NoBounds by Ann Jacobs

who’d
deserved more richly than Dax Petrone to die. “Wha—what will happen to her?”
    Sadness filled her heart as she watched the
two guards pick Ciel up and drag her away. Thoughts of how the woman had
befriended her at a terrible time in her life slammed back into Amber’s mind
and made her sick that she hadn’t been able to help to prevent… She didn’t want
to imagine how Ciel’s life would be, but she had to know.
    Cole drew Amber close, obviously feeling
her distress. “I imagine they’ll order that she be institutionalized. There’s
no way anyone could say she’s sane. I’ll send word to my father about what’s
happened and ask him to get a lawyer up here to defend her. In the meantime,
she’ll be safe in jail, where she can’t harm herself or anybody else.”
    They stepped outside, into the eerie light
of Obsidion’s multicolored moons, and Amber took Cole’s hand. Guilt overcame
her and she started to tremble. “This wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been
for us.”
    “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. I
forbid it.” Cole stopped, drew Amber into his arms again and stroked her the
way a father might to reassure a child.
    “My sister has always had a tenuous hold on
reality. We—everyone in the family—have always done our best to see that she
didn’t lose that hold. If what happened back there is anyone’s fault, it’s
mine. I knew this afternoon when she finally woke that the news about us would
set her off. I didn’t realize how badly she’d react. At the time she seemed to
take it extremely well, for Ciel.
    “Sweetheart, don’t cry. I know Ciel’s your
friend. We’ll get her the treatment she should have had years ago and she’ll be
all right.”
    Amber looked up and saw the caring in
Cole’s dark eyes, eyes so much like Ciel’s except that, instead of hate, they
held all the love she’d ever wanted—love she’d found in his arms, his bed.
“Won’t she go to prison for killing Dax?”
    “Not if there’s a God. In her madness, that
was the one sane thing my sister did—she got rid of the sadistic bastard who
hurt you. Because of her madness, she’ll be one of the few who gets away with
murder.”

Chapter Six
     
    Cole quietly arranged for Petrone’s remains
to be disposed of once Obsidion’s police detectives had collected the physical
evidence they needed. He fought the guilt that surrounded him over the fact
that Ciel had felt she had to kill Petrone. Those feelings wouldn’t go away
though.
    I should have killed the fucker myself . The memory of his sister confined in an eight-by-eight cell behind
sturdy iron bars ate at him, just as thinking of Ciel’s tortured eyes, her
madness, had made Amber unnaturally quiet, reflective. For the first time since
he’d made Amber his slave, Cole had slept alone the night before, unwilling to
subject her to his nightmares, his own tenuous grip on sanity.
    He stood in the main dungeon at No Bounds,
looking at the shiny new equipment and wondering if his father had been right.
Had this lifestyle that he loved contributed to Ciel’s final downfall?
    No. He wouldn’t allow himself to go there.
For whatever reasons, he got off on wielding sexual power, using it to bring
his lover pleasure. Ciel had chosen that way too, though Cole now believed
Amber was right that she’d cast herself into a Dominant role that didn’t fit
her and had lived her submissive fantasies vicariously, through Amber.
    He’d talked with his father and promised
he’d help the lawyer and the shrink Alan was sending to get settled in to what
he imagined would become lucrative practices on Obsidion. He had arranged with
Ciel’s jailers to treat her well. He’d so far never ceased to be amazed by how
loudly money talked, particularly on a planet whose permanent inhabitants had
almost all been transported because of some brush with Federation laws back
home.
    Now he had a business to run and a slave to
honor and protect. He’d done all he