DeadlyPleasure (7 page)

“I didn’t leave school just to play with the Felinia. I was
coming down to Level 18 to find you,” the child answered.

“That is very sweet, and I appreciate your honesty,” the
female responded, “but, Emylie—”

Forty-Two snapped straight.

[GU priority-one target located commence action]

Activating the molecular disruptor built into his left
forearm, he stepped out of Thanatos’ bedroom.

And locked his stare on the bio-weapon. “M.E.Lii.”

* * * * *

Her mouth slid up and down his erection, her tongue lapping
at the curve of his balls as she deep-throated him.

Corvan groaned, the thick sound vibrating up his throat and
past his lips. He fisted the sheet, focusing on the heat coiling low in the pit
of his stomach. It spread out, a rolling wave of twisting tension starting at
his cock and burning its slow, wonderful way through the rest of his body.

With each wet caress of Falynn’s mouth, with each tiny nip
of her teeth on the throbbing head of his cock, with each not-so-gentle squeeze
of his sac with her fingers, his climax drew closer.

Lifting one hand to the back of her head, he tangled his
fingers in her hair, reveling in the feel of the silken strands. He clenched
his hand into a fist, knowing Falynn enjoyed the erotic pain the action
brought. She was such a creature of contrasts—the most proficient, talented
natural killer he knew, yet a woman needing to be worshipped and cherished at
the same time. A woman needing to know she had worth and place.

And she did.

For him, she always had.

Her tongue lapped the base of his shaft, flicked at the
swell of his balls before she slowly, slowly, slowly raised her head. His cock
slipped from her mouth, the sex-den’s cool artificial air chilling its heated
length.

A shiver rippled through him, turning his already hard
nipples to rock-hard tips of flesh.

Falynn snaked up his body, pinching one with her finger and
thumb, capturing the other with her teeth. She bit the small pebble, watching
his face through the tumbled strands of her bangs, smiling when he sucked in a
sharp breath. “Oh Fri’ac.”

“Does that mean you want me to stop?”

The sheer cheekiness in her husky voice made his already
aching cock spasm with carnal hunger. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Well, when you put it that way…”

With a quick blurring of her right arm, she grabbed the fist
in her hair, drove her thumbnail into the pressure point between his thumb and
index finger and rammed his hand flat to the mattress beside his head, raising
herself up onto her knees to hover above his stiff shaft.

“Hey!” He gave her an indignant glare. “What do you think
you’re doing?”

She grinned at him from her lofty position. “You said,
‘don’t you fucking dare’. I dared.” Lowering herself slightly, she brushed the
velvet softness of her pussy lips against his straining, bulbous cockhead. “Now
what are you going to do?”

He grinned back. “This.”

He locked his legs around her calves and rolled them both to
the side, stabbing his cock into her cunt as he did so and driving it all the
way in.

* * * * *

The bio-weapon jumped at his voice, humanlike dark-brown
eyes snapping wide before its companion—a short, plump female with a soft body
and sharp eyes—grabbed its arm and yanked it behind her back.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

Forty-Two turned his scan on the woman. Bio-living tissue
covering an air servosystem kelruudium skeleton. P0-2 nanny gynoid.

[caution]

“Surrender the M.E.Lii and I shall not disassemble you.”

The gynoid didn’t move. “Leave.”

Forty-Two raised his arm, leveling his disruptor on the
location of the nanny-bot’s power source. “Surrender the bio-weapon.”

The gynoid swiftly raised her own arm, a neo-pulse blaster
instantly tearing through the dermal layer on the back of her hand. An alarm
sounded in Forty-Two’s head as the small but highly lethal gun locked onto his
right eye. “Leave now.”

“Surely you realize you are outclassed?”

The gynoid smiled at him, a kind, gentle smile of infinite
tenderness and maternal compassion. “Surely you realize you are outdated?”

“Mare’ree?”

A small trembling whisper reached Forty-Two’s aural receptors
and instantly his targeting unit locked onto the bio-weapon’s location. Four
point seven inches to the left of the gynoid’s center of gravity.

Forty-Two charged his molecular disruptor. And lunged.

* * * * *

Falynn’s sex gripped him. Her firm, slick muscles squeezed
his cock, taunting him, teasing him. She extracted pleasure with the same
absolute determination she dedicated to extinguishing a life. Despite now being
beneath him, back pressed to the mattress, she owned the rhythm, her cunt
constricting and contracting around his length in sensual pulses that stole his
breath and robbed him of thought. She rode his body, not just his erection, her
sweat-slicked skin sliding over his, her palms exploring his chest, his
shoulders, his hips; her long, lithe legs entwined with his to hold him to her.

“Kiirs, Corvan, you feel so fucking good.”

Corvan stared into her eyes, unable and unwilling to break
even that abstract contact. Her words, low and throaty, made his heart thump
harder.
He
felt good? One hand cupped the back of her head, the other
smoothing up and down the length of her torso, from breast to hip to ass and
back again as he slowly pumped into her. Her sex stretched around his cock,
enveloped him. Fri’ac,
she’d
never felt better. Their bodies moved
together in such perfect unison, with each breath he drew she took him deeper,
deeper.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, and the sight of her parted
lips, glistening with the moisture of their kisses, sent a surge of fresh blood
to his groin. Fuck, he was close. He gripped the thick base of her braid,
guiding her harder into his thrusts, his balls slapping her ass. The tingling
pressure in his groin began to spread to his spine. His breaths grew rapid,
shallow.

“Oh, by the gods, yes.” Falynn groaned, bowing her back to
grind her clit against the root of his cock. She sank her nails into his
shoulders. Raked them down his back. Marked his flesh with ten scored lines of
burning pain that bespoke of her rapture. It shot through him. Ignited a liquid
fire in the pit of his gut, his balls.

He’d been so tempted during the last three years to Traverse
to another of his dimensional existences, one where he and Falynn fucked each
other—no,
made love
to each other every night—just to see her. To draw
her soft scent into his body with each breath. To Traverse and experience her
again in the flesh…

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave Emylie unprotected.

Now here she was. In True Time. Her body against his, her
sweet taste on his tongue. Her tight sex gripping him with divine, exquisite
pressure. Fri’ac, what had he done for the gods to reward him so?

What was right. You saved a life when you could have
taken it. For the first time in your life, you did what was right.

His chest grew heavy and he lowered his head, brushing his
lips over hers as he slid deeper into her very center. “I love you, Falynn
Mavek,” he stated calmly before the building tension of his imminent climax
could steal his ability to form words. “In all dimensions, in all temporal
possibilities.”

Falynn’s blue eyes widened. A silent gasp slipped from her
parted lips, and then her cunt constricted around his cock, squeezing in
powerful pulses as her orgasm claimed her.

And detonated his own.

Her nails pierced his shoulders, her heels dug into his
back. She bucked underneath him, her sex milking his cock of his spurting seed.
She cried out, wild, uninhibited keening sounds that fed his own violent
release. He slammed into her, again and again, filling her, possessing her.
Never wanting to let her go. Never wanting this moment of True Time to—

A high-pitched squeal pierced the air and Corvan froze, his
blood running to ice.

Fri’ac, no.

“Corvan?” Falynn’s voice was lost in the ear-slicing alarm.

Snapping upright, throat tight, chest tighter, he smacked
his fingers against the small com-unit strapped around his right wrist.

“
Corvan!
” Emylie’s scream burst from the com-unit,
her voice high with terror, the sounds of metal smashing against metal in the
background. “
Corvan! He’s got me. He’s go
t—

The com-link went dead.

Fuck
.

He leapt from the bed.

Falynn scrambled upright. “What’s going on?”

Shoving his legs into his trousers, Corvan shot her a quick
look. “Emylie. Someone’s got Emylie.”

And before she could reply, he snatched his strafer,
synaptic neutralizer and gutting blade from the bench and ran from the room.

* * * * *

Forty-Two walked through the crowded passageway, assessing
the report from his internal diagnostics, ignoring the stares and angry shouts
of those he pushed aside. A ruptured hydraulic line, two shattered servo
controllers and a destroyed munitions control module. His targeting system was
currently offline, requiring a reboot to realign the target-firing lock, and
there was a fluid leak in his left “calf” that would need to be stemmed before
the seeping liquid bled his hydraulic systems dry.

He affected a frown. If his E.S.O.U.L program was still
functional, he’d be grudgingly impressed. The nanny-bot knew how to fight.

He continued through the busy corridor, readjusting the load
under his arm as he headed for Level 7. The P0-2 had been much harder, much
more time-consuming to destroy than he’d anticipated. Who would have thought a
gynoid built like a human geriatric would be capable of putting up such a
battle?

He ran another diagnostic, detecting a cascading failure in
his core control unit. The P0-2 had somehow damaged his exo-battle armor
deployment mechanism.

He shuffled the load under his left arm to his right. “Impressive.”

A blistering hiss sounded near his left ear and a hot jolt
shot across the side of his face, distorting his vision for zero point eight
seconds.

The bio-weapon knew how to fight too, obviously tutored by
Thanatos. The damage it had caused to his dermal layer with the small
neuron-destabilizer was extensive.

“Hey.” A voice rose above the clatter of the passageway. A
tall humanoid wearing an officious expression and a slightly crumpled Master
Merchant’s robe pushed through the throng of suddenly curious onlookers,
stopping directly in front of Forty-Two to glare up at him. “What’s going on?
What are you doing with Mister Jareth’s little girl?”

Forty-Two let his stare slide to the unconscious body
hanging limp on his hip before returning it to the man blocking his path.
“Taking it,” he said, and smashed his palm heel into the man’s nose.

The man flew backward, a splattering arc of bright-red blood
spurting from the shattered mess of his nose as he landed on his back on the
floor.

The passageway erupted into a cacophony of screams and
shouts. The crowd scattered, jumping over the fallen Master Merchant, and
Forty-Two continued to the docking level and
The Wisp
. He would secure
the M.E.Lii in the vessel’s lockup before completing the second part of his new
mission.

Terminate Unit Zero agents Thanatos and Proserpina.

Corvan was halfway across his apartment before what he saw
really sank in. He stumbled to a halt, gut clenching.

No.

The living area was in chaos, furniture overturned and
shattered as if a meteorite storm had raged through the small space. He stood
still, scanning the mess, refusing to feel anything. He needed to be ice.
Detached. He needed to find—

There
.

Tossing aside an overturned armchair, he crossed the room,
dropping into a crouch beside the motionless Mare’ree. Fluid-weeping wounds crisscrossed
her bio-dermal layer, some so deep the intricate circuitry beneath was visible.
One optical sensor lay against her cheek on a tangled rope of wires, the
scratches around the socket indicating the bionic eye had been gouged out of
the gynoid’s head. Her mouth hung open, jaw skewed to the right; the entire
left side of her once kindly, maternal face now just shredded skin and
shattered components. “Mare’ree?”

The nanny-bot didn’t move. He ran a quick inspection over
her brutalized form, noting with detached anger her body ended at her hips,
circuits and wires and hydraulics rupturing from the ragged wound. Whoever had
taken Emylie had torn Mare’ree in two.

“Mare’ree?”

Nothing.

“Corvan? Is Emylie—” Falynn sprinted into the room, the
question dying on her lips as she stumbled to a halt beside him. “Kiirs! What
happened?”

He cast her a quick look, noting she’d dressed herself in
his discarded jacket before leaving the den, the heavy leather garment almost
hiding her naked body. Her eyes narrowed as she looked about the room, her grip
on the pistol in her hand tightening. “Who did this?”

Ignoring her question and the crushing weight of time,
Corvan turned back to the gynoid, closing his fingers lightly around her
forehead. An unexpected sense of loss at Mare’ree’s demise pressed hard on his
chest as he twisted her head to the left, revealing a small access point behind
her ear. With a gentle tap, he opened a concealed panel, exposing the
nanny-bot’s internal communications unit. He pressed his finger to the small
sensor pad, triggering the security override system and activating the P0-2’s
Final Message function.

“R42 combat ’droid.” The words sounded from her motionless
lips in a low, distorted, metallic vibration.

Corvan stared at her shattered face, a fist squeezing his
heart.

“R42?” Falynn echoed from behind him, confusion and
disbelief in her voice.

White-hot rage roared through him. He sprang to his feet,
turning to fix her with a level gaze. “
You’re
responsible for this.”

“What?” She shook her head, eyes wide. “
No
, Corvan. I
didn’t program—”

He didn’t let her finish.

Perhaps she’d programmed the R42 to attack. Perhaps she
hadn’t. At the moment, Corvan didn’t have the luxury of trust where Emylie’s
life was concerned.

He whipped his destabilizer from its holster and stunned her
before she’d even realized it was in his hand. He watched as she dropped to the
floor in a crumpled heap across Mare’ree’s severed torso, eyes rolling back in
her head, limbs limp.

Refusing to acknowledge the numb grief threatening to claim
him, he turned and left his apartment. He had to find Emylie. Now.

* * * * *

“Let me go! Let me go let me go
letmego
!”

The bio-weapon thrashed in Forty-Two’s hold, small childlike
arms and legs whipping out, smacking against his chest and thighs in stinging
little punches and ineffectual kicks.

He ignored it, moving through Spaceport Mercy’s empty
docking level, heading for UZ Agent Proserpina’s Dragonfly-class vessel.

“
Let me go
!” the thing screamed again, its tiny
bunched fist bouncing off his cheek, just below his eye.

He gave it a sharp shake. “Be quiet.”

“Corvan is going to make you dead,” it shouted, twisting and
bucking against his side.

Forty-Two smiled. “Agent Thanatos is more than welcome to
try.”

“Thank you.”

The sound of the deep male voice, emotionless and cold at
once, made Forty-Two spin around. Standing on the passageway behind him, the
musky stink of Agent Proserpina wafting from his flesh in potent waves, was the
towering bouncer from The Steam.

“I see you have finished fucking, Agent Thanatos.”

“Corvan!” the bio-weapon squealed, squirming.

The man tilted his head a little, studying Forty-Two
intently, silver eyes steady and unwavering. “Put the child down.”

“I will put the bio-weapon down in
The Wisp
. After I
kill you.”

“Very well.”

His arm moved in a blur, so fast even Forty-Two’s bionic
vision failed to track it. A sharp report cracked the air, followed immediately
by explosive heat in his chest and a wailing siren in the air as the
spaceport’s security system activated, slamming shut a thick set of solid blast
doors, cutting the docking bay off from the rest of the spaceport.

Forty-Two staggered backward, bio-dermal layer sizzling into
eroding blisters under Thanatos’ fire. His positronic matrix registered the
painful neo-energy signature of a de-atomizing pulse pistol blast spreading
into his living flesh, and he ground his teeth, redirecting power to his
internal equalizer. He gripped the kicking, squirming bio-weapon under his arm
tighter, crushing it harder to his side to prevent it slipping free.

“
Lemmegolemmegolemmego!
”

Thanatos charged him, pulse pistol leveled on his chest,
dead stare locked on his face. Forty-Two lifted his left arm, skin splitting as
his molecular disruptor burst from his forearm. The destructive weapon
detonated, a thick, blinding bolt of iridescent white cutting the air to sink
into Corvan’s chest.

Or it should have. The man twisted midair, avoiding the
lethal charge and firing off another pulse before Forty-Two could track his
path.

The energy pulse tore into Forty-Two’s side, stripping more
skin from his structure, scorching circuits, wires and hydraulics. He stumbled
to the side, the CPU controlling his equilibrium faltering for a micro-second.

[deploy exo-battle armor]

The command code shot through his core unit, followed
instantly by an alert alarm.

[exo-battle armor offline]

A pulse blast struck his shoulder. Another. He reeled
backward, the sensory receptors in his right side spiking into overload.

He spun, flinging the GU’s bio-weapon from his hip as he did
so, clamping his arm around its tiny torso to pin it to his chest. “Shoot again
and I will crush its thorax.”

The small, sweaty thing squirmed, fingers clawing at
Forty-Two’s arm. “Corvan!”

The docking bay’s siren abruptly fell silent, reverting
instead to a dull, red flashing light that cast Thanatos in bloody shadows.
“Let her go,” he ordered, his low growl cutting into the heavy silence, his
pulse pistol targeting Forty-Two’s forehead. “Now.”

“I have two missions to complete, Thanatos,” Forty-Two
stated, ignoring the writhing body in his grip as he kept his molecular
disruptor trained on the assassin. “Return the bio-weapon known as M.E.Lii to
the GU Interplanetary Alliance Council, and terminate Unit Zero agents Thanatos
and Proserpina.”

“Then you’re about to fail both.”

“And how are you going to stop me? I have disengaged my
external emergency deactivation function. Apart from the pulse pistol in your
hand, I detect a strafer on your right thigh, a neural disruptor in your right
boot, a synaptic neutralizer at the small of your back and a neo-energy gutting
blade on your left biceps. None of these weapons are sufficient to destroy an
R42 military-combat ’droid.”

“I won’t need any of them.”

Forty-Two narrowed his eyes, scanning the man again. His
composed confidence was unpredicted. Unexpected.

[zero undetected weapons]

[bio-rhythms fluctuating]

Tightening his hold on the still-squirming bio-weapon,
Forty-Two returned his attention to Thanatos’ face. What was he missing?

“Corvan?” The soft sob scraped at Forty-Two’s aural senses.

The assassin’s stare slid to the bio-weapon and he gave it a
small smile. “Remember my promise, Emylie,” he said, voice calm, soothing.
“Remember, I will never break my word to you.”

“Very touching,” Forty-Two said. He abruptly released his
grip on the bio-weapon, letting it free fall for a fraction of a second before
closing his fingers around its neck to hold it dangling above the floor, its
feet thrashing wildly in the air, its small hands clawing at his large one. “But—”

[alert]

[bio-rhythms fluctuating]

[temporal shift detected]

[temporal displacement detected]

“But your time’s up, Metal Man.”

The low snarl to Forty-Two’s right snapped his head around.
His gaze locked on a pair of very angry silver eyes almost level with his own
before, point zero zero four seconds later, a second Agent Thanatos pressed a
strafer to his forehead and fired.

A spreading wall of concentrated deax energy penetrated his
teratanium skull, raining fire through his neural net. His sensory receptors
exploded with impulses. Molten heat flooded his system. The fingers clenched
around the bio-weapon’s neck sprang open. It squealed, falling toward the floor
before he snatched it from the air again with his left hand and yanked it to
his side, keeping his molecular disruptor extended and charged.

He spun, swiping his right arm at the second Thanatos, his
locked fingers tearing across the man’s cheek, gouging the flesh even as his
logic circuits denied the man’s existence.

A sizzling bolt of deax energy struck his neck, and for a
micro-second his whole system froze.

[
alert one system shutdown]

[alert one system shutdown]

[redirecting power to secondary processors]

[E.S.O.U.L rebooting
]

A shudder racked Forty-Two’s frame.

“Corvan!”

[E.S.O.U.L online]

A child’s petrified scream snapped Forty-Two’s visual
sensors back online. He turned, fear and rage and guilt abruptly flooding
through him, just in time to see the original Thanatos aim and fire the pulse
pistol directly into his face.

The blast registered as a wall of white code roaring through
his positronic matrix.

[
secondary processors offline]

[E.S.O.U.L offline
]

“Pain” spiked into his rebooting core processor. He
staggered backward, squeezing the squealing bio-weapon harder to his chest.
Without his exo-battle armor he was more vulnerable than anticipated. He needed
to halt the attack of the two men before his entire system shut down. He
clamped his fingers over the bio-weapon’s forehead, pressing hard against its
small skull as he locked his stare on the original Thanatos. “I will crush its
frontal lobe.”

“I will tear you to pieces.”

[alert]

[bio-rhythms fluctuating]

[temporal shift detected]

[temporal displacement detected]

“As will I.”

“And I.”

“And I.”

“And you can bet your metal ass I will too.”

Forty-Two rotated his head from left to right, his logic CPU
again denying what his optical sensors detected. Three more Agent Thanatoses
stood in the docking bay, all with identical fluctuating bio-rhythms, all
leveling one weapon or another at his head. Five in total.

He turned back to the original Thanatos. The one with Agent
Proserpina’s scent on his flesh. “Do what you will, but know my fingers will
shatter the M.E.Lii’s skull and crush its cerebrum before the first—”

[E.S.O.U.L rebooting]

Cold, sick guilt smashed into him. He froze. Confused. By
the maker, what was—

[error…E.S.O.U.L offline]

He stared at Thanatos, the stink of Agent Proserpina
stronger than ever in his olfactory sensors. “It will be a vegetable. A
brainless lump. Retreat, or I will—”

“Forty-Two.” A female voice cut across his demand. “Let go
of Emylie. Now.”

Forty-Two snapped straight, all his sensors zeroing in on
the woman walking toward him from his right, her left cheek bruised and
inflamed, charged pulse pistol raised and pointed at him.

[E.S.O.U.L rebooting]

A tight churning sensation erupted in Forty-Two’s core
processor. He blinked, gazing at the approaching woman, his grip on the
wriggling bio-weap…child…M.E.L…

Emylie…

[E.S.O.U.L rebooting]

“Agent.”

“Put her down, Forty-Two,” the female ordered. “Or I
will
turn you into a million scorched pieces of useless metal.” Brilliant blue eyes
drilled into him. Emotionless. Unwavering. A killer’s eyes. And yet, underneath
the ice, something he recognized. A flicker he’d seen more than once before.
When he’d held her after bringing her to clima—

[E.S.O.U.L
online]

Guilt, shame and horror flooded him. Every circuit in his
system burned with the emotions. “Falynn?”

“Put her down, Forty-Two,” she ordered again, voice softer
this time. “Please.” She took a step closer, weapon still trained on his head.
“She’s scared. You’re scaring her.”

He jerked his stare to the child in his arms, flinching at
the absolute terror swimming in her wide brown eyes. He could feel the fragile
bones of her skull under his fingers, the clammy feel of her flesh against his
dermal layer. Her heart smashed against his arm, a tiny rapid beat, the acrid
sting of her fear filled his nose.

How could he be one actuator pulse away from crushing her
skull? What was he—

[fatal error…E.S.O.U.L terminated]

Complete stillness claimed Forty-Two’s structure. He lifted
his head, turning his optical sensors on the Thanatos standing before him
before locking them onto Agent Proserpina. “It should be scared,” he said,
tightening his grip on the bio-weapon’s head.