Spartan Resistance Read Free Page A

peacefulness.
    “And who are you?”
    He looked up. Then down a little. The woman, Mavourneen, was standing in front of him, her hands on her hips, and a bright enquiring smile on her face. Her eyes, he noticed, were a chocolate color that would have been warm and friendly except for the glint of ice in them.
    “Hiya. I’m harmless. Don’t worry about me.” He went back to the dashboard.
    “I’m sure you’re quite harmless. That wasn’t what I asked.”
    He looked up again. “Gawaine,” he said patiently. “Ask anyone at the agency about me. They’ll vouch for me. Do you always run your neural tides along the electronic circuits like this?”
    “Do not touch that!” She stepped forward, closer to the dashboard. “That is proprietary work. You shouldn’t even be looking at it. Who let you in here?”
    “I told you—”
    “You’re harmless,” she finished with a snap that made Gawaine wonder if her red hair was quite as enhanced as it appeared. There was a temper in there and it was simmering.
    For the first time, Gawaine considered that he might be offending her. “Look, hey, I’m just curious, that’s all. I wasn’t going to touch it, but if I could just look at the neo-limbic core—”
    She crossed her arms. “No.”
    He had upset her. Marley was always on his case about letting his geeky side run too wild and he’d done it again. He held out a hand, signally peace. “I’m sorry. Really. My roommate says I have all the social skills of an elephant in mating season and sometimes I think she’s right. Not always, but neurals always make me switch off that part of my brain, which is kinda ironic, really.”
    The woman stood silent as a stone. Her expression was stony, too.
    “No, really,” he said, trying again to smooth it over. He turned back to the dashboard. “I saw your layout here and it’s…it’s fascinating,” he lied desperately, for fascination was the last thing he felt about the offensive tangle of circuitry in front of him. “I can see you’ve got some really powerful feeds coming in.” He reached to point to a cluster at the top of the board. “I’ve never seen input feeds like those. It almost looks like, well, weather.”
    His hand didn’t make contact with the board. With a screech that made the hair on the back of his neck rise, she snatched away his wrist and at the same time her body slammed into his. Gawaine went staggering, surprise doing more to move him than her bodyweight. She was as light as a snowball.
    But then she fell on him, leaping up from the ground with a jump that was astonishingly powerful, to land right on top of him where he stood with his jaw hanging open in stupid surprise. This time he did fall and her knees on his chest drove the wind out of him. The impact of the ground against his back made his ribcage and shoulders creak.
    He tried to breathe, but her weight on him and the shock of his landing had locked up his chest. He drew in shallow sips of air, telling himself to stay calm, that he would be able to breathe better in a minute or two. He just had to draw air slow and steady for now or he would pass out.
    The woman’s fingers were gripping his shirt at the shoulders. She was holding him down—as if he was capable of any sort of defense right then. Her leap upon him had disturbed her clothing and where the multi-colored shirt-thing wrapped over at the front, it had come askew and was gaping. He tore his gaze away as he realized he was looking at the tops of her breasts. Two full, rounded milky breasts….
    She tapped his cheek with one hand, not gently. He looked at her face. She waved her finger at him, like he was a naughty schoolboy. “That is how you get your neck broken for you. Don’t touch. Don’t pry.”
    “You’re a vampire!” he gasped. There could be no other conclusion. Her leap, the unearthly scream, the way she was holding him down, even the very exact way she was speaking all said she was.
    “Very good,” she