by Patty Jansen
"See? There you go. It is normal to feel like this."
His voice rumbled in his chest under her ears. All of a sudden, she felt to incredibly tired. She wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. He was still holding her and instead of her usual discomfort of being touched, it felt right. Because he understood. Because he had gone through bad things himself.
He smelled like fresh outdoor air, with a tang of sweat. A very male scent that made her cheeks glow again. Damn, this was not going to end well.
He shifted his arms ever so slightly. "We should go to sleep."
"Do you think you can sleep?"
"I'm not too bad with sleeping in odd places at odd times. I'm also not too bad with not getting much sleep. Comes with the job."
Wait—"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Whatever you want it to."
"Are you flirting with me?"
"Of course not. Every idiot knows it's dangerous to make a pass at a Hedron guard."
"You must be an idiot then."
"Yes." He reached out and stroked her cheek. "But I'm mad enough to run the risk."
Her cheeks were definitely glowing now. Damn, unless she went into the water to cool off, her hormones would run crazy and she was going to flush. After such a long time of not being with a man, her skin was so much more responsive that just a male smell would set it off. She could go to sleep and deal with it in the dark… or… she could just give in to it.
I'm not too bad with not getting much sleep. The hell, if that wasn't a blatant invitation.
She met his eyes. Her vision was already going watery.
He gave her an intense look. "You're flushing."
"Whose fault is that?"
He laughed.
"It's less easy to control when… with intense emotions…" Hell. "It doesn't mean anything except…"
"You're attracted to me."
She laughed awkwardly. Her skin was glowing, and her mind was going foggy. She wanted him and no longer cared about anything else. And it was not as if when she left here she would see him again, or that there would be any consequences. Mirani Endri didn't breed with anyone and neither did Coldi.
"You want to have a taste of what is normally forbidden?" Her voice was already going husky. Blood roared in her ears. There was no stopping it now.
She slid a hand under his tunic from below. His skin felt soft and strangely cool. All her flings had been Coldi except for Abbasi. She pulled her shirt up, but Braedon held it down.
"Uhm, maybe we should go to a more private spot." He gestured in the direction of the cave, invisible from here under the overhang of the rock. If anyone came up, this spot was the first thing they'd see.
Sure.
He took her hand and led her past the lower pools to the ones on the far side of the rock formation. The water here was still as a mirror, with faint wisps of steam rising off the surface. The moons had already gone, but the broad band of the milky way arced overhead and produced a faint glow.
Braedon stopped at the edge of the water. First he unbuttoned his shirt and then stepped out of his trousers and put both in a neat pile.
Izramith took off her shirt and trousers and tossed them into a heap.
He was already in the water when she waded in and sat next to him. And then neither of them moved for a long time.
The water was warm and smelled faintly of sulphur. The rocky bottom of the pool felt rough to the soft skin on her backside.
Boy, this was awkward. Asto Coldi had a word for this, nethana, intimacy without meaning, something that was common in associations, in particular between zhaymas, and also between other equals, like business contacts.
Braedon put his hand on her shoulder. His hand slid down her upper arm. She flinched when he ran his fingertips across the initiation scars, a series of cross-hatched cuts that she should have kept covered. He retracted his hand. "It doesn't hurt anymore, does it?"
"No."
"We can heal wounds like that these days without scars."
"The scars are the point. My service will be forever inscribed on my body."
"Oh." There was a small silence. "Like initiation?"
"Yes. No one is supposed to see the scars when you're in active duty."
"You've not done anything wrong then. It's too dark for me to see them. I can only feel them."
True.
She leaned closer and put her hands on his upper arms. His skin was cool and moist with sweat. Did he want to back out? Was he just as nervous as she was?
She said, "We're grown-up. We understand. I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm asking. I know that there will be no rights or claims made on the basis of nethana."
"I don't like that word," he said. "Nethana is old Coldi for 'whim'. A decision to give yourself to someone is never a whim. It's only called that when it turned out the results are not that good."
"You know what I mean."
"Yes." He said nothing for a while.
"All right," he whispered and bent towards her. "I'll settle for that. Nethana," he said in the hollow of her neck so that her skin tickled.
His lips caressed the soft skin under her ear. A series of delicious shivers crawled over her skin. He knew how to make a Coldi woman crazy.
She pushed herself onto her knees while facing him. She swung her leg over both of his and curved her back so that the sensitive skin on her belly touched his. His skin felt cool against hers, his breath a warm spot on her chest.
"You're a crazy woman," he whispered.
"Not half as crazy as you."
"Might as well go for the big prize, huh?" His hands slid up her sides.
"Go for it."
He pulled her down onto his lap. What had been unremarkable during the day had grown to be quite impressive. Her heightened senses could feel him sliding into her all the way.
"A big boy, huh?"
"Only where it matters."
They settled in a rhythmic rocking motion. Not too fast because it made the water splash. Not too vigorous because already the flush was building. He clung onto her and she onto him like they were the only surviving people in the world.
The wave of the flush built and built. Her skin felt so hot that she thought she'd glow in the dark. The familiar tingling sensation started in the skin of her chest, spread to the soft skin of the underside of her arms, to her inner thighs and up to the most secret and sensitive of spots. All her sensations balled together in that one area. She had to clamp her jaws to stop herself shouting out. Braedon's grip on her tightened. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her thighs. He let out a stifled moan, spilling his seed inside her.
And then there was only the roaring of blood in her ears, and Braedon's hands slowly sliding off her thighs. His chest heaved with deep breaths. "Oh crap, that was like…" He blew out breath.
"Been a long time?"
"To be honest, yeah."
"Sorry if I caused any bruises," she whispered.
"If there are any, it was worth it."
She rolled off him, into the water, her mind relaxed and more calm than she had been since going to Indrahui. Even encounters with Abbasi has always been hurried, since they had to be secret and there were few places on the Indrahui plane to hide. Worth it, Braedon's words.
They went back to the camp, without speaking a single word. Izramith fell asleep almost the moment she hit the mat.
Chapter 21
Izramith woke abruptly when it was still pitch dark. There had been a noise, but it had stopped now, and she had woken up too late to hear what it was. Right now, all she could hear was her pounding heart and the roaring of blood in her ears.
And see nothing.
Except—
A faint thrumming sound made a continuous whisper in the background.
—a red light blinked on the motion sensor.
Fuck.
She crawled off her mat, bumbling around randomly-placed shoes and bags in the cave, and activated her comm screen. The glare of
it made her vision blurry. She blinked away sleep—
It was definitely the motion alarm. The screen said activity detected.
She switched to the infrared channel.
Most of the screen was dark grey, with a few lighter spots where there were boulders that still radiated heat of the day.
Amongst these boulders, something moved. It could have been an animal, but as she watched, the light-coloured blob clambered up a boulder, sticking out a leg for balance, and the figure was unmistakably human. Now that cleared her head.
She found her helmet with infrared sensor and panned the surrounding forest in greater detail than the motion sensor offered. All members of her team were asleep on their mats. Loxa and Dashu next to each other, Wairin on his back, Eris curled up in foetal position. Braedon faced her. The peaceful look on his face caused a small warm spot to grow inside her chest. It flowered briefly, and then it flickered out as reality set in. They'd agreed on nethana. She could only dream of ever being part in his world. It was too gentile, too sophisticated, too… surrounded by loving family members.
Damn.
Izramith crawled across the ground and shook his shoulder. "Wake up."
"Hmmm?"
She shone her comm screen light in his face. He raised an arm over his face, turning away from the light. "There's someone at the shack."
"What?" He took his arm away, squinting into the light. "Sure?"
"The alarm went off. I checked the scan and it's very clearly a person."
"Shit." He pushed himself up, looked around, and listened. "Just our luck. It's raining." He activated his lights to find his gun. The faint glow from his comm showed water dripping down from the overhanging rock ledge. Outside their shelter, the ground was dark and glistening wet.
Izramith went around the cave, waking up the other members of the team.
She donned her suit and body armour and checked her gear. The infrared view on her helmet showed her a mush of grey and darker grey. They would need every bit of gear in this awful weather.
Wairin joined her, his dark face serious. Eris came a moment later, followed Loxa and Dashu and Braedon. Izramith didn't meet his eyes. Inside, she was one ball of nerves.
The team gathered around her in silence. The rain pattered softly on her helmet. Already, the part of her suit around her neck was wet.
"All right, so this is what we'll do. We have no idea how many people there are or if they've noticed the wire. We'll go up that hill and we try to stay unnoticed for as long as we can. That's going to be really hard in that forest in the dark, but we have to sacrifice speed for silence. It's better if we split up into groups of two. You." She pointed to Braedon and he met her eyes without emotion. "Stay with me. Dashu and Loxa go up the left side. Eris and Wairin take the right side. We go up the middle. We try to make as little noise as possible. Keep your weapons ready. Stay in your position as we advance. Shoot anything that moves and is not in position."
"Stun or live?" Wairin asked, his voice dark. She heard echoes of the war on his home world.
"Stun, for now."
Nods all around. But their faces showed that they heard the implied threat in her words.
Helmets went on, connections were tested and they set out into the forest, walking slowly. Dashu and Loxa went first, and soon disappeared in the darkness. They showed up as light grey shapes in Izramith's infrared cam. Wairin and Eris strode past her up the other side.
Braedon walked slightly behind her. She wanted to say or do something that would acknowledge what had happened last night, even though they had agreed not to do this. But she could only think of Abbasi and how she'd tried so very hard to behave according to her Hedron guards guidelines about relationships. Those regulations were why, that fateful morning, she had not spoken to him before he went out on the patrol. And why she had never spoken to him again.
Going up the hill was very slow going, even following the trail they'd left the previous afternoon. The vegetation was far too dense to move quietly and it was too dark to see much. Her pack kept snagging on trailing vines. Mossy boulders made for slippery footing. So much for being quiet. If there were any people at the shack, they would hear them coming from a long way away.
To make things worse, the rain had intensified, an insistent soft drizzle not strong enough to be limit vision but enough to make everything wet. The air was very humid. The higher they got, the more shards of mist drifted through the forest. Sometimes it was hard to see more than a few steps in front. Using the comm lights did not make much difference.
They were about halfway up the hill when the sharp crack of a branch echoed in the forest, followed by the sound of footsteps, just in front of them. In a split second, Braedon had out his gun.
Loxa's voice rang out. "Show yourself or I'll shoot."
There was no reply.
No one moved for what felt like a long time. Izramith listened, but heard nothing except drops of water falling from the trees, and Braedon's breathing behind her. She saw nothing except mist and the tree trunks immediately surrounding her.
Did she imagine it or was it starting to get light?
They started moving again, even more slowly this time, stopping for every tiny sound.
They caught up with Loxa and Dashu at the shack. They were dark shapes in the mist, bristling with antennas on the back of their helmets. As before, the shack was empty and there were no signs that anyone had been there overnight.
But it was on the other side of the hilltop where she had seen the human figure. After checking the coordinates off the motion sensor, all without speaking, Loxa and Dashu disappeared into the forest again.
Braedon fiddled with his belt. "This thing keeps getting caught."
Izramith sat down on the bench while he readjusted his gear.
By pure chance, she looked up to the underside of the roof, and noticed a glint of metal in the corner. That definitely hadn't been there before. She took off her glove and felt the branch that supported the roof. The object was smooth and cold. She pulled it from its hiding place. It came free, attached to a lead with a plug that snapped loose as she pulled it, leaving no visible sign where it had been attached.
The thing in her hand was just another part of an electronic connection plug. Had it remained behind because the owner had tried to pack up in haste? Moreover, where was that lead going?
She circled the shack, looking for cords or connections. The tree itself stood on the highest point of the hill. That would be the best place to set up a transmitter. But she couldn't spot anything unusual in the small patch of glow of her comm reader. The branches above her were a tangle of sticks and leaves. It would be easy to hide a thin cord in the cover of moss and little plantlets that grew on the trunk. With a bit of skill, someone could even hide a satellite dish up there. One of the team would have to climb the tree to inspect it. Climbing the tree wouldn't be too hard. She grabbed a handful of the mossy cover, pulled herself up—and a slab of moss ripped free.
Something glinted in the gap where the moss had come off. She pulled the surrounding moss, which came off quite easily. The surface underneath was metal. With her knife, she levered off another chunk. Damn, it looked like the whole trunk was covered in metal. She tapped it. The sound was hollow.
What the…?
She tapped at a different place. Definitely hollow. And the surface was cold not because the trunk was wet, but because…
She ripped away part of the shack's roof where it attached to the trunk. The roof material came off, but the support beam was part of the tree. Just as she feared, this wasn't a real tree.
"Come and have a look," she said to Braedon behind her.
He did, running his hand over the trunk. "The whole thing is an antenna."
She was about to yell for Loxa to come back when a crack echoed through the forest.
Fuck. She pulled her gun from its holder. Braedon did the same, dropping to one knee and staring into the forest.
The early ligh
t rendered bushes, tree trunks and the debris-covered ground in featureless shades of blue. Shards of mist hung between the trees, cloaking the hilltop in heavy silence. Not a twig or a leaf moved. Her infrared visor showed no recognisable shapes. Damn, where were Loxa and Dashu? Where were Eris and Wairin?
An explosion rocked the ground, somewhere on the other side of the hill.
Izramith ducked under the shelter and behind the table just before the shockwave hit. Branches and other debris rained down on the roof.
Someone shouted but it was too noisy to recognise the voice.
She looked around the edge of the shack. All she saw was smoke or steam.
No movement. No Loxa or Dashu. Braedon raised himself from the other side of the table. He, too, held his gun ready to fire. The light on the side of the charge barrel was still blue for the stun setting.
Izramith turned hers to the kill setting, and when she looked at him again, his light was orange, too.
She spotted Wairin a bit further down the slope, taking shelter with his back to a large tree. No Eris.
Another shard of mist drifted by, restricting vision to no more than a few steps away.
When it was gone, Eris had poked his head up from between two boulders close to where Wairin stood.
Izramith jerked her head to the far side of the hill and the four of them crept forward, from tree to tree.
Wairin was to the right and just ahead of her. Eris further right.
Izramith hit a spot of level ground and prepared to sprint across—
—and noticed the faint shimmer of tripwire just in time to avoid hitting it.
Crap.
Braedon caught up with her. He dropped to his knees, following the wire to a nearby tree trunk where it was attached to an eyelet and a battery pack that sat in a hollow between a branch and the trunk.
Eris had discovered a section of wire on the other side of the tree trunk, too. "This is not where we strung it yesterday."
"This is not ours. It's Mirani army gear," Braedon said.
His expression was grave. Dashu and Loxa had passed here, and one of them had probably set off the wire.
