The Pleasure Dome (The Science Officer Book 4)

by Blaze Ward

  “Okay,” she said.

  Sykora seemed to relax. A shade. As much as she ever did. Javier kept waiting for her to drop to parade rest or something.

  Instead, she surprised him by stepping down into the central pit and stretching her long frame out in one of the comfie chairs, legs crossed at the ankles and smiling up at him.

  “So now what?” she asked innocently.

  Javier fought not to goggle at her behavior, so radically out of character.

  Then he realized she was doing this deliberately, just to get a rise out of him.

  Kids, riding in the back of the vehicle on a long trip, pushing each other to get the other one in trouble with the parents.

  As close to a default setting as their relationship ever got.

  He could work with this.

  Javier decided to play along and took a spot at the far end of the big couch, nearly falling into the soft pillows as he settled. It left him almost exactly across the round area from her.

  “We need to talk fashion,” Javier smiled at her.

  It was rewarding watching her fight against rolling her eyes at him. He wasn’t sure she could actually resist the temptation, even in the privacy of their own suite.

  “Fine,” she finally said. “Fashion. Go ahead.”

  “The water in the lake is clean, because they keep a lot of it planted with a variety of species of tree and bush, both for the purpose of keeping the water pure, and to make it look pretty,” he started. “People can swim, sail, tan, or play, and they don’t need shoes or anything. Depending on the mores of your homeworld, clothing can run from a full bodysuit to nothing whatsoever.”

  “I have no tan lines,” she fixed him with a challenging eye. “Neu Berne would either run to nearly full coverage, or au naturel, depending on the company.”

  “Everyone here will hopefully stay strangers,” Javier replied. “Clothing, however, presents a challenge. We just can’t afford it.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, leaning forward enough to indicate she was listening.

  “For no other reason than pique and money, many women here will be wearing one-piece suits, usually by elite fashion designers,” he began.

  “Okay.”

  “Hadiiye needs to understand that those suits start at around a thousand credits each and get really expensive from there.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t screech, but just barely

  He had her attention now, so he just shrugged.

  “You will either wear a simple cloth, loosely wrapped around your hips, like we talked about, or a pair of tight swim trunks, the kind that will cover your bum when you sit and keep sand out of sensitive areas. We are not here to compete with these people. Which any type of bathing suit would imply.”

  Sykora leaned back and eyed him speculatively. After a moment, she nodded.

  “If we’re not in their socio-economic class,” Javier said, “then we’re just poor relatives visiting the big city for the first time. I’m okay with being mistaken for a bumpkin on this job.”

  “Because they’ll have no idea just how dangerous you really are,” she replied, surprising him. “Or Navarre.”

  “Hopefully, none of them have heard of Salekhard,” he replied. “So nobody will care who we are.”

  A knock at the outer door interrupted.

  Javier took a deep breath and put on his game face.

  This was when it was going to get interesting.

  Part Three

  Djamila Sykora was not a natural actress.

  She knew that. Appreciated that she could never make up for the amazing charisma and ease of self that Wilhelmina had brought to the role.

  Or Aritza, but she was sure, after spending more than a year close to the man, that nobody had met the true Javier Aritza. Not in many years. Maybe never.

  It was interesting, watching him walk, carrying that heavy case and following the same bureaucrat who had met them earlier.

  Aritza looked like a pirate.

  She still loathed the man, but could appreciate the professionalism he brought to the job when he wanted to.

  Now, if she could only get him to act like that all the time, rather than when he wanted to. He might even turn into something useful.

  She doubted it.

  But she could play the role of a tall, intimidating woman. The kind willing to kick your ass if you got too close, or too fresh.

  Or just because.

  She had twenty-five years’ experience with that, since she had first gotten taller than any man who wasn’t a blood relative. They had all learned to take no for an answer, eventually.

  Yes, she could do this.

  Be this strange person, quiet and deadly. Stalk with fluid menace rather than marching in rigid rhythm. Walk like a great cat, rather than a warhorse.

  Djamila looked out through what she imagined Wilhelmina had fashioned into Hadiiye’s eyes. Threat assessment. Tactical maneuver. Bodyguarding.

  But something else as well. Something new.

  Barely-contained violence, but the kind tinged with mocking laughter. Wilhelmina had explained it to her once. How to use laughter as a knife on proud men. Especially from such a towering height.

  Dr. Teague had done it by adding soles to her fighting boots, raising her from being merely the height of most men, to looking subtly down on them.

  Djamila had always felt like an ogre with such incredible height. Teague had shown her how to be a goddess, instead.

  The liberation was seductive. Perhaps addictive.

  A whole new flavor of dangerous.

  She came back to herself as they entered a larger chamber.

  Djamila hadn’t been day-dreaming, but she wasn’t keyed to her normal level of twitchy paranoia in a dangerous situation here. They were on neutral ground, as Aritza had said, surrounded by people with no reason to view them as a threat. Still, time to pay attention.

  The last door they had entered had felt something like the sort of airlock normally separating the engineering spaces from the rest of any well-made ship.

  Now, she found herself in a lush lounge. Maybe the lobby of a very exclusive bank.

  Soft benches and chairs in a rich maroon cloth. Wood paneling. Oil paintings on the wall and small statues on pedestals. Soft gray carpets everywhere.

  A woman came out from a disguised side door. One of many such doors, carefully obscured by good interior design.

  How many of them had guards hidden behind them?

  Hadiiye took over now, assessing the new woman as Navarre’s bodyguard.

  Tall, for a woman, but lean, with long, bottle-blond hair. Extremely well-dressed in an understated way. Elegant, perhaps.

  If the man who had brought them here was merely a bureaucrat, this new woman was a banker, the kind who dealt with women wearing thousand-credit-swimsuits. The thought nearly brought a smile to Hadiiye’s lips.

  Then she realized where she was, who she was, and grinned cat-like.

  Something of it communicated to the stranger, who glanced up at her just long enough to ghost a smile back before turning her attention and charm to the pirate between them. The bureaucrat had not accompanied them into the chamber.

  “I understand that your security is among the best there is,” Navarre growled out in that buzzsaw rasp he used for a voice. He held up the box lightly in one strong hand. “Can you secure this?”

  The woman was all smiles now. Soft but not passive. Accommodating a strong man and his desires in an unspoken, but no less sensual, way.

  It was interesting, seeing the situation as Wilhelmina might have envisioned it.

  Had she known that Djamila would need to play Hadiiye at some future point? Some of those observations, their conversations, didn’t make any sense in other contexts, but did here.

  Dr. Teague hadn’t just been explaining how she had rescued Djamila, but also how she had become someone else, put on their skin, their eyes.

  How to remember childh
ood stories about princesses and dragons.

  “Well, Captain Navarre,” the strange banker purred seductively. “I’ll need to see what you have to offer, but I’m sure we can find a place to fit it.”

  Djamila blinked at the woman’s tone, caught herself, remained in character.

  Aritza was an impressive man, even playing a pirate. Attractive and charming when he wanted to be. Average height, but in extremely good shape. Not up to Djamila’s standards, but what man was? Swarthy and a little too hairy, but intellectual and sharp.

  She supposed some women would find that intriguing.

  The way Aritza grinned ferally back at the woman didn’t help.

  “Do you have someplace private?” he asked. “I could show you.”

  Again, the woman glanced up at Hadiiye, questioning. Djamila was almost insulted by the implication, but then she realized the woman was subtly asking for permission.

  What have you done to me, Doctor Teague? I wouldn’t have even noticed that, six months ago.

  Djamila shrugged with her eyes and her cheeks. A bodyguard didn’t get physically or emotionally involved with her charge. In that way, it made this the perfect cover for her to be around Aritza.

  “My bodyguard can wait here,” Javier continued. “I’ll presume we’re safe.”

  The banker nodded.

  “Can I get you something to drink while you wait?” she asked Djamila, all professional and courteous again, and no longer possibly infringing on another woman’s claim.

  “Tea would be lovely,” Hadiiye replied with a long, low drawl. “Black and hot. With a little cream and two lumps, if possible.”

  Service with professionalism and a smile. The woman led her to a chair in a corner with a good view in all directions. It was the kind that was comfortable, but not too much so.

  Perhaps just the place for bodyguards to wait while their principal conducted business close by. Another woman appeared nearly instantly to deliver tea in utter silence and vanish again.

  Djamila settled and began a stretching routine that started with her toes individually and worked its way up her body, one isolation group at a time. Not quite meditation. Nor yoga.

  Keep the body loose and the mind tight.

  Eleven minutes passed.

  Navarre and the banker emerged from the door on the far end of the chamber, presumably the one that led directly to a vault, or a room with small, individual lockers. The black box with Buday’s helmet was no longer present.

  Djamila joined them, interrogating the couple with her nose.

  Aritza had the woman’s perfume on him in ways that just being in the same room for that short of a time wouldn’t convey. At the same time, neither of them had the sort of sweaty musk that would have suggested a quick romp in a side chamber. Nor had they stopped for a quick shower afterwards, not even a sonic pulse. That would have cleared her perfume as well.

  So, at most, a quick grope and snog in a closet sort of thing. All part of the role.

  She wasn’t jealous of Aritza. In her duty as Dragoon, she had kept close tabs on his amorous escapades on the ship, mostly against security risk. Nothing about the man had suggested danger to any of the women he occasionally took to bed. And they were all adults.

  No, she found her slightest hint of jealousy at the casual ease of it. Of going into a private suite with a total stranger and flirting her up, to the point that her perfume ended up pervading your clothing.

  Neu Berne didn’t do things that way.

  She doubted he was doing it to get under her skin. That was just the way Aritza was. Charming, confident, and receptive enough to let a woman worm her own way in, thinking it was her idea.

  Again, Djamila nearly rolled her eyes. Hopefully, if the banker woman came to Javier’s suite later, the walls would prove to be soundproofed enough that she could sleep.

  She watched Navarre bow over the woman’s hand and kiss the back of it in an old-fashioned, courtly manner.

  The two of them twinkled with barely-suppressed lust before they separated. Djamila followed Aritza to the door and through it, concentrating on not puking at the gooiness of it all.

  Seven minutes later, they were in their suite.

  Djamila came to parade rest for a moment as the door locked behind her, and then threw caution to the wind and settled back in the chair she had claimed earlier.

  Javier followed in her wake and ended up on the couch again. It was a lovely metaphor.

  “We are early, ship’s day,” he began. “However late we are personal day. I think we need to go down and explore the beach, now that the box is secure.”

  Djamila processed his words and sneered at him briefly.

  “You just want to get me nude,” she said.

  “Not just,” he leered back, just a flash. “Call it a perk of the job.”

  She considered hitting him. She considered hating him. He knew Neu Berne culture too well.

  This wasn’t a scam on his part.

  No, not just.

  But she was in for a pound at this point.

  Nothing this man did was going to break her will.

  Part Four

  She really had proved him wrong.

  Javier could see that he was going to have to re-evaluate this dangerous woman. Again.

  Djamila towered before him at parade rest, like a veteran waiting for the weekly inspection to end so she could get back to whatever it was she was doing before some idiot officer wandered along.

  Like him, she wore only a light, thigh-length cloth, loosely wrapped around her hips. Hers was clipped on her right side, just in front of the point of the hip bone, concealing as much as it revealed when she walked.

  Having no basis for prior comparison, Javier had no idea if the lack of hair on her legs was a new thing, or a standard of personal grooming, but her long, bronzed limbs were as smooth as glass, marred only by old scars: nicks and stitches and burns that just made her more impressive.

  The hips weren’t as soft as ’Mina’s, nor the waist as waspish. But Teague had never had an eight-pack for a stomach in her life. Sykora’s smallish breasts had the sort of pointed hardness that came from an excess of pushups every morning. Far less interesting than ’Mina’s, but impressive nonetheless.

  Javier knew the woman had body issues. Nobody else would understand, looking at her, except by the implication of how hard she worked, every day, to look like that. But she would also do nearly as good a job of distraction in this situation as Wilhelmina would have.

  There just weren’t that many women, nearly that impressive, anywhere in the galaxy.

  Javier wore an identical cloth, clipped on his left. He generally worked out, and was in good shape for a spacer in his early forties, but nobody was in Sykora’s league. Plus he was as hairy on legs and arms and chest as she was smooth.

  At least none of it had started turning gray yet.

  She studied him with a look of bored contempt that she must have learned from ’Mina, back when she was learning to walk sexy from the smaller woman. Javier grinned pure insolence up at her, and then nodded for her to precede him.

  Out in the hallways, it was indeed early in the local day, probably set to Altai’s capital city. Locals were probably fast a-bed now, as the only people they saw while they walked wore the tan slacks and green shirts of staff, brightly different from the hard gray of technical crew.

  They turned a corner after a few minutes, and passed through another over-scale airlock into something approximating a locker room, with restrooms, showers, and more helpful staff on hand.

  Another, smaller airlock, beyond that, and Javier had warm sand in his toes, sun just rising in what was now officially east, and a morning breeze crossing from left to right. Waves, not ten meters away.

  And not one, damned seagull to be found, anywhere.

  “What’s that?” a voice jarred him out of his happy spot.

  Her voice. Sykora.

  At least it was curiosity and not pique. At leas
t as near as he could tell.

  A giant tree branch suddenly stretched out over his shoulder and in front of him. It took a moment to identify her arm as such. She was pointing at the spot in the middle of the room.

  A monumentally large room.

  “Shangri-La,” he replied. “Private island for by-invitation-only guests and very private parties. Not anyplace I want to go. You neither.”

  “Huh,” she replied noncommittal. “It would be an easy swim.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Six hundred meters from here. Less if you catch the short axis. I’m not that ambitious to get thrown off the ship that quickly.”

  “Okay, then now what?” she asked.

  Javier ignored the woman and walked twenty or forty meters to one side, crossing a few dunes and some sedge grass until he found the right spot, not too far from the water, slightly private as dunes created a small amphitheater effect.

  Perfect.

  Javier unclipped his towel, stretched it out, and laid down to catch some of the early morning sun. He might be naturally much darker than Sykora, but his tan still needed work.

  “Hey, what do I do?” she asked again as he closed his eyes.

  Javier opened them again. From here, she was a kilometer tall.

  “Bodyguard,” he replied. “If you think a mermaid might get me. Tan, maybe. Nap? Or swim some. Up to you.”

  She glared prodigiously down at him, again Athena atop Olympus. For a moment, he thought the Dragoon might seriously go tactical on an empty beach, but she dropped her towel next to him, jutted a chin rudely in his direction, and raced out into the surf.

  Aphrodite in reverse, disappearing under the waves.

  “So,” a new voice intruded on his consciousness after a few moments. “Should I read that as faith in the competence of my staff? Or insolence, on the part of yours?”