Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
No fewer than three women approached Robbie as he led his robot posse and their prisoners back toward the entrance.
The first one tried acting coy, the second called his name—and who knew how she’d figured that out already—and the third skipped all the middlemen and just stripped her top off.
She was blonde, beautiful, curvy, perky, and terribly scarred across the tops of both her breasts, which she thrust toward him with a smile and a wink.
It was both blatant and subtle, a way of coming onto him while letting him know that nothing he could do would be worse than what she’d already lived through. Robbie was impressed.
Not impressed enough, though. “No thanks,” he said as he stepped around her.
“We have boys too if that’s more your style,” she called after him, rushing to catch up. “Boys who know how to take a man like you, nothing like that scared little bunny your robot’s got his claw around. Or maybe you’d prefer to sample from a broader menu?”
“I’m not hungry,” Robbie said. He swiped his card at the door, then his palm, then let it read his iris as well.
“Everybody’s got hungers, baby,” the woman said knowingly as he left the Pit behind. “If you can’t feed them here, where can you?”
How about at the bottom of a black fucking hole, which is where I’d like to put most of the people in here? Robbie gritted his teeth silently but kept moving until they reached the door that led to the intake room on the left-hand side. “Get the others to the infirmary,” he directed the bots.
“This one’s physical functionality has ceased,” said the bot holding the inmate that Isidore had bitten.
“Then run him to the infirmary,” Robbie snapped.
“Go!” Holy shit, he hoped Wyl was installing some sort of improved AI in ZeeBee because these things were too stupid to live.
It wasn’t surprising that the inmates ripped them up for parts; they were no threat unless backed up by less reliable, more dangerous human guards.
Robbie moved into the room, and the last bot followed with Kyle.
He looked over the focus of their entire mission surreptitiously as he put his weapons away in the stasis case.
The case was a precaution against thievery, the assumption being that Robbie wouldn’t need an extra weapon to help him deal with an un-modded prisoner, and that there was no sense in giving them a chance to swipe something useful to take back into the Pit.
Robbie was damn sure that rule was broken all the time, but he wasn’t going to get things off to a bad start. Besides …
“You smart, kid, or are you stupid?” he asked in the same bored tones he’d been using all day.
“Smart, sir.”
At least he was prompt. “You wanna prove that, then you’re not gonna make any fast movements. Got it? Because I’m not in the mood for any shit while we process your intake.”
“Got it, sir.”
“Good.” Robbie picked up the official Redstone officer’s tab and pulled up Kyle Alexander’s information, all of it displayed in urgent red tones. “State your name.”
“Kyle Dazemar Holliston Harmony Alexander.” The top line turned green.
“I can see you’re already used to cruel and unusual punishment.”
One side of Kyle’s lips quirked up. “Sir.”
“Age.”
“Twenty-two.” Huh, he’d had a birthday since being in custody. That sucked.
“Planet of origin.”
“Olympus.” Another green line.
“Serial birth number.”
Kyle dashed off the twenty-seven digit number like he was reciting the alphabet. Another green line.
“Good. Personal representative?”
“Demarcos Gyllenny.”
“Put your palm here.” He held out the tab and let Kyle set his hand down on it and waited for it to register his print. It glowed green a moment later. “Good. Just the eyes now.”
“Why rush things, new guy?”
Robbie sighed internally. Of course, he wasn’t going to be able to get through this without another confrontation. He turned around and looked at the two men who’d just entered the room. They were the same guards he’d had to force away from his door just a few hours ago. Pushy.
“Hey there, friend,” the bolder one said with a manic grin. “There’s no need to throw this pretty thing back to the wolves before we’ve had a chance to do a more thorough intake exam.”
Robbie decided to start by playing dumb. “Bot didn’t say anything about damages, so he doesn’t need the tank.”
“How dense are you?” the second guard demanded. “You might have some ass on the side, but the rest of us have to play the field. Just leave the room for five—”
“Ten,” the first guy amended.
“Yeah, ten minutes and then come back and take him back to the Pit. No fuss, no muss.”
“We’re being recorded right now.”
“No, we aren’t.” Robbie could have spread that man’s smug across a slice of bread, it was so thick.
“No eyes in this room. Just finish the official intake and get lost for a while, new guy. You said earlier you wanted to be friends, didn’t you?
So do we!” He smiled again. “This is a good way to make friends in Redstone.”
Robbie couldn’t let himself be seen as soft toward a prisoner, and not to Kyle Alexander in particular. He couldn’t let Kyle get stuck with these two either, though. It wasn’t an option. Dumb hadn’t worked, so Robbie decided to fall back on belligerent instead.
“No recording doesn’t mean we aren’t being timed by the boss,” Robbie hissed.
“I get what this is. You’re comin’ in on my first fucking day on the job, trying to get me written up for stalling or whatever the fuck I can get into trouble for, as if passing around prisoners ain’t enough to get my own ass thrown into solitary for a while.
“Is this your way of making a play for my man? Get me sent to discipline, then you can get your hands on him while he’s alone?
” The startled glance the two men exchanged was enough to let Robbie know they probably hadn’t thought that far ahead, but he was on a roll now.
“You’re so anxious for some boy pussy, you can go fuck each other because this intake is ending on time, and I’m keeping my goddamn nose clean.
” Robbie held the tab up to Kyle’s face and scanned his iris briskly, then slapped his own palm down on the surface to finish the formal registration.
“You don’t know who you’re making enemies of here, new guy,” the first guard said. “You think it’s just us? If you’re not more careful, you won’t have any friends at all. Then where will you and your husband be?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Robbie motioned for the bot to take hold of Kyle again, retrieved his weapons, and headed for the door, knocking into the other guards’ shoulders to clear them out of the way.
He took Kyle back down the hall and steeled himself to let him go back into the Pit.
The atmosphere of the place made Robbie’s skin crawl; he couldn’t imagine how it must feel to be there as much as Kyle had to be.
The faster they put the rest of Garrett’s plan into effect, the better.
***
“You’ll be here when he gets in, right?”
“Absolutely.” The pause from his husband made Garrett sigh.
“Jonah, I will swear on whatever you want me to swear on that I’ll be back by the time Cody gets in.
I wouldn’t do that to him or to you; you’re going to need help wrangling all of the kids.
” Cody, Ten, Darrell, and Grennson were all arriving at Miles Caractacus’ floating family dwelling today, a brief visit before they headed back to Olympus and the beginning of their second year at the Academy.
“Provided you don’t make me late,” he added when Jonah seemed to have no inclination to roll off him.
“We haven’t spent an afternoon in bed together in way too long,” Jonah said, stretching out against Garrett and rubbing the lengths of their nude bodies together.
Garrett turned into the movement, drawn to his husband’s warm skin like light to a black hole.
“Can’t blame me for wanting to prolong it. ”
“Mmm, no,” Garrett agreed. And quite the afternoon it had been too; Jonah had been away for the past three weeks, traveling from Drifter ship to Drifter ship like a ghost and negotiating small but useful deals for mutual assistance in the Fringe.
Garrett had been stuck in unending debate with the Senate while trying to juggle dozens of other projects and potentials at the same time.
One of those potentials, one that could provide invaluable information for other projects, had finally agreed to meet with him face-to-face.
It was quite a coup; Garrett would be the first person in over a decade to speak with Berengaria Alexander in person. Needless to say, he and Jonah both been busy, so when the opportunity to fall into bed and forget everything else for a while had come up, neither man had resisted.
Two spectacular orgasms later and Garrett was feeling rather successfully relaxed.
And when Jonah curled his long fingers around Garrett’s waist again, sliding his hands up his back until they got a good grip on his shoulders, Garrett gave in.
He let his head fall back against the mattress and wrapped his legs around Jonah’s waist, hitching him closer to where Garrett wanted him, where he’d already been once.
“I’ve got to leave in half an hour,” he whispered in Jonah’s ear, loving the way he could still make his husband’s breath shudder in his chest. “So, you’ll have to be fast and focused.”