by Mason, Jolie
They had sent their bags on ahead with the supplies Caden had demanded she take. Computer equipment to be installed and a few other goodies she hadn't gotten a peek at before they left.
The crowd thickened as they neared the hulking, wedge silhouette of the Bell. The dust on the streets grew thicker as well, till Luca nearly tasted it as she breathed. Enforcers would clear the streets soon, if it was a dust storm blowing in from the desert. She picked up the pace.
She slammed face first into the burly chest of a dock worker of some sort. She felt the wind exit her body in a rush, as they'd both been going at top speeds. The man caught her by her arms, or she likely would be on her ass in the dirt. He grumbled as he righted her.
Luca shrugged her shoulders to shake the man off as soon as she could stand. He stank of sweat, but everyone here did. Her nose wrinkled. She felt a small prick as something scratched her as she pulled away from him.
“Excuse me”, he apologized profusely, yet he kept moving at speeds some ships couldn't reach. She rubbed her arm and stared off at the rude mud farmer. She hated Taarken.
“Ass”, she whispered under her breath as she watched him disappear.
“Luca”. She heard Emery call above the bustle of the market nearby. “Are you waiting for rain?”
He spread his arms impatiently. That would be a long wait on Taarken.
“Coming.” She answered with a growl.
She trudged toward the Bell, and almost sighed with relief the moment she felt the Tantium metal beneath her feet and heard the roar of hydraulics in the bay. It was a sweeping rectangle with smaller storage up in the loft walkways and a heavy lift in the back of the bay for moving small cargo up. Two serviceable, spiral stairways curled up from the lower deck to the loft area above.
“Captain”, a young cargo hand waved at her and smiled as he pushed a cart of heavy duty tools.
“Hey, Roarke.” She continued to the back of the bay where the double doors leading to the bowels of the Bell stood beside the lift like sentries. The sensors registered her approach and spread the doors wide. It was air conditioned Heaven. Luca stood a moment in the artificially cool environment of the Bell and breathed in deeply. It was magic.
Emery stood at the end of the long white hallway staring at her in amusement. “Are you quite finished?”
“Oh, shut up. I hate heat.” It made her feel jittery and claustrophobic, reminding her of her nightmares where she was trapped in the oppressive heat and dark. She shuddered.
“Let's get the navpoint set up and get some shut eye.” Neither of them had slept much, she'd realized as she'd woken to find him watching her from the chair. They hadn't said much of anything about it either, but the easy camaraderie between them seemed more fragile than it had been, like the wrong word would break it.
Luca walked more briskly up the angled hall and to the lift that would take her to the top deck of the Bell and her pilot's cabin. The screen lit up with burning sunlight offended her eyes when she entered the small cabin, so she hit a pattern of controls to shut the damn thing off to black.
“That's better. Hey, Cam.” She spoke to the dimpled youth who flew the Bell now more than she did. A fact that she tried not to envy, but she did. Nothing would change it. She resented not being able to fly as much. “Pull the Navmap up, would you?”
She leaned in over the holomap the console to the right of her pilot generated in opaque renderings of systems that would melt down into a menu of planets with preset navpoints at the touch of a button.
The Sensor system glowed orange with a mid-sized star. She selected Prime and chose that navpoint. “We're going to Sensor?”
“Yep, Cam. Sensor Prime. We're going shopping. Won't that be fun?'
“If you say so, Captain.” The young man seemed uncertain that shopping would meet his definition of fun.
“Oh, you'll be okay, Cam. You can mind the ship again, if shopping scares you.”
Emery stood outside the hatch, waiting for her with obvious impatience. “Walk with me?”, she asked quietly.
As they made their way through the ship's meandering white corridors, she sighed once. “Where to when we hit atmo?”
“Sensor Prime Medical is the first stop. Then we can see where we go from there. I've already pulled the Enforcer record of your release.”
She grinned straight ahead. “Do I need to know how you got that?”
“You do not.” There was humor, well hidden and subtle, in his voice. It was there, however. “How are you feeling?”
Concern dotted his features. She looked up at him. Luca was a tallish woman, but he still had a few inches on her. “I'm tired, but otherwise fine. Why do you ask?”
He looked down at her now. “The nightmares are wearing you down. That's obvious.”
“I can handle a few bad dreams.” It came out in her tough girl voice, but that started to ring hollow as her situation grew more and more surreal.
When they'd left Taarken, Ari had hugged her close, anxious. Nothing made Ari anxious, but whatever she'd learned from Emery had. She'd demand that he tell her soon. Just this minute, though, she needed a shower and some rack time.
His sigh echoed her own. “I know what you're doing here.”
“Oh, good. Enlighten me.” Snark filled the empty hallway where he'd stopped and turned her toward him.
“You're bluffing. If you bluff your way through being strong, you'll still win sometimes, even if it's total bullshit, right? You don't have to bluff me. I'm not playing against you. We're partners.”
“Time will tell, Emery. You admit you aren't what you appeared when I hired you. Actions will tell.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “Fair enough. Have you eaten anything?”
She had to think about the answer which meant probably not.
He smiled sadly and pressed her shoulder in an affectionate squeeze. “I'll send something to your cabin. Go on.”
“Thank you”, she said gratefully, and she'd never meant it more.
3
Luca sat at the deep mahogany desk in the Captain's office, Ari's office. This room remained just as it was the day Ari left it. Luca thought it might have been her escape hatch. It made her feel like Ari was here, still being the captain, still bellowing down the halls about the “damn inventory”.
This was the only room where she could indulge in just being herself whoever the hell that was today. As they neared Sensor, she wondered who she'd be when they left that planet.
Rubbing her head with one hand, she sighed again and returned her attention to the invoices on the viewscreen. Her head ached. She rolled her shoulders to ease the tension causing the ache there.
The hatchway signal beeped softly under the soothing music she'd been playing in gentle strains to help ease tension. It wasn't working anyway, so she hit the pad to turn it off, then used a soft verbal command to open the hatch.
Emery strolled in staring at his own datapad. “Luca, have you seen these invoices from the Carry Call? It's not adding up. I think we need to look into the captain's accounting.”
She nodded. “Go ahead and comm HQ and have someone else do it.”
He looked up after closing out an application. “You okay?”
The weariness in her voice couldn't be hidden, so she just waved it away. “Just tired.”
“The sleeping pills aren't working?”
“They are. I just guess they're making me groggy. That and I'm going through my mountain of paperwork. A favorite hobby of mine.”
“What's the paperwork? Is it something I can help with?”
“Delivery allocations”, she answered and leaned back on her tall, comforting chair. “Thank the gods we hired the payroll executive back at the office. Can you imagine if I had to deal with money on top of all this junk?”
He chuckled, probably remembering the early days when he had to help her with basic payroll functions. She could fly the ship like one of the mythical angels he'd compared her to, but don't ask h
er to pay her crew.
“I'd rather not, thank you. How are you holding up really, Luca?”
“I'll be fine. Waiting isn't fun.”
“We're only a few hours out now.”
She nodded slowly and stood to walk around and stretch her arms out in front of her. Luca felt the pop as she rolled her stiff neck. She heard him set his pad on a surface, then felt his hands on her shoulders as his gruff, “Here” hit her ears. She stiffened and lowered her arms.
His hands rolled over the muscles of her neck and shoulders in seductive, pleasure inducing relief. She groaned, as her head tipped forward in surrender. That dark laugh rumbled behind her again. She leaned back into his body without meaning to do it. He leaned back as well to sit against her sturdy desk taking her weight.
Luca simply fell into whatever was happening between them. It was probably a stupid thing to do. She didn't know his real name or where he came from, but she didn't know any of that about herself either. The part of her starting to want him was starting to win.
His hands worked the muscles of her back, her slim shoulders, but where she pressed her lower body against him, she felt that too. He grew against the back of her thighs, hard and hot even through his uniform. “Umm”, she moaned. She wasn't exactly certain what made her moan, his back rub or his erection. Both were interfering with thought.
“Luca”, he whispered. “Luca, Angel.” She loved when he called her that. She didn't know if she'd ever heard a word like it applied to her, and she knew it couldn't have ever been Angel. His voice was a broken plea, but he didn't specify what he wanted, so Luca twisted to face him, and pressed the front of her body against his. She swallowed when she saw his face.
His expression was ragged, intense anxiety mixed with darker impulses and lust on his face. Dark eyes grew darker and darker. She pushed herself up on her toes, wrapped a hand firmly around his neck and opened her soft mouth over his strong one. To hell with it, this was what she wanted. She reveled in the blending of their breaths, the twining of their tongues. Her mouth teased and taunted his, until she felt him give like the structure of a bridge collapsing, in a rush all at once destroying everything in the way as it gave way.
His hands grasped her roughly as his mouth took over. He wrapped his hand in her hair, controlling the kiss, holding her in place while his mouth took her places she couldn't have imagined moments before. She lost all higher brain function. Her thoughts degenerated to images of what she wanted him to do to her. She saw him pushing her to the floor and taking her hard against the scratchy carpeting. She felt him behind her, pistoning into her body. She whimpered as she pushed back at him with her palms till he leaned back over the desk a moment before lifting her.
Delighted, she wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her to the chair and sat down tugging her into his lap. Straddling him, she finally had him just where she wanted him. Tongues twisting like dancers, and his hardness nestled between her hot thighs, held still and firm beneath her gyrating movements. Emery pulled his head away from hers with a ragged breath. “Luca”, he said. “I can't do this. I'm sorry.”
“Why not?” She asked the question while her seeking mouth kissed his face, nibbled at the hard edges of his jaw. “You are doing it.”
“Remember who I am, Angel. I'm the guy who lied to you.”
Something in the way he said it, in the hard edge of his voice, cut through her haze just enough. She stopped suddenly, pulling back slowly. Her voice cracked. “Yeah, that's true.”
It was, effectively, a verbal cold shower. Luca felt her fog lift, and her mind came back to her in a rush that was acutely aware of two things; She'd lost it on her first mate, and she now sat straddling his lap in her office. It was a professional low point, no doubt.
Shame swamped her. “I'm sorry. I never intended that to happen.”
His hands bracketed her head. “No, that's not what I mean. Luca, look at me!”
At first, she didn't want to, but he pulled her eyes to his. “I want you. How can you be in doubt of that now?” He pushed himself into the v of her legs setting off more of that heat she'd lost in the return of reality. “I'm not a good man. I don't know what I am, but it's definitely not that.”
Confusion registered. “No, you're...”
“Stop”. He shook his head. “Just stop. You don't know who I am.”
“So tell me.”
“No. Just... don't ask me that. Please.”
She heard the plea again, and it hit her deep inside. So deep she worried he might be inside her after all. Maybe, they hadn't really stopped or maybe, it had gone on too long because this thing between them still felt intimate and consuming like they shared a secret, but she didn't know what that secret was. He had just begged her for something. This strong competent man of the world begged. How could she deny him anything he needed that badly?
“Just this once, Angel. I'm going to be the hero, and then I'll be gone and you can be safe. Okay?”
She melted as she nodded, but she didn't let go of him. What she did next had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with pain and decision. She leaned sweetly into him and twined her arms around his neck to cradle his head in her arms. She leaned her body into his, his ear turned to her pounding heart. Luca held onto him with everything in her.
He was so lost and so very wrong. He was one of the best men she'd met. Her lips pressed to the crown of his head as she whispered that and a million other bits of nonsense. He unwound gradually. His hands clutching tightly around her back and dug into a shoulder as he breathed in the scent of her, buried his nose in the curve of her neck and chest.
Luca felt him rest against her. She wouldn't fight him on this. It would do no good. He might just run if she did, but it was not over. They would come back to this. She had the strange feeling that they would always come back to this like it was some foregone conclusion, a fact not a wish.
***#***
She liked Sensor Prime, the hustle of it. The shopping, the casinos, the lights and the traffic noise made her feel alive in a way that she normally didn't. She didn't like it as much as she loved the black ocean of space, but she liked it a lot. Today, she could hardly enjoy that bustle though.
The lights made her eyes ache, and the noise beat at her head like a drum. She wasn't feeling better. In fact, she couldn't recall ever feeling this bad. Perhaps, it was the sight of her face in the mirror after her shower earlier as she prepared for landfall that bothered her most. She'd been pale and wan enough that it looked like a stranger staring back at her. Luca had found the makeup she hardly used and applied it liberally.
“Luca, are you sure you're all right?”
His worried tone sounded behind her, and it seemed very unlike him. “Em, I'm fine”, she breathed out one more time. Before last night, she'd seen him as a friend. Today, she found everything was more and less complicated.
Nurses and doctors rushed by them in dark blue coats or red scrubs. Emery led her over to the waiting area across from the administrative offices of the massive Prime Medical Center. “Sit down and wait here. I'll be back shortly.” He disappeared back into the office they'd left a second ago.
She leaned her head back silently and wished for the files they'd requested to be found with all her heart. Her medical records weren't in the system. They'd been relegated to hard copy in the basement. No one knew just why.
Luca couldn't be sure she hadn't fallen asleep, but her eyes opened to see Emery approaching with a stacked file opened and an anxious look on his face. He stopped mid-stride to read something, then looked up. She wondered briefly what could put that look on his face.
He sat heavily in the chair beside her and offered her the files which she scanned the way he had. “Deceased?”, she said in alarm.
He nodded.
“But why?” She asked, looking at him as if he had the answers. “How?”
“Why might be easy to guess”, he answered. “I'm not sure how. We have redundancies in place to
stop this from happening. It seems like someone managed anyway.”
“So, my files, under my patient number, are just filed away and marked deceased?”
“It gets better. They can't find you in the comps historical database either. You've been sanitized from the hospital records.” He kept his voice hushed in the crowd and scanned the room with his gaze continuously.
“It doesn't make any sense”, she insisted.
He huffed. “No, it makes sense, but it compounds our problem. Let's head back to the Bell for the night and think this over.”
She groaned loudly. Luca felt like her tongue, her mouth, her whole body was on fire. “God, that's a long walk to think about.”
He grabbed her hand and tugged her up. “Come on. Let's get you into bed.”
“Promises. Promises.” She whispered the teasing words because the trip up to standing position had left her dizzy and nauseous. It was extreme. She didn't think she could stand for long. “Emery?”
She squeaked weakly. “Em?”, she murmured before passing out in his arms.
***#***
Nothing could have prepared her for waking up. She was being wheeled on a gurney, or it was possible the world was upside down. She felt like her head was on fire. Her throat hurt, her stomach tossed and the panicked voices of the nurses around her scared her. There was two thousand pound alamar sitting on her chest, and Emery was nowhere around that she could see.
She tried to talk, but someone just told her to be calm and not to talk. Luca was so confused. She couldn't think. Her mind burned with a jumble of images, fire, whizzing yellow walls, flowers, clowns, then, blessedly, things went dark just as she thought, I really hate clowns.
***#***
Emery kept pace behind the gurney. No way he was staying behind. It was obvious she didn't feel well when they left the ship. This was … this was scary. He had tried desperately to wake her until the nurses took notice and called for a doctor. She could barely open her eyes.
He remembered a few fevered questions thrown at him as the man flashed a light in and out of her eyes, holding them wide. “Has she been eating? Drinking?”
