Chiara smoothed back her already neat hair. A self-conscious gesture that reminded Myrina of Hylla’s discomfort when Myrina had first met the navigator in the mess room. She now realized that Hylla had definitely felt awkward about revealing her hair to a relative stranger, even if that stranger was experiencing Rakanasmara with the Captain. The Second obviously didn’t feel completely at ease either showing her hair to Myrina so why had she exposed herself?
She wants something. That thought was quickly followed by another. “You’re worried about someone.”
Myrina wasn’t quite sure if she was asking a question or making an observation.
Regardless, Chiara nodded. “He’s older than the others,” she admitted. “I’m concerned he won’t…”
…make it. Myrina filled in the blank and wondered if she’d stumbled across another case of a Dakokatan cheap thrill affair. It must be difficult for Chiara to look in a mirror each morning, see the grey hair and know her chances of finding her life partner were rapidly diminishing.
Normally, Myrina wouldn’t hesitate to offer the woman a hug, but she held back. For one thing, she hadn’t noticed any casual physical contact among the crew, which made her wary of transgressing another Dakokatan custom. For another, the Second appeared highly embarrassed by her emotional display. Her relationship with this man was obviously important, probably all she had.
So she kept the conversation strictly professional. Besides, she knew exactly who Chiara was worried about. At this point, Myrina could probably list the personal data and symptoms of each of the seventy-seven Outposters from memory.
With one last look at her pack, she closed the lid. She wasn’t about to make any rash promises, but that didn’t stop her from offering some positive hope. Especially since there were two or three other critically ill Outposters who might not make it.
“I know how it looks,” she said. “But he has a pretty good chance.”
She glanced at the shuttle’s hatchway. If only those kind of odds were in her favor, too.
Chapter Fourteen
He couldn’t smell it, but every breath Judan took tasted metallic. He’d avoided food after one bite of a protein bar two and a half hours ago. After five hours of breathing in the deadly air he understood why the handful of Outposters who’d met them at the landing site looked haggard. On top of their illnesses, malnutrition had set in.
He’d since wondered a time or two what Myrina had meant when she’d told him before their flight down to the planet that everything would be all right. She certainly hadn’t warned him that he’d come to regret the necessity of breathing, shun food and have less energy than a giant sand lizard basking under the rays of the Dakokatan sun. It seemed his immunity offered only limited protection against Hitani’s wrath.
He kept walking toward the other side of the Outposters’ camp anyway and ignored the deceptively benign-looking landscape. Blue, cloudless sky, an abundant variety of foliage of mostly unknown species and, a short distance away, the silvery sparkle of the sun reflecting off the clear waters of a lake. Myrina’s base of operations was situated on a flat rise above the lake, which afforded an excellent view of the deceptively deadly countryside.
They’d each overseen the recovery of half the complement of Outposters. The simulated DNA injection had only been the first step, hence the five hour wait until the Outposters’ bodies had adjusted to the changes and it was safe enough for them to leave the planet’s surface.
A few minutes ago the second shuttle had landed. It was time to begin the evacuation. He planned to take a handful of Outposters back to the Ketiga Bulan, the rest, including the most critical cases, would be taken aboard the reconnaissance vessel to receive more extensive care.
He passed several Outposters sorting through their personal belongings. Though he didn’t expect it, a few of them managed to stand and nod as he walked by. He found the rest of the group Myrina had treated huddled stoically in a tent. The high velocity winds that had plagued the camp a few weeks ago had torn gaping holes in the tent’s supposedly durable fabric. Three hover transports stood nearby ready to load passengers for the short trip to the shuttles. Much as he regretted leaving the ravaged remnants of the camp, no one had the time or energy to dismantle the tents and prefabricated buildings or to pack supplies.
He glanced around the group, conducting a quick assessment of how much assistance these people would need to reach the shuttles. He expected to see Myrina tending one of the more critically ill patients, but she wasn’t in the tent. A young man with light blond hair who looked to be in slightly better health than many of the others stepped forward.
“Can I help you, Ktua?” he asked.
“I’m looking for Dr. deCarte,” Judan said.
“Myrina, the doctor, left over an hour ago to collect samples,” the man said. “She went that way.” He pointed east toward a stand of stubby, thick-trunked trees.
“Start loading the hover transports,” Judan instructed. “As soon as I’ve found the doctor, we’ll leave for the shuttles.”
The young man nodded.
With one last look around, Judan left the tent. They hadn’t had much of a chance to talk this morning. Myrina had been gone by the time he woke, uncharacteristically late, his cock hard and aching for her again.
One night hadn’t been nearly long enough to sate him. The problem now was, how was he going to coax her into his bed? Out of necessity, he’d deferred the final ritual, but he’d made a deliberate choice. Instead of coaxing her into his bed, he’d taken her in the shower and in her bed. So, even though the final stage of Rakanasmara had occurred last night, the ritual itself could still be completed.
Meanwhile he had to find out what Myrina was doing. He’d noticed her sample pack this morning in the docking bay. He understood she was a scientist with the need to analyze what precisely Hitani had done to these people. And yet, he never would have taken her for someone who would leave her post. Who would place sample collecting above people’s lives.
He entered the stand of trees, surprised to realize the air here smelled and tasted somewhat better. A little later he spotted Myrina’s backside. She was bent over, one arm holding the trunk for support, and appeared to be studying the ground underneath a huge tree. There was no sign of her specimen pack.
“Myrina,” he called out.
She straightened instantly and turned, the back of her free hand wiping her mouth. Using the tree as leverage, she pushed herself forward, swayed and then lurched across the ground to the next tree. When she looked up at him, her smile barely reached her lips.
“I sure hope you’re here to tell me we’re ready to start the evacuation,” she said.
Something was terribly wrong. She had, he realized, been vomiting.
She stayed at the tree waiting for him. In fact she sagged against it. Pale didn’t come close to describing the lack of color in her face. Her features were pinched tight and she’d curved a protective arm across her middle.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m getting a breath of, well, fresher air,” she said with a slight shrug. “There’s a higher level of oxygen here and less contaminants because of the trees.”
Her voice sounded much stronger than she looked, so he concluded she was trying to put on what in English was called “a brave front”. He knew anxiety attacks sometimes included extreme reactions but his instincts told him that’s not what was happening here.
He gestured towards her and kept walking closer. “I understood you were collecting samples,” he said.
She grimaced. “I had to give some story so they wouldn’t worry, or worse, panic. Besides, it wasn’t exactly a lie, I did want to collect specimens. I just didn’t get the chance.”
“Is that what you were doing in the docking bay this morning?” he said coming to stand in front of her. “Not exactly lying when you told me everything was going to be all right.”
He picked up her wrist.
“What ar
e you, the doctor all of a sudden?” She tried to snatch her hand away, but she didn’t have the strength to pull free. Her pulse raced underneath his slight touch and her skin was burning up.
“It’s Hitani, isn’t it?” he said. All the time they’d been talking, his brain had been scrambling for an answer. He’d found it in the story she’d told him last night.
“The Rakanasmara didn’t make any difference to you. You don’t have much immunity because you’re sterile. Isn’t that right, Myrina?”
“More or less,” she said with another wan imitation of a smile. “I managed to last three quarters of an hour before the nausea and stomach cramps came on.”
And yet she’d ignored the symptoms for over another three hours before giving in to the pain. He scooped her up in his arms, ignoring her protests and nearly staggered under her weight. A reminder that he’d better get them off this planet before his immunity gave out on him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Under normal circumstances he’d welcome the feel of her in his arms, her head nestled against his shoulder, her soft green eyes gazing up at him with longing. Except it wasn’t exactly longing he saw reflected in her eyes, but relief. She’d obviously been lurching from tree to tree on her way back to the camp. If he hadn’t come along, she never would have made it.
“Tell you what?” she finally whispered. “That you had to come down to Hitani alone? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What’s ridiculous is you didn’t tell me that neither one of us would be fully protected by the immunity.”
“Didn’t know for sure,” she wheezed. Now that they’d cleared the trees she was having a hard time catching her breath. “Hitani adapted. Hoped we had time…had to fight…to face it and win this time. Knew you wouldn’t like my decision, get mad.”
It took her a while to get the full explanation out. When she had, he didn’t answer, deciding it was more prudent to save his own breath for the walk to the camp rather than risk it arguing with her.
Was he mad? How could he be mad at Myrina for facing her greatest fear and sticking to her principles to save the Outposters? Furious, maybe, at the irrational wrath of this planet against his woman. And definitely terrified. He’d just spent five nerve-racking hours working with nearly forty Outposters, willing the injection he’d given them to make them well enough to leave the planet. He wasn’t about to accept that he’d worked so hard to lose the one person he most wanted to keep.
By the time he made it back to the camp, Myrina was unconscious. Most of the Outposters were now on the hover transports, making his job easier. He staggered to the tent and leaned against one of the posts for support. Several of the people sitting in the nearby hover transport gasped when they saw Myrina’s condition. He paid no attention, too busy searching for a face. Once he made eye contact with the blond man, he issued his order.
“Follow me, we’re evacuating the planet. Now!”
He didn’t wait to see if everyone came. The man known as the last to leave anyone in need was the first on board the shuttle. Gently, he lowered Myrina’s limp form onto one of the few available beds. Reaching behind him, he swiftly undid his braid, letting his hair fall in a curtain around them. He breathed a little easier when his hair reached out and wrapped itself around her arm. The connection was still strong between them. Nevertheless, he rechecked her pulse. It fluttered irregularly.
“Ktua. Ktua.”
He looked up into the earnest face of the young blond man.
“The others need help, Ktua,” he said, pointing back to the shuttle’s hatch.
Judan nodded. He stood, reluctant to leave Myrina, but having no choice.
“Watch her,” he told the man and left.
For once in his life Judan worked on automatic pilot. He didn’t allow himself to think, he simply did what he had to do. Once his passengers were aboard, he completed the preflight check. They were so close to getting off the planet, he didn’t want anything to go wrong. Both shuttles left the planet’s surface and blasted through Hitani’s atmosphere without encountering any further hostile reaction. The other ship veered off toward the reconnaissance vessel while he headed back to the Ketiga Bulan.
Only when the shuttle was parked back in the bay and he was by Myrina’s side again did he relax. While Vand and Biali assisted the Outposters to the makeshift medical facility in one of the lounges near the clinic, Judan sat at Myrina’s side and talked.
He apologized for his anger the previous day. He hadn’t last night, an oversight he now regretted. They’d shared something far more intense and connected than a simple fuck. At the time, he’d thought it was Rakanasmara. But at some point during the night he’d begun to wonder if there wasn’t something to this “love” business after all.
He still didn’t understand it, but he felt…an intangible force that drove him. He shook his head. He wasn’t at all sure he liked “love”. The whole relationship had seemed easier when he’d simply wanted Myrina.
But now.
What if he did “love” her?
He wasn’t sure. The idea was too startling, too new. But he wanted the chance to find out.
“I want you, Myrina deCarte. Don’t you dare die on me.”
No answer. Not that he’d expected one. He just couldn’t face the alternative if she didn’t wake up.
* * * * *
The next time Myrina woke, the grogginess had receded and her memory had returned. Or at least part of it. She’d been leaning against a tree, reluctant to lose its support and wondering how she was ever going to make it back to the camp when her legs and her stomach refused to cooperate. The onset of dehydration hadn’t helped.
Bottom line, she’d been in big trouble. She’d rushed too far into the woods. Lost her lunch, her breakfast and any other meal she’d ever eaten. And hadn’t had the strength to walk, crawl or, heck, drag herself to safety. For the second time in her life, she’d needed rescuing from the demonic clutches of a hostile planet. Some great savior she’d turned out to be, when she was the one who’d ended up needing to be saved. And then Judan had come along to do the job, even though she hadn’t stayed out of another fight. She clearly remembered him picking her up in his arms and carrying her out of the trees. After that, her memory was a complete blank, except for the occasional foggy images of faces and noises.
It was quiet now and she was lying in a bed. Naked. Well, okay, she had her panties on, so technically she was almost naked. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to the dimness. They’d put her in the bedroom Judan had given her. A moment later she was forced to close her eyes against a sudden light.
“Sorry, is that too bright?”
Judan’s voice. Judan was here in the room with her.
She started to shake her head, then thought better of it. “Give me a minute,” she said.
A hand brushed against her own and fingers curled around hers, holding tight. A thumb drew lazy circles across the back of her hand, sending tingles along her arm. She sighed with relief at the familiar sensation and squeezed back. The strokes were soft and gentle and hypnotic, lulling her back to sleep. She blinked again, determined to stay awake, and looked up into Judan’s grim face. He was kneeling beside the bed, but still looked imposing from her prone position.
“Better?” he asked. His voice, unbelievably tender, sounded the exact opposite of how he looked.
“Yes,” she said. “How long?”
He eased back to sit on the floor, but didn’t let go of her hand. “You’ve been asleep on and off for a day.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “Faster than I thought,” she said. Given how badly the conditions on the planet had deteriorated, she’d expected far worse.
“Vand found your test program. He had a combined sedative antidote to counteract the toxins attacking your system ready when we arrived back.”
“What?” Carefully she turned her head and looked at him. “He doesn’t know how to use the GCS.”
He shrugged, looking t
otally unrepentant on his brother’s behalf. “Vand’s always been good with technology. He apologizes for using your equipment but since our discussion in the lab he’s become, how do you say in English…”
“Driven,” she said, because the word exactly described the man’s intense nature.
Judan nodded. “He’s determined not to repeat his mistakes, but to learn from experience.” There was a definite measure of pride in Judan’s voice as he spoke of his brother.
“I take it things are better between the two of you.”
“We’re working together,” he said. “But once this is over, he wants to go to TLC and study colonization dissonance under the esteemed Dr. deCarte.” He grinned at her. Obviously he thought this was a great idea.
Once this is over. Once this is over. I’ll be back at TLC, but where will you be?
“Hardly esteemed,” she said and stared up at the ceiling. “I couldn’t even fight my way out of a paper bag.”
“You took a calculated risk and did all right,” he said softly. “We both did and we got everyone off the planet safely.”
She’d become a “we”. When had that happened? When the Rakanasmara between them had been triggered in Fenton deMorriss’ office? When they’d had wild oral sex? When they’d made love in the shower? And what did any of those events prove anyway?
Not a damn thing except that they enjoyed mind-bogglingly hot sex. Not a damn thing except that she was a total wimp. Sure, a couple of days ago she’d admitted to herself she wanted him, but now… She’d taken a calculated risk, pitting herself against Hitani to save the Outposters, and she’d barely survived. She still wanted Judan, but was she willing to take another calculated risk to keep him? Commitment scared the heck out of her. What if she said yes and it didn’t last? Worse, what if this was her only chance at happiness? What if she said no and regretted the decision for the rest of her life?
She reached up and tugged aside the collar of his shirt. Her fingers found the now familiar path of scar tissue. She’d touched, kissed and been fascinated by those lines. The twin scars made him seem more…human, the way they marred his otherwise perfect body. Judan was a Ktua, the captain of his own ship and a man who made mistakes. And survived them.
Love Partner Page 19
