Chapter 29 - The Kraken Gate
I was angry, of course; angry with myself for being careless and being caught unaware. I was annoyed with Dr. Betz for her presumption that I had fallen for her flirtations. My eyes scanned the room for threats. This was a classic entrapment tactic that many a spy or secret service operative had fallen for and paid for with their lives. I moved right and opened the wardrobe, prepared for anything. Only a stunted person would have had room to hide in it. I made it look casual by hanging my towel up in it, all the while keeping Jenniver in the corner of one eye. She wasn’t fooled.
‘There’s no one here but me.’ Again, her voice was low and breathy. She was nervous. Or excited. It was hard to be sure.
I kicked one shoe under the bed. It tumbled out the other side. Probably no one there. The words were all queuing up in my head. You shouldn’t be here. What makes you think I’m… How dare you?! You’re not my type. You should be saving yourself for the right man, er woman. I moved to the bed intent on pulling her up and shooing her from the room.
‘Dr. Betz,’ I began.
‘Please…call me Jenniver,’ she husked.
I did nothing, and said none of the things that I had been meaning to say. The girl was anxious. Her chest was rising and falling quickly, pressing her breasts against her silk camisole. Her lips were full, red and slightly parted. Her green eyes looked up at me, her need evident.
Benjamin Scott was the last person I had lain with. How long ago was that? Nearly three years ago! Gods, but the need inside me was crippling. How I needed that warmth of human contact. More than two years focusing on the job, working hard to build up my business and rebuild confidence in myself. The only relationships I had had in all that time had been professional, work related, with my employees and our clients.
I took the key that was hanging around my neck and placed it on the bedside table. Then I leaned over and kissed Jenniver full on the mouth. It was a long and sensuous kiss. She moaned and reached a hand up to the side of my face, touching it tenderly. My stomach lurched and excitement flooded every deck of my ship, and it quickly sank. I kissed her again, placing my hand on the sheer fabric wrapping her slender waist. She reached into my half-open blouse and cupped my breast, running her thumb over the nipple. The world broke into a million pieces and caught fire.
I ran my hand to her thigh and stroked it gently, moving up to the cleft beneath her gown. She moaned again.
‘Clothes,’ she gasped, and pulled at my britches. I tore my blouse off over my head while she fumbled at my belt then managed to wrestle the trousers off my hips. I kicked them off and climbed onto the bed, lowering myself into her embrace.
I was utterly lost to the moment. An ocean of need had been held back by a mountain range of my own determination to succeed in a man’s world. With one kiss, Jenniver had reduced the mountains to rubble and I was swept away by the resulting landslide.
When it was over, I lay down beside her and rested my head on the pillows, watching as her breathing settled. She looked at me with her green eyes and reached out to stroke my hair.
‘I’ve dreamed about you ever since I read about you in the Emberly Crier.’
I tried to collect my scattered wits. ‘The newspaper article?’ The business editor of The Crier had spoken with me to write a piece about New Women of the Republic.
‘Yes. I never believed I’d get the chance to meet you. You’re an inspiration. You gave me hope while I was at university, when I was getting such dreadful abuse for being a girl, studying science. When I learned what you were doing, what was possible…’ Her voice tailed off. She looked at my scars. Her finger traced the puckered skin under my right breast where a bullet had punctured my chest, but said nothing.
‘I got a lot of abuse in letters to the paper.’ Eager to promote my company and hungry for publicity, I’d believed it to be a good idea, that is until the vitriol started pouring in. ‘Men claiming that women weren’t clever enough, or worried that their jobs would be taken. Men, angry that their wives wouldn’t be at home to cook their meals and asking who would look after their children.’
‘But don’t you see?’ Jenniver’s eyes shone. ‘It made me see that I wasn’t alone in what I had to put up with. All of the hate that I’d endured and even violence… it wasn’t aimed specifically at me. It gave me the strength to carry on.’
I listed other women who were breaking the mould and making the news. There was Mrs. Otterly who had taken over her husband’s shipbuilding company on his death and doubled its profits in a year. There was Miss Anne Verstaad, the elected council member for Ripolis, whose whereabouts were unknown since its annexation by the Nallians, and then there was that girl who’d sailed across The Sea of Souls single-handedly.
‘Very humble, Ms. Derringer,’ teased Jenniver. ‘Now it’s time for me to show you my appreciation.’ She got out of bed, extinguished one of the gas lamps and turned the other down so that it was no more than a glow.
She pulled the silk nightgown over her head, her slender body silhouetted against the feeble light. Then she slid back into bed beside me. I reached out for her, but she pushed me down and climbed on top. Her hair caressed my skin and now it was my turn to draw breath sharply. Too busy for relationships since I set up Lockhouse Security, I thought that I had put myself beyond such longings. Dr. Betz’s exquisite touch exploded those ridiculous notions. Molten metal moved in the pit of my stomach. All sense of what I was disappeared into a maelstrom of pleasure.
Later, I was luxuriating in the sensation of Jenniver lying up against me, her head on my shoulder. I was trying to fathom what had just happened, but my thoughts moved like treacle. Jenniver must have sensed my unease and jumped to the wrong conclusion. She gazed at me intently.
‘It must be hard losing people who work for you.’
I shook my head and looked at the ceiling, unsure what to say.
‘Had you known them a long time?’
‘Rendish and Finnian?’ I recalled Rendish, strolling towards me through clouds of cordite smoke and raining mud as we pushed across Kontepract, and Finnian, who had just walked off the street last year; he’d seen the advertisement in the window of our office. ‘Rendish, five years. Finnian, just over five cycles.’
Jenniver said nothing for a while, so I told her what they were like. Tyrone; dependable, quiet, resourceful. Finnian, enthusiastic, gregarious and prone to making daft mistakes. When I stopped, Jenniver gave me a reassuring squeeze.
‘You’ll be going through the gate won’t you?’
I nodded.
‘How would I disable the failsafe if I knew you were coming back through the gate and I wanted to keep you safe?’ she asked, softly.
‘The Charg are bad,’ I said, ‘but there may be worse on Ganeton that we don’t yet know about.’
‘Suppose I knew there was no danger?’
‘Then the failsafe won’t trigger,’ I laughed. ‘There’d be no reason for you to disable it.’ Jenniver laughed too, so I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
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