gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap (16 page)

The orgasm struck her with the force of a terrestrial hurricane, and she screamed as she came, letting it all go, not caring how much noise she made. Derek seemed to take that as his signal, because he sped up, driving into her, his own breathing quickening, coming in harsh rasps, and then she could feel it hit him as well, feel him drive into her one last time as his own orgasm shuddered through him. He moaned, fine jaw clenched, and then he collapsed onto her as if he didn’t have the strength to hold himself up any longer.

Not that she minded. She liked the feel of his weight, liked feeling his slightly sweat-slick body pressed against hers. He felt real, and close, and she knew then that she never wanted him to leave.

After a long, heavy silence, he pushed himself off her and rolled over onto his side. One hand reached out to brush a stray lock of hair away from her face.

This was the moment when all the men she’d known would climb out of bed, using the excuse that they needed to get cleaned up, and hey, it had been fun, and they’d be in touch. Not that they ever called, and Cassidy found she didn’t much care.

Now, though, she found herself holding her breath, wondering what Derek was going to do, what he was going to say. True, they were on a spaceship; there was a limit to how much distance he could put between the two of them. Even so, she braced herself for the inevitable rejection.

It didn’t come. He watched her, dark eyes thoughtful. Then he said, “You’re beautiful, Cassidy.”

Under normal circumstances, she would have laughed, or made a sarcastic comment about his eyesight. But there was something so achingly raw in the way he looked at her, the way he seemed to take in every aspect of her face and body, that she knew she couldn’t make the standard response. It would wound him. He’d opened himself up to her and told her about the rift with his father, had been honest and real, and she knew she had to accept the gift he’d given her, not throw it back in his face.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, although she couldn’t help adding, “No one’s ever said that to me before.”

His eyebrows lifted. “And here I thought bad eyesight had been all but eradicated.”

There was nothing to do but laugh then, so she chuckled, even as she shook her head. “Let’s just say that most of the men I’ve known haven’t been real big on giving compliments.”

“I don’t like to think of it as giving you a compliment, only stating the obvious truth.”

What could she say to that? Cassidy couldn’t think of a good reply, so she settled for leaning over and giving him a quick kiss. That seemed safe enough. Just a light touch of her mouth to his, enough to show that she appreciated his remark, even if she wasn’t quite ready to go another round.

It seemed that he had other ideas, however, since he reached out and drew her close, deepening the kiss, even as she felt him hardening against her and knew he was ready even if she wasn’t.

Okay, scratch that. Her body was responding, heat moving through her all over again, and she pressed against him, let out a gasp as his fingers began to stroke her once again, all heat and fire and aching need. Then she was on top of him, riding him, and though usually she would shut her eyes in ecstasy, she wanted to keep them open, wanted to look at him, drink in every plane and angle of his face, the sculpted curves of his arms and shoulders and chest, the utter perfection of him. He was gazing at her as well, and their eyes locked, energy seeming to pulse between them, crackling with sparks, until she twined her fingers with his and held on while the orgasm racked through her, felt him spasm in her as well.

She collapsed next to him, panting, spent and happy and tingling in every pore. Now was the time when she should get up, go to the bathroom and clean herself off, put her clothes back on. True, they were far, far away from Gaia, and the proximity alerts would give them ample warning, but she should still be in the cockpit, monitoring everything, making sure nothing would go wrong.

All those were things she should be doing, but weariness came over her like a yawning dark wave, and she felt into it, let it suck her under. And then she was gone before she even realized what was happening.

CHAPTER TEN

He watched her sleep, her dark hair mussed against the pillow. Some time earlier he’d pulled the covers up around her, and she’d stirred slightly but hadn’t woken. Now was the best time for her to rest, while they were still out in the kingdom of the gas giants. Traffic would begin to pick up once they were inside the orbit of Jupiter, but he wasn’t sure how long that would be. Some hours, even in this ship, so much faster than Cassidy’s lost
Avalon
.

Although he knew he should be trying to sleep as well, he couldn’t help taking this stolen moment, to gaze on her when she was finally relaxed and unguarded, the barriers she kept up at all times relinquished in slumber. She’d chuckled when he’d called her beautiful, but she was, even if she didn’t want to acknowledge that truth about herself. Delicate as porcelain but stronger than titanium. A while earlier he’d thought he’d never met a woman like her before, and nothing in that estimation had changed. A mixture of toughness and trust, keen-edged intelligence and sudden, shocking vulnerability.

Years ago he’d realized he probably would never settle down, not the way his sister had. He was all right with that, as he loved his work, felt privileged to be making a difference in the world. Now, though, as he stared down at Cassidy Evans, his mind began to explore, ever so delicately, the possibility that there might be something more than the work, something more than the sterile days that had formerly comprised his life.

And that was crazy, wasn’t it? Because they were heading toward Gaia, and if he really cared about having a future with Cassidy, he should be waking her up and telling her to redirect their course, to get them the hell out of this system and very far away from anyone who had a vested interest in making sure Derek Tagawa was caught and silenced…permanently.

Somehow he knew he wouldn’t do that. It was a risk, and a terrible one, but he didn’t want to live his life in hiding, as someone else. He’d worked too hard to be where he was. Cassidy knew the risk she was taking and had still agreed to come along, had understood that some things were more important than mere survival. Although he didn’t agree with his father on a lot of things, personal honor was one ideal they both shared. Letting a lie live on, and allowing the people who’d killed Theo to get away with it, was not something Derek would allow himself to accept.

So he lay down next to Cassidy, moving slowly and quietly, and let himself fall into sleep, knowing that he wasn’t alone in this, that somehow, impossibly, he’d found the one person he could trust to have his back.

The beeping of a handheld woke her. Cassidy opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling of the cabin, taking a second to orient herself. Besides her, Derek stirred, but his eyelids remained shut.

She glanced around the cabin, didn’t see the device making the noise, then remembered hers had been shoved in the pocket of her trousers. Slipping out of bed, she located the discarded pants half-flung across a chair, but when she pulled out her handheld, it was blank and silent.

The beeping continued from a spot on the floor, buried underneath Derek’s T-shirt and underwear. The only thing left were his pajama bottoms, and, sure enough, when she lifted those and reached inside the pocket, she could feel the handheld vibrating against her palm.

So why had he felt the need to carry the thing everywhere he went, even in his pajama pants?

Because he didn’t want to miss a call.

The phone was locked, and she didn’t have the code, so all she could do was cross over to the bed and nudge it with one knee. “It’s for you,” she said, extending the phone as Derek opened one bleary eye and blinked at her.

That bleariness seemed to disappear when he realized what she was holding. He sat up and reached to take the phone from her.

“Were you expecting a call?” she asked, wondering what exactly he’d been hiding from her.

“Not this soon,” he replied, and plucked the handheld from her fingers, then entered the code to unlock it.

“Anyone I know?”

He must have caught the edge to her tone, because he said at once, “It’s from our sponsor, benefactor…whatever you want to call him. Or her.”

That information did make Cassidy relax slightly, although she wished he’d told her that he’d had further contact with that elusive person. “Then I guess you’d better answer it.”

A smile quirked around the edges of his mouth, one that faded as he read the message. “You’re certain?”

Because of the way he held the device, Cassidy couldn’t see the letters on the screen. All she could see was the tightening of Derek’s jaw, the way his mouth thinned as he read whatever their sponsor had just sent to him.

“Thank you,” he said then. “We’ll follow up.”

That must not have been the end of it, because his brow puckered as he read the next message. “We will. Thank you again for everything.” And then he did tap the screen to end the exchange, right before he glanced over at her, eyes gleaming.

“We’ve got him.”

“Him who?” she asked.

Derek placed the handheld on top of the covers and then pushed himself out of bed. “The man who killed Theo Karras.”

It turned out that they’d slept for a good six hours, and so Cassidy checked the cockpit and the instruments to make sure everything was still operating normally, and then took a quick shower before relinquishing the stall to Derek. Although he might have liked to share that shower with her, the cramped facilities made such an activity pretty near impossible.

But before they did any of that, she’d asked for the details on his previous interactions with their sponsor, and so he’d showed her the logs of the two brief conversations they’d had. She’d read through them quickly, then nodded and said quietly, “Thank you.”

Maybe she had expected him to conceal them from her, but really, he had nothing to hide. He hadn’t mentioned them earlier because he had so little to tell her. Also, he thought with a grin, they’d both gotten a bit distracted.

She didn’t look distracted now, sitting in the captain’s seat, scanning the readouts on the console, hazel eyes also flicking occasionally to the huge window that showed utter black all around them, although far off to the left was a pale orange disc that she’d informed him was Jupiter.

“Everything all right?” he asked, settling himself into the copilot’s chair.

“As far as I can tell. We got a transmission from Ganymede, checking our registry since we were passing in close enough that they cared who we were.”

That didn’t sound good. “And?”

“And they sent us on our merry way and told me to have a nice day.” Finally she turned toward him, and he was gratified to see that her eyes were dancing with amusement. “So whoever put together those fake I.D.s for us seems to have known what they were doing. They don’t mess around on Ganymede — their people are good. They would’ve smelled a badly faked registry a million kilometers off.”

Some tension he hadn’t even known he was carrying in his shoulders seemed to ease itself slightly. “So we’re good to go.”

“As far as I can tell.” Her expression sobered. “Since it doesn’t look like anyone intends to pursue us in the near future, maybe you can tell me what your plan is.”

This was the part he’d been dreading. The closer they got to Gaia, the more concrete and solid this chance at retribution became. And after receiving the latest transmission from their benefactor, one he hadn’t yet shared with Cassidy because it had come in while he was in the shower, he was worried, as it seemed part of the plan would rest heavily on her.

“The man involved, Conrad Waite, is actually an operative under contract to MonAg.”

Some of the color left her cheeks at the mention of the megacorp that had its fingers in basically every facet of the Consortium government, but she said steadily, “That a fact?”

“Yes. He’s been in their employ for some fifteen years. Apparently handles a lot of their dirty work, but our contact said we didn’t need to concern ourselves with that. Records show he was in Hunan Province during the right timeframe, although he left immediately afterward and went to South Africa.”

“Doing something equally dirty, I assume.”

Her wry tone made Derek want to smile, but he kept his voice even as he replied, “I’d say that was a safe assumption. Anyway, for the past three months he’s been working out of Chicago, although our sponsor didn’t give me any details.”

“Chicago, huh?” She appeared to consider that prospect. “I always wanted to try deep-dish pizza.”

A tradition the former Windy City clung to, even though so much else of the world had changed. “We’ll try to squeeze that in. The interesting thing is that this Waite seems to consider himself something of a ladies’ man.”

Cassidy picked up on that right away. “And that’s where I come in.”

“I know it’s asking a lot, but I think you have the best chance of getting close to him. Obviously, I have to stay far away, since he’ll recognize me on sight.”

“It’s not a problem.” Again that little gleam of amusement came and went in her eyes. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to meet men in bars.”

Derek lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really.” She tapped her fingers on the armrest of her chair and met his gaze in that forthright way he liked so much. “Do you have a problem with that, Dr. Tagawa?”

“Not at all,” he said. “But this isn’t some shuttle jockey looking to pass the time in Luna City. He’s a cold-blooded killer.”

Not even a blink. “I know that, Derek. But he won’t know me from Eve, and if he has as high an opinion of himself as your contact seems to think he does, then he’ll be like every other guy out there…thinking with his dick.”

“So that’s your opinion of me?” Derek tried to sound arch, but he could feel a smile teasing around the corners of his mouth despite his best efforts to suppress it.

Wearing a matching grin, Cassidy got to her feet and stood on her tiptoes so she could press her lips against his cheek. “I like the way you think with your dick. It’s powerful and responsive…just like your brain.”