His head snapped up. “I wasn’t doing that.”
“Please, you’re lucky she was too naive to notice, or she would have been scared you were going to jump her in an alley. And find a way to work some of that off before asking her for coffee.”
Sergei had to unclench his jaw to say, “Has anyone mentioned how appealing your raw bluntness is?”
“Not very often.”
“There’s a reason.”
Hazel snorted and headed for the door, thumping him on the shoulder on the way by.
When he was alone, Sergei took a deep breath and shook out his arms, forcing himself to relax. Hazel’s blunt opinions might not be pleasant to hear, but he had to admit she was right on that point, as well. He ought to be pleased that she had stopped treating him like a leper. Hell, she had apologized to him. Who would have expected that? And she hadn’t forbidden him to pursue Jamie again. She probably still thought he was too old and… lust-radiating for her, but she hadn’t said it. Hazel’s opinion shouldn’t matter, but for some reason, he found this new development freeing.
Too bad Jamie didn’t want anything to do with him at the moment. He sighed and headed for his cabin. It was late, and he should probably get some sleep, but Hazel’s idea of working off lust had some merit.
* * *
After being patched up by the doctor, Jamie should have headed for her cabin, but Lauren had gone to bed, and Jamie craved privacy. The doctor had injected her with a contraceptive along with his ministrations, saying only, “Just in case,” as if he expected Jamie to encounter thugs who wanted to rape her every week and wouldn’t be so lucky to escape next time.
The doctor’s presumption disturbed her. More than that, emotions she had been struggling to sublimate all night welled near the surface. Privacy, yes. She needed privacy. She headed for the shuttle bay, almost jogging by the time she reached the door.
The lighting was dimmed for night, so she assumed nobody else was around. The illumination flared to full when she walked in. She would have preferred the dark, but she could leave the lights out in the shuttle. She climbed the ramp and started for the pilot’s seat, but it still felt too open, too vulnerable. She slipped through the curtain and into the clinic, moving around the patient bed to the end of the counter. She wedged herself into a niche between it and a chair and finally felt safe in the tight cubby.
With her back to the wall, she sat on the floor. She curled her legs to her chest, ordered the lights off, and let herself release a long, shuddering breath. Tears burned her eyes, and she didn’t bother holding them back, not this time.
She had never been the crier in the family—that distinction belonged to her youngest sister, who could bawl on demand. But Jamie couldn’t manage stoicism anymore. Between the doctor’s shot, the hateful things Delgado’s buddy had said, and the attack from the assassin, she was surprised she hadn’t collapsed sooner.
She felt more homesick than she had at any time since leaving, and not for the first time since coming aboard the Albatross, she missed her father’s protection. She had never appreciated it as a teenager, but there were so many people on this ship she wished he could punch. Her plan to go back to school returned to her mind, but at the moment, she was more interested in going home. She wondered what Ankari and Lauren would say if she asked to find a transport back to Mercruse and forget the business and the mercenary ship for a good long while.
At first, the tears seeped down her cheeks in silence, but before long she was drawing in long shuddering breaths and bawling for real for the first time since her mom had died. She was glad she hadn’t tried to do this from her bunk—she surely would have woken up Lauren and been forced to explain. She didn’t want to explain anything to anyone.
The light level increased, and Jamie lifted her head from her knees, groaning softly. Nobody was looking for her now, were they? She had told Ankari everything she knew in sickbay.
Footsteps sounded on the ramp. Jamie wiped her eyes, holding back another groan. She didn’t want anyone to stumble across her. She didn’t want to be caught with her eyes all puffy. There would be questions she didn’t want to answer. She dropped her head atop her knees again, willing whoever it was to continue past the curtained area, to pick up some forgotten item, then leave.
But what if it was Sergei? And he had come looking for her? She wasn’t ready to see him. Later, she would think about that whispered proclamation of love, but she couldn’t process it tonight.
The footsteps trod past the clinic, and nobody pushed aside the curtain to look in. It wasn’t Sergei, she realized. She wouldn’t have heard his soft footfalls.
Someone plopped into one of the chairs in front of the control panel. Ankari? Who else would come down to the shuttle?
Jamie’s guess was verified a moment later, when Ankari yawned and listened to a message left by some Senator Fung Peng from the planet. It must have been office hours on whatever cloud city the woman lived on, because Ankari returned the call. Jamie closed her eyes, tuning out the business-related inquiry, assuming Ankari would finish soon and leave. Then Jamie would have her isolation again.
“Tomorrow?” Ankari asked. “I’ll see what we can do and confirm with you in the morning here. We’re back up in orbit at the moment.”
“Very well,” the other woman said. “Good day.”
Ankari cut the comm. “Day. Right.” She yawned again.
Footsteps sounded again, not from Ankari but from someone else walking across the bay. Jamie kept her face buried in her knees, willing them all to go away. Wasn’t it after midnight, ship’s time?
Ankari’s footsteps sounded as she headed for the hatch. Good.
But she paused in front of the curtain opening. Had Jamie made some noise? She groped for something to say, a way to explain why she was hiding on the floor. But the curtain didn’t stir.
“Are you in need of clinical services?” Ankari asked, amusement lacing her voice.
“I’m in need of you,” came a growl from the ramp. The captain. “You said you’d be up a half hour ago.” Good, he would drag Ankari away, and Jamie could have the shuttle to herself for the rest of the night. She would raise the ramp and secure it once they left.
“It’s not my fault you got yourself shot and then locked me out of sickbay, so we couldn’t have our tender moments. Though I do appreciate that you pushed me down and took the bullet for me. That was very noble.”
“Noble people shouldn’t be left alone and forlorn in their quarters.” The captain’s footsteps thudded up the ramp.
“Forlorn?” Ankari was still standing in front of the clinic. Shouldn’t she fling herself into his arms now, so he could carry her up to their cabin? “You?”
“Me,” he rumbled, his voice close to Ankari’s now.
She giggled—odd, Ankari never giggled—but the talking ended after that. Kissing and sucking sounds replaced the words. A thump sounded—someone being pushed against a wall? Whatever it was, it elicited a grunt from the captain and another laugh from Ankari.
With growing dread, Jamie realized they might not go to their cabin. She looked left and right, trying to spot a way to escape without being seen. The shuttle controls were to the left, and there was no door up there. The hatch was to the right, but between the bed for the patients, the counter, and those storage bins bolted to the deck back there, she didn’t think she could squeeze out that way. She would have to go out straight ahead, and then turn for the hatch. Except that all the kissing and sucking was coming from that direction.
Jamie debated whether to clear her throat or stand up and rush out with an apology. That would be the logical thing to do, but shouldn’t she have done that five minutes ago, if she was going to? When Ankari had been chatting to a client? Now it would be… weird. They would think she had been sitting in here like some perverted voyeur, enjoying the listen. As if she was in the mood for anything of the sort after being mauled by that bounty hunter.
And yet… there was maybe a te
eny tiny part of her that wondered how sex might be between two people who actually cared about each other. So far, her experience had been limited to books and movies—and now orgies and would-be rapists. Still, she wasn’t going to stay here and listen. It would be ninety-nine degrees of awkward if they discovered her at some point. What if they decided to come in the clinic and use the bed?
Jamie’s mouth dropped open, as that suddenly seemed more and more probable. Where else would they get horizontal? On the deck? In a chair? The chairs weren’t that big, nor did they recline. It was doubtlessly only a matter of time before they pushed aside the curtain and stumbled across her. There was no way they would miss her, even if she was tucked in beside the end of the counter.
Jamie rolled to her knees, careful not to make any noise. From the sound of things, Ankari and the captain were quite involved with each other. Maybe if she stayed low, she could slip out without them noticing.
She inched around the bed and toward the curtain, though her heart rate tripled in the seconds it took her to reach it. She was becoming more and more certain that she would get caught and that it was far too late to explain her presence. She imagined trying to tell them that she had fallen asleep on the bed and just woken up and was wondering what all the thumping and kissing was about. Somewhere during her crying fit, half of her hair had fallen out of her braids, so maybe they would believe that. Or maybe they would simply give her a weird look, write her off as a pervert, and ensure every future interaction they had was awkward.
Jamie stifled a groan. Could this day get any worse?
She reached the curtain, her weight on one knee and one foot. She was either ready to crawl to freedom or sprint from humiliation. One of the two.
As she was about to part the curtain slightly to check on her options, Ankari spoke. Jamie froze.
“Still feeling forlorn?” Ankari asked breathlessly, her words muffled, like she was kissing and talking at the same time.
“Less so,” Mandrake murmured. “Keep going.” He wasn’t quite as breathless as Ankari, but his voice had a gentleness to it that Jamie had never heard. That softness in his words, even more than the kissing sounds, made Jamie’s cheeks heat to scalding with shame, shame that was she in here, intruding on their moment.
She parted the curtain a few millimeters, hoping to find her opportunity to escape. Two crumpled shirts lay on the deck in front of her. The captain leaned against the wall, no more than three feet from Jamie’s spot, his torso bare, his belt unfastened and his trousers barely hanging from his hips. Ankari was running her hands up and down his sides and kissing his chest, rasping her tongue across his nipples, then sucking them. She smiled and looked up at him as she did so. He made contented grumbles, his fingers tangled in her hair, massaging her scalp.
Jamie looked away, her cheeks hot for another reason now. She found herself thinking of the spa again, of that overwhelming desire she’d had to lick Sergei’s chest. Had he enjoyed it? The way the captain was enjoying Ankari’s attention?
In the spa, Jamie had only been answering her own drug-addled desires, and she hadn’t looked up at him to see. Sergei had carried her out, rather than standing there to accept more tongue explorations. But maybe he had only wanted to do the decent thing, to protect her from all those watching eyes. She wished she knew what he had been thinking. Had he been aroused by that moment? By her? When he had said he loved her in the grow room, had that meant in a non-platonic way? How could he love her after only a week? Then again, should she be surprised, given that he had told her the details of his tormented past on the second day they had known each other?
How did she feel about him? She wasn’t even sure. She liked him. She had sensed he needed a friend when they had first met, and for some reason, she had wanted to be that person. She had been eager to go off on adventures with him too. She had made excuses to do so, coming up with plans that involved her going with him to help. But was it because she loved him? Maybe not yet, but she was finding it hard to dismiss the image of his bare chest at that moment. Maybe it was the licks and soft groans that continued to come from the other side of the curtain, but she imagined herself showing up at Sergei’s cabin, asking him to remove his shirt, and then seeing how much they both enjoyed it.
More than her cheeks were heated now. Her groin tingled, feeling hot and tight. She needed to escape. Sitting there, getting aroused while her friend and her friend’s lover were having sex wasn’t right. But if Ankari still had her head lower than the captain’s, he was sure to see Jamie if she tried to slip out. He was facing the damned curtain.
She parted it ever so slightly again, hoping the captain might have turned away. Jamie didn’t want Ankari to see her, either, but that would be less horrible than him spotting her.
“How about now?” Ankari asked, her voice coming from lower. She was kneeling on the deck now, the back of her head barely higher than Jamie’s.
“What?” the captain gasped.
Ankari turned her head, and his erect penis came into view. She slid her tongue along it as she cupped his balls, stroking them gently.
“Your level of forlornness. Is it going down?” Her voice was full of amusement now. She was teasing him, Jamie realized. His chest was rising and falling deeply, quickly. He wanted sex right there and now—or oral sex, Jamie supposed it was, a detached part of her labeling and cataloguing things. Another part of her, the part attached to the heat building in her groin, was too busy observing what she had always been too shy to watch in movies to think straight. As if this wasn’t much worse than watching some vid. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to let the curtain slip shut. Curiosity burned in her mind, and her eyes were surely rounder than full moons. She couldn’t tear them away.
“Not yet,” Mandrake whispered.
“I had no idea you were so needy.”
“It’s been over a week.”
“You used to go months between rented women, or so you told me.” Ankari ran her tongue to the tip of his penis, then took him in her mouth, cupping him with her lips.
The captain groaned, arching his hips toward her. “I was a different man then,” he said, panting almost. Sweat slithered down his chest, disappearing into his dark, curly pubic hair. “I’ve changed. I have green hand towels now.”
Ankari withdrew enough to laugh and say, “That means you need sex more often?” Then she took him more deeply. One of her hands held the base of his penis while the other gripped his butt, as if she wanted him closer, needed this as much as he did.
“It means—” She did something with her tongue or sucked in a different way, and he gasped, his head nearly cracking the wall as it fell backward. “Ankari,” he groaned her name.
She was moving faster up and down his shaft now, and he stopped talking, too busy panting.
It occurred to Jamie that this might be her chance to escape. The captain was looking at the ceiling and his eyes were probably rolled back in his head. Ankari’s eyes were closed as she drew his penis in and out. A part of Jamie wanted to stay, to see what else they did, to maybe slip her hand down between her own legs and try to find some release from the moist heat building there, but she reminded herself that they would likely want to use that bed at some point.
Jamie shifted both feet under her, widened the curtain a centimeter more, testing. She knew she would have to open it more than that to slip through, but her heart was pounding in her chest, and the fear of being caught made her hand shake. She didn’t think she made a noise, but she must have brushed the curtain, sent a ripple through it, because the captain’s head came down abruptly.
Jamie froze like an animal in the hunter’s sights, her brain unable to process information, unable to decide what to do. He looked right at her. He couldn’t have seen much through that centimeter of curtain, but he knew she was there, no doubt. Her excuse. What had it been? Falling asleep? Her thoughts were a jumble, and she couldn’t think of anything that made sense. Flee. That was what she should do. He wouldn�
�t try to stop her, would he? Demand an explanation?
“Ankari,” the captain said, touching the side of her face. He was breathing heavily, trying to gather himself, and Jamie gulped, knowing he was about to tell Ankari about her, or ask her to deal with her wayward business partner.
“Hm?” Ankari murmured, teasing him again with her tongue.
Maybe he would be so distracted by her that he would totally forget about the peeper behind the curtain.
“Let me return the favor,” he said and bent to lift her into his arms.
“Oh? Before…?”
“Yeah.” He kissed her and carried her toward the front of the shuttle, his back to the clinic and the hatch, his torso blocking Ankari’s view.
Jamie couldn’t believe her luck. Either he hadn’t seen her, after all, or he was giving her a chance to escape. She slipped out, staying low, only glancing back once. A silly part of her wanted to stop and protest the naked butt plastered onto the control station. She set her coffee and donut there in the mornings, ew.
Not important, she reminded herself, and hustled down the ramp, careful not to let her shoes ring on the metal. Even though the view screen in the shuttle had been turned off, she took a circular route to the steps, not wanting either of them to see her, hoping neither really had. Maybe the captain didn’t know for sure who had been behind the curtain. Though he could doubtlessly guess. It wasn’t as if Lauren could be torn from her microscope for long enough to gawk at an erect penis.
Jamie didn’t relax until she had escaped the shuttle bay and could lean against the wall next to the closed door. Her hands were still shaking, as if she had been in combat rather than peeping at Ankari and Mandrake. She was even breathing heavily, rattled from the situation.
“Yes, being a pervert is hard,” she whispered, then glanced both ways, making sure she was alone in the corridor.
She ought to go back to her cabin, turn off the lights, and get some sleep. But as she stood there, in relative safety, she started thinking about what Ankari had been doing, how much the captain had enjoyed it. And how tender he had been with her. It was a side of him that Jamie had never seen. Sergei wasn’t as gruff and aloof as the captain day-to-day, but she wondered if he would be different if they were… lovers. What would it feel like to have his hands tangled in her hair? To have him gazing down at her with adoration? To—she blushed before the thought even fully formed—slip her lips around his penis and hear him groan her name. She wondered what favor exactly the captain had intended to give to Ankari after Jamie left, and a dirty part of her wished she could watch the rest of their lovemaking session. For educational purposes, of course. Or maybe she could simply ask Sergei about favors.
The Assassin's Salvation (Mandrake Company) Page 18
