by H. E. Trent
Heavier footsteps approached from inside the ship. Sera quickly straightened up and transferred the bolts to her weaker left hand. Then came another set of footsteps behind them, the duet creating a rhythmless cacophony against the metal floor, and her heart raced.
Would he be happy to see her? Or annoyed?
Marco stepped outside, scanning the faces of the sisters. A slow smile spread across his lips, and Sera felt light enough to float.
“Hey, hey,” he said in greeting. “Escobar said something about a favor?”
“W-well, yes,” Sera stammered, trying to gather her wits about her. She was trying to take in too much of him at once, and that was a mad thing to attempt. His hair was wet. He’d slicked it back out of his face and Sera stared dumbly at the exquisite cheekbones and the strong jaw that were so often obscured. He looked like one of the gladiators she’d seen in mythology texts. He could be someone’s champion, she realized.
Was someone’s champion. He’d helped save her, and Elken, and her sisters.
His shirt was a bit damp, too. She could see the droplets of water clinging to his chest. Perhaps he hadn’t dried off properly after a shower. A man his size must have needed quite a long time to completely dry off, and likely couldn’t reach everything. His back probably needed special attention. He was so tall and broad.
I could probably reach if he asked…
Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she wondered what that might be like, the two of them in tight quarters in a room with a closed door. His skin exposed and her wondering where to touch him.
Ara poked Sera’s arm.
“Hmm?” Blinking, Sera turned to her sister, whose eyebrow arched poignantly.
“Marco asked what you needed,” she said in Jekhani. “Did you not hear him?”
“Oh! I heard.” Flustered, Sera smoothed out some nonexistent wrinkles in her dress and cleared her throat. Then she pulled Elken closer so she could fidget the child’s hair. “I…see that you’re busy now, but I was hoping you could drive us.”
“Drive you? Where to?”
She gave the strap of Ara’s satchel a demonstrative little tug. “I did what you said. I made gifts to deliver today to the three closest farms, and walking so far seemed—”
“Ah, say no more.” He hopped down from the step and turned toward Jasper behind him. Sera hadn’t noticed the man standing there. “You don’t mind if we take a little detour on the way to town, do you? The most efficient route would put you in Little Gitano right after the third farm. That one’s closest to town.”
“Nah, I don’t mind,” Jasper said. “I just need to be in town by eight tonight so I can clock in for my shift. This’ll give me a chance to explore a little. I rarely have a good excuse to ride around. Lemme go get my stuff.” He retreated into The Tin Can.
Still smiling, Marco turned his gaze to Elken and dipped down from his considerable height to meet her gaze. “Hey! How was breakfast?”
She held up two fingers. “I had that many eggs.”
Ara huffed and muttered in Jekhani, “She was given that many. She only played with the second.”
“Is she telling you how much she doesn’t like me?” Marco asked Sera, and there was laughter in his eyes. If not for his smiling eyes, she decided, he’d look so much more dangerous. Like he had on the station when he’d had blood smeared on his face. “I don’t know a lick of Jekhani, but that sounded sketchy.”
“No,” Sera said, working the bolts around in her hand. “She was talking about how sometimes Elken plays with her food more than she eats it.”
“If say bad things,” Ara said in English, “I make sure you hear. No hide.”
“Gee, thanks,” Marco said.
“You are welcome.”
“Oh, damn. Forgot.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to Ara. “Did Eileen catch up to you last night? She’d picked up a book for you.”
Ara furrowed her brow and pointed to herself. “For me?”
“Yeah. Some kind of workbook about music notation or whatever. Western style. I guess she had a friend take a look, and he said that it was a good text for folks used to the Jekhan style.”
“Ooh! How interesting. Haven’t seen Eileen.”
“What’s that about Eileen?” Edgar called out.
“She’s got a book for Ara,” Jasper said.
Edgar appeared in the doorway beside Jasper a moment later, and was wiping his greasy hands on a rag. “Where the hell is she, anyway? I didn’t see her last night.”
“What did you do to her?” Ara asked.
Edgar gaped with incredulity. “Absolutely nothing!”
She snorted. “Yes, of course.”
“Seriously. For God’s sake…” Grunting, he rubbed the scruff on his chin and turned his gaze toward the sky. “I don’t think I did, anyway. She’s a hard lady to figure out even on the best of days.”
“I’ll remind you to get the book from her later,” Sera told her sister. To Edgar, she said, “I believe she, Fastida, and Precious spent the night in town. I imagine they’ll be back sometime today.”
Edgar fidgeted the band of his wrist COM and ground his teeth.
“I don’t understand why he doesn’t just sit her down and talk to her,” Ara muttered in Jekhani. “I swear, these men are like children. They constantly have to be told what to do.”
Edgar folded his arms over his chest and arched one of this thick eyebrows at her.
“Sorry.” Ara’s shrug indicated she was anything but that. “Forgot you spoke our tongue.”
“Maybe you’re right, though,” he said in English. “Maybe it’s high time me and the cowgirl had a little chat.”
“That sounds ominous,” Marco said.
“Nah. I’ll behave myself like a perfect gentleman. You know that.”
“Maybe that is problem,” Ara said.
“Huh?”
“Maybe…” Ara made a swirling gesture with her hand. “Maybe too much a gentleman.”
“You can’t possibly mean that.”
“I say it, I mean it.”
“Believe her,” Sera muttered, concentrating on a curl of Elken’s hair.
Unlike her sister, Ara was very good at compartmentalizing past from present, and not letting her traumas dictate how she’d live her life. She was bold that way—an artist who was fond of risks and who didn’t mind the occasional fight. Conflicts enriched Ara’s outlook.
They made Sera’s crumble.
Sera wanted to be more like Ara. She wanted to take risks again. She wanted to be able to bet on herself and not feel guilty about winning.
Once again, her gaze drifted to Marco and his gladiator’s face.
Calculated risk.
“All rightie then,” he said, rocking back on the heels of his boots. “Ready to go? We could start with our favorite dairy farmers. Maybe they’ll even have some cheese for us to sample.”
“Are you always thinking about food?” Jasper asked.
“Hunger is almost always at the forefront of my mind. Let’s put it that way.”
“He’s a big man,” Sera said quietly and turned toward the truck.
Ara caught up to her quickly and leaned in to whisper in Jekhani, “Yes, he is, isn’t he? Quite large.”
“Mm-hmm.” Sera gripped Elken’s hand with her free one and hurried the child along before the men could catch up. Ara rarely hashed her words.
“So, you’ve noticed that he’s quite large, then?”
“Hard to miss that.”
“What else have you noticed about him?”
“Hush.”
“I will not. You woke me from my delicious slumber, and you’re going to repay me with some words.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Ara.”
“I want you to tell me whether you noticed that Marco is a man, or simply if he’s a male.”
“I don’t understand the difference.” Sera let down the back gate of the truck and reached for the little step stool Trigr
ian kept latched at the right side. Elken always liked climbing up by herself and always insisted that they ride in the back. She enjoyed the wind in her face and Sera had to admit that after so many years cooped up in one kind of metal box or another, she did, too.
“Don’t try that with me.” Ara set her satchel on the floor and heaved herself up beside Elken. “You’re a lot of things, sister, but naive isn’t one of them.”
“I simply don’t know what you’re insinuating.” Sera pushed the step stool back into the built-in niche and caught Marco and Jasper approaching in her periphery. They needed to hurry the conversation along. Even if they didn’t speak Jekhani, they’d probably be piqued by the exasperation in the women’s tones.
“You want me to speak plainly? Fine.” Ara reached down, pressed her hands beneath Sera’s armpits, and heaved her up onto the raised surface. “I think you’ve looked at him, and not only in the assessment-of-danger sort of way.”
“What other way is there?” Sera pulled one of the bracing straps around Elken’s waist and then grabbed one for herself.
Ara huffed. “Fine. If you want to be coy, perhaps I’ll start seeing him myself. I’ll look at him as a man and not a male, and maybe you’ll be jealous when I take him to my bed.”
“You wouldn’t. You don’t want him.”
Ara studied her nails.
“Ara…”
“Hmm?” Ara picked at one already-pristine cuticle and smiled sweetly at Sera.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you should know that there’s no better person to confess to but me. I would understand. I know that desire isn’t an easy thing to make sense of, especially when you’d prefer to believe that you no longer have any.”
Sera cleared her throat and glanced down at Elken. Elken understood Jekhani fine when she was paying very good attention, but at the moment, she wasn’t paying very good attention to her mother and aunt. She was clapping her hands and squealing with glee that the truck was hovering off the ground. The technology wasn’t by any means new for Jekhans, but everything was a wonder for Elken.
“What do you want?” Ara asked.
Sera pressed her hand to her aching shoulder and shrugged. “Just friendship.”
Ara’s eyes could have rolled out of her head. “Right. Friendship.”
“What’s so wrong with that? Isn’t friendship as important as desire?”
“There’s nothing wrong with friendship. What’s wrong is you telling me that’s all there is. I don’t believe that.”
Sera ground her teeth and stole a glance through the hover-truck’s back window and into the cab.
Marco was driving. Jasper sat smiling in the passenger side with his left arm slung over the back of the seat. He was talking. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the subject must have been amusing.
“You can tell me things,” Ara said. “You know that, don’t you? I won’t judge you or mistakenly assume that you’re fully recovered from our ordeal now because you’ve taken interest in one Terran man.”
“He’s kind to me.”
“Many men are kind to you, little sister.”
“Yes, but…” Sera set her teeth into her bottom lip and slowly spread the fingers of her weak arm, biting harder as the pain seared up her ulna. She gave up the exercise. She’d only made the attempt to distract herself from the pain in her back, but now, they both hurt. “He doesn’t want anything from me, and that makes him different.”
“Ah. I understand.”
“Do you?”
Ara nodded sagely. “He’s safe, in your opinion.”
“He could be a friend.”
“But, is that what you want, Sera?” The corner of Ara’s lips crept up and her eyes narrowed. “You want a friend?”
Sera cleared her throat and stole a glance at the cab’s window. “What’s so wrong with that?”
“There are different sorts of friendship. What sort are you looking for? I should know this so I know how to comport myself accordingly.”
“You’re making a bigger deal of this than you should. I’m simply trying to see if I’m open to the possibilities. That’s all. I have Elken to worry about. I’m certainly not looking for anything more.”
Elken whipped around and looked at her mother.
Sera patted her on her head and put on her everything’s all right smile that she’d practiced every day since the child was born. Looking to Ara, she rooted around in her brain for the tidbits of Villtet language they’d learned during one particularly grueling nine-month period on a very dark, dim ship before Elken had arrived. “Uh, I don’t know, anymore, what normal is. I don’t know what I should want.”
“Hmm. There is no normal anymore,” Ara said, switching the conversation back to Jekhani. “Do what you want. Take what you want. You don’t need to fit anyone’s mold. I don’t plan to.”
Sera laughed. “You never did. What are your plans, anyway? You haven’t expressed interest in anyone. I do hope you haven’t been waiting for me to make a move of any sort before you’ve looked for the fulfillment you so obviously want.”
Ara’s nervous shrug hinted that that had been her plan exactly.
“You don’t have to do that for me. I wouldn’t be upset or angry if you decided to be with someone. Or someones.”
Ara picked at her cuticle again. “And if that someone was Terran?”
“I wouldn’t care. I’d worry like I would for anyone I loved, but I wouldn’t care. I’d trust that in the end you were taking proper precautions.”
“And I would do the same for you. I’d trust that you would guard yourself as necessarily. I trust that you’re strong enough for this. Now you need to convince yourself of that.”
Sera was nearly already convinced.
They were approaching the perimeter of the closest farm to the Beshni property. In less than five minutes, they’d be at the front door of the house, and Sera would have to leave their conversation in the past. She wanted everything off her chest—she wanted to be sure she was clear on what she intended and what her next steps were so that Ara would know if she needed to swoop in to rescue her. She was good at knowing that.
Sera watched the back of Marco’s dark head as he leaned forward and peered through the dust the hover turbines kicked up.
Jasper turned his head leftward, and her movement must have caught his eye, because he turned in his seat, smiling, and gave her a lazy nod of his head.
Anxiety grounded through her like an electric bolt. She would have been fine, if not for what Ara had said about his looks, and of course, Sera couldn’t help but to look for what Ara had seen. To look for that “sizzle” factor Ara always spoke of when comparing men.
And yes, Jasper Escobar had sizzle. In fact, he smoldered.
Too bad Sera didn’t want to be smoldered.
“You’re a hopeless case.” Ara leaned and waved cheerily at him. Settling back against the side of the truck bed, she furrowed her brow and rubbed her chin. “Huh.”
“What?” Sera peered sideways again at the window. Jasper had faced forward once more. She didn’t know what it was about the man that terrified her so. He hadn’t done anything to deserve her fear. Not really, anyway.
“Nothing.” Ara pulled the satchel against her chest and sighed wistfully. “I wonder if Marco will take you to Earth. I’d like to see Earth.”
“You’re jumping way too far ahead and without sufficient provocation.”
“Uh-huh. Friendship tends to turn into other things, or so I’ve heard.”
“Heard from who?”
“Friends in town. Many who were on The Tin Can with us after the rescue have already taken Terran lovers. Such a practical bunch, but I suppose Jekhan women have a reputation for that.”
“We do.” Sera laid her head on top of Elken’s and closed her eyes. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only one who hasn’t moved on with her life.”
“We’ve always been a very forward-moving race. Som
etimes, we do what we have to do, even if we’re afraid to. From the time the Tyneali abducted their first breeders from Earth, the women here have always known that we’ve had to give up our ability to make certain choices in order to support the greater good.”
“Yes, our women were always expected to enter a trio even if they had no desire to be in a relationship because we had to do our part to support the population growth. We needed to help keep our men alive and the birthrate robust.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of Jekhan men who are appalled that we would consider human men first given how badly they need us. I hear the rumblings in town.”
Sera picked up her head and opened her eyes to find that her sister’s expression was grave. “What are they saying?”
“Ridiculous things that aren’t all that threatening, but are actually pretty comical, if you think about them.” Ara leaned up and peered over the side of the truck.
Marco was slowing them down a bit as they rounded a large outcrop. The loose stones could do major damage to the turbines if he wasn’t careful.
“Tell me, and I’ll judge whether or not they’re worth laughing at.”
“Fine.” Ara forced out a breath and smoothed her hands over her dress’s bodice. “They’re saying they’ll bring in more human women, as if we’d be offended by that.”
Sera blinked. Just blinked.
She didn’t know what to say, but she wouldn’t have called the situation funny. Did the men really think the local women were such narcissists? If there were women on Earth willing to travel all the way to Jekh and commit to relationships with a duo of broody, hovering males, then they could have them. In fact, that would be less stress for the Jekhan women.
“Perhaps we should start a campaign,” Sera said, smoothing down Elken’s flyaway bangs. “We could have Brenna put out a message on her Twitter thing.”
“Mmm.” The husky laugh that had aroused the attentions of hundreds of men flowed from Ara’s throat. It’d always made Sera smile. So uniquely Ara. She could always find her sister in a crowded room by listening for her laugh. “Oh, yes. The message could say, Wanted—fertile masochists. Bring your own lubricant.”
