Wager: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 4)
Page 24
“Make room for what?”
“My things.”
“What?” He was starting to wonder if they were having two different conversations, or if perhaps he was a few sentences behind in the same one.
“Mmm.” She nodded curtly and opened the next drawer. That one wasn’t any better. That was where his socks lived. He scrounged for two that sort of looked alike and didn’t bother balling the mates together when he took them out of the dryer. “I figured I should leave some of my things here.”
“Why?”
“So that I can tidy up in the mornings after I’ve spent the night.”
Something wasn’t connecting. “Wait, I don’t—”
“Go on.” She shouldered him toward the bathroom. He probably outweighed her by eighty pounds, but standing still would have probably caused her to screw up her good arm. He didn’t want to hurt her, so with each bump from her, he moved a little more backward.
“What are you doing?” he asked, even though that was perfectly obvious. She was turning on the water in the shower. What he didn’t quite understand was why.
Humming a jaunty little tune, she tugged at the fastener of Marco’s pants and pulled the zipper down. “You should get in before the water pressure tapers off.”
“I, well, yeah,” he said, pushing his pants down. “I mean, I know about the weak water pressure. But why are you undressing me?”
She bent and untied the laces of his boots, still humming.
Perplexed, he stepped out of one boot, then the other, and endured the humiliation of her peeling down his sweaty socks.
“Step out,” she said, indicating his pants.
He did, and immediately stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed to hide his shame. Blushing wasn’t something his body was inclined to do, but he was so out of sorts that his brain was processing the situation slower than his body. His skin had flushed pink down to his knees.
He sighed at himself and scrubbed water out of his eyes.
“Wash well,” Sera said. “Every fold and crevice. Do you need help?”
“Um. No?”
“I only want to make sure you’re perfect.”
“Pardon me?” Being the brother of two of the biggest assholes in Boston and beyond, Marco recognized sarcasm when he heard it, and Sera had spoken the word “perfect” with a certain inflection Erin might have called “stank.” Apparently, mild-mannered Sera had spontaneously developed an attitude problem.
He rolled his eyes.
Of course she had. The disposition had probably rubbed off of any number of the humans around, the same way as that virus the newcomers had brought from the Barrens. The attitude problem was probably harder to get rid of, though.
He pushed the curtain aside and found Sera glowering and drumming her right fingers against her left bicep with impatience.
“Wait. You’re mad at me?” He rubbed water out of his eyes again. The goddamned shower head sprayed all over the place. Yet another thing for him to replace. “Why are you mad at me?”
“I’m not angry. I’m helping you.”
“Helping me what?”
“Helping you become the tarjot.”
“Tarjot? You gotta pardon my dearth of Jekhani vocabulary, but I have no idea what that is.”
Grunting, she grabbed his hand, turned it over, and then squirted shampoo into his palm. “Wash,” she spat.
Furrowing his brow, he scrubbed his head.
“A tarjot,” she said, “is a man who doesn’t fight for the woman who’s shown him interest. It’s an expletive. I suppose the Earth equivalent might be a bitch.”
“Hold the fuck up.” He dunked his head under the water which was still going every-damn-where and tried to rinse out the suds as quickly as he could, but the soap seemed to be multiplying instead of diluting.
Shit.
Growling, he closed his eyes and scrubbed faster. “I’m so goddamned confused. I can’t do anything right. At first, I thought you needed space, so I didn’t pursue you.”
“And?”
“And, well, obviously that was a mistake on my part. If I would have known you’d like me a little, maybe I would have said something to you sooner. But, I don’t know why you’re mad at me. I stepped back so you could have a chance with someone who doesn’t have his head shoved up his ass.”
She treated him to another of those long silences.
As soon as the rinse water from his hair turned clear, he looked out and found her still glowering.
“I offered myself to you,” she said through gritted teeth after taking a deep breath.
“You did. Yes. And I’m flattered because you’re…well, you’re Sera, but I know in this place, we have to be practical.”
Her head tilted quizzically. She stopped drumming her arm, and instead she rubbed the side of her bicep. She’d probably drummed her flesh black and blue. “What is so practical about you throwing me away for someone else? Who is that practical for? Not me. Any man could give me children and bring income into the household. Jekhan men would give me more space to do as I please as the culture indicates that such is typical and proper. A Terran man would expect more attention, which is fine if I only have one of them. I would not have offered myself to you if I wasn’t willing to give you the attention. So, where does the practicality come into play, hmm? You give me away because I’m too much work, or because I’m not whole?”
“Hell no!”
“Then what?” She shoved a bar of soap into his hand. “If you’re not a tarjot who’ll truss himself up prettily and deliver his woman to a competitor as though she’s a gift, then tell me what the circumstances are. Tell me why you’re so eager to throw me at Jasper.”
“I—” He shut his mouth. What he said didn’t matter, and he suspected that she wouldn’t appreciate any reasoning that wasn’t “I fucked up.”
Hell, if he’d been in her shoes, he would have been steaming mad, too. Rejection was no stranger to him, but he’d never once been given away by a woman who didn’t want him. No one had ever tried to pass the buck. He hadn’t realized that was what he was doing.
“Okay. Listen, Sera, the truth is I slept with you knowing that he was going to approach you, and I felt like shit immediately afterward. I like the guy, you know?”
Her fingers took up that drumming pattern again and her mouth twisted into a frown. “Are you aware that he paid for access to me? Does that make you feel less depraved?”
“What are you talking about?”
She pushed out a long breath and gave the side of the shower wall a little pound. That was the most violent he’d ever seen her. In the scheme of things, that thump didn’t carry a lot of power, but the emotion was there. She hurt, and he’d hurt her. “Gods, Marco. You try to be noble but no one else is. Can’t you see that you’ll never be happy if you’re not a little selfish? This isn’t Earth. The rules are different here.”
He dug the heels of his palms against his eyes and rubbed. For a minute, he rubbed and waited for the truth to present itself. He had no new revelations, though, because he’d always known the truth.
She was good for him, and he wanted her so fucking bad. In his mind, “Sera” had come to mean “satisfied.” He never felt used up when they interacted. Never felt like he’d wasted all of his emotional currency in a transaction that would never bear fruit. He always took something away.
She was right that he should have been fighting for that.
“I’m starting to see that.”
“Do you want me?” she asked softly.
“Of course I want you.” Loved her, even. That’s what that feeling was when he felt like he couldn’t breathe in ways that had nothing to do with his asthma. Like he was doing without something he couldn’t survive long-term without. “I want you.”
She slid her hand down the wall and, features softening, said quietly, “Then act like you do. Please.”
He took the towel she tossed toward him.
“No excu
ses. This is the Jekhan way. We accept that this is the way things will be, and we’ll overcome obstacles as we approach them.”
“My obstacle is that I’ll be losing a friend.”
“If you do, he wasn’t much of a friend to start with.”
Maybe she’s right.
He scrubbed his face with the towel and stepped onto the rug to dry off. Most women moved when he was in their space, but Sera held her ground, staring up at him with a dare in her eyes.
“I’m not a…tarjot.” He trailed his fingers along her collar, stopping when he approached her cleavage.
She pressed his hand over her breast. “Nothing on me is off-limits to you.”
“You’re reading my thoughts.”
“I’m glad that they’re easy sometimes.” She pushed up onto her tiptoes and tilted her head back.
He’d always been shit at reading body language, but he would have bet his dick she wanted to be kissed.
He kissed her, and she let out the sweetest little moan.
Finally doing something right.
But he had to ask. Had to clear the air so he knew where he stood with her. “Sera. Sweetie, you said that we have to be Jekhan about this. To be practical about this.”
“Hmm?” She slid her hand down the front of his towel and brazenly cupped his erection.
Jesus.
As she worked the terrycloth material against his tender cock, he had a hard time remembering what he was going to query—what thing was holding him back from true freedom.
And then she tugged the top of his towel down.
His cock jutted forth and something in her wicked grin sparked the memory. The words came rushing back as he wrapped his fingers around her questing hand.
“Sera. Are you accepting me because I’m safe or because you really want me?”
She rolled her eyes and nudged him toward his bed. She unfastened her sling, pulled off her leggings, and pushed him down onto his back. Holding her tunic up at her waist, she slid down onto his shaft. Wet heat in a tight caress that made his stomach burn and balls throb.
“Fuck,” he murmured and yanked her tunic over her head. He wanted to see her in the light. He wanted to see if there was resignation on her face or eagerness.
She breathed out an indulgent moan and put her head back as she worked her hips in a figure-eight. “You make me feel like a maniac,” she said on a rasp of breath. “This is all I think about now. You and your touch, and how kind you are. Does that answer your question?”
As he pressed his thumb to her clit and rubbed, he didn’t feel so kind, but he nodded anyway. He wasn’t about to be anyone’s fucking tarjot.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The view panel on the side of the bunker was dark and the input pads weren’t capturing every tap, but Luke was certain the machine inside was registering the programming. Occasionally, he’d hear clicks and whines in the inner mechanism that indicated that all the hacking Owen was doing was serving some purpose, but after hours of fiddling with the damned thing, Luke was ready to resort to brute force.
“That’s the last of the code,” Owen said with a shrug. “I don’t have any more to put in.” He gave the panel a little thump with his fist, and the machinery made a suspicious hiccupping sound.
Ais, soothingly clucking her tongue at Michael, swayed the baby in his sling. “So, what do we do now?”
“We have to wait,” Luke said. “We’ll check in a few minutes to see what the commands do to the connected systems.”
“Mmm,” Owen said, “if we followed the instructions correctly, some power should be shunted toward this input box and the system that powers this security feature should start functioning in a manner that’s at least close to normal.”
Hauge strolled over to the box with his hands in his pockets and his face set in consternation. “How do you know how to do this…hacking work? Is that not illegal?”
“Who are you to talk about shit being illegal?” Luke asked. “You being on this planet right now is illegal.”
“I did what I had to do.” So damned blasé. The guy had probably been born knowing how not to give a shit.
“And that’s all we’re doing. Besides, I don’t think there are any laws about this kind of thing on Jekh. Even on Earth, there were people paid to hack things on purpose. I’m pretty sure Precious did that, but she won’t say one way or another.”
“I could almost guarantee that she did,” Owen said. “Hanging around hooligans like us, she was bound to find some trouble like that to get into. She was getting headhunted by think tanks right out of college and being offered obscene amounts of money, so whatever job she ended up taking had to pay even more.”
Luke grunted. “I guarantee her tax bracket was way higher than mine. She had a sick apartment. Spacious with a great view. Farm living must be a hell of an adjustment for her.”
“She’s fine.” Ais dropped a kiss atop Michael’s head and swayed some more. “I think the travel for her trade runs occupies her. When she comes back to Jekh, she rests. She doesn’t complain.”
“Not about that, anyway,” Luke muttered. His little sister was a champion complainer. If someone had given out medals for whining and nagging, she would have been the ultimate grand prize gold-level champion. Of course, she always clammed up when Ma was around. She knew which side her bread was buttered on.
Hauge let out an indolent scoff and swirled a tuft of Michael’s hair beneath his fingers. “All things considered, I believe I have been unfairly judged.”
“Cry me a river.” Luke squinted at the screen on the input box. There was a little character, a few pixels wide, flashing in the top left corner. “Ais, is that symbol from the Tynealean or Jekhani alphabet?”
She squeezed between the men and pushed up onto her tiptoes to see the thing. “Hmm. Both. It is one of the few characters that appears in both writing systems. Vas is the symbol for ten.”
The character changed.
“That’s nine.”
Another change.
“Eight.” She canted her head with curiosity. “Is the computer counting down, do you think?”
“Looks like it. What’s it counting down to, though?”
“Should we stand back?” Hauge asked, not bothering to disguise his apprehension. He pulled his sister a few paces away from the wall.
She sighed, but complied.
Owen held his info pod up to the panel and scowled at the data it was sending back to his wrist computer. Luke leaned in for a look. The little device was relaying a stream of code the bunker was obviously processing off-screen.
“Does any of that make sense?” Luke asked him.
“I think the response is benign.” Owen grimaced in his patented don’t-quote-me-on-that way. “I think the program is surpassing the override.”
“And that’s what we want.”
“In theory.”
The panel stopped counting down, and Luke held his breath. In theory sounded about right. The truth was, they were low on information. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into. All they knew was that they were the good guys. Supposedly.
Owen didn’t move. He stared, unblinking, at the panel, until there was a click on the doors built into the ground. Something inside the large metal panels whirred, the gears grinding at a pitch that indicated that shit was broken and by the time all was said and done, the doors wouldn’t lock the same way anymore.
“Shit,” Owen muttered. “We just wanted to get the intercom on. I don’t want to spring the doors open on them without warning.”
A loud, grating, squealing noise had them all slapping their hands over their ears and gnashing their teeth at the high frequency.
The doors were parting slow as sludge, and there had to have been something caught in the track of one—some foreign object it was dragging as the door receded.
By the time the doors were open as far as they could go, which was only halfway, Luke was about ready to pop his own eardrums.
A thin beam of light illuminated downward.
“COM camera on,” he commanded. “Identify any visible objects.”
“Ladder,” the pleasant, feminine computer voice said. “Approximately ten meters in length, likely metal composition. Floor space of approximately two square meters. There is a closed portal near the end of the ladder.”
“Anything else?”
“There are no other objects.”
Luke pulled his wrist back and had his computer stand down. He looked to Owen. “You want me to?”
“To what?” Hauge asked.
“Go down, obviously.” If anyone in their little crew was the metaphorical “red-shirt” on the mission, it was him. He was expendable. Ais obviously had a baby to care for. Owen had Ais to care for. And Hauge was…some kind of royal. People probably cared about him.
Luke was just Luke. Much loved, but certainly not setting the world ablaze with his contributions.
Ais pulled away from Hauge and hurried over. “Is it safe?”
Luke shrugged. “No way of knowing, hon. I don’t think they have any good weapons down there, or if they do have anything, they’re going to have to get pretty close to use them. I’m going to talk all the way down so they can hear me approach. Hopefully they won’t feel too threatened.”
“I should go,” Ais said.
“No,” Luke, Owen, and Hauge said in chorus.
“Why not?” she asked, huffing with a note of indignant annoyance. “I look much more like them than any of you, and I speak their language. They won’t hurt me.”
“You can’t know that with certainty,” Hauge said. “Desperate people do rash things and worry about the consequences later.”
Ais huffed again and put a little more energy into her Michael-swaying. “I do not believe they will hurt me. If their mindsets are anything like mine was when I was imprisoned in the Tyneali lab, they’ll still think often of rescue or escape. They may not be kind, but they won’t do anything to undermine their chances at freedom.”