Finding Lara (Distant Worlds Book 3) (8 page)

She was pressed up
against the cold steel of her cabin door, and neither of them made any move to
open it and find the bed like civilized people.  Neither of them were feeling
very civilized.

She wrapped her legs
around the big man and even with all their clothes on, she felt the heat and
hardness of him.  She was held too high to feel what she really wanted between
her legs, but she would take what she could get.  She pressed herself against
him as hard as she could, needing more.  More heat, more pressure, just more.
Barnos growled a bestial sound that had her groaning into that hot mouth.  He
pulled the tunic over her head and then ran his lips down her neck while she
threw back her head and shivered at the feel of him.  When he licked her ear,
she clenched around him, mirroring the reaction from deep inside.  He cursed
when he saw the nanite armor against her skin, and Lara laughed a slightly
breathless full-bodied laugh that made his eyes smolder and his hands clench
the less than pliable fabric of her armor.

“You thinking to get me
naked in the hallway, pirate?” she asked rubbing up against him blatantly, her
eyes as hot as his on his face.

He nipped her lips in
challenge and grinned his own challenge.  His was scarier than hers.  “Tell me
you don’t want to be naked and mounted on my dick and I won’t believe you,
Lady.” He pressed his nose to the sensitive skin of her neck and breathed her
in.  “I could smell your need on the bridge.  Saw it on your body when you
reacted to the danger we were in.”  He licked one swipe up her neck to her jaw
and she shuddered around him.  “Makes me crazy,” he murmured just under her ear
before he bit down none to gently just there.  Her whole body clenched up
tight.  “Take off the armor,” he growled nipping her ear, “now.”  Then he
smiled another more challenging smile.  “I dare you.”

Lara reached between them
and grabbed the top of her armor, wondering privately when she had lost her
mind.  It was keyed to her touch so it opened like a flower.  Barnos didn’t
wait for her to finish.  With one hand, he grabbed the now pliable fabric and
yanked it down her body.  It fell away like magic, shrinking down off her back
and chest until she was suddenly topless from the waist up.  With another one
of those pulse pounding growls Barnos wasted no time in taking the advantage. 
His mouth found her breast and opened wide above it, taking as much as he could
into his hot mouth and sucking.  Hard. Lara screeched at the suddenness of it,
her head falling back and her hands digging into his hair to hold him in
place.  He lavished one breast and then the other with loving attention. So
much so, that she was writhing in his arms.

A shout from the bridge
made Lara jerk in her sex haze.  “We have company!” Tolan Lark shouted and
Barnos cursed a blue streak, dropping her and pulling out of her hold, so fast
she had to grab the wall behind her or fall.  He was still cursing as he ran
for the bridge even as they all felt the percussion of a missile hitting the
shield.

Lara blinked stupidly,
the heat of her body not leaving as fast as her brain was catching on.  She closed
her eyes and fought the need coursing through every sensitive inch of her skin,
a lot of which was exposed to the recirculating air, and pebbling.  She did not
bother to reposition her armor, but just pulled the tunic shakily back on over
her naked skin.  The brush of the fabric against her reddened nipples had her
gasping and pulling the fabric away from her chest.  She took deep breaths until
she felt a measure of calm, and then with yet another blast against their
shields that had the ship quaking, she headed for the bridge.

She ignored both men and
took her crash seat as curtly directed by a distracted Barnos.  She did her
best to also ignore the heated red in her cheeks.  She could not decide if she
was more embarrassed by how fast she had moved with the pirate, or disappointed
that she did not get to go further before she was forced back to her senses. 
Since her body was still jumping with awakened nerves and heat, she was leaning
toward the second when Barnos turned briefly to make sure she was buckled down,
gave her one blatantly possessive once over that more than suggested he was now
seeing her as his for the taking, then turned back to his fight.

Lara blew out a breath
and fell back into the hard back of her jump seat.  The question was, did she
want it any other way?

CHAPTER EIGHT

“They are hailing us,”
Tolan said grimly, his lavender eyes sharp on the screen.  With a few strokes,
he had the screen open and Barnos could see the encroaching ship. 

“Shite,” he muttered,
jumping into the nav seat with a fluid over the back move that belied his large
size.  “That’s not a pirate vessel.”

“Looks more like a rich man’s
mercenary escort,” Tolan Lark muttered back, his fingers flying.

“Why the hell would they
fire on us?”

“They didn’t.  They put
two across the bow.”

“We got a percussion wake
from a warning shot?”  Barnos didn’t wait for the obvious answer; he just
cursed long and fluently.

Then the message came through
in ship standard and Barnos had to amend his earlier words.  Definitely not an
escort crew.

“Remove yourself from
this area or we will remove you,” was the short and to the point message across
ship standard.  Tolan Lark motioned to the Alliance tracking device and Barnos
blinked at the screen.

“The kid is close.”  He
looked back at Tolan Lark and gave a half grin despite the circumstances.  “We
are close to the death games.”

“Hence the well-armed
sentries,” Tolan Lark smiled back and it was just as cold as Barnos’ smile.

“We found him?” Lara
asked from behind them and Barnos lost what smile he had.

He shared another look
with Tolan Lark, before the man responded to the less than welcoming hail with
a typed one of his own.  There was a moment of silence, then he received a
response the same way.  Barnos assumed he did not want the Lady Lara to hear
whatever he was telling them.

A moment later, there was
another verbal answer over the com.  “Proceed, and you will be met with an
escort for landing.”

Barnos looked at him
curiously, “What did you tell them?”

Tolan looked at him
grimly.  “I told them these were the coordinates we were given for death game
fighter/slaves to be delivered.”

Barnos narrowed his eyes
and looked from Tolan Lark to the Lady Lara and back.  “Don’t you think they
will be a little suspicious when we have nothing to deliver?”

Tolan Lark moved faster
than Barnos could follow.  One second he was looking at the mercenary; he saw
his eyes go cold and he had time to reach for his blaster and think, too
close! 
There was the sting of a stun stick at his neck and then a white
flare of heat took his vision.  Then nothing.

Lara was still frozen in
her seat when Barnos crashed to the deck out cold and Tolan Lark turned her
way.  “Listen very carefully,” he said mildly, still holding the stun stick,
his eyes beating into hers with the intensity of a crusader.  She listened.  It
was not as if she had a choice.

***

Barnos woke up in the
dark; he shifted and felt the chains along his wrists and ankles bite for the
first time.  He cursed in three languages, as loud and as lewd as he could
manage and wished them all on that betraying bastard of a Shakien cat.  He knew
him at least well enough to know that he was trying to bring the games down, so
clearly he had some plan in motion, and had made Barnos a pawn in it.  The
trouble with being a pawn was expendability. He did not consider himself expendable,
but apparently, Tolan Lark did.  They were going to have words, if he survived
whatever idiot plan the cat had come up with.

“That’s quite the
vocabulary you have there, stranger.”  The voice came out of the darkness and
then the lights flicked on, showing him a small room with a bed and a hole in
the ground; luckily, he did not seem to be sharing his cell with anyone.  He
looked around and that voice came again.

“We are going to release
your transport chains after a few rules are expressed,” the voice assured him
without inflection.  “You have been inducted into the death games.  Fight well
and you will be rewarded.  Fight badly and you die.  Not every fight is to the
death, but lose three in a row and you will be moved from the fighters to the
other
entertainment.”  The inflection on the last made Barnos positive he
did not want to find out what that meant.  “Any attempts at escape will be
punished quickly and decisively. And let me assure you, no one has ever escaped
the death games.”  The chains clicked off automatically and then dragged out of
sight until the table he rested on sealed around them.  He sat up.  The voice
ended with, “Enjoy your stay.”

After that, no matter
what he said, or how he insulted the listeners, they did not come back.  He
gave up after a bit and explored his square 6 x 6 cell that did not have a door
that he could find.  Good thing he did not suffered from confined spaces.  A
box would have been less claustrophobic than the badly lit cell.

He forced himself back to
the mat when he realized no one was coming for him any time soon.  If he was
going to be called to fight in some twisted death match, he might want to try
for a little shuteye.  Here’s to hoping they provided food at some point, but
for now, it did not feel like he had been unconscious long enough for his
stomach to protest.  He would sleep, fight, and go from there.

Since he could not
imagine Lara sold as a fighter he did not worry for her safety.  There was no
way Tolan Lark would endanger the High Ambassador’s daughter any more than he
already had.  She was safe on board
The Fire
, had to be.  So, why was
worry about the naive bit the thing that followed him into his dreams?

The next day, or at least
he assumed it was the next day, one whole wall slid away from his box and he
was hustled with little fanfare to join a line of warriors and miscreants. 
They were a varied bunch.  Every one of them was either big and deadly looking
or of a race where smaller did not equate to prey.  Some were scarred and had
the look of bloodied warriors; others looked like walking dead, they had so
little life left in their eyes.  Most were in leather pants, boots, and bare
upper bodies, but some like him seemed to be in what they were taken in.  Ships
suits, tunics, and trousers.  Most of them had seen better days.  You could
tell which fighters were the forerunners because they seemed more rested,
better fed, and groomed.  While the rest looked to have been starved and denied
such small concessions as soap, or a thermal shower.  Fighters for the death
games.  There had to be fifty of them trooping by.  He scoped out the
competition and was not happy to see a bevy of battle-scarred warriors from
most of the well-known fighting races across the galaxy.  He saw no young
children, so he assumed that the child Lara was after was kept separate,
training somewhere else.

They ended in a steel
enforced arena looking out at full stands of watchers.  He blinked at the crowd
and what it meant.  Apparently, the fight started now.

An announcer started
speaking in a language Barnos did not understand and then a woman’s voice came
over the speaker and spoke hesitantly in ship standard and then in six other
languages for the crowd.  He knew that voice.  Barnos whipped his head around
and cursed Tolan Lark again when he caught sight of the tall box on the side. 
For this he would see him dead.  For selling Lara along with himself, he would
make sure he suffered the fires of hell for this betrayal.

Lara in a barely there
red harem dress that looked to be made out of scarves and left her flat belly
and long curvy legs and arms bare had him blinking at the mouthwatering sight. 
She was in knee boots, her hair loose but for a few braids around her face. 
Her eyes looked unbelievably huge, blackened as they were with liner and
shadows.  Her lips were the same crimson red as her dress, and it made her skin
look luminous in even the harsh light of the arena.  She stood on a curtained
platform just above and to the left of them with another man who was speaking. 
When he stopped she spoke, her voice carried synthetically throughout the
cavernous space, interpreting in several languages.  He had no clue what half
of them were.  But she sounded good doing it, and she looked better.  It was a
sight many of the audience seemed to appreciate if the catcalls and throng of shouting
voices were any indication.

“Greetings honored guests
and fighters,” she finally said in ship standard, her eyes skimming over the
warriors. She caught sight of him and faltered briefly, her eyes brightening
before she resumed her calm demeanor and continued.  “As always, bets will be
taken before the game starts and the men will be paired up in fights of one-to-one.” 
She raised her chin as she spoke the words, glaring them over the warriors in
one dismissive sweep before she came calmly back to him and looked him right in
the eyes when she finished.  “If you win your heat tonight untold pleasures
await you; whether you can keep what you earn depends on your skill and
willingness to kill.  Because the winner of each night’s heat will fight the
next night, and so on until one winner is left standing.  The last fight will
be to the death.”   Then she stepped back and he did not see her anymore.  But
he heard her voice, “Tonight will be five fights.  If you are on the roster,
you will be escorted to preparation.  If you are not, you will be returned to
your cells.”

Shite.
Now he had to not only survive but also rescue the Lady.  Looking around at the
scarred and embattled competition, even if he was on the roster, there was no
guarantee that he would come out of this alive, let alone with the girl.

Barnos followed his line
back out of the arena to the hooting calls of the audience.  They passed the
early entertainment as they left.  Haggard men with hollow eyes and death on
their backs were shuffled in, and then he heard the beasts howling and he had
an idea of what the other entertainment might be.  Killed in battle as a slave
was bad enough.  Eaten by wild alien beasts for the pleasure of bloodthirsty
crowds — he would have to pass on that.  He had a feeling the Lady Lara would
agree with him.  There was a slim chance she knew of the plan and in some self-sacrificing
idiocy, she agreed to be given as slave to the death games, but he somehow
doubted it.  Tolan Lark had a lot to answer for.

***

Lara stood in her own
much larger and more comfortable cell pacing, still trying to figure out
exactly how she ended up where she was.  On
The Fire,
Tolan Lark had
turned to her over Barnos’ unconscious body and told her his plan.  When she
argued with him, he had told her she could go along with the plan or they would
all end up in the death games with no one to get them out.

“You’re going to get him
killed!” she yelled, even as he was injecting an untraceable Alliance tracker into
him.  “We already have a tracker on Thaos to track to the games, why are you
doing this?”

“Chances are they keep
the fighters away from the younger trainees.  And if I don’t have a fighter in
the games, I don’t get an invite to participate.  I need him in, but I don’t
want to lose him,” he spoke grimly not looking at her, and Lara could feel the
cold intent of purpose riding him.

“And if he dies in the
games before you rescue him?”

He did not answer.  There
was a loud thump and Lara had to grab the bulkhead to stay on her feet.  They
were caught by the energy beam and pulled in for landing.  “You have a better
chance of surviving in the games than he does,” she said sharply, her eyes hot
and sandy from not crying.  “You should have talked to him.  Told him your plan,
and let him decide if he wanted to risk his life for your crusade.”

“It’s his crusade, too,”
he spat grimly back.

“Is it?” she asked
quietly, as they auto docked.  “Then why knock him out?  I mean, if you knew he
would agree.”

He said nothing to that,
just gave her a look of ice and turned away.  “When they come in here, don’t
speak.  You will kill us all if you try to save him now.”

“So I should just be
quiet and save my own life over Barnos’?”  Her words left no doubt of her disgust
with the idea and the man.

Tolan Lark growled and
turned to her in a whirl of air, so fast she closed her eyes in reflex and when
she opened them, he was right there.  His eyes burning into hers.  “I swear to
you that I will get him out of there.” He vowed grimly, and from this close,
she could see the lavender bleeding into his eyes.  Feel his hot breath on her
face, and the cold implacable will of him.

She swallowed hard and
tasted her own fear.  She did not look away though.  Lara stood her ground
before all the ferocious churning emotions of the beast before her.  “What is
your word worth, Tolan Lark?” she whispered unhappily, as her first tear fell.

He growled kissing close,
his eyes following the trail of that tear.  He looked back into her eyes and
flinched visibly at the accusation there.  “By the blood of my people lost to
these games,” he said hard and growly, and she could feel the resolve behind
the words, “I will get him out!”

Lara raised her chin
while the tears fell in earnest.  “And if he dies before your word is met?” she
asked just as quietly.

He had no answer and she
could see that in the frustration beating behind his eyes.  Then they were
hailed, and he pulled back and turned from her to lower the shields and allow
the boarding.