Chains - Chains Released Part 9

"She quit?" Jake demanded, feeling as if he'd been hit hard in his middle.

"How could you let her do that?"

"I decided that this department would be much better off without her, and I do still run this place," Coleson answered, the man's snottiness returning visibly. "With that point in mind, Killen, you can expect your next a.s.signment in a couple or three days. And don't even think about quitting yourself. You have no basis for a breach of contract, and if you walk out anyway I'll have you enjoined from working anywhere else. Now get out of my office."

Jake stared at Coleson for a moment, that close to quitting anyway, but cutting his own throat would accomplish nothing.

"Oh, don't worry, I'm not quitting," Jake said, showing a smile again. "I want to be right here when they kick you out on your a.s.s. That's a show I'd be willing to pay money to see."

When Coleson's lips peeled back from his teeth to show a silent snarl, Jake turned and walked out of the office leaving the door open behind him.

He very much felt like snarling himself, but held back on the urge until he was out of the office entirely.

"Well?" Ennie asked as soon as Jake came out into the corridor, Tandro's expression almost as intense as hers. "Did you find out where Tain is?"

"Coleson refused to talk about Tain except to tell me that she quit,"

Jake answered, frustration beginning to fill him. "Since we already know she isn't at her apartment or with any of her friends, I don't know where the h.e.l.l she is."

"Can we help you look for her, my friend?" Tandro asked, the calm in his voice acting as an aid to settle Jake down. "I don't know how much help I would be, but Ennie knows her way around almost as well as you do."

"I appreciate the offer, but you two have your own plans to take care of,"

Jake said with a sincere smile. Ennie meant to take the training she'd missed from a private source, and Tandro would do the same.

Then the two were going back to Oliven to help Gordi abolish slavery, an end they were both determined to accomplish.

"Do you think you'll find her if you search?" Ennie asked, sympathy clear in her eyes. "If you need professional help, I'd be more than willing to hire some private detectives."

"If I decide I need the help I'll let you know," Jake a.s.sured her, then they all left the headquarters building in silence. Once outside they separated, Tandro and Ennie on their way back to her house, Jake to his own apartment. Tandro had looked uncomfortable in the clothes Ennie had bought for him, but Jake knew the man would get used to wearing more than a body cloth. Most planets weren't as warm as Oliven...

Once in his apartment, Jake threw himself into a chair and began to brood.

He'd already tried to trace Tain's movements, but the woman had obviously covered her tracks to make sure no one followed her. If only she was less of a professional, less able to disappear without a trace...

A picture of Tain formed in front of Jake's inner eye, Tain the way he'd seen her so often during their time on Oliven. Her beautiful brown hair fell in gentle waves and framed her lovely face and blue eyes, leading his own eye down to the teasing view of that vest. Every now and then the vest had parted to show glimpses of her large and rounded b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and that skirt thing had framed her private parts with the promise of an even better view if she moved wrong.

"Or moved right, depending on your point of view," Jake murmured, falling into a waking dream. In the dream she stood waiting while he walked over to her, his hands going to her face before he leaned down to kiss her softly. Her lips were like a magnet to the iron in his blood, and that blood began to thunder around inside him as his hands moved down and started to take off her vest. She made no effort to stop him, of course, so those incredible b.r.e.a.s.t.s were bared to his sight in no more than a brief moment.

"You've now run away from me twice," Jake murmured as he caressed her with both hands, hating that she refused to respond in any way to the touch.

"At first I thought it was because you hated me, but if you hated me you wouldn't have run. You would have told me exactly how you felt, and then you would have turned and walked away. Why did you run?"

"That's my business," she answered, looking through rather than at him.

"Why are you wasting time?"

Jake knew she meant the way he was touching her. He'd forgotten the point for a time, but it had come back to him that female agents were taught a way to sublimate their physical responses if that kind of thing became necessary. Tain wasn't letting herself respond to him, which wasn't at all the same as being uninterested.

"You're right, I am wasting time," he agreed, then reached down and removed her skirt before taking her wrist and pulling her after him.

She wouldn't have followed on her own, of course, but being his slave gave him all the choices. He'd made some mistakes with her, but sometimes a mistake can still be very satisfying.

"You were a very bad girl and caused me an endless amount of worry, and now you're going to be punished for that," Jake said as he led her to the chair, sat, and then pulled her over his lap. "I think you know you deserve what you're about to get, but you don't yet regret having earned it. That lack, however, is about to be remedied."

The way Tain moved just a little showed how unhappy she was to be in that position, but she wasn't allowed to do anything but accept what was done to her. Not having to hold her down let Jake use both hands to put the insertion into her round little bottom, and when she gasped he smiled. All the training in the universe couldn't keep her from responding once that insertion was in place.

But first there was a punishment to be given her. Jake picked up the thin, narrow wooden paddle, and once his hand was wrapped comfortably around the handle he began to spank Tain. One stroke and she made a sound in her throat as she fought not to squirm. Two strokes and the sound was repeated as she continued to resist moving. The third stroke drew a slightly louder sound from her, but it wasn't until the fifth stroke that she lost the battle to lie still. Her pretty bottom was starting to turn pink, and Jake was only just beginning to warm up - so to speak.

After ten strokes Tain was moving in desperation as she half whimpered and half moaned. Jake watched the squirming as he applied that paddle to her bottom over and over, memory of how worried he'd been about her adding to the strength of his arm. It had taken her two days to get back to the base, and if she'd pa.s.sed out from blood loss at any point she could have died.

Tain was kicking and howling, her bottom red and tender-looking when Jake came back to himself. He'd been so furious over almost losing her that the paddling had been a bit harder than he'd originally intended. There was no question that she deserved to be punished, but he wanted her able to respond to what came next. If he gave her too much pain, her response would be less than what he wanted it to be.

So he gave her only three more strokes of the paddle, each stroke making her jump and yell and writhe. When he put the paddle aside and urged her to her feet, he felt nothing of a sense of not having done a proper job.

After all, tomorrow was another day and so was the day after. It would take more than a few days for his anger to disappear, and Tain, being responsible for the anger, would also be responsible for easing the emotion.

Once Jake got to his feet, he picked Tain up in his arms and carried her to the bed. She was crying, of course, but that was only to be expected.

He put her down and then followed, letting her raise her aching bottom off the bed while he leaned over those b.r.e.a.s.t.s and began to kiss and lick them. Tain's breath came in gasps almost as soon as he started, but when he began to kiss his way down her body she also began to moan.

Her knees were spread nice and wide, and when he began to lick her lowest softness her moans turned downright frantic. She probably would have been begging him to ease her if she'd been permitted to speak, but slaves did only what their owners allowed. Jake made her writhe and squirm for quite some time before he straightened and began to take off his body cloth. He would have enjoyed feeling her hands on his own body while he took pleasure from hers, but letting her touch him would have interfered with the rest of her punishment. Jake knew she wanted to touch him, but she hadn't earned the right to do that.

When he finally knelt between her legs and began to enter her, the squeaking she'd been doing started to intensify. The insertion made her so delightfully tight that he might have had trouble entering her if he hadn't gotten her so aroused that her body wept in its desperation for his. Once he had all of him inside her he began to stroke her in a different way, his arms braced on either side of her body. He knew she wanted to be held as he used her and meant to refuse as a continuing punishment, but after a very short time he found that it was he who was being punished. This woman meant too much to him for him to just use her like a hole in the ground.

So Jake gathered her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers while he eased them both, and suddenly her own arms were around him.

She'd been denied the touching of him until she really wanted to, until she wanted to touch him. The feel of her hands sliding down his back was so good, so incredibly good, so - Jake had to shake his head hard to pull all the way out of the daydream, and then his sense of loss rose to new heights. His dream had kept changing to match his changing desires, and the last of it was almost pitiful. He wanted Tain Halliday to want him as much as he wanted her, but all that wanting just wasn't going to happen, at least not on her part.

He might be able to talk her around somehow, but first he had to find her.

And how was he supposed to do that...?

Chapter 9.

Jake noticed Tandro and Ennie entering the alcove while Tain spoke to Gordi and his friends, but the two just stopped near him and stood quietly. Somehow Tain had managed to put herself in charge of everyone and everything, and Jake still wasn't quite sure how she had done that. And, in the back of his mind, he also wasn't quite sure he liked the accomplishment...

"There's one other thing I want to say before I free you," Tain told the men. "I don't want anyone knowing about this place, so once we're out of here you'll all forget about where you were kept and even what building you were brought to. Does everyone understand?"

Jake saw the three men nod, and oddly enough he, Ennie, and Tandro also nodded. Then Tain was telling the three men not to take orders from anyone but her, and once she left even that exception would expire. If she came back even a single day later, they would no longer have to take her orders. Gordi and the other two men looked extremely relieved, and then it was time to start leaving.

Jake joined Tandro in getting their gear together while Tain escorted Artro and Dimmis out first. Those two weren't going back to Gordi's house with the rest of them, so it made sense to let them leave first. If seven people left the warehouse at the same time someone might notice; as it was, keeping the five of them together might be pus.h.i.+ng the bounds of luck.

When Tain came back it turned out that it still wasn't time for the rest of them to leave.

"We can't just leave Flam's body there," she said, looking down at the body in question. "We also can't take the body out with us, so we have to choose the final option."

"Which is what?" Jake asked, his eagerness to be on his way playing havoc with his temper. "Wave a magic wand to make the body disappear?"

"You're close," Tain said with barely a glance in his direction.

"Before the women left I asked them about a place to dump serious garbage, and they gave me directions. If you three men will pick up the body, we can take care of its disposal before we go."

There was no choice at all, so Jake took Flam's shoulders while Tandro took his legs, and once the two of them had the body off the floor Gordi helped by supporting his former opponent's middle. Tain took a lamp and then led the way into the tunnel, turning toward the darkness rather than the other way.

They walked for what seemed like a very long time, long enough for Jake to feel the body he carried getting heavier and heavier. When they'd first started out he'd considered Gordi's "help" unnecessary, but by the time Tain stopped by a fold in the rock of the wall Gordi was sharing a lot more of the weight of their burden.

"Now you have to be careful," Tain said, holding the lamp close to the fold. "There's supposed to be a deep pit just behind here, and we don't want anyone but Flam going into it."

Tandro had been leading the way with Flam's feet, so Jake moved the other two men around until his part of the body was closest to the fold. A glance inside showed the pit Tain had mentioned, so Jake eased the body down at the lip of the opening and let it go. Then he joined Gordi near the middle of the body, and the two of them pushed. A moment later Flam's legs were disappearing into the dark hole, and that was that.

Ennie had been trailing along behind them, obviously unwilling to just sit and wait until everyone else got back, so they made a parade of it retracing their steps. Ennie seemed a bit green around the gills to Jake even in the dim light of the lamp, and Tandro apparently saw the same. The native put his arm around Ennie as they walked, and the girl leaned into Tandro as though trying to share his warmth.

When they finally made it back to the lit portions of the tunnel, Jake went directly to his saddlebags and Tandro did the same. If any other delays had come up Jake probably would have exploded, but Tain just replaced the lamp she'd been carrying and led the way to the stairs they'd come down. They were finally getting out of that place, the first step to being on their way to leaving this world entirely.

Tain checked the area carefully before she let any of them leave the warehouse, but then they were out in the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne and heat. Jake wasn't the only one who took a deep breath of what seemed like freer air, and Gordi even smiled.

"I'd better move to the head of this little procession now," the big man said, looking around at all of them. "My people will have been searching for me, and we don't want them to think I'm your prisoner." Then his smile disappeared. "I didn't want to ask this earlier, but now I have to. If my people didn't stop you from taking me to begin with, it can only be because they weren't able to. Did you ... hurt any of them seriously?"

"If you're asking if we killed them, the answer is no," Jake a.s.sured the man. "We only made them unconscious for a while, and by now they ought to be as good as new."

"That's a very great relief," Gordi responded, his smile returning and widening. "Those people are my friends as well as my supporters, and if anything serious had happened to them..."

"If anything serious had happened to them you wouldn't have been very happy with us," Jake finished when Gordi didn't. "We understand the point because we would have felt the same way, and that's why we were careful.

We don't mind killing to protect ourselves, but killing someone just for the h.e.l.l of it when making them unconscious will do as well isn't something we're willing to consider."

"I'm really glad to hear that," Gordi said as he began to walk. "It makes me eager to hear what other ways your people are willing to help us besides supplying that antidote to the slave drug. While you and your friends are my guests, you and I will have to talk."

"My pleasure," Jake agreed, surprised and delighted that things were working out so well. His department hadn't expected anything beyond getting the natives of this world to abolish slavery, and hadn't even been sure they could manage that much.

Now Gordi was all but offering his support of whatever else Jake's people might have in mind to help his world, but the man wanted some details before he committed himself completely. That was as far from unreasonable as you could get, and suddenly Jake was also eager to have that talk. He did want to get back to base as quickly as possible, but the delay of an hour or two wasn't likely to be all that hard to take.

They walked back toward Gordi's house with Gordi and Jake leading the way, the two of them discussing what problems to expect when slavery was abolished. The slavers would hardly be the only ones who resisted the change, and Jake explained what Gordi's people would have to be on the lookout for. They had just pa.s.sed the house closest to Gordi's and still hadn't run into any searchers, which probably meant Gordi's people were searching a different part of the town - The attack came so fast that Jake barely had time to understand what was going on, not to mention react. When he heard Ennie scream he whirled around and saw the slaver Himlin. Oddly enough Himlin was alone, but the slaver held a knife and clearly meant to use the weapon on Jake. In fact Himlin had obviously intended to knife Jake in the back, but somehow Tain had gotten in the way. The blade had sliced open Tain's arm, but she'd delayed Himlin long enough for Jake to take over.

Which Jake did as soon as he thrust his saddlebags at Gordi. The big man took the saddlebags and moved back out of the way, and then Jake had nothing to distract him from the slaver. Himlin slashed at Jake, obviously intending to cut Jake open, but Jake had no trouble avoiding the slash.

"You're a dead man," Himlin snarled as he slashed at Jake again.

"Guardsmen have arrested all my people, and I was only just able to get away myself. I don't know how you managed to escape and report me, but you won't live long enough to enjoy the betrayal. Now obey me and stand still while I kill you as slowly and painfully as I can."

"You're not going to kill me in any way at all," Jake growled in answer, rage having risen in him at sight of the slaver. "The last time we met you were protected by the presence of a large number of men as well as having put a drug in me. Now you're alone and the drug doesn't work, which means I'm going to show the world what a stinking coward you really are."

Himlin paled just a little when he realized that he couldn't order Jake around any longer, but then he snarled and came at Jake again.

After all, he had a knife and Jake's knife was in a saddlebag, so what was there to worry about? Jake could almost hear the man thinking like that, which made Jake smile as he answered the unspoken question. He waited for the next slash to go by before he moved in, then his left hand was wrapped around Himlin's right wrist and his right fist was being thrown into Himlin's face.

By the time Himlin fell to the ground, Jake had already gotten the knife away from the slaver and had tossed the weapon out of reach.

Then Jake reached down to Himlin's fancy vest, pulled the man upright again, and hit him a second time. The third time the slaver went down he was unconscious, and Jake's rage had been calmed just enough to let him think about other things. Tain had been hurt...

Turning quickly showed Jake that Tandro had gotten some cloth out of his saddlebags and had bound up the wound on Tain's left arm. The woman looked a bit pale, and that disturbed Jake more than he'd thought it would.

After all, the slaver had cut Tain just to get her out of the way so he could reach Jake himself...

"Listen to me, all of you," Tain said suddenly before Jake could say a word. "You're to stay as Gordi's houseguests for a full two days at least, and none of you is to try to stop me now or even follow me. In case you were wondering, those were orders."

And with that she turned and hurried away, leaving them able to do nothing but stand and stare after her until she was gone from sight.

"Why did she do that?" Jake asked no one in particular as he tried to figure out the answer on his own. "She's hurt only because she was in Himlin's way, so why didn't she stay with us?"

"That's not why she was hurt," Ennie said, and Jake turned to see the girl staring at him oddly. "She saw that man before any of the rest of us, and she deliberately got in his way before he could stab you in the back. If not for her, you would be dead now."

Shock hit Jake worse than it ever had, even during the time he'd been Himlin's slave. Tain had let herself be hurt just to save his life? She must have seen Himlin only at the last second, otherwise she would have been able to interfere with the slaver in a different way. And if she let herself be hurt like that rather than see Jake hurt, he had to mean more to her than she'd been admitting...

"My guess would be that the woman doesn't want to be near you now," Tandro said, faint disturbance to be heard behind the calm of his voice.

"Either she thinks she can't trust you, or she doesn't trust herself."

"Or both," Jake said, feeling more than a little weary as he remembered what Tain had said about being tired of waiting for him to consider her.

He hadn't even really thanked her for getting him and Tandro out of Himlin's clutches, which was downright inexcusable. But she still felt something for him, and was afraid he would find that out if she stayed...

"Gordi, you're the only one of us who'll be completely free once we get to your house," Jake said, turning to look at the big native. "Would you be willing to order some of your people to go after the woman? If she pa.s.ses out from blood loss while she's alone, she could die."

"I'll be glad to send my people out as soon as we take care of this garbage," Gordi said, nodding toward the still-unconscious slaver.

"All you have to do is tell me where to send my men."

Jake opened his mouth to answer, but the words he wanted refused to come.

He had no idea where the hideout they'd just left was, something that made him curse with feeling.

"That miserable female," Jake said bitterly once the cursing ran down.

"She must have had something like this in mind even before we left wherever we were. If she happens to survive and we catch up with her, I'm going to beat her within an inch of her life!"

"I think you're going to need that antidote first," Gordi suggested, speaking when Tandro and Ennie simply exchanged a glance and then stayed silent. "If you don't have the antidote, you probably won't get very far trying to punish her for being a fool."

Jake would have loved to argue, but there was no sense in wasting his breath. Tain Halliday had waged a better campaign against Jake than he had against her, and now she'd left him behind. Not having to take any more orders from the woman should have made Jake feel really good, but the thought of Tain being wounded and all alone made his insides curl.

All he could do was pray she survived long enough for him to kill her. If she didn't, Jake didn't know what he would do...