Shadow, page 3
part #1 of Jaegers of the Consortium Series
“But I’m telling you, I didn’t buy anything!” Charity ground out, her voice rising in pitch and volume. She stormed across the room, flopped onto a couch close to the room’s large stone fireplace, and mindlessly spun the floor globe. Why would no one believe her? She massaged her temples and let out a long, exasperated sigh. This whole ordeal today was giving her a headache. “The only purchase that I signed for any time recently was the wedding planner, and that didn’t even go through.”
“Ever since you graduated, you and your mother have spent hours—no, days—hell, weeks planning this wedding...,” Bertram said, standing up. “Tomorrow, you should rest up and I’ll tell your mother to leave you alone about anything concerning the details. In fact, maybe you should go to Atlanta, take in a show at the theater, and relax some. This entire wedding business has you wound up. I know it was a shock for you when you came home, and I apologize for that. Once you’re married, you’ll have plenty of other things to worry about,” he said, walking over and giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead.
Charity had trouble believing him, but her parents had been an arranged marriage and seemed to like each other well enough. It would be different, with Eddie. She knew that already.
“Is she still going on about this sinister conspiracy of hers that someone has stolen her money?” Her mother asked, walking into the library. She crossed to the desk side, giving Charity’s father a sour look.
“I was just telling her that she needed to relax and maybe get away from it all,” Bertram said to his wife with a reassuring smile.
Get away from it all? Charity thought, frowned, and then shot to her feet. “Daddy, you are exactly right. This wedding does have me stressing. Would I be permitted to take a vacation for the summer? I could be back before the Gala when things will then be formalized?”
Her father shot her mother a sharp look, as she was already opening her mouth to protest the notion.
“Of course, darling,” he said. “Where would you like to go? The Mississippi Bay? Manassas Beach? Or maybe you could go to the new luxury resort up in Charlotte. I hear that they built wooden houses in the trees that are suspended over the waters of the shallows there. It sounds wonderful.”
“Elysium,” Charity said, “I want to go visit Ayla in Elysium.”
“The Sin Islands?” Her mother recoiled as if struck. “Are you afflicted with the fever?”
Even her father seemed reluctant. “That is hardly the place for a lady—”
“I’m twenty-four and I’ve been there before,” Charity protested. “You let me go there every summer with Ayla while I was in university!”
“But that was schooling, dear, and you were chaperoned at the time by either her parents or us,” her mother said. “Now you are on the verge of becoming a lady, and ladies do not go to Elysium unattended. Don’t you understand that? Your reputation—your fiancé! What will he think?”
“I won’t be unattended, mother. I will be staying with Ayla and her family, since she’s not married yet, either. Didn’t you say just last year when you met them that you liked all of the Greenstars?”
Her mother looked taken aback, “Yes, well,” her voice trailed off. Charity knew her mother was searching for a sound argument against her daughter visiting what she thought amounted to the most sinful place in the entire Western Hemisphere. And it was… looser, in some respects, than Georgia, but perfectly safe, especially since she would be with Ayla.
“And, Daddy, didn’t you say that they had a lot of good business sense? Even to the point that you’ve started multiple contracts with them to import luxury items in exchange for aircraft? Your profits have soared; have they not?”
Her father grinned. “Well played, Charity. Indeed, they have. You make a convincing case.”
“Bertram!” her mother cried. “You cannot seriously be considering allowing her to leave to visit… that place—and all alone? What if something happens?”
“I think, my dear, that if we said no we would wake up tomorrow to an empty bed in our daughter’s room. Or, we can book her on a secure airship route down to New Eden direct from Atlanta. She will be staying with her friend who is the daughter of a wealthy businessman. If it’ll calm your mind, we can even get a Consortium Jaeger to escort her. What is the worst that could happen?”
Chapter 3
Stark naked, Ayla Greenstar took the steps up from the foyer two at a time. Her vibrant crimson hair billowed behind her as her long, toned legs carried her quickly up the stairs. She didn’t dare look back at her pursuer, because to do so meant capture. He was close.
Taking a hard left to head down one wing of her mansion, Ayla smiled when she heard him let out a few curses as he fell behind. She flew down the hallway, her bare feet cushioned by the plush carpeting. Almost immediately, she took another left into a small room that served as the guest suite’s dressing room. She went straight for the empty walk-in closet in the opposite corner of the room. Pressing hard on the wall at just the right place, Ayla heard the distinct click of hidden gears in motion as a disguised panel slid out of the way, revealing the passageway that would lead to another walk-in closet in the opposite wing.
Closing the panel behind her, Ayla chuckled to herself as she crept through the dark passageway. It was only a few meters to the other end and once she was there, she slid the secret door open and carefully peered out. Unlike the guest wing, this wing’s closet was full of her clothes, as it connected to her master bedroom.
There was no sign of her pursuer. She took a few hesitant steps out, smiling as she moved quietly out of the closet and through her room, anxious to get off the top floor and into a better hiding spot. Maybe she’d hide in one of the towers or the empty servant’s wing; there were lots of hiding spaces and secret passages there that she could disappear into for a while.
“Gotcha!” her pursuer yelled as he grabbed her by the top of her head, pulling her before she managed to get out the door.
“Damn it, Lucas, be careful! That hurts!” she protested as she was dragged backward.
“I don’t hear the magic words,” Lucas said in a sing-song voice, as he wrapped his hand into her long red hair.
“‘Fuck’ and ‘you’?” Ayla guessed snidely, trying to get free. She knew the two words—their safe words—that would either soften him or stop him entirely, but she wasn’t about to use either one; she was having too much fun putting up a fight. Instead, she growled while holding on to his wrist. “How the hell did you know I was here, anyway?”
Lucas just smiled as he pulled her by her hair over to the massive four-poster bed that dominated the master bedroom. It was situated on a raised platform in the exact center of the room. “You’re not the only one who knows about all these little secret passages. They were here when you bought the place. Besides, you like to double back a lot when you’re being chased.”
“Ugh…” Ayla rolled her eyes, gripping his wrist with both hands to ease the pressure on her hair. She hated being predictable.
“I’m kind of disappointed,” Lucas said, as he casually pushed her onto the bed. He followed her up, grabbing her by her shapely thigh and pulling her back toward him when she tried to scramble away. “I figured that it would’ve taken me at least an hour to catch you. Are you getting lax on me or are you just that anxious to get laid tonight?”
“I’m not tied up yet,” Ayla said, grinning. Her fingers clawed at the bed, but there was nothing to grab. When he flipped her over onto her back, she flailed at him, but he merely batted her attacks aside as he grabbed her wrists, pinning them both above her head.
Lucas smiled and inhaled her scent, then shifted upward, straddling her midsection and pinning her biceps with his knees. Reaching to grab the ropes he’d placed on the nightstand earlier, Lucas took less than a minute to restrain Ayla’s hands to either of the upper bedposts; all while ignoring her incessant twisting and bucking under him. “You were saying, my dear?”
Ayla pulled at her bindings and raised an eyebrow at him. “You know that I can easily get out of these, right?”
“All things being equal, yes; but, we are far from done.” Lucas paused in his work long enough to strip out of his undershirt. It had grass stains on it from when he tried to tackle her outside the manor earlier, and he was glad he’d had the foresight to remove his suit before taking off after her. Grabbing a smaller length of rope, he bound her ankles together. Once she was secured, he stepped off the bed to strip his remaining clothes, his cock fully aroused.
He didn’t go right for her, as she was expecting. Instead his hand breezed lightly out to catch her left breast, slapping it to the side. The noise was loud, but sounded worse than it felt. It felt wonderful. Ayla gasped with pleasure and twisted on the bed. “Oh, come on, already! Don’t keep me waiting!”
“You keep complaining about my technique and I’m going to have to gag you,” Lucas said, slapping her right breast this time. “You really like to go for the fast and furious fuck, don’t you?”
“You don’t want someone to fight you; you want some meek little submissive thing you can torture to death,” Ayla countered.
Lucas smirked as he moved his hand to the shaven cleft between her thighs. “Chasing is all well and good, but the constant lip service is irritating,” he said as he squeezed her pussy a few times before letting his hand rest there. Ayla whined and twisted, trying to get him to continue playing with her. When he finally bent over and took one of her full breasts into his mouth, Ayla closed her eyes and moaned. He moved up her body, grabbed her by the top of her hair, and pulled her head toward him. “Speaking of lip service, I think that you’re talking way too much tonight,” he said as he brought his cock up to her mouth and shoved it in.
“Mmmph,” Ayla moaned the moment his cock slid past her ruby-red lips. She enjoyed the pseudo violence in their play, but they both knew it wouldn’t last. They wanted other things—things they could not provide to one another.
She wanted someone who could dominate her, both in bed and in life. Lucas could certainly do that, but he wanted a sweet, innocent girl who he could pamper. Ayla was too much of a wild child to ever be what he wanted, and she wasn’t one for pampering. But, for now, they could have fun.
Lucas caught one breast in a loud, stinging slap, and then the other. She moaned again around his cock and ground her clitoris up against his hand when he reached for her. Lucas slapped her lightly between the legs, eliciting a squeal as she tensed against her bonds.
Lucas pulled out of her mouth and untied the rope on her ankles just long enough to secure them to the posts on either side of the foot board, spreading her legs wide open. He was then back on top of her, this time snaking his arm under her neck to grab her hair again. Pulling her head to the side, he bared her neck and planted his lips on the skin there. Ayla inhaled sharply. Pleasure tingled down her spine, making her wetter than she had been during the chase, wetter than she’d been when he tied her down, a grip so tight she could hardly move. “Ooooh, yes,” she purred. “Take me, take me,” she gasped as she felt him slide down to grind his pelvis into hers. She could feel the rock-hard shaft of his cock against her folds. She wanted him inside her.
“All in good time,” Lucas murmured into her neck, reaching for more rope as he rubbed the underside of his shaft against her mound. He smiled at her startled, confused look as he took the rope and fashioned it into a gag, pressing it between her teeth and then tying it in place. It tasted like his hands, and like… well, hemp. Ayla jerked her head around, glaring at him.
Stop this teasing, she thought. Just fuck me!
But Lucas just patted her on the cheek as he knelt between her legs, admiring her body. Ayla was still twisting in her bonds, however, and eventually her leg came up enough to catch Lucas in the thigh.
He touched his leg where she had kneed him, and then grinned. “Alright, I see how it’s going to be tonight.” He left the bed and walked over to peruse the implements on Ayla’s wall of “toys.” Ayla was left bound, naked, and exposed on the bed.
“Hmm, let’s see; bullwhip? Nah, too hard on the soft, supple frontal flesh,” he said. “Cane? Too rigid. Cat-o’-nine-tails? Too medieval. Really, Ayla, you are perverse,” he mused as his hand settled on a simple, black riding crop with a leather loop at the end. He tested the flexibility, and smiled. “Ah. Just right.”
The smell of the nearby ocean greeted Charity as she climbed from the back of the luxury steam-powered carriage. She looked up at her best friend’s mansion and couldn’t help but marvel at the design differences between Dixie and Elysium. Back home, she was used to the large multi-story plantation houses that had been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, some even dating from before the Cataclysm and the Great War. There, even the average citizen owned at least a single-story home, with a porch that mimicked the larger houses. Here, the rural mansions were of a more modern design. The base of Ayla’s mansion had been built of the same dark metal that the Atlanta city towers were made of, while the rest of the structure looked to have been hand-laid in stone. It was only two stories tall, but it was very long, with two wings going off in either direction from the central structure. The brick walkway led up a slight hill to the front door. Charity could just barely make out the tops of two towers peeking up from the rear of the mansion despite the small lanterns that lined the road and flanked the gate, lighting the way to the front door. The smell of flowers hung heavy and sweet in the darkness.
Does she live here all by herself? Charity wondered as she lifted her dress above her shoes so as not to step on it. Before arriving at this mansion, Charity had gone to the family home, but her parents told her Ayla needed her own place now that she was out of college and directed her to Ayla’s new residence. Charity couldn’t help but feel jealous of Ayla’s freedom. Charity’s parents would never be so… progressive.
She strode up the walkway to the massive double doors, squinting in the dark to identify the entry keypad. Several small clockwork servants hopped off the carriage roof behind her, whirring into action. They picked up her luggage and fell into step behind her. The Greenstars’ clockwork servants seemed particularly well-pro-grammed. It had been kind of Ayla’s parents to lend them to her, along with the carriage.
Charity felt a twinge of envy toward her friend. Charity’s parents were insistent on keeping her at home, within their perpetual reach. Getting an airship flight out of Atlanta that night had been a fiasco. She suspected her father had arranged her personal tour of the airship’s bridge that lasted the entire two-hour flight, though the staff said it was included in the price of her ticket. Charity knew it had to be her mother who had the Consortium Jaeger, Deliverer, who conveniently happened to be on the same flight, act as her personal escort until they landed. She wasn’t sure what to think of Jaeger Deliverer. He spent most of the flight going on about the air pirate, Cheyenne. Charity was simply happy she didn’t attack them on the way down to Elysium.
Not that the airship flight down was bad. It was clear skies the entire way and the stars seemed to shine all around them. She found it thrilling to feel the deck plates vibrate as the Tesla generators started, and hear the sound of the airship’s massive engines engage to get them airborne. Seeing the military airship take off nearby, the DACS Samuel Cooper, with the Dixie Stars-and-Cross emblazoned proudly on its tail, was worth the hassle of the tour and escort.
Finding the keypad at last, Charity entered the second of the two codes the Greenstars had given her. She pressed the brass numbers down in order, each one giving a sharp, spring-loaded click when depressed. The first code had only gotten her onto the mansion’s grounds; beautiful, well-maintained grounds rich with the smell of flowers. After she pressed the last digit, hydraulics hissed as the doors swung inward, granting her admittance, and drowning out the crashing waves that came from out of the darkness. The entryway at the base of the tower was just as grand and majestic on the inside as it was on the outside. Charity’s soft boots barely made a sound, but, once she waved her control rod at the clockworks, they started to cause a racket as they filed in to take up positions against a nearby wall.
Just as she considered calling out for someone, Charity heard the sound of skin being slapped and the high-pitched squeal of a woman. Ayla. Dropping her handbag and control rod, Charity ran up the stairs as fast as she could. Her heart nearly stopped when she reached the open doorway. Ayla was tied down, naked, to the massive four poster bed with an equally naked, somewhat scarred, supremely athletic, and very well-endowed black-haired man standing over her. There was a riding crop in his hand and he was bringing it down across Ayla’s body, repeatedly.
Lucas jerked his wrist, sending the riding crop down across Ayla’s chest. The crop caught the tips of her heaving breasts perfectly, and she jerked in pain and pleasure, moaning into her gag. She strained against the ropes holding her, lifting her hips slightly to arch her back, and shifting to make her breasts jiggle for him. Lucas grinned and swatted her again, this time on her left breast just below the nipple, causing another squeal and moan to escape.
Ayla’s eyes fluttered open, looking up at Lucas with lust. Some movement just behind him distracted and then startled her. Her eyes widened when she saw exactly who was behind him, and what she was witnessing. She started thrashing about on the bed and screaming through her gag for Lucas to look behind him.
Lucas, however, was completely focused on Ayla. He smiled broadly, as she flailed about. “Into a bit of resistance tonight, are we?” he teased as he trailed the riding crop up the inside of her thigh.
