“Come,” he said, reaching down to take her hands again. “It is not far.”
* * *
It wasn’t actually that far, for which Mara was intensely grateful.
Ozendi half-carried her a few more meters toward the bottom of the valley and then along the length of it for a minute or two. It felt like an eternity, but eventually he paused next to a place where the valley wall rose up in a sheer cliff.
“There is a small cave back here,” he said, his breath coming quickly. “Shine your light on the cliff there.”
Mara obliged, and sure enough, she could see a narrow, vertical slit of darkness half obscured by brush.
“That’s good,” she said. “Nice and hidden. Is it big enough for both of us?”
“Yes,” Ozendi said. “Hold on, I will have to carry you.” He bent and tightened the arm around her waist, while slipping his other arm beneath her knees. She could tell he was trying his best to be gentle, but pain shot through her at his touch. She pressed her lips together so hard that they hurt, but a muffled sound of distress escaped anyway.
“I am sorry,” he said, breathless.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Just get me there.”
Mara tucked her head close to his chest, feeling his warmth radiating through his flight suit beneath her cheek. She felt him duck as he stepped through the narrow cave opening, angling her body so she didn’t hit the rock walls. It had been dark outside, but that gloom was nothing compared to the blackness inside the cave. Ozendi took only two steps and then stopped.
“Shine your light,” he said. “I want to make sure this is a safe place to put you down.”
Mara played her light around them. The dim redness seemed impossibly bright in the full dark as it showed an uneven, undulating wall and a sloping, dirt-covered floor that held nothing but a pile of old bones and branches.
“We are not the first to shelter here, it seems,” Ozendi said, his words rumbling through his chest. “But I do not smell anything, so I think the pile is at least a season old. I’m going to put you down now, all right? Then I’ll see about making a fire. The cave opens out behind us, so we should have adequate ventilation.”
“Is that smart?” Mara asked. “What if it draws the assholes to us?”
“We should be shielded well enough in this cave,” he said. “And we could both use a little light and warmth, at least until we sleep.”
Since her hands and feet had stopped shivering and gone numb with cold a while ago, Mara didn’t argue. She just braced herself for the lancing, stabbing pain as Ozendi bent to set her gently down on the cave floor. She scooted herself backwards so she was leaning against the wall, and then took a moment to congratulate herself for not passing out from the agony as she did so.
She pulled her backpack into her lap and began digging in it for tools and supplies while Ozendi used the piled-up branches to create a small, merry blaze.
“You were right,” Mara said softly as the fire crackled in the makeshift pit he’d scratched out of the dirt on the floor. “We did need a fire. I don’t know why, but I feel better having one.”
“Fire is light and warmth and comfort,” Ozendi said, giving her a smile that seemed to flicker in the uncertain light. “We who have spent time planetside crave it on an instinctive level. On the Spins, it is a different story. I have many friends who are not comfortable with fire at all.”
“Fire is dangerous in space.” Mara nodded. “I get that.”
“Do you have those fruits? I will roast some. They’re delicious that way.”
She held out the bag, and he dug around in it. He grabbed two of the fist-sized fruits and cut them open, then removed the sweet flesh and speared it on the tip of the knife she’d seen him carrying in his pocket.
“The sugar caramelizes with the heat,” he said as he held the speared fruit down into the yellow flames. “And the fruit puffs slightly. It’s very good. Try it!”
“Like a marshmallow,” Mara said as she accepted the offering when he held it out to her. She tossed the hot, sticky mess from hand to hand and then popped it in her mouth, sucking in air to help it cool. It even tasted a little bit like a roasted marshmallow: all crispy, burned sugar. “It’s delicious.”
“What is a ‘marshmallow?’” Ozendi asked as he speared another bit on his knife. “Is it a fruit from your planet?”
“Not a fruit, a candy,” she said. “It’s basically spun sugar. They’re terrible for you, and even worse when roasted. But they’re delicious. Donnie used to love them.”
“And who is Donnie?” Ozendi asked, a joking edge to his tone. “A lover? A partner you left behind?”
“No,” Mara said, her voice going quiet and empty. “My son.”
Ozendi inhaled, and Mara could tell he had turned toward her, but she kept her eyes steadfastly on the flames.
“Mara, I am so sorry,” Ozendi said. “I did not know you left a child behind.”
Mara nodded. “He was four,” she said, keeping her voice even. She never talked about Donnie, or much about her old life at all, but all of a sudden, the words seemed to well up inside her, wanting nothing more than to spill out into the flickering firelight of the cave. “His dad and I divorced, but we stayed on good terms. We used to take Donnie camping every summer. He loved to roast marshmallows and make s’mores. He’s dead now, I suppose.”
“You don’t know that,” Ozendi said.
Mara let out a harsh laugh. “Yes, I do,” she said. “It’s been over a hundred years since that…since I entered cryosleep. He’s long dead. He was staying with my ex when I was deployed. My ex wasn’t a great husband, but he was always a good dad. Sometimes…”
She felt her lips curve up in a smile. “Sometimes I think about Donnie growing up, going to high school, playing sports, having a girlfriend. Stuff like that. I imagine him getting married and having kids. The Army would have given me a funeral and stuff, given him a flag. I like to imagine him telling my grandchildren about me. Showing them the letters I wrote home to him, telling him how much I loved him—”
She broke off when Ozendi’s fingers brushed her cheek. Her eyes had flooded again. She sniffled hard and looked down in embarrassment.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Do not be,” Ozendi said, his voice rough. “Do not apologize. You are so hard, so strong, all the time. You can…you are allowed to hurt for this.”
His words broke the dam. Mara squeezed her eyes tight against the flood and opened her mouth in a scream. Grief swelled within her, pressing out from the center of her skull, from the core of her chest. She pulled her arms inward, crossing them over her heart, her fingers curled in claws of agony as she finally opened the door on the thoughts she’d been pushing aside since she first woke in the Dornaani infirmary, since before she even met Murphy.
Wave after wave of grief and memory washed over her, paralyzing her as she gasped, choking in the dark on pain and loss.
She wound up lying on her side, the stone floor of the cave cool under her cheek. Her knee and ankle throbbed abominably, but her physical discomfort had faded to background noise under the onslaught of the emotional maelstrom. Firelight flickered, painting mobile shadows across the tiny space. Mara sniffed and tried once more to wipe her eyes.
“What I wouldn’t give for a shower,” she muttered, her voice rough but even as she pushed herself up to a seated position. She felt empty, wrung out, as if the explosion of emotion had burned her clean from the inside out.
“Here,” Ozendi said. He reached into his own pack and pulled out what looked like a spare T-shirt. He shook it open and then wet it with some of the water in his bottle. “There are many streams and springs around here,” he said, holding the damp cloth out to her. “At least you can wipe your face and hands.”
“Thank you,” she said. She hoped he understood she wasn’t just talking about the cloth. She took it and immediately began scrubbing her face.
“May I look at your leg now?” Oze
ndi said. “I’m not as good as Naliryiz, but I might be able to help a little.”
“Sure,” Mara said. She sniffled mightily and straightened the leg as best she could. He came forward and gently prodded at her knee and ankle. “I don’t want to take the boot off,” Mara said as his long fingers felt around her foot. “I can already feel it swelling, and I’m afraid I won’t get it back on.”
“It is fine,” Ozendi said, his voice pitched to be reassuring. “You will not need to remove it, I don’t think. I think you are right; nothing feels broken. This is good news; I have something in my pack to help with swelling and inflammation.”
He turned to rummage in his bag again while Mara continued to wipe her face and hands free of the clinging grit. It wasn’t the shower she longed for, but she had to admit that she felt better once she was done. Ozendi turned back to her just as she was folding up the cloth.
“Here,” he said, holding up a small fabric twist. “This is what I was looking for.”
“What is it?” Mara asked, unable to keep her tone entirely free of suspicion.
Ozendi laughed. “Just herbs. A local blend. You dissolve them in your drink. Naliryiz makes this for the liaisons because we’re naturally clumsy when we first come back to planetary gravity. It will reduce the swelling and the pain.”
Mara eyed the packet with distrust, but since she didn’t have a flight doc handy and she really needed to be able to walk tomorrow, she gave a short nod and held out her water bottle. Ozendi opened up the packet and carefully poured in the powdered mixture. Mara capped it and shook. The whole thing turned a muddy, unappetizing brown color in the firelight.
“Down the hatch,” she muttered as she uncapped it and chugged. To her surprise, it didn’t taste bad. It had a sort of citrusy zing, but mostly it tasted like the scent of newly mown grass. She’d definitely tasted worse.
“That should work quickly,” he said. “I think you will feel much better tomorrow.”
“Let’s hope so,” she said quietly, suddenly feeling very exposed. She looked away from him, staring steadfastly at the fire.
“Mara.” Ozendi’s voice was soft, and he bent close until she had no choice but to make eye contact. “You are all right. Grief is to be expected in your situation. Have you not allowed yourself to mourn yet?”
Mara shrugged one shoulder and looked away again. “It’s just easier, you know? Especially with the guys. I’m secure in my position and stuff, but it’s never good for them to see a woman crying. They tend to think we’re weak. I can’t believe I let you see.”
“You know I do not fault you. Many among my people think as you do. But living on R’Bak for so long when I was young, I saw that for people like you, the problem is not weakness. Your problem is that you have been too strong for too long. One thing I have learned from my travels in both worlds is that emotions must be felt, Mara. Otherwise, they fester like a wound untreated.”
She looked back at him, and his nearness shivered along her skin. “Not every emotion is a smart emotion,” she whispered. He quirked the corner of his beautiful lips in a tiny smile and reached out to brush a stray piece of her hair behind her ear.
“We are talking of emotions, not logic. Smart or stupid doesn’t apply.”
“Maybe not, but they do apply to behaviors. Choices. It isn’t smart for me to choose to let the guys see me crying.”
“It isn’t smart for you to lock your emotions away indefinitely, either.” His fingers traced her cheekbone. “You have to deal with them eventually.”
“When it’s safe,” Mara murmured.
“It’s safe,” he assured her and leaned in. His lips hovered a breath above hers. She could feel the almost electric warmth of his skin. “Yes?” he asked.
She shouldn’t. There were a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t. But none of that mattered in the flickering light and her sudden, agonizing need for touch, for life.
“Yes,” she said, and claimed his lips for her own.
Lightning tingled below her skin as he carefully pulled her close. She reached, her hands frantic, and began unfastening his jacket, opening up his flight suit. She nearly ripped his undershirt in her haste to get to him, to feel that warm bronze silk so delicious against her own skin.
“Stars and ancestors, Mara,” he groaned next to her ear. “I cannot stop. I cannot get enough of you.”
“Then don’t,” she said, her breath a gasp of need. “Don’t ever stop.”
Firelight and shadows danced over their bodies as they tangled one with the other, reaching for the knowledge—the proof—that they still lived. Together, they spiraled toward an aching, almost painful climax that left them breathless, holding onto each other like shipwreck survivors clinging to driftwood.
“You—are you hurt?” Ozendi asked, his words broken as he gasped for air.
“No,” Mara said, her voice just as breathy. She could feel the languor that followed sex start to seep in, gilding the edges of her thoughts. “No, not at all.” She started to roll away from him, but he tightened his hold and pulled her gently, inexorably back, until she lay stretched upon him once more, her head pillowed in the hollow of his shoulder.
“I don’t usually cuddle, after,” she said, putting some humor in her tone.
“What is your English expression? Oh, right. Shut the fuck up, Mara.”
She stiffened, unsure whether to laugh or be insulted. He went on, his hand playing idly with her hair.
“I know what you are doing. You are trying to put me—this—in a box with all of the other things you don’t want to feel. But now that we have come together, I have a say, too. I won’t let you lock me away, Mara. You feel this, the same as me.”
“I just thought—”
“That is the problem. By the mercy unknown to the Deathfathers, Mara. Stop thinking.” He stroked his fingers over her shoulder, down her back to her hip, and back up, trailing fire under her skin with his touch. “Just let me love you.”
“Love?”
“Shhh,” he said and stopped her mouth with a soft, hungry kiss. “You’re thinking again. Is not this love? You desired me, and I you. And now we’ve come together in beauty and pleasure and need. What else would you call it?” he whispered when he was done.
“This is just sex. Love is—I don’t—”
“Is not sex a form of love? Just as friendship is love? Loyalty is love? I think perhaps you have been so angry at yourself for waking up that you have severed yourself from all of these things. You deserve to feel, Mara. You deserve to be loved.”
She should have gotten angry. She knew that. She should have shoved him away and told him that her feelings were none of his business. She should have threatened him with bodily harm if he touched her ever again…
But he was touching her now, and igniting that need that still slumbered within her, and she wanted…oh, she wanted him. All of him. Not just his beautiful warrior’s body, but she wanted everything else he was saying. She wanted his laughing eyes and his sweet smiles and his inside jokes. She wanted his presence beside her, bolstering her nerve. She wanted his strength to augment her own. She wanted his words whispered in her ear.
She wanted him. She wanted to feel. She wanted his love.
And she was so, so tired of fighting what she wanted.
“And you,” she whispered, hating the vulnerability in her voice, but knowing it needed to be there. “You…want to love me?”
“I have since the first time we flew together,” he said. “Since the first time I glimpsed the real you behind the façade of toughness you wear so well.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Okay. I want you. To love me.”
“Then I shall, I promise.”
She felt his hand glide once more down over the curve of her hip. He lifted her, pulled her more fully atop him, and stared up into her eyes. Then he smiled.
And did.
* * * * *
Chapter Forty-Nine
Pre-dawn light filtered through the cave, waking them. Mara felt good, despite not sleeping for most of the night. The herbal remedy seemed to have significantly improved her knee and ankle, and she took a couple of experimental steps, carefully allowing it to take her weight.
“How do you feel?” Ozendi asked. He had extinguished the banked fire and was busy repacking the items they’d pulled out during the night.
“Really good,” Mara said, surprise threading through her tone. She turned to him with a grin. “Not nearly as tired as I would have expected.”
“There are many forms of rest,” he said and gave her an exaggerated wink. She threw her head back and laughed.
“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked. “Is that something your people do?”
“No,” he said. “But I have seen your people do it from time to time. Did I get the context wrong?”
“You nailed it,” she said, and walked over to him with just the barest trace of a limp. As she’d hoped, he opened his arms to welcome her into an embrace, and she took a moment to breathe in his scent and revel in the replete soreness she felt from the previous night’s exertions. Ozendi wrapped his arms around her and held her close.
“Since we are speaking of your people,” he said, “do you think there will be trouble for you, because of our connection?”
“Murphy will be pissed,” Mara predicted, a grim edge forming around her words. “But he’ll get over it. In the end, what can they do to me? I’m one of our few pilots and the only one with quals on more modern birds. They need my skills too badly to put me back on ice.” At least, she seriously hoped so.
“I will help protect you if I can,” Ozendi promised. “There will be no repercussions to me for taking you as a mate. Especially if…well, my people will protect you if necessary.”
“I think it’ll be fine,” Mara said and dropped her arms. “But that’s a problem for another day. For now, we need to get back to the settlement and let them know about the raiders…and figure out how to get my maintenance team back to our bird.”
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