that flashed on the vid screen couldn’t be right.

  “Are you sure you input those coordinates correctly?”

  The baby-faced giant shook his head. “Uh-huh. I know them numbers by heart.”

  “But they can’t be right… The hideout is located in the middle of a pulsar?”

  “Sort of unexpected, isn’t it?” Robin waggled an eyebrow. “Sort of unusual and unique, don’t you think?”

  “It’s sort of insane, you mean.” I frowned, puzzled at the notion of placing a humanoid dwelling inside something obviously dangerous to life as we knew it. “Robin, how in the universe can your hideout be located inside an X-ray emitting, radio wave generating, magnetic, pulsating star?”

  He shrugged and sat back down in his chair. “I don’t know. It’s a secret. The land was certainly cheap enough.”

  I slapped my forehead in disgust. “I bet.”

  I settled down at the navigation console once more and brought up the star charts on the vid screen to confirm my theory. Sure enough, the coordinates took us straight into the middle of a millisecond pulsar, your standard type of neutron star, but this one didn’t have a binary companion. My self-study into interstellar astronomy proved its worth as I studied the star’s rotation and noted anomalies in its pulsation period. I gasped as I realized what the numbers added up to. I turned to Robin.

  “Your neutron star has got a planet. So, why isn’t it marked on the official space charts?”

  Robin picked up what appeared to be the broken remains of a vibrator from his footlocker and began fiddling with it. “Official space charts aren’t always kept up to date. Isn’t that right, John Thomas?”

  “Yeah, especially if you give money and lots of playthings to the mapmaking guys. They said they was real happy not to list Old Smokey in their planet book.”

  I smiled at my somewhat slow-witted companion. “I see. So ‘Old Smokey’ is the name of the planet where the hideout is located?”

  John Thomas pouted. “I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.” He looked over his shoulder at Robin for confirmation. “Ain’t that right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct Little John. You cannot tell Brandi that our hideout is located on a planet circling a pulsar that we’ve nicknamed Old Smokey.”

  The sonic screwdriver in Robin’s hand slipped at that moment. He muttered a curse. “Damn! The quality of this last shipment of Pulsating Purple Parsnips was clearly inferior. Didn’t you check the shipment for duds before we loaded them up, Will?”

  The second in command spun around in his chair. “I did. They appeared to meet our usual high quality standards. Murt, Bigguns and I tested a few at warp speed. They held up fine—and you know how tough the Cyclops can be on sex toys.”

  “True. Then why did this one practically disintegrate in my hand?” He crumpled the pieces in his fist then turned his palm over, allowing them to tumble to the deck. “That thing was brand new—I picked it up from the hold earlier this morning. Only the edible underwear is supposed to melt in your mouth, not in your hands. I hate to accuse our suppliers of shoddy craftsmanship, but the evidence doesn’t lie.”

  Robin dumped the remaining vibrator parts back into the chest and kicked the lid shut. Willie approached the captain’s chair and lowered his voice.

  “Do you suspect Daro is trying to pull a fast one on us? Beneath the top boxes he knows we’ll open and inspect, he’s dumping some half-ass product on us?”

  My dark and handsome space pirate bit his lower lip in a thoughtful gesture. His eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. I instinctively slowed my breathing as to make out their conversation.

  “I’m afraid it’s all starting to come together—Daro is working for Bak Azzwards.”

  Willie shook his head. “No, no, can’t be. That’s ridiculous. Daro wouldn’t work for that asshole. He’s much too smart to do anything that stupid.”

  “But he is, Will. I see how these seemingly unrelated coincidences line up now. Zelina’s so-called tantrum over losing Zelda is a ploy to get her on board the Parsnip. Once she with us on top of Old Smokey she’ll let on to her pansy boss the location of our hideout and the entire scope of our smuggling operation.”

  “Shit!” Willie stomped a foot. “Daro, a double agent? Is there no honor among thieves?”

  I laughed out loud at that point. I mean how crazy is it for a space pirate to think his dealers in contraband are honest to begin with? Suddenly I felt two pairs of very angry eyes drilling into my back. I spun around to face my superior officers.

  “Of course this ‘Daro’ is a double agent,” I said. “Why wouldn’t he be? You yourselves double-bribed the officials on Proxima Centauri Five so they won’t throw you in prison. Why wouldn’t Daro try to make a little extra money by selling information to another competitor?”

  “But isn’t it Zelina who’s attempting to join us?” Willie’s brow furrowed in thought. “Could it be this is all her idea—that she’s the one trying to sell Bak the information about our hideout instead of Daro? I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s one tough broad.”

  “Why couldn’t the two of them be in it together?” Robin appeared resigned to the fact. He laid the sonic screwdriver on the arm of his chair and steepled his fingers together in thought. “Zelda makes up a story to join our gang and gets the information Bak wants, which she then trades for the s
econd in command position aboard the Longdong.”

  “And she gets back together with Zelda—or so she hopes,” Will added, nodding thoughtfully. “Brilliant move.”

  “Yes, it is. Daro, in the meantime, makes us look bad because we’re selling shoddy products he’s passing off as our usual high quality ones. We lose our best customers, go out of business, and he continues smuggling contraband adult toys for Bak Azzwards’ crew of first class cretins. Then they take over our base and hand us all over to the galactic cops quicker than Brandi can climax during a good rogering.”

  “Hey!” I stuck out my tongue at Robin “Don’t make fun of me.”

  He waggled an eyebrow back. “I wasn’t. It was a compliment.”

  “No, it’s a diabolically clever plan.” Willie rubbed his temples, pacingthe area between the com console and the captain’s chair. “In fact it’s so diabolical it makes my head ache. Bak could have never come up with such an intelligent idea by himself in a million years.”

  Robin snorted. “Of course he couldn’t. This whole situation clearly demonstrates that Zelina and Daro have been working together to screw both Bak and us for some time now. And it explains why Captain Fruit Loops let us escape the clutches of the crooked cops on Proxima so easily.”

  “Bak Azzwards let us escape?” My wide-open jaw practically scraped the floor at the thought. “How did he let us escape? Didn’t we have to fight off those bastards off with the help of Beula and the girls?”

  “Too easy—it was all too easy,” Willie muttered with a stomp of his boots. He spun around. “Shit. We should have known better. We’ve walked right into that bastard Daro’s trap. What should we say to him and Zelina at the rendezvous in a few hours? ‘Screw yourself and the space horse you rode in on?’ Or do we blast them out of existence with that ‘gift’ Bigguns’ uncle gave us a while back?”

  Robin cleared his throat and made a slicing gesture across throat. “Will, you’re forgetting Bigguns doesn’t have an uncle. Remember?”

  “I remember,” John Thomas piped up. I had assumed that the entire conversation had gone over the giant’s very pointed head and broad shoulders, but obviously he’d been following it all along. “Bigguns does not have an uncle. And he didn’t give us a ‘gift’ to blast people out of existence. Old Smokey is a secret we don’t tell anyone about ever, just like Bigguns’ non-uncle’s gift.”

  “That’s right, J.T.” Robin stood and patted him kindly on the shoulders. “You just go on forgetting all about them. Did I ever tell you how excellent you are at forgetting things?”

  John Thomas grinned and sat up straighter at his post. He really ate up the praise. If there were two good things anyone could say about Robin’s friendly giant they were this: He was loyal to the bone and easily motivated by non-compliments.

  “Okay, so we don’t blast Daro and Zelina to bits. Do we continue to act as if nothing underhanded is happening?” Willie asked. “I’m not too sure I can forget as easily as Little John.”

  “Do we continue to act as if nothing underhanded is happening? Hmm…” Robin stroked his beard, pacing the deck in deep thought. Suddenly he turned around and winked at me.

  “Yes—and no.”

  Willie exhaled slowly and slumped. “Another riddle, huh?”

  “Not really.” Robin reached for my shoulders and gave them a good, deep massage. “Yes, at the rendezvous we’re going to act like nothing has changed between us. We’ll treat Daro as we always have, and we’ll take Zelina on board.”

  “Whoa!” Willie stepped toward us. “Honestly, that’s not one of your better ideas, Robin. Shouldn’t we—”

  “No, we shouldn’t,” Robin cut in. He pointed a finger at his first officer then continued my back rub. “We’ll take Zelina on board, but we won’t take her to Old Smokey.”

  The massage felt good, but still I frowned. “So what do we do with Zelina? Are we going to push her out the airlock? There isn’t a life-sustaining planet within a thousand parsecs where we could dump her safely. What other options do we have?”

  “Oh, there are always options.” Robin took hold of my hand and pulled me to my feet. “What do you think, gentlemen? Does Brandi make a good piece of bait?”

  Willie clapped his hands together. “Bravo! Now you’re talking!” He raked his eyes up and down my barely covered curves. “No doubt about it—especially after this morning’s performance. They’d both fall for her in seconds flat.”

  “They? Oh, no…” I stepped back from my admirers. “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying…”

  “I think Brandi is very pretty.” John Thomas giggled, an odd, high-pitched sound to come from a man who stands almost seven feet tall. “Daro likes pretty girls. He showed me pictures of girls he liked once. Brandi looks like the girls in Daro’s favorite pictures.”

  “Excellent information!” Robin flashed a broad smile at my fellow navigator and slapped him on the back. “John Thomas, you truly are a credit to our crew. I knew there was some reason I kept you on besides your obvious expertise in forgetting things.”

  “This… this is crazy.” I clutched at my heart and gulped hard. “I won’t go through with it. Willie, please convince Robin this is an utterly and totally insane course of action.”

  “Zelina may not go for Brandi, though, if she’s still stuck on Zelda. Zelda is hard to get over. I should know,” Willie admitted with a wry grin. “But we could always take the opposite tactic.”

  Robin waggled an eyebrow as he settled into his chair. “Ah, yes. Jealousy is a powerful motivator.” He plunked a boot atop the chest. “Call Zelda to the bridge, would you, Will?”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  So infuriated I felt that my own lover and my fellow crewmembers would treat me like an inanimate object that words escaped me for several minutes. I took more than a few deep breaths, gathering courage to properly defend myself, releasing them slowly before I spoke again.

  “I am not some Magrathean mud worm you can spear on a hook to fish for Sontaran slime eels. I’m an official member of this crew, and I have the right to be treated with respect and—”

  “You have the responsibility to follow orders given to you by your superior officers,” Robin said matter-of-factly. “Didn’t you learn your lesson earlier today? Should I order another discipline session for you with Zelda before we make our rendezvous?” He flashed a wicked grin as his throaty chuckle came soft and low. “I’m certain both of you would enjoy it.”

  “You, why, you…” I was too paralyzed with anger to say anything more. The swish of the elevator doors opening revealed Zelda. She stood with hands on hips, crop in hand, legs spread wide, her lust-filled smile wider still.

  “You called?” She arched an electric-blue eyebrow and nodded toward my direction. “Why, hello again. Does our newest crew member have need of more discipline?”

  Robin spun around in his chair. “She does, but it’ll have to wait. Your special skills are needed to complete our mission. Zelda—we need you and Brandi to go undercover.”

  “Really?” The dominatrix dressed in violet-blue slowly licked her matching colored lips. She thrust her full, pointed tits toward me, slowly trailing a finger down the inside of her thigh. “Sounds yummy. How deep under the covers do you want us to go?”

  * * * *

  “You do understand our mission—don’t you, Zelda?”

  Zelda lazily swept a lavender lace-covered finger down the side of my face, along the curve of my neck and between my tingling breasts. “Uh-huh. We’re to pretend we’re lovers so Zelina will get so jealous she’ll make mistakes and spill her guts. It should be easy enough task to accomplish. The woman is ruled by her passions.”

  I swallowed and closed my eyes. I could say pretty much the same about myself.

  Robin had said that I needed further discipline and so our conversation was taking place in Zelda’s “office”, a rather warm, steamy, sauna-bath of a compartment near the engine room. At least this time I wasn’t t
ied up. Although I must admit that lying across Zelda’s mauve-colored, heart-shaped bed made me feel twice as uncomfortable.

  Zelda lowered her lips to my pebbled peaks pointing through the thin material of my silky shirt and began to suckle. My toes curled and my pussy dampened.

  “Hmm, you like that, don’t you? It won’t be too hard for you to pretend that we’ve been lovers, will it?”

  “I… I guess not,” I admitted, breathless. Zelda’s tongue could work wonders through my clothing. What would it feel like if she removed the barrier? I didn’t have long to wait as she tugged at the corner of my poet shirt, ripping it from my body.

  “I borrowed that shirt from Robin. He might get upset if it’s torn.”

  Zelda shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ll mend it later. You need to dress the part of my lover. Zelina will never believe I’ve fallen for a ‘girly girl’ like you. I mean, you’re drop dead gorgeous with that shiny, thick auburn mop of curls and those sexy, long legs and that curvy ass of yours and those big, round tits and—”

  “I get the picture.” The room temperature had risen several dozen degrees in the last two minutes or so it seemed. “I should dress the part to convince Zelina of your attraction to me.”

  Zelda chuckled. “Exactly. And I know just the thing. Old Zeli will flip when she spies you in this little number. Guaranteed.”

  She jumped up from the bed and crossed the room to a large closet, flinging wide the doors, revealing the colorful contents within. I rose up on my elbows and blinked. The costumes contained in Zelda’s wardrobe rivaled those of any commercial theatrical agency. It was as if an Old Terran Mardi Gras parade had taken up residence aboard the Parsnip.

  “Wow… That’s quite a rack you’ve got there.”

  She turned around and blew me a kiss, playfully wiggling her breasts at me. “I glad you noticed.”

  I blushed. “I meant rack of outfits actually. Oh, never mind.”

  Why deny it? I finally convinced myself. To say it out loud would make her happy, and, after all, we were supposed to be lovers.