S n o w b u r n
E. J. Frost
Snowburn
Copyright © 2014 by E. J. Frost
All rights reserved.
www.ejfrost.com
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rights. Thank you!
All characters and events in this book are
fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or
dead is strictly coincidental.
Cover art by Alexandria N.
Thompson
www.gothicfate.com
Interior book design by Bob Houston
eBook Formatting
ISBN: 1497397863
ISBN-13: 978-1497397866
Dedication
To my family, physical and virtual,
you know who you are.
And to Carina Persson, DeeGee
Timms and Jamelith, for keeping the
faith.
Chapter 1
Movement.
It catches at my modified senses. Jerks
my brain onto high alert. My mind’s been
idling as I move along the familiar path
through the spaceport. Turning over
possibilities: what I want for dinner, what I
can find for entertainment afterwards.
There’s Maier’s poker game, but the idea of
sitting in his claustrophobic cube, filling my
lungs with the stink of the punters’ anxiety
while I fleece ‘em, ain’t doing anything for
me. Still, I’ve got three days to kill before
my next flight. Maybe it’s time to hit the
Delta.
Small, deliberate movement in my
peripheral vision wipes all those thoughts
from my brain.
I hyperfocus. A woman. On her own. No
visible weapons. No obvious modifications.
My brain slows down a fraction at the lack
of threat and takes in small details. A flash of
pale skin through ripped fishnets as she
draws up her knee. She props a well-worn
boot against the plaz fence separating the
restricted area of the docks from the rest of
the spaceport. The jet wash off a launching
Starflare blows white-blonde rat-tails a few
shades darker than her skin around her
shoulders as she turns her head to look at me.
I’ve seen that pale skin, those long rat-
tails, before.
It takes me a moment and then I place her.
Yesterday. Round the same time and place.
Only then she wasn’t making it obvious, the
way she is now. The rat-tails were tucked
under a slouchy hat; the pale skin hidden
under loose black fatigues.
So she’s been watching me. And now
she’s decided to make her play. Interesting.
I pretend to ignore her. I’m a busy man.
Twice as busy as I used to be, since I’m
living two lives now. My old life as Hale
Hauser: ex-S.A.W.L., escaped convict,
declared dead in the wreckage of a prison
transport two years ago, but you never know
when a stray piece of DNA will trip a
watcher program somewhere.
So while I’m laying low and being
careful what I touch, I gotta keep up
appearances in my new life as Sandringham
Snow, master of the short hopper, Spinning
Marie, transport for the legal and not so
legal throughout the Vespers System.
I pass the girl, moving steadily down the
walkway but not too fast. Leaving enough
distance between us that she’ll have to lunge
if she tries to come at me. She doesn’t look
big or tough enough to be a peacekeeper, but
the only place those kind of assumptions get
you is back in the hole.
“Hey, mister,” she says. Loud enough for
me to hear her clearly but not loud enough to
draw attention from the other pilots,
passengers and random passers-by on the
walkway. “Are you a pilot?”
I glance over my shoulder at her. “D’you
need one?”
“Yeah.” She falls into step with me. “Can
I buy you a drink?”
“Sure.”
She catches my hand. The warm shock of
skin on skin nearly makes me stumble. I’m
not used to being touched. Not like this. Not
without paying for it. She tugs on my hand
and when I don’t resist, leads me off the
walkway into the warren of side streets that
wriggle around the port like maggots through
meat.
I follow her curiously. Waiting for the
catch. The sting of transdermal drugs on my
palm. Heavy breathing in the alley ahead.
But there’s nothing. Her hand is warm and
soft in mine. The alley’s silent until we turn
the corner and there’s a burst of pounding
bass music as a door opens and shuts ahead
of us. Too loud for my modified senses. Too
conspicuous for Snow’s low profile.
“Not there.”
She glances up at me. Pale blue eyes
within kohled circles. Light from the haylon
street signs catches on small metal rings
through her nose and ears. “There.” She nods
at a door further down the street. Very little
haylon. Very little noise.
I nod. I like her taste.
She leads me through the quiet door.
Locals bar. Smatterings of people clustered
around their drinks. Low hum of
conversation. Clink of glaz. Some
anonymous and unappreciated bastard
playing a magnellon towards the back, so
quietly the drone of conversation almost
drowns him out.
The girl’s internal propulsion cuts out at
the bar. She turns and looks up at me. Pale
oval of a face in the bar’s low lights. Pale
pink bow of a mouth that shows white teeth
when she speaks. Pale blue circles of her
irises around huge black pupils. The bar’s
dim but not dark enough to make her go owl-
eyed. She’s high.
I lean into her, ostensibly to give her my
drink order, but really to catch her scent. She
doesn’t smell strongly, mostly of soap, and
underneath a warm, musky, female scent. No
herbs, no chemicals. Smells clean.
After naming a local brand of beer – real
beer not the algae-crap they serve in the
haylon-lit places – I could step back. Give
her a little space. Let her cool down and see
what her eyes do. Instead I stand close, so
close the air
between us warms from the heat
off our bodies. Reach one hand into the back
pocket of my fatigues so my chest and
shoulders flex. Watch her pupils dilate until
there’s just a thin rim of blue.
“Uh.” She clears her throat. Drags her
eyes away. Orders two beers from the
bartender who is doing a bad job of hiding
his smirk.
I take the bulb she passes me. Wait while
she pays. Hard credits. No wonder she
brought me here. Hard credits wouldn’t be
accepted in the haylon-lit places. Both
Hauser and Snow are fond of hard credits.
Easy to steal; impossible to trace. But, then,
both Hauser and Snow have the skill and
lack of conscience to get and keep hard
credits. That this girl carries them, without
visible means of offense or defense, raises
her a notch in my estimation.
She takes my hand again once she’s paid.
Her skin’s cool from handling the drinks.
Warms quickly against mine. She leads me to
a booth towards the back. Close enough to
the musician that no one’s gonna hear us over
the music. Far away from the bar’s other
point of interest: two silver-skinned Mods
who are kissing flamboyantly across a table
silverfish, but trying not to be obvious about
it. No one’s gonna pay any attention to us.
Even when she pulls me into the booth next
to her instead of sitting across from me. Even
when she tucks my hand against her thigh and
keeps her fingers wrapped around mine.
I could break her hold in a split-second if
I needed to. But that split-second could be
the difference between reaching a weapon in
time and not. I draw my hand out of hers
slowly. Lean into her so she knows I’m not
rejecting her. I’ve never had a woman come
onto me so physically before. I like it. I like
everything about her so far. Except maybe
the piercings. Hope she doesn’t have too
many in other places. I’m not a fan of metal
against my skin.
She looks up at me. From under a curtain
of bangs and blonde dreadlocks. Out of those
deeply-kohled, hugely-dilated eyes. A kitten-
pink tongue flicks out and wets her full lower
lip. I follow the movement with my eyes, let
her see that I’m watching and that I like what
I see. Her breath catches. Shallow breasts
rise under a black tank. In the bar’s dim light,
against the black neopoly of her shirt, her
skin glows like pearl.
She finally looks away and color flushes
her cheeks. Even her ears flush around the
silver hoops. I chuckle.
“What can I do for you, Miz—?”
“Kez.” She shifts on the genSkin seat,
crosses her legs and presses her knee against
mine. The color in her cheeks fades; her
pupils contract. She’s back in control. Or
thinks she is. “I need to move something from
Kuus to New Brunny. Interested?”
Very. But not in her shipment. “What’s
the deadline?”
“Pick up tonight at midnight.” There isn’t
really a midnight on Kuseros, which has a
twenty-three hour day, but even the natives
call the last hour of the day ‘midnight.’ A
leftover from our collective origins on Earth.
“Drop by five a.m.”
Not a tight schedule, particularly in the
Spinning Marie, which is a better ship than
her original owner deserved. Although the
girl’s asking me to drop into a war zone.
New Brunny’s been in a permanent state of
shitstorm for the last three months while the
peacekeepers have been trying to put down
water riots. She’s also living dangerously if
she’s only lining up a pilot now. Midnight’s
less than three hours away and Kuus is all
the way on the other side of the long valley
that makes up the Western Colony. She’ll
need a ship to make the pickup, much less the
drop. “What’s the package?”
“Organic. Fifty kilos give or take.”
Could be anything, but at fifty kilos it’s
unlikely to be drugs – too heavy – or a body
– too light – which is where I draw the line.
Most shit is tolerated in the Vespers, but
getting caught transporting drugs or bodies is
a one-way ticket back to Tol Seng. “My
cut?”
“Three thousand. Soft.”
Credit wands are useless to me. They’re
validated by fingerprint and I burned mine
off long before I landed on Kuseros.
“Twenty-five hundred. Hard.”
The pink tongue licks out again. Is she
trying distract me with the promise of that
mouth? I reach out and drag the pad of my
thumb over her wet lip. Brush the backs of
my fingers across the swell of her breast as
my hand drops back to the table. Two can
play at that game, and I play harder than she
does.
Her pupils dilate again. Breath catches
and her chest heaves as she takes the next
one.
“Deal,” she says breathlessly.
“And twenty minutes out back.”
“Uh,” she stammers, blushes furiously.
“Deal?” I lean into her a little more.
“Fifteen.” It’s such a soft whisper that I
lean closer to catch it. Breathe warmly into
the shell of her ear, buried in the dreadlocks.
“You’ll get more out of it if it’s twenty.”
drops open. “Deal,” she finally manages.
“Let’s go.” We leave our drinks
untouched. I lead her this time, with my hand
in the small of her back. A more intimate and
controlling guidance. She makes no objection
as I steer her past the musician making
complicated patterns through the magnetic
fields of his instrument, through a swinging
door that leads to the toilets, past some doors
marked ‘Private’ and through the one marked
‘Exit,’ to the obligatory dark alley behind the
bar. Directly behind the bar it smells of stale
beer and grease, so I steer her further into the
shadows until the stink and the occasional
noise from the haylon-lit place down the
street fade and all there is is darkness and
her rapid breathing.
I stop her by a convenient wall that looks
neither too dirty nor too rough for what I
have in mind. “Here,” I say as gently as I
can. She halts, compliant. But she’s
trembling under my hand. No matter what
kind of thrill-seeker she is, she must be at
least a little scared by the idea of giving
herself over to a stranger in the dark.
“Rules,” I say. I run my hand up her back,
grip the collar of her jacket and pull it off
her. She rolls her shoulders so it slips down
her arms. Still compliant. I drop her jacket
onto the pavement. Shrug out of mine and
drape it over hers. The spring night’s too
cool to take off our tanks, which is
disappointing, but what the night air is doing
to her nipples makes up for it. I enjoy the
view for a moment before turning her around
to face the wall. “Rule one, your hands stay
here.” I place her palms against the cool
permacrete. She leans into the wall with a
sigh, rests her cheek between her hands.
“Rule two, dead puppies ain’t no fun. You
want me to stop, you say so.”
She turns her head slightly to look at me
over her shoulder. Teeth and eyes and silver
hoops glint in the dark. “Dead puppies?”
“Uh-huh.” Seems a safe enough safe-
word. Dead puppies have never figured into
sex before, no matter how strange it’s gotten.
“Okay.” She arches her back, lifting her
ass a little, so it brushes my groin. I don’t
need any further invitation. I reach around,
pull open the fly of the tight, shiny shorts
she’s wearing over the fishnets and push
them down over her hips. The fishnets are
suspenders, outlining her long legs, baring
her ass, sexy as hell. No underwear. I shape
her soft ass with my palms before reaching
around, spreading my hand over her belly,
and cupping her mons. She’s bare there:
smooth skin under my fingertips. I finger her
for a moment, until she moans. Then I bring
my other hand down on that soft, round ass.
Hard.
She jumps at the spank. Cries out and
tries to twist around.
“Rules,” I growl and she whimpers,
clinging to the wall.
I spank her again, the slap punctuated by
my voice, rough and angry. “How long you
been watchin’ me?”
“T-two days.”
She had to think about it. Fucking liar. I
spank her again, hard enough that my palm
stings. Hard enough that she jumps and
trembles. Hard enough that wetness slicks
the fingers I still have between her thighs.
She may not have asked for the spanking, but
she likes it. “How long?”
“Four! Four days.”
Another hard smack. Her ass-cheek has
gone cherry-red, even in the dark; she’ll
wear the marks of my fingers tomorrow.
“Who sent you?”
“No one.”
She didn’t have to think about it but I
spank her again for good measure.
“No one!” she cries. Nearly comes off
the wall, then grips it like a lifeline. “I
swear, I’m not working for anyone.”