AMAZONIAN'S LOVE

PART ONE

by Misty Vixen

DISCLAIMER

While this novella does take place in the same

universe as the Hellcats, it has nothing to do

directly with that series.

Paige held her breath as she shoved herself into the uncomfortably small niche in the mainframe room, waiting and listening intently. Somewhere else in the room, a door had opened. It was the middle of the night and no one was supposed to be in the area, but, of course, that was the difference between planning a mission on paper and actually running it in real life. Reality was often sloppy, and you had to be extra-sharp to compensate, able to adjust yourself and your plan on the fly, to adapt to the situation as it altered.

Someone was muttering to themselves, getting closer.

Paige felt her body tense in anticipation. Judging by the way they were walking, a little quickly, like they were pressed for time, it was more than likely a technician, someone who probably wouldn't be armed. She was fairly confident that she could take anyone in the building in one-on-one combat. Being a genetically engineered, nearly seven foot tall warrior with fifteen years experience tended to boost ones confidence in themselves and give them the ability to judge a combat scenario with good accuracy.

But that didn't mean she wanted to.

Paige was trained for stealth, and she didn't like murder. She also didn't like being discovered. The muttering drew closer and became a kind of half-assed humming. She waited, remaining frozen, hidden in the shadows of the recessed niche between two bulky pieces of equipment that hummed and occasionally beeped softly.

A technician came into view and walked past her, then stopped. Paige tensed even further, her hand resting gently on the butt of the pistol at her hip. It was a slim black model packed with a dozen knock-out darts, non-lethal and extremely effective. Already, in her mind, she was running through how she would handle this if she had to. If he saw her, she'd pull out the pistol and shoot him, then drag his body to a utility closet she'd passed on the way into the room and lock him in there. Easy, though, unfortunately, he might remember her. It'd be better if no one remembered her. The dart might screw with his memories, it might not.

As it was, she couldn't wait around forever.

She'd left a little program in place in the security network that played a continuous loop of the mainframe room over any monitors, showing it as empty. That trick usually worked...but then again, sometimes it didn't.

“There you are,” the man muttered.

She saw by his uniform that he was a corporate technician. Across from here was a cubicle farm, and apparently his desk was the one directly in front of her. The man stepped into his cubicle and partially disappeared from view behind the wall. She waited some more, becoming increasingly irritated. She was so close to finishing the damned job. A few seconds later, the technician found whatever it was he was looking for and stepped out of his cubicle. He lingered for a few seconds more, as if considering something, then began walking away.

Paige let her breath out slowly as he left the room, thankful for her increased lung capacity. Alone again, the inordinately tall woman slipped out of her hiding spot and began moving to the left, along the bank of mainframes. She reached the one she was looking for, took a quick look around to reconfirm that she was alone and then extracted a data-chip from her pocket. She slipped it into one of the receiving slots.

A small light on the back of the chip snapped on, first it was red, then it began blinking, then it snapped to green.

Perfect. The data was being extracted.

She waited around, forcing herself not to fidget anxiously. It was only going to take thirty seconds, but each second felt like an hour. Paige told herself to just be calm. Soon, the data would be hers, she'd slip out, transmit it to the rival corporation she was currently working for and, upon confirmation, they would discreetly transfer ten thousand credits to her account. And then...then she'd have to take another job.

Because ten thousand credits just wasn't enough.

Not for what she needed.

The chip released a short chirp. She glanced down, saw the light had turned blue, meaning it was full of the intel it had been designed to steal. She yanked it out, secured it in the protected, padded pocket on her combat suit and began making her way out. It was just past midnight local time and almost everyone in the building had long since gone home for the night, leaving only a skeleton crew of security personnel, janitors and a few techs to keep everything monitored. Easy enough to avoid. Now she just had to reverse the process she'd used to get inside. She had a glider stashed on the room, she'd paid someone to hack an automated maintenance drone to deliver it up there. Easiest way to escape currently.

She was just three stories from the top.

As Paige stepped through the exit of the mainframe room and into a long, dimly lit corridor, an alarm began to cycle.

“Shit!” she snapped.

Somehow, she'd been found out.

She started sprinting. The program she'd bought and slipped into their security network had a final option, set to go off automatically if she was discovered. It would scramble their security systems for about five minutes.

She had that window of time to get out of there.

Paige made it down the length of the corridor, took a right hand turn, ran down it and then slipped into a storage room as she heard voices. Someone was shouting orders. They were looking for her and nearby now.

She was good at two things: speed and stealth. She'd need both of them to escape this situation intact and undiscovered.

The next few minutes passed, wrapped in tension and anxiety. She slipped through the storage room, down a short hallway, through a personal office, down another hallway and, finally, found herself in the maintenance access shaft she was looking for. Elevators were definitely out, too easy to lock down remotely, and stairwells were tolerable but should be avoided at all costs. Too easy to bump into someone.

She glanced at the time superimposed over her vision from the head's up display she'd set up in her ocular implant. Less than a minute now. Paige scrambled up the access ladder as quickly as she could. Making her way up the three stories, she opened the hatch at the top and crawled out onto the roof. Overhead, a million stars and a pair of yellow-tinted moons stared down at her. With twenty seconds to go, Paige located the glider, popped it open, grabbed on and then ran for the west edge of the roof.

She jumped.

The city unfolded beneath her as she drifted away from the imposing black and silver tower, the corporate headquarters of Stellar Corp, one of the top dogs in the faster-than-light travel technology. She'd been hired by a rival corporation, Starshine Inc, to steal their latest breakthrough in FTL technology, something they'd apparently been keeping under wraps and had yet to patent. She didn't know the details of how they planned on getting around the fact that this was stolen technology or the potential ensuing corporate warfare.

And she didn't care.

That wasn't her job. Her job was simply to extract the data and transmit it via a secure transmitter she had hidden elsewhere in the city. Which was exactly where she was heading now. Paige blinked three times, slowly and deliberately, activating the preset retinal filter. Below her, the city became angular blue neon and, among all those hard, bright lines was a pulsing red dot. Exactly where she needed to go.

She'd planned it all out. The glider would get her just close enough to that location. It was set in a derelict air-conditioning unit on top of a long abandoned warehouse in the slums of the city. A place no one cared about and no one should be going. As she sailed through the crisp night air, she felt a frown forming on her face and darker, unhappy thoughts began to take up residence in her mind. The job was nearly done and she was that much closer to a payday...and paying off her debt. But tonight should have gone off perfectly.

What had happened?

What had gone wrong?

And, unfortunately, this wasn't the first time it had happened, or even the first time it had happened in recent memory. The more she did this, the more it seemed that she was running into technical glitches and irritating problems like this. It pushed her towards something that she had been trying to avoid for a long time, almost three years now. Something she wasn't sure she even knew how to do anymore.

Paige was going to have to take on a partner.

The glider led her just barely onto the roof of the abandoned warehouse. She ran forward a few steps as the momentum forced her to, then disengaged from the glider, broke it down and held it in one hand as she approached the abandoned unit. Although there was no reason to believe anyone should be able to track her here, Paige felt paranoid. She set the folded-up glider next to her as she crouched before the air conditioning unit and pulled off the siding. Setting it aside, she reached inside and pulled out the encrypted transmitter.

Firing it up, she plugged the data-chip into the side and activated the device. Sixty seconds passed and the device hummed and beeped softly in her hand. Although it didn't seem like anything was happening on the surface, she knew that it was punching up through the grid of security that enveloped the planet, slipping into a corporate satellite, posing as a routine system-check from a ground-based device and then being blasted off at faster-than-light speeds to Starshine Inc, a few systems over.

By the end of that sixty seconds, the data packet she'd stolen had been transmitted and a return signal had been fired back. She quickly read it over on the small display screen mounted on the side of the transmitter. It was just a single string of letters she'd memorized: the confirmation code. They had received the data, it was valid and they had shipped the ten thousand credits off to her account. She sighed.

Ten thousand wasn't enough, she should've asked for more.

But, the problem with that was that there were always other hungry mercs out there, willing to do it for cheaper. She knew she'd been lucky to get this job. That was another thing that was pushing her towards getting a partner. As she gathered up the transmitter and the glider and shoved them into the air conditioning unit, Paige knew that technology was not her strong suit. She'd made herself learn enough to get by, but she just didn't have a mind for it. Her strengths lay on the battlefield, in combat, in speed and stealth and sometimes strength.

Paige activated the timer on a small, shaped controlled-burn charge that would destroy both objects and burn itself out within seconds. She jogged across the roof, found the ladder, swung herself around and slid down it.

She'd hit the ground and made it down the street, through an alley and into another street before it went off.

Tonight really just highlighted the unfortunate reality she was finding herself in. The high-paying jobs were all getting more and more technical, at least the jobs that required infiltration and espionage, which she was well versed in. She could only outsource so much without taking on a partner, someone who would be with her 'in spirit' as they sometimes like to call it, or, more technically, in constant contact over a tight-beam transceiver through the whole mission, hacking into security software, opening doors, watching her back.

She needed someone else.

Paige walked along the vacant street, making for her apartment. It was her temporary base of operations, and it was about to be abandoned. There were things to do. She had to get to that apartment, grab a few things and wipe it clean of any data that could be traced back to her. Easy enough. Then she had to make it off-world in a transport going pretty much anywhere. Then...she'd have to start looking for a partner.

Sighing, Paige walked on into the cold night.

...

Ethan glanced up as there was a knock at his door.

Frowning, he keyed the tiny, hidden camera he had attached to the door's frame. A fourth of the huge razor thin monitor before him cleared to show the view in front of his apartment's entrance. A kid with an ugly mohawk, lots of piercings and tattoos, wearing a lanky tanktop and baggy, poorly cut-off cargo pants was standing outside of his apartment, holding a plastic bag and looking impatient. Ethan's frown disappeared, replaced by a smile.

He leaned closer to the mic beside him and keyed it. “Thanks for the delivery. You can leave it in front of the door. The payment has already been made.”

The kid looked around, startled, then reached into his pocket, pulled out a tablet and checked it over. He sighed and set down the bag. “Uh...thanks,” he murmured awkwardly. Then he turned and began walking away.

Ethan waited until he was gone to cross the room, open up the door, snag the bag, pull it in and firmly shut and lock the door behind him. Crossing back over to his huge, U shaped desk and planting himself firmly within it, he set the bag down on a space he left clear for just such an occasion. Tonight was a big night, and he needed to be focused, which meant that he needed to eat. Ethan emptied the bag, pulling out cartons of chicken fried rice, spicy chicken & cashews and eggrolls. He set it all out, applied the appropriate sauces and then quickly got up, moved to his kitchen, retrieved a few cans of soda and sat back down.

He dug in.

Ethan was a hacker, known to almost everyone who knew him simply as Livewire. It was the handle he'd chosen for himself quite a while ago. Sometime he regretted from time to time. Choose a name for yourself at fourteen and you're going regret it by the time you reached twenty. But the underground community knew him as Livewire and he'd built his reputation around that name. And it had been a long, hard road.

Tonight, he was hacking into a corporate archive from the sanctuary that was his home. His 'home' being a crappy, tenth-story studio apartment on a rainy little moon. Ethan spent the vast majority of his time plugged into the net, and his surroundings reflected it. Calling his place of residence stark wouldn't quite do it justice. There was really just his bed and his desk, and some other things that he didn't pay much attention to.

His job, which was his life, demanded it.

In about an hour, he was going to hack into the Supernova Corporation's corporate archives and extract some pretty damning dirt on their CEO. Then he would turn it over to Strider Inc for a hefty sum. They were giving him two hundred thousand credits for this job, with one hundred of it already secure in his account, since he tended to work on a half now-half later basis. And there was a lot he could do with two hundred thousand credits.

Ethan finished eating in ten minutes, dividing his attention between a show he was currently into, his food and poking around some underground message boards. When his food was gone, he returned his attention to tonight's mission. It was going to take some prep work. The minutes washed away in the screen's multifaceted glow while he did preliminary examinations of corporate archives, the beefed up security measures and the incoming and outgoing message traffic. That was going to be his way in. He had a virus ready.

Essentially, it would piggyback on a message going in that he'd preselected, then essentially 'hold the door open' for him. From there, he'd find and extract the data he wanted. It was a pretty risky procedure, a lot of things could go wrong and, given this level of security, if something did go wrong...well, he wasn't getting back in. At least not without a lot more high tech gear and a great deal of luck.

A small alarm chimed.

It was time to begin.

Ethan set to work, letting himself get into it. It was almost like dropping his body into a warm river and began carried along. He tracked the progress. The message came. He stuck his virus to it, watched it sink through the security protocols and defense systems, and...there was his opening. Perfect. He moved in carefully through the hole in the network and spent ten seconds searching for the data. It felt like a lifetime.

There. He had the data.

He began the extraction.

Almost the second he did, suddenly, every single electronic device in his apartment died. Ethan cried out in shock, almost as if he'd been hit. Panic ignited in him. This couldn't happen, this was impossible...

He looked around, realizing that he wasn't in perfect darkness. Light filtered in through his windows. He surged to his feet and rushed over to the nearest window, his brain trying to make some semblance of sense from this power outage. He could see lights in the next building over, and, he realized after a few seconds of growing horror, he could see lights from apartments below him in the reflection of that building's windows.

It was only his apartment that had been hit.

But...his generator!

Why hadn't it kicked in!?

He sat there for a full minute, his heart slamming in his chest, trying to put the pieces together. The loss of power was so jarring that he felt as disconnected as his rig. Suddenly, he had it: someone must have sabotaged him. He'd made any number of enemies over the past several years and although he was meticulous and careful, there was always bad luck or just a single slip to fuck you over. Cursing, he did something he really, really didn't want to do: he activated his Link and began heading through the net, searching for those corporate archives.

Using his Link, a piece of hardware that pretty much every human had built into their head, to do slicing and hacking was extremely dangerous, but he didn't see that he had much choice right now. Maybe if he could get there in time, he could reinitialize the download. He had another, backup server elsewhere in the city that could handle the transfer. He should have bought those fucking back-up batteries and stopped relying on his generator. His Link brought him close to the archives. He gave a cautious, cursory examination.

The hole was gone.

The security had re-engaged with a vengeance and they knew someone had been trying to rip them off.

Ethan disengaged from his Link, sat there in the dark, and tried to think of what to do next.

...

Paige stared out of the window next to her, trying to drown out the noise from the shuttle's cabin. Rain streaked on the glass as the shuttle made for the local port. She'd managed to get away from planet she'd pulled the job on, Rose, without any trouble. After ditching the gear and getting the money, she'd hit her apartment, grabbed anything relevant and had walked to the nearest port. On the way there, she'd sent out feelers over the net, searching for a competent hacker, finally acknowledging the need for a partner.

It was something she had mixed feelings about.

Several contacts she sometimes relied on for data or jobs sent her back a name: Livewire. He was a hacker living on a miserable little moon called Poll. He was young, fast and very good, the only problem, they said, was that he didn't like to go on the move. He operated from his apartment. Paige wasn't sure why, but she felt the urge to go after this hacker. Maybe it was just because he was the first real name that had popped up or maybe she didn't want to keep looking, but she wanted to take a shot at convincing him to work with her. Although not much was known about Livewire, everyone seemed fairly sure that it was a young human male.

Paige had sent off a basic inquiry to his net address and then had hopped on the next transport to Poll. It was sufficiently far enough away from Rose to help dissipate her trail and it seemed like a pretty low-key area, perfect for laying low between jobs. After that, she'd unhappily shipped off seven thousand credits from her ten thousand payout to the Gemini Corporation, making another dent in her debt owed to them.

There was a thump from below as the landing gear locked into place. Paige scanned the cabin, a reflexive gesture the military had drilled into her: always be aware of your environment. Several people quickly looked away from her. Someone with less awareness might have missed it, but she didn't. Paige fought the urge to sigh in irritation. Being six foot eleven in a society where the average height was about six feet made her stand out a great deal. She'd gotten used to people staring at her a long time ago. Even as a young teenager she'd been inordinately tall, hitting six feet by the time she was fifteen and topping off naturally at six four.

She'd gone into the Amazon Program not long after she'd turned twenty when they began making their rounds. The strange all-female experimental branch of the galactic human military had taken her in, made her better, faster and stronger. Much taller, too. But that was all ancient history. She'd been operating on her own for a few years now. Reliant on herself and no one else. Relying on other people...tended to cause problems.

And here she was, preparing to do that again.

The shuttle touched down and rolled to a halt. A moment later, it connected to the terminal and the passengers began to disembark. Paige stood up and several people backed away from her. She ignored them, grabbed her duffel bag from overhead and left the shuttle. Making her way along the tunnel connecting the shuttle to the terminal, she found several thoughts drifting through her head. Being a mercenary meant you were pretty much always riding the edge. One mistake, one slip up, one wrong step and you could die.

Not to mention, there were a lot of people you tended to piss off as a merc, and although she did a lot to keep her identity hidden...there were only so many Amazonians out there. And most of them tended to stick together.

As she came into the terminal, Paige moved over to the side, out of the way and paused to check her Link.

There was a single response in her inbox.

Livewire wanted to meet her.

...

Ethan walked through the gray, dismal sunlight and the light rainfall, hidden behind mirrored, razor thin silver sunglasses and a black trenchcoat.

This was against his better judgment, but he was flat out of options.

After the power outage last night, he'd ended up having a bit of panic attack and he'd passed out. At some point, he must have crawled into bed without really realizing it, because he woke up the next morning in his bed, feeling like hammered shit. There were several messages in his Link, but what had woken him was a call directly from the man who had given him this assignment. The conversation had been grave.

They didn't know how or why, only that he had failed, and examinations of the corporate archives on their part only reconfirmed what Ethan had seen before: getting in a second time was going to be significantly more difficult, something he was no longer capable of. They very upset...but also businesslike about the whole thing.

They were willing to part ways and not speak another word about it if Ethan would simply give them the hundred thousand credit advance back.

Just wanting to get his shit back in order, he was more than willing to do this...except that he no longer had that ability. Whoever had hit his power supply and sabotaged his generator had also sapped his bank account...all three of them. They were drained dry and somehow they'd even managed to close them out.

All he had left were around three thousand credits stashed on a personal server in his apartment, physically severed from any connection to the net. So not only was he broke, he was now a hundred thousand credits in the hole. They had told him that he'd better start finding a way to get that money back to them.

He wasn't sure what to do then.

After sitting there in his chair, thinking about it for nearly half an hour, he realized that something was nagging at his brain, something he'd seen when he'd checked his Link earlier. Then he had it. There were about ten new messages in his inbox. Nine of them were from his contact, more than likely demanding to know what the hell had happened. But one of them had stood out, because it was from someone else.

Going back, he'd opened it up and found a message from a someone identifying themselves as Quicksilver. They said that they were a mercenary who pulled stealth runs and needed a partner who knew their way around technology, encryption and security systems, and he had come highly recommended.

They also said that the job would require travel, lots of it.

Out of habit, he'd almost responded negatively, saying that he didn't do travel. At all. He liked his set up and, despite how crappy the colony he lived in was, he liked it, too. The frequent rainfall appealed to him.

But he was in a bad place. He needed money, fast. And some cursory examinations of Quicksilver painted them as a professional. And, probably the most important part of the message, was that they were willing to split the profits fifty-fifty.

Ethan knew that in his current capacity, he mostly did small-time jobs. The one last night was basically a fluke, a huge lucky find that had ended up screwing him over hard. Jobs with mercs tended to pay out a lot more than the ones he was used to. They were also dangerous. But, again, he didn't have a choice.

So he was going to meet this Quicksilver.

He'd given a time and a place to meet, then he'd asked how he would be able to spot Quicksilver. The only response was to look out for 'the tall one'. This was going to be fun. Their meeting place was a little corner cafe that served Greek food. Occasionally, he would make begrudging pilgrimages there, since they didn't deliver and he was a sucker for gyros and they made the best ones. It was still early in the day but it was a low tide time for the colony so the streets were fairly clear. Which was good for him, Ethan wasn't exactly a crowds kind of person.

He found the Greek place and went inside. Scanning the area, he immediately saw his contact. The message was right: she was really tall.

An Amazonian.

He supposed it made enough sense. She sat in a booth that was barely big enough to hold her huge, slender frame. She wore a long-sleeved hoodie and cargo pants. Her chestnut brown hair was pulled into a rough ponytail and her pale face seemed to be all hard angles. She was striking rather than traditionally beautiful. Striking in a very good way. Her eyes were a hard, flat iron gray that practically seethed with intellect and attentive focus.

Ethan walked over and slid into the opposite side of the booth. They were lucky, as they were practically the only people there.

“Livewire,” she said, staring hard at him.

“Quicksilver,” he replied.

She nodded. Before they could get down to business, a waitress came and took their order. Ethan noted how nervous she seemed in Quicksilver's presence. Well, he had to admit, he was rather intimidated as well. It was so strange and more than a little daunting to be sitting across from a woman over a foot taller than you. He'd been around tall people before but...man, she was huge. There was something almost unreal about her.

They both ordered gyros and sodas and the waitress beat a hasty retreat.

“Are you interested in the job?” she asked, getting right down to business.

“What, exactly, would it entail?” Ethan replied. He didn't want to appear too desperate for cash. That was never a good idea.

“You would live and travel with me. It would just be the two of us. I'll be out in the field and you'll be back at whatever HQ we set up, running ops for me. Doing whatever needs to be done. These will be high profile assignments. Can you handle that?”

“Yes,” he replied, hoping he wasn't lying. The reality of the situation was that he'd know whether or not he could handle it when he saw it, whatever it was. The good news was that he knew a hell of a lot of about modern tech, legal and illegal. Despite the embarrassing episode last night, he liked to think he was adaptive. “There's just one thing I want to make clear. I won't be joining you in the field. I don't do grunt work.”

“Fine,” Quicksilver replied.

Their meals came shortly thereafter and they proceeded to eat in silence. Quicksilver went through her two thickly-packed gyros like a ravenous wolf. Ethan remembered reading that Amazonian's had a jumped up metabolism to help support their large frames and boosted reflexes and strength, meaning they were hungry practically all the time.

“We split the money fifty-fifty,” she said after she was finished. “We each cover our own expenses: tickets, food, supplies.”

“Fair deal,” Ethan replied. “Anything else I should know?”

“Nothing I can think of. Is there anything I should know?” she asked.

Ethan hesitated. There was a bit of an edge to her question. “Like what?”

“I checked you out. You never take jobs that require you to travel. So why are you taking this one?” she asked.

“I haven't actually agreed to it yet...”

“I can read people, and I can see where this is going,” she replied flatly.

He sighed quietly. “I got fucked over last night and I'm out a substantial bit of credits. I need more of them and soon.”

“Are these problems going to follow you?”

“I can't say for sure,” he admitted. He wasn't sure he could lie to her, at least not successfully. She was tougher, older and significantly larger than he was. She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes boring into his, and he could tell she was weighing the situation. He fought not to look away, to stare right back at her, finally, she nodded slightly.

“Fine. We should get off-world as soon as we can. What do you need to do?”

“I have some gear I need to pack back at my apartment. We'll need to pick up a secure, padded cargo crate for it,” he replied.

She nodded. “Let's go then.”

...

They picked up the padded container on the way back, stopping by a shady looking warehouse. Livewire paid for it and Paige carried it. She still wasn't sure why, but the kid was giving her good vibes. Her instincts were telling her that this was going to work. And, so far, her instincts hadn't really led her astray.

Although she secretly suspected that perhaps this wasn't the normal instincts she relied upon to keep her alive but other, dormant instincts.

When she'd seen him, there'd been kind of an instant attraction and she'd felt her heart kick a little bit. At first, she hadn't been able to place why. He was pale, kind of scrawny, very rough around the edges. But there was something about his face...then she'd had it. He reminded her of someone, the first boy she'd ever had a serious crush on some twenty years ago. She'd never asked him out. Never had worked up the nerve.

But this just played into the fact that she hadn't been with anyone in three years. It was tough enough to get laid being seven feet tall and fit enough to break a guy in half, tougher if you had trust issues.

As they walked back through the rain to his apartment, she made herself push the thought away. It'd be stupid to get involved with him, there was no way he'd be into her. She instead focused on the task at hand.

An elevator, old and battered, took them up to his tenth story apartment. He led her inside, hesitating briefly in the entryway, then moved over to his desk. Paige smirked briefly as she realized why he had hesitated: he was embarrassed. Probably about the state of his apartment. There was hardly anything in it. She spied a bed along the back of the room, a small one, with a nightstand and a narrow dresser. Besides that and a desk, all the apartment contained was a small kitchen and a smaller bathroom. Not even a closet.

The place was also a mess. Clothes and empty Chinese takeout cartons and soda cans were everywhere. Well, it wasn't like Paige was about to judge him. She lived in roughly similar conditions. In between missions, she'd slowly forgotten how to have a 'life' down the years. She just worked out or trained. Her only real habit was reading books. She suddenly became nervous over the thought of living with someone else again.

Living on your own meant that you weren't really accountable to anyone but yourself, and although taking care of her body and herself had become an engrained habit, she also knew that she had a few habits that would have to go. Namely the fact that she tended to spend all her time in wherever she was living at the moment naked. It was simply too comfortable. Clothing felt...restrictive, especially the tight combat suits she tended to wear on missions. She found herself wondering if he'd mind if she walked around naked...

Growing frustrated, she pushed the thought away again. She could live without sex. Everyone could. It was just...really difficult, especially when you hadn't have it in a really long time and suddenly you were around a cute, single person.

Livewire, (what was his real name?), broke down and packed up his tech gear, placing all the various parts into the self-molding padding within the crate. Once that was done, he found a duffel bag, packed it with clothing.

“Done,” he said.

“Do you need to check in with anyone? Say goodbye?” Paige replied.

“No. I've already severed the lease. It was on a bi-weekly basis. And there's no one in the colony I need to say goodbye to.”

“Well...let's go then.”

...

Ethan came awake with the sound of landing gear locking into place beneath them. He sat up, startled, and looked around. He was in the cabin of a shuttle, he remembered, slowly settling back into his seat, and Quicksilver was next to him.

“You okay?” she asked, a small grin on her face.

“Yeah, just...nervous. Hate flying. Only ever been on a shuttle a couple of times,” he replied, glancing out the window. A sun-drenched colony blurred beneath them as they came in for a landing at the local port.

He frowned and returned his attention inbound.

“Sorry,” Quicksilver replied, “goes with the territory.” He thought he detected a note of sympathy in her voice.

As she looked away from him, apparently scoping out the cabin and those that shared it with them, Ethan snuck a glance at her. Now that he'd spent more time around her and he'd kind of gotten used to her intimidating presence, he was beginning to notice that she was very attractive. But not in what most people would think of as the traditional type of beauty. Quicksilver had a different type of sexiness to her.

He remembered thinking earlier that her face was striking rather than beautiful, but now he thought of it as both. There was a rigid harshness to her face, a kind of unique bone structure that made her stand out in a crowd. (Not that she'd have any trouble with that.) What he'd seen of her body implied a lithe, lean musculature. How long had it been since he'd been with someone? He'd always been awful with relationships. His natural awkwardness was only compounded by the fact that he tended to throw himself into his work to the point of excluding practically everything else in his life. He hadn't even hired a hooker for about four months now.

In her presence, he found himself becoming intensely aroused and was glad for the baggy pants. He wasn't sure why he was even bothering thinking about this though, there was no way Quicksilver, (what was her real name?), would be interested in him. She seemed above lust, somehow, like she was better than it, like it was beneath her to feel something so basic. There was a part of him that wished he could banish such distractions from his mind, but then there was another part of him that recognized how fucking awesome sex was.

As the shuttle came to a halt and shut down after taxiing over to the terminal and linking up to it, Ethan tried to stop thinking about it. But that became even more difficult when he ended up behind her in the line to exit the plane. It was hard not to look at her ass. She'd opted to wear some loose-fitting gym shorts that showed off her thighs and sat very nicely on her expertly-maintained ass. Although she was slim and lithe for the most part, but her thighs were well-built and her ass had some nice padding to it, giving it a really sexy shape.

He couldn't help but stare at it the whole time as they were leaving the shuttle and heading into the terminal.

As they got away from the crowd and began making for one of the exits, Ethan got up alongside her, trying to keep pace with her great strides. “Now what?” he asked.

“We find a base of operations. Usually a furnished apartment. We'll use assumed names. Can you do that for us? I can if I have to but I imagine you'll be better at it.”

“Yeah, get me somewhere with a power source,” he replied.

He didn't say, you probably should have mentioned this earlier, because he didn't want to piss her off. He could do it on the fly if he had to, it wasn't too difficult. He followed her out of the terminal. It was midday and the sun was shining down on the colony. They followed a sidewalk away from the port and into the colony.

...

They found a little hole-in-the-wall pizza shop and sat in the back corner. They'd left an order with the airport to hold the case containing Livewire's gear, which they agreed to do for a fee. When they were settled, she'd have it shipped to the new place. Paige watched him bring out his laptop and plug it into the wall, then set to work getting them fake IDs.

“You sure it's safe, to do it here?” she asked.

“Yeah, don't worry, I've got a masking program in place and another piece of software that makes it appear that I'm working from across the city. Even without that stuff, I'd be pretty hard to spot. I've just got to generate the false IDs and make them strong enough to fool cursory checks. Though we probably shouldn't stick around for more than a few weeks.”

“We won't,” Paige replied.

She watched him work, already planning how it all would go down. They'd get settled into a place, something she had her Link auto-searching for based on a little algorithm she'd bought from a tech-head about a year ago, then she'd look for jobs, something her Link was also auto-searching for. If all went well, they'd pull the job and then hightail it out of there. Rinse and repeat. Until she had her debt paid off.

Then...

She wasn't sure what she'd do then.

Something was distracting her though. Paige had good peripheral vision and she'd gotten quite skilled at paying attention to details. Her physical enhancements from the Amazon Program had only boosted her abilities. She was almost positive that Livewire had been checking her out when he thought she wasn't looking.

What did that mean?

She felt convinced that he wouldn't be interested in her. Besides seeming like a guy who was too in love with his work to have room for anyone in his life, surely he was turned off by her size and stature? She'd hardly met anyone over the years who she considered 'normal' that had been interested in her. Even just going to bed with her.

“Done,” he said suddenly, straightening up. “Here, punch in your Link code so I can transmit your new ID to you.”

He turned the laptop around to face her. For a moment, paranoia washed through her, giving out your Link code could be very dangerous in this line of work. But, she surmised as she took the laptop and punched it in, if he was going to be her partner, there were some things she was simply going to have to relinquish. Once she finished punching it in, he turned the laptop back around and punched in a string of commands.

“There,” he said. Almost at the same time as the word left his mouth, her Link chimed, indicating that she had an incoming message. She activated the device, opened the message and let the program run after checking it out and passing it through a few filters. It checked out, and she suddenly found herself in possession of a new idea.

“Elisa Marble?” she asked.

“Best I could do. Hey, I get to be Matthew Hull,” he replied.

Paige couldn't help but smirk, just a little. “Fair enough.” Her Link chimed again. It had come up with a suitable match for their base of operations. “You ready to go?” she asked. “We need to be getting into our apartment.”

Livewire frowned, looking down at his half-eaten pizza. They'd eaten while he had set up the fake IDs. “I suppose so.”

“We can eat more later,” she said. Her stomach was hungry for more, too. Then again, it almost always was.

Livewire nodded, packed up his laptop and reluctantly left his food behind. They headed out of the pizza shop and back into the sunshine.

...

The apartment turned out to be really nice.

The kitchen was of a decent size, all done up in smooth black obsidian and shiny chrome. The living room came equipped with a couch, coffee table, two chairs and a huge television. Besides that, it had two bedrooms and a bathroom. Quicksilver had paid extra to replace the bed and one of the chairs in the living room with something she could actually fit into without breaking. Once they were settled in and certain about it, they'd had his rig delivered, again paying extra to get it there within the hour. Once it had arrived, he'd spent a while setting it up on the desk in his room, (he had to pull in the desk from Quicksilver's room to make enough space, since she wasn't going to be using it for anything, and she said she wouldn't mind the extra space.)

While he did that, Quicksilver had ordered them a shitload of food and other supplies for the place. Ethan kept finding himself distracted, thoughts of Quicksilver slipping in. He was beginning to get a little frustrated. Why was he so focused on her? Maybe it was just the fact that he hadn't really been around another person for an extended period of time for...well, for quite a while. He'd been operating alone for years now.

Was it really that simple?

He just hadn't been around a woman in so long that his body was reacting this naturally, this powerfully to her?

He wasn't sure, but he thought it was something more. Maybe it was because he'd expected her to be a ruthless hardass, and in their short time together, he'd discovered that she wasn't quite that. She smiled, she showed a bit of sympathy, she'd made a few jokes. He wondered, suddenly, if she was in the same situation he was. Cursory examinations of her online showed that she didn't seem to take on partners. He almost wanted to shoot the same question right back at her that she'd asked him earlier: Why the sudden change in standard operating procedure?

But, despite their rapport so far, he didn't feel like pushing back against her. Mainly just because he was so intimated by her, but also just because he wasn't a very naturally confrontational person. It was part of the reason he spent so much of his time alone. It was easier that way. Safer. Although maybe easy and safe weren't always the smartest options. Halfway through setting up his rig, Ethan discovered that some of his components had been damaged during the energy surge that had killed his power and fucked him over.

They were pretty simple to replace and fairly cheap. In fact, he was sure they'd passed a simple electronics shop on the way in. He could order them over his Link and have them delivered here, but two things made him decide against that decision. The first was that it would probably be safer to leave as few trails as possible to the apartment, the second was that he suddenly felt the urge to get a bit of time away from Quicksilver. He needed to clear his head, to examine the sudden rush of feelings he was having about her.

So, he stood and headed to the living room. He found her on the floor, doing stretches. She'd stripped her shirt off, leaving in just a sports bra and her jogging shorts. She glanced up at him as he entered the room.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey...uh...I'm going to go out,” he replied. She had a really good body.

“What for?” she replied, continuing with her stretches.

“Um...parts...parts of my rig burnt out, I need new ones,” he explained, trying to keep his mind intact and trying not to make it too obvious that he was staring at her.

“All right, I'll be here.”

He nodded, turned and left. As he left the apartment and made his way down the stairs, he let out his breath in one long sigh. Holy shit she was hot. He'd always really had a thing for tall chicks, and for fit women, too. She absolutely hit his buttons in all the right places. He shook his head as he came out into the sunshine. No way she was into him. Even if she was looking to get some action, there's no way she'd take him to bed when she could probably have any guy she wanted. Someone taller than him, fitter, more attractive. He was just shy of six feet and weighed one seventy. He knew he was scrawny and pale, and he didn't think his face was much to look at. Ethan kept walking into the city, moving down the block, turning and spotting the electronics store.

Good, it was where he'd remembered it being.

He stepped inside, trying to keep focused as he moved through the aisles, picking out the high-quality, premium versions of the parts he needed. Ethan found his thoughts drifting back to his last real relationship. It was a little over a year ago. She'd called herself Pink and he'd never known her by any other name. She wore her hair half shaved on one side, long and straight on the other, dyed a vivid, glowing pink. She had pink, glowing eyes to match. She was thin, fast, smart and a lot of fun in bed. He'd thought he was in love.

Who knew, maybe he had been.

In the end, she'd sold him out, fucking him out of some crucial data from a job they'd been pulling together.

He hadn't been with anyone in a serious fashion since then.

After Pink, there'd just been the occasional hooker, and even those had stopped several months ago. Ethan sighed softly as he had the devices he'd needed scanned and he paid with a swipe of his thumb. As he stepped back out into the sunlight, he considered what to do next. He wasn't quite ready to go back to the apartment yet. He wanted to buy some things for himself: deodorant, toothpaste and a toothbrush, mouthwash, a razor. Well, an electric razor, since he didn't clean shave his face anymore. It made him look way too young.

Instead he just opted for stubble.

He was also thinking about using an electric razor to buzz his dark hair down to stubble as well. It's what he usually did when it got too long, and right now it was definitely too long. But something made him reconsider that, especially when he laid eyes on a barbershop across the street. After a moment's consideration, he began walking towards it.

...

Paige finished organizing all the food in the fridge. It was probably a byproduct of her military lifestyle, but she liked things neat and well-organized, especially when it came to her food. The fridge was packed with all manner of supplies now, as was the freezer and the cabinets. She'd dropped nearly two hundred credits on food for the two of them and made a note to get half of it back from Livewire. She could hear him in the shower right now. He'd come in about twenty minutes ago, while she'd still been sorting, and she'd tossed a glance his way to confirm it was him, then had gone back to work getting everything in order.

In the midst of this, her Link had chimed and she'd paused long enough to check it out. Her search algorithm had found a job nearby. Now that she was finished, Paige leaned back against the counter, activated her Link and began looking over the information superimposed over her retinas. The job was a good one, similar to the one she'd just pulled. One corporation wanted her to steal crucial data from another.

The catch was that the data was stored in a severed database. You had to physical be there to download it.

Just like last time.

The payout was seventy five thousand credits. Apparently they wanted it bad. She saw a few other bids from mercs nearby and put in a bid of her own at fifty thousand credits. Twenty five thousand credits for each of them would be great. She could pay off a decent piece of her debt and save some for the next job. In fact, if she had a few more jobs like this one, she'd be able to clear the rest of her debt.

Paige exited her Link as she heard Livewire finish his shower. She moved into the living room, sitting down on the chair she'd had moved in for her and activated the tv. It was something she didn't indulge in very much but, for the moment, she wasn't sure what else to do. She'd exercised for about an hour today, not much by her normal standards but all the travel had her a bit worn down. It was something she'd never quite gotten used to.

By the time Livewire was coming into the living room, her Link had chimed once more: she'd gotten the job. They shot over the relevant information and mission parameters. Paige glanced up as she saw the younger man enter the living room and come around to sit on the sofa. He looked...a lot different. A lot better. He'd gotten a haircut, shearing his dark hair down to something more manageable and spiked it a bit with hair gel. It was a style she'd been, despite her best efforts, attracted to. He'd also buzzed down his facial hair to stubble, bought some new clothes that didn't fit quite so loose on his frame and generally seemed to be more well put together. He smelled good, too. If he'd been distracting before, he was a lot more so now.

She gave her head a slight shake, telling herself to stop thinking about it.

“We've got a job,” she said.

“That was fast,” he replied, dropping onto the sofa. “What is it? What's the pay?”

“Twenty five k apiece. I've got to break into an office building and steal some data, which means you've got to watch my back and go in ahead of me to deal with the security systems.”

“What kind of timeline are we looking at?”

“Sooner the better. I figured you and I could physically scope out the building tonight and then you could look it over with your gear. We plan the run, then pull it off tomorrow night if possible,” she explained.

He nodded. “All right, sounds doable.”

“Now, about scoping out the buildings, I have a kind of interesting idea on how to handle that...”

...

Quicksilver's idea was interesting indeed.

She had decided that, in order to canvas the building physically, Ethan would pose as her escort. That's what she had said, instead of date. When she'd said it, he thought he had detected a very slight note of bitterness in her voice. He wondered if she was having the same problems he was. He wondered how hard it was for her to get a date. Maybe it was as hard as it was for him, or harder. Ethan was peripherally aware of the societal norms and he knew that men tended to go for women who were shorter than they were.

He thought it had to do with the fact that most men, (not all, obviously), whether or not they knew it, liked the idea that they were stronger than the women they dated. There were all sorts of theories as to why, but none of them seemed to have quite settled on Ethan. He had always had a thing for much taller women.

Apparently, one of the things that Quicksilver had bought was a black dress that did a lot to showcase her muscular thighs and cleavage. It was jarringly sexy after all the casual, loose-fitting stuff he'd seen her wear so far. She still wore her hair in a ponytail, but she'd washed and combed it first. Although he thought she looked great now, he thought that maybe she looked even better before. There was something appealing about a rough-around-the-edges kind of woman...why was he thinking about this so much?

Probably because he was posing as her escort.

They headed to a high-class restaurant first and, as they began walking down the street, he slipped an arm around her waist. Well, sort of. He had to angle it up slightly. He felt her tense for a few seconds, then relax.

“Is this all right?” he asked.

“It's fine,” she replied. “Just a little jarring. It's...been a while since anyone has touched me in a non-threatening way.”

“That sucks.”

“It does,” she agreed.

They came into the restaurant, requested a window seat and managed to get set together in a booth, giving a perfect view of the office building across the street. They ordered, then gazed at the building.

“What do you think so far?” she asked quietly.

“Not a lot, honestly. I've spotted a few tell-tales of high-quality security, but this isn't really my field,” he replied.

She nodded.

“So...while we're out on our, uh, date, maybe we should get to know each other a little better,” Ethan suggested.

“...what do you want to know?” Quicksilver replied cautiously.

“The Amazon Program, what was it about? What was it like?”

Quicksilver frowned and seemed to consider it for a long moment. “At first, it was very good. The military made a big show of it, you know, when they first got it rolling out. I get the feeling it was mostly a combination of a PR stunt, some bigwig's wet dream and shock and awe tactics. Worked out pretty well, though, for the most part. We fought for about ten solid years. I was twenty when they recruited me. Already really tall and pretty fit. Back then I could do the four minute mile and I was pushing below that, but once I got those enhancements I could hit a three minute mile like it was nothing. The training and enhancement process lasted for about a year, then they started sending us into the field.”

“Who'd you fight?” he asked.

“Slavers, mostly. Pirates. Thieves. Militias. Pretty much anyone stirring up trouble where they weren't supposed to.”

“So...what happened? I mean, why it defunct now?”

Quicksilver sighed and her features darkened. “Politics. Bureaucracy. I don't really know, but I can tell you what it felt like. It was like we were toys that some rich kid had been very interested in at first but, eventually, grew bored of and discarded. Some of us tried to get back into the military, but they made it really tough. Most of us became mercenaries or worked private security. Although a few of us found other careers. I have this really good friend, we still keep in touch, she became a model. Her name's Elise.”

“What did you do?” Ethan asked.

Quicksilver stopped, closed her mouth, seemed to think about it for a few seconds. “It's not something I'd like to talk about.”

“Oh...sorry.”

Their food came. Ethan had gotten lobster, while Quicksilver had a bloody raw steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, fries and toast.

“What about you?” she asked as they dug in. “What's your origin story?”

He laughed. “Nothing interesting, really. Grew up on a shit colony. Ghosts for parents, you know, never around. Decent money, though. First thing I can remember is them handing me some electronic toy. I got plugged into the net really early and I just...well, it clicked with me. Tech was like a second language. I started hacking when I was nine. Well, just for jokes, really, I didn't know what I was doing back then. But I did learn one thing: it has a real rush to it. I became addicted. Spent my formative years learning all the angles, figuring out all the tricks, and all the traps. I ended up just leaving when I was sixteen, since, by that point, my parents had figured out what I was doing, and they were pissed because it could come back on them...not upset though that I was putting myself at risk, mind you. Just that I was endangering their way of life. So I left, set up my own operation and never looked back,” he explained.

“How old are you, exactly?” she asked.

He grinned. “I'll tell you if you tell me,” he replied.

She twisted her mouth, seeming to consider it. “Fine,” she replied. “I'm thirty five.”

“Twenty,” he said.

“Huh. You look a little older.”

“I was going to say the opposite for you.”

“Oh...uh, thanks,” she murmured. There was something weird about the way she said it, like she'd almost, but not quite, forgotten how to respond to a compliment. He supposed he knew how she felt.

They continued eating and apparently neither could think of something to say for the rest of the meal. When it was over, they paid and left, walking in a slow, drifting circle around the office building. He took her hand and laced their fingers together, trying to think of things that an escort would do without being too...overt? He wasn't sure where her boundaries lay and he thought if he pushed too far, she was liable to fire him.

Or hurt him.

She'd have no problem breaking any of his bones.

As they finished their walk, and their 'date', he found himself wondering why she'd even bothered with this. Visiting a site in person was kind of dangerous, and largely pointless, given the sheer amount of data he could extrapolate from the comfort and safety of his desk. A thought flickered through his head but he dismissed it immediately. The notion that Quicksilver had generated this to have an excuse for him to pose as her escort was ridiculous.

Impossible.

Although...well, he didn't think himself particularly skilled at reading people, but he thought that Quicksilver's body language seemed to suggest that she liked it whenever he touched her. As they were finishing up their walk, Ethan found himself doing something stupid. But, well, he was kind of a risk-taker. It came with the territory. As he slipped his arm back around her waist, he moved it very purposefully and slowly over her ass.

She didn't say anything, but he didn't sense any kind of tension in her body. And...there was a car up ahead. They were close enough that he could see their reflection in the sideview mirror...Quicksilver was smiling slightly and...was she blushing?

Her pale skin made it too obvious to be confused for anything else. She was blushing. Or maybe she was furious. Although it didn't seem like it. She didn't forcibly remove his arm. To clench his analysis of the situation, she casually draped an arm over his shoulders and held him a bit closer to her. They kept walking.

...

Paige laid in her bed, staring at the darkened ceiling, and wasn't sure how she felt.

After they'd gotten back from the canvasing the office building, (that hadn't really done a lot of good), they'd talked a bit more about what they'd seen and what kind of research Livewire would do, then they'd headed to bed. Not that she needed more than four or five hours of sleep in a day. And she wasn't sure sleep was going to come soon. She was too distracted. If there was any question about whether or not he was into her left...it was a pretty small question now. Especially after the way he'd touched her ass. It was very deliberate.

And suggestive.

Now she was trying to decide what to actually do with that information.

Should she jump him? Or would he end up like several of the other guys she actually talked into her bed? All talk and no game. Sex wasn't something she traditionally had much success with. Well...okay, that wasn't true. Sex with guys hadn't really gone well. Sex with women, (almost exclusively with other Amazonians,) had gone pretty freaking well there for a while. But he seemed pretty confident. Which was kind of surprising. He kind of reminded her of some of the boys she'd run into during high school who had also been kind of reclusive and tech-obsessed: awkward, quiet, more than a little shy.

And you always had to make the first move on them.

Paige sighed softly, trying to put all this out of her mind. She should be focusing on the mission, but it kept resurfacing every couple of minutes. Like how part of the reason she was so into Livewire was because she used to date guys like him. Rarely, though. Most of them were too intimidated by her. But she'd taken several young men's virginity, and that had been a lot of fun. Paige sighed again in frustration.

She was getting horny.

Normally, she was pretty good about being able to push it out of her awareness. She'd spent a long time learning how to not let petty distractions get in the way of her objective. Pain, discomfort, hunger, lust, she could push most of these away.

Now, though, laying here in the dim light with a really cute guy barely twenty feet away and almost two years of no sex...

It was hard.

After another few moments of fidgeting, she growled and gave in. Okay, she's masturbate and just get it over with. Laying on her back, Paige spread her legs a little and slipped her hand into her panties. They were the only thing she wore to bed. She felt a ripple of dark excitement tremble through her as she slipped a fingertip in between the lips of her pussy. She let out a low, slow moan as she found her clit and began rubbing it gently.

The reaction was immediate and powerful.

Pleasure shot through her, building in her lower belly, a tremendous warmth that almost made her ache. How long had it been? Had it really been so long since she'd last even pleasured herself? Another moan escaped her throat as she began rubbing her clit harder and faster. Wow, she really missed this. Her only immediate regret was that it wasn't the cute guy in the next bedroom in here touching her...rubbing her...kissing her...

Paige cried out and clapped her other hand over her mouth in shock as she suddenly started to orgasm. She felt her sex juices gushing out of her, her muscles, no, her whole body trembling, clenching and releasing rapidly as she came. She continued moaning, unable to silence herself, feeling hot, pure bliss boiling through her body, filling her. After what seemed like ages, her orgasm finally ceased and she fell back against the bed with a harsh exhale. Then she pulled her hand away and tried to get her breath back.

Wow.

That was one for the books.

Paige realized that she'd made a hell of a mess, but a wave of sleepiness was slowly washing over her now. With a soft groan, she made herself get up, strip the sheets and flip the mattress. Not the most hygienic of solutions, but she was too tired. The blanket at least had been spared from the mess, so she grabbed it, fell back onto the bed and pulled it over her. Paige laid on her side and closed her eyes. She felt at peace.

...

Ethan thought he had a good plan in place.

He was also pretty sure he'd overheard Quicksilver getting off last night. It had been tough, but he'd put that aside and had spent four hours last night and then another six hours after he'd gotten some sleep planning. He'd broken into the corporate HQ's security network through a maintenance protocol subroutine and sent out some near invisible feelers into the system, providing him with a map. Well, several different maps that combined to make one. A map of the physical layout of the building, a map of their internal security network, a map of guards and where they were patrolling, schedules, inventory...anything he thought might help.

And now he had a run for her planned. It was risky, but, well, every job they did was risky. Now, Quicksilver stood behind him, staring at the screen in front of him, as he outlined the plan. He'd tried to keep it simple.

“So what are we looking at?” she asked.

“You're going in through the sewers,” he replied, calling up a wire-frame image of the office building and the area surrounding it. “You'll go in here,” he pointed to a warehouse. “Automated storage warehouse, low security about a mile from the building itself. You can get into the basement and there's a service exit to the sewer system. You head underground and come up into basement of the headquarters here. Given that we're going to be doing this in the middle of the night, I can shut down an elevator shaft without causing any problems. You climb up the shaft to the twentieth floor, that's where the mainframe is. It's not far from where you'll emerge. You get in, steal the data and get back out the same way. Once you're physically clear of the building, you send the data back here to me in a burst transmission and I ship it off to our benefactors. And then we get paid, and...presumably celebrate, I guess.”

Quicksilver was silent for a long moment. She seemed to be considering it. What she was probably considering was shipping him the information. It would technically be very easy for him to take the data and run, keeping it and the money for himself. He had no intention of doing that, but she had no way of knowing that.

“All right,” she said after a while. She set down a small tablet. “Transfer this information to my tablet. Then we've got to make a trip down to the local black market. I'm going to need a few things to do this.”

“On it,” he replied, taking the tablet and transferring the data. Once that was done, he shut down his rig, stood up and followed her out of the apartment.

...

If Livewire had overheard her...'activities' last night, he hadn't said anything.

One of Paige's subroutines in her Link also checked the local underground network for black markets, places to buy things under the table. With a purely digital economy, it was tough for such things to exist now, since it was so much easier to track all transactions, but there were ways to get around that, and you could also barter. That was why she'd brought along a trio of densely packed memory crystals. They had a thousand and one uses and people were always looking for them, so she always kept some on hand.

There was a black market operating out of a warehouse on the edge of town. That's where they were heading right now.

“You nervous about this?” Paige asked as they drew closer.

“What we're doing now or the run?” Livewire replied.

“Both.”

“Yeah, always nervous about runs, to a certain degree. I'm fairly confident we'll do all right though. This is a fairly simple run, as far as runs go.”

“I suppose so.”

They fell back into silence. Paige was beginning to realize that she had forgotten how to have a conversation. It had been a long time. Why was she even feeling the need to have a conversation with him anyway?

Probably because, somewhere, in the back of her head, no matter how much she was trying to tell herself how ridiculous it was, she was trying to work up the nerve to prepare to ask him to sleep with her. There were a lot of reasons not to, the primary one being that it wasn't really a good idea to get seriously involved with your partners. Although she'd gotten good at divorcing sex from emotion over the years, well...okay, maybe she was lying to herself there. She hadn't actually gotten good at it. Despite everything, despite all her training and the tough exterior she'd been forced to develop over the past few decades...

She was, at heart, a lover more than a fighter.

Not that she had any problem with fighting.

But she had always tended to want to enjoy all aspects of sex, besides just the physical pleasure of it. She enjoy forming connections and romance and love. But she also knew the tremendous dangers that went with those bonds, namely, what happened if you lost that other person, either by tragedy or betrayal or just circumstances.

And that wasn't somewhere she wanted to go again.

Well, probably.

They came to the warehouse. Paige led him in. “Let me do the talking,” she said.

“Fine by me,” he replied.

He seemed a bit ill-at-ease in the area, probably because there were so many people around. She knew how he felt. Crowds didn't gel with her, either. Most of the people were workers. The warehouse doubled as a factory and a storage area. One of the workers broke away and walked up to them, deliberating standing front of them.

“Help you?” he asked. He wore a hardhat and his face was smeared with sweat and grease.

“Heard there's a party downstairs,” Paige replied.

He crossed his arms. “Oh yeah, who told you that?”

“Striker.”

His demeanor changed immediately. He pointed behind him, to a door they could barely see, half hidden behind a pile of crates in the far back wall. “Through there.”

Paige nodded and led Livewire onward. They moved through the crowd of workers, reached the door and opened it up. It led to a narrow, dank, poorly lit stairwell. The pair walked down it and moved through another door. A huge man wearing a shirt with the sleeves ripped out, black cargo pants and combat boots with a black beanie fit over his head was standing guard. As big as he was, however, Paige was bigger. Noticeably bigger.

She smiled as he looked up at her and hesitated.

He asked for the password, same as the worker who'd asked her, and she gave it to him. He seemed relieved and waved them through.

Beyond the door was a huge open room that reminded her of a flea market. There were about fifty stalls and tables around, all of them packed with all sorts of gear. You could get lots of things here. Drugs, guns, military-grade hardware and all manner of gear. She and Livewire moved through area, garnering a few quick, awkward looks from the dozens of people searching the area for their own illicit purchases. They didn't last long, though. Big first rule in places like this: mind your own business. Keep your eyes to yourself.

It took about an hour, but they managed to find several pieces of gear that Paige thought she might need for tonight's run, including a military-grade bodysuit that would protect her from a number of things, and a wet suit for the sewers she'd have to walk through. She bought a two-way radio that would provide her with a direct, live, encrypted link to Livewire. She also snagged a silenced pistol and a few magazines of knockout darts. She also grabbed a few other choice pieces of gear and then lead Livewire back up and out.

He seemed to breathe easier once they were back outside.

“You ready for this run?” she asked.

“Definitely,” he replied.

They began walking back to the apartment.

...

When the time came, Ethan found it easy to focus.

He sat in his new chair, radio plugged into his ear, bathed in a multi-colored light from his monitor. He had made sure to triple check that they were secure, that they could talk without anyone listening in. Theoretically, anyway. He had half a dozen different digital alarms that would warn him if someone was peeping.

After going over the run another three times and theorizing how to handle any potential mishaps, fuck-ups or bad luck, Quicksilver had gathered her gear into a backpack and gone for a walk. She'd managed to break into the warehouse without any trouble and now she was in the sewers. He didn't envy her that.

According to the timeline they'd laid out, she should be about halfway done with the sewer portion of the run. He left her to it, taking another look at the corporate HQ they were breaking into. Everything looked good. The appropriate amount of personnel were there, which was a pretty low number given that everyone had gone home for the night. There was nothing on the radio, nothing out of place.

A few minutes passed.

“I'm out of the sewers,” Quicksilver said, her voice whispered to him over the radio he had stuck into his ear. No way they were using their Links for this.

“The way looks clear,” he replied, checking over the security feeds he'd hacked into.

“Got it. Emerging now.”

He waited, continually checking over the data feeds coming in. He also found himself thinking about the payout. Provided everything went well, he could give twenty grand to the people he was indebted to. That should get them off his back and hopefully make them confident enough that he could get the rest to them in a timely matter.

“I'm in the basement, am I clear?” Quicksilver asked over the radio.

He paused, scanning the security monitors and heat sensors. “Yes, you're clear. Let me know when you're near the elevator, I'll shut it down.”

“Got it.”

A minute passed. “I'm here,” she reported.

Ethan hit the command. The elevator inside the shaft headed down to the bottom, on Quicksilver's level, and there it stayed. The doors opened and the power died, though the building's security power grid didn't know the difference, as he had a subroutine in place feeding it false data. “Go,” he said.

“Going.”

...

Paige reached up, not having to stretch at all due to her tall stature, and found the release for the emergency escape hatch in the top of the elevator. She hit it and the latch popped down. Grabbing it, she gently lowered it. It hung on hinges and came to rest against the wall. Jumping up, Paige grabbed the edge and pulled slim frame up and through. She could smell herself faintly, frowning at it. The sewers had been disgusting and she'd worn a wetsuit over her gear, shedding it just outside the entrance to the building's basement.

She'd pick it back up on the way out.

Although it had done a lot to keep her covered, some of the stink still clung to her. As much as it annoyed her to have to smell it, it was more worrying than irritating. It might give her away. But, well, she trusted Livewire to have her back. She had to. Not completely though. Something could go wrong, they could drop out of contact due to a glitch or malfunction, and she might be on her own. The reality of the situation was that she was here, and she had to rely mainly on herself. Standing on top of the lift, Paige found the emergency ladder and began the long climb up, moving as quickly as she could, taking one rung after another.

It gave her a moment to think.

This job would really help ease her debt. She was still in the hole a good fifty grand, but this would almost halve that. She wondered what she would do once the debt was clear. Take a vacation? A month ago the idea would have seemed ludicrous. Maybe even a week ago. But being around another person was making her reconsider a few things. It was almost like she'd been dislocated from humanity for a long time, almost like she'd gone into autopilot, but now there had been a course correction, and she was actually taking notice of the scenery outside.

It was a weird feeling.

Maybe she really would go on a vacation, actually try to remember how to enjoy herself. Paige reached the level she had to get out on.

“I'm in position.”

There was a pause. “You're clear,” Livewire replied.

The doors opened. Paige got a grip on one of them and pulled herself into the hallway beyond. The doors dinged closed once she was clear. Looking around, confirming that she really was clear, she moved down the length of the hall, peered around a corner and then kept moving. Within a minute, she was in the mainframe room.

“Clear?” she asked softly as she crossed the room.

“Clear,” Livewire confirmed.

She found the mainframe in question, pulled out the data-chip and slotted it. It flashed its colors and started the download. Paige fought the urge to pace. Not the best thing to do in a situation like this. The seconds ticking by felt like hours. Finally, the little data-chip turned blue. It was done. With a soft sigh, she retrieved it, secured it in the reinforced pocket, turned and left. She'd almost made it back to the elevator when Livewire suddenly sounded in her ear.

“Hurry up,” he said, “someone's coming.”

Paige sped the process up, hurrying down the hallways until she was back at the elevator. The doors opened up and she slipped inside, hearing footfalls somewhere nearby. The doors closed and she hurried down the ladder.

“Am I clear?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Livewire replied.

“Who was it? I thought you said the floor was clear?”

“I thought it was. Apparently a guard fell asleep in the damned bathroom or something before the run,” he replied.

Paige snorted and kept climbing.

She got back on top of the elevator, slipped down in through the hole and replaced the hatch, locking it back up. Once she was out, Livewire restarted the elevator and she made her way back through the basement as quickly as she could. Home stretch, she was almost out of here. Not that it was a good reason to let her guard down. This was probably the most dangerous part of the job, the exit. But she managed to get back into the sewers, locked the door behind her and suit back up. She made her way along the sewer tunnels beneath the city as quickly as she could, slipping a filtration mask into place that did little to block out the smell.

Once she was actually free, she plugged the data-chip into a transmitter they'd purchased, checked out and modified for the job.

“Sending you the data now,” she said.

“Ready for it,” Livewire replied.

She hit the transmit button and it sent off the data in a burst of heavily encrypted data. A few seconds passed.

“Got it. Confirming everything is there...okay, we're good. I'm sending it off now.”

“All right, I'm on my way back,” she said, stripping out of the wetsuit and then the combat suit beneath it. She'd worn a tanktop and jogging shorts beneath it. Although there shouldn't be too many people out and about, Paige knew that she was already conspicuous enough as it was being seven feet tall. Walking around in a combat suit would just make it that much worse. She stuffed it all into the backpack she'd brought, shrugged into it and started walking.

“Okay, confirmed, we have our money,” Livewire said. He sounded happy. And relieved.

She knew how he felt. “Roger that. I'm on my way home. You need anything else, contact me through my Link.”

“Got it.”

Paige couldn't help but smile as she began the brisk walk back home.

...

Ethan was feeling good.

He'd shipped off twenty thousand credits to his contact with a promise that more would be coming soon, received a thank you and stuffed the remaining five thousand into his own collection. After double-checking to see that there were no alarm bells ringing anywhere in town, at least related to either him or Quicksilver, and confirming that they had gotten away with everything, he'd put his rig to sleep, got up and went to the kitchen. He was hungry. By the time Quicksilver got home, he was halfway through a pizza he'd warmed up.

“Would you make me one?” she asked as she dropped the backpack onto the floor. “I've gotta go take a shower and I'm starving.”

“Not a problem,” he replied.

“Thanks.”

He watched her go, feeling elated from the successful run and the relief from being able to pay off even some of his immense debt, and couldn't help but stare at her shapely backside, looking fantastic in the shorts she was wearing. He also couldn't help but imagine her wet and naked in the shower when the bathroom door closed and he started hearing running water. He went into the kitchen and put another pizza in the oven, debating briefly about what kind she might have liked, then finally settling on pepperoni, since there were several of those. Once the oven was set, he went back to his own pizza and kept eating.

He wondered what would come next.

Hopefully they'd do another run together. He didn't see any reason not to.

By the time Quicksilver returned, her pizza was done and out. He'd cut it up for her and went back to his own pizza. She came out wearing another tanktop and some pretty short pink shorts. And it became quickly obvious that she'd opted out of wearing a bra. Ethan tried not to stare. He didn't want to get punched by a super soldier.

“Thanks,” she said from the kitchen. “For making it, and for cutting it up.”

“Happy to,” he replied.

Quicksilver emerged a moment later from the kitchen carrying a bottle of wine and the entire pizza on a large plate. She sat down opposite to him at the table.

“You want some?” she asked after tearing the cork out of the wine bottle. “There's also some beer and vodka in there, too.”

“No, not much of a drinker,” he replied.

She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “More for me,” she replied, then took a long drink from the bottle, draining a quarter of it. She set it down and started eating. A couple of minutes went by in silence as she continued eating and Ethan finished off his own meal.

“So, that went really well,” she said after taking another long drink from the bottle. “I was basically thinking of this as a test run, to see if we fit well together, and it looks like we do. Would you be up for doing some more jobs with me?” she asked.

“Definitely,” he replied.

“Great! In the morning, we can pack up and shuttle out of here, do the whole thing over again. You did good tonight.” She upended the bottle and polished it off, set it down, then stood up and headed into the kitchen.

Reemerging, she held a second bottle.

“What?” she asked, pausing when Ethan glanced at her.

“I didn't say anything,” he replied.

“Being seven feet tall means it takes a lot for me to get drunk,” she said, although he noticed she was slightly slurring her words now.

She got through another quarter of the bottle before she spoke up again. “So, uh...you wanna fuck?” she asked abruptly.

He stared at her, startled. For a long moment, he felt totally stunned, like someone had just hit his reset button.

“No,” he said finally, “not like this.”

“...what do you mean, 'like this'? Like what?” she asked. He could hear her getting angry. Not good, but was suddenly angry himself.

“Drunk,” he replied, sitting up straighter. “And I have to admit, that pisses me off.”

“What? Why?”

“You apparently felt the need to have to get drunk to be able to take me to bed. What's that supposed to mean? You needed to be drunk so you could find me attractive?”

“What? No! I...” she raised the bottle slightly. “This isn't because of you...this is because of me...I, well, this isn't easy for me,” she mumbled. “I couldn't work up the nerve otherwise.”

Ethan felt his anger slip away, but he shook his head. He may be a lot of things: obsessive, a criminal, a technophile with questionable morals, but he didn't like this. He'd never been comfortable with the idea of having a first sexual encounter with someone who was, in some way, inebriated. “No,” he said again.

“Why?” Quicksilver asked quietly.

“Listen...I like you. I actually really want to have sex with you,” he replied, “but not when you're drunk. If we're going to have sex, I want it to be because both of us want it and when both of us are sober. We'll talk about it again tomorrow.”

He stood up and walked back to his bedroom, closing the door behind him. He hoped he hadn't just blown up this partnership, but there were some lines he wasn't willing to cross. He also hoped Quicksilver wouldn't kick his door down and strangle him. But as he took off his clothes and climbed into bed and tried to go to sleep, he didn't hear anything. Eventually, after a long time, he heard footfalls and a door closing.

...

Well...fuck.

Paige felt pretty shitty. She sat there in the chair at the dinner table, staring at the remains of their meal and the empty chair where Livewire had been sitting. She didn't even know his real name and she'd propositioned him.

She took a long drink from the bottle, her head swimming a bit.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a guy turn her down because she was drunk. Actually...come to think of it, it had never happened before. What the hell did that mean? She supposed he had a point. But she didn't think she could face him now. One of the drawbacks of a long period of social inactivity: she'd surprisingly lost the ability to handle rejection well. Although, thinking about it, she'd never handled it well.

She just wanted to run away.

In fact, the only thing that kept her from standing up, grabbing her stuff and walking out was the fact that the wine had hit her harder than she expected. That, and she was suddenly tired. What a miserable fucking situation. Paige sat there and drank until she'd polished off the second bottle. Okay, she'd go to bed, then she'd wake up before he did and then she would leave. Should she leave a note? She didn't think she could do that.

What would she write down, anyway? Sorry?

With a sigh, Paige stood up, stumbled slightly, then made her way back to her bedroom. She closed the door, fell into bed and fell asleep.

Hey, a little message from the author here.

I know there's no sex in this one, and I'm sorry!

The story made it necessary.

I promise there will be a LOT of sex in Part Two!

Thanks for reading!

Other Erotic Series by Misty Vixen

If you enjoyed this part and intend to keep reading but want to save some money, you can buy The Complete Trilogy right here.

Or, if you’d like to read the next part, you can do so right here.

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Jason is a regular, twenty-something human who feels adrift. After trying to radically alter his life, all that really changes is that he now lives next door to an incredibly hot redheaded vampire. When they hook up, she leads him into a world of hot sex with inhuman women. A Paranormal Romance themed erotica series.

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HELLCATS

Young human technician Ryan suddenly finds himself aboard a ship of beautiful alien women who want to take him to bed. A Science Fiction themed erotica series.

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ALIEN HAREM

James is an unsuccessful writer struggling to pay the bills. He’s good friends with a quartet of alien women who are mostly in a similar situation. Imagine his surprise when his best friend propositions him with a new plan to pay the bills: he comes to live with them and helps them film human on alien porn to sell on the internet for money. A Science Fiction themed erotica series.

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LUST & ADVENTURE

Alan is a magical healer who lives in a quiet village. He enjoys his life, but one thing keeps bothering him: what would the life of an adventurer be like? It’s a question that has been bugging him lately, one he feels sure he must answer. So when a trio of female adventurers arrive in his village, looking to hire a healer, it feels like fate, and he agrees goes with them. One thing he wasn’t counting on was the fact that there is a lot of casual sex to be had in the life of an adventurer. A Fantasy themed erotica series.

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VALKYRIES

Jared is a former mercenary with a specialty in technology. He quit the life after almost getting murdered. But that was over a year ago and just lately he’s found himself wondering if he shouldn’t go back to that life. By chance, two mercenaries who are looking to form their own crew bump into him and need a technician. When he agrees to join them, he quickly learns that they, and the other mercenaries they end up hiring, are interested in more than just his skill at repair. A Science Fiction themed erotica series.

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WANDERLUST

Owyn Hunter has just come of age and decides to leave his small village and start adventuring out in the world at large. But instead of danger or riches, he finds that his greatest adventure is all the beautiful monster women he encounters that wish to experience the taboo thrill of sex with a human. A Fantasy themed erotica series.

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Hi, I'm the author. I'm no one special. I live somewhere in the US and, (obviously), I love writing erotica!

After some thought, I've come to realize that three things seem to set me apart from all the other ten million erotica authors out there.

The first is that I tend to write from the perspective of regular, average twenty-something men. After hearing about all the billionaires and NAVY Seals and cowboys, I figured maybe it was time to hear from someone a bit more...real. Someone people could relate to.

The second thing that sticks out is that while I've come across tons of erotica about hot babes being slammed by monsters, (werewolves, vampires, even dinosaurs and BIGFOOT for fuck's sake!), there wasn't much out there about regular dudes banging hot monster chicks. And they need love too, right?

The final thing that I didn't even realize at first and I've since tried to cultivate because I believe in it is that I'm all about sexual equality. I'm not really here to condemn or kink-shame anyone, but I just like the idea of consent, sexual respect and both parties getting what they want out of the sexual encounter. (Or I guess I should say all parties, depending on how many people are fucking at once!)

If you like my work and want to get in touch with me, there are a few ways that can be done.

First, here's my Twitter.

Also, here's my blog.

Finally, you can e-mail me directly at mistyvixen@outlook.com

I love hearing from people and I try to keep all of these up-to-date.

Thank you for reading this, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it!

-Misty

AMAZONIAN'S LOVE: PART ONE. Copyright © by Misty Vixen. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entire coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.