Jason dropped back down onto his side and threaded his fingers through her hair while watching her face from beneath the fringe of his thick eyelashes. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice so rough and tender it made her heart hurt.
“I’m fine,” she answered on a sniffle. “As long as I have you, I’ll be fine.”
Stroking her hair and watching her eyes, Jason was silent for several moments before he finally spoke again. “What Junkie said last night? It was just macho bullshit. I don’t think he meant it.”
With her hands on his chest, she pushed at him. “Junkie’s big enough to stick up for himself. He doesn’t need you defending him.”
He grasped her firmly and held her gaze. “I don’t want you to be unhappy,” he stated seriously.
“I’m not unhappy,” she insisted, her chin quavering only the slightest bit. “What makes you think I’m unhappy?”
His gaze flicked toward the windows before he answered. “That tree you destroyed last night.”
“It was dark out there,” she complained jokingly after swiping her wrist under her nose. “I mistook it for somebody else.”
“Someone with a long black braid?” he asked on a rumbling chuckle.
She lifted one slim shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe,” she whispered.
“Let’s go find him,” Jason said, reaching for his copper communicator on the small table beside the bed and hanging it on his ear.
She opened her mouth to argue, wanting to tell Jason that they didn’t need Junkie. It occurred to her, however, that Jason might feel indebted to him for some male reason she didn’t understand. The eYonan had certainly done a good job of taking care of Jason and looking out for his interests up until that point. And when she’d found them together in the bathroom last night, she’d sensed a closeness between the two men. A closeness that hadn’t been there earlier. At the time, it had almost felt as though she’d walked in on two brothers quietly sharing secrets.
Closing her mouth on an insubordinate growl, she kicked at the bedsheets and rolled out of bed. Once dressed, she reluctantly joined Jason in his hunt for their commanding officer. A faint hint of music drifted on the air and Lacey followed it down two floors to Danjer’s recording studio next to the garage. Though the studio’s walls were soundproof, Lacey’s desire to find the eYonan had evidently sharpened her hearing—though desire wasn’t really the right word. At any rate, she heard his music and together she and Jason found him. Now they stood in a narrow corridor, looking through a large glass window into the small studio.
Junkie sat on a stool, the heel of one boot hooked on the stool’s high rung, his other long leg stretched out straight to the floor. His chin was tilted downward as he adjusted the slim black-lacquered keytar and arranged the guitars to accompany the percussion section. His voice was a wonderful rich, gravelly wail as he picked his way through the words of a slow song. At first Lacey listened with grudging appreciation but, as the song progressed, she grew increasingly self-conscious. The song’s melancholy lyrics seeming to tell the story of a very different Junkie than the one she knew, or thought she knew—a lonely man who, if she could believe the words of the song, was not content to be alone. A man who perhaps longed for connection and love. “Let’s go,” she whispered to Jason, feeling like a voyeur as she backed away down the corridor.
But it was too late. As Jason turned his head and gave her a curious look, Junkie picked up on the flicker of movement. With a slow smile, he set his keytar aside and made his way to the door.
She hadn’t been eavesdropping, Lacey told herself. And it was just a song, not an autobiography. Just because a man sang a sad song, it didn’t mean that he was unhappy. Still, she was glad that Junkie wouldn’t know she’d heard those heartbreaking lyrics.
“Are you guys hungry?” he asked as he closed the studio door behind him. “I started some breakfast earlier. It should be ready.” Before they could answer, he herded them up the stairs one level and into the kitchen. After insisting they make themselves comfortable at the round table tucked into the kitchen’s nook, he served up a breakfast casserole and warm crackle cake he’d made himself.
“So you’re a musician?” Lacey asked, making conversation as she took a bite of the tasty casserole. The dish was melt-in-your mouth wonderful—a light egg and onion custard sitting on a crisp shell of fried riverweed. She wanted to growl with frustration! Why did someone so…perfect have to be such a damn prick?
He nodded. “I used to play in a band with Danjer and Saxon, Olan and Scratch. Hard and Fast. We were doing pretty good before the civil war broke out here on eYona.”
“Civil war?” Jason questioned.
“A southern baroness tried to usurp the throne,” Junkie explained briefly.
“I take it the queen is from the north?”
“That’s right. She holds court at Iverannon,” he said, jerking his head in a northerly direction.
“So you gave up your career to fight?” Lacey asked.
Junkie’s laugh was a bit on the dry side. “We didn’t have much choice.”
“Why not?”
He made a face. A ridge formed between the strong line of his brows and his handsome mouth curved downward. “The baroness is…horrible. Beautiful but dangerous. Danjer and Saxon were instrumental in her defeat.”
“What happened to her, after she was defeated?”
Junkie sent her a wry look. “She has a pleasant apartment at Iverannon where she’s presently incarcerated.”
“And the queen?”
His expression softened immediately. “The queen is everything the baroness isn’t. The north adores her.”
“The Alliance seems to share that opinion,” Jason offered warmly as he reached for his steaming cup of char. Lifting it to his lips, he blew on it before taking a sip of the dark brew.
Lacey nodded and swiftly swallowed the bite of crackle cake in her mouth. “She did us a huge favor when she allowed our battle cruiser safe harbor. We could never have eliminated the Grundian High Command without that help.”
With a fork, Junkie stirred the food around on his plate. “I understand your sister and her husbands were involved in that mission?”
“That’s right,” she confirmed.
“Well,” he grunted, “let’s just hope the Grundians don’t retaliate.”
“The backbone of their military is broken,” she told him. “What’s left of their forces is scattered and disorganized…though outlaws and pirates under the command of individual officers are still an issue,” she admitted.
“That’s why we’re here,” Jason offered. “To protect the planet while we help eYona get up to speed on defense systems.”
“If you’d just arm our warriors with blastukas, we wouldn’t need your help,” Junkie muttered while averting his gaze to his plate.
“Regional Command is working with Inter-Gal to lift the ban on interplanetary weapons trade. We should have blastukas to you within a month,” Jason reassured him.
“A month,” Junkie grumbled, lifting his gaze, looking both angry about the situation and guilty about complaining. “And in the meantime, the Grundians sure as hell won’t be playing by Inter-Gal’s rules.”
Jason nodded. “That’s true. But any attack they could pull off would have to be relatively small. Nothing that our four-ship fighter wing couldn’t intercept and handle.”
“I hope you’re right,” Junkie mumbled, stirring his food again.
“Of course, he’s right,” Lacey said soothingly.
While Lacey was sharing a warm look with the blond airman, she couldn’t help noticing how his olive shirt brought out the deep sage in his irises. “You look good in green,” she said, filling in the silence that followed their weighty discussion. “It brings out the color in your eyes.” When her gaze swung back in Junkie’s direction, she found his dark eyes watching her with such a solemn, searching expression that it made her heart turn over. She’d forgotten that eYonans didn’t see in color. Between
white and black, they saw only shades of gray.
“What color are her eyes?” Junkie asked Jason, his keen black gaze studying first her eyes then her mouth and finally her hair, as though trying with his entire soul to understand colors.
“Green,” Jason answered.
“Like yours?”
“No,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “Mine are actually hazel. A mix of colors.”
Junkie cleared his throat self-consciously. “What about my eyes? What color are they?”
“They’re black,” Jason told him.
“Black!” he exclaimed, his fork slipping through his fingers and clattering against the ceramic plate. He pulled his gaze from Lacey’s face and looked at Jason. “But black isn’t a color. I understand what black is!”
Jason shrugged and grinned. “Some people have black eyes. Both your eyes and hair are black.”
But he didn’t seem to particularly welcome the news. “What color is her hair?” he asked softly, his expression somehow melancholy.
As Lacey stared into those enigmatic black eyes, Jason answered. “Her hair is what we call red. She’s a redhead.”
Jason watched them staring at each other, Lacey’s expression startled and surprised, Junkie’s gaze searching and hungry. When he glanced at the eYonan’s plate, he noted that Junkie hadn’t eaten a bite of the hot breakfast he’d prepared. Maybe it was just him but it looked to Jason as though the eYonan was as much a slave to the beautiful Adept as he was, despite his cavalier claim that he was only in it for the sex. Before he could carry this idea much further, however, he was interrupted by a voice in his ear.
“Jason.”
He blinked, surprised to hear Gray’s voice coming through on his copper communicator. After all, it was Gray who’d called for communication silence during their stay at the villa. Excusing himself with a quiet word, he strolled casually through the kitchen doors into the corridor. “Hammer,” he murmured, using Gray’s Spaceforce nickname. “What’s up?”
“I thought I’d sneak a call through to you while I was alone in my Hex. Make sure you’re okay.”
Tucking a few wayward strands of hair behind his ear, Jason surreptitiously covered his communicator with his hand and glanced at the doors to the room where he’d left Junkie and Lacey. “Alone in your Hexapod? Where are you?”
“The wing scrambled out five minutes ago in response to a distress call from a Tauran trader.”
Jason grimaced. Though supposedly neutral during the Grundian conflict, the Taurans had supplied the Alliance’s enemies with everything from popcorn to polyrounds. “Well, keep your eyes open. I don’t trust those bastards any more than you do.”
“Ten-four, good buddy,” Gray replied, dropping into the ancient code they’d resurrected long ago to confuse enemies who might be eavesdropping. Over time, the CB jargon had become as natural to them as everyday slang. “How are you?” Gray asked.
The concern in Gray’s deep voice made Jason smile. “I’m good, Gray.”
“You sure?”
“I’m really good,” he responded in a soft rumble.
“That asshole eYonan isn’t fucking you around?”
“He’s not like that,” Jason answered swiftly.
“If you say so,” Gray growled, though Jason didn’t miss the note of relief in his friend’s voice. “I—Jeezis Skies!” he shouted.
Jason froze, his entire body going rigid as he stood in the wide corridor. “Gray?”
“The Tauran ship has cast a web. My controls are inoperative. We’re being pulled—”
A terrifyingly empty silence followed. “Gray,” Jed shouted. “Gray. Come back!” He stared at Lacey and Junkie who had rushed into the corridor and were now watching him with wide eyes.
“What is it?” Lacey whispered, her words sounding hollow in the empty corridor.
“It’s Gray. He was calling from his Hex when the wing was attacked.” His mind raced. Jed and Match were two other members of Gray’s wing. Normally, Jason would have manned the fourth Hexapod but, in his absence, Velvet might have taken the gunship’s controls. She had recently completed battlespace training. At any rate, four of their companions had most certainly been captured. That left fourteen officers back on the planet to help fend off any attack that might follow. And four of them were medical officers, the rest being support personnel! He didn’t know how effective any of them might be with a weapon.
“Attacked!” Lacey exclaimed, her expression sharp with anxiety. “By who?”
“I’m not sure. He said they were answering a Tauran distress call. It…might have been a trap. Just before the communication cut out, Gray said the Tauran ship had cast a web.”
Lacey’s voice was faint. “But the Taurans have never committed an act of aggression…”
“Yeah, I know,” he answered as her voice trailed away in confusion. “It’s hard to believe the Grundians aren’t at the root of this.”
Turning swiftly, Junkie strode down the corridor toward the villa’s small transmission center. “I’ll try to raise Judipeao on the radio,” he barked while Jason and Lacey trailed him. Knowing Lacey would be worried about her sister in particular, Jason took her hand and gave it a firm squeeze on the way to the radio room. Once there, Junkie’s efforts to reach their friends netted no response. That was a bad sign. They all knew that the transmission center at the Iron Palace was never left unattended.
“We have to do something,” Jason growled, catching Junkie’s eye. If the Iron Palace had fallen, they needed to move quickly.
“We’ll go to Judipeao,” Junkie said, rubbing his jaw and pacing the radio room like a great dark cat, his plastic cleats making hard sounds on the marble-tiled floor.
“What’s the plan?” Jason asked.
“We don’t have time to come up with a plan,” Junkie muttered as he stalked the room. “We’ll make things up as we go.”
Lacey crossed her arms over her chest and widened her stance. “We’re going to take on a ship full of Taurans without any particular plan and without any weapons?”
Junkie sent her a sharp look. “The Taurans have no military training to speak of. They’ve been pretending to be neutral for too long.”
“Gray said the ship cast a web. That’s Grundian technology. And you don’t need much training to fire a blastuka!”
“Blastukas!” Junkie shouted. “That’s Earther technology. How the hell would Taurans get blastukas?”
“The Grundians captured several weapons when they attacked Etiens,” Lacey told him, her voice flat.
Junkie turned his gaze on Jason as though demanding more information.
Jason rolled his shoulders and gave the eYonan the bad news. “On their last mission, Gray and Jed reported seeing two of the weapons on board a Tauran ship.”
“Fuck,” Junkie grumbled. “Blastukas. That would explain how those Tauran traders were able to take out a thousand eYonan warriors armed with swords and crossbows, wouldn’t it?” He eyed first Jason then Lacey as one long strand of black hair came loose from his braid and fell down to almost touch his shoulder.
“So what are we going to do?” Lacey asked.
“I’ll have my sword. Jason will have you. It’s not like we’re completely defenseless,” he said decisively, his smile grim. “The fact that Jason’s a blond should distract at least a few of them. Now if we only had a blonde female, we could distract the hell out of them.” Then, as though something had just occurred to him, he stopped in mid-stride and rubbed his chin thoughtfully before slowly turning toward Lacey.
“What?” she said uneasily.
“I need you to be a blonde,” he said, his voice flat.
“You need what?”
“I need you to be what you call a blonde. What we call fair-haired or light-haired.”
“I can’t just—”
“Jason!” he barked. “Make her change.”
Jason gave him an open-mouthed stare before arguing, “How the hell am I supposed to do that?�
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“I just gave you a direct order, soldier. Make it happen!”
Exasperated, Jason threw his hands in the air and turned away. What the fuck! They needed to get to Judipeao and get there quickly. What the hell was Junkie thinking? How did he expect him to…
After taking a few steps he stopped suddenly, turned around again and moved close to Lacey. With a swift tug, he pulled her close and ground his lower body against her pelvis as he opened his mouth on hers and tempted her with a long, eating kiss. He was breathing hard as he broke his lips from her mouth and panted against her ear. “You need to be a blonde, Lacey.”
As she pulled away, he caught sight of her tongue licking his taste from her mouth. Thinking this just might work after all, he hid the smile that twitched at the corner of his mouth. Her auburn brows pinched up into an adorable frown as she explained, “I need a reason to be blonde, Jason.”
He made his voice harsh and unforgiving, which wasn’t easy when she was gazing up at him like that with those big green eyes. “If you don’t turn blonde, I’ll never fuck you again.”
She paled a little—and almost immediately turned blonde, her vibrant red tresses lightening to platinum and almost as white as her face.
Junkie laughed as he strode away from them. “Good work, soldier. I’ll grab my keytar. You guys get changed.”
“Get changed? Keytar?” Jason questioned, trying to keep up with the quick-thinking eYonan. “What’s our cover? Are we going in as musicians?”
Junkie snorted. “Nah. That’s been done.”
“What then?”
“I’ll let you two figure it out,” he called to them as he backed away down the corridor toward the stairs. “But I’ll be playing the part of the eYonan pimp bearing blonde gifts.”
After sharing an unsavory look with Lacey, Jason steered her upstairs to the bedroom and together they got to work.
Hiding his concern from his two charges, Junkie took the stairs two at a time on his way down to the recording studio. Despite his outward show of confidence, worry ate at his insides. The Iron Palace was packed with men he’d fought with during the civil war. Men he’d toured with before the civil war. Men he’d shared women with while on tour! Guys like Saxon and Danjer. Scratch and Olan. Camp, Blair and Jake.
Made for Two Heroes Page 11
