Pleasure 2035 Read online

  Damnation!

  By holy Athena, he didn’t need this. He needed to get back out there and do his job, find out who kept the war between the Blues and Blacks going and who wanted to kill him just for existing.

  “You’re a Return?” Mayflower’s incredulous voice surprised him. She turned in his arms and stared at him, her violet eyes reflecting her disbelief.

  She knew.

  “The biting, the way you heal…it all makes sense,” she said. Mark didn’t respond.

  “How old are you?”

  Mark had trouble finding his voice. Mayflower poked his forearm.

  “How. Old. Are. You?” she repeated, emphasizing every word. Her expression left no room for noncompliance.

  “About two thousand years, give or take a decade.”

  Mayflower’s mouth dropped open, and Mark’s mind whirled with the possibilities of such an inviting temptation.

  “That explains a lot,” Mayflower finally said, turning her back to him. Mark raised an eyebrow.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Her chuckle made her body bounce. She was laughing at him. He squeezed her, and she laughed harder.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  “No wonder you’re so good in the sack. You’ve had two thousand years to perfect your technique,” she said, ending with a charming giggle. Mark nipped her ear, and she let out a little hiccup.

  “It has nothing to do with technique, Mayflower,” he said. “It has everything to do with the partnering.”

  His cock grew and throbbed as he continued to kiss his way down her shapely neck. She leaned into his erection, letting it slide between her thighs. Her wetness beckoned.

  Mark broke their connection long enough to turn Mayflower to face him, one hand steadying her hip and the other probing the depths of her damp pussy. Mayflower leaned into his touch, moaning, and he claimed her mouth. She opened to him.

  “Take me,” she said against his lips.

  His cock ached to be inside her tightness, feeling the velvet walls close around him and suck him in deeper. He lifted her, and her legs automatically wound around his waist, allowing him access to her slick channel. Their kiss continued until he set her down next to the wall, breathless. She seemed to sense what he wanted, facing the wall without waiting for his request.

  She spread her arms out above her head and leaned her cheek on the wall, the flirtatious glint in her eyes matching her sassy smile. She opened her thighs and wiggled her ass at him.

  “Come get me,” she teased, and Mark lost it.

  He fell upon her, crushing her body with his own, running his hands up her arms and winding fingers through hers. He adjusted his hips so his cock found her pussy hole, and he filled it. Quickly. Urgently. Her muscles clamped down on him, and his engorged cock pulsed with the need for release.

  He thought he’d explode on the first thrust, but he made it three times—three blissful strokes of her woman’s flesh on his – before he spilled himself inside her again. He rode out his orgasm gently bouncing into her warm, sensitive folds, massaging his teeth along her neck.

  Once the sweet oblivion of his climax ebbed, Mark kissed Mayflower’s hot cheek. Its ruddy red color signaled she hadn’t found her pleasure, and even with her eyes closed, her expression emanated tension from unspent sexual energy. Problem easily solved.

  Mark’s two fingers fit perfectly inside Mayflower. She lifted her ass to him as he played with her, moving in and out, in and out. She whimpered when he slid his fingers out of her and found her hard bud, swollen with need. He massaged it until Mayflower screamed his name, her face reflecting the sweet agony of her release. Her laughter ended with a sigh, and Mark had never heard anything so enchanting.

  He gathered her into his arms and kissed her soundly. She didn’t resist.

  If only…

  A screech, like an animal in pain, shook the metal walls around them, and Mayflower pushed him aside. She ran for the door, her naked form tense with fear, only to be blown back away from it when the blaster destroyed door with a gust of power.

  Mark threw himself in front of Mayflower, who struggled to get to her feet. Dime’s flailing form came tumbling into the room, his terrified shrieks and moans heart-wrenching. He landed in front of them, writhing on the floor like a wild animal, fighting to free himself of his jeans and mesh T-shirt as if they burned his skin.

  Mayflower dove for Dime, but Hannah toppled into her path, her momentum carrying them across the floor and into the gurney. It toppled with a crash, and both women scrambled away from the spine-shattering noise. A familiar voice rose over the clatter, chilling Mark’s blood as a large creature grabbed him in a stranglehold and refused to let go.

  “Well, Mayflower baby, it looks like your time is up.”

  Chapter Seven

  Chico’s voice cut through everything. All other noises faded around Mayflower, recognition of her ex-lover making her brain buzz. Somehow, he’d found them, and now he’d kill them. How could she let this happen to Dime?

  How could she let this happen to Mark?

  Mark. Mayflower glanced around the room searching for him through the smoky chaos until she spotted him next to the lab table, a large synthbot choking him, slowly squeezing the life out of her hero.

  Terror surged through her, and her body froze. The memory of the synthbot attack sizzled just beneath the surface of her weary mind, threatening to shatter it into a million pieces. Panic gripped her, tying her defenses down. Like always, the wicked voice of defeat chuckled deep inside Mayflower’s psyche, reminding her she could never win against the more powerful, ruthless creatures.

  But this time another voice echoed in the distance, a woman’s voice in the throes of passion, revealing herself to her lover as she cried out in ecstasy at his touch. The echo lingered, drifting through her haze until she recognized the voice as her own. Her own passionate cries slowly began to smother the cackling doubt, and emotion she hadn’t felt in years warmed her frozen limbs and spurned her to action.

  She threw herself on the synthbot, clawing and scratching like a wild animal. Ten times stronger than a mere human, the monster didn’t flinch at her assault. He showed no emotion at all, the big hulking lug, and continued to block Mark’s air. He might already have crushed his windpipe, but Chilly had the tools to regenerate one. She continued to fight.

  Mark’s fist came down on the lab table, smashing an old glass measuring cup Chilly used for mixing some of the lesser valued street drugs he sold to support his habit. A piece with a sharp edge rolled toward Mayflower and she grabbed it, jamming it into the back of the synthbot’s steel head. It should have shattered against his impenetrable skull, but whatever substance coated it began to eat away at the synthbot’s exterior coating.

  It dropped Mark to the ground and staggered around the room, grabbing at the back of its head. Mayflower let herself fall from its massive form and crawled toward Mark, who rubbed his neck and tried to get up. The robotic beast wailed, tearing parts of its own head away – first hair, then the synthetic coating protecting the steel alloy frame.

  Smoke roiled from its decaying head and, out of control, it stumbled too close to Hannah, who wept over Dime’s thrashing body. The young woman glanced up, anger flashing in her tear-filled eyes, and her ankle shot out, sending the dying brute to the floor. It crashed, posturing. Its silver skull, eyes blazing with red lights, fell back, and its mouth gaped open one last time. It didn’t move.

  The gust of energy from Chico’s blaster ended the revolution Mayflower started with such flair. Time stood still. No one moved. The static of silence replaced the chaos reigning only moments before until Chilly strutted through the destroyed door and clapped Chico on the back.

  “What did I tell you, old man? Right where I said they’d be,” he said, way too cheerful for someone who’d just sentenced four people to death. “Now where’s my payment?”

  Mayflower’s sorrow over the loss of her old friend to lithac e
rupted into full-fledged contempt at him and his habit. He’d betrayed her. She’d tried to help him, and he’d betrayed her. He’d betrayed them all, and it was her fault. Again.

  “Shut up,” Chico said, his voice gruff.

  In the split second it took for the sound wave of his harsh command to dissipate into the air around them, Chico lifted his blaster and fired a direct ray right into Chilly’s face. Chilly’s head disappeared and his body dropped to the ground. Mayflower forced the bile rising in her throat back down.

  Hannah burst into a new round of hysterics, and Dime lay semi-conscious on the floor, twitching. Chico hovered over them, his large frame giving him a distinct advantage, and brushed his jet black hair out of his violet eyes. He glared at Mayflower.

  “Where is it, Mayflower? Give me what I want, and you all live,” he said, trying to make his voice sound reasonable without much success. If there was one thing Chico had never been, it was reasonable.

  “I’d gladly oblige, you piece of shit, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Mayflower snapped, her temper getting the best of her.

  Chico stepped forward and placed the blaster at Dime’s head.

  “Where is it, you stupid bitch?” Chico demanded, fingering the trigger.

  Mayflower had no idea what he talked about, but she had to do something. Goose pimples raised on her naked body, rather out of fear or from the cold air pouring through the door, she had no idea. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mark clench and unclench his fists.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “I hid it back at your club.”

  Chico eyed her with suspicion.

  “Why there?”

  Mayflower shrugged. “Because that would be the last place you’d think I left it.”

  Chico never blinked, but his smile turned wicked.

  “How ironic. The one thing that will give me all the power in the world over the Blues, and it was right under my nose all along. How about we go get it, Mayflower? Just you and me?” he said, his tone maniacal.

  He lifted his blaster toward Hannah and pulled the trigger, but a piece of the synthbot’s head knocked the weapon from his hand before it could discharge. Furious, Chico charged Mark, who stood solidly in his path. Mark didn’t flinch, but waited until Chico got about a foot away before slashing back and forth in the air in front of him.

  Chico grabbed his throat, blood spurting out over his fingers, eyes big. His fury turned to fear, then realization as he collapsed on the ground, blood pooling around him. His eyes never closed.

  Mark tossed a piece of broken glass, covered in blood, on Chico’s body. He looked at Mayflower.

  “So what exactly did you do back when…when you…you know…” Mayflower stammered, fighting for words.

  “I was taken at Thermopoly,” he said simply, as if people get turned into vampires every day. Well, maybe back then they did. “I was a Spartan soldier.”

  Mayflower could have sworn she saw hurt in his eyes when he said it, but he masked it well. His jaw muscles tensed and his brows furrowed. She didn’t like the way he looked at her.

  Mayflower tried to remember her ancient Greek history. Thermopoly. Greeks versus Persians. Spartans were the elite soldiers. So many thoughts whirled through her head, but one surfaced, bring with it a pang of loss.

  Only Spartans with sons were sent to fight because they had heirs. Mark must have had a son, too, when he was given the virus. He probably wouldn’t have been able to go back to his family. Mayflower recognized the haunted, hollowness in his eyes. Nothing, however, explained the simmering anger there also.

  “We need to get going,” he said, his monotone breaking the spell. He glared at her.

  “Where?”

  “Back to Chico’s club. You’re going to get whatever it is Chico wanted you to get.”

  Mayflower shrugged. “But I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about.”

  Mark grabbed her upper arms and squeezed hard. “I think you’re lying.”

  “What? No, Mark, I…”

  “Call me Jove,” he said, his voice rough. “And get these two ready to travel. We leave in fifteen minutes.”

  Chapter Eight

  Mark refused to look at her on the way to Chico’s club. Worse, he refused to speak and pulled his arm away if Mayflower tried to touch him. He seemed convinced she knew what Chico had wanted. Most of the time Chico himself didn’t know what he wanted, so how could she?

  Dime sat in the back of the ambulance, back to his old self. Once they’d given him his computer back, he’d reverted. Hannah sat beside him, her head on his shoulder, watching his screen with her hand on his arm. He didn’t seem to mind at all.

  Mayflower’s body ached for Mark’s reassuring touch. For the first time since she met him, she felt unsafe. She empathized with the enemies he’d faced in battle. He made a much better friend than enemy, and a much better lover than anything else.

  Her pussy dripped. She’d been able to salvage some of her clothes from Chilly’s place—more mesh and tights—and managed to outfit Hannah in something functional, though downright bizarre. The orange tights and black tank top with a sweetheart neckline covered her much better than her short, see-through Blue Honey uniform.

  For the first time since she’d known him, Dime focused his attention in one place for more than five seconds, and that place was Hannah’s cleavage.

  Mark hadn’t fared as well. He wore his pajama pants and an oversized T-shirt Chilly’d taken from a patient who couldn’t pay. His attire wasn’t what one would call battle ready. It showed his muscular arms and thighs, his tight ass, and his big cock. How he thought he was going to get through Chilly’s guards to find some mysterious object without something more substantial covering him mystified her, unless he planned to seduce his way in.

  Returns, once cured of their vampirism, didn’t have the superhuman strength or most of the other characteristics they possessed while infected. Adjusting to being a mere mortal again led to the untimely demise of many. Mark probably didn’t have much adjusting to do, having been a Spartan soldier.

  Mayflower’s stomach fluttered and her neck tingled, but she willed it away. Visions of him in the heat of battle, fighting the enemy, returning from long journeys into the arms of his wife, who looked way more like Mayflower than she cared to admit, flashed through her mind. Her body hummed, on fire for the man sitting next to her, ignoring her.

  She peeked at him, but Mark stared straight ahead. She’d tried to convince him when they all piled into the ambulance again that going up against Chico’s guards was suicide. She’d been his lead performer for years, singing and dancing, setting the stage for some of his most important transactions, distracting his buyers. Mark had no idea who Chico was, what he was capable of, but she did. What the hell were they going to do?

  * * * *

  Chico Orlando. That son of a bitch. Chico handled the conniving Miss Mayflower. He should have known the minute she popped out of the box. How could he ever think anything else?

  Mark tried to relax his jaw muscles, but every time he did, Mayflower would make some loud noise and distract him. Like now. She breathed, and the nearly imperceptible scrape of her nipples against her mesh top drove him crazy. He willed his cock to still when it tried to rise. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. The sooner they made it to the Camp, the better.

  There he’d stash Hannah and Dime for safe-keeping, and for leverage. Mayflower, as treacherous as she’d turned out to be, did seem to care more about him than herself. Maybe that was a lie as well. Acting, it appeared, came naturally to her, except for that awful fake orgasm he’d witnessed.

  A green expanse surrounded by rocky coast rose into view and he readied the ambulance for landing. The extra medical supplies in the back would help the residents too much for them to ask him any probing questions, and if Dix still led the outcasts, there’d be no questions at all except when he planned to join the fight.


  Mark guided the ambulance to perfect landing as three figures appeared. He recognized Rocky, Melanchor, and Selena, leaders of the hard-fought revolution that no one seemed to know existed. The Blues and Blacks forgot anyone else mattered except them. Maybe that’s why the ragtag group of disabled soldiers had lasted this long.

  Mark sought a cure for his vampirism so he could die valiantly in battle, a fate denied him by his dead wife and her lover. Once he discovered the person responsible for keeping the rancor between the Blues and Blacks going, he’d return to this field and lead the remaining refugees in their fight against the tyranny of a divided nation.

  “Mark, you son of a bitch,” a familiar voice boomed. “You’re still alive?”

  Mark smiled. Dix Randall, his captain in Iraq III, wheeled his chair up as the three exited the vehicle and slapped him on the arm.

  “How you doin’, buddy?”

  Mark leaned down and grabbed his ex-commander in a bear hug. When he straightened, he found Mayflower staring at him, a pink blush coloring her cheeks. Her breathing quickened.

  It didn’t surprise him. Most women found Dix exceptionally attractive. He never wanted for pussy before or after losing an arm and a leg. His Nordic ancestry—blond hair, crystal blue eyes and tall, lean build—combined with his quiet authority and warm personality, captivated most men and women with whom he came into contact.

  Ignoring the pang of jealousy gnawing at his gut, Mark busied himself with helping Hannah move some boxes of supplies.

  “I think you could have picked a mode of transport a little less obvious,” Dix said, running his fingers along the outside of the ambulance. “This’ll get picked up by Blues and Blacks both.”

  Mark shook his head. “We dumped the medics and I fixed the transponder before we left. I took the back airways along the coast. We’ll be good once your people strip it and repaint it. It’s yours after that.”

  Dix nodded and winked. He spun his chair in a circle. “Selena! Rocky! Get a crew together!” he yelled. “Get these supplies stored and revamp the vehicle. Melanchor, find a place for our visitors.”