Behind the door to Lacey’s room, Jason stalked to the end of the rug and turned. He looked at Lacey, sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs crossed, her empty gaze fixed on the floor as she tugged the collar of Junkie’s black jacket closed beneath her chin. She looked as shell-shocked as he felt.
He knew he should have been on the bed with her, pulling her beneath his body and making love to the beautiful woman who was all his. Unfortunately, he was grappling with a strange sense of loss—a feeling not unlike the terrible emptiness he felt after losing a comrade in battle. Someone he’d fought beside. Someone who had defended him and protected him. Someone closer even than the brother for whom, at the age of sixteen, he’d sacrificed his life.
While he wanted Lacey to be happy and content, the idea of moving ahead without Junkie had him dragging his heels. Somehow, somewhere along the way, he had bonded with the tall, dark eYonan. They were a team. Without him Jason felt somehow…incomplete. Everything he’d learned about women and pleasuring women as well as finding his own pleasure with the opposite sex had been at the hands of this one determined man. If it hadn’t been for Junkie, Jason wouldn’t even have the woman of his heart.
Something told him that Lacey was experiencing that same sense of loss.
With an unhappy snort of confusion, he jammed his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the wooden credenza that took up most of one wall. He didn’t want to share Lacey. Right? He was sure of that. Wasn’t he? At least, he certainly didn’t want to share her with anyone other than Junkie. Jason was an Earther. Earthers didn’t share their women.
And even if he was willing to change his mind about sharing Lacey, how the hell would he explain it to her at this point—after he’d insisted earlier that he’d never share her willingly, after he’d told her that he didn’t want to hear anything more about another man?
Oh fuck! There had to be a way out.
As he gazed at Lacey and wondered how on earth to broach the subject, she stood suddenly. Two steps later she was in his arms, burying her face in his chest and clinging to him like there was no tomorrow. He smoothed his hand down her back and rubbed his palm into the soft black leather as he tried to soothe her. She seemed to have something she wanted to tell him, though no words made it past her lips. Still, he was certain he knew the reason and the source of her unspoken emotion.
Junkie.
“Are you okay?” he asked, burying his face in her silken tumble of hair and trying to find a way into the topic he was sure they both wanted to discuss. Gently, he cupped the side of her face and made her look at him. As difficult as it was, the first thing he had to do was let her know he’d changed his mind about sharing her. “Tell me about the other man you wanted me to meet.”
Lacey blinked up at him as though that was the last thing on her mind. “What other man?” she asked.
“The one you mentioned back at the villa. The one you were going to introduce me to.”
She shook her head while narrowing her confused gaze on him. “That was before, when we were talking about escaping from Junkie, back when I was convinced I needed two lovers. I don’t feel that way anymore. Jason, I love you.”
“Who was he?” he plied her gently, recognizing that she was trying hard to assure him that he was all she needed, while at the same time grieving over the loss of Junkie.
“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I never knew who he was. He was a friend of Jed’s. It was dark. I was blindfolded.”
Jason made a soft snort. He knew he was grasping at straws but he asked the question anyway. “Is there any chance it could have been him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there any chance it could have been Junkie? He’s a friend of Jed’s.”
She shook her head, her unhappy gaze fixed on his chest. “His hair was shorter. Shoulder length.”
Jason stared at her a long moment. But he wasn’t seeing Lacey. He was seeing Junkie fixing his hair in the bathroom a day ago. When Jason had walked in on him, his fist had been wrapped around his braid as though…as though he was afraid it might fall off. “Let’s go see Jed,” he said, feeling a little stunned.
“Listen, Jason. It doesn’t matter. I’m ready to make a commitment to you. To you alone.”
“Let’s go see Jed,” he said firmly, pushing her ahead of him through the door.
“But why?” she asked in a long, pained moan as he steered her down the hall toward the room Jed shared with Gray and Velvet.
“Because he’s in love with you.”
“Who?” she cried, stopping to face him and stamping her foot on the blue and gold carpet.
“Junkie.”
Her mouth dropped open as she stared at him. “You’re crazy,” she finally said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Junkie doesn’t care about me!” she shouted, looking like she was going to cry. “I’m just another on a long list of women for him.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Jason argued, realizing how much the idea hurt her. “I think it’s an act.”
“What on earth makes you think—”
“I don’t know! I just know. It’s the same thing that makes me think you’re in love with him. It’s the way he looks at you. It’s the way you look at each other!” Stopping a few doors down, Jason banged his fist on the door then waited impatiently for someone to answer.
Gray opened the door, his face creasing into a smile of pleasure as he dragged Jason into the room and gave his hand a strong shake. Lacey was next, she disappeared inside his bearlike hug. As Jason glanced around, Jed rose slowly from a chair on the other side of the large room, a troubled light at the back of his eyes.
“So, have you two set a date?” Gray demanded without hiding his enthusiasm. It sounded as though he was keen to see them married off.
“Not quite,” Jason answered, more interested in catching Jed’s attention than dealing with Gray’s questions. “We still have a few details to work out.”
“What’s up?” Gray asked, swiftly picking up on the fact that there was something going on. Graham Hamm wasn’t unit commander for nothing.
“Lacey has a question for Jed,” he stated as he turned his gaze on her and gave her hand a squeeze.
Jed’s smile was a bit brittle as he asked, “Lacey?”
She gave Jason a strange look before she started. “I’m…ready to learn the name of your eYonan friend. The man you sent to my room two nights ago.”
Jed’s normally narrow gaze widened as his green eyes flickered with regret. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you his name.”
But before Lacey could even react to this information, Jason demanded, “Why not?”
“He…wishes to remain anonymous,” Jed explained, his voice strangely hollow.
“Can you tell me his name?” Jason asked.
“No!” Gray cut in unexpectedly, flashing a warning look at Jason.
Jason turned back to Lacey. “Have Jed send him a message,” he insisted. “Ask him to get in touch with you.”
“Could…you do that?” she asked as she eyed Jed hesitantly.
“No,” Gray answered, bluntly.
Jed fried Gray with a sideways glance before answering Lacey. “I’ll…ask him if he’d be willing to accept a message from you,” Jed offered tightly, “though I’m not sure when I’ll be able to reach him next.”
While Gray glowered back at his roommate, Jason frowned, sensing the conflict that crackled between the two close friends. What the hell was going on?
Lacey stared, first at Jed then at Gray. Although the two men had once been fierce rivals, since their marriage to Velvet they generally got along. In fact, to her knowledge, there was only one matter on which they disagreed. Junkie. And right now, they looked like they were disagreeing about the tall, rangy eYonan. Looking at the two men facing off against one another, she’d have sworn that was the case. But how could that be? How could the man who had come to her in her room two nights ago have been Junki
e? His hair was shorter. Besides, if it had been Junkie, her body would have recognized him as he entered her that first time at the villa…
Oh nooo. Feeling as though the ground had fallen away beneath her feet, Lacey snatched at Jason’s arm.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured, grabbing her beneath the elbows and supporting her weight as he gazed down on her. “Sweetheart? What’s wrong?”
“Oh no!” Lacey gasped, recalling Junkie’s smooth penetration that first time he’d entered her at the villa. She’d been so distracted at the time that she hadn’t noticed how her body had accepted his size and shape just as though he had been the last man who’d made love to her.
Because he had been the last man who’d made love to her.
Chapter Fourteen
“Where is he?” Lacey shouted.
Gray gave her a blank look too practiced to be sincere. “Who?”
“Junkie! Damn it, Gray. I need to talk to Junkie! Where the hell is he?”
Gray transferred his gaze to Jason, obviously looking for a reason to withhold the information. But if he was hoping for help from the blond airman, he didn’t get it as Jason growled, “Where is he, Gray?”
With a wry look twisting the corner of his mouth, Gray sauntered across the room and shaded his eyes with his hand as he peered out the narrow window up into the sky. “About five miles straight up and halfway to the Delta quadrant would be my guess.”
He turned and smirked. It was obvious he thought it was too late to bring the eYonan back. Jason seemed to have a different opinion. His fingers gripped her strongly as he held her steadily in front of him and gave her a slight shake. “Bring him back,” he ordered.
Lacey stared up into Jason’s eyes, hoping that look and that order meant what she thought it meant. “You want me to bring him back?”
“Yes. I mean, if you want to.” Then he put aside all pretense as he shouted, “Damn it, Lacey! Just bring him back!”
Together they raced through the door, their footsteps sounding heavily as they sped along the hall, down the winding stone staircase, across the entry and outside into the yard where dusk cloaked the palace enclosure with an early evening blanket of gray. Lacey wasn’t sure what she was going to do or how she was going to do it. But she was going to try to bring Junkie back. She assumed he had rented a small vehicle at the spaceport and just hoped there weren’t a whole bunch of them out there. Because, if there were, she was afraid the yard she was standing in would end up looking like a spaceport parking lot.
The air crackled with static energy as the wind lifted ahead of the nightly storm. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and threw her hands upward, reaching for anything metal that was out there, letting her wish to be reunited with one long, tall arrogant eYonan feed her fiercely growing desire.
Moments later there was a slight thump and when she opened her eyes, a small spacecraft sat in the middle of the yard, listing to one side and smoking slightly as a result of its rapid journey through the planet’s atmosphere.
Jason’s expression alone was worth the effort. His face was brilliant with joy as he shouted, “You did it!”
Lacey’s shoulders sagged and she fell into his arms while he rained kisses on her head. As the door to the rental cracked open behind them, they turned to face it. “Let me have a few minutes alone with him,” she suggested softly.
Jason gave her a squeeze as he rumbled his answer in a deep voice. “Of course. Just…don’t let him get away.”
“Lacey!” Junkie murmured, meeting her at the open door. Obviously disoriented, he frowned around at the yard. “What the hell?”
“Leaving without a goodbye?” Lacey asked, her tone sharp, her hands on her hips as she stepped up into the small ship.
“That’s right,” he agreed, a forced smile on his lips as he backed away from her. “My…ah…work here is done, so to speak.”
“You forgot your jacket,” she said, wrapping it more tightly around herself.
“It looks good on you,” he said softly. “You keep it.”
“So, in the end, you didn’t need me,” she challenged him. “In the end I was just another name on your long list of conquests.”
With a hand on the back of the padded leather chair, he swiveled his seat around to face her then dropped into it. His voice was quiet when he answered, “That’s not fair, Lacey. To me or to Jason. You made the right decision when you made a commitment to him.”
“Do you know why I agreed to a one-on-one with Jason?”
“Because you love him,” he said, his voice quiet but strong.
Lacey frowned deeply to hold back her tears, moved by the words that were stated with such solemn conviction, so proud of the man who wouldn’t take anything from Jason. “I thought you were just in this thing for a no-strings-attached fuck. I thought you…I thought you just liked to watch Jason and me together.”
His muscles rippled with lithe power as he rolled his shoulders. “I did.”
“I thought you didn’t care about me!” she shouted, her eyes filling with tears. “That I wasn’t anything special to you. That I’d never be anything special to you.”
Junkie leaned forward, his forearms resting on his spread knees. His voice was soft when he murmured, “How could any man fail to find you special, Y Nahita?”
“Y Nahita,” she whispered on a shaky breath, crossing her arms over her chest and hugging his jacket around her as though her heart might spill out if she didn’t. “That’s what he called me.”
“Who?”
“The eYonan who came to my room two nights ago. The man I want as my second lover.”
He shook his head as he gazed at her solemnly. He rubbed a big, strong hand over his face then peered at her as his voice shook. “Ot n’uathu at Y?”
“It was you,” she breathed. Shaking her head slowly, she narrowed her eyes on his face then trailed her gaze down his thick black braid.
With his long fingers, he plucked at the heavy twist of hair until the end came away then he shook out his shoulder-length raven hair.
Her eyes widened. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried.
“You didn’t want to know your lover,” he reminded her, his voice scratchy as he stood and moved toward her. “And I promised Velvet I’d keep my identity a secret.” With the fringed stump in his hand, he wrapped the night-black swath around his thick wrist and used it to brush at the wet patches beneath her eyes.
“I have to tell Jason,” she said, her voice cracking as she pressed her wrist beneath her nose and sniffed.
“No,” he said gently. “Don’t call him.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not staying.”
“Where are you going?” Jason’s voice intruded breathlessly as he ducked his head and stepped through the rental’s hatch. Clearly, he’d been eavesdropping while waiting outside.
Junkie turned his head quickly and swept his hand toward the rental’s control console…as though that explained anything! “I thought I’d take a trip.”
“You’re…leaving us? Still? Even after—”
Without looking at Jason, his chin pulled downward in a jerk of assent.
“Why?” Lacey asked, wiping her eyes and casting her voice stronger than Jason’s. Accusatory. She was not going to let him get away without a fight.
He turned to face them, a taut smile trembling at the edge of that hard, handsome mouth. “I’ve watched you two together. You don’t need me. I don’t want to get between you and Jason. I don’t want to ruin the great thing you two have going.”
“What if we want you?” Jason asked quietly, sidestepping for now the issue of whether or not they needed him. “Both of us.”
Junkie shrugged sharply. “You know me,” he snorted, that stubborn streak of pride just what she might have expected from the big arrogant jerk. “I’d never be content with one woman. It wouldn’t be long before I started looking around for something else.”
“Like what?” Lacey demanded. �
��A blonde? A brunette?” As she held his gaze, she turned her hair to the pale hue of straw then a rich, glowing brown, finally darkening it to black. He couldn’t see the colors but he would understand the difference in shade.
“No,” he answered softly. “A redhead. Another redhead.”
Touched that he’d remembered the word which described the color of her hair though the word itself couldn’t possibly mean a thing to him, she allowed her hair to return to its normal lustrous shade of red. Grim but determined, she asked, “Okay, I understand you don’t think you’d ever be content with one woman but why don’t you just stay for as long as it lasts?”
He turned away again, readjusting some papers he’d stowed above the craft’s wide window, finally stopping and lifting his eyes to the ceiling, blinking. “Would you want that?” he asked in a hoarse, gravelly rasp. “Would you both want that?”
When they didn’t answer he turned to face them again. Lacey took Jason’s hands and searched his face. Together they shared a heartfelt nod of agreement.
Junkie leaned back on the control console, grasping at the padded edge as though he feared he might float away if he didn’t hold on to something. “What…” he croaked, “what if it lasted a long time? Would you still want it?”
Lacey fought back her tears with a wry smile. Then she was on him, wrapping her arms around his neck and almost strangling him with a tight hug. Jason followed, settling his butt on the console beside Junkie and wrapping an arm around his shoulders.
“What if it lasted forever, Lacey? Jason? Would you still want it?”
While Lacey sobbed against his chest, Jason tugged him close and put his lips against Junkie’s temple. “Forever sounds pretty good to me,” he answered.
* * * * *
Up in the room they shared on the second floor of the Iron Palace, Jed and Gray stood crowded beside each other at the narrow window, looking down at the singed and smoking rental craft that listed slightly to sunboard as it sat in the middle of the yard. Warriors and airmen were making their way cautiously toward it, watching the sky with one eye while bits of space wreckage and small iron meteorites continued to rain sporadically down around them.
Made for Two Heroes Page 15
