Fallon frowned. That was exactly what was tailing her. “Yeah ...”
“Come home now!”
Fallon’s frown deepened. “Now?”
“Now, Izzie. I’m serious. The Imperium pays those guys to take criminals, and the Fallen Star is high on the criminal collection list!”
Fallon winced. “Yeah, well, being a
good
professional thief has its disadvantages ...”
“Izzie, if they get you, you are not coming back!”
Fallon snorted. “Relax, Peter, there isn’t any place I can’t break out of --”
“Izzie! I’m not playing here! If they get you, you won’t come back, because you won’t
want
to come back; you’ll want to stay with them!”
Fallon rolled her eyes. “Peter, you know nothing can hold me.”
“Izzie, I mean it. Get down here! Don’t make me use the codes to
get
you down here.”
She gasped. He was actually threatening her with the command codes? “Peter!”
“Come home now, Izzie!”
“Okay, okay, Peter, I’ll come home, but I don’t want him following me down, so let me lose him first.”
“Don’t bother. Let him follow; I’ll take care of him. Follow the map, and get your little ass down here right now.”
She sighed.
Damned nanny.
You’d think she was still a skinny ten-year-old with scraped knees running through drainpipes from the bigger kids. “Okay, Peter. I’m on my way.”
“Good. Go!” The line died.
Fallon rolled up her wire and tucked the tap back into her boot while scanning the information she’d just downloaded. She wasn’t anywhere near where she was supposed to be. She groaned.
Piss
... She hadn’t thought she had drifted that far off course. She was going to have to backtrack.
A low, masculine chuckle echoed in the alley. “Dead-end, thief.”
Her heart slammed in her throat.
Blood and Fate, not again?
She turned sharply to look behind her. Her pursuer was little more than a silhouette of broad-shouldered moving blackness, yet he filled the alley with his intimidating presence.
Damn it!
She’d known he was close, but she hadn’t thought he was that close! How, by burning fury, was he finding her so fast?
The stupid, stubborn brute ...
She turned her back on him and set her gloved hands on the steel wall, but it was too slippery with night condensation to climb.
Shit, shit, shit!
“You are out of options, thief.” His chuckle echoed at her back. “Yield, and save yourself some grief.”
She backed up against the steel wall and dropped into a fighter’s crouch with her fists raised. “I’m not down yet!”
“But you will be.” He stepped across a small beam of light that cut through the misty darkness to caress his sculpted, overlapping black body armor. It shimmered with oily iridescence, as though made of midnight rainbows. Silver gleamed in the frost white of his hair. Shadows deepened the pale and brutally handsome lines of his high cheekbones and strong jaw. Pairs of silver rings glittered in the lobes of his pointed ears, accentuating the decorative cuts along the lower arches. The long tail of his severe braid fell well past his broad shoulders and swung at his narrow waist as he approached. “You will go down, and you will yield.”
Fallon felt her pulse beat in her throat. He was fully armored, and all she had was a thin layer of battered leather. Fate and damnation, she didn’t want to fight him again, but she didn’t have a whole lot of choice. “You haven’t caught me yet.”
“Oh, no?” His white brows rose over bright, amused sapphire-blue eyes. Feline green-gold reflected in their depths. His full lips curved into a cruel smile. “Have it your way.” The points of his canines gleamed. “But there’s only one way out ...” He opened his arms, his hands pointedly empty of the weapons she knew he carried, daring her to get past him.
She took the dare in a flurry of fists and feet.
The exchange of fists, kicks, and curses was vicious and short. He trapped her arm and grappled her into a chokehold with both of her wrists wedged up to the center of her back, wrapped in one large paw.
She was just too damned tired.
“This hunt is over, thief.” His breath was harsh and hot against her ear. “You lose.”
Fallon sucked a breath past the armored arm jammed across her windpipe.
Bloody Fate, he has a tight grip.
Smart move on his part; she was very limber. If he gave her the smallest increment, she would wiggle free. She arched her spine, coming up on her toes to relieve the ache. Not that it did much good. He was more than a head and a half taller, and his shoulders were twice hers in width.
He didn’t look nearly this big when he introduced himself in the bar.
But then, he hadn’t been wearing pointy black armor, either.
She sucked air past his chokehold. “Sobehk, you are cutting off the circulation in my arms.”
“Oh, really?” Sobehk’s chuckle made the hair on her arms rise. “That’s too bad, Fallon. Or should I say, Isabeau Torne Fallon?”
Fallon froze. He knew her whole name? Where, by fury, had he heard that? Not even her boss knew more than her handle!
“Do you yield?” His voice was a sinister purr in her ear. “Or do I need to break something?”
Damn it, she couldn’t afford the time off to heal a broken arm. “All right, fine, I yield. So now what?”
“Now, you go down.” His foot hooked hers and she fell to her knees. He dropped down on one knee with her, keeping her wrists jammed tight up against her spine, with his arm snug around her throat. “And you stay down.”
Fallon hissed to keep from yelping and arched back sharply. The uneven pavement dug into her knees, and both shoulders were painfully close to dislocation. “Take it easy on the arms, you big brute. I’m not a marine cyborg!” She was robotically augmented for agility, not power.
“No, but you are one slippery thief.” His hand tightened on her wrists. “I’m not taking any chances with losing you again.”
She bit back an escaping whimper. “Yeah, I’m a thief. What did you expect? This is a smuggling outpost -- everybody’s a thief.” She wriggled her fingers, but all she could feel was his damned body armor. It had to be some kind of titanium alloy; he moved like it didn’t weigh more than paper, but there wasn’t a drop of give to it. She hadn’t been able to land a single effective blow. Her foot was still bruised from that last kick she’d aimed at his kidneys.
This really sucks ...
Damn it! She didn’t have time for this shit. She set her teeth. “Look, whatever you intend to do to me -- beat me, fuck me, or whatever ... Can you hurry up and get it over with? I have shit to get done.”
His arm tightened on her throat. “What? Do you have a quota or something, thief?”
She turned her head slightly and sucked in a small breath past his chokehold. “Or something ...” Blood and Fate, yeah, she had a quota; everyone on this blasted outpost had some kind of quota to fill. She was lucky that she was damned good at filling hers, because this stupid game of hide-and-seek had taken far too much of her productive time. “Just do it, all right?”
“I’ll get to it when I’m damned good and ready.” Sobehk’s voice rumbled in a deep growl. “If you wanted a quick end to this, you should have yielded two days ago when I caught you the first time.”
Fallon snorted. “You could have given up two days ago when I got away the first time.”
“Too bad for you.” Sobehk actually chuckled. “Once I start a hunt, I finish it.” His long teeth caught the lobe of her ear in a tender bite. “You shouldn’t have picked me for a target.”
Fallon tilted her head away from his mouth. “You shouldn’t have pissed me off!”
He nipped at her exposed throat. “What? Don’t you like sex?” He made a sound that might have been a growl, but it sounded a lot closer to an actual feline purr.
Fallon shivered in spite of herself. “Sure, I like sex -- with guys that aren’t assholes!” She tried to twist, even a little, but his grip on her arms was far too tight. “Look, grabbing people and kissing them within seconds of stating your name is not the way to pick up women.”
“Is that so?” He purred right into the curve of her ear. “Then why did you kiss me back?”
Fallon felt her face heat. She
had
kissed him back; Sobehk was a damned good kisser. “So I kissed you, big fat hairy deal. That didn’t mean I wanted to have sex in the middle of a crowded bar.”
“Are you sure?” His deep chuckle curled straight down into her gut. “I didn’t hear any complaints until after I had your bare tit in one hand and you were ready to cum on my other.”
“Of course not!” Fallon scowled as her cheeks flushed with more heat. “I was flat down on the table with your tongue shoved down my throat. I had to bite you to get your mouth off mine so I could
tell
you to stop.”
“I thought you were just being affectionate.” His voice practically purred ... then the sound drifted into a growl. “Until you took off on me.”
Fallon pitched her voice as sweet as sugar. “And I thought you were just being a perverted asshole, which is
why
I took off on you.”
Sobehk stiffened and his voice rumbled deep in his chest. “Is that why you took my turbo glider?”
“Well, yeah.” She winced under the increased pressure. If he gripped her any tighter, he was going to break her arm. “You pissed me off!”
Sobehk relaxed slightly and barked out a laugh. “You were pissed because I almost made you cum right there in front of everybody.”
Fallon ground her teeth. She remembered only too well exactly how close -- and how fast -- he had brought her to the trembling edge of orgasm. He was damned attractive, in a big, scary kind of way, and he was really good with his hands and his mouth. She had spent over an hour with her fingers in her wet flesh, trying to ease the burning hunger he had stirred in her before she had fled. The smug bastard ... “And you’re pissed now because it took you three days to catch me.”
“Fuck, yeah, I’m pissed! Because of you, I’m way behind schedule. But I’ve got you now, and you’re gonna pay for holding me up -- with your ass.” The brute was grinning; she could tell by his voice.
She scowled. “What, do
you
have a quota to fill?”
“Not anymore.” Sobehk’s voice purred with innuendo. “Your nipples are hard. I think you like being caught.”
Her nipples
were
hard, and it pissed her off even more. “I think you like being a bastard.”
“Oh, I do. I love being a bastard to slippery little thieves who really need to have their asses smacked for taking things that don’t belong to them.”
“I don’t know why you bothered chasing me; you got your glider back the next day!” Damn it, she couldn’t reach anything with her fingers ...
“I’m bothering because I’ve been rock hard since that night in the bar -- and I fully intend to do something about it.” He dropped his arm, releasing her throat, and slammed a hand between her shoulder blades, shoving her face down onto the pavement. “And your tight little ass is gonna feel really sweet around my dick as I empty my balls in it.”
Fallon had to turn her head or breathe concrete.
What? Does he plan to ass-fuck me? Bloody Fate, I hope not!
When he’d had her lying flat down on the bar’s table she had felt one monster of an erection pressing against her stomach. She honestly didn’t think she could fit something that big up her butt. “Hey, I have a perfectly good pussy!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get that, too.” His grip shifted on her wrists as he reached for something she couldn’t see. “Hold still.”
“What are you doing?” Metal closed around her wrists. He was cuffing her? A shimmer went through her internal technology.
Force-cuffs? Where by burning fury did he get a set of those?
They were tightly regulated by the Imperium; not even the local cops had them. She ground her teeth. The cuffs were tuned to her augmentations. As long as those things were on her wrists, her arms were his to command.
She licked her dry lips. But her feet were still free, and her tools were in her boots. If she could get to her tools, she could tap into her own augmentations and release herself. It would be difficult as bleeding fury with her hands pinned behind her, but she’d done it once before; she could do it again. Her gaze flicked to the male practically on top of her.
Gimme one deep breath of space and I’m gone, you big bastard.
“Look, if you’re taking me to enforcement for the theft of your glider, I’ll be out in a matter of minutes. I’m on the payroll.”
“I figured as much; you have some expensive body augmentation.” His hands shifted on her arms. “Keep your wrists together.”
She wriggled, but her wrists remained pinned together at her back, imprisoned by his order and her own augmentations.
Bloody Fate, I hate these things ...
At least her arms weren’t being jerked out of their sockets.
“Much better.” He grabbed her by the short hair at the back of her neck and sat back, pulling her upright with him.
Fallon winced as she came up on her knees. “Must you rip my hair out by the roots?”
He pulled her head back and glared down at her. “If I were you, I’d be more worried about my ass than my hair, thief. Do you have any idea who you robbed?”
Fallon leveled a glare the big brute. “Yeah, a big-mouthed, white-haired pervert with pointy ears and pointy teeth that likes to have sex with total strangers in public places.”
Wearing decorative and obviously expensive black body armor and carrying regulation force-cuffs ...
She eyed him with suspicion. “Are you some kind of Imperial agent?”
“I’m not an Imperial anything.” Sobehk’s eyes narrowed. “I’m a
Mahf’dhyt,
you idiot.”
She blinked. Was that supposed to mean something? She arched a brow at him. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“As a matter of fact ... Yes.” He bared his teeth in a triumphant smile, and the heart of his blue eyes reflected feline green-gold. “I’m a Skeldhi enforcer, also known as a hunter, and you’ve just joined the ranks of Skeldhi
rehkyt
.”
He was a
cop?
Her neck hairs rose in alarm. “I ... what?”