Acquisitions Ch. 02

Author's Note: Thank you all so much for being patient and offering words of encouragement for my writing. September 11, 2001 was horribly difficult for so many people in so many ways, and the way it manifested with me was in my writing. This is the first story I've completed in two years. I hope it is up to par with the expectations of my fans, and, as always, I look forward to hearing from you. -Seneca

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The pages were spread out around me on the bed, a patchwork quilt in different shades of white. Some were edging toward dingy yellow, folded and rumpled with age, while others remained as pristine as new fallen snow. There were dozens of them, new overlapping with old, each sheet covered with notes in my own meticulous handwriting, each sheet a page in a story. Why had I kept these pages, these reminders of the men I've met over the years? What has compelled me to document, even if only for my own eyes, every acquisition I've ever made?

A errant puff of wind from the open balcony doors caused the papers to stir, one of them fluttering like a broken butterfly to the floor. I leaned over the edge of the bed and snagged the runaway between two fingers, returning it to the fold.

The name on the top of the page caught my eye, and I picked the paper back up to give it a better look. As I read over the information I'd carefully written out, the image of him the first time I'd laid eyes on him resurfaced. Thick, dark hair the color of chocolate, eyes the indigo of the twilight sky. He'd been a very attractive man, which is what had caught my interest in the first place.

Tony.

Where was he now? How was he? Was he happy with his new life? The last time I'd seen him, nearly two years ago, he'd been unconscious on a wheeled bed, being pushed out the door of the house over the cove by a Driel woman and her assistant. That had been what...twenty, maybe thirty men ago? What was it about Tony that kept drawing my attention back to him?

I shook my head and gathered my pages up again, slipped them into the black binder I've carried with me everywhere I've gone for the last twenty years. After tucking the binder back into the bottom of my tote bag, I glanced down at my watch. It's eight o'clock. Time to go back to work.

She hadn't changed as much as she would have liked to think she had. Oh, physically, she couldn't look more different than the woman he remembered. He remembered hair the color of flames and eyes the green of the ocean that lapped the shore outside his house back home. The woman who's photo he looked at now had short, platinum blond hair spiked into points that could put a man's eye out and silver-gray eyes gleaming with sexuality. But there was something about the look in those eyes, in the saucy posture as she gazed into the camera that reminded him so strongly of the woman he'd known that he would never had mistaken her for anyone else.

"She goes by the name Sabela, now, and she's the best there is at what she does," the man across the table from him said. "We need her brought in, and we need her now, before the group she works for does any more damage."

He shook his head in disbelief, and looked at the other man, the leader of this task force and a friend of long standing. "I still can't believe it, Shawn. She was always such a straight arrow. Honest to a fault. Are you sure this is the same woman?"

"It's been years, Galen. People change." Shawn opened his folder and pulled out a second photograph. A-ha. This was the woman the girl he remembered should have grown into. "This is out of her personnel folder, from back when Acquisitions were legal."

He latched onto that, almost desperate to attach some legitimate reason to her illegal actions. "Does she even know?"

"Of course she knows. EVERYONE knows. The Anti-Acquisitions Act was the biggest and most controversial law passed in the last century. Caused riots on three planets. You'd have to be living under a rock not to know."

That was, unfortunately, true. Had she changed that much? Galen didn't want to think so. But it had been years, a good many years, since he'd seen her.

They'd been barely more than children when he'd decided to make law enforcement his life's path. He'd been shocked when, fresh out of the academy and back home for the first time in four years, he discovered that the little girl from next door had gone into Acquisitions.

He glanced down at the sultry platinum blond gazing at him from the photo. No. She definitely wasn't the girl next door anymore. Galen sighed and placed the picture back on top of the file it had been pulled from and picked up a second photo. This one was of much poorer quality, showing the profile of a middle aged woman with close cropped, steel gray hair and a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes. This was their ultimate quarry, the woman known as Control. She was in charge of this Acquisitions group. From what they could uncover, she had recruited all the acquirers who worked for her directly, gave them their orders and processed the men that were acquired. She was the one who would have been notified of the Anti-Acquisitions Act upon it's passage two years earlier. She was the one who had ignored the new law, and apparently several of her girls had followed her example. He put the picture down. "So, where do we go from here?"

"As soon as you agreed to join this task force, Galen, we set up an Acquisition request. Our agent told her," he tapped a finger against the picture of the older woman, "that she is desperate and willing to pay any amount necessary to acquire the product, but only if Control's very best was put on the job. Almost immediately, Control contacted Sabela. We were very specific about the physical attributes of the man we want, making the description as close to you as we could, without being too obvious." Shawn looked concerned for a moment. "Galen, are you sure, absolutely sure, that Sabela will not recognize you?"

"I'm positive." Galen studied the table for a long moment, then sighed. It wasn't something he usually talked about, but the task force needed the reassurance. "I was involved in the riots at the Marius asteroid mining facility five years ago. I was caught in the explosion when the mine detonated. The doctors put me back together very well, but I don't look anything like I used to. She won't recognize me."

Shawn looked shocked for a moment -- he'd known Galen had been injured shortly prior to their acquaintance, but not what had happened or where -- then nodded. "Very good." He shuffled the papers and shoved them back into the file, then folded his hands on top. "We want these woman, Galen. This Control went completely rogue when the AAA went into effect. She'll sell men to anyone, for any reason, as long as the fee is right. We've had fifteen dead human males show up in various areas around the Alliance in the last eighteen months. Every one of them traces back to this group, and to this woman. You bring Sabela in, and I'd bet she'll have enough information to be able to lead us right to her Control."

The open air dance club was packed with people to the point that the dancers could barely do more than sway and bop to the beat. The long bar behind the dance floor had people lined up three deep, those who wanted to listen to the band playing on the low stage to the right of the dance floor, but either didn't want to dance or realized the improbability of fitting even one more person on the floor. Three bartenders, two men and a woman, buzzed back and forth, taking orders and providing libations as fast as they could. The only seats available were the two dozen bar stools that had long since been claimed by early patrons -- if you wanted to sit, better find a spot in the sand to park it. And some people had, outside the pavilion that, during the day, kept the worst of the sun off the patrons. At night, the rice lights woven around the rafters gave the impression of a star filled sky, even on the cloudiest of nights.

I had arrived earlier, picking a stool at the far end of the bar where I could people watch with relative ease. I was determined to finish this Acquisition tonight -- Control had informed me that after this Acquisition, we would be moving our operation away from this island. The local authorities were beginning to become suspicious of the number of men who had vanished without a trace from the resort. Disappearing men make for bad business.

I thought I had caught a lucky break when a man who came very close to the description I needed sat down beside me early on. But there was something about him that gave me the creeps. Maybe it was the speed at which he was pouring alcohol down his throat. Maybe it was the way that he eyeballed the breasts of every woman who crossed his path. Or maybe, it was the pale white line on the fourth finger of his left hand and the scrapes on the knuckle where a ring of long standing had recently been pulled off. Whatever it was, when a young woman began to ogle him back, thrusting her chest out for his obvious appreciation, I vacated my seat to her. Let them have fun with each other. I was on business.

Sipping my drink, I prowled the perimeter of the dance floor. Watching the people move, looking, always looking. Please, I thought, let me find him tonight. There had been something urgent in the last call I had received from Control. She was upset about something, and I got the feeling it was more than just the local police becoming suspicious of the disappearances.

I was standing in what would be the corner if this club had walls, looking down across the beach toward the sea, when a movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. A man was approaching the club. At this distance, I could tell much more than his height -- very, very tall -- and what he was wearing -- khaki short and a brown polo shirt open at the neck. As he came closer, I notice the slightly too long golden brown hair. He wore black ray-ban sunglasses against the last of the late afternoon sunshine, which disguised his eyes, giving him a rather mysterious look. I wasn't the only woman noticing the man. Many heads turned and followed his progress, to the obvious amusement of many a girlfriend and the disgust of many a boyfriend.

As unobtrusively as possible, I positioned myself next the roof support nearest the newcomer. From what I could see, physically he was almost a perfect match for what I needed. He was coming almost directly at me, so I turned slightly, as if watching the pair of twenty-somethings behind him tossing a Frisbee back and forth.

As the man passed the female participant, she turned away from her male companion to watch the man walk by. I caught a look of disgust on the younger man's face, just before he pulled his arm back and whipped the Frisbee as hard as he could -- not at his girlfriend, but at the back of the head of the newcomer. His girlfriend caught the movement and gave a squeak of alarm. Whether that alerted him, or he just had exemplary reflexes, at the last moment just before the Frisbee hit him in the back of the head, he spun on his heal, snatched the plastic disk out of the air and flicked it back at the young man. He didn't seem to use too much effort, but the young man instinctively reached out and caught the disk, then howled in pain and dropped it, shaking his stinging hand. Then, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he turned back and continued toward the bar. I watched in amusement as the young woman stalked over to her boyfriend snatched up the Frisbee out of the sand at his feet, yelled "serves you right, jerkoff!" and walked away. The young man followed, still holding his sore hand and talking frantically to the girl.

I turned back to the crowd around the bar and immediately felt a little thread of alarm -- I'd lost him. No...there he was, on the other side of the dance floor, leaning over the shoulders of a pair of woman to pick up a drink off the bar. One of the women said something to him, and he grinned. He said something back -- there was too much noise in the pavilion, so I couldn't hear what he said -- and the young woman pouted slightly. By then I was close enough to hear her say, "well, I tried." I walked up behind the man, my eyes looking past him toward the small building marked "Restrooms." I timed it carefully so that as he turned toward me to walk away from the bar, I deliberately stumbled a bit, bumping his arm and causing him to dump the contents of his glass right down the front of himself.

"Oh, my God!" I cried, feigning horror. "I am so sorry!" I snatched up a handful of paper napkins off the bar and began to blot at the front of his shirt. "I stumbled...I'm sorry...I'm such a klutz..." I babbled. Suddenly, I felt the warm chest under my hand vibrate as the man chuckled.

"It's okay," he laughed, trying to catch my hand as I darted it around the damp spot on his shirt. "It's only water. It'll dry. No harm done."

I bit my lip and gave him an unsure look. "Are you sure?"

He finally pinned my hand. "Positive." I looked up at him. He'd pushed his sunglasses up to the top of his head and was looking down at me with green eyes sparkling with mirth and the tiniest bit of attraction. Oh, yea. He was just getting better and better. With a thought I let off a little bit of pheromones, just enough to fan that slight spark. I could tell it had worked when he set his now empty glass back on the bar and grinned at me again. "Come on, let me buy you a drink, just to show that there are no hard feelings."

"Shouldn't I be the one offering to buy you a drink to replace the one I spilled?" I asked as he placed a hand gently at the small of my back to guide me through the press of people.

"I told you, it was just water. Didn't cost me anything to get."

"Oh, right." He was guiding me out of the bar and out onto the twilight lit beach. "Thought you were going to buy me a drink," I murmured, glancing back over my shoulder.

"I am. I was hoping, though, I could convince you to add a little dinner to that drink." He looked back at the bar, too. "Someplace a little less crowded than that."

"I'd like that," I said, linking my arm with his as we strolled slowly across the sand.

Dinner was a nice affair. We chatted like old friends through two servings of thick, cheesy lasagna, homemade apple crumb pie and the best coffee I've had in a long time. He told me his name was Derek Thomas, and that he was on vacation after a particularly hard year. The grandmother who'd raised him from the time he'd been a baby had finally passed away at the ripe old age of 97. He'd lost a job he'd been absolutely miserable in ("hey, it paid the bills."), and had finally landed a new one, but the new company wouldn't be needing his services for another three months. So it had seemed like the perfect time for a long overdue vacation. I smiled, offered my condolences on the death of his grandmother, commiserated over the lost, miserable job. I told him my name was Natasha, and we talked about me only a little bit--I gave him cover story about being the daughter of a wealthy business man who's best friend had agreed to loan me his beach house while I chase my dream of being a professional writer. Sweetly, Derek promised that he would buy my book when I finally got it published.

By the time we were finished, night had fallen completely and silvery moonlight sparkled off the waves breaking against the shore. As soon as we were outside, away from other people, walking arm in arm along the beach, I pumped up the pheromones, and almost instantly we went from arm in arm to cuddled side to side with his arm pressing me tight to him.

A sideways glance told me that he was already highly aroused. All it took was my veiled suggestion that he come to my place, and the next thing I knew, we were closing my front door behind us, and he was practically inhaling me.

It was happening very, very fast. He kissed his was across my jaw and down to my neck, holding me so close to him that it was like he was trying to pull me inside his body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realized that at this rate we were never going to make it upstairs to my bedroom, but before I could pull away, he had me pinned against the wall, locked his lips to mine again and was fumbling for the edge of my skirt. In the moment he pushed my panties down my legs, I surrendered to the inevitable--this first time between us was just going to be for us.

I kicked my underwear off my ankle and wrapped my legs around his waist. I realized that somewhere along the line he had dropped his own pants and shorts into a wad around his feet, and from the waist down we were now bare skin to bare skin. He growled as he grabbed my hips, and I latched onto a handful of his hair as he bit down, hard, on my shoulder and pushed himself inside me at the same time.

Oh...

I screamed. At least, I think I did. Whether it was from the pain of the bite to my shoulder or the pleasure of my body expanding over his thick, heavy male flesh, I don't know. All I could be sure of as he began to thrust was that in all the years I'd been in acquisitions, never had being with a man felt quite so...right. It was horribly difficult to remember that this was just another acquisition, that before the night was out, this man could very well be on his way to a new owner, a new life.

The idea repulsed me.

But I had other things to think about, though any kind of thinking was becoming more and more difficult. Derek licked at the bite mark on my shoulder, and I purred. It felt so good, so right. I barely noticed the door frame biting into the back of my right shoulder and hip, only the tight clasp of his hands on my body, the heavy, tight thickness of him inside my body. When he raised his lips from my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "come on, baby. Fly for me..." I groaned and gave myself totally over to the moment.

For the first time in...years, my climax took me by surprise. One moment I was climbing the steep hill to bliss, and the next I was taking him at his word and flying. I locked my legs tightly around his hips and arched my back as the spasms took me. Derek gave a rumbling growl from deep in his chest, vibrating wonderfully against my breasts as he joined me in climax.

Somehow, we ended up in a tangle of limbs on the floor. Derek's legs appeared to have slid out from under him, and I'd landed on his lap...kind of. We were both shaking and sweaty, making feeble attempts to disentangle ourselves from one another and the moment suddenly struck me as funny. My laughter triggered his, and as his deep chuckles surrounded me, I realized that he was still inside me, and still more than a little hard. And it felt so good.

He sighed. "Man, I haven't done this since I was a teenager."

"Really?" I asked.

He leaned his forehead against mine. "What I meant is, I usually have more finesse than to make love to a woman in her front hallway."

"Oh, that." I chuckled again, and felt him harden even more. Oh, yea, he was more than ready for a second round. "Well, Mr. Caveman, if you want to try for the bedroom, it's up the stairs, second door on the left." He laughed. Then he stood up, took her hand in one of his, grabbed their scattered clothing with the other, and led her up the stairs.

Galen felt the mattress sag a bit as she climbed quietly out of bed. Continuing to feign sleep, he cracked his eyes just a bit and watched her retrieve the discarded condom out of the trash and walk into the bathroom. The soft snick of the lock and the sudden sound of the shower coming on told him she was about to run the "tests" he'd been warned about. Under ordinary circumstances, he'd been told, Sabela would test his semen to make sure he was healthy and, if needs warranted, fertile, and then a second rendezvous would be set up where she would drug her victim and turn him over to Control for processing. He had no intention of letting it go that far.