gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap (15 page)

“Go,” she went on, making a flapping motion with her hands. “Get some sleep. I’m fine.”

Since he knew arguing the matter further would only irritate her, he replied, “Okay,” then headed on back to his cabin. Once there, he pushed the button to shut the door, and sat down on the bed. He fished the handheld out of his pocket, activating the text-to-speech function. “This is Derek Tagawa,” he said, hoping it wasn’t the middle of the night wherever their benefactor was located.

If it was, they were either a night owl or extremely quick on the trigger. Pale blue words appeared on the screen.
What is it, Dr. Tagawa?

He paused, then told himself,
Nothing ventured….
“I wanted to ask if you could locate someone for me.”

Do you think I haven’t done enough for you already, Dr. Tagawa?

Oh, hell. “That’s not it at all. But the only way for me to clear my name is to find the man who shot Theo Karras.”

The screen remained blank for a few seconds, and Derek began to wonder if their sponsor had signed off in disgust, both at his demands and the obvious fact that he was headed back to Gaia. Then,
This would have been in March 2463, correct?

He let out a breath. “Yes.”

I’ll look into and get back to you.

“Thank you,” Derek said, but there was no reply, and he didn’t dare ask for anything else.

But their benefactor was apparently on the case, which meant he thought he might finally be able to relax enough to get that sleep Cassidy had urged on him. He went to the small but rather elegant little bathroom, scrubbed his teeth and face, then returned to his cabin.

Now if he could just make himself stop thinking about her alone in the cockpit, curled up in that chair….

Every second took them closer to Gaia, and every nerve ending in Cassidy’s body was screaming at her to turn the ship around, to head into the null space between gravity wells so she could engage the subspace engines and get them the hell out of here. Someplace safe, someplace that didn’t have an extradition agreement with Gaia, like Eridani….

She knew she’d never do that, though. Once she gave her word, she didn’t take it back, and that included ferrying Derek Tagawa to Gaia, even if doing so meant the two of them most likely ending up dead.

Shifting in her chair, she attempted to find the position most conducive to falling asleep. Yes, she’d gotten a good chunk of it back on Triton, but, as she’d told Derek, they had no idea what they’d be facing on Gaia. Better to do it as rested as possible.

So she adjusted her position again, took a final glance at the displays on the console, then shut her eyes. Everything was fine…for now. The ship wouldn’t falter, would take them straight on to Gaia without her help if necessary. Not that she planned to sleep that long. Just a few hours. Just enough for her to get her edge back.

Taking a breath, she let her thoughts drift, let herself sink down into a blackness as deep as that which surrounded the ship.
Relax…breathe….

She seemed to float in the dark for a long time, feeling it like a soothing warmth against her skin, welcoming and soft as the blanket she’d loved to death as a child. Gradually, however, the air touching her grew colder and colder, until it was like ice, like the absolute zero of outer space. Her eyes fluttered open, but she couldn’t see anything. Only black, pressing like a weight against her eyeballs.

And then something seemed to hold her by the wrist, and she swung around, trying to see what it was that had grabbed her, and she saw that it was a corpse wearing the dark gray uniform of the GDF, face pale and bloated, eyes staring sightlessly at her. She tried to yank her arm away, but even though it was dead, it continued to hold on, was pulling her closer, drawing her toward the gaping maw of its mouth, its tongue black and swollen, somehow reaching out to her….

She screamed, and screamed again, even though she knew sound didn’t carry in a vacuum. And then a pair of strong hands were on her biceps, shaking her, Derek’s voice saying urgently, “Cassidy, wake up! Wake up!”

Her eyes snapped open, and she realized she was in the cockpit, one leg tucked under her, gone dead and asleep from the pressure of her weight. With a grimace, she slid it out, feeling the sharp prick of pins and needles as blood began to rush back into the limb.

“What was it?” Derek asked, worried dark eyes scanning her face.

“What do you think it was?” she snapped, angry at herself for losing control like that. “Just a nightmare.”

His eyebrows lifted. “It must have been a hell of a nightmare. You were screaming like you were being murdered.”

Maybe she had. It certainly felt that way. A shiver went over her, and she knotted her fingers together, willing the dregs of the nightmare away. “It’s no big deal. I guess I must be more stressed than I thought.”

No reply, only an expectant look as he stood there, rocking back slightly on his heels. For the first time she realized he was dressed for sleep, wearing baggy pajama bottoms and a tight-fitting T-shirt. His biceps bulged against the sleeves, and she swallowed and made herself look away. Why the hell did he have to be so…distracting?

“Okay,” she said, relenting when it became obvious that he had no problem with standing there and staring at her until she told him what the dream had been about. “I was in space, and something grabbed me.”

“Something?”

“A corpse wearing a GDF uniform,” she snapped. “Satisfied?”

Actually, he didn’t look satisfied at all. His jaw tightened, and his brows drew together as he regarded her carefully. “He would have killed you, given the chance.”

Intellectually, she knew that, knew she’d only done what she must in order to stay alive. Sure, killing someone was way outside her comfort zone, but she’d kept telling herself that those pilots had sure as hell intended to kill her and Derek, and stealing their ship was the only way to survive. And maybe her conscious mind had accepted that “ends justify the means” argument, while the whole time her subconscious had been saving up a huge ration of guilt, just waiting to launch it at her at the first opportune moment.

“I guess it was,” she replied, giving what she knew was a very half-hearted shrug. All she wanted was for him to stop staring at her with those worried eyes, as if he feared this was just the beginning, that she was going to fall apart when he needed her most. “I don’t like that I had to kill anyone, even though I was only doing what had to be done. I guess it just…caught up with me.”

He reached out to her then, to lay what he no doubt thought was a comforting hand on her shoulder. But something about feeling the warmth of his flesh through the thin fabric of her shirt seemed to touch off a spark within her, something that seemed to shimmer and dance along every nerve ending. Although she hadn’t intended to, she sucked in a breath, the gasp sounding hideously loud in the close confines of the cockpit.

For some reason she’d thought he’d pull his hand away then. He didn’t, though. His fingers tightened on her shoulder for the briefest of seconds, then slid down to her arm. It was a caress. Cassidy knew there could be no other word for it. She also knew she should pull away, shouldn’t let him continue to touch her. The situation was complicated enough already — did she really intend to make it worse?

Raising her eyes to his, she pulled in another breath. He was watching her with that same careful gaze she’d come to recognize, but beneath it was a steady, hot glow, one of desire. There was no mistaking it this time, no pushing it away and trying to call it something else. She could tell he was waiting for her to react. He wouldn’t force this. The final decision would have to come from her.

Before she realized precisely what she was doing, she was pushing herself up out of the captain’s seat, standing so she was only a scant few inches away from him. He smelled good, she realized, of soap and warm skin, and as she inhaled that enticing aroma, she knew she was lost. She could blame it on stress, on weariness, on being so damn tired of feeling alone, but she knew it was more than that, more than she wanted to acknowledge.

And then she was tilting her face up toward his, and he was bending down to her, and oh, God, that was his mouth on hers, soft and strong at the same time, and his tongue, tasting of peppermint. She let out some kind of incoherent sound, half sigh, half groan, and she was pressing against him, feeling the hardness of his muscles, feeling the hardness of something else through the thin fabric of his pajama pants. Heat flickered in her core, and she knew she wanted him in her, wanted it more than anything she could remember wanting. It seemed this desire had flared up out of nowhere, like a nuclear explosion, and she could only wrap her arms around him and pull him more closely against her, needing to feel as much of him as possible.

In that moment, he lifted his mouth from hers and asked, his voice hoarse, “Is this — is this something you want? Because I didn’t expect this to happen — ”

“I want it,” she murmured, and brushed her hand against the bulge in his pants. “Believe me. I know it’s crazy, but I don’t care.”

“Neither do I,” he said, bending to kiss her again.

Ah, the delicious sensation of his mouth pressed against hers! No one had ever kissed her like this before, so full of need, of desire, with an intensity that seemed to push all other concerns to the side.

She didn’t want to pull away from him, but there were other places on board this ship far better suited to the kind of activity she had in mind. So she ended the kiss, but gently, then took his hand and guided him to the largest cabin, the one he’d said should be hers. She’d been so focused on getting the ship away from Triton that she hadn’t even come back here to explore yet, but what she saw now pleased here — a decent-sized stateroom with a bed big enough for two, the walls a soft gray-blue, a small table up against a wall. The bag containing the items she’d brought away from Triton was sitting on that table, which meant the bed was blessedly unobstructed.

If she paused now, she knew she might lose her nerve, so she didn’t stop, drew Derek toward the bed, sank down on it and pulled him down with her, feeling the weight of his body on top of hers, the hardness of his arousal against her thigh. He was kissing her again, but at the same time she felt his hands moving over her, finding the fasteners for her shirt, pulling it loose from the waistband of her trousers. Then it was his fingers against the bare flesh of her stomach, a touch that ratcheted up the heat within her, causing her to wrap her legs around him, pull him closer. It was as if she needed to have every inch of her body touching every inch of his, and so she didn’t protest when he undid her bra, pushed it up and over her breasts, caught hold of both it and her shirt and pulled them away. At the same time, she grasped his T-shirt and yanked it over his head.

God, she wanted to groan aloud at the sight of him, at the hard muscles of his chest, his flat stomach, all that wonderful smooth golden-brown skin. How had he managed to stay in that kind of shape during his stint at the MaxSec? She’d have to ask him later…if she could hold on to the thought that long. Right now her body was screaming for him, for all of him. It had been way too long since she’d been with anyone, let alone someone like Derek.

Actually, she’d never been with someone like him. He was as far outside her experience as daily life on Eridani. But you know what they say about new experiences….

His hands were on her pants, undoing them as well, pulling them away. Somehow her underwear seemed to go with them. Not that she minded. One less obstruction between her and the thing she wanted more than anything right now. Her own fingers were pulling at his pajama bottoms, and then he was free, and she could see how much he wanted her, how big he was, and she didn’t stop to think, didn’t wait, only ran her hand down his shaft, feeling the smooth skin, the hot, heavy weight of his need.

He moaned, and she continued to stroke him, even as he shifted so his mouth could close on her nipple, his tongue moving in slow, teasing circles. She hadn’t been expecting that, and gasped, but didn’t release her hold on him, not even when one of his hands moved downward, found the wet heat at her core.

This from a man who claimed he’d never had much time for women? Cassidy wasn’t sure she believed that, since he seemed to know exactly where to touch her,
how
to touch her. Slow and purposeful, fingers curling into her so she leaned her head back against the pillows and felt the pressure building within, the hot waves of arousal pulsing closer and closer together, until at last they coalesced into an explosion of pleasure, one that rippled all through her, aftershocks leaving her limbs trembling.

She must have let go of Derek while in the throes of ecstasy, because she felt him move against her, felt him heavy and thick against her inner thigh. So, so close….

In ages past, she might have had to worry about getting pregnant, or catching a disease. But she’d had all her shots, and she knew Derek, coming from MaxSec, where he’d been kept in solitary, would also be clean. It was so easy, then, for him to slide into her, for there not to be a single second of hesitation or doubt. Her hand moved up to glide along his neck, then run through his thick hair, even as her other hand slid down, feeling the muscles in his firm ass flex as he thrust into her.

And then all she could think about was how good he felt, how he fit into her so well, how they seemed to know exactly how to move together, to rock into one another as if they’d done this a hundred times before. His breathing sped up, but she could almost feel him trying to hold back his orgasm, to make sure he didn’t reach climax before she did. She wanted to tell him that it was all right, that he’d already made her come, and he probably needed the release even more than she did. The words seemed to get caught in her throat, however, and all she could do was keep rocking him into her, feeling that pulsing warmth at her center once again, and she knew he wouldn’t have to wait very long, wouldn’t have to restrain himself for much longer.