Aries Revealed Read online

  Presuming that they were from her life with her ex, the dresses hadn’t interested him half as much as the vanity case he’d opened up, looking for the shower gel she’d wanted. Inside the innocuous looking case were dildos and vibrators of every shape and size. Hard as a rock within a heartbeat, he’d rifled through them, imagining her using them…imagining her letting him use them on her. His cock surged to life, hard and aching in his pants as he stole another kiss.

  Diversion, he told himself, even as he felt like a prick for lusting after her when she was out of it. He shouldn’t, should stop this now, but he couldn’t, quickly finding he had absolutely zero morals where she was concerned. Pressing her back into the soft cushions, he parted her lips with a sweep of his tongue and groaned as she opened up for him with a soft whimper. The kiss was short, started out sweet, but ended with them both breathing heavily and Johnny fighting to retain control.

  “You found my toy collection,” she murmured as she kissed along his neck, her legs entangled with his on the small couch. It was no good for fucking on. If they took this further, they’d have to move to the desk. “Jas…my ex hated them. Said it made him feel less of a man, that I shouldn’t need them or any of the stuff I wanted to do. That he should be enough for me.”

  Johnny swore softly as her hand meandered down his torso and fought back the need to strip her naked, part her legs and make her forget both her ex and the two dead guys out on the bridge.

  “I want you to use them. I want to see you use them. I want to use them on you.”

  He caught her lips in a brief, hard kiss, swallowing her moans. The sexy little sounds drove him crazy. Deliberately he ignored the warnings of his onboard about threat levels and getting the ship back to the station. He’d felt the lurch as they jumped. No one was going anywhere until they dropped back into normal space.

  “Oh god, yeah…” Her little plea hit him low down, his cock jerking and pulsing savagely in his pants, straining at the zipper. “Jason wouldn’t do anything…just wanted me to suck him off, then fuck me for a few minutes until he came. Then he’d roll over and sleep.”

  Her hands clung to his broad shoulders, nails biting against his skin. Erotic little stings that fed the images rolling through his brain. Instantly he relegated blowjobs to the list of things he wouldn’t ask her to do for him.

  “He never wanted to experiment. Not even doggy style…no tying up…definitely no…” She paused, a hitch in her breathing and a hot, yet shy look in her gorgeous eyes.

  “Definitely no what?” he prompted, wondering what had brought the color to her cheeks and the sexy little look to her face. Fuck, he had it bad for her.

  She shook her head, biting at her lip in a way that made him want to forget everything that was going on around them, forget he was a cyborg and she thought he was a bot, and just ride off into the sunset with her. Of course, first he’d have to find a sunset, but it was the thought that counted, right?

  “Kinky stuff. You know…” Gods, this was sounding better and better. “Using toys, more than one…” He held his breath, but let her continue without prompting. “Maybe even ‘back there’.” She hid her face against his chest, hiding her expression from him “Oh god, I can’t believe I’m saying this to a bot. But you’re like a sex toy anyway, aren’t you? So it’s okay.”

  Fuck. She was going to be the death of him. Johnny’s blood roared in his ears as he fought to get his body’s reaction under control. His little human wanted the kinky stuff, did she? That wasn’t a problem. Hell, it would never be a problem. Just the thought of spreading her wide and taking her ass had him ready to come in his pants right there.

  “Hell, yeah. It’s more than okay.”

  He ignored the comment about him being a sex toy, glad beyond belief that Cyn hadn’t been around to hear that one. He’d never hear the end of it. “And as soon as I get you back to your room, I’m going to prove just how okay it is.”

  Chapter Eight

  He’d fought on the desert planets of the Gerleran system, and the ice moons of Petia Four, but Johnny had never found anything as difficult as leaving Milly in the Captain’s office of the Starflame while he went about cleaning up. Tucked onto the couch with a light blanket and her eyes drifting shut from the shot he’d given her, she looked adorable.

  He watched her for a moment, a smile on his lips. She looked cute and soft, her usual hard-edged demeanor gone as she snuggled into the cushions, ready to sleep. The shot was nothing serious, just a light painkiller for her headache which wouldn’t interfere with the concussion. He’d given it to her after she’d recited the main computer access code. Free of pain and worn out from the emotional distress, she would be asleep in minutes. His expression hardened as he turned back to the door and walked out onto the bridge. Time to sort this crapshoot of a situation out.

  The smell hit him first. Blood and death, a perfume that had pervaded his life until he was sure it seeped from his pores. Dickwad and Fucktard still lay where he’d left them, their bodies twisted and grotesque. Normally he didn’t bother with his kills, simply dropped them and moved on. This time was different. Because of what they’d done and planned to do to Milly, he wanted to kill them again, mutilate their corpses in the vain hope that the agony would follow them into death and as a warning to anyone against messing with his woman.

  His woman…

  Who thought he was some kind of fancy bot and who he’d lied to consistently. He had to find a way to tell her the truth, a way that meant she would still have something to do with him or at the very least not space him before they returned to the station.

  Gritting his teeth, he set about cleaning up. There was a maintenance hatch to the right of the main view screen leading to the access tubes that riddled the ship like a rabbit warren. It was how he’d reached the bridge without using the lift.

  “Fuck, you should’ve gone on a diet, mate,” he grunted as he manhandled the pilot through the hatch and waited for the dull thud as he hit the walkway beyond. Once they’d dropped out of the jump, the access tubes could be vented to space to get rid of the bodies and their accompanying stink.

  Returning for the second body, he dragged it across the bridge, leaving a trail of blood and nastier fluids in its wake. At least this area wasn’t carpeted, so he could simply mop it down and get rid of the evidence. Not that he was bothered, he could simply ignore the smell, but he didn’t want anything left behind to upset Milly when she woke.

  As he reached the hatch, a comm unit crackled.

  “Welch, Vors…what’s happenin’ up there? We’re like fookin’ sardines down ‘ere. How close are we to the jump end?”

  Crap. There were more of them. Johnny dropped the body and patted down the pockets, totally ignoring the guy’s sightless eyes. He’d known others, even cyborgs, who couldn’t stand a dead man’s eyes, but it didn’t bother him. It wasn’t like they could do anything from where they were.

  “You’d better not be having too much fun with the woman. Remember, we’re looking for a piece of the action before she gets sent off to one of the farms. And unlike them, we’d kinda like her still to look like a woman, not a bit of bloody meat.”

  He yanked the comm unit from the guy’s back pocket, and schooled the rush of anger at yet another threat to Milly. This one, though, was far more insidious. The reference to farms could only mean one thing. Once they were done with her, they were going to sell her to one of the organ processing units. In the main systems they were legit operations, requiring both a death certificate and a medical examination before any payment was made. Signs of a violent death would mean the body was impounded and the seller arrested on suspicion of murder. Out here, there was less paperwork and even fewer ethics. Obvious cause of death or even mere unconsciousness was often ignored before money exchanged hands and the victim was loaded into a stripping unit. It was a brutal way to go.

  Clicking down the button on the side, he spoke. His voice when it issued was higher and more whining than befo
re. A perfect match for the guy whose neck he’d done a one-eighty on.

  “Wait your fucking turn. We’re not done yet,” he snarled as he strode over to the first officer’s station at the back of the bridge. “She’s a hot piece of ass, though. Pity you’re locked down until we drop out.”

  His fingers danced over the controls as he started to isolate the source of the comm signal. Where were they?

  The comm erupted with foul curses, most directed at Welch and his comrade about their supposed carnal enjoyment of Milly. Johnny ignored it as he narrowed down the signal. Yes, there. They were on the ventral hull, near the stern, a small shuttle attached to the armored plating like a parasite.

  Leaving them just a laugh to think about, he cut the comm and crossed back to the pilot’s station. The seat was obviously designed for a smaller man, or a woman, but he crammed his tall, muscled frame into it and flicked the displays up. Their jump course overlaid a star-map, a counter in the corner counting down to the end point. They were about halfway through the jump, so he didn’t have much room to maneuver.

  “Computer, change jump destination point to coordinates seven-seven-alpha-zero-niner by nine-three-juliet-two-five. Authorization Locke-sierra-seven-nine-four. Please confirm.”

  Silence greeted his words. He’d shortened the jump, which would drop them into normal space within a couple of minutes. He reclined in the chair as he waited for the computer’s response as it worked out the new drop point. He could practically hear it crunching the numbers. Hell, they really needed to get the flame’s mainframe updated. The fun Cyn could have with a whole ship to play with…

  “Warning, alteration of jump destination will jeopardize fuel consumption rates for onward journey. Do you wish to proceed?”

  “Acceptable. Confirm course change and drop us.”

  “Confirmed. Dropping to normal space in one minute, twenty seconds.”

  There were many stories about the ruthlessness of cyborgs when they went into combat. Merciless killers, they’d been bred in a lab, matured in tanks and gone under the surgeon’s knife before they’d achieved consciousness for the first time.

  Most of that was true, Johnny acknowledged as he strapped weaponry around his body from the small weapons cache kept on the bridge. He checked the power pack on the pulse assault carbine in his hands and shoved it home before activating the weapon with practiced movements. Another carbine was slung crosswise over his back, he had pistols on both hips and a small shotgun in a spine sheath. A trench knife played peekaboo from the top of his boot as he strode across the bridge to the lift.

  No, far from the hardened psychopaths they were labeled, all cyborgs were “born” from the tanks a blank slate. Like a terran pitbull forced to fight in the ring, it took intervention and cruelty to create a monster. He flicked the safety off the carbine as the lift doors slid shut in front of him, rage surging through every cell in his body.

  He’d spent years serving the fleet and he’d never once stepped over the line from thinking, feeling soldier who just happened to be cybernetic to cold, heartless cyborg killer. Attacking Milly was one step too far, as the two life signs he’d picked up in the shuttle were about to find out.

  It took him less than ten minutes to traverse the length and depth of the ship, his boots pounding the metal deck plates at a dead run that would have taxed his system had he been merely human. But he wasn’t, he was a cyborg and unlike his organic systems, the tri-sappherium crystals that powered his combat chassis never tired.

  He swung into the corridor they’d breached and plastered himself to the wall behind a support strut. The corridor was dark. It had taken some arguments with the Starflame’s old and crabby computer core and lowering his body temperature by a few degrees, but the computer was now set not to recognize him as a life form. He shook his head, he really had to get Cyn on the ship to deal with the thing. A couple of upgrades and one of the new AI cores and Milly wouldn’t know the place.

  He leaned out and peered down the corridor. Like all the lower decks, this one didn’t have the luxury of the extruded fabric walls and neat checker plate flooring that marked the bridge and upper levels. Instead the walls were bare bulkheads marked at intervals by internal support struts and the floor was little more than a mesh walkway over the conduits and piping running beneath.

  But he wasn’t interested in the interior decoration. Instead, his attention was fixed on the boarding hatch ten feet down, on the opposite wall. Standard issue, it featured interlocking rings to clamp onto the hull of another ship, and an arc cutter to slice pressurized plating. A one-stop operation that both created a big enough hole to board through and equalized the pressure on both sides at the same time. It was a sweet bit of equipment he’d heard about but never used.

  The sound of the hatch sliding open echoed through the corridor. Johnny tightened his hold on the pistol grip of his rifle and waited. Sure enough, a leg extended through the opening.

  “Told you we’d dropped out of jump space. I didn’t think this crate could move so fast…it’s bigger than your butt. And we all know how fas—”

  Johnny squeezed the trigger. He’d never purposely shot to wound before, but he did now, peppering the leg and torso which emerged from the hatch. The energy bolts sizzled as they streaked through the air, burning through clothing and skin alike to slam into the tender flesh beneath. The hijacker’s body danced like a marionette with a maniac on the strings as screams filled the corridor. Fuck, his shoot to wound skills needed some updating.

  Six hits. Vital organ damage, femoral artery damage, circulatory system fatally compromised. Death imminent.

  His onboard kept up a stream of information as he moved from cover, stalking toward the board hatch and the dying man squirming there as the damaged artery in his thigh continued the paint the inside of the opening scarlet.

  “What the fuck?! Darrick…fuckfuckfuck!”

  Johnny ignored the swearing from inside the shuttle in favor of wrapping a hard hand around the newly named Darrick’s ankle and yanking. The still twitching man slithered from the hatch into a boneless heap in front of it. Johnny didn’t flinch as blood splattered in a warm spray over the side of his rib cage and down over his leg. The pulses were getting weaker now and the light in Darrick’s eyes fading as his heart struggled to find blood to pump. He was fucked, properly fucked, and try as he might, Johnny couldn’t find any sympathy in his heart.

  “Screw you, asshole!” The hijacker still inside the shuttle screamed and slammed the internal door across. Johnny shook his head. As if a thin sheet of metal was going to stop him. The carbine clattered as he dropped it on the metal floor next to the dead man.

  Winding his shoulder back, Johnny let fly with his fist. Punching like the machine he was, he hammered at the metal in front of him, venting all his rage and fury on the barrier. Thuds rang out like old-fashioned gunshots as he punched deep holes in the metal. It screamed and squealed, twisting like a living thing under his blows before one heavy punch spilt it like the skin of an overripe orange. His lips quirked, a line from an old holo-vid he’d seen a week ago springing to mind.

  “Heeeeere’s Johnny.”

  Grabbing the edges of the split metal, he tore it like paper, throwing huge chunks behind him before shouldering his way through the gap. He dropped onto the floor of the shuttle, trench knife in hand, and looked around for the occupant.

  “Fuck you, you stay away from me, bastard!”

  Johnny caught movement out of the corner of his eye and twisted automatically, his arm lifting into a block just in the nick of time. A second later and the fire extinguisher the hijacker was using as a club would have caught him on the side of the face.

  “Oooooh, rocking it in the improvisation stakes,” the cyborg taunted and dropped to the floor. Weight on his hands, he sliced his legs around, the scissor action taking the hijacker’s right out from under him. In a second, Johnny was all over him like a bad rash.

  “Hold fucking still,” he snarl
ed but the guy fought back like a bucking Bacaral, twisting as Johnny tried to slam a fist in his face. His knuckles left an imprint in the metal right where the hijacker’s face had been not a moment before. He turned wide eyes up to Johnny.

  “What are you?”

  “I’m your worst fucking nightmare.”

  Johnny grinned and let his serial code show through on his cheek. The hijacker paled, right as Johnny’s fist hammered into his temple and dropped him into unconsciousness.

  The sound of running water brought Milly out of sleep slowly, fighting every step of the way. She was warm and cozy where she was, but the warning buzz at the back of her mind said she’d forgotten something. Something important.

  As she opened her eyes, it hit her. The memories poured back, slamming into and rolling over her. Her breath caught in her throat as she recalled the hijack, being dragged onto the bridge and what had happened after. Fear held her rigid as image after brutal image flashed through her mind, all backed up in graphic detail as she remembered the pain of her face hitting the table, the smell of blood and other nastier things as she’d stabbed the guy trying to rape her…

  Then there had been Johnny. Her Aries had come to rescue her, killing two humans in the process. Something no bot should be able to do, but he wasn’t just any bot, was he? He was some kind of uber-bot, able to think…and feel?

  She sat up in bed, gaze going instinctively to the glass door of the shower alcove and the shadowy male figure behind it. There was no mistaking Johnny’s tall, broad-shouldered form and relief hit her at jump speed. He was here, he would protect her.

  When did she start thinking of him as Johnny, rather than the bot or the Aries? When he’d taken her with such power and desperation in the shower…or when he’d arrived on the bridge like an avenging angel? No, it was neither. She knew the exact point when her perception of him had changed. It had been when he’d carried her, battered and bruised, from the bridge to her office and set about cleaning the battered mess of her face with such tenderness.