He gave his wife an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you’re not familiar with the insect life here on eYona. The ticks here are big. Really big. Some of the females get as big as a Hex fighter,” he said, referring to the nimble Spaceforce gunship he flew as one of a four-member wing of battlespace pilots.
“Are you serious?” Velvet asked, her amethyst eyes going even wider.
“Right now it’s mating season,” Jed explained after inclining his head. “The females resist the advances of the much-smaller males so the males band together to hunt down a female. It takes several males to hold the stronger female down, almost smothering her beneath the pile of their bodies, while the others take turns mating her.”
Velvet made a sour face. “Ugh! Why would we want to see that?”
Jed chuckled. “You probably wouldn’t. It’s the chase that’s worth seeing. The female releases a strong pheromone which attracts the males. The sight of a giant female flying across the sands with a drove of twenty-odd males in hot pursuit is quite a spectacle.”
“Isn’t it dangerous?” Gray asked, finishing up his char with a quick swallow and pushing back in his chair. “Didn’t Pink almost get eaten by one of those things?”
Jed shrugged at the name of the Imp whom his cousin, Saxon, shared in marriage with Danjer. “A tick will attack a human and drink his blood if it gets a chance. But, at this time of year, they’re too focused on mating to go chasing after food. Watching a mating chase isn’t all that dangerous.”
“Hunting them, on the other hand, is a little more risky,” inserted a new voice.
Gray tilted his head upward and narrowed his eyes on Junkie who had evidently overheard their conversation and strolled over to join them. “Is there a story that goes with that cynical smile on your face, eYonan?”
Junkie’s rugged lips parted in a grin that was pure mischief. “Yeah, there is, Earther. A lot of eYonans hunt ticks for sport. During mating season it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. You can purchase tick pheromone and splash it around then wait for the male ticks to fly in and pick them off with a crossbow. But you don’t want to miss. And you don’t want to get the pheromone on your skin or clothing…as has happened before, on at least one occasion.”
“A hunter got the tick pheromone on his clothing?” Gray sent him a painful squint. “Does this story have a happy ending?”
“No.”
Gray snorted, his storm-colored eyes glinting with humor. “What happened?”
“The male ticks thought he was a female,” Junkie said. “They were convinced of it, in fact.”
Gray almost choked on a gruff sound of amusement. “Did he survive?”
“Yeah. But he probably wished he hadn’t…especially after he gave birth five months later.” With those words hanging on the air, Junkie sent Lacey a wink before he sauntered away, his cleated boots making a hard, sexy sound on the stone tiles beneath his feet.
Lacey shouted with laughter as she watched those long, leather-clad legs move across the patio. “You’re kidding! He’s kidding, isn’t he, Jed?”
Jed made a face—half smile, half grimace. “Not really.”
“Okay,” Gray announced. “I’m curious. Where can we see a mating chase?”
“Our best shot will be out at Nahita Moruu.” Jed answered as Lacey polished off her last bite of crackle cake. Surprised to hear him utter the word she’d so recently heard for the first time, she asked, “What does that mean?”
“Nahita Moruu? It means Heart of the Desert. It’s a stone outcropping out east of here in the middle of the sand wastes.”
“Nahita? Nahita means heart?”
“That’s right.”
“Heart!” she repeated slowly. “What about Y Nahita? What does that mean?”
Jed was a moment answering. “My heart. It means my heart. Where did you hear it?”
“I don’t remember,” she lied.
“It’s a fairly common endearment, here on eYona,” he told her with a casual lift of his shoulder.
“Oh,” she answered, a little disappointed that the words she’d heard whispered last night, seemingly with such feeling, were nothing more than a common endearment. “What about…Oat nooathoo at yee?”
“Ot n’uathu at Y?”
“That’s right.”
Jed shot his vivid green gaze around the table. “Let’s take a walk,” he suggested abruptly, pushing back his chair as Velvet and Gray exchanged curious glances.
Bewildered by Jed’s apparent retreat to secrecy, Lacey stood and followed him through the narrow door back into the crowded hall. “What are you going to say that you don’t want Velvet and Gray to hear?” she asked him.
He rubbed his long sun-bronzed fingers over the hard angle of his chin and sent her a wry look. “I, ah…just assumed you wouldn’t want your lover’s words broadcast too far and wide.”
Lacey felt a flush of heat creep across her cheeks. “How did you know—”
“Because they sounded like a lover’s words,” he told her, his smile stern.
Charmed and intrigued by Jed’s response, Lacey gazed up at him while her heart skipped a beat or two. “Are you going to tell me what they mean?”
As he guided her across the hall, his hand on her elbow, he lowered his voice slightly. “Can I trust you with them?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“If you should ever discover the identity of the man who came to you last night, I wouldn’t want you to throw the words back in his face. Obviously, they were spoken knowing you wouldn’t understand them. You weren’t meant to understand them.”
“You can trust me,” she answered, her curiosity aroused to the point that she was almost hopping with impatience.
Though Jed accepted her response with a nod, he still seemed hesitant to divulge the meaning of the eYonan words. “He took a certain amount of personal risk as well as…sacrifice in coming to you.”
“Sacrifice?” She snorted, genuinely surprised. “I hadn’t realized. I just thought any man would be willing to—”
“Any man would have been willing to. But there were a limited number we felt we could trust with you.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice trailing away softly. “This man is one of your friends?”
“He is.”
“Will you…thank him for me?”
Jed’s handsome mouth curled into a soft smile. “I will.”
“So…will you tell me what it means?” she pleaded, ready to beg if she had to.
“Ot n’uathu at Y?” Jed cleared his throat. When he spoke, there remained a great deal of reluctance in his voice. “It means…what have you done to me?”
With the fixed intensity of a hunting predator, Jason’s gaze tracked Lacey as she moved slowly across the great hall with Jed at her side. Upon reaching the wide archway that led out to the stone-tiled entry, the lovely officer turned the corner with a swaying flick of her hips and left Jed standing just inside the hall. Almost immediately, he was hailed by another of his eYonan friends and moved off toward the table of warriors.
Having arrived only a few minutes earlier and sitting at a table on the other side of the great hall, Jason had escaped Lacey’s notice entirely. But she hadn’t escaped his.
Without conscious thought, he rubbed a thick finger over the scar that ripped down the left side of his face. His interest in Lacey was probably no secret to the diners in the great hall—it was stamped across his features in pure, worshiping adoration. Yet, despite his singular obsession, he’d barely talked to the girl and avoided her whenever possible.
Which wasn’t all that easy, considering they worked together.
It had been a long time since he’d looked twice at a girl—so long that the last female he’d been interested in had, in fact, been a girl and not a woman. That had been ages ago, back when his life had seemed simple, clean and untarnished. Pure. But that life was so far behind him it might as well have never happened. Bit by bit, he’d surrendered
that part of himself until all that was left was a man he almost didn’t recognize. A man he wasn’t sure he liked. A man who would certainly repulse a woman like Lacey, should she ever learn of his history.
And even if she could overlook his dark, unsavory past, what the hell could he offer her? He hardly knew what to do with a woman. How to treat her. To be blunt, he was afraid that what he’d come to think of as normal sexual behavior would shock the young lieutenant at best and, at worst, hurt her.
Jason Orlov didn’t know how to make love to a woman.
In the meantime, there was Junkie. Right from the start, Junkie hadn’t been backward in voicing his interest in Lacey, even back when he’d known no more about her than what had been revealed in Velvet’s drawing of her sister. While Jason had turned the pages of Velvet’s battered field notebook, Junkie had looked over his shoulder. Together, they’d shared their first glimpse of Lacey Meadows in that simple pencil sketch.
That was the moment Jason had fallen for Lacey.
Knowing Junkie, that was probably the moment he’d decided he wanted to fuck her. The idea frosted Jason’s balls. How could anyone be casual about a woman like Lacey?
Afterward, as Jason had witnessed Lacey’s recovery at Earth Base Ten, his feelings had grown from initial infatuation to deep fascination. The woman was a wild combination of sweet and strong—vulnerably female yet efficient and decisive. The young lieutenant was definitely Spaceforce material. Despite the attack at Etiens, which she’d only barely survived, her sense of humor remained intact along with a rebellious appetite for mischief. And she was beautiful. Jeezis Skies, she was beautiful in a long-legged, full-breasted, sultry-lipped way that made him ache from the root of his cock all the way up to the heavy tip. All of that and a cheeky, girlish smile that sparkled in her eyes and hovered at the edges of her mouth.
Like the color of her hair, Lacey was all warmth and fire. To possess her would be akin to holding a flame. And, just as it was dangerous to play with fire, Jason was certain that loving Lacey would hurt him. One way or another, whether she rejected him outright or discarded him later on when she realized he hadn’t a clue in bed, he was going to get burned. Despite that fact, he knew he would reach for her if he got the chance, regardless of however much it might hurt.
“She’s something, isn’t she?”
Jason stiffened at the sound of Junkie’s voice behind him. A moment later the eYonan warrior had thrown himself into the chair beside his as he drawled, “Lacey. She’s really something.”
The ease with which the tall, dark eYonan carried himself grated on Jason’s nerves. The guy emanated a lithe, pantherish confidence, as though nothing could throw him. Not even defeat. If Junkie lost, he’d laugh it off. But for Jason, Lacey was no laughing matter. “She’s really something,” he agreed through the tight clench of his teeth.
“I’d love to get her into bed but the story is she wants two lovers…and she’d prefer one of them to be you.”
A sharp twinge of bitterness hardened his jaw. It couldn’t get much more fucking ironic than that. He’d finally found a woman who so interested him, he was ready to open himself to rejection and humiliation. And, apparently, her interest in him didn’t extend beyond that of a sex toy. And he was done with being a sex toy. He’d had enough of that on Ibeeza. Jason sent him a cold glare. “I’m fucking honored.”
“Hey, don’t get mad at me. I’m just trying to make things work. But first I have to make it work for Lacey.”
“You have to make it work for Lacey so you can make it work for you,” Jason growled, his voice edged with disgust.
“That’s right,” he answered amiably.
Jason resisted the urge to plant his fist in Junkie’s casual smile. Despite the hot flare of irritation he felt toward Lacey, he hated the man for talking about her that way. Like she was just a convenient fuck and nothing more. “She’s too good for you,” he gritted.
“I’ll not argue that point,” he murmured, casting his glance around the hall. “But I’m only meant to be the second act. Not the main attraction.” As though questioning the chance of rain, he continued in an irritating drawl, “At this point, I’m just wondering if she’s too good for my friend, Olan.”
Jason ratcheted to his feet, his hands clenching at his sides as he glowered down at the dark man. The muffled sound of chairs moving on styrowood followed as, sensing conflict and possibly expecting a fight, warriors and airmen stood to see what was going on. “If you touch her—”
“You’ll have some catching up to do,” Junkie finished for him on a snide snort.
For three seconds Jason considered hitting the smug bastard, despite the fact that it would be a rude fucking way to repay the Iron Duke’s hospitality. Instead he turned and stalked away, almost plowing into Gray on his way across the room. As he strode through the narrow door that led out to the patio, he could hear Junkie’s voice follow him in a slow drawl.
“Let me know if you change your mind.”
Chapter Five
As Junkie watched Jason stalk away, his gaze caught on Graham Hamm. A storm was brewing in the officer’s glowering gray eyes as he tucked his wife behind him in what looked like a protective gesture. The reaction was probably pure instinct and certainly unwarranted but it did seem to suggest that violence was in the offing.
“I’ll kill him,” Hamm growled, his long legs eating up the ground that lay between them. With a belated curse, Junkie shoved back his chair and stood to face the angry Earther. From the corner of his eye, he could see Jed moving swiftly toward them from the other side of the big room. Not entirely convinced that Jed would reach Hamm in time to stop him, he backed into a slight crouch and prepared to defend himself with his fists, which looked to be no easy task. While Junkie matched Graham Hamm in height, the dark-haired officer had at least twenty pounds on him, all of it rock-solid muscle.
As Junkie prepared to do battle with Hamm, Danjer stepped between them, his arctic gaze flicking first at Junkie then at the irate Earther. Jed reached Hamm at about the same time. Grabbing him from behind, he pinned Gray’s arms behind his back, which did little to stop him. Growling and snarling, Hamm dragged Jed several inches across the styrowood floor before turning suddenly on his friend. With an obscene Earth curse, Gray pulled an arm free and rounded on the Cajun, his fingers doubled into a tight hammer and, for a moment, it looked as though he might flatten Jed’s long, square nose. With a last-minute growl of recognition, he rolled his shoulders and shook away from Jed.
“There’ll be no fighting between Earthers and eYonans in my home,” Danjer stated quietly. “We need to learn to work together and we might as well start right now.”
Hamm bared his teeth and growled, “Get out of my way, Danjer.”
But Danjer stood his ground. As an Earther who’d immigrated to eYona in his teens, Danjer had been appointed the queen’s liaison to the Spaceforce officers who’d recently arrived on eYona. Up until their arrival, Danjer had been one of only a handful of Earthers on the planet. As such, he was well aware that his eYonan friends considered Earthmen an unruly bunch of hotheads.
At least that’s the term that Danjer would probably have used. Junkie would have used a word that was a little more explicit. As far as Junkie was concerned, Earthers were fucking animals when you got them angry and the lieutenant commander’s current display of emotion was living proof of that fact.
“You might as well let us have it out now,” Gray snarled. “After I break his nose and loosen a few of his teeth, I’ll be a helluva lot more willing to work together.”
Danjer turned his frigid gaze on Junkie. “What’s this all about?”
“Damned if I know.” Junkie smirked while eyeing the Earther from behind Danjer’s broad shoulder. “Earthers are all mad. Everyone knows that.” Taking another look at his host’s stern expression, he added, “No offense, Danjer.”
Danjer ignored him. “Lieutenant Commander?”
Gray rolled his shoulders then tugge
d on the waistband of his short jacket. “If you expect us to get along, you’re going to have to tell this bastard to quit taunting my men. If you can’t stop him, I will.”
Danjer’s narrow gaze swept the mill of curious faces—airmen and warriors who had gathered in a circle to see what would happen next. “Let’s take this to the radio room. With any luck, we’ll find Saxon there,” he said, making reference to his best friend and Jed’s cousin.
Junkie fell in behind a very stiff Hamm, who swept his wife along in one arm and followed them through the archway, across the entry and down a long stone-paved corridor to the transmission center. There, they found Saxon working at a long workbench in front of a large bank of radios—the wireless communication system used on eYona, evidently long since obsolete on Earth. A good-sized wooden table stood in the middle of the room and Junkie sank into a chair, Danjer joining him on one side after sharing a few private words with Saxon. As though facing off for conflict, Jed, Gray and Velvet settled themselves on the opposite side of the table. Leaving his work, Saxon took the free chair alongside Junkie. Once seated, it was not the volatile Danjer who led the discussion but the easygoing Saxon, a fair-haired warrior who made Danjer look small.
And Danjer wasn’t small.
Saxon kicked back in his chair, eyeing Junkie shrewdly as he asked, “What’s the problem, Junkie?”
Junkie pulled his shoulders up into a lazy shrug. “Search me, Saxon.”
The big man snorted, his quiet gaze drilling into him for several seconds before moving on to Hamm. “Do you know why we call him Junkie, Lieutenant Commander?”
“His mother had a long tail and worked night shift at the junkyard?” Hamm suggested, his upper lip curled into a sneer.
“Nah.” Saxon shook his head and laughed. “It’s a nickname. He’s addicted to women. His real name is—”
“None of his business,” Junkie cut in swiftly.
Saxon returned his gaze to Junkie and gave him a pointed look. “Why don’t you tell me what this is all about, Junkie?”
Made for Two Heroes Page 4
