Sarda Read online

  He nodded and grunted. At least that one made sense. They ran drills on Prykimis.

  "...perfect Athela and an Unsworn technopath..."

  They both hung their heads and swore in unison.

  "Fuckin' glove your ass, Fuckles!" Vedma spat.

  "Godsdamn bastard!" Dyr growled.

  Vedma's name for the disembodied voice—Fuckles—caught his ear. He smirked.

  "Your head's cracked!" Vedma griped at the conduits overhead as she pointed at Dyr. "He's on house holiday, and I ain't perfect."

  He jolted upright, offended. "Not on holiday. I'm Unsworn."

  "Ech, you're just playin' around," she said without any heat, dismissing him.

  Riled, Dyr pointed to the clade ink that peeked up over the collar of his skinsuit. "You've no idea what I did to earn these."

  She rolled her eyes at him. "Don't matter. Second your da calls you home, some fancy medic's gonna erase all that. Peel 'em off. Spit you out as clean as the day you was born."

  He glared at her. "You're nothing but bluster, Vedma. As an Athela, you have more privilege than a thane."

  She laughed. "I got shit."

  "You have houses determined to outmaneuver each other politically and financially, all without inciting any feuds, just to present their suit."

  "Yeah, and all they're offerin' is shit."

  He brushed her words aside and said in a low tone, "I'm not on some damn house holiday."

  She shrugged, then stood up. He gaped at her lax composure. No residual ire from their argument stiffened her spine or had her snapping the blanket as she lay down on the cot and closed her eyes. Didn't even deign to put her back to him. She just rolled on through, like a storm heading toward the horizon.

  This left Dyr extremely unsatisfied.

  The discussion had not fucking concluded. She truly had no notion of the task foisted on him for the good of his house. How his father had demanded that Dyr's genetic contribution be spurted into a collection vial, then clinically distributed a dozen times over. He refused to be a father modeled after his own, stacking the odds while stacking cradles into an overcrowded nursery.

  Yet he had no intention of enlightening her.

  That admission, plus recognizing that the damn recording had prodded her sniping, dampened his own ire. There was no fight to be had here. Just exhaustion, stress, and the last bursts of the stimulant hitting their tired systems. Apparently, Vedma leaped ahead to that conclusion, because she simply disengaged and bunked down.

  Nevertheless, this lady—she drew forth the ass in him.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  "Damn stimulant," he muttered, then tucked back into his food.

  * * *

  "Damn stimulant," Vedma grumped as she squeezed her thighs together.

  The pressure didn't ease the throbbing between her legs. It just emphasized the empty ache and her dampened skivvies.

  Jittery nerves. Ravenous appetite. Queasy belly. Increased blood flow. Everything she ever wanted from a stim when hopping between pockets of atmo and the void, but not what she wanted when she desperately needed shut-eye. When she desperately needed her thoughts to stop churning over her last foggy memories—settling into her bed at the Academe, so damn pleased that she completed all her exams. Memories that felt like yesterday, even though they happened months ago.

  She bristled, silently damning the stimulant. Increased blood flow, her ass. Her nipples resembled tacks and her clutchers clenched so hard they cramped her belly and thigh muscles. Back in her dorm, all alone, she would've already self-serviced herself into a blissful night's sleep. Bunking just two cots away from Dyr posed a problem. Every time she shifted, he shifted. She'd grumble. He'd groan. He even called out to her once, the sound of her name a low rumble in the dark.

  That didn't help her predicament, at all, because Dyrastur fucking Borac had a bedroom voice.

  When illuminated by the stark, artificial lighting of the ship, he clipped his consonants and flattened his vowels, making her want to rip her own ears off, but in the cocooned dark, with a blanket drifting over her sensitized skin, his voice tantalized.

  Lying there, straining to hear him rustling his blanket, did her no godsdamn favors.

  She sighed.

  "Vedma?"

  By Direis, her clutchers pulsed.

  Well, there was nothing for it. Don't know why she put it off, battling the inevitable and all. This way, they'd both get some sleep.

  She threw her blanket off and swung her legs off the cot. Her thighs quaked as she stood.

  "Gotta piss." She tossed over her shoulder.

  More blanket rustling seduced her hearing, followed by the deep timbre of his voice. "All right, just let me—"

  She high-tailed it outta there. "I'll be fine."

  Once through the hatch, she did her best not to run, because he'd hear her. The Teras had phenomenal hearing. But she did scurry like a rodent. No shame in that. She ducked into another of the berthing cabins and tugged the jumper and her panties down around her ankles. Almost knocked herself out cold diving into a bottom bunk, where she flopped onto her back, spread her legs, and took care of business.

  "Oh, gods," she moaned as she slid two fingers past her swollen lips, where her clutchers—her clyccana, a woman's corresponding cilia to a man's anthers—eagerly gripped her digits, sucking them in further.

  Finally, the stiff resistance of her fingers provided the spine-tingling feedback she needed. Her clyccana began undulating and squeezing, causing her to dig her heels into the thin mattress and tilt her hips upward.

  Only, she couldn't get the angle quite right. Back in her dorm at the Academe, and not slid into a bottom bunk, she'd be upright on her knees, legs spread wide, with a replica male appendage stimulating her grasping cilia.

  With a frustrated growl, she faced the possibility that she'd be forced to return to her cot in worse shape than when she left. It felt so damn good, but she just couldn't quite get—

  "Vedma?"

  At the sound of Dyr's voice, her clutchers clamped down, constricting around her fingers and bowing her spine.

  "Oh shit!" The words escaped her.

  "Vedma?"

  She clamped her mouth shut, and a low, placating whimper vibrated her lips.

  "You're here?" He must have tapped the light console because the darkness vanished, and he stood there. No skinsuit, just tight shorts and bare flesh, with clade tattoos branded all over his torso. "What—"

  His words degenerated into a guttural growl. Her whole body snapped taut.

  She came. She came so hard she cracked her damn knuckles. With her cunt. Her finger joints popped along with her orgasm, adding a sensation that she didn't know how to process. With her eyes locked on him, she coiled through her release. Watched in a languid stupor as he prowled toward her, reached up, and gripped the edge of the top bunk with both hands. His praal and tattoos rippled with his heaving chest, and his eyes flashed as he roved them over her body.

  Fine. He could look. She had nothing he hadn't seen before. And if her body introduced him to the female form for the first time, well, he'd done lived a sheltered life for an Unsworn Teras.

  She eased her fingers out and let her hand flop uselessly on her inner thigh. She sighed, a bit miffed that it came out as a rather pathetic moan.

  "All better now?" he said.

  "Gods," she sighed again and smiled up at him. "That stimulant makes everythin' better."

  He smiled back, only his grin had a feral edge to it. "I'm sure it does."

  Well, damn. His voice now sounded delicious in the light as well. She battened down the dismay that rolled through her. None of that, now. Men had turned her head before. She knew how to look without taking a tumble. That, and tussling with Dyr would blowback so hard, she'd be blasted clear of the Tendex.

  By the gods, sex with Dyr was off the damn table.

  Spurred by her new resolve, she reached for the jumper pooled around her ankles, almost bashing he
r head on the bunk above her in her haste. "Thanks for the assist."

  "My pleasure."

  She bit back the retort that ballooned inside her chest. If she'd been born a pot, she'd hold piss, not honey. Being nice sucked harder than sard. Since he kept any leers or innuendos between himself and Unholde, she could hold her tongue as well. Even if her quip rattled her insides, causing her hands to tremble as she tugged up her clothes.

  She had the bottom half of the jumper up over her ass. Good enough. She scooted off the bunk, mumbling her thanks as he stepped back, giving her space to maneuver.

  "Cabin's all yours." She knocked him on the shoulder as she scuttled past. "Treat yourself to a good tug and tickle."

  "Vedma." He drew her name out.

  "...perfect Athela and an Unsworn technopath..."

  She ducked her head. Being bared and ready for a tussle never roused a sense of shame in her. Yet a blush crept into her cheeks at Fuckles's taunt that paired her with Dyr?

  "Fuckin' hate you, Fuckles," she snapped as she returned to her cot.

  * * *

  Dyr watched Vedma slip out of the cabin. Then he staggered back, stumbling when his legs hit the stacked bunks. He could smell the musk of her in the confined space, overriding the stale, dusty air. Staring down at the bulge in his shorts, he cursed in bemusement. His cock, already throbbing and aching due to the stimulant, lurched at the sight of her sprawled open, unfurled like a bud, on the bunk. The sounds—her heady sighs and the slick constrictions of her clyccana—had pulled his gut tight and weakened his knees. Spasms in his hands forced him to clasp the top bunk in a grip that punished his knuckles, lest he snatch her to him.

  Damn stimulant.

  For almost two hours he had listened to her tossing in her cot, his racing mind envisioning her squirming to get comfortable. Only he didn't picture her gangly contortions from earlier, but sensual twisting and writhing as she battled restlessness. To now know she had arched and tugged against the blanket with her nipples hard and her cunt wet had his entire body coiling. It shocked him that he would have eased her. Would have been damn ecstatic and eager to have ushered her release.

  Certainly, the stimulant produced such a reaction in him.

  Aye, Vedma held beauty that any Teras man would admire. Thick, glossy black hair that swung past her shoulders. Flared hips and a softly sloping belly that balanced her tapered waist and full breasts. Her arms and legs curved with muscles that spoke to her fitness regime—of someone who preferred movement to idleness. Delicate praal, in the most intriguing patterns that he longed to map with his fingers and lips, pulsed an enticing turquoise. Even the flash of her tiny incisors tickled his anthers.

  But he couldn't reconcile his visceral reaction as simply a response to the Teras standard of beauty and his stimulant-fueled arousal. This was Vedma, one of the most dangerous individuals he could've encountered. For his own preservation and the stability of his house, he needed to feel the very opposite of arousal.

  He never wanted to clutch, thus risk having a clutch-conceived child. Would never give his father the satisfaction of fulfilling his godsawful duty, because any children he had would upset the balance of House Borac. If he had a technopathic child, Thane Borac would hound him until he returned home and took up the mantle as heir. It was bad enough that his house expected him to reproduce exponentially until he had a technopathic child. To also be the thane... he shuddered.

  No, being a thane's son was burden enough for him to bear.

  Disgruntled and weary, he went back to the cabin they'd commandeered. Setting his eyes on her burrowed beneath the blanket calmed him while reinforcing his dread.

  He needed to get them off this barge.

  Whoever had abducted them took them knowing exactly what they were—technopaths. The environment on Kigen was meant to hold them. No greater access to the AthNet. No transport shuttles. Crippled ship systems. They were spacebound.

  During his barge-wide sweep, he'd found a signal boosting buoy—something that would let the kidnappers on the barge send and receive communications. That meant they had coordinated with conspirators. Even their supplies held hints of a multi-layered organization. The crates held precisely stowed gear that served minimal utility. The entire operation could be packed up and hustled out in a matter of minutes. Hovering cryo-bins easily carried off.

  How long before either the Gwyrettis' clan came looking for their missing members or the mysterious kidnappers came back?

  Vedma sighed in her sleep, a wracked whimper that underscored his urgency.

  This lady. He had to save this lady.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Vedma sat on the deck and stared at Dyr's ripped stomach. She fumed.

  Days ago, Dyr had laid out an action plan entailing two goals. One, operate the ore extractor, extending it back to the Gwyretti pipe like a long airlock tube. Followed by two, repairing the pipe so they could get the hell out of there. With resolute purpose, Dyr had ditched his skinsuit for a spare jumper that he snagged from the kidnappers' supplies. He hadn't bothered with donning the sleeves, just knotting them around his hips, and pulled on a snug undershirt—all while mumbling nonsense about literal britches. Then he had grabbed his ridiculous sword with one hand, a tool caddy with another, and set to work.

  Step one of said plan had Dyr repairing the parts of Kigen's control room that the Gwyretti had dismantled, particularly the extractor console and its correlating systems. Her contribution to the plan boiled down to strict adherence of non-interference, all because ships were thanes' fucking business.

  Hell, the Athela Academe tossed that damn tripe out so much, they might as well've embroidered it on all the towels and bedsheets. Throughout her classes, the instructors told the girls that the thanes held stewardship over the spaceships, while Athelas mastered the intricacies of the AthNet. Vedma could query societal registries, read current news, explore trends, and manage a Teras house information system that contained thousands of members. Thus, while Dyr wedged himself under panels and draped himself over consoles, her capabilities reduced her to a tool jockey. She simply hovered close to him and handed him wrenches and cutters and soldering lances.

  "Ships're thanes' business," she muttered mockingly in exasperation.

  Her anger grew exponentially at how fucking useless she proved to be.

  "Hey, Sarda," Dyr rumbled at her.

  She startled at the nickname, sitting up straighter as something suspiciously close to giddiness trickled through her. Irked, she scowled at him, and then realized her rebuff lacked impact since his head and shoulders remained jammed inside a console casing. She huffed grumpily.

  Dyr, still shoved into the console, blindly extended his hand and wiggled expectant fingers at her. "Are you paying attention?"

  No. She wasn't. Just like she barely stayed focused during her Athela Academe lectures. Even staring at his bent-over ass—or flat plane of his stomach, or thick thighs just sticking out beneath a rack of components—had become mind-achingly pointless. She couldn't muck with the repairs. She couldn't muck with him. Not much for her to do but sit cross-legged on the deck and stew in endless frustration.

  But since he called out her shirking without any real bite in his tone, she overlooked that ridiculous nickname and nudged his thigh with the toe of her boot. "Whatcha need, thane's son?"

  "Torque spanner."

  She passed him the tool.

  At least her da laid the foundation of her mechanic whatnots. She knew her tools by touch, and if the ore extractor itself needed tweaking, she could muddle through, but she understood fuck all about ship systems.

  "Thanks," he muttered, sounding preoccupied.

  Vedma rested her chin on her fist. Now the fun part, watching Dyr put that torque spanner to good use. As he wielded the spanner, his entire body engaged. His stomach muscles rippled. His thighs bunched. Twisting his shoulders lifted his hips up in the imitation of a thrust.

  She swallowed back her sigh and wondered: if ships
were thanes' business, how often did thanes mingle business with pleasure? She had a few loose screws that he could tighten.

  "Been thinking about the ship," Dyr said with a grunt of exertion. "More I get into these parts, more Athelasan tech I encounter."

  "Ech. Not surprised."

  The barge had thousand-year-old bones. The slope of her corridors, the nestling of her cabins, the nacre sheen her hull held underneath the layer of flaky rust, all resembled features of Athelasan vessels.

  When the Athelasans colonized the Tendex Worlds, none of the inhabitant species—the Teras, Gwyretti, Kraai, or Apinazeru—had spacefaring technology. In fact, none of the species even knew of one another until the Athelasans' arrival and integration. Even though the Athelasans themselves had been gone for hundreds of years, their ships remained engineering marvels, still space-worthy vessels. The systems faltered, though, leading the Teras and other species to swap out ancient Athelasan tech for modern components.

  Vedma excelled at using Athelasan tech. The Academe made sure of it, exposing the Athela students to original components and Teras reverse-engineered components as well. Kigen felt like ancient tech, possessing nuances that led Vedma to classify her as such, like discerning the texture inherent to different fabrics. The barge also felt off, sluggish, yet constricting with its constant alarms and reports streaming with system failures or offline statuses. Also, the dual mysteries still confounded her: Fuckles's recording playing over and over, and the fact that the ore extractor had snagged Dyr and her off of the pipe.

  A shudder rushed through Vedma. Not her first one, either. Since the stimulant had worn off, she'd had a constant sensation of unease—slight headache, fluttering in her belly, nagging fatigue—that would not abate.

  Giving the ship her stink-eye, Vedma growled in frustration. "This ship. It ain't right, Dyr."

  Wasn't the first time she'd told him that in the past handful of days.

  From inside the console, he gave his standing reply. "Brooding isn't going to solve our problems, Sarda. Focus on the mechanics of the issue."