He only hoped they both survived long enough for him to taste her lips again.
CHAPTER TWO
“Strap in,” Redlan ordered. She watched him secure his own launch restraint and then flip open the mainline thrust controls and scan the readouts.
This time Cenn did exactly as he ordered. She could smell the anger coming off him, and the scent seemed to sizzle in her nose. The ground beneath the landing gear continued to shake and rumble with the occasional aftershock. Tremors vibrated throughout the ship’s hull.
They were both naked again, their flight suits abandoned outside after all the shape-shifting, but her earlier arousal had long since vanished. Fear had replaced it, along with the tired, shaky feeling that followed an adrenaline rush and shape-shifting too much in a short time. Changing took energy. Even though they had stim-shots for a burst of energy, there had been no chance to use them. Getting off-world immediately was the only thing that mattered now.
The dropship lurched to the side and shuddered hard enough to throw her from the seat if she hadn’t been secured.
“Aftershocks are getting worse,” she said through gritted teeth as she brought all her navigation computers online with a swipe of her hand. “How’s that possible?”
“Hold on,” he said, glaring at the shaking trees outside the main viewport. “Hard burn in three, two, one, engage!”
Redlan fully engaged the thrusters. G-forces pinned her back in the copilot’s seat as the ship launched straight into the sky, blasting out of the clearing, shooting above the tree canopy and into the red-orange sky. She clenched her teeth against the pressure. The roar of the thruster engines reached near-deafening levels. The ship was shaking hard. It took most of her strength and concentration to work her holoscreen controls. Tracking their escape velocity, thrust ratios, and power-burn rate while double-checking the heat shields as they rocketed into the upper atmosphere was never easy, but a hard blastoff like this taxed every skill she had.
“Secondary systems all good,” she said, nearly biting her tongue as turbulence rattled her around. “We have escape velocity. Hull integrity good. We’re clear to go space bound.”
“Affirmative.” Redlan remained completely focused on steering the ship as it rocketed into space. The artificial gravity kicked in, spiking the power-consumption readout on one of her screens as it compensated for the loss of gravity from the moon they’d left behind. The shaking and g-forces diminished as Redlan eased back on the power.
“We’re clear,” Redlan said, finally releasing control of the joystick and thruster control. He engaged the autopilot and leaned back into the pilot-chair headrest. He closed his eyes and sighed out a long breath.
“Too close,” she said, feeling giddy with relief that they’d made it safely into space and escaped clean with all the ore they’d mined. They’d be heroes back on the Wolfstar.
Redlan grunted and didn’t look her way. All her relief drained away. She knew perfectly well why he was pissed. He wasn’t ready to forget her earlier stunt when she’d disobeyed his command. Her disobedience hadn’t been the fun way she usually defied him, knowing she could expect some delicious punishment later. This was serious.
“Look,” she said. “I did what I thought was best for our mission and our pack.”
“Later.”
“Is that all you’re going to say? Throw monosyllabic grunts at me?”
“‘Later’ is two syllables. And by later, I mean I don’t have time now so, later.”
Cenn took a breath to let him know that she didn’t care if “later” was groxxing infinite syllables, she deserved more than some abrupt brush off. He activated the encrypted communication link with the Wolfstar before she could get any of the words out.
“Wolfstar,” he transmitted, “this is Dropship One, do you read?”
A wide holo-projection screen popped up over the console, but the image was filled with static and distorted by interference, and the only thing she could make out was a vague, unsteady dark shape.
“Subspace distortion,” she said, keeping her voice flat and perfectly professional as she checked the signal strength and compression filters. She tried to filter out the distortion and clean up the signal, but had little luck. “Interference. Maybe a strong gravity field between us.”
“Perfect,” he muttered. He tried again. “Wolfstar, this is Redlan Acher on Dropship One, do you copy?”
A hum and crackle of interference burst over the screen and then: “—what’s your status, Dropship—?”
“We have left the atmosphere and are looking to rendezvous.”
Interference ate the reply completely. Cenn ran every filter program she had available to screen for whatever field or radiation was blitzing their subnet.
Redlan glanced at her, frowning. “I need a clean transmission.”
She ground her teeth, working faster. “Try it again.”
“Wolfstar, you’re breaking up. Please repeat.”
The audio transmission from the ship came in stronger, but still without visuals. “We copy you, Dropship One. Repeat, we are sending our coordinates now, over.”
Redlan glanced at her. “Get them?”
She enlarged the screen and frowned at the data. “Partially corrupted. Lucky for us, I’m good.” She ran a quick cross check, forcing the computer to extrapolate and narrow down possible coordinates within the system. A second later she had an accurate plotting with a ninety-seven percent probability. “Got ’em. Entering them into the navi-computer now.”
“Good.” He hit transmit again. “Wolfstar, we have your coordinates.”
“Clear skies. Wolfstar, out.”
Redlan ended the transmission and the holoscreen vanished. The cockpit fell eerily quiet. Worse, a sudden onslaught of claustrophobia hit her, and she had to close her eyes and take a slow, deep breath. The scent of anger saturated the air—the only way she could think to describe it was that it smelled “hot.” A crazy synesthesia description like that wouldn’t make sense to someone who wasn’t a lycanari, but it made perfect sense to her wolf nose. The air in the cockpit smelled as though she’d shoved her snout into fire.
“We’re on auto for the rest of the ride,” Redlan said. The uncomfortable silence continued to spread between them. “I’ll check the cargo bay,” he continued when she didn’t answer. “I’m sure I heard one of the diggers bouncing around back there when we were taking off. Groxx, anything could’ve been busted up. The captain’s going to skin a pelt out of my ass.” He stood without looking at her and headed for door that led to the rear of the dropship.
She tried to hold her tongue, but she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Red, wait. I know you’re upset—”
He whirled on her. “Upset doesn’t begin to cover it. You put this entire mission at risk, and you put the Wolfstar at risk. Out here, these dropships are the lifeline.”
“We needed that digger. We needed that ore. That’s our lifeline.”
“One digger. Only twenty-five percent of all the ore we mined. Not nearly enough to jeopardize ourselves or the dropship. You made a bad call.” He leveled a finger at her. “Worse, you made a bad call over my call.”
She reeled from the intensity of his rebuke. All her careful, logical defenses tumbled down into a disordered mess. She couldn’t even think of what to say next. Space was full of hazards and gambles. It was profit that kept ships in the air. Surely he could understand that.
He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his thick brown hair. “I’m not going to report your failure to obey me, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re my problem, and I’m going to deal with you myself.”
Deal with her? Deal with her? She was a problem, was she? As though she were some headstrong little wolf pup that needed a firm hand. She clenched her jaw, trying to bite back an explosion of curses and…and whatever else came to her mind. He had no right to treat her this way. Not for real. She sat there in her copilot chair, her anger glowing like the tip of a
laser-welder. The fact that she couldn’t think of a single cutting reply made her even angrier. Worse, it made her feel helpless.
She hated to feel helpless.
Redlan spun on his heel and left the cockpit without another word. She didn’t try to call him back.
* * *
Redlan stomped down the corridor leading to the cargo hold with his hands clenched, his jaw clenched—groxx, every clenchable thing clenched. He was angry in a way that transcended anger and circled right back around to calm again.
When Cenn had disobeyed and shifted to her wolf, running to save that damn ore-robot, there hadn’t been enough time to feel much anger or fear. Now he suspected that the anger had rebounded far more intensely because of the fear. She was his, damn it. It was his job to protect her. To keep her safe. And she’d gone and done something so staggeringly stupid and brave, he still felt stunned to have witnessed it. She’d not even hesitated. She was absolutely fearless.
Fearless, but also foolish beyond words. She’d taken an unnecessary risk, a complete gamble with something so precious. No amount of ore was worth Cenn’s life. Or his life. Or the life of any member of their pack. Life was too precious.
A small maintenance robot shaped like an octopus was working on a thruster junction box in the main corridor. Damn, what now? Junction boxes were where the position controls and fuel lines fed power and information to the engines, allowing them to rotate position for ideal propulsion in either space or atmosphere. A problem with one could mean nothing important. Or it could mean ending up stranded in space. He really did not need this now.
He halted next to the robot. “Report!”
The chrome robot climbed out of the junction box and down the wall panel. It stood on eight flexible metal legs and raised one tentacle to its round body in a fluid salute that had Redlan raising an eyebrow. Robots didn’t usually salute, and he wondered if this were some kind of prank. Maslo, the lead engineer on the Wolfstar, was a degenerate practical joker.
The robot’s voice bubbled out in a high-pitched chirp that rose with excitement at the end of every sentence. “Minor stress cracks present on the aconitum joint, First Terrestrial Forager Redlan Acher! Current status remains space-worthy!”
“Never use my full title,” he warned, glowering. “How long for repairs?”
“Current projection is four-seven standard minutes, Abbreviated Terrestrial Forager—!”
“All right, all right, no titles. Just get it fixed. This isn’t an Andorian pleasure cruise.” The worst thing the robo-engineers had ever done was give robots the ability to speak.
“Instructions understood and will be complied with, no title Redlan Acher.” It saluted again and undulated up the wall and into the junction box where it continued its repairs.
He shook his head. One good thing about robots, though, you could snap at them all you wanted and they never became upset. All the same, he felt guilty about grousing at it. Groxxing foolish, but damn it, there it was. He was more shaken up than he’d realized.
He continued to tramp his way to the cargo area, but the distraction of talking to the repair robot had surprisingly calmed him a little. Cenn had ended up as pissed at him as he was at her after he’d spoken his mind back there, which was pretty galling, since she had absolutely no right to feel burned up after the stunt she’d pulled. Now they were at each other’s throats instead of making love.
Worse, her anger had squashed any attempt he might’ve made to finally explain how he truly felt about her. What was the point now? It wasn’t simply her disobedience that had infuriated him but the fact that he could’ve lost her forever. That possibility terrified him. Losing her would end him. He couldn’t even put it in words because he was no groxxing poet. It remained a simple fact. He wasn’t afraid of anything…except losing her.
True, he’d never made that fact known to her. Not in so many words, and yes, he realized he couldn’t expect her to read his mind. He knew that on some level she understood how he felt about her, even if he’d never expressed it as loud and clear as she deserved. Both of their wolves knew, though. So dammit, she had to take care of herself—she owed it to him. She couldn’t be all crazy-wild and ignore his orders and scare him to death. Didn’t she understand how that possibility, that fear for her, made him want to rip something to pieces, simply to have a chance to protect her? And ripping things to pieces was never a good idea on a spaceship.
So maybe she didn’t understand after all. Maybe she didn’t understand because he’d never straight out claimed her. That was on him. But now now wasn’t the right time, with this between them. He had to find a way to make her realize that her needless endangerment of her life had nearly gutted him.
Groxx. What a mess.
He opened the door to the cargo area and found another disaster. The loading bays were all reinforced metal and vecidium tethers to keep cargo and the digger robots in position during takeoff. The digger’s AI actually allowed them to secure themselves on their own when they rolled into their separate docking stations. Unfortunately he had to blast off in such a hurry, there’d been no time for the last digger robot to reach its flight-secure station. The hard blast had thrown the digger against one side of the cargo bay, leaving a huge dent and smashing the hell out of a panel, crushing a wall-mounted toolbox, and then rolling onto a power-loader.
To think, this day had started out so well. Time alone with Cenn. A run through the forest. Nakedness and flirting and heavy petting. The promise of scorching-hot sex with the woman he loved.
Now he had a heavily damaged cargo bay and destroyed equipment, a near death experience on some random moon, a fight with the woman he loved, and let nobody forget the significant case of blue balls.
Could it get any worse?
Repairs would eat up at least one digger’s complete haul of dylios ore. So, not only had Cenn taken a foolish risk with her life, her risk had amounted to nothing in the end because the ore she’d saved would have to be sold to repair the digger, the hold, and replace the powerloader.
He sighed and stretched, trying to let the mental negativity flow out of him through his toes and dry up on the metal deck. If only he were back in that strange forest on Nue Darvolk, running as a wolf after Cenn, chasing her through the trees with the fiery-red leaves. Well, that was in the past. He had no choice but to start sorting out the mess in the cargo bay. A little work would help him blow off some steam.
He snorted. No matter how upset he might be with Cenn, the only thing his one-track-need body was interested in was driving his cock deep inside Cenn’s pussy. He wanted to watch as ecstasy fill her, knowing he was the one who’d made her feel such pleasure. He shook his head as his cock started to stiffen at the images in his mind. Blue balls. And no hope of relief. Not until they settled this…this whatever it was that had risen up between them like a wall.
He shoved these thoughts out of his mind and set to work.
CHAPTER THREE
Cenn put her boots up on the control panel and leaned back in the copilot chair. She took a long sip of her cold coffee. It was sludgy, because the dropship’s coffeemaker was on the fritz. Again. But caffeine was caffeine, and these were gourmet beans from Xaxi Prime, not synthetics that tasted like burned plastic.
Coffee made her life better. Any problems she might’ve had were shoved aside by its delicious warmth.
Lover pissed at you because you ran your own path?
Coffee.
Sexually frustrated because you can’t get action from previously mentioned angry lover?
Coffee.
Well…sadly, not really. Coffee wasn’t even a close substitute for fucking Redlan. That was a shame, but she wasn’t the one who had the problem. In fact, she should be the one who was angry, because she’d done the right thing, the hard thing, and she’d caught counter-fire for it.
If Redlan wanted to spend the rest of their unpredictable “alone time” away from the Wolfstar acting pissed off at her, then let him. If he res
ented the initiative she’d shown back on Nue Darvolk, then she didn’t know what to say. Her body might want to lie down in front of him and spread her legs, but her mind had a death grip on the reins. She was a higher animal. She was a virtual paragon of self-control.
Besides, he had no right to be upset. The pack mattered more than any single member. The hierarchy always put the good of the pack first and foremost, followed by the good of their ship, and finally the good of the individual. Only by being a part of the pack society could anyone earn enough room to play out any individual desires. It seemed so simple to her. Direct. Clear-cut. Weren’t males supposed to be logical? Wasn’t that always the first defense they played in any kind of disagreement? She snorted.
The pack needed the ship. The ship needed dylios ore. They were foragers, collecting supplies in a system designed to help supplement their distant travel routes in the UnReg systems, where there was no central galaxy government or infrastructure. Their job was to secure the ore. The ore they’d collected had been in danger during that quake. She’d done what she had to do to negate that danger and fulfill her mission.
Simple.
So was Redlan mad because he believed she’d upstaged him somehow? It couldn’t be some machismo thing, could it? If he believed his manhood had been damaged somehow, then she didn’t know what to say. If he couldn’t handle her as a woman, then maybe he wasn’t the right man for her. True, he could still report her to the captain for disobeying orders if he wanted, but she was certain it wouldn’t result in much more than a slap on the wrist because, again, she’d made the right decision and done the right thing.
Her job was important. It was more important than her personal safety. She suspected he would’ve done the exactly the same thing if she hadn’t made the move first. And then there would’ve been macho backslapping and congratulations on the Wolfstar, because he’d been so brave and decisive and heroic. But she was expected to follow orders for her own safety.
Valentines Heat III Page 6
