Prison Moon_Ice Heart

by Alexandra Marell

  Kelskar’s large palm slid under her tunic, cupping her unbound breast, circling agonisingly slowly. Like they had infinite time to touch and taste and feel.

  “I want to go all the way. To feel you come inside me.” Thank heavens for the night. The sobering stench of rotting leaves on the damp air. Did she actually just say that? Kelskar dipped his head, nuzzling her throat, dropping feather light kisses onto her chin, her nose, and cheeks.

  “I wish we could.” Regret warred with Kelskar’s steely resolve to do the right thing. Right for both of them, she knew it. But still, she lifted her hips, seeking out his hard cock. Tempting, inviting. All kinds of wrong and no place for babies.

  Baby Dimo felt so vulnerable in her arms. That sweet little bundle had set off a dangerous yearning in her heart.

  “We’ll both go insane doing this.” She arched her neck, seeking out Kelskar’s mouth, his insistent tongue. If he lost her to a challenger, they’d never do this together again.

  “I know. I want to take you slowly, devour you and savour your womanly scent. So many things to teach you. So many ways I can pleasure you.”

  “Keep talking.” He was naked and she still dressed. With frantic fingers, she tore at her belt, lifting her butt to ease down her pants. When he felt her kicking off her boots, he stopped her.

  “I would love to have you naked beneath me, but this place is too dangerous. I won’t have you vulnerable like that, not here in the open.”

  “You’re naked.” The metal coat fastenings beneath them bit into her exposed flesh. Cold damp air raised the hairs on her legs and washed over her stomach. Kelskar shoved the tunic and undershirt higher, exposing her breasts to his lips and tongue, the scratch of his beard. Braced on one arm, he found her clit with his thumb, hooked two large fingers inside her wet heat and found that other, legendary spot she never quite believed in until him.

  “I often fought naked, in the arena. It is of no consequence to me. You would spend more time covering your blushes than spearing your attacker.”

  “You’re right, oh...” The throbbing low in her belly rippled through her in ever increasing waves. Pressing her lips together, Janie stifled the moans clogging her throat.

  You don’t know how sound carries in these forests. Dailam’s words came to her, a hit of cold water on the heat of passion. Kelskar noticed her hesitation, of course he noticed. Pushing her knees apart, straining the material of her pants, he dipped his head to taste her, replacing fingers and thumb with his lips and tongue.

  “One day,” he whispered, his lips grazing her unbearably sensitised skin. “One day, sweet thing, I’ll take you in the open and make you scream out your pleasure. You taste so fucking sweet.”

  He took her up again, nothing gentle this time. A crashing wave that caught her and swept her away to a place of hot breath on skin. Kelskar’s cock pushing inside her.

  Too tied up in the constricting pants to wrap her legs around him when his slow thrusts became a desperate pounding of his flesh on hers. No sound from him, he poured it all into keeping her on the crest of that wave with him.

  “I must...” His voice cracked. “I want to... You know I want to.”

  “I know, I know.” She let him go, everything screaming to keep him inside her and take the risk. He came silently, sliding over skin in desperate heaving thrusts. Teeth bared as if undergoing torture, not scaling the heights of ecstasy.

  Janie lay back in wonder, dazed, fingers grazing his rough cheek. Her heart melting in a puddle of overwhelming love.

  The real thing, she had no doubts.

  Well, maybe one. Did he love her?

  “Thank you.” Kelskar lifted his head, a sleepy satisfied smile replacing the grimace. That same supremely pleased look of well-loved men the world over.

  Or should that be, galaxy wide? Her thinking had undergone a seismic shift since the abduction.

  “Thank you,” she said, keeping him in place. “I wish we could stay like this forever.”

  “I wish I had never endorsed the chain of events that brought you to this.”

  Kelskar pushed off her to kneel between her bent knees. “Stay there, I’ll tend to your comfort.”

  “I think the scarf is in your coat pocket.” She found the deep pocket, lifted the flap and fished inside, feeling for the silky neck scarf. “I’ll do it. You get dressed and rest. I forgot you’re barely healed. You make me forget things like that.”

  She noted the weary slump of his shoulders. Poor man must be beat, yet he still found energy for this.

  Passion had a lot to answer for.

  “Rest,” she said and sat up to wipe him from her thigh. “You’re breathing too fast and even a body like yours needs time to properly heal. I’ll fetch water and keep first watch.”

  Kelskar opened his mouth to protest and closed it without uttering a word. Progress at least.

  “You were magnificent. You are magnificent. But even Superman needs to rest.”

  “Dailam might have killed you.” Kelskar surveyed the camp, searching out his discarded clothes. “When I sleep, you are vulnerable.”

  She handed him the undershirt and tunic lying beside her. “I know, but what choice do we have? When you’re sick, I’m vulnerable. If you don’t sleep, I’ll be vulnerable. Anyhow,” she added. “He didn’t kill me, did he?”

  Kelskar disappeared inside the rough woven tunic shirt. He pulled it down and lifted a leg to don his underwear. “He’s an assassin. A genetic mutation with chameleon skin that changes with background colour. Did you notice? Do you know how dangerous those beings are? How many ways they know to kill a man or a woman? I had them in my employ at the royal court.”

  “Why involve you in the princess’s murder? Why not just get an assassin to do it?”

  He toed a foot into a boot, bent to snap the buckles. Back to the business of protecting and surviving. Janie wriggled into her pants, ignoring the hollow pit that had nothing to do with hunger opening in her stomach. Stolen moments of normality, of bliss and then always this ice cold reality.

  “A test of loyalty? A distraction? They must have believed I’d run straight home to my family and leave the princess to her fate. Instead, I spent precious time finding her, spiriting her away.” His chest rose and fell in resigned breath. “I might have saved them had I put them first.”

  Janie’s legs refused to stand. Not yet. Not after that. “The messenger said they were already dead.”

  “He did. But were they? I’ll never know. That’s the killer, I’ll never know.”

  Janie rested her chin on her bent knees, stared into the night forest and gave him the solidarity of silence. Empty words wouldn’t change things. As if reading her thoughts, the forest fell silent, dried leaves clinging to branches stilled their whispering. Everything paused and in tune with two lost people and their circling thoughts.

  How long had they been here? Days that felt like weeks? Or did the Corporation manipulate time to trick their confused minds? They were out there, waiting to take her from Kelskar with their cameras and surprises. And he would fight to the death stopping them.

  Without his part in this they’d never have met. Another thought to drive her crazy when she couldn’t sleep at night.

  “I wish I could bring them back to you.” She broke the long silence knowing they could only go on surviving what life dealt on this prison moon. “Is it painful, remembering?”

  “Necessary pain,” he said, stroking her hair. “Necessary so I can move on, with you.”

  Janie stood and stepped into his arms. “I know you’re here for me. You did all you could for them and you’ll do the same for me.”

  “I won’t let them take you.”

  The steel band of his arms held her to him. Times like this she felt so safe, like nothing could touch her. And then she had to step away and strike out in step with him.

  “Dailam said it’s a given. You’ve watched them on TV. How will they do it?” An edge of panic rippled over her skin. What i
f they took her before he healed? “Don’t die stopping them. Fight for me. You’re good at that. Fight for me and win.”

  “They won’t take you.”

  The cold conviction in his voice scared her and at the same time gave her hope. If Dailam spoke the truth, the Kelskar and Janie show was already in the schedules. The audience primed and baying for blood. And no amount of running would stop it happening.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cameras, every way they turned.

  “Those bloody cameras have been following us like lost dogs for seven days. We’ll never be free of them.” Janie shot the hovering box the evil eye. The camera box dipped for a close-up, an irritatingly familiar ritual.

  Days of circling, backtracking, and hiding and every time they opened their eyes, they were there, coloured lights blinking out patterns that meant something to some off world controller intent on beaming their every move to an insatiable audience.

  “Fuck off. Leave us alone.”

  The camera box moved closer. Kelskar slid his palm to Janie’s, fingers curling.

  “Ignore them and tell me about dogs.” He kept up his determined stride, dragging her along. How in the name of the dark gods did Dailam disable those things? The boxes dodged all his assaults with slingshots, executed sharp upswings every time he lunged with the long sword, leaving them on a knife edge of waiting for a sudden swoop with a paralysing charge or a blast of numbing gas.

  Kelskar spared Janie no details of their coming ordeal. Scenes he’d watched many times on the Vidi Views at the Ludus Maxim.

  “Man’s best friend we call them. Hairy animals, we keep as pets.”

  “Companion beasts? We keep them too.” He noticed the present tense, the little slip that signified hope yet lived as a small spark inside of them. Talking with Janie, learning about her home world intrigued him and gave their minds a few precious moments of blessed relief from constant thoughts of bleak futures and looming death.

  “I bet yours was big as a horse with a mouthful of vampire teeth.”

  “His name was Banyon. Standing he reached almost to my shoulder. I don’t yet recall his fate.”

  “We had a family dog back in the day. A small yappy thing that loved biting postmen.”

  “Tell me about postmen.”

  He kept her close, listening to her soft chatter. A colony of tawny short-pelted creatures bounded past them, pausing only to bare their teeth in warning, lest they should get too close. Kelskar noted two species of snake, one thicker than his arm winding through sunken roots, the other a slim sharp-eyed creature banded in browns and greens, following their progress from a high branch. He steered Janie in a wide arc around the watchful creature. Danger came in all sizes. He trusted nothing on this alien moon.

  “Is that the sea?” Janie shaded her eyes against the shafts of sunlight dancing through the gaps in the trees. Beyond the tree line spread a glittering expanse of broken blues and pinks.

  “I smell salt water.” Kelskar breathed in the scent of saline and rotting algae on the air. The underlying tang of shelled creatures washed up on the shore. His stomach responded with a growl. The lake sparkling before them in the late, leaf-fall sunlight looked a likely place to hunt and find food.

  Crouching in the shelter of the forest edge, he scanned the curved sandy bank, counting five beings wielding hunting poles with lines angled hopefully into the water. Another three stood waist deep, studying the water, wooden spears held aloft.

  “Is it a lake or a sea? It’s huge.”

  “It looks like a salt lake. See the far banks over there? The tree line reaching down to the water’s edge?”

  “Do those...people look friendly?” Janie crouched beside him, flush with his body, giving him her weight. Exhausted from their futile quest to outrun danger.

  “Impossible to tell. We can’t take the risk.”

  No signs of hostility between the hunters, who looked like two different species working as one. Drawn together in their mutual quest for food, or a cohesive gang who would defend their patch with deadly force?

  “Okay. What now?”

  “We’ve enough food to see us through the day. The temperature is dropping. Our priority is to find shelter.”

  “Where? We haven’t encountered any ruins in days. And we’re seeing more and more people. It’s like that bloody camera is herding us. Taking us places we don’t want to go.”

  “Likely it is.” They’d fallen into the habit of whispering for fear of being overheard. The felons might not hear them, but the cameras would pick up every sound no matter how low. When the boxes closed in, he and Janie turned their backs and resorted to gesture. Kelskar almost welcomed the looming confrontation. The waiting, the wondering when it would happen heaped frustration and tension on them both.

  This scuttling around, hiding in the shadows did not sit well with a man used to looking danger squarely in the eye. He gave himself up for Janie, vowed to be her shield and keep her safe. As long as he breathed, he would give his all to her.

  “We go back into the forest.”

  “Do we have to?” Janie grimaced, increasing her weight against his side. “I never want to see another tree again.”

  He found a smile for her. They were getting rarer and fewer. “Yes, sweet girl, we do.”

  “Bully,” she said, aiming a weak thump at his biceps. She sat back on the fallen leaves to tighten the buckle her boot. With a huff, Janie flipped her long plait over her shoulder and attacked the fastening. Still in possession of the dark fall of hair, he refused without question her pleas to take a knife to it. Had forbidden her to do the same. That thought brought another smile to his lips, earning him a curious glance from Janie.

  “What’s so funny?” She feared, she ached, and dropped with exhaustion, yet her wry sense of humour remained intact.

  “The thought that I should ever command any real authority over you. Don’t ask me to cut your hair. I know what troubles your mind. One day we will lie naked together, I promise. And when we do, I want you above me, the curtain of your hair caressing my bare skin.”

  “That’s not fair.” Janie stood, brushing leaves from her pants, stained with the sticky red forest mud. He thanked the gods for the chill that kept off the rain, gifting them a rare chance to dry out.

  “I don’t fight fair. In the death matches, there were no rules in the arena. In my employ at the royal court, all sought to win by fair means or foul.”

  “It sounds like the politicians back on Earth.” As always, when she mentioned her home planet, Janie paused and focussed to the far distance. As if by doing so she might catch one last glimpse of the place.

  He squeezed her hand and rose, grateful to be able to move without the clamour in his head. Whatever Laeesha did to him, she did it well. He ached now from the knitting of bone, sinew, and skin. Healing, the infections attacked and conquered. Had it not been for Dailam, they would have followed Laeesha in repayment of the debt he owed her. She should not be out there alone with a child.

  If Kelskar’s intuition still served him, Dailam’s motives acted on the side of good. He hoped so.

  “Janie, stay quiet.” He placed a finger on his lips, eyes fixed on the three beings walking in line up the sloped bank, their footfall making no noise on the fine sand. One carried a bundle of wood, another a catch of pescids threaded onto a stick. Humanoid as were most of the beings they witnessed. A dark green caste to their skin, two short legs and overlarge heads covered with a fuzz of hair ranging in colour from white to yellow.

  The three beings hunkered down at a ring of stones, growling low, words he could not hear. The taller laughed. A staccato barking sound. Another of the group tilted his head at the trees behind, a hand shading his eyes. The other two turned their attention to the forest, staring for long moments into the tightly woven branches.

  Frozen still, Janie raised her eyebrows in question, not daring to speak. A species Kelskar did not easily recognise, he had no idea how acute their senses or hea
ring might be. If he and Janie crept away, would they pick that up?

  On the second strike of stone on stone, a spark leaped to the stacked wood and caught. The acrid smell of smoke drifted from the campfire. The men arranged the fish on a spit and sat back to wait for it to cook. Kelskar squeezed Janie’s thigh, warning her to remain silent and still. The smell of roasting pescine flesh mingled with the smoke, filling Kelskar’s mouth with water. His stomach growled with such vigorous longing, the entire hunting group might have heard it.

  Janie flicked him a sympathetic glance knowing that gladiators, warriors like him, needed meat and plenty of it. His bulk and size demanded more than foraged berries, the few fruits left on tree and bush and the smaller edible creatures he managed to trap. The hoofed quadruped species with its plentiful bounty proved mighty elusive since that catch.

  The camera box shot past them so suddenly they had no time to duck. Janie gave a soft cry. The box skimmed Kelskar’s ear, filling his head with a sharp buzzing as it whizzed on towards the laughing group on the beach.

  “What’s it doing?” Janie pointed out the camera, swinging into the beings’ field of vision. Too intent on their food, the group remained heads down. Then one of them looked up.

  Kelskar took hold of Janie’s hand, pulling her close, drawing his short sword with the other. The beings scrabbled to their feet, babbling with uncontrolled fear, all of them staring wild-eyed at the camera. No, not the camera, their tipped back heads pointed at the sky. No need of a translation chip to know something had scared them. The hunters in the water shoved past each other splashing to the shore, slipping, leaping up to race along the beach. Those on the beach threw down their lines, flinging themselves at the trees.

  “When I give word, get ready to run.” Kelskar inched his spare hand towards the coat-bag. Janie nodded fervently, her gaze glued to the panicking men. Trembling slightly, but holding her nerve.

  “It’s going dark. What is it? A solar eclipse? Is that why they’re afraid?”

  “It could be. I don’t know this moon well enough.” Kelskar scanned the sky. Not an eclipse, a rolling shadow darkening the pink, blue hue. Like the wings of a creature so large it blotted out the sun itself.