Dusk (Dusk 1) (4 page)

“Oooh!” Olivia swatted Kase on the shoulder again as she sat down. “Two salmon
blini
and a large
medovukah
to drink, with a small salad.” She turned to face the boy directly. “Please,” she added sweetly.

The kid behind the counter didn’t move. His jaw appeared to be locked about halfway open, and his eyes had taken on a distinctly glazed sheen. She raised up a little, and the kid’s eyes moved precisely the same amount.

For a brief moment, Olivia toyed with the idea of being offended. On the other hand, she remembered being, what? Seventeen, maybe eighteen Dusk years old, when the mysteries of the opposite sex had conspired with her own rampaging hormones to make her very curious indeed. It was just possible… no,
more
than possible, she admitted, flinching away from an embarrassing memory, that she had stared at older men as avidly and lasciviously as the kid now stared at her.

“See anything you like?” she asked gently.

“Uh-huh,” the kid said, his lips turning up into a dreamy smile.

“Jeffrey!” a voice from the kitchen snapped. “Are those paying customers?”

The kid shook as if awakening from a pleasant dream into a nightmare, his smile vanishing like a
hrunczek
lizard under a rock. “Oh, er, sorry, ma’am. What would you like?”

She smiled and repeated the order, giving no indication of her annoyance. Just because she understood the kid’s predicament didn’t mean she had any interest in being mentally undressed by a boy who probably hadn’t even grown a proper pubic bush yet. The only person she enjoyed being visually undressed by was Merrick, and he was unavailable, taking a meeting with a couple of the other junior ambassadors over some trivial matter of protocol.

The thought of Merrick’s hazel eyes heating as he gazed upon her exposed skin brought a light flush of heat to her face. She wanted a lot more than his eyes. She wanted his big hands and warm, soft tongue, and most of all, his long, thick, hard…

“Olivia!”

She jolted back to the here and now to see Kase staring at her, one hand propping up her chin in a slightly belligerent manner.

“How was your nap?”

Olivia winked. “You should have been there.”

“Uh-huh,” Kase huffed. “Look at you, getting all starry-eyed like a teenage girl.”

She debated whether to make it worse by telling Kase just
how
good her imaginings had been, before deciding not to. After all, Kase, like half the women in the city, got warm at the thought of Merrick’s form. Aside from possibly angering her by dangling the fact of Merrick’s attachment to Olivia in her face or embarrassing herself by describing intimate details that were certainly not fit conversation for a public corridor, there was nothing to be gained by it.

“What can I say?” She shrugged. “Merrick’s the only man I want looking at me like that.”

Kase gave her a long once-over. “Which is why you dress with such modesty and delicacy.” She put on a horrific mockery of an accent from the southern zone of Terra’s northwestern continent, undoubtedly something she’d seen in an old bi-vee from Terra. “Whah, ah do decleh you look jes’ lahk a virgin on her weddin’ not!”

As if the conversation needed any assistance getting any more awkward, the kid chose that moment to return with her drink. He froze, roughly two paces from the counter, his face blazing redder than the sign above his head.

“Um… your order will be right out, ma’am,” he stuttered, quickly setting the beverage down. With a grimace, he turned on his heel and fled.

From the back, she heard him say, “I’m taking a break, Ivan. Can you get the lady’s order out?”

The lower growl from the owner escaped her, but the kid protested angrily, “I am
not
! I’m just… look, I need a
break
, okay?” His voice cracked and wandered over three different pitches.

Olivia raised an eyebrow and glanced at Kase, whose face had gone from pale silk to violent magenta. She tried, with limited success, to choke off a snicker.

“What? What did he say?”

Kase just shook her head and clamped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes bulged as if she was in the throes of a seizure, and her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Olivia demanded.

A male voice with a thick Russian accent spoke from the kitchen. “I tell him if he want to go jerk off, he do that on his time, not mine.”

Olivia flinched. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry anymore.

“I hef your food for you in a minute,
da
?”

“
Da
,” she agreed weakly.

Kase grinned at her impishly. “Sorry you asked?”

For answer, Olivia shook her head with a groan and shifted her chair a few inches to one side. The ventilator return mounted in the ceiling blew a steady stream of cooled air downward, and aside from mussing her hair, it also chilled her skin unpleasantly. Finding a happy medium between too cool and too warm, she settled in.

“Here is your blini, miss.”

The potbellied, dark-haired and dark-eyed man of Russian stock set a plate in front of her with two of the paper-thin pastries. He said nothing more, but waited expectantly. She took the hint and picked up one of the blini. Biting into it, she chewed thoughtfully and then nodded. The spiced “salmon” was prepared perfectly. She swallowed.

“This is very good,” she reported.

The man nodded, the hint of a smile gracing his dour features. “I am glad you approve, miss. If you need anything more, just call.”

She assured him she would, and was rewarded with another smile as he turned away.

Much of the ethnic cuisine available for sale in the food vendors slanted heavily toward Russian, Mexican, Spanish, and Italian dishes, along with traditional fare from the northwest continent. Although the initial settlers had been a fairly mixed bag of ethnicities and cultures, these particular strains and national origins had been particularly well represented. As humans tend to do, when they arrived on Dusk, they sought out things that reminded them of home, dismissing utterly little things like accuracy in naming them. The “salmon” in her blini, for example, was actually the steamed, flaky white flesh of a small ground-roving lizard. She had eaten Terran salmon before and the fish tasted nothing at all like its Dusk counterpart, but she supposed to homesick settlers who were unlikely ever to set foot on their homeworld again it was close enough for comfort’s sake.

Kase studied her. “So, what’s the latest intrigue in the DDC?”

There was nothing confidential in the briefing material. If there had been, Trelawney would have made certain everyone knew it before he proceeded. In quick, concise sentences she described the substance of the meeting.

Of course, Kase could have just plucked the information right out of her head, had she wished. That ability had firmly shut the door on any hope she had of joining the DDC. Diplomats from other worlds would never have tolerated such a huge edge in negotiations if
they
did not control it, and the multiplicity of dangers perceived and real involved in having someone who could hear the thoughts of another person as clearly as if the person had shouted would create a hazardously unstable base for diplomacy.

However, even if Olivia hadn’t been extensively trained in how to thwart such psionic snooping, it would no more occur to Kase to invade her friend’s privacy that way than it would for her to whip out a blaster and shoot Olivia. It simply contradicted everything in her nature.

Kase’s eyes went wide. “So… what are they going to do?”

Olivia shook her head. “I don’t know. No one seems to want to believe me, but I really think I’m right about this.”

“But how would they use it as a weapon?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea, Kase. I wish I did. The only things I can think of…” she trailed off with a shudder. “Well, let’s just say I can’t think of anything cheerful they might do with it.”

Kase’s eyes widened even more in response to the sudden onslaught of Olivia’s negative emotions. Mental blocks, no matter how rigorous or well-maintained, didn’t count for much when one was all but screaming their emotions to the entire immediate universe. “Um, sweetie,” she gasped, her voice pained, “do you think you can calm down a little?”

Olivia cursed and whispered a calming nonsense rhyme. After a few moments, the anxious anger abated, leaving only a tense calm in its place.

“Sorry about that,” she murmured.

Kase smiled. “No problem. Happens all the time.” Olivia knew her friend well enough to know she wasn’t exaggerating.

“So, tell me what you have planned with Merrick tonight!” Kase urged.

* * *

Merrick smiled at her, showing off the dimples in his cheeks. “Well, what’d you expect? You basically threw a baby nuclear bomb onto the table and dared everyone not to freak out about it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because apparently I was the only one in that chamber who could see what Terra’s up to.” She grabbed Merrick’s hand. “You believe me, right?”

His grin faded a little, but his nod was firm. “It… I don’t like to admit it, Liv, but it makes sense to me. Terra already gets all the projectile-resistant fabric it needs at bargain credits, and there’s nothing else here with true military applications. But --”

“But how would they use magick in a military situation?” Olivia finished. She’d already considered that, but none of the scenarios she came up with were cheerful ones.

Merrick stood silently for a moment, frowning as he mulled over the implications. The sorrowful shake of his head told her he had come to much the same frightening conclusions she had.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but this is a negotiation, not a command. Terra couldn’t order us even if they wanted to.” Merrick turned toward her and wrapped his arms around her.

Despite herself, she relaxed into his warm, powerful embrace. She breathed in the light scent of his preferred aftershave and the slight spicy note of his sweat. His chest featured only a light tuft of hair right over his breastbone, leading down a fine, soft treasure trail that arrowed under his breechclout. With an appreciative purr, she pressed her lips to one firm pectoral, just above the nipple, and let her tongue flick out to taste his masculine flavor.

He gasped slightly and pulled her closer. His hands closed around her buttocks, cradling her in a grip as sturdy and unbreakable as carbonized titasteel as he lifted her up to press against his groin.

“I wanted you so badly the entire time we were in there,” he informed her huskily, dropping his lips to hers.

She started to reply, but before she could, he invaded her mouth with his tongue. It was a shamelessly barbaric male kiss, the kind that no woman has ever needed interpreted since the dawn of the species. That kiss spelled out “MINE” in letters of flame as he teased her tongue with his.

Olivia squeaked at his possessive turn, but then melted against him, molding her body to his as best she could. Sometimes she hated Merrick’s territoriality, but in the right mood she found it quite arousing. Between her fear of what the Terrans were really after and her need for comfort, right now she was perfectly willing to let his inner Neanderthal have his way with her.

Her crotch met the bulge between his thighs, sending a silent scream of need through her entire body as he pulled her closer yet. Even through his breechclout and her attire the hard ridge of his erection stroked at her needy center, coaxing soft waves of damp desire from her.

She wanted desperately to peel off the scanty strands of fabric and take him right here and now, and to hell with who might see it.

As if reading her mind, he kissed her once more with lavish craving and then pulled away.

“We can do better than up against the ’car,” he said with a wink.

“Oh… okay.” She tried to stop it, but felt her lower lip pooch out into a tiny pout nevertheless.

He pressed his palm to the entry plate. The hatch slid silently forward to allow access to the pilot compartment. This model was designed to carry only two people, but it did so in unquestionable luxury.

With a gallant gesture, he suggested she should enter first. She scrambled over the side, leaving her backside exposed and vulnerable for a crucial second. A stinging, playful smack on her rump brought her head up sharply.

“Hey!”

“Sorry.” He laughed with all the impish sincerity of a toddler caught noshing on forbidden snacks between meals. “But it’s all your fault, you know.”

She glanced back at him, raising her eyebrows.

“Oh, really?”

“If your ass wasn’t so sexy, I wouldn’t want to touch it.”

She groaned, considering all the delectable ways he had touched her ass in the past. Another throb of heat shivered deliciously through her lower body.

“So where are we going?” she asked breathlessly.

“Away from it all,” Merrick assured her as she sank into the soft, cream-colored leather of the cabin. Once she was secured, he leapt the side like a great cat bounding at its prey and landed precisely in the pilot’s seat. In seconds the repulsor-mag engines whirred as they came online and the canopy slid closed with a faint, sturdy clicking sound.

She didn’t question his intentions. Olivia had known Merrick since their youngest school days, and the two had alternately driven each other crazy and away in the way of all young children with an attraction to each other and an aversion to cooties. Between the birthday parties, the summertime camping trips, and the press of education together, she had learned there was one immutable fact in the universe.

Wherever she went, whatever she did, she could trust Merrick with her life.

He glanced over at her, his eyes glinting purple with the reflected glow of the holo displays. “We’re not going far. I found a new spot the other day I think you’ll appreciate.” He glanced down, moving his hand so close to her own she could feel the warmth of his skin. Stroking his finger over a smooth metal control in the center console caused the lid to pop up unexpectedly.

She peered inside and saw a green glass bottle reclining wrapped in a soft chamois towel.