by Mel Teshco
She snorted. If problems equated to sex, then it was a little too late for that. Many of the women who shared cells also shared beds at one time or another.
Her eyes squeezed shut. She’d been tempted to do the same last night. Except it was Jarred she wanted between her thighs, not the impersonal stab of her cellmates’ tongue and fingers.
With a sigh, she began her routine of stretches. It didn’t pay to get lazy. Going by the reports, AKA gossip, that had filtered down from guards to prisoners, and tutors to students, Solitaire wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. Fitness and good health was imperative if there was any hope to fully colonize the new world.
She paused and pressed an outspread hand to her belly. What would it be like to have a baby growing in her womb? A child, with Jarred as the father?
She brushed aside the sudden maternal impulse. She’d probably never experience the joy of motherhood. She was a prisoner, and the implant she’d been given to protect against pregnancy would stay until her sentence was served. And even then, she’d have to put in a request to have the implant removed.
She unpinned her hair and dragged a brush through her messy, but luxuriously clean mane. A convicted felon wasn’t considered worthy of producing more supposedly “like-minded” children. It mattered little that she was innocent. The courts had declared her guilty and that was that.
A sleazy old man in the towers was given more worth than a young woman who no longer had a home, and few prospects. It’d been his word against hers.
“A token for your thoughts?”
She spun around with a gasp at Jarred’s voice. Damn. She’d been so lost in her own dark musings, she hadn’t even heard the cell door open.
His presence filled her with warmth from the inside out, chasing away the shadows and causing a smile to curl her lips. She pushed back an impulse to fling herself into his arms, and instead drank him in.
He was out of uniform and dressed casually, in a pair of jeans and a white long-sleeved T-shirt that brought out the natural tan of his skin. Whatever his ancestry, he was the perfect fusion. She wanted to run her hands all over his body and trace every corded muscle and contour.
She sighed, glancing down at her ugly prison-issue uniform. She’d been young when the world had turned to shit. Her parents had sold anything of value just to keep everyone warm and fed. Fancy clothes had become an extravagant luxury left to the people in the towers.
Sourness filled her belly. Things had gone from bad to worse after her little brother had fallen ill. They’d had no money for medication or hospital bills … until her father had been approached by his former best friend, who lived in one of the esteemed towers. The man had offered an obscene amount of money for Lucinda to live with him permanently.
She shuddered. She still recalled the horror of feeling as if she had no option but to agree, still recalled her parents’ horror at feeling exactly the same way. When she’d been taken to the tower, a tight-lipped servant with rough hands had scrubbed every inch of her. Another servant had waxed her body parts and buffed and polished her nails before dressing her in a tight, suffocating swathe of silk called a gown.
Perhaps the prison garb wasn’t so bad, after all.
“Well?” Jarred’s brilliant eyes assessed her.
She cleared her throat, aware her smile had long since vanished. “I doubt you’d be interested.”
“Try me.”
She swallowed, beyond tempted to unload a little, just this once. Lord only knew he’d entrusted her with a secret big enough to rip apart his career. But she’d learned the hard way not to hand out trust easily. Though it’d been against her parents’ ideals, if even they could sell her to a horny rich man, what was a man who only wanted her body capable of doing?
She shook her head, “I’d rather not.”
His eyes glinted, then, seemingly undeterred, he proffered a hand. “Then walk with me?”
It took less than one second to accept his invitation. What could it hurt? She would only have whiled away the day thinking of the very man who wanted to spend some time with her. “Okay.”
One of the women prisoners catcalled as she and the pilot walked down the corridor, their hands interlinked. She swung Jarred a barely repressed grin. He winked and squeezed her fingers, and for a fleeting moment she was reminded what it was to be happy.
Stokes strode toward them, on his rounds and evidently back on his normal roster. She only hoped he didn’t pull another double shift. The asshole had to sleep some time. His hard stare connected with hers and then burned with disdain. Her chin tilted. She refused to be intimidated by him just because she was the one girl who’d dented his ego by saying no.
“What a barrel full of sunshine,” Jarred said with a shake of his head as the guard continued past them.
“Isn’t he just?”
The pilot’s expression became a little more somber. “Remember what I said—if Stokes so much as—”
“I can handle him,” she cut in. “But thank you, all the same.”
A minute or two later, Jarred stopped at a door in the corridor and held his wrist under an identifier. He turned to her as the door clicked open. “Let’s not allow Stokes’ mood to darken our short time together today.”
She looked up and arched a brow. “Is this a date?”
He grinned as they took some stairs to another zone. “Yes, I guess it is. I didn’t exactly take the time to get to know you earlier. I’m hoping to make up for at least a little of that now.”
A strange ache settled in the middle of her chest. Jarred shouldn’t care about stuff like that. She was just a lowly prisoner, and he’d already gotten more from her than any other man on the ship. And yet still he wanted to take it one step further and get to know her personally.
Leading her along another corridor, he drew her into a big, odd-shaped room with an old, scarred table that appeared to be a makeshift bar. Her eyes widened as many of the patrons turned to view the newcomers.
She swallowed before muttering, “You really do want to make ‘us’ official, don’t you?”
“Hell, yes,” he answered with a grin, before he led her to an empty booth that stank of stale beer and sour body odors.
But it could have been the top of one of the Earth’s tower for all she cared. Despite herself, she was already enjoying their “date” far too much. Hell, it was probably the nicest thing she’d done since being incarcerated on the Siren.
Jarred nodded a greeting to a good-looking, dark-haired man in camo pants and a dark T-shirt, who stood in the far corner of the room strumming a guitar. “Leo Grady,” he said with a small grin, “serenading me again.”
Lucinda’s first impression was that Leo didn’t look all that comfortable in the spotlight. Her next was that she vaguely recognized him, but it had taken a moment because he wasn’t in uniform. He was maintenance, always tinkering with something. She’d seen him around, and probably washed his uniform countless times. Jarred turned and nodded to a man behind the bar. Less than a minute later a mousy-haired woman in a stained red top and a ragged skirt plunked two beers onto their table. Lucinda guessed the pilot’s rank meant he needn’t bother ordering his own drinks.
The woman eyed Lucinda’s prisoner outfit before giving a disdainful sniff and turning her attention to Jarred. “Nice to see you here, Jarred,” she purred. “It’s been too long.”
He shrugged, though his eyes crinkled with amusement. “You know me, Karen … busy flying us all to a new world.”
“Yes, I guess there’s that,” the woman said with approval, patting her ragged topknot as if it was coiffed to perfection.
Jarred reached for Lucinda’s hand. “And now I have Lucinda here driving me to distraction as well.”
The woman—Karen—sighed dramatically, her lips thinning. “There are other women onboard who aren’t prisoners, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Lucinda glared. It was bad enough being referred to as a number, but to be spoken about as if
she wasn’t even there really scraped a nerve. She opened her mouth, but when Jarred’s grasp on her hand tightened a little, she relented.
Sometimes silence was the better option. Especially being a prisoner with very few rights.
Jarred’s tone gentled as he faced the other woman. “And there’s the perfect man somewhere for you too, whether it’s on the Siren or the Sphinx … or someone already on Solitaire.” He shrugged. “Odds are you’ll find him.”
The brunette’s smile brightened her whole face and melted the lines of tension away, exposing her delicate bone structure. She waggled her dark eyebrows. “With any luck I might find more than one.”
Jarred laughed, the sound warming Lucinda’s belly and making her want him all over again. He took a sip of the beer and nodded. “I sincerely hope that you do.” He glanced pointedly at Lucinda. “We all deserve to find happiness.”
Once Karen had flounced away to help at the bar, Jarred turned his back on the rest of the crowd so that it was just the two of them. His thumb rubbed over her knuckles, his eyes not once leaving hers, even when he took another sip of the beer, seemingly enjoying the foul-tasting brew. “You never did tell me what was weighing so heavily on your mind.”
Her throat suddenly dry, she took a big swallow of the beer, then choked a little before gasping, “Perhaps I’m not so willing to share my deepest, darkest secrets with you.”
He released her hand and leaned back, his eyes fathomless. “You don’t trust me?”
She cupped what remained of her beer and peered into its murky froth. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“Lucinda, look at me,” he said softly. When she did, compelled by the stark rawness in his voice, he added, “I will never hurt you.”
Her eyes stung and her throat ached when she finally managed, “I’ll be stuck on Solitaire when you travel back to Earth. How can that not hurt me?”
The thought alone caused a lump of misery to sit uncomfortably in her middle.
He moved closer, placing an outspread hand on her thigh. “I’ll be leaving. But I’ll be back again for you. And by that time your sentence will be done, yes?”
She nodded slowly, her mind turning over the facts. He’d be gone for at least two years. “Yes.”
His hand tightened a little, a gesture that was both possessive and reassuring. “Then you’ll be free and there’ll be no reason we can’t be together.”
Her breath seemed trapped in her chest when she searched his all-too-serious stare. “You really mean that, don’t you?” she whispered.
“I do,” he said softly. “I really, really do.”
She refused to let her heart rule her head, refused to give in to the pure joy threatening to engulf her. Instead, she leaned into him and tugged down the neckline of his T-shirt.
His throat was bare. No chain and its attached wedding ring. Nothing. She released the material with a hiss of breath. “My god,” she said, feeling dazed by the emotions leaking through her armor. “You really are serious.”
He nodded. “Yes I am.”
She sank against the booth seat, trying to absorb the profound truth. Jarred hardly knew her, and yet he’d told her about a past she’d bet he hadn’t shared with anyone else. He’d also told her that he was married when he could have easily lied.
From the very first, he’d been honest and expressed his true feelings. That he felt deeply for her clearly wasn’t a lie.
Somehow, she understood. Whatever they shared was always meant to be more than a brief affair. There was something powerful between them, something they needed to explore further.
She grabbed her beer and gulped what was left of it, wishing for something far stronger to subdue the emotions unleashed within. She set her empty glass down. “So … what now?”
“We see each other whenever we can and make the most of what we have.” He put his glass beside hers. “I’ll ensure my days off coincide with every one of yours.”
She nodded, wishing she had more than one in ten days free. Guess she should consider herself lucky even those days hadn’t been taken from the prisoners, considering all the extra work hours they’d been forced to do.
Then again, the superiors would be aware of the dissatisfaction growing among the prisoners. The overcrowding, rationing of food and medications were bad enough. If they took away the prisoners’ rest days as well, it would create a riot.
Jarred clasped her hands and leaned close, his warm breath on her ear sending skitters of pleasure down her spine. “I wish we had more time together, but I’m due to teach advanced interstellar space travel to some promising young students in ten minutes.”
She swallowed back a whole lot of disappointment. She should have known better than to expect his whole day to be free. She nodded. “Okay.”
He smiled. “The lesson will go for a handful of hours at least—but I’m free afterward if you want to join me here again tonight?”
“Another date?” she asked weakly.
He grinned and nodded. “I heard there’s a band on who aren’t half bad. And I’m certain it beats studying.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be allowed—”
“I’ve already cleared it with the major.” His grin widened at her frown. “Presumptuous of me, I know, but I wasn’t going to leave it to the last minute.”
The laundry girls were given far more liberties than most of the prisoners aboard the Siren. There were far too many washing pickups and deliveries for a guard to be appointed to every laundry girl. Instead, the workers were given strict areas in which they could move about freely. Lucinda’s main area was the air crew level—including the service elevator that took her there.
Jarred lifted a hand, his fingertips gliding across her jaw. As the feathery sensation shot through her body, she closed her eyes, effectively blocking out his mouth, which she wanted to kiss senseless.
“It does sound like fun,” she murmured.
When was the last time she’d actually done something purely for enjoyment? Did such a word even exist in her vocabulary? What did she have to lose, except maybe a few hours of sleep?
Her eyes flicked back open. “I’d love to.”
A slow smile spread across his face, making his eyes sparkle. “Good. I’ll come and get you as soon as I’m free.” He pushed to his feet. “Until then, allow me to escort you back before I have to face the classroom, and a thousand questions.”
She smiled right back. “Thanks. But I think I might head to class too.”
The last thing she wanted was to be alone in her cell while Stokes was still on duty.
“Oh?” His stare lit up with interest.
“Geology.”
She didn’t want to miss the class, though she’d bet the teacher wouldn’t have even marked her absence if she hadn’t shown. With the prisoners pushed to exhaustion from all the extra work, most of the lecturers assumed the prisoners would choose sleep over education.
He nodded. “Excellent. That class is in the air crew zone, right near mine.”
A little thrill pierced her body, knowing he’d be so close.
They stood in unison and walked into the corridor and toward their classrooms.
As they were about to part ways, he caught her hand in his, brushed her knuckles with his mouth and murmured, “I’ll be thinking of you.”
Chapter Five
Lucinda left the geology class feeling more positive about her future than ever before. Between Jarred’s determination to keep her in his life, and the geology lecture, which had sparked her imagination about the planet they were about to inhabit, she was literally beaming.
She didn’t fool herself for one minute that life on Solitaire wouldn’t be hard—especially for the prisoners, who’d been brought to the new world as manual labor. But at least when things got really tough, thoughts of being reunited with Jarred would keep her going.
She followed a couple of prisoner classmates and a guard who led the way before accessing a locked doorway that would tak
e them to prisoner level. Heading toward the mess hall, her mind turned over all she’d learned. The regular earthquakes and landslides on Solitaire, which exposed much of its mineral rich content, wouldn’t stop her from looking forward to the day Jarred returned for her.
She was just thankful the colony of Unity had settled in a secure area, away from the dangers of quakes and flooding. She pitied the poor bastards who put themselves at risk mapping the planet and all its unknown dangers, though.
She grabbed a tray from the racks near the heated display unit that kept the prisoners’ insipid stew warm, and lined up behind the other women in their standard-issue yellow garb.
The prison uniform ensured no one really stood out. Blending in with the crowd was imperative, unlike the few unfortunates in their “whites”, who were classified as killers or mentally unstable. The whites prisoners were rare, though, and had only been brought to the new world because of their specialized skills.
There was the gorgeous and talented artist who’d recently married a chief warrant officer, a dark-haired beauty way above his status. Lucinda had always admired Rita. The fact the officer had fallen for a ‘lowly’ prisoner only deepened her respect. The woman had followed her heart, not protocol. It gave Lucinda hope that she and Jarred really could make things work.
Then there was the woman who’d blown up a dam to make the rivers flow for the farmers, who were desperate to water their crops. Her explosive skills would undoubtedly be put to further use on Solitaire.
Possibly the worst of the whites was a man—monster—who’d murdered his own wife and two teenage daughters to save them from a group of men breaking into their family home. He hadn’t been given the death penalty because of his scientific brain, which had seen him win numerous honors, including the distinguished Nobel Prize, awarded to him around a decade before the Earth had turned to shit.
She didn’t want to judge the whites prisoners. After all, her own sentence had been given under false testimonies and accusations. But she believed that anyone who murdered their own family shouldn’t be given jail time, let alone the possibility of a whole new life.
