When Stone did nothing but stare at him, Warren sighed and dropped the suit at his feet. "Who would've thought you'd be shy." He turned toward a control panel. "What's your pleasure—animal, vegetable, or mineral?"
"Just what the hell is this?"
"I told you, it's virtual reality hunting simulations. You put the gear on, hook yourself to the wires, pick your program, and you're there. It'll look, feel, even smell real. So what'll it be? Do you want to chase down people, animals, or things? Hurry up, the kidlet's waiting on me."
Curiosity got the better of him.
"Dealer's choice," he muttered, slowly crouching to pick up the suit.
"Roger that. The hood's attached to the back of the suit. The wires are self-explanatory. To get in, press this button; to get out, there'll be a menu that drops down—ah, screw it, you'll figure it out." He started walking away. "Just remember, it's not really real. Don't stay in there too long—it'll mess with your head."
Stone watched the android's back for a second before something occurred to him. "Hey!"
At his exclamation Warren turned, expression impatient.
"What isn't Mea telling us about that colony's leader?"
The android's face lost all expression, staring at Stone for a minute before answering, "He's a slaver. She has a thing about slavers—her parents were killed by them."
Then he left, and Stone scowled down at the suit in his hand. That explained a couple of things, namely why she'd started a fight with a bunch of them back on Belata. But it also meant she was taking the kid into slaver territory. His first instinct was to track her down and argue with her about it—that it was too damned dangerous for the kid. On the other hand, his earlier frustration hadn't gone anywhere, and he knew what would happen if he got within arms reach of her. Besides, the kid wasn't his problem anymore.
Growling low in his throat, he stripped and yanked on the suit. It was more like a body glove, covering every inch of him including his hands and feet. He twitched at the curious rasping feel of it against his skin. Pressing the button on the control panel that Warren had indicated, he attached the wires to their places on the suit and pulled the hood over his head. It felt like smothering at first, since it only left small airholes for his nose and hugged his face like a second skin. Then the wires lifted him into the air, and a whole new world opened up around him.
He was in a jungle, something he'd only ever seen on vid-screens. The air was thick with moisture and sound. And smell. There was the sweet smell of a hundred different kinds of flowers and green growing things, but under that was the rich smell of decaying plant matter.
And under that—blood. It stung his senses sharply and he crouched, caution slowing his movements. Looking around, he saw nothing but green jungle, birds, and bugs. Lifting his head, he sampled the air carefully, and then moved with as much stealth as he could toward the scent of blood. Even so, he nearly stumbled over the body.
It was human—he couldn't tell if it had been a man or woman, it was so mangled. There was something around its neck. Eyeing the surrounding jungle carefully to make sure that this wasn't a trap, he crouched by the body and reached for the object. That was when his palm began to vibrate, and he jerked his hand back in surprise, realizing only then that there was some kind of metallic device fitted around his fingers. Maybe some kind of scanner? He held it back out toward the body and waited while it vibrated against his palm again.
"Analysis complete," a toneless, sexless voice chimed in his ear. "Probable cause of death: severe hemorrhaging from multiple locations. Probable manifestation of death: Nacrid mesotania, man-eater, 92.8 percent certainty."
An image formed on his palm, and he stared at the creature in amazement. Apparently a Nacrid was a large cat, striped gray and black with a set of fangs on it damned near the length of his forearm. Definitely a man-eater. And apparently, he was supposed to hunt it.
"God," he muttered.
"Query," the voice promptly responded.
He ignored it, reaching out again for the metal thing around the victim's neck. It was an ident band, announcing the dead body to be Jones, Carter A., with a long title ending in "ologist." A scientist. And a little far away from his laboratory.
The details of this program were incredible. It was hard not to believe that he was really in a jungle, feet sinking into soft, sandy soil, and fingers slick with blood from the dead man.
A sound penetrated his fascination. It was a distant roar of an animal, probably his Nacrid. It was almost as though the beast was challenging him to hunt it. So he did.
An eternity later, long after Stone had stopped thinking of his surroundings as a program and started living it, the jungle suddenly blinked out of existence. Disoriented, he floated in darkness until solid ground came up under the soles of his feet. He stumbled, confused by the lack of light and a suffocated feeling until the hood was pulled off his head and he remembered who he was.
"Sonv'a bitch!" His voice slurred as though he'd forgotten human speech.
"I told you not to stay in there too long."
The android was frowning at him. He slumped against the wall, struggling with two different realities. He might remember where he was, but his body seemed slow to catch on. He kept seeing flickers of motion out of the corner of his eyes, and his muscles twitched with remembered movement. It had been a deadly game between him and his Nacrid cat—Who would be predator and who would be prey? He'd been pared down to the bare bones of himself, all primitive, senses pushed to the limit. Kill or be killed. It was hard to register the safety of his surroundings when adrenaline still surged like electricity through his body.
It had been the most challenging test of his survival skills that he'd ever had.
"Christ Jesus."
"Yeah, I thought you'd like that. I left you some food in the mess. Ema can give you a restorative if you think you need it." The slight rise in his tone made the last sentence sound like a question, and Stone shook his head.
"Figures. It's late—you should rest, Stone."
The android left, and Stone slowly stripped out of the VR suit, the sterile air of the ship cool against his sweat slicked skin. With deliberate care, he pulled on his clothes and made his way out of the gym, trying to ignore how the hum of the ship made him paranoid. Resisting the urge to look over his shoulder constantly, he went to the mess hall to eat, shoveling the food down as though he hadn't seen it in days.
The meal steadied him, and he began to think more clearly. That program explained a lot about these hunters—no wonder Mea hadn't been afraid of him. Why be afraid of a man when you've spent time staring down a Nacrid?
Thinking of Mea started a different kind of chain reaction in his body, though, and he got to his feet with a shake of his head. Clearing the table, he left the mess and walked down the corridor to his quarters. His muscles still twitched in reaction to the hunt even though his mind was starting to fog with weariness and he could smell himself. A shower would help him sleep.
It didn't really work the way he wanted it to. After the shower he felt refreshed, energized even—he was still pumped from the program. And thoughts of Mea kept sneaking up on him. He tried to avoid them, pacing shirtless and barefoot to work off this new burst of energy, but images of her asleep, warm, and smelling of secret female things steadily shredded his self-control. And pissed him off.
She'd called him a human being, but so far he'd been nothing but an animal, reacting instead of acting. Worse, if he kept touching her, he was going to wind up being her animal. That thought made his guts twist in fury and fear, but images of her wouldn't leave him alone. He tortured himself with memories of last night until it suddenly occurred to him that she'd wanted him. He wouldn't put it past her to fake it, but he knew somehow that her responses had been real.
She wanted him. He was out the door and across the corridor between one ragged breath and another. Again, her door was not locked. Torn between anger and need, he stepped stiff-legged into her quart
ers. Mea was not asleep or in bed. She'd been pacing her quarters and had on another shapeless wrap. When she saw him, she sagged as if in relief.
"Thank god." Not waiting for him this time, she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering against his mouth. "Where have you been?"
Unable to stop himself, he kissed her deeply while a frantic voice in the back of his mind demanded control—some kind, any kind, or he was lost for good. The only thing that saved him from caving without a struggle was her wrap—if she'd been naked, it would have been hopeless. At least, that's what he told himself while he pulled her arms away, still kissing her desperately. She wrestled with him briefly until he started pushing her toward the bed. He wasn't going to be able to stop touching her, but goddamn it, she was going to suffer for tricking him, trapping him, driving him insane. He was going to make her beg.
If he'd been thinking clearly, he would have seen the huge flaw in this plan, but what he was doing couldn't be called thinking. Not even close—he was reacting again, to his anger and to her taste, her smell, her passion.
Lowering them both to the bed, he caught both of her wrists in one hand and held them over her head, pulling her wrap open with the other hand. Then he started teasing her, torturing her with his mouth and hand, at the same time trying to limit contact with the rest of his body. He found out it didn't matter how much of him touched her, though, even with his pants still on. The flaw became painfully clear—in torturing her, he was torturing himself.
Her skin was silky soft, and she tasted like the sweetest dream, but it was her responses that made him ache in every muscle. She writhed and arched under his hand, gasped and shivered at every touch of his mouth, but even though her hands clenched repeatedly, she didn't try to break his grip on her wrists. The little moans and whimpers she made in the back of her throat were maddening, and he was on fire, shuddering with the need to be inside her.
But stubbornly he continued to punish them both, teasing and tantalizing without fulfillment until she gasped out his name, "Bay, please! Oh god, I love you, please."
Her words went through him like a powerful jolt of electricity, and his control disintegrated as though it'd never existed. He found himself full length on her, growling like an animal into her mouth and thrusting wildly into her. Moments later she arched under him, keening while her body contracted around him. His world blew apart.
Dying must feel like that, was his first thought when his brain started working again. At first he just tried to remember how to breathe, dimly amazed that any part of him still worked at all. But memory was a ruthless thing, and once it got its teeth into him, it shook him like a dog and didn't let go—memory of his own reaction to Mea's words. The abyss opened again in front of him, and he slid relentlessly towards the edge, darkness pulling at him.
Gasping, he rolled away from her, this time toward the door. Forcing his rubbery legs to hold him, he pulled up his pants—he hadn't even taken them all the way off—and moved toward the exit. She said and did nothing to stop him. He refused to look at her as he left.
Back in his own quarters, Stone dropped chest down onto the cool metal floor and tried to get himself back under control—body and brain. He'd set out to make her beg, damn it, and that's what she did. That's why he'd lost it, not because of anything else she'd said. He almost had himself convinced that this was the truth when sleep finally caught up with him.
His last thought before drifting under was that he was going to have to avoid her from now on, whatever the cost.
Chapter 20
The next day, Stone found out that avoiding her wasn't going to be too damned difficult, since she was avoiding him. He spent the day with the kid on the pretext of using Regan as a buffer—which turned out to be a pretty flimsy excuse, since they saw Mea maybe twice the whole day. She smiled and laughed with the kid, but he didn't even get a look, as though he was suddenly invisible. He should have been relieved, but he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never did—that day.
He wasn't totally off the hook, though. Regan managed to torture him in a different way, coming up with little phrases like "If you stay, we can do this every day" and "We make a great family, don't you think?" She called him Dad like she'd forgotten he'd ever had another name and smiled at him like he was the sun, moon, and stars. It made his skin itch like it wanted to crawl right off of him, but he put up with it, staying with her even after it became clear that Mea wasn't going to bother him. He even stayed with her when Warren called her to her lessons. The subject was boring as hell—some history thing about asteroid mining—but the kid treated it and the android the same way she had treated Stone and knife throwing. And she never forgot he was there. Every once in a while she'd look over and ask his opinion or just smile at him.
Real damned irritating, but at least she was consistent. As the day wore on, Mea's absence started to prick like a splinter under his skin. And the android was too quiet. Occasionally he'd catch Warren watching him with a strange, unreadable expression, and his attitude toward Stone was suddenly bland and almost courteous. He started to feel like he was back on Nacrid territory, hunted and paranoid.
But nothing happened. The day ended, he saw the kid off to bed and went to his own quarters, all without incident. Sleep avoided him as neatly as Mea had.
Stone's final day on the Starfire was much different. He knew he was in trouble when he entered the mess hall that morning and Mea smiled at him. It went downhill from there, in a damned hurry. She didn't take her eyes off him once, and by the time he got a plateful of food and sat down, every inch of his skin was on fire and beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. Then the kid deserted him, cheerfully announcing that she'd be in the gym. At least the android was still there, muttering over a digital pad. That was the only reason Stone didn't bolt, figuring she wouldn't do anything in front of Warren. He figured wrong.
About two minutes after the kid left, Mea stood and sauntered around to his side of the table with a terrible grace. Frozen by the look in her eyes, he didn't move as she braced one hand on the back of his neck and straddled him, swift as a cat. Sinking with deliberate provocation onto his lap, she smiled into his eyes.
"So, what do you want to do today, lover?"
He didn't hear Warren leave—had forgotten he even existed as some tension inside him snapped. With a sweep of one arm, he cleared the table and laid her flat on her back, pressing his body into hers and kissing her savagely. Breakfast was postponed for a long time.
The mess hall wasn't the only place he had her that day. In the afternoon it was the gym, and then in the evening they started in the control room, finishing in her quarters. Twice. She wasn't playing by the rules she'd set for herself—was in fact very demanding, and he couldn't seem to get enough of her. That should've terrified him, but she didn't give him time. And it didn't seem important when he'd see the light in her eyes or hear her laugh softly in his ear. It was only when he was lying in her bed recovering with her curled against him that he started thinking again. Too late.
A deep, heavy lethargy pushed him into the soft cushion, but that alone didn't alarm him until he tried to move and couldn't. Then he tried to speak—and couldn't. He fought it with all he had, but his eyes wouldn't stay open. Just before he was pulled into unconsciousness, Mea lifted her head and looked at him. Her face was streaked with tears.
"I'm sorry," was the last thing he heard before darkness closed over his head.
Chapter 21
Sluggish and groggy, Stone fought his heavy eyelids open and struggled up on one elbow. Something was wrong, but a fog filled his mind and he couldn't think straight. Blinking slowly, he looked around. He was in Mea's quarters, but she wasn't there and there was a strange stillness to his surroundings. He felt like he had when Ema was healing him, but that would mean—
Memory came back and he shot to his feet, ignoring dizziness to yank on his clothes. She'd drugged him. Rage flowed through him, making him shake with viol
ence, and he gave it free rein to bury a stinging sense of betrayal.
Fiercely denying any thought that he might have been starting to trust her, he stalked out into the corridor and bellowed her name. When he got no response, from her or anyone else, he finally realized why the ship seemed so still. The engines no longer throbbed under his heels. They must have landed. On Xerxes or had she taken him somewhere else? And where the hell was she?
Swiftly he searched the ship. The transport was missing and so were Mea, Regan, and the android. Full of thwarted anger, he barreled into the infirmary.
"Where are they? Where've we landed? Why'd she drug me, goddammit!"
"Calm down! There's no need to shout; I can hear you just fine. They are in the transport, collecting the information needed for the present mission. We are on Xerxes, as promised. As to why she drugged you, well, that's my fault in a round about way."
She paused and Stone stalked toward her table, practically vibrating with aggression.
"Spill it or I'll—"
"No need to threaten. You humans! So volatile. She and I had an argument a few days ago when you decided to stay on board. I accused her of taking my advice, and she didn't take the accusation well."
"What advice?" he muttered between clenched teeth.
"After the last time you deserted them, I told her she should—let's see, I believe my exact words were 'drag his butt back here and give him what he wants for a few days, then see whether or not he feels like running away.' She insisted that you'd been given free choice in the matter, and I disagreed."
Stone began pacing, mouthing a string of curses.
"Not that I think she forced you back here in any way—she would never have hurt you like that. But humans are frequently driven by their hormones, and I think you were forced into the choice that you made by simple biology. Anyway, Mea took my accusation very much to heart and was determined to give you the opportunity to make a clean decision. She said that she needed to know that any choice you made was a free one, not hampered by physical or emotional blackmail. She drugged you so that you'd not be swayed by them when we arrived on Xerxes, one way or the other."
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