When Sparks Fly (14 page)

She sat up, her wide eyes riveted on his
body as he sat beside her. He lifted her legs and took her pants
fully off; then he lifted her onto his lap and kissed her. She felt
the prodding of his sex. After a moment he slid her down between
his legs so that she was kneeling on the carpet, facing him. His
eyes on hers, he scooted to the edge of the couch and cradled her
to him, her face against his hard abdomen.

Her breasts rested in his lap. Between them
rose…She shuddered, her damp thighs a reminder of how much pleasure
he’d given her.

How much he
still
gave her. Blue
leaned down and kissed the top of her head, her temple. He threaded
his fingers through her hair and stroked. Both soothing and
provocative, his touch made her ache again, made her squeeze her
legs together to try and soothe her desire.

Her first kiss to his stomach was almost
involuntary: she had to touch him. But as his hands stroked her
hair in tender encouragement, caressed her spine, she scattered shy
kisses all around on his hips and thighs, gently touched the dark
hair that grew there. Then, when he leaned back against the couch,
his head falling back and his hands going slack, then stroking her
shoulders, she carefully kissed swollen flesh covered by silky
skin. He was so hard! How?

His whisper sounded like a benediction as
she explored him with her fingers, all sensual curiosity. His head
moved from side to side as she stroked, found a rhythm.

“Harder,” he gasped. His hand closed over
hers, showed her what he liked, both harder and faster than what
she’d assumed. When his hand fell away, she kept up the rhythm,
watched his face, his breathing. Then he climaxed in her hand,
arching back and shouting with release.

Gem drew back, shaken and dazed. What had
just happened? What did it mean? Unsure what to do with the wetness
on her hand, she murmured something apologetic and headed for the
bathroom.

In a fog she washed her hands, trying not to
notice her naked chest even as spray from the faucet dampened it.
She still wore her torn shirt. The face in the bathroom mirror was
scared. She’d never done this before, but the smell of sex was an
unmistakable reminder that it had really happened.

Her eyes wide, she pulled the ragged edges
of her shirt closed as Blue came in. He was naked. He dampened a
washcloth and cleaned himself up. His eyes were brighter than
ever.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah.” She didn’t know what to say,
where to look.

“Hm.” He tossed the washcloth he’d used
toward the tub. “Do you want a shower?”

Confused, she shook her head.

His smile was lopsided. “I mean, with me.
It’ll be fun.”

Fun? Somehow, that had been the wrong word
to use. It sounded too…nonchalant. She shook her head again and
scuttled away, hurrying to her bedroom. There, with the door
locked, she discarded her torn shirt and quickly grabbed another.
She was unraveling and didn’t understand it.

A knock sounded at the door. “Gem? Are you
all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine. Go away.”

She bit her lip. She shouldn’t have added
the last part. It would only make matters worse.

Sure enough, he failed to leave. The silence
on the other side of the door was damning. A full minute went
by.

Then, “Open the door, Gem.” It was an order:
calm, but not to be ignored.

Gem knew the door wouldn’t last if he
decided to take it down. She didn’t want to have to repair it.

She didn’t meet his eyes as she let him in.
At least she’d had time to dress. Unwilling to sit on the bed, she
stood on unsteady legs and inspected her fingernails.

“You’re ashamed of this,” he said. It wasn’t
a question.

She took a deep breath. “I might have been
hasty. I apologize for…”

“I don’t.”

Her head whipped up. She saw that he’d
re-donned his jeans, but his shirt was bunched in one hand and his
feet were bare. His eyes glittered with the memory of what they’d
just shared. Gem closed her eyes against the fire it lit in
her.

“Just so we’re clear,” he added, “I intend
to do it again. Don’t bother saying you didn’t like it; I was
there. A man doesn’t like to give up what’s already been given to
him, and you’ve given yourself. You should’ve thought twice,
darlin’, but now your thinking’s done.”

His eyes flicked possessively over her; then
he turned and left.

Gem wrapped her arms around herself after
he’d gone. Shivers wracked her body, but it wasn’t from cold.

Blue was a man of his word.

Xera was coming home! Gem was torn between
relief at having her sister back and worry over the circumstances.
She’d been summoned by the police, both the local cops and the IC’s
narcotics division. Though Xera would be a source of personal
support, Gem also didn’t want her involved. She couldn’t imagine
that Xera knew anything relevant to the case.

Regardless of Gem’s fears, Xera would arrive
in three days. And their single conversation hadn’t gone well:

“What did you think you were doing, waiting
days
before you told me Brandy was in the hospital? All it
would have taken was a simple pin beam. Three minutes, Gem! Don’t
you think I deserve to know that people beat the hell out of my
sister?”

Gem held the communicator away from her ear
and winced. “Xera, you were in the middle of a flight.”

“I don’t care! Get that through your head,
Gem. If my family is harmed, I need to know. Why would any amount
of distance change how much I care? And this would never have
happened while I was home.”

Wondering what Xera thought she would have
done, Gem rolled her eyes. Her sister had always had this Amazonian
protective streak. Still, she tried to reassure her. “Look, Jaq and
Blue are helping.”

“Blue! That worthless drifter? As if he
could do anything I’d be remotely reassured by. All he does is eat
and try to crawl into your bed.”

Guilt strangled Gem. Thank God her sister
couldn’t see her face.

Xera took her silence in stride. “Look, this
is what I want to you to do. Stay close to home, close to Jaq. I
talked with him, and it sounds like he has the bar and the staff
under control. Keep Blue in the gardens, working on something
there; you don’t need him for a distraction. You’ve got the local
police and that Narc guy…Azul? Azor?...on quick connect,
right?”

Gem ground her teeth. This was an aspect of
Xera she hadn’t missed: her bossiness. “I’ve got things under
control, sis. Just get yourself home.”

“As fast as this ship can fly,” Xera agreed.
“But before I get there, is there anything else I should know?”

The urge to lie and deal with her sister
later was strong, but Gem knew she’d rather have Xera a solar
system away when she exploded. Yes, better the people on the other
end had to deal with Xera than Gem suffering her rage in person.
So, quickly she gave Xera the full scope of what they were dealing
with, including the background on Blue, Chief Blackwing’s
assessment of him, and the fact that he was now her bodyguard. She
could almost hear her sibling’s fury quivering over the
communicator’s pinbeam.

Surprisingly, Xera’s voice, when it came,
was tight and controlled. “Gem, I will be home in three days. When
I get there, we are going to make some serious changes. Until then,
don’t do a thing. I’m afraid of what you might screw up next.”

As soon as the communicator clicked dead,
Gem got a stomachache that wouldn’t go away.

Blue didn’t help. He wasn’t subtle about the
change between them, and the way he looked at her, all smoky heat,
made her weak.

Jaq noticed. The first time he saw, he
raised his brows, considered her, and smiled. Then he went back to
polishing shot glasses.

Gem knew her new manager noticed, too. Mr.
Rasheed often sent both her and Blue faintly suspicious looks, but
since they were never making out directly under his nose, he seemed
to reserve judgment. Gem did her best to remain professional around
him, and that seemed to settle his mind. She hired an assistant
whom she let Mr. Rasheed train. The time this saved was freed up
for her to visit and help out Brandy.

Brandy. Gem’s sister was a situation of her
own. The swelling was going down, but she still looked terrible.
Talking hurt, so they did little of that. Mostly Gem kept silent
company while Brandy watched comedy broadcasts.

Worry hounded Gem. Not only because Brandy
was so badly hurt, but because there was still the matter of her
involvement in the drug smuggling operation. That problem wouldn’t
go away simply because the girl was recuperating from assault. And
yes, she’d been blackmailed, but Gem could hardly believe the
lengths to which Brandy had gone in trying to protect her partners
in crime. It just wasn’t in character.

The unhappy thought occurred to Gem that
Jean Luc held something else over her sister’s head. Could the two
have been lovers? Gem grimaced. She couldn’t see it, herself, but
she also hadn’t seen this drug operation. Her sister was a
passionate person. Perhaps she’d been lonely. Maybe she’d thought
she’d never do better.

Gem didn’t want to bring it up, didn’t want
to deal with the pain and deception, but she also was never the
kind to let things fester. The only choice was to ask Brandy about
it.

Her sister’s eyes bugged out when the
question was posed. “No! How could you even…?
No!”
She
winced, for her healing jaw protested. Even with healing
accelerators, wounds didn’t vanish overnight.

Quickly raising her hands in defeat, Gem
tried to appease her sister before she hurt herself. “I’m sorry!
Really. I’m just trying to figure things out. It seems so
incredible to me that you’d let Jean Luc blackmail you for so long.
You’re not a weak person, Bran. I
know
that. Was there
something else he used against you? We need to get it out in the
open if there was. These secrets are killing us.”

A cynical look came into Brandy’s eyes. She
looked away for a long moment, as if thinking. When she met Gem’s
eyes again, it was with bitter self-disgust. Nonetheless, she
admitted: “Xera. I covered for her.”

Gem just stared.

“I walked in on her and a guy in bed
together last year. Jean Luc overheard us arguing about it.”

It was lucky Gem was sitting down. She
hadn’t had a clue.

A good thing, too, that she’d been unaware.
If word of this kind of indiscretion had leaked out, Xera would
have
had
to move off-planet. As all three sisters knew,
Polaris society didn’t tolerate people bedding down outside of
wedlock. Sure, if she’d married the guy, the furor would have
eventually settled down, but it didn’t sound as if it had been that
kind of alliance. Of course, Xera’s plan had always been to join
the Galactic Explorers, and Gem knew how stubborn she could be.

What burned most was, Gem had never met the
man. Had she? “Who…?”

Brandy shrugged. “Some drifter.”

A drifter? Oh, Xera had some gall, throwing
Blue in Gem’s face. At least Blue had proved he would…She frowned.
What? What had he proven? That he would stick around? Maybe for a
while. She didn’t know anything more than she had before he’d taken
her body so thoroughly, hopelessly confusing her.

She wrenched her thoughts back to Xera.
“Were there…any complications?”

Brandy sighed. “She says they didn’t get
that far; she just wanted to explore. They looked pretty naked to
me, so I don’t know if she was telling the truth.”

“Naked?” Gem repeated.

Brandy glared at her. “What do you want, a
book on it? Here’s what happened: They were in bed with the covers
over them. They were kissing. How graphic do you want me to get? He
wasn’t on top of her.” Brandy colored suddenly, obviously feeling
she’d gone too far.

Gem felt her own face burn and wanted to get
away from the topic. “Okay. That’s that. But about the other
situation: I assume she didn’t know you were covering for her? Dumb
question; of course she didn’t. She would never have allowed that.
So, how about I stop asking you questions? Your jaw must be
sore.”

She needed to think. No wonder Xera had
wanted off-planet so badly. She’d made an indiscreet choice and it
was haunting her. Not that Gem could point fingers. It seemed all
three of the Harrisdaughters were long overdue to settle down and
therefore making rash decisions.

Which circled her around to Blue. What was
his deal? She clearly believed that she needed to settle down to be
happy, needed to create her own little family. But making that
family wouldn’t be done with him. He wasn’t going to stay and she
knew that. That whole thing with him was an aberration she needed
to squelch. She’d been so controlled her whole life, and so maybe
she’d been due for a crack in the dike. She’d been under a lot of
pressure lately, and she’d chosen a dangerous release. She wasn’t
the only one to have done so.

No, she decided, she had to work on making
herself happy in her life. Until then, she’d just have to find a
better way to relieve the stress.

She had to remind herself that a healthy
release just couldn’t happen in Blue’s arms.

Chapter 11

“What are you doing?”

Gem pulled another weed before she looked up
into Blue’s furious face. “I’m reclaiming my sanity.”

“Is it worth dying over?”

It was late afternoon and she was in the
gardens behind the inn, hidden from casual observers by the tall
hedges. The flowering berry plants released sweet perfume into the
breeze. It had been a relaxing ten minutes until he’d stormed up,
breathing fire.

“Perhaps not, but it’s an improvement over
going crazy, pacing inside my room. I don’t take confinement
well.”

“Yeah? Then you’re going to love a coffin.
Come on.” He reached for her arm.