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“This is gonna hurt,” Ortega said.
She applied the wound cauterizer to the knife slash on his chest.
Kovacs.
An Envoy, a special ops soldier trained to infiltrate anywhere, kill anyone. Trained to slide easily into an unfamiliar body, a waiting sleeve, to hit the ground running, ready for whatever action their masters deemed appropriate.
Kovacs, summoned by the long-lived Meth called Bancroft to play two-bit detective. Tasked to solve the Meth’s “murder,” even though it was perfectly obvious to everyone that the Meth had dispatched his own sleeve, and that it didn’t count as murder since all the guy needed to do was download into the backup body he kept ready in a stasis chamber.
The Envoy Kovacs, who had been downloaded into the body of her lover, Ryker.
Ryker himself — well, his stack, the container for his personality and memories — was on ice, doing time for crimes he didn’t commit. His body was supposed to have been off-limits. But Meths could buy anything, and he’d chosen Ryker’s body to house Kovacs. Just to irritate Ortega, she was sure. She had history with the family.
It wasn’t Kovacs’s fault. He hadn’t chosen the body he was wearing.
But Ortega was furious, and Kovacs was here, and the Meth was not, and she had a medical tool that could cause pain. Her body was burning with unresolved lust, and Ryker’s — Kovacs’s, dammit — was naked to the waist, bleeding from half a dozen cuts.
She used the cautery tool on the slash across his shoulder. It brought her face close to his, and he looked at her with that supercilious expression that said “I’m a super-soldier and you’re a beat cop in a used-up city on a used-up planet.”
The cautery tool had done its healing work. Raw pink flesh covered the cuts, standing up in relief, as if she’d been embossing on him.
She wasn’t done with it. She wanted to use it to cause pain and damage now.
And Kovacs knew it. His sardonic eye watched her face. “Go ahead,” he whispered in a voice almost too low to hear. “You want to. You’re curious how much an Envoy can take, aren’t you?”
“Shut up, goddammit!” she shouted, and she ground the tip of the tool against his chest.
Far from shutting up, Kovacs howled. There was pain in the noise he made, and in the face, twisted in agony. It made her forget again that he wasn’t Ryker, and she was awash with guilt for a brief second.
Kovacs gripped her wrist, forced it and the tool away. She wasn’t surprised to see anger and pain in his face. She was only a little surprised to see arousal — no one would ever survive Envoy training without a dollop of masochism in their psyche, she was sure.
She was surprised to see understanding. And pity.
Her rage redoubled. This man had no right to pity her. It was not his place to understand her, as if they had something in common. They weren’t the same at all!
Ortega slapped his face with all her strength, growling in wordless rage.
That surprised him, she read in his face. Good. It meant Envoys weren’t always as perfect at reading body language as they were made out to be.
Then his face changed, and she realized he wasn’t surprised at what she’d done. He was surprised at his own reaction.
He was furiously indignant. Which made no sense. He was supposed to feel superior to her. Supposed to consider her a means to an end, a tool. But indignance was for equals. A response to the betrayal of a friend or ally.
She saw the next emotion rise on his face briefly but didn’t have time to fully process it before he’d yanked her toward him.
“You have three seconds to say no,” he said in a low, calm voice that was more dangerous than any screaming lout or gun-toting thug.
She threw away the cautery tool, grabbed his face and kissed him. Furiously. Hating him. Wanting him. Willing to take whatever she could tear out of him.
His fierceness met hers.
They fell on the hardwood floor, rolling over and over, wrestling for dominance. Ortega’s body wasn’t enhanced, so she had no hope of winning on strength. She had some combat training, focused mostly on street fighting, but that wouldn’t be any match for the Envoy’s fighting skills either. What she had was knowledge of Ryker’s body. The secret ways to cause him pleasure and pain.
Of course she didn’t know how the Envoy would deal with what she was doing but…
He stopped trying to overpower and mount her, rolled onto his back, and pulled her on top of him.
“Ride me,” he gritted out, his face still twisted into a grimace, rage mixed with raw lust.
She yanked at his belt buckle. He pushed her hands away and took over. So she peeled off her own jeans and underwear, watching as he opened his fly and his cock sprang out.
Ryker’s cock. But Kovacs handled it differently. He didn’t wrap his whole hand around the shaft, but held the base with his fingertips so it stood at just the right angle to…
She slammed down onto it. Pushed it inside her, moved her hips, until it was jammed as deep as she could get it.
Kovacs tried to control her movements, his big hands gripping her hips and ass. Ryker had never done that. He would lie back, resting his head on his hands, and let her ride him to her heart’s content, his only contribution a slow, sinuous roll of the hips.
She raised her hand to slap Kovacs, stop him from trying to dominate…and then groaned as he jerked up into her, hitting every nerve ending on the way in and on the way out, thrusting hard and fast as if this was gonna be the last fuck of his life and he was determined to make it the best for both of them. She wondered, in little stutters in between the explosions of sensation that took her whole attention, whether this was the way all Envoys did it. With the danger they lived in, maybe they were always aware this one could be their last.
They were both making so much noise, she was surprised no neighbors had banged on the wall in protest.
Then it was all too much, the way he was taking her, like a savage. She felt herself tighten convulsively around his cock, and his next few thrusts threw her over the edge. She scrabbled at his chest, her thighs squeezing him so hard she knew it would be painful, as her growls gave way to hoarse screams.
He wrapped his arms around her back and roughly pulled her face down to his, kissing her violently, his tongue fighting hers for entrance into her mouth. And then she knew she’d conquered him, he’d run off the cliff like a cartoon bird and his climax was rising up toward him. She felt him coming inside her, hot and copious, and growling loudly into her mouth…she thought she heard her name.
He didn’t pull out, and she was finally ready to feel his weight on her, wanted her arms pinned down, wanted to wrap her legs around his powerful thighs and feel him rocking into her, grinding on her clit as he took her over the edge again. She used all her strength to roll him.
She was surprised again.
It drove Ryker crazy when she rolled herself under him and spread her legs for his cock. He’d take her hard and fast and deep. His cock always felt huge when he penetrated her in this position. She’d come again and again, and he never failed to keep fucking her until she was begging for mercy.
Kovacs clearly knew what she wanted. He caged her body with his arms and thighs, pumping into her steadily, until she had come several more times, unable to resist the way he wielded his body, the way he hit every hot spot inside her but never the same way twice. He contorted his tall body and took a nipple into his mouth, biting it sharply in time with his thrusts — she hadn’t even known it was possible for his body to bend that way. And after he’d brought her like that, he sucked on her neck, then tightened his grip on her and began kissing her as if his life depended on it.
But instead of ratcheting up the ferocity, as she’d expected now that she’d let him have the dominant position — he seemed to calm and settle.
If “calm and settled” were the right words for what they were doing. He was still pushing himself as deep inside as he could reach, still grinding against her, propped up on one arm so he could stroke her belly and breasts and neck with his other hand. But hard and fast had gradually become slow and…not gentle, but as if he were determined to savor every sensation that fucking her could give him, and savor her pleasure too. Draw it out.
“Damn you, Kovacs,” she growled. She didn’t want him to be savoring her. She really didn’t want to be teetering on the edge of this kind of orgasm, the kind that expanded slowly and inexorably and excruciatingly through her whole body, but didn’t take just her body. It also took her mind and heart.
She’d loved Ryker bringing her like that. His eyes, glowing with pleasure and triumph, boring into hers as she surrendered to it.
She didn’t know if she could stand Kovacs doing it. But she couldn’t’ve stopped it, stopped him, if their lives had depended on it. The pleasure. The connection she was so hungry for, and so was he, she realized. Terribly lonely way of life, the Envoys had — never knowing what time period they’d next wake up in, never mind what star system, what planet, what body.
“No, please,” she whispered, but she meant yes and Ryker knew it.
He’d slowed down even more, his hips pushing, then lifting and withdrawing. And it made his cock seem bigger than ever, his lips sweeter.
“Yes, please,” he said, the pleading tone in his voice echoing hers. “I need to give it to you. I need to take it from you.”
“Promise you won’t hurt me,” she said, tightening around him.
“I promise. I promise, Kristen Ortega. Say yes.”
They both knew it was a lie. He couldn’t promise that. He didn’t have enough control over the factors driving his life. Heck, she didn’t either. She could feel her life spiraling out of control. She might be dead tomorrow, or next week. And he might be the one who had to kill her.
At least she knew now that he’d regret it if he did.
“Yes, Kovacs. Give it to me. Take it from me.”
It felt like it went on forever. As soon as she thought it was going to start ebbing, he drove back into her, or thumbed her clit, or kissed her with tenderness and knowledge, and she spiraled back into it.
All the time he was muttering just one word.
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
He released again at last and she felt his come spilling back out of her, she was so full.
She pushed him off her when he began to snore. Enough was enough. He scarcely noticed, tucked his hands under his head, as if he slept without a pillow every night. He was lying with his back to her.
But she wrapped herself around him, her eyes heavy. It was ridiculous for the 5’5” body to be the big spoon and the 6’3” body the little spoon. But it would do for now.