The Hand of Vengeance Read online

He shoved three fingers into her cunt, pumping them as he buried a finger deep in her ass.

  Her entire body spasmed, and her vaginal muscles squeezed.

  He alternated pushing his fingers into her cunt then her ass, back and forth as she bucked and shuddered in wave after wave of release. It lasted at least thirty seconds—the most glorious display of female orgasm he’d ever had the pleasure of witnessing.

  When at last she lay collapsed and panting over his lap, he eased his fingers out of her and wiped them on a handkerchief.

  She didn’t move, and he didn’t feel inclined to help her. She looked so lovely—thoroughly spent with her ass painted rosy and the juices of her sex smeared between her legs. If she was his woman, he’d lift her to her hands and knees and pound her gorgeous little pussy from behind.

  But she wasn’t. She was a highly trained surgeon, crucial to the revolution. And he probably should have shown a little more respect. Bailey would kill him if he knew what Blade had just done.

  It occurred to him she might not think she had permission to get up, since the last time she’d tried, he’d held her down and smacked her. He forced himself to pull her panties and leggings up and lifted her to sit between his knees with her back against his chest. He pulled a bloodfruit from his pocket and handed it to her, along with his smallest hunting knife. He figured she wouldn’t want him cutting her fruit without washing his hands first, and he wasn’t ready to leave her.

  She accepted the fruit, turning it over in her hands.

  “Cut it in half. There’s no pit in the middle.”

  She obeyed, slicing the ruby red fruit down the middle and holding it away from her as the blood-red juices ran. She looked over her shoulder at him questioningly.

  “Take a bite, it’s sweet. You’ll like it.”

  She leaned forward and bit into it. Even from where he sat, he had the view of her full lips closing around the juicy meat of the bloodfruit, and he longed to be holding it for her, feeding her himself.

  She twisted to offer him a bite.

  “You eat it, I have another in my pocket.” He’d given her the only ripe one—the other two he’d found were still sour—but he didn’t mind. Watching the eager way she bit into the fruit again made it worth it.

  She ate the whole thing. and he offered her one of the unripe ones. She ate that one, too, then licked her stained lips. Fucking gorgeous.

  ~~*~~

  Lara’s entire body still trembled from both the spanking and the orgasm. She hoped the fruit would calm the tremors, but having the burly warrior so close made it hard for her to pull it together. Her brain kept short-circuiting every time she thought about what had just happened. Both her pussy and her anus were sore from use, but the euphoria from her climax had the rest of her body languid. She didn’t understand what had made him pleasure her. One minute he’d been punishing her, the next… Well. Yeah. That happened.

  She screwed up the courage to talk about it. “Why did you do that?”

  Behind her, it seemed Blade stopped breathing. “You said yes.” His tone was slightly defensive, as if he thought she might feel violated.

  Hell, she did feel violated, except he was right, she had said yes, though she hadn’t even understand what exactly she’d said yes to, at the time.

  She scrubbed her face. “Yeah, but what made you think I wanted that?”

  Again he stilled. “You’re the doctor.”

  She nibbled her lip, turning his words over in her mind. What did he mean?

  “I saw evidence of your need,” he explained. “If you’re asking why a spanking aroused you, you’ll have to ask yourself that.”

  Inexplicably, she burst into tears.

  Blade’s muscled arm snaked around her waist and pulled her back against his barrel chest. “Shh, it’s okay.”

  She gulped in air, embarrassed at her tears. She had no idea why she was even crying. It was as if the shell of Dr. Lara Simmons had been cracked and some other self she didn’t know had been dumped out. She felt weak and needy. She wanted to crawl into Blade’s arms and beg him to hold her. She wanted his approval, wanted to hear him call her “good girl” again. And none of that made sense to her, unless it was more of the Stockholm syndrome.

  “Are you scared? I promise I’ll get you out of this canyon in one piece.”

  She sniffled.

  “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.” A sob choked her and she snuffled.

  “Are you crying over your spanking?”

  “No.” Her voice wobbled. Yes. Maybe.

  “Are you worried about what will happen to you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He cupped the back of her head to turn it and thumbed away her tears. “They want you for a surgery. For someone crucial to the revolution.”

  She drew in a breath, blessed focus returning with this nugget of information. “Why me? Aren’t there other surgeons on the planet?”

  “None sympathetic to our cause. And it’s a tricky surgery. So it requires someone with your skill. Someone with knowledge of the latest medicine from Earth, but also with hands-on experience. You’re one of five like that in all the galaxies.”

  She mulled that over, her foolish ego preening at his words. She loved being needed. To a fault. It was what made her risk her life to work as an Interplanetary Samaritan. Her professional curiosity had her mind spinning, wondering what type of surgery it might be and the identity of the patient.

  “We’d better keep moving. I need to find a way to get you to the camp. Hopefully today.”

  “Where is camp? Is it far?”

  “Yes. We can’t walk there. We’ll have to find our way out of this canyon and take a ship.” He lifted her to her feet as he stood. “Let’s move.”

  He stalked off ahead, and she watched his impressive figure—the solid muscle bulging and rippling as he walked.

  He turned back, his dark gaze traveling over her face. The fierce hardness she usually saw there was gone, replaced with...what was it? Concern? He took two long strides back toward her and held out his hand.

  Surprised, she met his gaze, her tummy fluttering as she placed her palm in his. He tugged her along, holding branches away for her and pointing out fallen logs and holes to keep her from tripping.

  He stopped to wash his hands in the river and cut them each another length of sweet-reed to suck on. It was like a straw, filled with a thin nectar, refreshing and sweet. The canyon itself was beautiful—jagged stone walls striated with shades of pink, orange, blue, and purple. The river sparkled turquoise blue, begging her to drink from it. What a shame it had been polluted like all the rivers on Earth. She imagined that hurt the original Jeselians more than anything.

  They walked in silence for the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon. Days were shorter on Jesel, and she still hadn’t grown accustomed to how fast they went by, although the shorter nights suited her. She’d always suffered from insomnia. Here, she didn’t have as long a stretch of lying awake, worrying about how she should be asleep.

  Blade stopped and crouched beside a planted decked with fat orange berries.

  “Lemonberries.” He held one up to her mouth. It seemed too intimate to let him feed her, but hunger won out over compunction and she parted her lips for him. He popped the berry onto her tongue, and she bit into it. A sweet-sour taste exploded in her mouth.

  “Mmm.”

  He grinned, holding out his cupped palm, which he’d filled with them. “You like them?”

  She accepted the handful. She’d never tasted anything so magnificent. The flavor overwhelmed her senses. Like a child, she shoved the entire handful into her mouth at once, her cheeks full as she chewed.

  He chuckled. “I guess that’s a yes?”

  She crouched down, picking them as fast as her fingers could fly, shoving them in her already full mouth, juice dripping down her chin.

  Blade didn’t eat any himself, just gathered them and held them out to her, his dark eyes glit
tering with amusement.

  She reached to pick more, but he made a quiet noise in his throat and caught her hand. Pointing at a beautiful flying creature sitting atop a berry, he smiled. It blended in, its wings the same color as the lemonberry.

  “Berryhawk.” His voice came low but filled with warmth or even reverence. “They change color depending on which berry they land on. Like the chameleons on Earth.”

  She smiled, watching the tiny bird-like insect with its glittering wings. “She’s beautiful.”

  He held his palm out flat beside the creature and she stepped onto it, her wings changing to the color of his skin. “You see?”

  “Amazing,” she breathed.

  A breeze blew, and the little creature took off, flitting above their heads while they watched.

  Blade took her hand in his once more. “Come on.”

  She looked longingly back at the lemonberries but didn’t want to be disagreeable. Not when he’d shown her his sweeter side.

  The canyon walls grew lower, and her confidence in Blade’s ability to lead them out of it increased. Blade, however, became more cautious as they lost their cover of the high cliffs and overgrowth. He insisted they inch along in the shadows while he constantly swept the area with his attentive gaze.

  “Come on, we’ll crawl out here.” He stopped when the walls reached about ten feet in height.

  She looked at the rock face dubiously.

  He pulled the coil of rope off his belt and tied it around her waist. She flushed, remembering the way he’d knotted her hands behind her back before he whipped her. Her pussy clenched.

  He must have caught her blush because his gaze lingered on her face, a trace of curiosity there. One corner of his mouth hinted at a smile, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Let’s go.” He touched her back.

  Holding one end of the rope, he quickly scaled the rock face, as if the effort was no more challenging than climbing a ladder. “Okay, now you climb. If you slip, I have you,” he said, tugging the rope.

  She curled her fingertips around the edge of stone in the rock face the way she’d seen him do, and found a toehold. Drawing a deep breath, she reached for the next one. And slipped.

  Blade’s rope caught her, cutting into her waist as she dangled backward in the air. She swung back and hit the rock again. Before she could even try to find another handhold, Blade began to lift her dead weight, pulling the rope hand over hand.

  “Wait—I can help,” she offered, but he’d already pulled her to the top. She flushed, feeling stupid. “I’m sorry. I’m no good at this stuff.”

  He untied the knot at her waist with deft movements. “We don’t need you to be good at this stuff. We need you for your skill with a scalpel.”

  “What kind of surgery is it?” she asked, but, of course, he ignored her, walking away and looking all around.

  If she’d thought he’d taken long strides before, he walked even faster now, so that every few steps she had to jog to catch up. “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer. It seemed he was back to the gruff, uncommunicative boor from the day before. She supposed he was like this when focused, but, even so, it hurt her feelings. That was stupid. She should not be forming an attachment to this man. She’d let him give her pleasure in a moment of weakness, but that didn’t mean he had feelings for her. She needed to stop thinking like a little fool.

  They crested a hill, and Blade stopped. Something about his posture and stance made her tense and, when she reached his side, she saw why. Below them lay the ruins of a small city.

  Metal and concrete lay in piles of rubble.

  “Sansimon.”

  “What?”

  “This used to be Sansimon. A peaceful settlement with dairy farms and cheese factories. The Republicans hadn’t enslaved the Jeselians because they needed the food grown here.”

  “What happened?”

  His black gaze swiveled to her, the hard fierceness returned. She remembered the name they’d called him on his comms unit: Vengeance. It fit the man before her. “What do you think?”

  “The Republicans changed their minds?”

  He gave a single nod and started down the hill, the set of his shoulders making him look like a man never to be crossed.

  ~~*~~

  He’d heard of Sansimon’s demise a year ago, but this was the first time he’d seen the devastation. Sansimon had managed to exist as a free territory largely because they claimed complete pacifism. But as more escaped slaves sought refuge there, it had become an underground rebel camp. By outward appearances, it was primitive and simple—farmlands and pasture, rickety old wooden structures with outhouses. Treedle’s army had bombed it after they found two escaped slaves there, but they hadn’t known to look for the underground tunnels and buildings secretly used by the Jesel, or they surely would have destroyed them, too.

  He found an intact airship in an underground bunker. Unfortunately, the solar tubes had cracked, so he couldn’t power it up.

  “I’m going to see if there are any intact solar tubes in the settlement. I want you to stay here. Do not leave this bunker. Do not touch anything.” He gave her his sternest look. He couldn’t risk her wandering around—there might be explosives anywhere or even other scavengers around.

  She scowled.

  He reached for the rope at his belt. “I can tie you up.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she took a step back.

  He unclipped his laser gun and held it out. “Stay right here. It may not be safe out there.”

  She took the gun. “What if something happens to you?”

  “Look for a comms unit and identify yourself as a Samaritan. But I’ll be back.” He turned and ducked his head to walk out the hatch. The pinprick heat of the sighting laser of the gun touched the center of his back. “Very funny,” he said, without turning back.

  “Hmmph.”

  He almost chuckled. He found her feistiness sexy as hell.

  When he returned with an armful of solar tubes scrounged from the wreckage, he found her still in the ship, emptying cabinets. “I found these MREs.” She held up several packs of ready-to-eat meal rations from Earth. “Do you think they’re safe?”

  He liked that she’d grown more cautious. Or maybe he just liked that she’d asked him before tearing into them. “Yes.”

  She extended her arm to offer him one.

  “Later. You go ahead and eat.” He hated packaged food from Earth. Jesel didn’t have any industrialized farming or food production. Here, they ate from the land as hunter-gatherers. They used to farm, too, before Treedle and his mines demolished their peaceful way of life.

  He searched for a toolkit and carried it over to the control dash. He’d worked on this make and model before, and while the airships themselves were slow and clunky to fly, the engineering was blessedly simple. He had a fair degree of confidence he’d be able to get them in the air by nightfall. He detached the casing and pulled it off to expose the workings of the engine. The positioning of the solar tubes required him to crawl underneath and lie on his back to install them. There hadn’t been an illuminator or any kind of light in the toolbox, so he’d have to go by feel.

  Forty minutes later, he had just finished installing the first tube when a low growl reached his ears.

  “Ah...Blade?” The doctor’s voice had a tremor.

  He moved slowly, easing out from under the dash. A bluehound stood in the doorway, its ears folded back, teeth bared. The red light of his laser gun danced on its forehead. “Hold your fire, Lara,” he said softly, unfolding his long limbs to come to his full height.

  The dog had a worn collar around its neck, but if it had come from Sansimon, it had been running wild for at least a year. “Easy, boy,” he said. He held out his hand. “I’ll bet you’re hungry, aren’t you?”

  He advanced, and the canine took two steps back, head lowered, growl still rumbling in its throat.

  “Hand me an MRE,” he said, without taking his focus
off the canine. Lara passed him the meal, and he opened it, slowly lowering it to the floor at his feet. If the dog wanted it, he’d have to come in close to get it.

  The animal stopped growling and sniffed.

  “Here, boy. Come and get it.”

  The bluehound took one step forward and stopped, sniffing again.

  “Come, boy.”

  His ears pricked forward, the bluehound darted forward, catching the edge of the MRE between his teeth and dragging it backward.

  Blade and the doctor watched as the canine gulped the meal in about ten seconds flat.

  “I thought you were hungry. Want another one?”

  The dog wagged his tail.

  “Sit.”

  He sat immediately, as if remembering the command, then popped back up uncertainly.

  Blade held out his hand for another MRE. “I said, sit.”

  The dog sat.

  “Good boy.” He unwrapped the meal and set it on the floor in front of his feet. “Come.”

  The dog lunged forward and grabbed the meal, this time not retreating quite as far with it.

  ~~*~~

  Lara inched closer to Blade, and the vicious dog bared its teeth at her and growled.

  “No.” Blade’s deep commanding bark made her jump and nearly shriek. It took her a moment to realize he was pointing a finger at the dog. Not her. She’d laugh if she wasn’t so terrified.

  The animal lowered his head submissively. Apparently it knew to acknowledge the alpha in the room. Smart creature.

  Blade reached out and took his laser gun from her hand, slipping it back into the holster at his belt.

  “A-Are you sure he’s safe?” Her damn voice quavered.

  Blade contemplated the dog. “No. He’s probably still dangerous. But I believe I can handle him.”

  A shiver ran down her spine. Something about the way he so expertly tamed and dominated the dog seemed too familiar. Like with the stupid dog, he triggered some instinctive submission deep within her, becoming her master, reducing her not only to obedience, but to an eagerness to please him. It made him both irresistibly attractive and completely odious to her at the same time. She didn’t want to be lowered to a groveling canine.