Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (7 page)

Rainer watched the glowing
speckles beneath her skin, too. “Do you ever find it unsettling that your
new body art owes its beauty to a tree crustacean?”

“Actually, I didn’t know
where all these lights came from.” She’d simply been told the bio-lights
were an exclusive mark of the ambasadoras and that they would be a part of her
for the rest of her life.

“I asked the doctor in your
recovery room,” Rainer said. “They’re protein cells from proto-shrimp
living in canopy pools in the Archenzon Cloud Forest on Tampa One.”

“That’s unnerving. To think
I have another species living comfortably inside my body.” She patted her
forehead dry then ran the towel over her neck.

“Harvesting them must have
been no simple task. Those forests were the first in the system to be
terraformed. The trees are enormous because they were never touched once Tampa
Deux opened for settlement.”

“I’ve never been
there.” Traveling to the system’s farthest moon had never appealed to her,
but she would hop on a freight ship headed to the mines of Deleine this second
if she could get away from Simon.

“Most people haven’t since
the Embassy imposed the trade embargo on Tampa One. That means your little
friends are probably worth more than this entire territory.”

“Expensive livestock
brand,” she muttered.

“You haven’t embraced your
new role as a Face of the Embassy, I take it?”

She hoped Rainer didn’t suspect
she just played Simon’s game until she had an advantage of her own. “It’s
better than the alternative.” She squeezed his forearm in an attempt to
change his focus.

She was a little surprised to see
it had worked when he traced his finger along her jaw to her neck and down to
her cleavage.

“You missed a spot.” He
rubbed the moisture from her body between his thumb and forefinger.

A mix of desire and anger welled
within her. She slid her hand up his arm. “You like the new me, don’t
you?” she asked.

“It’s different,” he
said.

“Better? More like a
contractor?” Sara caressed his neck with the back of her hand.

“Better, but you’ll never be
a contractor, even with the hair and the training. It’s not in your
genes.”

“That’s right,” she
said as though just recollecting some odd fact. “Unlike normal Socialites
and Armadans, contractors only mix with other contractors. You even take your
profession based on your heritage, or is it the other way around?” She
leaned a little closer. “But, doesn’t that lead to a lot of
inbreeding?” Sara thrust her fingers into Rainer’s neck, pinching the
nerves. Before he could react, she kicked his feet out from under him and held
him at bay with one of his own cenders.

“But you’d be willing to
overlook that for a tumble,” she said. “It’s still me. Just with a
prettier shell. Apparently the shell is all that matters to you.” She
looked up at a newly gathering crowd. “To anyone.”

Rainer made it to one knee before
Sara pressed the cender into his temple.

“Don’t worry. I’ll dial down
the energy before I shoot you, like you did for me.”

A few chuckles and a smattering
of applause drifted her way from the crowd.

Rainer grabbed Sara’s wrist. With
his thumb jammed in between her tendons, she lost her grip on his cender.

She punched him in the jaw with
her other hand.

“Enough.” Simon’s tinny
voice stopped the escalating fray. “Your training is paying off,
Ambasadora Mendoza. Now I suggest we try it out on someone other than
Contractor Varden.”

Rainer’s look was as hard as
Simon’s.

Sara picked up the cender and
offered the silver grip to Rainer. He grabbed her hand with it, crushing her
fingers into the metal. The action matched the threat in his eyes. They both
knew he wouldn’t do anything in front of Simon, but he had just warned her
about any future encounters.

She’d be waiting.

“Leave us,” Simon said
to the crowd of contractors.

“I found you a ship,
ambasadora. The
Bard
. It’s registered as a science vessel, but was
originally a pleasure cruiser, so the accommodations should be reasonable. You
will need a suitable transport to shuttle you from engagement to
engagement.”

“Found me a ship? Like you
found me a new body and a new title? Don’t expect me to be honored by any of
it.”

Simon whirled on her. “Never
speak to me like that again or I’ll send you back to Contractor Renault, and
this time I won’t hold her back.”

Sara’s face flushed and she
avoided Rainer’s gaze. “I apologize. Maybe it was the shock that you’re
sending me out on social engagements.”

“I am sending you to get
information on a suspected fragger operative who lives aboard the
Bard
.
To keep up appearances, you will be expected to attend certain social functions
of my choosing.”

Sara forced her mouth to stay
closed.

“Don’t forget this new title
and new body are gifts. I have personally chosen each ambasadora based on
exceptional breeding lineage, beauty, and social skills. I chose
you
because you have a connection to my curse. The training I’ve given you should
have been reserved for a contractor. And, my doctors had no choice but to
improve your assets. How else could you charm the fragger operative and bring
him into your confidence?”

Sara’s fists balled up when Simon
mentioned her improved assets. Before Faya sliced Sara’s face to bits, she had
been pretty, if not striking or beautiful. More importantly, Sara’s face had
been
hers
. As the tears threatened, she warned herself to quit mourning
who she used to be and embrace this chance at a more powerful life. Beat Simon
with his own tools.

“How do you know it’s a
him
?”
Sara asked.

“Because my sources suspect
someone in particular.”

“Who?” Rainer spoke up.

Sara wondered why Rainer wasn’t
privy to this information ahead of time. Perhaps the Sovereign and his Head
Contractor weren’t as close these days. The implications of how that could
benefit her raced through her mind.

“The
Bard
’s Armadan
pilot,” Simon said.

Rainer sniffed. “That
doesn’t surprise me. Armadans are only three steps away from being Lowers, and
since fraggers are anti-caste, well….” He shrugged.

“How old is this guy?”
Sara asked. “I thought Armadans stayed with the military until their
century mark, then lived their last sixty or so years in retirement on
Yurai.”

“Are you afraid you won’t
like the shell?” Rainer asked.

Sara ignored the jibe.

“This particular Armadan
captain left service of his own volition halfway through his commission. His
record at the time was superb. He was even due for a promotion, one of the
reasons my sources suspect him. Why abandon your professional life in its
prime?” Simon looked at Sara. “He’s still in his prime sexually, as
well, so I don’t think you’ll find what I’m asking to be too unpleasant.”

Simon didn’t know what unpleasant
meant. But he would.

She should be close
.

David watched Mari’s red-tipped blonde
hair bounce over her eyes as he pressed her back against the grey wall of his
suite. With her legs wrapped around him, she slid up and down the smooth
surface quite easily. It was the only wall that would work since it was the one
without wooden screens attached to it.

With a forty year age difference,
Boston Maribu and David Anlow had nothing in common.
Well, almost nothing
.

Mari’s jaw slackened. Her
breathing came in shallow gasps. When she seized his shoulders in a death grip
and clamped her mouth over his, he knew he had her. And none too soon—he’d been
close for a while and his legs were ready to give out.

Their bodies both tensed. David
kept Mari pressed to the wall as he pumped inside her one last time. And, he
kept his mouth on hers in a tight kiss because she had a tendency to be loud
when she climaxed. It was hard to be discreet on a ship with thin inner walls,
especially with Mari’s vigor for sex. David found it more and more difficult to
keep their couplings secret, and he knew Mari liked the thrill of clandestine
meetings in the beginning, but was ready to announce to everyone that she and
David were officially together. He wasn’t. Though he suspected Sean knew,
thankfully the younger man had never brought it up. That would be more for
Mari’s sake than David’s, though, because the two men still didn’t get along.

David feared the revelation about
he and Mari would cause problems with the others, but he also worried that the
magic of their relationship would somehow end if it were exposed to the world.

Last month he almost lost her
completely to Dale Zapona, a human trafficker who would have sold Mari to a
psycho whose sport was torturing and raping young women from Deleine. Mari may
have saved herself, but David’s the one who personally took care of Dale.
David’s brother, Ben, was still hunting down the psycho buyer. Hopefully he’d
hear good news soon.

The trauma of the event was
easing for Mari. Days like today almost seemed normal.

He tossed her playfully onto the
thin mattress on the floor. As soon as he collapsed beside her, Mari wrapped
herself up in half of the royal blue duvet and snuggled against him. The citrus
notes of her scentbots played in his nose once again.

“How could you possibly be
cold after all of that?” He curled an arm around her under the blanket.

“Because you keep this place
like a cave.” She shivered. “It’s not very homey. You barely have any
furniture. And what you do have is ugly.”

David scanned his bedroom. Three
of the walls had large black screens adhered to their surfaces. These were
inset with an occasional white square over the grey backing that covered the
other walls and the ceiling. On the wall opposite the entrance was a large
framed line drawing of the Koley Mountains on Yurai, David’s home planet.
Besides the low bed and the freestanding lamps, the only other piece of
furniture was a light blue wooden chair that was more comfortable than it
looked…and apparently ugly.

The spartan interior housed
everything he needed, but more importantly, it looked like his quarters on the
Argo
Protector
just before he left his commission there.

“It’s better than the neon
world where you live.” He smiled and closed his eyes, knowing the tease
would get her riled up.

“What’s wrong with a little
color?” she asked.

“A
little
color? It
looks like the bottom part of the light spectrum exploded all over your suite
in green and blue globules.” He peeked out of one eye to see her reaction.

“Well, when you become my
prime, maybe I’ll let you have a say in the redecorating. Unless we stayed in
your suite, then
I’d
have a say in the redecorating. Whose suite is
bigger? I think mine is, but yours is closer to the bridge, so that’s something
to consider.”

Mari prattled on. David stared at
the ceiling. Sometimes she talked so fast and about so many different topics
all at once that David had a hard time following the conversation. Not that it
ever really was much of a conversation because Mari didn’t often give him a
chance to get a word in, except when she was mad at him and during sex. The
latter had to become a rule, though, after the first couple of times that he
and Mari were in the throes of coupling and she talked through half of it. He
managed to smother her mouth with kisses during the other half, but as soon as
he would come up for air, she’d find something new to tell him. So they had
agreed that unless it was dirty, encouraging, or telling him that he was doing something
wrong, it could wait until afterward.

Still, he liked to hear her
voice. That’s why the sudden quiet jarred him out of his thoughts. Since they
had just finished docking, it meant Mari’s silence was born of irritation, not
coital bliss.

“Nothing to say?” she
asked.

“I was just enjoying the
moment.” David tried to play innocent. He knew she was referring to the
marriage subject again, but he hoped to avoid a fight.

“David.”

“I thought we agreed not to
talk about this for a while.”

“It’s been almost a month
since I mentioned it.” She propped herself up by an elbow.

“That’s only a month, not a
while.” He knew that wouldn’t pacify her. They would end up in the same
argument they always did recently.

“Do you think you can do
better than me,” she said. Her tone implied she didn’t quite believe it,
but she’d lost a bit of her confidence since her abdunction.

How could I do better?

Mari’s insecurities about her
coral-colored eyes were unfounded in David’s opinion. She couldn’t help that
she had a reaction to a vaccine while living on Deleine. Besides, it gave her
individuality in a society of tired copies. Of course, that’s why Dale could
fetch such a high price for her from the psycho.

David’s real concern was Mari’s
age and inexperience. Not only was he her first real relationship, but the
first and only man she had ever been intimate with. That worried him. She was
too young to be thinking about marriage and children. There was too much life
for her yet to live. Armadan males often started families much later, after
their service to the fleet came to an end, but Socialites always jumped right in,
practically after puberty. Just the cultural variations, he supposed. Still, a
guilty little part of him felt as though he were taking advantage of her. He
needed to be sure of his feelings and hers before they took another step.

He realized she was still talking
when she asked, “Or are you just holding out for a battle maiden?”

“I’ve had lots and lots of
battle maidens,” he said. He meant it as a joke, but she didn’t need to
know it was true.