James Axler – Trader Redux

But Sukie had other plans. She pulled off her worn riding boots and wriggled her toes in the sunshine. “That feels so good, Doc. Think I might take off a little more.” She dropped the dark blue jacket and peeled her way out of the white blouse, leaving herself with just the turquoise necklace above the waist. The sun spilled fire across her breasts.

“Are you considering removing any further apparel, my dear lady?”

“You aiming to go delving in the root cellar again, then, Doc?” Sukie asked with a wicked grin.

“It had crossed my mind that it might assuredly help to enliven what could be our last private interlude together, before returning to the bosom of my friends.”

Even as he heard the word “bosom” slipping from his mouth, Doc knew that Sukie would use it to open up some distinctly carnal negotiations.

As it turned out, he was right.

WHEN DOC AWAKENED, he saw the woman sitting cross-legged and naked, examining the inscription incised down the length of the Toledo blade of the sword stick. She saw him blink back toward consciousness. “Can’t read this flowery writing on the steel. What’s it say?”

“Very old, like the sword. ‘ No me saques sin razon, no me envaines sin honor .’ Want to know what it means, Sukie?”

“Course I do, you old stud. Sounds real pretty the way you set your tongue around it. Speaking of setting your tongue around something” She opened her thighs a little to allow him a glimpse of the moist pearl within.

“No, no! Time passes. Listen, time passes. Bible-black evening will soon come rolling toward us, madam. The message on my rapier warns that the steel should never be drawn without reason, nor sheathed without honor.”

“Hey,” she said, shuffling toward him, laying the blade aside. “That’s the kind of moral could apply to another, real different kind of weapon, Doc.”

He sighed. “Yes, I suppose it might.”

AFTER THE WHITE-COATS had selected Doc as a prime candidate for the trawling experiments known as Operation Chronos, his life had been a perpetual roller coaster of mental confusion, mostly dark and horrific, but with the occasional flash of brightness.

It had been a very long time since he’d experienced such dazzling brightness as he had since his lucky meeting with Susan Smith, and entered into an admittedly short-lived relationship that had already brought him much of what he suspected might be called happiness.

It was his turn to lean upon his elbow and gaze down at her sleeping face, which wasn’t exactly what you would have called truly pretty. The Pre-Raphaelite painters that Doc so admired would not have turned their heads as she walked by them along Piccadilly, or called her a “stunner.”

But the forty-three-year-old from Hildenvillethe one-boss burg in the middle of the plainshad a great quality of strength in the lines of her face, a mix of wisdom and experience that was undeniably beautiful.

“Well, Emily, my dearest,” he whispered to himself, “for the first time since the unkind Lords of Chaos drove us apart, I think that I have been truly unfaithful to your memory. Not just a penny bunk-up in a dark alley or a knee tremble in the back of a hansom cab. I think that I may actually be falling a little in love with this lady.”

THEY DRESSED, standing close together, both watching a bald eagle that seemed to have a nest somewhere a deal higher up the mountain and a mile or more away to the east of where they’d been camping. It looked like it was hunting some small rodent, constantly swooping low over the tops of the scattered pine trees, then rising a thousand feet in the air in frustration at its lack of success.

“Must be the most marvelous feeling,” Doc said, tucking in the tail of his white shirt.

“Best fun you can have when you’re not lying down,” Sukie agreed, running her long-nailed fingers through her mane of silvery-gold hair.

Judas whickered softly and Doc turned to him. “Well, old companion. Not long now before you’ll find yourself safe and snug in your familiar stable, with plenty of good straw and a bucket of sweet water as a reward for your faithful service. Reasonably faithful.”