“Oh, I know. I met Morna.”
“Morna?” I did not know this name, but I had not been active in the club for some time.
“She belongs to him. I guess. She isn’t allowed to leave the building without him, but when she tried to go inside, she was ordered to sleep somewhere else.”
“Where?” I had a feeling I knew, and I didn’t like it one bit.
Smith shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“None of this makes sense. How did you end up inside his suites?” Kayson, apparently, was the only one thinking with his first brain, rather than the one inside his cock. I was having trouble moving past the nightmares in my memories, visions of Master Gee inflicting pain. The subs wanted the pain, at first. But he usually went too far.
If he’d laid a single finger on Smith, I’d— I’d—
Fuck. I wouldn’t do a fucking thing. She wasn’t mine. She didn’t want to be mine. She was a free agent. She was working on this case and then going home, to another planet. When this was over, I’d never see her again.
“Will you please stop panicking. I heard some things in the subs’ lounge that made me suspicious. I talked to Morna and asked her to take me somewhere I could freshen up. She took me somewhere, not sure what was in the room because I only pretended to go in. And then I followed her to Master Gee’s suites. I heard her asking to be allowed inside. She said she needed to warn him, that someone had been asking her questions about the princess.
“The guy inside basically told her to get lost. Reminded her that her benevolent master had ordered her to sleep somewhere else, somewhere I gathered was not pleasant.”
Smith was right. It wasn’t.
“Then I told the guard I had wandered too far and become lost. He invited me to wait inside until someone could escort me back downstairs—because poor, little helpless sub that I am, I couldn’t possibly find my way back all by myittle bittleself.”
Geros tilted his head to the side. “What are these odd words? Why are you speaking so strangely.”
She sighed. “Effect totally lost on you? All three of you?”
I had absolutely no idea what an ‘ittle bittle’was, and neither did my NPU, the neural processing unit programmed to instantly translate every known language in the Coalition and deliver the knowledge directly to my mind. If the NPU didn’t understand this term, no one would.
“Fine. I pretended to be afraid to walk back alone. He disappeared. Said he needed to find someone to cover the door so he could walk me back himself. He was actually quite kind.”
“Kind?” What the hell was this crazy female rambling on about. I knew that guard. He was a stone-cold killer in the war. He was definitelynotkind.
“Yes. He was kind to me.”
“How were you able to see these images?” My patience was wearing thin. I was about to toss her over my knee and spank her for the risks she’d taken. Alone.
“He is a large man. His footsteps are very easy to hear. I realized the suite was quite large and took the opportunity to look inside Master Gee’s office. Or maybe his study. I don’t know what you all call it on Viken. I poked around, found the tablet. It turned itself on and an image of the queen was right there. I scrolled through a few more, figured I was out of time and went back to where he left me. Sure enough, he came back and escorted me downstairs.”
“You broke into his office and went through his belongings?” Kayson asked. He appeared to be unaffected by her story. At least he could form coherent sentences. “Do you know how dangerous that was?”
“I’ve done much worse. Believe me. The only thing that spooked me was his cat thing.”
“Cat thing?” Geros looked as confused as I felt.
“I don’t know what you call it. Some kind of pet. It came in while I was looking around and wouldn’t leave. I had to lock it inside the room when I left. Which could be bad. If the creature is truly like a cat, they probably won’t think a thing of it. Cats get into odd places all the time. But if not? He will know someone was in his office poking around.”
“If you’d been discovered, you would have been killed.” Kayson was calm. Too calm.
But he hadn’t looked into Smith’s eyes as she came, as Geros filled her with his cock. As the device I’d placed over her clit had made her eyes glaze with pleasure. He wasn’t the one she’d trusted to take care of her tonight.
No, that responsibility was squarely on my shoulders. And it was by pure chance that she was alive. That, in my estimation, was a complete and total failure.
Apparently, talk of death was the one thing to which Smith had no response. She shrugged. “He’s the bad guy we are looking for. Do your thing. Figure out how we’re going to get our hands on that tablet and take him alive. He will need to be questioned. I’m exhausted and we have to go back tomorrow night.”
“Why would you risk yourself again? We have what we need. We know he’s involved.” Geros sounded about as excited as I felt. The thought of taking her back into that building, of placing her in danger again was like a pit of darkness gnawing away at my insides.
“We don’t want him, Geros. We need his boss. He’s a minion, not the leader. We need to go in there and take the rest of those images, and his books, and records, and everything else he has in that suite. We need to get our hands on all of it, because something in those rooms will lead us to his boss, to the top echelon of the VSS.”
