Sail (Haunted Stars Book 1)

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  I dragged in my mattress and blankets while Nesbit and Glenn fell asleep with their heads and arms propped on the gurney.

  The sounds of deep sleep drifted my eyes almost shut until Mase wiggled his fingers at me to get my attention. I adjusted my head to see him better, my heart speeding when I saw that he wore a small yet surreptitious smile. He flicked a screw at me across the floor, but it rolled under the gurney. His hand came up with something else, and he pushed that toward me, too. A washer.

  The man was giving me more iron. No one had ever encouraged my iron addiction except Ellison and Pop. No one else ever understood how much I needed it, least of all the most beautiful man I’d ever seen handing it out like candy.

  My fingers closed around the washer, and when he flipped another one at me, I grabbed that one, too, and the screw under the gurney. I felt like I was following a trail of breadcrumbs as he pushed more and more at me, and I left the warmth of my blankets to get them all. A grin spread across my face that matched his the closer I crawled.

  I inched my head down to whisper a thank you, my lips magnetized to that full mouth. Raw hunger blazed in his eyes as I dipped my head lower to breathe his air.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  He closed his eyes as the words sighed over his mouth, then he tipped up his chin so his top lip brushed over mine. An overwhelming heat spread to my middle at the sensation, taking all sense with it. I settled my lips even closer. He caught my bottom one under the edge of his teeth and sucked it.

  My breaths turned to pants. His eyes lit with desire, and I could tell from the throbbing between my legs that my gaze was probably just as needy.

  With a low groan, he sat up, pushing me with him, and grabbed the back of my neck to devour my lips with his. Oh, my Feozva, yes. I wanted this. I wanted him, but with a gasp, I braced my forearms against his chest to stop him. We couldn’t. Not here with Nesbit and Captain Glenn in the same room, not to mention Daryl and Randolph’s empty chairs.

  He nodded, seeming to understand, yet a fire still lit in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. Really, really sorry. I should’ve just stopped with “Thank you” and called it a night, but damn. The man needed comfort just as much as I needed him inside me to coax us both into oblivion. We both deserved to feel a little of that.

  I crawled back to my mattress, and once settled, I held my hand out to him over my blanket so he’d know just how thankful I was.

  He smiled and slid his hand out from under his coat toward mine. Only two feet separated our fingertips, but the warmth blooming inside my chest made it feel monumentally smaller.

  I woke with an agonizing ache between my legs and a crick in my neck. Dreams about heated looks and naked bodies and tongues and hands swam through my head the entire night. Apparently my subconscious was a dirty whore.

  The subject of my dreams lay tantalizingly close, one broad shoulder peeking out from under his coat and rising and falling in deep sleep. I had a feeling Mase would love my subconscious and the things it wanted to do to him.

  Glenn and Nesbit’s legs were bent under the gurney, their snores sawing at the otherwise silent ship.

  Gritting my teeth against all my aches and pains, I untangled myself from the blanket and went to the kitchen. Hopefully cooking breakfast would clean my mind up and focus my body on something other than Mase’s lips on mine. His warm, lickable lips.

  Breakfast! I ran to the pantry and loaded my arms with the ingredients for a breakfast hash.

  The double doors flip-flapped open behind me. Mase saluted me on his way to the pantry, while lower down something else saluted with an enormous bulge in his pants.

  “Don’t mind him. He only bites when necessary,” he said with a lascivious smile, raking his fingers through his sexy bed hair.

  I exhaled slowly while I stared after the trail of sex appeal.

  He came back out seconds later with a glass of milk, a white mustache already clinging to his upper lip. How I wanted to lick that off his face just before I tore all of his clothes off and begged every inch of him to bite me.

  Good Feozva, where had that come from? Now wasn’t the time to drool over that man, not on a haunted ship where a doctor lay strapped to a gurney and a chef had gone missing while hurtling through dangerous space toward my missing sister. Not now, despite the fact that he’d given me iron.

  “You know, I could tell you weren’t a boy the first time I saw you,” he said.

  “Can you repeat that a little louder, please?” I hissed. “I don’t think the folks in the next solar system heard you.”

  He sauntered up to me, his cowboy boots tapping a slow, suggestive rhythm. “Your face, your cheekbones, your little ears, those pouty lips—it’s all woman. You’re way too beautiful.”

  My body hummed alive with his nearness. Each breath he drew in pulled me closer until we shared the same pocket of air between our mouths. His enormous erection rubbed against my lower belly, pulling the bundle of nerves just below it taut.

  “You’re just saying that because I’m the only girl on this ship. You’ve probably said that to a hundred girls,” I said, my voice raspy.

  “Wrong.” He slipped his fingers under my waistband and cupped my bare ass, and a grin curled his mouth when he realized I was going commando.

  “Then you’re just trying to get in my pants.”

  He arched a brow, considering, then shook his head. “Wrong.”

  “But you are,” I said, breathless. My arms wrapped around his waist, even though I didn’t remember telling them to, and I inhaled the warm, spicy smell of his white thermal shirt.

  “Because I can’t stop thinking about you.” His lips still cold from his milk, he dropped frosty kisses down my neck which cooled the blush heating my body. “You’re all I dream about.”

  So his subconscious was just as slutty as mine. Good to know, because the very idea of coupling our involuntary thoughts and acting them out right here, right now, spiraled around the room with dizzying possibilities.

  “Something tells me if any girl had pants, you would have your hands down them. Am I right?” I asked.

  “There’s been a few pants, yeah, but never fugitive ghost magnet pants.”

  “Never?” I breathed.

  “Nope.” His lips popped on the p sound then continued in their exploration of my neck.

  “Well, that’s just…” I lost my train of thought as he trailed his fingers up the back of my sweatshirt to the boob hugger cinching my breasts while his icy lips nibbled at my jaw.

  “The day I saw you naked… I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since. The ghosts on this ship have nothing on you, Absidy. You’re haunting me.”

  A loud yawn sounded from the dining room.

  Without thinking, I shoved a potato at Mase. “Hold that,” I told him.

  He leaned back with narrowed eyes. “Why?”

  “So you’ll keep your hands to yourself, that’s why. Now do it,” I warned.

  He chuckled but reluctantly slid his hands away from my body and took the potato. “Am I going to have to hold it all morning? I have stuff to do.”

  “You can put it down whenever you want on your way out the door. I have to make breakfast. I don’t need you and your…” My gaze involuntarily tracked down his front to the swell in his pants.

  “Morning potato?” he said with a grin.

  “I was going to say allure.”

  “Oh, allure? Is that what I have, college girl?” He smirked. “Okay, I’ll leave you to breakfast, and I’m putting my allure down on my way out.”

  I shook my head as he left. What was I getting into with him? Something that would get me into more trouble than I already was, I guessed. Only I feared this kind of trouble would be worth putting on repeat. But we should be investigating what had happened to Daryl and Randolph and what haunted this ship, not flirting and rubbing all over each other.

  “One more thing,” Mase said, coming back through th
e double doors. “We’ll be entering deep space in just a couple hours, so now would be the time to call…someone if…you know.” A strange look crossed over his face as he studied me with those mismatched eyes. “If you don’t have a Mind-I, that is. Do you have a Mind-I?”

  “No, I don’t. Thanks.”

  He nodded then left again. Weird guy.

  Once we entered deep space, I’d be even closer to Ellison but farther away from a working phone tower, so I needed to work quickly. While the diced potatoes softened in the frying pan, I searched my phone for any mention of the Vicio.

  Knowing the ship’s history would likely explain what haunted it and what Mase and I had seen. Because whatever it was, it wasn’t human, and I’d never come up against a non-human ghost before. It terrified me. So did my iron losing its effectiveness. Already I had gone through half of what Mase had given me last night.

  But I couldn’t find anything on the Vicio. Nothing at all, which meant that this ship didn’t exist. Odd, because I was standing in its kitchen. That meant what exactly? That the ship’s past was a secret and had been wiped clean? But why?

  My phone couldn’t offer those answers, so I dialed Franco.

  “Hey. I need to speak to Moon,” I said once he answered.

  “How’s my favorite fugitive?” he asked. “Hang on. She’s right here.”

  “Absidy,” she said, breathless. “What the hell happened during our last conversation? What were those noises?”

  “Just a TV show.” I grimaced, hating that I had to lie to her, but there wasn’t time for the truth. “Listen, Moon, can you find out all you can about the Vicio?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Because in just a few hours, we’re going to be in deep space on a ship that doesn’t exist.”

  A pause. “Oh. That’s…oh. A few hours, huh?” She sounded defeated and teetering on the edge of tears. The thought lodged a lump in my throat because what if I would never see her or Jezebel or Franco again? What if the dangers of deep space, not ghosts, finally did me in? A year and a half wasn’t long enough for friends that were worthy of a lifetime. But what if this was our last conversation?

  “Yeah,” was all I could say.

  She didn’t speak for what might have been minutes, but gulps and a few sniffs sounded in my ear and made my eyes burn. “Find her.”

  “Okay,” I breathed.

  “I love you, Absidy Jones,” she said through a choked sob.

  “Love you too,” I whispered, then ended the call because it hurt too much to say anything else.

  Mase came into the dining room just as I was finishing clearing the table of breakfast dishes, his face pale.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I thought I saw Randolph, but…it wasn’t him. It wasn’t anybody…just…” He shook his head and slumped into his usual seat. “Sit with me? Please?”

  He looked so desperate to spill what was on his mind that I couldn’t refuse him. I sat. He took my hand and pressed an iron screw into it. “I want you to answer some questions that may be difficult to answer before I give you the rest.”

  “Okay.” What could he possibly want to know that I hadn’t already told him? I’d told him everything, more than I’d ever told anyone.

  “Don’t look so nervous. I’m going to give them to you anyway whether you answer the questions or not. Just let me ask them, and maybe you can think about the answers later. Okay?”

  So far he hadn’t judged me; I didn’t think he’d start now, so I relaxed in my seat. “Fine. Ask.”

  He took a breath. “Do you have a boyfriend back at college?”

  “That’s the difficult question?”

  He shrugged. “It could be, depending on the answer.”

  “No. I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

  “Never?” he asked, tilting his head in disbelief.

  “People think I’m crazy, Mase, with my metal corsets and chains in my hair. I don’t invite people to get too close for a reason, so guys aren’t exactly flocking to be my lab partner. And I know they’re not thrilled with the things I put in my mouth.”

  He bit back a grin. “But it’s such a sexy, dirty mouth.”

  I leaned my elbow on the gurney to press a smile into my palm. “That wasn’t a question. And you owe me two pieces of iron.”

  “What? I just asked if you had a boyfriend.”

  “You also asked ‘Never?’” I wiggled my fingers at him. “Hand them over.”

  With a sigh, he plucked two washers from his hand and dropped them in front of me. “You have wicked counting skills, college girl.”

  I shrugged. “It’s a gift. What’s your next question?”

  “Do the ghosts ever want to communicate with you?”

  “Sometimes.” While screaming mostly, and occasionally showing me a residual memory that made no sense.

  He put another washer in my palm. “Have you ever wanted to listen?”

  “No.”

  A look of doubt stitched his eyebrows together. “I don’t believe you.”

  I lined my voice with an ice pick point and aimed it right between his eyes. “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “But, Absidy, they’re attracted to you because you can help them. I’ve seen how big your heart is every time you put food in front of us, how you sleep in here with us, how you look out for us. If the ghosts weren’t so brutal with you, maybe you could—”

  “No.”

  “But you could find out why—”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  He smacked the gurney hard enough to make me jump. “I could help you, damn it!”

  His burst of anger pushed my next refusal back down my throat. But how could he want me to do that, to put myself in their path just so they’d attack me? That was never going to happen.

  “If things got out of hand, I could give you iron just like I did outside Randolph’s room. You could find out why this ship’s ghosts are here and make them leave.”

  I pointed bullets at him with my glare. “It’s so easy for you to say that, isn’t it? You could give me iron if things get out of hand? It always gets out of hand, Mase. They fling me around like a doll. They cut me open, break my bones, and almost kill me. They first cracked my head open when I was two. Two. I don’t want to listen to them or help such wicked things cross to the other side, and why should I want to if they don’t care what they do to me?”

  “Absidy…”

  “Get out,” I said, my voice lethal.

  He turned his head like I’d slapped him, sharp and hard, and maybe I should have. How could he say that? How could he give me iron only to suggest we take it away for the benefit of the ghosts? They didn’t deserve anything.

  His jaw worked up and down while he stared at the double doors. “But from what you said, it sounded like a ghost got Daryl away from you in the teralinguas’ room. Maybe they were helping—”

  “I can’t look at you right now,” I said, shoving myself away from the gurney. “Please, just go.”

  He stood slowly, like he wondered if he should try to argue any more. One glance at my narrowed eyes seemed to change his mind, and he handed me the final screw then stepped to the door.

  His hand gripping the doorframe, he said, “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.” Then he was gone.

  Chapter 13

  I baked and cooked the entire rest of the day, trying to work off all my frustrations about Mase, both sexual and not, and every other fucked up thing that powered my life. He had no right to suggest I give up iron just to help the ghosts. Maybe I should’ve kept all my scars like he had so I could wave them under his nose. He didn’t get it, and I could sit and describe it to him all day, but he still wouldn’t. No one could unless they’d seen what the ghosts used to do to me firsthand. Someone like Pop and Ellison.

  Their faces flitted through my head in such extreme detail, it felt like they were here with me, in the flesh, offering me comfort as they had every time before now. I would gi
ve anything to have them both at my side to tell Mase how reckless and stupid his idea was. That it would end badly without iron.

  But one stuffed turkey and a pie crust full of reflection later, I started to feel like a bitch. No, I hadn’t changed my mind about Mase’s idea—it was still insane—but I shouldn’t have told him to leave after he’d given me iron. He was just trying to help us all have one less thing to worry about by offering a suggestion. Anyone would do the same in that situation. And what he’d said on the way out…that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me…well, it couldn’t get much sweeter than that.

  So I decided to make him a few sugar cookies out of the leftover pie crust, sort of like a peace offering. I planned to leave one on his stool so no one could see it but him, and hopefully he’d have enough sense not to wave it around and say, “Hey, what’s this cookie doing on my chair?” Because then it would look like the fourteen-year-old boy chef who wasn’t a boy or a chef had a hot pipe for the pilot. I even dusted the cookie with some cinnamon. But I stopped myself before I wrote his initials inside a heart in red, gelled icing. Because I’m enigmatic like that.

  My feelings for him were far from explainable. He was doing something to me, like tinkering with my brain with surgical precision even though his hands had been down my pants and not in my head. Just the thought of his flesh sliding against mine gunned my heartbeat and colored a flush over my skin. Was this what it was like for Moon and Franco? If so, how did they ever get anything done?

  Nesbit entered the dining room before Mase, and I tried not to let my shoulders sag with disappointment while he sat in his assigned seat. I’d have to distract him with food before Mase came, so I gave him a huge turkey leg to gnaw on and half the bowl of stuffing.

  “Um, what if the others want to eat, too?” Nesbit asked through a mouthful of turkey leg.

  I twitched my lips to the side, nodding, then unheaped the entire pile back into the bowl.

  “Hey, wait. What if I want to eat?” he said with a scowl.

  I dolloped more on his plate, but the spoon smacked the glass with much more force than I’d intended.