Surely he didn’t get a call sign like Thorough for anything less.
Finally he looks at her, an insinuating prickle in his gray eyes as he pulls something from her ruck. She stares at the rubber penis in his gloved hand—hot pink and unabashedly large.
“What the hell is this?” His lips curl in a slow, serrated smile.
Lana’s mouth falls open long before the words come. “I… that’s not mine.” She can’t even gather the wits to add Sir to the end of her protest before she’s digging in the ruck herself. Definitely her things. She checks the zipper, finds her ID number on the tag.
Thorough glances over at the tablet, reading. “Then you’re not Cadet Marsden?” He yanks another item from the depths of the ruck. A lacy bra, emerald-green.
“I am, but, that isn’t mine. Sir!”
Thorough holds the bra in the air, letting it dangle from his gloved fist like some vermin he’s caught running wild in the Hub. Lana feels the trainees in line behind her craning their necks to gawk. She notices the other officers—Rangers—appearing out of nowhere, one to each side of Thorough’s table, observing the spectacle.
“Look!” Desperate, Lana grabs at the bra and stretches a lacy cup over her hand—enormous. “This isn’t even my size!” She expects him to glance at her chest to verify this. He doesn’t.
He lifts the pink dildo in his other hand instead. “No? How about this?”
Even though she’s never seen the giant dildo before, Lana feels the flush of blood creeping into her face. Some of the trainees behind her snicker. Thorough gives them a cutting look.
“Sex toys and lingerie are a Code violation.” He tosses the prohibited items in the bin and keeps rooting through her ruck. “Take her down to the brig. Her CO can sort it out.”
Lana stiffens as one of the Rangers comes toward her. She feels the other trainees edging away, making room. “Wait, please.” Stay calm. “This stuff isn’t mine, I swear. Somebody must have packed it in my ruck by mistake—” But it’s no use; arguing is only making a scene. The Ranger’s face remains impassive as he draws Lana’s hands in front of her and slips a pair of metal cuffs on her wrists. She bites her lip, hard, her entire body flushing hot as the cuffs snap shut.
The Rangers lead her away, up the steps, past the elevators and along the raised corridor. Panic courses through her as she’s marched to the far end of the Hub.
They’re really going to do this.
Lock her up.
She feels the eyes of the officers in the corridor moving over her, several administrative types gripping tablets and gazing down their noses at her, and those below staring up through the glass. She tries to ignore the strange torment, the inconvenient and almost unbearably arousing friction as her nipples, suddenly hard, rub against her bra. She catches a flicker of red and dares a glance at Scarlet, who watches, looking puzzled, hands on her hips.
Lana tries not to wriggle in the Ranger’s grasp, her bodysuit sticking to her sudden sweat, the cuffs and the humiliation chafing equally as a nasty thought twists its way into her gut.
Is this just one of their games?
Her throat pulls when she swallows, suddenly dry. Has she, Lana Marsden, exemplary trainee, been designated a bad girl? The girl who tries to smuggle a dildo and lingerie onto Station Six… and now her CO gets to decide how best to punish her?
The Rangers load her into a small service elevator. As the elevator sinks below the Transport Level of the Hub into the lowest level of the station, she struggles to get a grip.
Breathe.
She’ll get a reprimand, a formal note in her file. That’s all. No one is going to punish her—not like that. That’s all just fantasy. The oversexed imaginations of a bunch of bored and horny trainees. Her CO is most definitely not going to show up and strip her down and humiliate her further. That’s ridiculous.
But the thought alone has her squirming in place.
Of course, in her panicked, runaway imagination, the CO in question is ridiculously hot and just as unattainable. He looks like a Ranger. Maybe he’s wearing one of those helmets with the mask and he’s got a big, shiny pistol on his hip… and before she knows it, her blood is rushing to all the wrong places.
No. Between officers and cadets, sex is strictly forbidden. Which is why the rumors about Station Six are wrong.
And there’s nothing at all kinky about being singled out, cuffed and taken to the brig.
CHAPTER TWO
Catch takes the service elevator down to the hangar alone.
Normally he heads down to the Hub to check out his new batch of virgins in the flesh on arrivals day. Not all trainers do. First never bothers. But Catch likes to get a look at his trainees while they’re herded onto the station and sorted. While they’re off their game. Nervous and overwhelmed, irritable from transport. Battling shuttle lag.
More importantly, he wants them to get a look at him.
Catch knows he intimidates most virgins, and it’s not just the tattoos or his reputation. It’s important he be seen during their first anxiety-charged moments on Station Six as a reminder that he will be as integral to their experience here as the air system. Pass or fail, it’s up to him, the officer watching from above.
But today, he’s late. A last minute meeting with the XO and another meeting on its heels with the training leads meant none of the trainers made it to Transport in time to watch the virgins disembark.
And now this. Cleaning up a mess for First’s little sister already.
Score met Catch as he was coming out of the trainers’ meeting to show him the incident report. Catch immediately deleted it rather than authorize and log it in the system. As long as Thorough keeps his mouth shut, First will never have to know about this little stunt or the items confiscated from his sister’s ruck: two lace bras, three pairs lace panties, and one dildo, according to the report.
As the elevator sinks, Catch’s irritation climbs. What the hell was she thinking, smuggling that shit onto the station? When trainees break the rules this early, it’s never a good sign.
Everything Catch knows about his trainees before they step into the training core comes from their files. Lana Marsden is no exception. First hasn’t told Catch anything about his sister that he couldn’t read in her file, which indicates a dedicated and highly disciplined cadet with above-average potential for passing DEEP Training. She’s a Northern Fed, five-six, one hundred and twenty-six pounds, and has brown hair and blue eyes like her brother. The only flag in her medical file is an allergy to mushrooms. She rated within the top fifteen percent of her class coming out of Basic, fourth out of almost two hundred women. On Station One she completed six months of training with Communications Division before her acceptance to DEEP. Her evaluation scores are impressive, the only criticisms noted by her previous trainers things like pushes herself too hard and needs to manage expectations of herself. Catch had the impression of a hardworking and nerdy nice girl, not a spoiled brat. No prior Code violations. Not one thing in her file that hinted at this type of behavior. First didn’t hint at it either, though First’s not one for dropping hints. Surely if his sister was a shit disturber, he would have said so.
Then again, she’s six years younger than First, and they haven’t been on the same planet for eight years now. Maybe big brother’s out of touch.
Apparently, she told Thorough the confiscated items aren’t hers, though. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe this is all some misunderstanding.
Surely that’s the story she’s going to spin.
Or maybe she just thought she’d get away with it. Maybe Lana Marsden thinks the rules don’t apply to her because her brother is a trainer. Maybe she’s not a serious contender for deep space status at all. Maybe she heard the rumors about Six and assumed this quarter would be a free-for-all. Maybe she’s nothing but a tourist looking for a party and a long line of hard dicks to play with. She wouldn’t be the first. But she won’t find that here. Not in Catch’s unit. If that’s what she has in mind, h
er long, arduous service in Catch’s command will make her wish she’d never come to Six and wasted his time.
By the time he steps into the hangar, Catch’s blood is running hot. He stalks past the fleet. The recon cruisers, the Meridian, the Skywatch, big beefy ships, the ones he figured he’d be piloting when he gets old enough he wants to slow things down. He avoids the patrollers but it’s tough not to snatch a look at the sleek Phoenix line, the birds docked prominently in the center of the hangar. The flashy Starfall, the peppy little Starchip and the pride of the fleet, the Starcrasher. A gorgeous Crasher is docked in front of the security door and as Catch swipes through he gazes up at it, just once.
The memory comes on like a black storm as he stalks the narrow corridors to the brig—the command from Fleet Control repeating in his headset, the nauseating feeling of knowing he’s going into free fall and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it, fighting the urge to vomit and struggling to see straight as the universe spins out around him and his control panel goes berserk.
Crasher 2, return to Jump… Crasher 2, return to Jump…
Sometimes he still hears it in his dreams.
He hasn’t decided yet if he wants back into the cockpit. Which is okay, since no one has asked yet. Point is, he was there and now he’s here. And it doesn’t bother him as much as it should. As much as people seem to think it should. As much as it bothers them.
Catch likes being a trainer. He’s a damn good one, too. What the hell is wrong with that?
What he doesn’t like is being a goddamn glorified babysitter.
The moment he opens the door to the brig, the stench hits him. The dank room holds several cells, a shuttlehiker curled in the corner of the first awaiting deportation, his stink and his snoring filling the room. No civilians are allowed on the outer stations, but occasionally one manages to stow away aboard a shuttle. Little surprise that a trainee was able to smuggle a few goodies past her initial clearance check. It happens all the time. Security in transport isn’t as rigorous as it is on Six. The way Catch sees it, the outer stations, Six and Seven, are a last gut check on the precipice into the black. Any virgin who arrives with prohibited items in their ruck and therefore a chip on their shoulder or a defiant bent in their nature will have to surrender it—or fail the program. Take that shit forward into the deep and you might as well harbor a death wish.
Catch would know.
Beyond the shuttlehiker, the cells are empty. All but the last. He glimpses First’s sister in the near-dark, standing, facing into the corner.
He takes his time, boots thudding on the floor. Let her sweat it out. He could turn up the security lights to get a better look, but that might put her at ease. And right now he couldn’t give a fuck about putting Lana Marsden at ease.
As he approaches, he takes in the long ponytail that tumbles down between her shoulder blades. She’s slim, but the skin-tight bodysuit reveals inviting curves, a narrow waist and a flare of hips. He realizes only as he reaches the bars of her cell that she’s been cuffed and hooked to the ceiling. She stands stretched, balanced awkwardly on the toes of her boots. Cruel, but maybe she needed the shock. Crueler still, if she were just a couple of inches taller she could probably unhook herself, or at least turn around. As it is, she tries but can’t quite twist enough to see him.
As Catch watches her struggle, grasping the hook above her head with her hands to relieve the strain of the cuffs against her wrists, his gut clenches in that familiar way. If he didn’t know who she was, he might let himself appreciate it a while longer, the look of her trapped on that hook. Instead he clears his throat, which is suddenly tight, and gets on with it.
“Cadet Marsden. Your brother is highly regarded on this station.”
“Sir, I apologize for arguing with the clearance officer.” Her voice is soft in the near-dark, her tone firm but deferential in exactly the right degree. “It won’t happen again.”
“You’re not new to the Corps, cadet, but you’re new here. So I’ll give you one warning. Speak to me like that again and I’ll leave you in here for the rest of the week. The only words out of your mouth will be ‘Yes, Sir’ and ‘No, Sir.’”
“Yes, Sir.”
“If you talk back to any officer on this station again, he or she has my permission to have you on your knees, cleaning the toilets in the head for the next month. The men’s head.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“While they’re in use,” he clarifies.
She wriggles a little in the cuffs, trying to see him. “Yes, Sir.” Her voice wavers this time. She’s afraid he’s serious. He would be, if First wouldn’t kill him for it.
“Are you sure? You don’t sound sure.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Because if you’re not, I can leave you here to think about it. Someone will come to take you to the head and deliver the occasional meal, and you can just dangle and rethink your decision to come here. Will that be necessary?”
“No, Sir.”
If it didn’t smell so godawful in here, he might even draw this out. Let her sweat a little longer. But his irritation is dissipating just looking at her backside. He knows she’s not fragile or she couldn’t have made it this far in the Corps, but she looks delicate dangling from that hook.
He swipes his fingerchip over the scanner on the latch. The lock clanks and the door opens, and he enters the cell. He circles around her. The light spilling into the brig from the corridor skims her cheekbone. She looks up at him, her gaze direct.
Catch just hopes it’s dark enough that she can’t read his response.
First’s description of his little sister had been brief but clear. Or so Catch thought. “She’s a dork,” he said, when word got around to the other trainers that his sister was arriving today. When one of the assistant trainers asked what she looks like, First leveled him with a steel gaze and said, “She looks like me, shitrag.” First is huge. Just over six feet and broad-shouldered, lanky but muscular, with big hands, a square jaw, and thighs that could probably split a skull. So the image this conjured in Catch’s mind, and probably in the minds of the other trainers, wasn’t pretty.
Which might have been the point, in retrospect.
True, she does look like her brother; First just wasn’t clear what he meant. Yes, First is a hulking beast. He’s also graceful, somehow, lithe and athletic. And extremely good-looking. His sister’s been cut from a similar cloth.
Her eyes are dark in the shadows of the brig as she watches Catch, pupils overtaking that familiar blue. Her chest rises and falls in quick, shallow breaths, her full pink lips pressed together. She’s working very hard to look like she’s not losing her mind. Over the cuffs? The cell? Him? Catch can’t tell. He can’t seem to form a coherent string of thought at all.
And she just stares at him, uncertain. Waiting.
She doesn’t look angry or defeated, like he might expect. She looks alert, vividly humiliated, as she squirms on the hook. There’s fear, too, just beneath the surface, threatening to shake her apart, though she seems to have a handle on it—for now.
She also looks like she might just drop to her knees and suck his cock if he frees her—but that part is probably wishful thinking. Clearly she’s dying to be let free, but she doesn’t ask for it. Much as he might like her to ask. To beg, even. It’s the cuffs and the humiliation that get him. The tenderly bruised pride. But she’s not going to break. She’ll stay just as she is, her mouth shut, as long as he commands her to. This much he can tell by the deference in her gaze. His cock stirs at that look. An uncomfortably familiar pang of arousal roils low in his gut, even as he swallows it down.
First’s sister.
The thought snaps him out of it like an ice-cold slap in the face.
He leans in, so close he can feel her hot little breaths on his neck. Christ. He reaches up and grasps her slender wrist, feels her pulse beating against his thumb. He turns the cuff, exposing the clasp, and presses his fingerchip to it, disengaging the loc
k mechanism. When he lets her arm go, it drops like dead weight. He frees her other wrist and she stumbles back, heels dropping to the floor, and he catches her, his hand clamped on her upper arm. To her credit, she doesn’t protest. Doesn’t try to sell him a story about how that stuff in her ruck isn’t hers. She doesn’t say a thing.
“You’re going to keep yourself out of trouble, and I won’t tell your brother about this.” Strange, how he doesn’t sound like himself. Like this is just some scene he’s watching on the viz, some stranger playing Catch and doing a lousy job of it.
For a moment she looks stunned. Then she blinks and finds her voice. “Yes, Sir.”
He hooks a finger under her chin and holds her gaze, trying to ignore the electric charge crackling between them—does she feel it too?
“This incident will be stricken from your file. But if you act up again, make no mistake, I will bounce you right back down here to cuddle up with your new friend.” He nods at the shuttlehiker, who’s still passed out, snoring sloppily. “You don’t want to get on my bad side, Marsden. I don’t care whose sister you are. You follow my orders or I drop you from DEEP so fast you’ll be back on solid ground before you know what happened.”
The words come out smoothly, a recitation he’s uttered numerous times, to numerous trainees, over numerous infractions. Catch knows how to step into a room and take control. To use his bearing, his tone, his mere presence, to command respect, compliance, obedience. If he’s honest, the training core suits him better than the cockpit ever did. He was made for this, being a trainer. Though the words, this time, are a lie. It would take a hell of a lot for him to drop First’s sister before the end of the quarter, to eject her from the station, even if she was failing miserably.
A Dirty Wedding Night_A Dirty Rockstar Romance Page 28
