His Virtual Bride (5 page)

"I don't remember anything about happy or unhappy."

"But you remember the entire plot of a fairy tale."

"Yes, even though I can't remember what kind of--"

"Pea. The small round vegetable was a pea."

"Are you sure?" Goddess, Geoff looked so damn cute! He'd raked his fingers through his hair so often it stood on end like one of those old-Earth Mohawk styles. And now he was pulling at his mustache as if he wanted to jerk it off his upper lip. And the angrier she made him, the cuter and sexier he looked. Keely liked the sexy part, but felt frustration might be a better emotion than anger. Anger, as far as she could remember, was dangerous and sometimes led to violence.

She had a recurring flash of memory. A painful one where somebody wearing heavy, steel-toed boots kept kicking her and pounding her…her… Goddess! She wanted to forget all that, but she also wanted to remember it. If she could recall it completely, she might unlock her past.

"Keely?" Geoff sounded concerned. Which made her want to cry.

"What're the bolsters for?"

His dark brows knitted over his aquiline nose, but he let her distract him. "To protect the princess from the big bad wolf."

She looked at him blankly--one fairy tale she didn't know.

"You're the princess," he explained.

"I'm not afraid of wolves."

"You should be--especially the two-legged kind."

"What are the bolsters for?" she repeated.

"They're a barrier. In the early sixteenth century--maybe earlier--courting couples sometimes slept in the same bed. Parents accepted the practice so long as the bundling board remained between the couple."

"So the pillows… You intend to use them as a bundling board?"

"Right." He grinned at her.

"On top of the blankets?"

"Y-yes." He looked, and sounded, wary.

"While we are under the blankets? No thanks.
I'll
sleep on the couch. I think I'm shrimpy enough that the springs won't bother me."

He caught her arm. Spun her against him so hard she lost her balance. He lost his as well.

* * * *

Geoff realized if he let her go he could regain his balance, could keep them both from falling. But she felt so good, he wrapped his arms around her and let their combined weight carry them to the bed. The wide, firm, pillow-strewn bed.

He landed on top, seated firmly between her legs, the heat of her sex pressed against his swelling cock. In this position her
shrimpy
body fit perfectly with his harder--very, very hard--one.

"Make you a deal, princess."

She stopped squirming long enough to glare up at him. "What?" she snapped.

"You sleep under the blanket, I'll sleep on top."

She narrowed her eyes, jutted her chin. "With the bundling pillows between us."

"I don't see the need." Heeding her thinned lips, he told her, "But if you want the pillows…you got 'em."

Pushing at his unyielding shoulders, she glared harder. "Get off!"

He rolled to his back, cupped her buttocks to keep her in place. "Better?"

"No." Planting her sharp elbows in his solar plexus, she pushed off--hard. She picked up a pillow off the floor and then threw it at him. "This time put the pillows down the middle."

"I'm bigger than you."

"I sleep big," she countered. "Do it or one of us--and it won't be me--will sleep on the floor."

Jove, he loved it when she got in his face. Her pale green eyes darkened. The freckles on her nose stood out so clearly on her rosy skin he could count them. With her hands at her waist and her elbows thrust back, her breasts jutted out. He wanted to fill his hands with them. He wanted to move on to the fullness of her ass and pull her against him. Let her feel how hot and hard she made him.

Discretion seeming the better choice than having her slug him, he placed each pillow in the exact center of the bed. Years in space had given him a keen eye for distance.

"Satisfied?"

The corners of her mouth twitched as if she wanted to smile. As if she wanted to throw his own words back at him. Something lik
e Not yet, but I will be.

"
Almost." She pointed at the bathroom door. "Go in there. I'll call you when you can come back. Not one second sooner," she added as Geoff closed the bathroom door. Shouting, she demanded to know, "Did you hear me?"

"I heard you. By Jove, the entire galaxy heard you," he shouted back.

* * * *

Keely searched the drawers full of underwear someone had provided for her. No nightgown. A dozen pairs of briefs, a few thongs, a half-dozen bras. No nightgown. A skimpy bikini bathing suit, but no nightgown. She knew she hadn't packed one. On Mars, she slept nude. And she seldom stayed in hotels when she went on a hunt for information. Little
No-Name
suited her needs during those times and she slept nude there as well.

"Well hell!" Slanting a glance at the closed bathroom door, she riffled through Geoff's neatly unpacked belongings. On the bottom of a stack of very brief briefs, she found a well-worn T-shirt.

Undressing quickly, she slipped the soft cotton over her head. It slid down her body like satin. The hem came to a halt just above her knees. It wasn't fancy and, with the fabric worn thin in a lot of places, it sure wasn't sexy. But she felt fairly safe wearing it. Fairly.

She crawled into bed on the left side, ordered the light off and called, "You can come in now."

Even in the half-light cast by the lamp on his side of the bed, Keely could see Geoff had stripped down to his skivvies. And--Goddess help her!--he was even more gorgeous than she'd imagined. Earlier, she hadn't really looked at him. But she looked now.

Wide shoulders, a lightly matted barrel-like chest, firm abs, narrow waist and hips. Perfection. Sculpted, but not overly defined like some Marsians who worked out constantly and watched themselves in the mirrored gym walls. Her gaze flicked down, lingered only long enough to notice his skivvies barely held his private parts, then took in the rest of him. Powerful thighs, well-muscled calves. And, when he turned away, an ass--a well-muscled, perfectly rounded ass--she wanted to grab. Hold on to while he pumped into her again and again.

"You can't drive a spike with a tack hammer." He looked at her over his shoulder.

Feeling her face heat, Keely pulled the sheet up to her neck. She supposed she resembled a turtle, but she didn't care. She refused to let him see how her nipples had tightened while she just stared at him. And her legs--seeming to have a will of their own--had parted so she could cradle him between them.

"Geoff." Her voice sounded achy, needful.

He settled on the bed. On his side, one arm under his head, the other flung over a pillow, he grinned. "Wanna change your mind? Crawl on top of the sheets? On top of me?"

"No." Jove blast it! She sounded too damn indecisive. Too needy.

"Want me to crawl underneath?"

"No!" That was better. As if she really meant it. "We need to talk."

"About?"

"
Le Roi
. Your hermaphrodite."
Who are probably going at it like rabbits and making each other really, really happy.

"They aren't
my
anything, Keely."

"Then whose are they?"

He frowned. Her fingers twitched as if they wanted to soothe that crease away. At last he answered, "They're kinda like we are, Keely. Kinda like information gatherers working for a prize."

"Who or what are they looking for?" She had no intention of letting Geoff's friends--or Geoff himself--cut her out of collecting the huge reward Paris had offered for her great-uncle. Too much of Keely's own life depended on her finding
Le Roi
first.

"Herma-Frodie didn't lie." He raked his hair. "Except for one thing. They didn't come to help. They came to take me back to Earth."

Geoff reached across the pillow to chuck Keely under her chin. Her gaping mouth closed with a click and her jutted chin drooped.

"I…I know Paris doesn't care about any staff member's past. So long as we can get the job done now, it doesn't matter what we did before."

"But that doesn't keep you from wanting to know everything."

"About you," she corrected.

"Why am I more important than any other person?"

* * * *

She thought for a moment, her red-gold eyebrows drawn together above her nose.

Geoff reached out again and rubbed away the frown with his thumb. Her skin felt like satin--cool and incredibly soft. He wanted to tip up her chin, taste her lips. He wanted to toss the bundling pillows on the floor, pull her on top of him and stroke her satiny skin until she begged him to fuck her.

"We're partners. I think we'd get along better if we know something about each other," she told him.

"Okay. You go first."

"No, you first. How old are you?"

"Thirty-two. You?"

Ignoring the question, she posed her own. "Where are you from?"

"Not Mars, which you already know. You?"

"What planet?"

"Mostly I live on Earth." He gave up trying to pry information from Keely. At least for now. But he had learned she had single-minded determination. Stubbornness, he silently amended.

"What do you do--on Earth?"

"Told you before. I command the Fleet Admiral's flagship,
The Honey
."
And, Jove blast it, I miss her!

"Right. Somebody stole her."

"Right." Renewed anger--fury--raged through him.

"Did you? Steal her?"

"Jove, no! If you really think I did, you--"

"I don't believe you stole her, but… Do you know any details about her theft? Anything about the how or when or why?"

"I know about the when. The day before Thanksgiving--that's an old-Earth holiday in November. We still celebrate it." He raked his hair with tense fingers, pulling on the ends until he suspected he looked as crazy as Paris' great-uncle
Le Roi
. "Somebody with my voice, thumb print and retinal scan…everything looked and sounded like me.

"That takes care of the when and the how."

"But not the why. Why, Geoff? Why would someone steal your flagship?"

He almost told her. He wanted to tell her, but couldn't. The fewer people who knew
why
, the better his chances to recover
The Honey
intact.

"Guess you have secrets to keep." Keely sighed. "But aren't you a little young? I mean, I picture the commander of the Admiral's flagship as having a few wrinkles and some gray hairs. Some…seasoning."

"The powers-that-be thought I'd be less dangerous aboard
The Honey
. I prefer fighters. They're more like your
No-Name
. Small and quick. Deadly."

Keely's smile was like that. Small and quick. And what it did to his guts when it faded was definitely deadly. He wanted to protect her--just like he wanted to protect
The Honey
. Not the kind of baggage to be carrying around when he caught up with
Le Roi
and whoever might be helping him. The former King of Mars was crazy as a loon and clever as a fox. Geoff almost laughed at the mixed, though accurate, metaphors.

"Goodnight, Geoff."

"Hey! We had a deal. I told you about myself. Now you tell me about you. How old are you?"

Reluctance shone in her eyes. Her teeth raked her lush lower lip as if she wanted to seal her lips shut. She pulled the sheet up to her ears and clenched her fingers on it as if he might tear it away. Which, Goddess help him, he would do if she didn't look so damned…lost.

"You want me to guess how old you are? I can do that. As a kid, I could always guess peoples' ages. I was pretty good at it. Seldom missed." He sat up, tailor fashion, and ordered the lights to full. "Let's see. No signs of cosmetic fiddling around your eyes. No sagging jowls--but all that chin-jutting you do probably keeps them tight."

Keely grinned and jutted her chin.

"I could tell better if you'd let me see your body."

"In your dreams."

"Yeah, there, too. Well, since you're working in the recovery field, you must be younger than Paris."

"How old is she?"

"Dunno. I don't think even her grandfather Pushin knows her real age."

"Guess," Keely challenged, "oh infallible age-guesser."

"Under fifty, over forty. You…I think you're more than twenty, but younger than thirty-five. Am I right?"

"Possibly."

"Come on, Keely, give," he cajoled when she didn't take umbrage at being thought forty years old or even older.

"Twenty…" she muttered.

"I missed that. Did you say twenty-six?" She nodded, but looked uncertain. Or, in typical female fashion, had fibbed about her age. "That old, eh? I'm surprised you don't have warts and whiskers."

She hit him with a pillow and the fight was on.

She was stronger than she looked and pretty much held her own, delivering whap for whap until he discovered one of her secrets. She was ticklish and he took advantage until he had her right where he wanted her. Under him. Her captured hands above her head. Her breasts--full and tempting beneath his T-shirt. Her legs spread, held open by his thighs. His cock celebrating its nearness to its goal. Her eyes changing color, darkening. Her laughter fading and need growing to match his own. But under the need…

"Jonathan Jacob Jones! You're a virgin."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"Whadya mean? Maybe--"

"Maybe not. I…I can't remember. Anything."

He sat up. "Jove blast it, Keely! Don't cry."

"Not crying." She swiped away her tears as she sat up, leaning against the headboard. "I never cry." Her chin jutted.

"Maybe not. But you're giving a damn fine impression of somebody who does."

She hiccupped. "Sometimes…it just hits me. Like…like when I see how Herma-Frodie look at each other. I-I wonder if anybody's ever looked at me with so much love and respect and all that sappy stuff. It hits me then. And it hurts--not being able to remember."

"You don't remember anything? Not even your real age?"

"Not even my real name. Your queen's physician said I look like a girl he treated a long, long time ago. Her name was Keely. I liked it, so he called me that. Then Paris called me that and by the time Doc released me--"