Roark (Women Of Earth Book 1)

by Jacqueline Rhoades

  “Where is David?” Bitsy asked. Her face screwed up with worry. “He’s okay, isn’t he?”

  “I’m sure he is and he’ll be home shortly to prove it,” Wynne assured her, but her worried glance at the door said something different and Mira silently agreed.

  David should have been home hours ago. Since the night he’d left with Bret, David had kept his own hours, but he always came home. While they didn’t expect him home by dark, as they did the younger children, they did ask that he come home before Mira and Wynne settled in for the night, or at least give them a time when they could expect him. Most nights he complied, but not without complaint. It was a matter of courtesy and not control, but David didn’t see it that way.

  Time passed and as their worry for him grew, so did Mira’s anger. She couldn’t let herself believe that he’d been injured in the blasts, so she focused on his insensitivity to his sisters’ concerns.

  “He’d better be bruised and bleeding when he gets here, because if he isn’t, he will be.” But like Wynne, her smile was relieved when they finally heard his footsteps on the stairs. They were staggered and punctuated with loud thumps against the walls.

  “If he’s been drinking, I’ll kill him.”

  When she saw him, Mira immediately regretted her words.

  David was wild eyed and breathless when he staggered through the door. He slammed it behind him and shoved the lock bolts into place. He was covered in dust and dirt so thick his tears left muddy streaks as they ran down his cheeks. He stank of something acrid that smell vaguely like ammonia. His face and arms were covered with cuts and bruises and blood seeped through the fingers he had pressed to his side. He sank to his knees as more blood mixed with the filth that covered his jeans.

  Both sisters were immediately on their feet. Wynne ran to David and eased him down to lie on the floor. Mira ran for a towel, soaked it in the water bucket by the sink, and ran back to her brother. Ignoring the other children who gathered around them, she yanked his sodden shirt up to his chest and began to clear the blood from the wound.

  A wedge of glass was clearly visible protruding from her brother’s side. Using the wet cloth to steady her grip, she yanked it free. David cried out with the pain and his face paled even more.

  “Everything will be okay, David. You’re home now and the worst is over. You’re safe,” Mira assured him, but even as she said the words she knew it wasn’t true.

  “What happened, Davey?” her sister asked.

  He never had a chance to answer. More pounding feet sounded on the stairs. Panic took hold of him and he tried to tear himself away from Wynne’s embrace. His panicked eyes shifted toward the bedrooms and then, as if realizing there was no escape to be found there, he turned back to his sisters.

  A fist pounded on the door.

  “Help me.” David’s whisper was desperate.

  There was no way to help him. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide where he wouldn’t be found in the tiny apartment.

  “Oh, Davey, what have you done?”

  The pounding continued and someone shouted, “Open the door.”

  The guttural accent of the demand told Mira that the speaker was Godan. Whatever David had been involved in had doomed them all. Finding him, they would find the unregistered children, too.

  Those children stood, frozen in place and looking to her to tell them what to do. There was nothing she could tell them. There was no escaping this. Wynne started to cry.

  “What do you want? We are women alone here.” Mira called out in Godan, hoping to delay the soldiers’ entry. She needed time to think.

  There was a pause in the pounding and a murmur of heated conversation, though she couldn’t make out the words.

  “You are harboring a fugitive. Open the door,” came the delayed reply.

  She could only think of one thing to say that might save them. “My name is Mira Donazetto and I am your First Commander’s woman.”

  “Then we have completed both our missions. Open the door.”

  If David hadn’t brought the Godan here, Roark’s search for her would have. Mira reached for her brother’s hand and her touch seemed to give him courage. David finally spoke up.

  “You can have me, but leave my sisters alone,” he called out.

  “We have our orders.”

  A shoulder crashed against the door, splintering the wood of the jamb. Six helmeted Godan warriors swarmed into the apartment. Wynne screamed. The children cried out in terror. David shouted as he was grabbed and yanked to his feet. Mira fought the soldiers, pounding useless fists against their armor.

  “Leave him alone. Can’t you see he’s hurt,” she shouted to no effect.

  She was grabbed about the waist and dragged from her brother.

  “Check the place for others or anything of interest.”

  Two of the warriors moved to the bedrooms while two others began to search the kitchen and living areas.

  “You slime pricked puss balls! You were told to find her, not give her the bloody shits. Damn piss swillers,” shouted a familiar voice from out in the hall. “Get your fucking hands off of her. She’s not a criminal.”

  “What goes on here?” shouted another.

  At the sound of Roark’s voice following Mohawk’s, Mira stopped fighting, but when she saw them enter the apartment, all hope was lost. Mohawk took one look at David and his face flared with menace. The look he turned to her made her heart sink. She’d thought he was a friend. Roark’s face looked menacing, too, but his look was directed only toward her.

  “We came as ordered and saw the insurgent enter the building, sir,” the helmeted Third Station warrior explained.

  Mira watched as the First Commander’s face became even more terrifying.

  “This is your little brother?” Roark asked her, quite clearly, though his lips hardly moved over his clenched teeth.

  Mira saw her brother as Roark must see him; almost six feet tall with what looked like a man’s day old growth of beard bristling through the grime on his face. David had been cultivating that growth for a month. He was thin, but his long arms looked ropy with muscle.

  She closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes.”

  “And these are the children you claimed were your sister’s?”

  She nodded again. “Yes.”

  “They’re ours. Please...” Wynne began to protest, but Roark’s look cut her off.

  He turned those glaring eyes back to Mira. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that none of them resembled your sister? Or that she would have been what, nine of your Earth years when she bore the eldest?”

  She thought about reminding him that Godan children never looked like their mothers, either, but thought better of it. It wasn’t the same and both of them knew it. To imply anything different might make him angrier.

  “Roark, please, you don’t understand,” Mira pleaded instead.

  “They’re unregistered, aren’t they?” Ahnyis asked from the door. She sounded a little breathless from the climb.

  Mason was right behind her. “Well, shit. Here’s a party I didn’t want an invitation to.”

  “As I recall, you weren’t invited,” Roark snapped. “Did you know about this?” he asked Ahnyis.

  “It’s what we were coming to tell you,” she replied. She looked past him to David and immediately went to the injured boy. “He needs medical attention. Let him go. Lay him down,” she ordered but it was only at Roark’s nod that the soldiers obeyed.

  At Ahnyis’s words, Mira’s heart sank another notch. She’d thought of both Ahnyis and Mason as friends, too, and maybe Mason had tried to be one. Hadn’t he warned her to trust no one not even him? She was grateful, however, that David would get the medical attention she needed.

  “First?” one of the searchers interrupted. He held out a unit a little larger than a mobile phone and a section of a street map torn from an old phone book.

  Wynne uttered a small cry of dismay and Mira blanched. The Godan translat
or she kept hidden on the top shelf of the hallway closet would be another black mark against them.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In his pocket,” the soldier answered.

  Mira stepped forward. “It isn’t his. It’s mine.”

  David tried to rise but Mason’s hands held him down. “Shut up, Mira. It’s mine. I found it.” He held his hand out to Roark. “You have to believe me. She doesn’t know anything about it. They aren’t a part of this. I made sure of it.”

  Roark looked from brother to sister and seemed to come to a decision. He nodded sharply to David.

  “David Donazetto, as First Commander of Sector Three, North American Continent, I’m taking you into custody for alleged crimes against a protected people and suspected conspiracy against the Galactic Confederation.” He pointed to three of his men. “Take him back to the base, to the clinic, and remain with him until I or my Prime relieves you. Arm your weapons and be prepared for a rescue attempt. No one, and I mean no one but myself or my Prime interrogates him. Only this man,” Roark gave a nod to Mason, “or the Healer Vochem may touch him. Am I understood?” He waited for their responses before continuing. “If the prisoner escapes or dies, you will be held responsible. There will be no excuse for failure.”

  At the mention of his possible death, David paled even more.

  “Roark, please, don’t do this. He’s just a boy,” Mira pleaded.

  “A boy who reeks of prokash crystals,” he snarled, “Two warning towers were destroyed tonight with the use of those crystals. Two of my men were injured. Three humans died. Three more will likely die if Vochem can’t knit them back together.”

  “I think it’s ammonium nitrate, Mira,” Mason clarified, “A fertilizer bomb.”

  “No,” Wynne cried her disbelief. Her face paled and she swayed dangerously.

  David’s face became a mask of fear. “No! That’s not what...”

  “Take him away. Remember, no one speaks to him but me.”

  “Roark, please,” Mira begged, as her brother was led from the room, but she wasn’t sure what she was begging for. Mercy? David was obviously involved, but she couldn’t believe he’d be a party to murder.

  “I am the First Commander,” Roark responded to her plea and it was then Mira realized that all was lost. He was no longer Roark to her.

  He pointed to the remaining soldiers. “You two, I want everything in this place gone over again for evidence and brought to the base. Everything goes to the clinic. It’s to remain under guard until I or my Prime say otherwise.” His finger swung to the third. “You’re with Sergeant Mohawk.” He nodded at Mason who had helped the faint Wynne to a chair and was forcing her head down to her knees and encouraging her to take deep breaths. “You handle her. Mohawk, stay with Ahnyis and see that this unregistered problem is taken care of.”

  Lastly, his eyes locked on Mira’s. “You come with me.”

  Mira clung to the children surrounding her. “Let me stay with them.”

  The silver dragon that circled the edge of Roark’s ear began to glow. The emerald in its mouth became a piercing point of green light. Mira had seen a softer version of the glow the day before when he was angry at the failure of his troops, but assumed it was a trick the light. This was no trick. Bitsy noticed it, too.

  “Your dragon’s burning,” she pointed out. “Does it hurt?”

  Roark’s anger softened for a moment as he looked down at the child and the glow of the dragon subsided. “It does,” he told her, “It’s there to remind me to behave.”

  “We have Wynne and Mira to do that,” Bitsy acknowledged as if a magic dragon earing was the most natural thing in the world. “I thought maybe it meant you were angry.”

  “That too,” Roark admitted.

  Bitsy turned her attention to Mira. “Maybe if you say you’re sorry, he won’t be angry anymore and his dragon will go to sleep.”

  Roark’s eyes bored into Mira’s. “Wisdom from innocent tongues.”

  “I have nothing to be sorry for. I want to stay here where I belong.”

  He pulled her away from the children and once out of earshot, leaned in close to her face and whispered, “Time will tell about what you have to be sorry for and where you belong. Until then, you will do what you’re told. You will come with me. I command it, so it shall be, and this time, I will accept no argument and no disobedience. Defy me, Mira Donazetto, and I will have you trussed and delivered forcibly. That is not something you wish these children to see.”

  “What will you do with them?”

  “The children aren’t my concern. You are. That should be your first concern, too, since you have as much explaining to do as your brother.”

  “Me? I haven’t...” Mira’s mouth snapped shut because she had. She’d lied from the very beginning.

  Her mind began to assemble the pieces and realized how it must look to Roark. She’d learned the language from a translator stolen from a Godan warrior, a man who died in her care. What if they accused her of his murder? She’d wormed her way into a job where she was involved in the hiring of the locals who worked on the towers, locals who would have knowledge and access when the time came to set off the bomb. David was involved with whoever took those towers down. Did Roark think she was involved, too? She’d lied about the children and given him a false impression of Wynne. She’d portrayed her brother as a pouty child. The threat to her unregistered children would be enough for her to hate the Godan.

  Did Roark think she hated him, too? Did he think she used his attraction to her as part of some nefarious plan? That hurt more than anything.

  “Promise me that nothing will happen to Wynne or the children.”

  “You are not in a position to bargain, Mira.”

  “Please,” she begged, “Please don’t hurt them. I promise to answer anything you ask. I’ll do anything you want, accept any punishment you mete out, just don’t hurt my family.”

  Roark looked back at Wynne crying softly with Ahnyis’s arm around her and at the children staring back at him. When his eyes returned to her, they glinted with victory.

  “Done,” he said and said nothing more for the entire ride back to the base.

  Chapter 17

  Mira expected to be taken to an interrogation room or perhaps the cells below ground where Mason had been kept. She did not expect Roark to take her to his quarters. The door was barely closed before he started stripping off his shirt.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” She had to have misheard. He couldn’t be thinking...

  “Take off your clothes.”

  He was! This was the last place she expected this night to go and she wasn’t going.

  “No.”

  Who or what did he think she was? She’d been fully prepared to answer all his questions and to do what she could to save her sister and the kids. She didn’t know what she could do for David, except plead for mercy, but whatever it was, it didn’t include being used as a sex toy for a man who refused to let her call him by his name.

  He raised those winged brows at her refusal and the ridges in his forehead became more pronounced. “Yes. I command it, so it shall be.”

  Mira’s temper rose to the challenge. “Listen up, First Commander. I said I’d answer your questions. I didn’t say anything about being your beyah popo.” She used the Godan word to make sure he understood.

  “Did Mohawk teach you that or did you learn it from the translator you stole?”

  “I didn’t steal it.”

  Roark held up his hand. “Tell me after you’re naked.”

  “Roark,” she drew the name out in complaint and then added a sarcastic, “Or should I call you First Commander.”

  “Your Majesty will do. That’s what you call your kings, isn’t it? And you will take off your clothes. You gave your word, or did you lie about that too?”

  Mira put her hands to her hips and jutted her chin. “I did not promise to run around naked for yo
ur entertainment.”

  “Ah, but you did.” He quoted in a simpering voice, “I promise to answer anything you ask. I’ll do anything you want, accept any punishment you mete out, just don’t hurt my family.”

  “Bastard. I didn’t mean sex.”

  “Then you should have been more specific or have I misunderstood the term ‘anything’?” He rolled his hand in a forward motion indicating she should hurry it up. “I wish to experience another of your wet cleansings, a shower I think you called it.”

  He knew damn well what she called it. He’d enjoyed every minute of it.

  Roark’s eyebrows raised again. They hovered over the lascivious look in his emerald green eyes. “Or would you rather move on to punishment?”

  Knowing she was defeated, but huffing to make sure he knew she wasn’t conceding gracefully, Mira tore her sweatshirt up over her head. She threw it aside and tossed her bra after it. She shimmied out of her old and worn jeans, taking her white cotton undies with the pin at the waist down with them. As humiliated as she was, she still had some pride.

  “I hate you,” she said, but the effect of her venom was lost when she had to hop on one foot to extract the other from the bunched leg of the jeans.

  When she regained her balance, she looked up to find him standing in front of her, eyeing her body with that damned sexy glint in his eyes and a half smile on his lips.

  “I hate you,” she said again in case he missed it the first time, and just a little to remind herself that she did.

  Roark moved in closer.

  Mira tried to step away, but she was trapped in place by his hand at her back. The feel of that hand seared through the naked skin it touched. Her breasts became weighty with his nearness. Her nipples tightened with the heat of him.

  Roark saw the reaction and flicked a taut nipple with his finger. She hated him even more for being the cause of this betrayal of her body. To avoid plastering her nose against his chest she was forced to look up.

  “Say it again,” he ordered.

  She couldn’t look into his eyes, couldn’t let him see what was in her own. She turned her head to the side and, choosing cheek over nose, she pressed her face against him. Beneath the warmth of his solid chest, she could feel his heart beating.