“Do you need any more help?” She squeezed her eyes shut. Idiot. Now what are you going to do if he says yes? Refuse?
“No, I’m suddenly feeling much cleaner.” The tenor of his words shivered down her spine and all she could think of was stripping out of her own clothes and joining him under the warm spray. Except she couldn’t be that selfish. No matter how much she might want him—to run her hands over every inch of his body if only to confirm that he was real and had actually come back to her—he needed her as a doctor more than he needed a friend or anything else right now.
Get your butt out of here, woman!
With a short fumble over the latch on the rim of the screen, she managed to get out of the stall and not look at him and his naked body of dripping enticement again.
“When you want to turn the water off, just press the blue button on the remote. And yell if you need anything,” she called out over the rush of water.
He murmured an agreement. With a shake of her head, Sacha walked over to sit on the bed. She smoothed her water-splotched, steam-rumpled shirt and then pulled a bag of candy-coated chocolate out of her pocket. Oh boy, did she need some sugar.
Through the opaque screen, she could just make out the silhouette of Kai as he stood under the shower nozzle. A flush of searing heat burned through her as she remembered the feel of his hard body up against her, so she got up and made herself sit on the other side of the bed, with her back to the stall. Determinedly keeping her mind off what was going on behind her, she ate the chocolates, four or five at a time, until she’d finished the bag. The water shut off as she tossed the wrapper in the trash.
“There are towels and clean pajamas on that trolley.” She busied herself bashing the pillows on the bed into shape with more force than necessary and then pulled at the sheets sharp enough to tear them.
“Thanks, I found them.”
A few moments later, the screen hummed its way back into the wall recess, revealing Kai in a new set of PJ bottoms, scrubbing a towel over his damp hair. He dropped the cloth and then limped forward, holding a hand out to ward her off when she started over to help him. He shot her a stubborn look and made his own way over to the bed. Must be feeling better if he was getting his old I’ll-drop-before-I-let-anyone-help-me attitude back again.
She crossed her arms and watched as he stiffly climbed onto the bed and settled himself against the pillows. He sent her a smug grin and picked up the orange jelly he hadn’t touched before. For the first time since she’d walked into this room and seen him, he really did seem more like his old self and something tight in her chest released and unwound.
“Well then, if you don’t need me, I guess I’ll go home and get some sleep. You know I’m not even on-shift tonight, I just came in to make sure you were doing okay.”
“How considerate of you, Doctor Dalton.” He woofed down the jelly and gave her a look that said he saw right through her guilt trip.
She couldn’t help but smile, since she felt lighthearted for the first time in too long, like she could actually look forward to tomorrow. Kai abandoned the empty jelly cup and patted the edge of the bed before he picked up the mixed berry one.
With a silent sigh, she walked over to join him.
He shot her a brief, guarded look. “Tell me what else I’ve missed. I heard Commander Emmanuel took over my post?”
“Are you sure you’re ready to hear it all? Maybe you should get some sleep.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I won’t be able to sleep if I’m lying here wondering what happened while I was out of commission. Just give me the footnotes version.”
As he finished off the rest of the multi-jelly on the tray, she glossed through a year and a half worth of politics, advances in the war against the CS Soldiers, and the more personal gossip that’d happened onboard the Knox. He listened with a quiet intensity, not asking any questions or making any comments.
“And that’s about it, really,” she said as way of finishing.
Kai sank back against the pillows, gazing off toward the doorway still shuttered with the privacy screen. She got the feeling he wasn’t seeing anything, but instead trying to absorb everything she’d told him.
“The only question now is, where do I belong?”
Her heart plummeted at the desolate edge to his voice, something she’d never heard from him in the whole sixteen years they’d been friends.
“What do you mean? You belong here, on the Knox. This is home.”
He looked back at her, deep shadows in his gaze. The small smile he sent her looked bleaker than anything else.
“Emmanuel has my command. The Valiant Knox doesn’t need more than one commander.”
She bristled, crossing her arms as indignation swept through her. “Well then Commander Emmanuel can go back to whatever duty they pulled him from. You’re back, this ship is yours. You worked your ass off every day for nine years to get that position.”
He ran a hand over his short hair and dropped his gaze. “It’s not that simple.”
Would he be posted somewhere else? Would she lose him again when she’d only just gotten him back? Her stomach clenched over a churning sick feeling and without thinking, she reached out to take his hand.
“Don’t worry about it now, Kai. Just get better first and then whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.”
He stared at her, his fingers tightening against hers. With a slow movement, he straightened up from the pillows and caught her chin. Her breath left her in a rush as he leaned toward her. Hadn’t she just finished telling herself that kissing him could make things worse, not better?
“Kai—”
He closed his mouth over hers, cutting off the words. This time, there was no desperate plunge into lust. As if the other kiss had been a dream, the gentle, questioning movement of his mouth against hers seemed more real than anything she’d felt in the past eighteen months. For a second, the pressure and sensation of his lips against hers seemed totally foreign. But then a surge of warmth, of utter rapture erupted from her soul and spread through her body, filling her empty heart. She grabbed on to his shoulders and pulled herself closer, hard emotion coming on the heels of the initial exhilarated burst. In that moment, there were no words to describe how she felt about having him back. She could only repeat a litany of thank you, God, over and over in her mind.
Kai broke the kiss on an uneven breath. “God, Sacha, I missed you. I can’t tell you how many days I sat in that cell and thought of nothing but you. And today…today you’ve brought me alive again.”
Emotion clamped around her chest and surged upward to block her throat, making her eyes sting.
But now was the time to push her own needs and battered heart aside, to focus on the job of getting him better. Today was easy. The first day back, everyone was happy and riding the triumph of Commander Yang returning. Yet his simple question of where do I belong? foreshadowed just some of the difficulties he’d face in readjusting to life post-POW. She’d treated more than a few returned soldiers, and every one of them said things got harder as the weeks and months went by, not easier. Bringing any feelings into that equation would only make things messier.
His hand came up to touch the side of her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you, or said those things. You’re still mourning Elliot.”
She lifted her head to meet his eyes, their faces only inches apart, determined to change the subject to something less emotional for her. More than anything, she needed to concentrate on Kai and his recovery, let him work through his losses, not hers. “What happened to Amos?”
Kai’s gaze sliced away from her. “The morning I escaped, I woke up and he’d died sometime during the night. I have no idea what killed him. Take your pick, dehydration, starvation, the cold, the last beat-down he took from the guards. All of the above.” He took a ragged breath, moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes where his thick lashes tangled together.
“You remember a few years back his arm got crush
ed, and you guys replaced most of the bones with alloy?” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “I cut a length of it from his forearm and used it as a weapon on the guards. That’s how I escaped.”
Horror stabbed right through her middle, followed by a wave of nausea. God. And that probably wasn’t even the worst of what he’d been through while in the CSS prison. However, that incident alone could haunt a man the rest of his life.
She slid her hand across his chest and up his neck to cup his face. Tears trickled from his closed eyes and he clenched his jaw, before wiping them away with an angry swipe.
“Kai, you did what you had to in order to survive. Amos wouldn’t hold that against you, no one would hold that against you. The fact that you used some initiative to escape instead of lying down in that cell and dying makes you a hero.”
His eyes snapped open, fury lighting the depths, though it wasn’t directed at her. “I got away on sheer luck. And now I get to live with the fact that I left a man behind. Not only that, but I mutilated the body before I went. So yeah, that sounds like hero material to me.”
She clamped her lips together over the urge to argue. In this moment, he was hurting and wouldn’t believe her no matter what she said. He might never see himself in that light. Except she knew once his story got out—and it would, the military loved a good survival story—he would become a renowned hero and the reputation of fearless Commander Yang would become the stuff of legends.
She let her hands drop. “I really should leave you to sleep.”
He caught her wrists and stopped her from moving back. “I’ll sleep, but only if you stay.”
Her pulse thrummed through her and she arched an eyebrow at him. “So Commander Yang isn’t above blackmail and guilt trips?”
He released one of her wrists to wrap an arm around her middle, pulling her off balance and more firmly against him. “That’s right, and if Commander Yang says he wants his doctor in bed with him, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
The reminder of her position as a doctor was a cold slap in the face with reality. She pulled against his hold. “I’ll just go get Macaulay then. Though I don’t know how he’s going to react to the news he has to climb into bed with you.”
“You haven’t changed a bit.” Kai tightened his hold with a surprising amount of strength and kept her close. He caught her lips for a quick, hot and sweet kiss.
She wanted to reply that he hadn’t changed either, but they both knew that wasn’t true.
“All right, I’ll stay to make sure you get some sleep. Let me just get all these machines hooked back up.”
He let her go with obvious reluctance and she got busy hooking him back into everything to complete his healing process. By tomorrow, he’d be fully regenerated, though it would take some time to regain the muscle mass he’d lost. Still, all the nutrients and special healing white blood cells they were pumping him full of had filled him out a little and made his skin a healthy color. Made him look a bit more like his old self.
When she’d finished getting the BMC in place, she lowered the lights, kicked off her shoes, grabbed a spare blanket, and then hustled up next to him on the bed. He positioned his arm underneath her and half turned on his side, enveloping her in his warmth and strength.
She rested her head on the crook of his shoulder and snuggled deeper as her eyes dropped closed, the lids feeling heavy all of a sudden.
His breathing evened out almost immediately, and within a few minutes, the relaxed weight of his body told her he’d fallen asleep. Despite being comfortable enough to drift off herself, she carefully and quietly wiggled out of his hold, and then slid off the bed. She couldn’t imagine anything better than staying snuggled up to him all night, but the best thing she could do for him was let the machines do their thing, and leave him in peace.
At the door, she stole a look over her shoulder, heart skipping a beat at the sight of him lying there. Ignoring her reluctance to leave, she gave orders for the nursing staff to leave Commander Yang be for a few hours—he needed uninterrupted sleep, not well-meaning check-ups every twenty minutes. With the job done, she left the room, not letting herself look back again.
With every step she took, she told herself that when she returned to the med-level tomorrow and walked into Kai’s room, she would be Doctor Dalton, and that was all. No more kisses, and definitely no more showers together, or even the most innocent sponge bath. The nursing staff were supposed to handle that sort of thing. And if her chest tightened a little at the thought of someone else washing Kai? Well, she’d just add it to the long list of emotions to compartmentalize and ignore.
Chapter Five
Kai glared at the offending piece of rehab equipment, before directing the glower at the nurse holding it.
“Who ordered that?”
The nurse shuffled back a step. “Doctor Macaulay, sir. He said since you have refused surgery, you need this for at least the next week or you risk—”
“Tell Macaulay if he expects me to hobble around on a walking stick, he can damn well come and inform me himself. That way I can tell him in no uncertain terms where he can shove it.”
The nurse nodded stiffly and then hurried out of the room, leaving the door open after she’d disappeared.
Kai dragged a hand over his face. Okay, the nursing staff didn’t deserve a roasting over the fact they were trying to help him and acting under Macaulay’s orders, but after the few unsatisfying hours of sleep he’d gotten last night, the day had dragged by, especially since Sacha hadn’t put in an appearance.
One of the sub-doctors had mentioned something about back-to-back emergency trauma surgeries, but he’d been finding it hard to retain anything all day. Weird, but he’d think of something and then immediately forget it. Apparently it was something to do with his mind trying to process his sudden flight from captivity to returning to his old life, and should resolve itself shortly. In the meantime, it was damn frustrating.
Macaulay had told him not to leave his room, that he was supposed to be resting, but he’d spent the better part of the last eighteen months staring at the same four walls. The prospect of doing that again didn’t appeal. Even if it was in a med-level room he could technically leave at any time he wanted.
The only problem? He had no shoes. And no shirt. Only the PJ bottoms he’d put on after his shower last night. A short search of the room didn’t turn up anything else; the trolley Sacha had used to wash and shave him had been taken away at some point. Probably by Macaulay, the interfering douchebag.
Well, half the medical staff had already seen the scars of his captivity, physical and mental, considering his little meltdown over the drugs. It was stupid, logic told him that loud and clear. Anything the medico staff gave him would be safe, but even just the idea of taking medication made a cold sweat break out on his lower back. He shook his head at himself and made for the door. He needed to walk to distract himself and clear his mind. The more time he spent alone, the more he thought about things—things he couldn’t change, things that wouldn’t be good for him to dwell on.
Not to mention he’d just been through a marathon of sub-space calls with his parents and sister. Some of his extended family wanted to speak with him as well, but he just didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with any more of that today.
Out in the passageway, he stepped into the path of a sub-doctor, who paused and cast what could have been an amused look over him.
“Somewhere you need to be, Commander?”
He cast around in his mind for the guy’s name. “Moore, isn’t it?”
The sub-doctor nodded with an irreverent grin. “Archibald, according to my personnel file. But I go by Archie, or Ace.”
“Ace, of course. You’re friends with the captain of the fighter force, right, Leigh Alphin? I think we’ve met before.”
“Yes, sir, but it was a long time ago, and I seem to remember copious amounts of beer may have been involved.”
Well, at least he coul
d blame that memory lapse on being drunk, and not because the CSS Enlightening Camp had scrambled his brain.
“Could you tell me where I might find Doctor Dalton?”
Ace motioned over his shoulder. “Just coming out of surgery. End of the hall and turn right.”
“Thanks.” He held out his hand, and Ace shifted the datapad he was holding to his left to return the brief shake. “And if Doctor Macaulay asks—”
“I never saw you.” Ace shot him one last grin before brushing by him and continuing down the hallway, disappearing into the room next to his.
Kai resumed his walk with more purpose, now that he had a destination in mind.
When he reached the end of the corridor and turned right, like Ace had instructed, he came face to face with a door marked medical personnel only. He reached up and pressed a palm to the door, intending to walk through, except those stenciled letters brought him up short. As the commander of the Knox, no part of the ship had been off limits for him. But he wasn’t the commander anymore, and technically, as a patient of the hospital, he shouldn’t go wandering into places he didn’t have clearance. The full scope of that fact rounded out and compressed around his lungs. Likely no one would have the gall to tell him otherwise, if he went into those off-limit places, but his new status in limbo had him questioning his right to go anywhere he wanted.
Sacha had always teased him about going above and beyond to follow the rules, while Elliot had told him it was why he’d become one of the youngest commanders in the United Earth Force’s history.
With reluctance, he lowered his hand, stepped back from the door, and turned away. It seemed his time as a POW hadn’t changed some facets of his personality. He still couldn’t break the rules.
Escape Velocity Page 5
