Chapter 3:
Had she just talked Talon into taking on a Fed ship? And one that was traveling with at least a hundred others?
She had.
Shit.
Jessica was already regretting that little game she had played with Talon. She had totally shoved aside that bad feeling that she had in her gut, and she had done it by suggesting to him that they do something sure to either get them killed or hunted down by the Federation!
Not that she was not already wanted by those bastards, and it was likely that Talon would have decided to try for one anyway.
He was growing bolder by the day, and he had become something of a cult figure among the outlaw circles that wrapped the universe. He was out for vengeance, which made him dangerous, and he didn’t care if he died, which made him even more dangerous not only to the Federation but to the entire universe.
She readied her weapons as they slowly circled around a small star system that would hide them from the Federation ships long enough to drop behind them and raise their cloaking shields.
Not even the best cloaking shields would keep them from being noticed if they didn’t fly in the wake of the Federation ships though, and she knew that because Talon had told her so. When it came to flying, there were few in the universe that could match Talon.
She could trust him to fly her into danger and out of it, every time.
If only she could trust her body when he was near!
A small spasm of pain came and went in her temples. She frowned and closed her eyes, trying to let her mind go blank. Whatever memory she had locked away in her head to protect it from the mind wipe was trying to surface, but when she tried to grasp it, to reach for it, all she got was a searing pain for her troubles and no closer to recalling what it was that had made her so dangerous to the Federation.
What did she know?
It was maddening that she still did not remember after all this time! She had a strange and very strong sense that she had to remember, and fast, but she could not recall whatever it was she had seen or heard or done that made her such a threat, and she groaned, her fingers rubbing at her temples absently.
She managed to get a grip on the pain just as they circled around a small meteor shower and star storm.
She walked to her chamber with dragging footsteps. Her body ached from exhaustion and that endless worry that had been nagging at her for weeks now, telling her that something was very wrong. That there was something she should remember, and soon, because time was running out.
Time for what?
It was so close to the surface, so very close and yet so far away.
Yori.
If only he had been there, he could have shown her how to open that box in her brain and dig out the contents.
Was he even still alive?
She had not been the only one interrogated, and she knew that.
She had been a Capo and a leader of the resistance all at once and the worry and the stress had been enough to kill her at times.
She leaned against the wall in her chamber and sighed again. The Federation ship and the taking of it was a battle she would rather not fight so why had she goaded Talon into doing it?
Because he would have considered it anyway, a little voice in her head said. He would have because he was always on the lookout for a dare, for a challenge, for a way to get even with the Federation and the Gorlites.
She knew that. So why push it?
She had to. She needed something on that ship.
She paused, her hands flattening as she pushed herself away from the wall.
“What the hell is wrong with me?”
Good question.
But that thought stayed.
There was something she needed, and she had to have it from that ship.
But which ship?
She shucked her clothes and slid into bed. Her eyes closed and Yori’s face drifted up. He had been her best friend and her leader. She had kept his secret, and he had kept hers.
She had not betrayed him, but she had betrayed the woman who had been mind-wiped and implanted with the software that had turned her into a cycle spy.
Nobody knew that.
Oh, they knew that she had been the one to help turn that young woman into a cycle spy, but they had not known what that woman had done or why she had ended up on a slaver's ship. There was a cover story implanted in Jessica’s brain, and she had let Jeval into that section of her brain but not the rest of it.
The young woman whom she had betrayed had been the daughter of a Federation officer—and she had also been a member of the resistance down on Old Earth.
“I betrayed her to save Yori. It was a shitty bargain but what else could I do?”
What else could she have done?
The Federation knew that the Old Earth resistance had in its ranks one of the higher-ranking Federation’s offspring. What they didn’t know was that there were two people in the resistance who were offspring of the Federation’s members.
She had saved Yori because without him, the resistance was nothing and she had known that she was either going to die or be sent to a slaver planet.
She had known it, and so she had shut away her memories so that they could not touch the most important ones. She had not given up Yori, and she had yet to unearth that big secret, the one that Jeval had found when he had done the mind walking with her.
He had cornered her later that evening and told her he had never come across anyone who was so able to stay closed off before and he was curious, but he was also willing to leave it alone and let her be because she was a good fighter and he knew Talon wanted her as a crew member.
Sleep was what she needed, but it eluded her. She rolled over on her belly and her clit pressed against a rise of the sheets and covers. Desire throbbed along her nerve endings.
Talon and her attraction to him were becoming a serious issue and maybe that was causing her to think that there was something else she needed, maybe she was driving them into danger—whether it was danger that Talon relished or not—for no other reason than she was running from her feelings for him.
Her fingers tangled in the sheets. Her bottom lifted and her hips ground in a lazy circle. The pressure on her clit increased, and her top teeth sank into her lower lip. She swallowed hard as a heavy and intense throbbing began in her lower belly, and a liquid heat spilled from her inner folds and smeared along her inner thighs.
Her fingers clutched the sheets more tightly, winding into them as her ass cheeks clenched and she ground her front against the thick wad of her bed linens, wishing that it was Talon’s body below hers, that they were making love.
She came, but it was a purely physical thing with no real release or relief.
She rolled back over. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, and she sighed. Her body was lax and her limbs heavy, but her mind spun along like a wheel. She was too tired, so very tired, and yet sleep seemed so far away.