Happy Friday, everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending. Last week Len Ascent experiences Len’s nightmare and decides he wants to return to his deep slumber. This week, Tenad Fallon uses her own techniques to interrogate the captain of the Dart. WARNING! this post contains adult themes.
As I mentioned in my last post, for the next few weeks, I may on occasion be posting longer episodes of Dragon because I feel it will be better for the flow and enhance your reading pleasure by allowing these posts the extra length necessary to complete the scene. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!
If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.
For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.
Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series
On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.
Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.
Dragon Ascending Part 26: Kill the Messenger
“My med-bot took care of your little problem?” Tenad said when the door to her quarters slid open. She didn’t look up from her PD. She knew no one could get in that she hadn’t invited. She was a little surprised that Ivanovic had agreed to her interrogating the captain of the Dart. She hadn’t told him the interrogation would be her ship, in her quarters. She didn’t want to run the risk of him telling her no. That wouldn’t have stopped her, but she preferred at least a façade of cooperation whenever possible. If Cronin Teagues had any information about the SNT1, and she was pretty sure he did, she planned to have it and she’d have it much easier without Ivanovic’s interference.
“That’s a treasure, that bot of yours is.” The captain of the Dart’s voice was butter and honey smooth. “Ours is a piece of rubbish we salvaged off Diga X12. It can give you a jab in the ass if you’re taking on radiation, and it can almost set a bone, if you’re not too concerned about how well the job’s done. Definitely wouldn’t trust it with the family jewels. But that one of yours, that one sorted my junk right out and gave me a hand with the test drive after just to be sure I didn’t puke again.”
“It must have been very unpleasant, that. Puking at such an inconvenient time.” She turned to face him and let him ogle her up and down, while she returned the favor. She knew he liked what he saw. She was not hard on the eyes, especially when she was out of uniform. Not that it mattered much what he looked like or what his opinion was of her. She seldom paid much attention to looks now. They mattered far less than end results where her sexual encounters were concerned, and the longer they lasted, the harder it was the less often she needed to make special arrangements to take care of her needs. Looks aside, this one, she knew his kind, dangerous because he was easy on the eyes. One should never assume that because something looks good that it’s good for you in any way, as Captain Teagues was about to find out.
“Let’s just say projectile vomiting is no substitute for a good sac emptying in just the right spot.” He wiggled his eyebrows in a way she assumed some women found charming. For her, charming wasn’t necessary.
“I see your point,” she said, deliberately glancing down at his crotch.
He brushed long slender fingers over the fly of his trousers and offered her a full-lipped smile, dark eyes sparkling. “Not yet you don’t but we can certainly remedy that, can’t we … Do you have a name?”
“I do,” was all she said. She had made sure he didn’t know who had asked to see him or why. Most people didn’t actually know what Tenad Fallon looked like. She kept a much lower profile than her high viz brothers, who more often than not were making public spectacles of themselves, and the gossips and the paparazzi loved them for it. But she learned long ago that if no one knew who she was or what she looked like, well that was a currency all its own, often worth more than a conglomerate’s worth of credits. “And I look forward to you showing me that point,” she said giving him the walk around, which made him a little wrong-footed. He was used to being the aggressor with women. She slid her hand over his well-muscled buttocks, lingering to slide a finger along the seam in between with enough pressure that she felt the muscles around his anus clench in anticipation. Enjoying that little orifice would come later. She traced the trim, straight contours of his hipbone and moved on around to a casual caress of his balls and cock, already tightening in his trousers.
He caught his breath with a curse and a little grunt that ended in a chuckle. “You like slumming, do you? Rich and bored? Some conglomerate mogul’s daughter?”
“Something like that,” she said, increasing the pressure of her caress.
Another chuckle, this one with just a hint of bitterness, his hips now shifting into her strokes, his voice a little tighter, a little more breathless at her efforts. “Well I’m just fine with that. I like a little upscale pussy every now and again. Always happy to spread the pleasure.” He reached for her breasts, and she grabbed him so fast that he quickly stepped back, or tried to. But she’d caught the ponytail, which hung thick and dark between his shoulders and spun him around close to her, the bones in his neck cracking at the odd angel of force as she pulled him back to front against her body, her arms sliding into a choke hold. He was about her height, slender built, wiry, strong no doubt, and that made the muscles below her belly tighten in anticipation. No doubt he was fast, but she caught him off guard and held him firmly tightening her hold just enough to still him, then just a little more to remind him of how essential breathing was, but not enough to extinguish the anger radiating off of him at being bested by a woman. She wanted him angry. “I hear you like to hurt women, captain.” Her words came out a throaty whisper against his ear, a whisper he mistook for anger and he tensed in her embrace, his own anger practically vibrating through his whole body, especially his cock.
The press of her forearm against his trachea made him cough and scrabble with his fingers to loosen her grip, nails bitten short scratching across her skin raised goose bumps down below her navel.
“I have yet to meet a chick who doesn’t like it a little rough. They may play coy, but they don’t really know what they want till I give it to them. What about you? You like it rough, don’t you?”
“You have my number all right, captain, I like it very rough. What about you?” She wrapped his hair around her hand and pulled it tight. “That bulge of yours tells me you might just like it a little rough too.” She released him with a shove that landed him on her bed.
His eyes grew round, the subdued lighting rendering them little more than black holes in his angular face. His cock jerked in his trousers. “Honey, I can take whatever you can dish out and give it back till you scream for more.” He cleared his throat a couple of times and cracked his neck from side to side.
“I’m slick at the thought, captain.” She toyed with the tie at the waist of her white robe. She liked white robes when she knew blood was about to be shed. While he eyed her fingers on the robe expectantly, he was no dummy. “Who told you I like to hurt women?”
“Who do you think? Ivanovic, of course. He’s holding you and your men on your ship against your will, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“Bored, rich conglomerate mogul’s daughter, remember?” She untied the robe and he rested a hand against his surging penis.”
Still eyeing her with a wary blend of lust and mistrust, he chose his words carefully. “No doubt the crew of the ship that flung us into space left a message in our files for anyone who found us. The sick bunch of fucks onboard were about that crazy to leave us puking and living on space rations with full sacs wondering where the hell we’d end up.” He half coughed up the chuckle from his still irritated throat. “Pretty nutso, huh?”
“Indeed. In fact no one would have ever believed such a tale if the Lizzie Ann hadn’t corroborated your story.”
“Fuck me! You have no idea. And even with all that, it was still a nightmare to convince that hard-assed security bitch of Ivanovic’s that we were telling the truth. Now then, I want to test your med-bot’s handiwork in something other than my fist. How about you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.” He gave his package a salacious stroke. “Talk is cheap, and I think you want to play as badly as I…”
His words died in his throat as she slipped the knot of the robe and with a shrug, let it slide off her shoulders and over her hips in the hiss and caress of silk. Stroking his still clothed bulge, he watched as she walked naked to a small bench she’d had Camille set up next to the vanity table. She fingered the items laid out meticulously, just the way she liked them, all promising exquisite pain when rightly applied, and she knew exactly how to apply them. From the selection she picked up a length of rope, rough and abrasive like the old Terran hemp ropes she’d seen in museums as a kid. Then she turned to face him, running the abrasive weave of the rope over her palm. “Tell me about the ship that … flung you,” she slapped the end of the rope whip like against her hand relishing the sting. “And get undressed.”
Teagues lazily climbed off the bed his burnt-hole gaze shifting from her tits to the rope and back again as he worked the buckle of the belt that held his trousers up. “I see you brought toys.” The bravado wavered the tiniest bit when she did not smile. “Who’s tying up who?”
“Take off your clothes and tell me about the ship.”
“All right.” He bent slowly to take off his boots, careful to keep his eyes on the rope now, her body secondary at the moment, and that thought made her very slick indeed. “It wasn’t big, a tramp cargo ship, smuggler I’d bet.”
She had to hand it to him, in spite of the dangerous situation in which he found himself, his hands were steady as he slipped the shirt off over his head and went to work on his trousers. “Nothing special about it. It looked as old and battered as the Dart, but I’m guessing that was only a disguise.”
“I’m guessing so,” she replied. “Sounds like some pretty illegal shit on that boat.”
“You got that right. I mean no ship I know can ‘tran humans without scrambling their brains and their junk. I know cargo ships use illegal Mole tran tech, hell I’d have it on the Dart if I could afford it. But this, this was something else again. I doubt even your rich ass could afford it.”
Vaticana Jesu, the man was going to spill his guts without any real interrogation. Well, she supposed she was all right with that. In the end it wouldn’t matter anyway. She’d get what she wanted. All of what she wanted.
He continued, “Being ‘tranned was bad enough, but then to take our entire ship and toss it out toward the Rift at speeds like that, I figure it was either some top secret project some conglomerate’s carrying on out here or it was all stolen, I mean what else could it be?” When he was undressed, hands shielding his erection, he stood facing her expectantly, gaze returning nervously to the rope in her hands. “Look, honestly, sweetie, the rope isn’t really necessary. I’m harmless.”
With a quick flick of her wrist, the rope shot out and lashed him across the chest leaving an angry red welt. He gasped and stepped back barely catching himself to keep from falling on the bed again. “Sonovabitch! What the fuck?” His cock surged and he grabbed it as though he were reining himself in.
She chuckled under her breath. “I don’t want you harmless, Captain.” Then she snapped out the rope again. This time around his neck and reeled him in and his string of abusive language along with. With him flush against her body, skin to skin, chest to chest, she ran her hand down and cupped his heavy sac. “You’re right, captain, some women don’t know they like it rough, but I very much assure I’m not one of them.” She slid the rope free with a jerk leaving an angry abrasion around his throat.
“Fuck!” Was his only gasped response.
“Now, I want to know absolutely everything about that ship and it’s crew that so abused you.”