by Ric Beard
“It seems so.”
“What?” Blake said, stealing back to the present.
“The tiff, sir?”
“Oh, right, the tiff.”
Tiff. What a donk, you are, Blake Jensen.
“You have this CorpKill character who’s anti-immigration. Pro-isolation. It’s like he’s been hiding in the shadows and suddenly, now that this Tremor has vanished, the real CorpKill has risen from the ashes. As hard as The Underground has railed against Vaughn…” she cleared her throat and smirked again, “…Mayor Vaughn…Pardon me…” She smiled again; Blake found it contagious. “It’s surprising how CorpKill’s stance seems almost pro-Vaughn.”
“You think he’s a plant? Sounds conspiratorial, Miss Shaw.”
“I wouldn’t give Vaughn that much credit. I just find it interesting. Now, CorpKill has taken more than half The Underground with him and broken camp. Kind of funny how this Miles guy terrorizes Vaughn for years and, the second he’s out of the picture, not even an hour passes before lines are drawn and The Underground splits up. I just wonder how it all will affect your father’s campaign for mayor. If Tremor were around, Mikael would stand a better chance. Tremor would’ve no doubt thrown his weight behind him. But with this Miles Copeland gone…”
“How did you know my father was going to run for mayor?”
“How do you think I know, Mister Jensen? He told me.”
“You mock me, Miss Shaw.”
“You’re funny. But seriously, opposing factions of The Underground could prove larger pains in our asses—if you’ll excuse my French. The city gets hit from two directions.”
“You think they’ll go through with it?”
“They sounded pretty serious to me. Hopefully Mikael will have a solid plan.”
“Oh, so you’ll call him Mikael, but I’m still Mister Jensen.”
Again, Lexi didn’t miss a beat.
“Someone has to be Mister Jensen.”
She is quick. Snappy. Smirky. Lovely…
Blake cleared his throat.
“So, your asset. Did he pick a side? Which breeze blew him?”
Blew him? Really? Get on your game!
“He split off with CorpKill62’s group,” the muscle beneath her eye twitched again as she seemed to consider something, “if that’s what you meant by blew him.”
Blake’s face warmed. While he cringed on the inside, he was careful not to give so much as the slightest shutter for her to see. Lexi was suddenly getting under his skin, waking up an inner beast Blake usually controlled with visits to the Virtual Escapes pavilion across town with a replica constructed in his own mind. This would not do.
“That leaves us blind on Labyrinth’s side, doesn’t it?”
“For the time being. But I think he split in the right direction. Follow the dangerous one. If they plan to hit our corporate infrastructure, I’ll be ready.”
“So, protect JenCorp and stay out of the political mess?”
“Play defense.”
“Your analysis seems more than sound.”
“Thank you.”
Blake grasped the cigar from his ashtray and twisted it in his fingers. He pulled out a lighter.
“I’m sorry, would this bother you?” He held up the cigar.
“Actually…”
She reached into the pocket of her slim-fitting pants and rummaged with her fingertips. Blake watched as her arm brushed her breast as she rummaged for it.
Avert your fucking eyes. She’s your employee!
Producing a silver case, Lexi flipped it open and showed him a row of thinner cigars.
“Ha!” He slid a metal lighter across the table. Lexi flipped it open and struck the flint, puffing vigorously as the flame danced on the end of the cigar, her reddened lips wrinkling slightly as they grasped the other end. Blake reached behind him and pulled an ashtray from a shelf and slid it across the desk.
Lexi slid down slightly in her chair and crossed her legs while she enjoyed the cigar. Smoke wafted into the air and was pulled into a box attached to the ceiling. They smoked in silence for a few moments, with Lexi staring at the pictures behind Blake while Blake watched her blue eyes dance. The morning sun ricocheting off the windows of buildings outside transformed her red hair to a glimmering copper. Her smooth white skin was like a porcelain canvas an artist had dotted with the occasional freckle in just the right places so as to accentuate the work. A tiny mole rested just above the corner of her upper lip.
Lexi leaned over toward the desk, the cigar protruding from between fingers suspended out in front of her. Her eyes slightly widened, her lips parted, and her eyebrows furrowed. She partially missed the ashtray, sending a dusting onto the desk.
“What is it?” Blake asked.
Lexi snapped out of it and flicked the rogue ashes into her palm, then into the ashtray. Blake leaned over the edge of the desk and looked down into the ashtray at the image of a leaf with nettled veins blown into the thick glass with writing carved into the side.
RTP GeneWorks,
Research Triangle Park, N.C.
“It’s…It’s so beautiful. I…I wonder how they did that with the glass?”
“I’m so glad you like it. It’s a relic of the old world from a company located not far from here. Just up the road, actually. It was a gift from my father. He knows how I love unusual art. I have no idea what the company did, but the glass is beautiful.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever thought of ashtrays as art, before now.”
“Lexi, are you sure that’s all? You look…discolored.”
“No! Not at all! I’m sorry, I just haven’t seen the like before. And it’s in such amazing condition. You must think I’m weird.”
“No, actually. I am the same way. It’s why I have it.”
“Well, I like it. That’s all.”
“Good,” Blake said, stamping out his cigar and standing from his desk. Lexi stood as well. Blake picked up the ashtray and held it out. She extinguished her cigar. “Are we still sparring tonight?”
Lexi’s eyes were back on the ashtray. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s Wednesday,” Blake said. He pulled out a small metal clipper and cut off the burnt part of the cigar, handing it back to her. She smiled, took it and put it back in her case. “Are we sparring?”
“Oh! Absolutely, sir. I get edgy when I go too long without beating on someone.”
Chapter Twelve
Are You Angry?
Lexi’s head snapped to one side, and she had to take a step back to right herself.
Lucky shot, she thought.
She hopped and reversed her stance, hands up in a defensive position, arms bent at the elbows. Bouncing side to side, keeping her breathing as level and deep as possible, Lexi struck out with her right foot and followed with a right back hand, catching Blake with a light slap to the jaw.
“Glad you take it easy on me,” Blake said as he bounced on the balls of his feet, drenched in sweat, bursts of short breaths raising and lowering his chest as he choreographed his own dance opposite her. “Anyway, CSS didn’t find anything in the building across from your apartment.” His words came out clipped in short breaths.
“Stop talking and focus,” she snapped. Blake was pretty quick, but he still had work to do. She had no doubt that these little sessions better prepared him should he get into a precarious situation, but he was really going to have to work on his form if he was going to keep from injuring himself. She watched his eyes intently, waiting, anticipating his next move. When it came, she blocked the incoming right with a double knife hand to his forearm, grabbed a pressure point on his wrist to distract him, and used her other hand to chop his neck at half power. Blake teetered for a moment, and his eyes went blank, but he quickly recovered. He stood still.
“What the hell was that?” He asked.
“Knife hand chop. Cuts off the flow of blood to the brain temporarily. It’s a quick way out of a bad situation, regardless of your opponent’s size. You ok
ay?”
“It’s a weird sensation.” He put one hand on his forehead. She stepped toward him and grasped his shoulder to help steady him.
“Come on, I barely tapped—”
He grabbed her wrist, wrapped his arm over hers to lock it in his armpit, and gripped the front of her neck with the other hand, pulling her close.
“Sucker.” His almond colored eyes locked with hers.
Feeling the pressure on her neck, Lexi felt a warmth in her chest.
The games of this morning’s talk in his office flowed back through her mind as she stared at him. The errant gazes he thought she hadn’t noticed. The playful banter. She longed for him to tighten his grip.
Getting close is one thing, but this…
Her eyelids lowered. Without thinking about it, she leaned into the chokehold, surprising herself by enticing him to squeeze harder. This caught Blake by surprise, and he released her neck. When he did, she grabbed the free hand, twisted to free her dominant arm, and pivoted under him, tossing him easily over her hip and onto the mat, where she straddled him and pinned his arms. She slid her pelvis down to his and squeezed her legs together to keep him from squirming.
“Who is the sucker now, Mister Jensen?”
“I guess you got me.” He tried to free his right arm. He grunted and struggled. After a moment’s contemplation, she allowed the arm to go free.
“Now that you have use of it, what are you going to do with it?” She lowered her torso so their faces were inches apart and she clinched his legs between her knees to isolate his lower body.
Blake struggled to find purchase with the free arm she’d granted him as irritation grew in his expression. Since the combat suit she wore was one piece that zipped along one side of the chest padding, he couldn’t find anywhere to grip to force her slimmer female body off of his bulkier frame.
He relaxed and let his head and the free arm drop to the canvas.
“Ok, you win. Get off.” Lexi didn’t comply. She held her position and looked down at him, her lips at his chin level. “You’ve got me. You can let me up now.”
“Are you going to tell an attacker in an alley that he has you, and he can let you up now?” She said in a low, throaty tone. Her nose twitched as she drew in his scent, and she ran her eyes down his neck and up again until their gazes locked. Then she pinched his nose. “Besides, how do I know you aren’t tricking me again?”
“Lexi.”
She adjusted her grip with her legs and felt him stiffen, “Mister Jensen.”
“Seriously,” he said, pushing his butt into the ground as if trying to pull his pelvis away from hers. She couldn’t feel anything through the groin padding, but the action itself spoke plenty.
Mister Jensen’s biological imperative is embarrassing him. I don’t know if I planned on getting this close, but this is fun.
Besides his attempts to free his pelvis from hers, she could hear his resistance in the almost pleading tone he exercised when he spoke her name.
“Lexi.”
But holding him under her control, feeling him try to squirm his lower half away, led to a warmness of her own, an almost irresistible need to grind.
“Okay.” She allowed herself only a subtle grind against him as she jumped to her feet. She held out a hand to help him up.
He ignored it, rolled to the side, and pushed himself up from the ground. He stepped forward so their faces were inches apart.
“What was that?” he asked.
His eyes flared with anger.
Poor baby. Are you feeling powerless? Don’t like being pinned down by a woman? Does your own arousal offend you?
Lexi knew she was way out of bounds here, but she found herself intrigued. The two were anything but strangers. She’d worked closely with Blake since before his father retired the previous year. Their combat practice was nothing new, either. They’d shared this room dozens of times before. But now she had different motivations and he wasn’t the only one feeling that yearning.
Lexi’d seen the look he gave her when she walked into his office wearing her new outfit with her hair down that morning. It was exactly the kind of look for which she’d hoped. His subtle, wandering eyes had signaled progress, but as the conversation rolled on, it became more. The conversation, the tease, had come almost too easily while remaining productive. Then she’d topped the presentation off with the cigar, because she often saw him smoking one after hours when she watched via the camera in his office. She was certainly no stranger to them.
What she hadn’t expected was her own, voracious response. She hadn’t had a man in a long time. Though the combat room hadn’t been where she expected to make her move, her body had wrested control from her mind, and in a rare instance of failed discipline, she let it. Now the deed was done, and her mind was weighing the situation. The look in his eyes made her wonder if she should force the issue.
Screw it. He’s ready.
“Are you angry?” She stepped closer, piercing his eyes with her own. He started to step back and she grabbed his hand with both of hers.
“Lexi,” he said, with some form of determination in his voice. But she could hear him forcing control into his tone, trying to steady himself. She felt another warm rush.
“I like the sound of my name coming from your mouth.”
Blake opened his mouth to say something but closed it again.
Lexi gripped his hand firmly and pressed both her thumbs into his palm before pulling it to her throat.
“Do it again,” she pleaded.
His hand jerked, but she adjusted and held it firm.
“Please?” She kissed the palm.
“Lexi!” he snapped.
She pulled the hand to the center of her chest. Their eyes remained locked, the room completely silent, a world unto itself.
“Everyone is gone. We’re alone.” She stepped close, his hand pinned between them.
“But—”
“This isn’t work. It isn’t business.”
When she released his hand, it jerked for a moment but didn’t leave her chest.
She suppressed a smile.
Blake’s head tilted slightly to the left, as if to consider her beneath the overhead LED lighting. Lexi shoved her face into his, gripped his lips between hers and pulled away, causing his bottom lip to fold outward and pop back into place.
She slapped him.
“Do it!”
Then he was on her, his hand back at her throat, his other hand wrapping around her tall, wiry frame at the waist and lifting her from the ground. Her arms flew around his shoulders, and she raised her legs and wrapped them around his waist as he forced her backward. Her back pounded into the padded wall. He lightened his grip, allowing her to slide down onto her feet. Lexi craned her neck forward and bit his lip, drawing a trickle of blood. He reached up with his free hand and tapped his lip. He looked at the droplet of blood on his finger and back up at her with incredulity.
She smiled and wrapped her arms around him with a firm grip, drawing a surprised expression.
“Let me get that for you.” She sucked the blood off his lip.
He squeezed her throat harder, and Lexi felt her muscles let go. Her lips parted. Her eyelids drooped. There was a sudden intake of breath. He pulled her from the padded wall and slammed her into it again.
“Is this what you want?” he said, pulling her from the padding of the wall and slamming her back into it.
“It’s all I want, Mister Jensen.”
He ripped down the zipper of her suit to her waist and reached inside. Fabric tore as he ripped away the tank she wore underneath and pinched the firm white flesh, beneath.
Lexi moaned. Then she slipped her arms beneath his arm pits, swiveled to the side and fell backward pulling his weight toward her and tossing him over her body and onto his back. In one liquid motion, she back-rolled on top of him.
Lexi grabbed his head and licked him from his chin to his nose and smiled as her eyes reacquired his. She yanke
d her zipper to her pelvis and Blake reached inside with both hands, finding the pink mounds on soft, firm, porcelain flesh and squeezed. She arched her back and absorbed the sensation before leaning down and placing her mouth next to his ear.
“You win,” Lexi whispered. “I’ll call you Blake.”
Part Three
Sean Stone
Oklahoma City
Chapter Thirteen
Slim and None
Day 2
Wednesday, Mar 20, 2137
It was a chilly, sunbaked afternoon in Oklahoma City. A great stone and metal wall surrounding the city reflected the light and scattered it into the urban sprawl that had developed slowly since The Resource Wars. The orange tint on the horizon was split by towering windmills hoisted to supplement the city’s nuclear plant after The Horde was pushed back into the wilds, the industrial complex boomed, and the population exploded.
In an unused warehouse, a few miles outside the defensive perimeter, Sean Stone perched on a crate watching the motes of dust dance in the sun rays filtering in from the windows above. His hair was pulled back from his forehead and ended just above his shoulders. A tight, manicured beard he kept trimmed along his jawline was intended to give him a rugged-but-dignified appearance.
A pair of massive floor-to-ceiling doors to his left rattled, then split apart. A torrent of light flooded in, casting three fuzzy shadows across the dingy gray warehouse floor. Sean raised a hand to block the sun from his eyes, adjusted his worn brown leather coat, and walked to the center of the floor. He rested his arms at his sides, his palms facing his visitors.
The Stetson atop the head of the short man in the center cast an odd-looking shadow at Sean’s feet.
I don’t like working with Carson, Sean thought.
Carson was a psychopath with an off-putting, gentleman’s grin. Business associates who excited Carson’s temper had a way of ending up maimed or disappearing outright, and Sean always kept his hand close when dealing with him. But as a mover of contra flowing into OK City, Carson had the kind of unrivaled underworld connections that kept people like Sean accustomed to a higher standard of living than the steam monkeys in the industrial zone who sweated their days away supporting the war effort. Sean had lived long enough to know that sometimes he had to suck it up to get the things he wanted out of life, and what he wanted was security. After a lifetime bouncing from place to place, fighting off the challenges of a violent outside world, security was a dream.
