“Come on.” She held out her hand.
He took her proffered fingers in a light grip. “Where are we going?”
“To get what you came for.”
“What’s that?”
She grinned, pulling him away from the stairs, along the reception area to the wall at the end. Another muscle membrane in one of the alcoves parted.
“Me,” she said.
It was a bedroom, circular, with a curving window band looking into the sea, its polyp ceiling hidden by drapes of dark red fabric. In the middle of the floor was a crater filled with perfectly clear jelly and covered by a thin rubbery sheet, silk pillows lining the rim. And Ione was standing very close. They kissed. He could feel her shiver slightly as his arms went round her. Heat began to seep into his body.
“Do you know why I wanted you?” she said.
“No.” He was kissing her throat, hands sliding across her blouse to cup her breasts.
“I’ve watched you,” Ione whispered.
“Er—” Joshua broke off fondling her breasts, and stared at her, the dreamy expression.
“You and all those beautiful rich girls. You’re an excellent lover, Joshua. Did you know that?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Jesus. She’s watched me? When? The night before last had been pretty wild, but he didn’t remember anyone else joining them. Although knowing Dominique it was highly possible. Hell, but I must have been smashed out of my skull.
Ione tugged at his jacket’s sash, opening the front. “You wait for the girls to climax, you want them to enjoy it. You make them enjoy it.” She kissed his sternum, tongue licking the ridges of his pectoral muscles. “That’s very rare, very bold.”
Her words and deeds were acting like the devil’s own stimulant program, sending a sparkling phantom fire shooting down his nerves to invade his groin and send his heart racing. He felt his cock growing incredibly hard as his breathing turned harsh.
Ione’s blouse came open easily under his impatient hands, and he pushed it off her shoulders. Her breasts were high and nicely rounded, with large areolae only a shade darker than her tan. He sucked on a nipple, fingers tracing the sleek muscle tone of her abdomen, eliciting indrawn hisses. Hands clutched and clawed at the back of his neck. He heard his name being called, the delight in her voice.
They fell onto the bed together, the jelly-substance under the sheet undulating wildly. The two of them rode the turbulent waves which their own threshing limbs whipped up.
Entering her was sheer perfection. She was delectably responsive, and strong, sinuous. He had to use his neural nanonics to restrain his body, making sure he remained in control. His secret glee. That way he could wait despite her furious pleading shouts. Wait as she strained and twisted sensually against him. Wait, and provoke, and prolong . . . Until the orgasm convulsed her, and a jubilant screech burst out of her mouth. Then he cancelled the artificial prohibitions, allowing his body to spend itself in frenzied bliss, gloating at her wide-eyed incredulity as his semen surged into her in a long exultant consummation.
They watched each other in silence as the bed slowly calmed. There was a moment’s silent contemplation, then they were both grinning lazily. “Was I as good as all the others, Joshua?”
He nodded fervently.
“Good enough to make you stay in Tranquillity, knowing I’m available whenever you want?”
“Er—” He rolled onto his side, disquieted by the gleam in her eye. “That’s unfair, and you know it.”
She giggled. “Yes.”
Looking at her, sprawled out on her back, with her arms flung above her head, perspiration slowly drying, he wondered why it should be that girls were always so much more alluring just after they’d had sex. So blatantly rampant, probably. “Are you going to ask me to stay, slap down an ultimatum? You or the Lady Mac ?”
“Not stay, no.” She rolled over onto her side. “But I have other demands.”
The second time, Ione insisted on straddling him. It was easier on his feet, and that way he was able to play with her breasts for the whole time she rode him to their twinned climax. For their third encounter, he arranged the cushions into a pile to support her as she went down on all fours, then mounted her from behind.
After the fifth time Joshua really didn’t care that he’d missed the party. Dominique would probably have found herself someone else for the night, too.
“When will you leave?” Ione asked.
“It’ll take a couple of months to make Lady Mac spaceworthy again, maybe three. I placed an order for the patterning nodes right after the auction. A lot depends on how long it takes to deliver them.”
“You know Sam Neeves and Octal Sipika haven’t returned yet?”
“I know,” he said grimly. He had told his story a dozen times a day since he docked, especially among the other scavengers and spaceport crews. The word was out now. He knew they would deny it, maybe even say he attacked them. And he had no proof, it was their word against his. But it was his version which had been told first, his version which was accepted, which carried all the weight. Ultimately, he had money on his side as well now. Tranquillity didn’t have a death penalty, but he had filed a charge of attempted murder with the personality as soon as he’d docked; they ought to get twenty years. The personality certainly hadn’t challenged his story, which gave his confidence a healthy boost.
“Well, make sure you don’t do anything stupid when they do turn up,” Ione said. “Leave it to the serjeants.”
Tranquillity’s serjeants were an addition to the usual habitat servitor genealogy, hulking exoskeleton-clad humanoids that served as a police force.
“Yes,” he groused. An unpleasant thought intruded. “You do believe it was them who attacked me, don’t you?”
Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled. “Oh, yes, we checked as best we could. There have been eight scavengers lost in the past five years. In six cases, Neeves and Sipika were out in the Ring at the same time, and in each instance they auctioned a larger than usual number of Laymil artefacts after they docked.”
Despite the warm weight of her pressing down on him, that eerie chill returned. It was the casual way she said it, the supreme confidence in her tone. “Who checked, Ione? Who’s we?”
She giggled again. “Oh, Joshua! Haven’t you worked it out yet? Perhaps I was wrong about you, although I admit you have been distracted with other matters since we arrived.”
“Worked what out?”
“Me. Who I am, of course.”
The intimation of disaster rose through him like a tidal wave. “No,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know.”
She smiled, and raised herself on her elbows, head held ten centimetres above his, taunting. “I’m the Lord of Ruin.”
He laughed, a sort of nervous choke which trailed off. “Jesus, you mean it.”
“Absolutely.” She rubbed her nose against his. “Look at my nose, Joshua.”
He did. It was a thin nose, with a down-turned end. The Saldana nose, that famous trademark which the Kulu royal family had kept through every genetic modification for the last ten generations. Some said the characteristic had deliberately been turned into a dominant gene by the geneticists.
What she said was true, he knew it was. Intuition yammered in his mind, as strong as the day he found the Laymil electronics. “Oh shit.”
She kissed him, and sat back, arms folded in her lap, looking smug.
“But why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Jesus!” His arms waved about in exasperated agitation. “Why not let people know you’re running things? Show them who you are. Why . . . why carry on with this charade of the research project? And your father’s dead; who’s been looking after you for the last eight years? And why me? What did you mean, being wrong about me?”