There All Along

by Dane, Lauren

  “I brought you some candles and a few other baubles you might like.”

  She tipped her head back with a smile. “You did?”

  He nodded. “I’ll be in momentarily.”

  She tried not to rush as she lit the candles he’d brought. The scent of them filled her bathroom, casting a golden glow on the walls. The same walls she’d seen every day for so long. They’d been a different color when she lived here with James. But after he’d died she repainted. Changed things to suit herself and chase his energy away.

  She disrobed, letting her hair stay free, knowing he liked it best that way. Several bundles sat on the bed. She unwrapped the red one first, finding earrings of deep blue glass. She smiled. No one gave her presents, not the way he did. Not always practical, but fun and pretty.

  She replaced her other earrings with the blue ones and then opened the next. A scarf. She drew it over her skin. So soft.

  “I thought it would look beautiful against your skin and I was right.”

  She turned to find him standing there, naked. She sighed happily. “You’re the best present of all.”

  “I turned the water off.”

  She brushed her hair back to show him the earrings. “They’re lovely, thank you.”

  “I have a confession to make.”

  “And what’s that then?”

  “My home in Shelter City is full of presents I’ve picked up for you over the years. I didn’t want to scare you with how often you came into my thoughts. So I have them tucked in drawers and on shelves. I tell myself I’ll give them to you bit by bit, but I keep finding new things that call to me. The scarf I picked up at a bazaar after the first time I came here.”

  She swallowed past a lump of emotion. “I don’t know what to say that could do justice to how much that touches me.”

  “You were so lovely the first time I saw you.” He took her hand and drew her into the bathroom. “We drove up that hill and I liked Silver Cliffs immediately. Well defended. Which makes my job easier of course.”

  She got in the tub and he settled in behind her, pulling her against him. Where she belonged. “It was the middle of the warm season. You came here and people were chattering because our old escort had retired. You got out of the lead vehicle and I just watched you.”

  “Yes. It was warm. You came out of the loading bay, your legs showing in a flowy dress. Pale blue. You had shadows in your eyes, but you smiled at me. I wanted you then. But you weren’t ready.”

  She really was fortunate in the men who fancied her. Both Loyal and Jackson had said the same thing. Had given her time and space to find her feet in the time after James was killed.

  “You weren’t ready and neither was I. I suppose the more I got to know you, the more I understood that too.” Their fingers tangled as they held hands. “I knew, deep down, that you were not the kind of woman I’d be able to walk away from. And once I took a taste.” He paused to laugh. “Once you demanded I did and I finally let myself, there was no turning back. It’s not just that I’m in love with you. It’s that I cannot imagine a life without you. I need you.”

  Tears pricked against her lashes. The man barely said ten words in a row and there he was, making this most moving declaration of love.

  “I don’t know how I ended up with you. You’re a miracle. My miracle and I cannot let you drive with me. Not right now.”

  Her heart got stuck in her throat and she forced herself to be calm, to listen to all he had to say and she hoped it would be enough.

  “There’s a schism in the brigand leadership. The ones we faced over the last three moons . . . ” He held her tighter and she shivered at whatever could make a man like him speak with that tone of fear and horror. “They’re cannibals. Not just the sharpened teeth to tear into foes when they attack. That’s part theater, part weapon. But these new ones.” He swallowed. “There’s a new illness in some of the garrisons they overran. A virus that comes from eating human flesh. They are . . . I can’t risk you. It’s one thing to risk you when you can handle a weapon and would be riding along with my crew, who are all highly skilled. But they had mass graves. The women and children had been defiled in unspeakable ways. I’ve seen a lot, but this was . . . I’ve never seen anything like it. I tell you this level of detail because I want you to understand that when I came to the last few miles until the first gates of Shelter City when I left you last it was my plan to seek permission to have you ride with me.”

  Chills ran across her arms and he held her closer. “I can’t protect you from that level of depravity. And the central government has issued a temporary ban on nonmilitary personnel riding along so it’s not just me.”

  “So what do we do then?”

  “It’s a good sign you’re not slapping me, I guess.”

  She snorted. “I want to be with you. But I’m not thick. I know this is bad. I know you have your reasons and they’re good. I don’t want to get tortured, raped and eaten for dinner by brigands any more than you want to.”

  “We get time off. I’ve arranged for some. I have this run to make but we’ll be back to get Tobin and head to Shelter City. Would you like to come with me? Stay with me a while? I can show you around. We can have every day with each other. And, if you like Shelter City and my home, well, you could be my wife and live there. Or here. Once things get better you can ride along. But in Shelter City you can take classes, see vids, stand in the big sea. Be in my bed. I’m in Shelter City more than I can be here. But we can make it work. Whatever you want, if I can give it to you, I will.”

  She got to her knees and turned to face him. “Did you just ask me to marry you?”

  He nodded, not speaking.

  18

  Driven to see her, he got out of the vehicle and nodded at Indigo. “Short of bleeding or something being on fire, if anyone disturbs me and my wife in the next two days or so, I will cut someone.”

  Indigo laughed. “Understood. Tell Verity I said hello and will see her when you’re ready to unchain her from your bed.”

  Hm, that sounded like something he should try.

  He waved and turned back to the house. A place that had been just somewhere he slept in between runs. For years. But now it was a home.

  Dawn crept over the horizon as he let himself inside, heading to her. Always on his way to her.

  She slept in their bed, a tousle of hair around her face, the blankets wrapped around her. A book lay open on the bedside table. One of the books from a class she was taking at the university.

  She’d thrown herself into life in Shelter City with wild abandon. While he was away, she took day trips to some of the temples on the outskirts of Shelter City. She learned to swim in the ocean. Spent time with Tobin, who was thriving in his training. She’d made friends there as well. Neighbors, mostly, but people from her classes, some of the spouses and partners of the lawmen they knew as well.

  They’d gotten married, just the two of them along with the officiant, on the sand with the roar of the big sea as their music. She was the heart of him. Vibrant and beautiful. Filling his life with music and love and so much desire his skin was tight with it.

  She opened her eyes as she shifted to her back. “I heard you come in. What are you standing all the way over there for? It’s been some time since I’ve been pleasured by anyone but myself.”

  He forgot everything else but her as he yanked his clothes off, sending things flying as he moved to her. Always to her.

  Her skin was warm, fragrant with the soap she used, her hair soft, thick and cool against his arms as he got in bed, pulling her to him, kissing her hard and long. Taking all she offered so freely.

  Two quick movements and he’d tossed away the nightgown she wore and her drawers, leaving her bare and eager.

  “Your own hands though? Busy?”

  “It helps me sleep.” She arched as he kissed her
neck. “Not nearly as well when it’s your mouth or hands instead of my fingers, of course. I’m sure you’re forced to make do with your hand while you’re gone too. Especially as your wife”—she paused to growl when he found her nipple and licked over it—“mmm, would shoot your cock off if you put it anywhere near another woman.”

  “It’s a sign of just how messed up I am, my love, that it gets me hot when you speak like that.”

  She laughed, squirming as he dragged his teeth over her nipple and sighed as he kissed down her ribs, dropping to her belly button and down, pushing her thighs open wide and breathing her in.

  Hunger for her dug in deep as he slid her labia apart with his thumbs. He licked her over and over, taking her taste into himself until his restlessness, the restlessness that came from being away from her, eased.

  She slid her fingers through his hair, tugging him closer, her hips moving back and forth against his mouth. Taking her pleasure.

  It lit him up. Made him so hard he ached as his cock pressed into the blankets beneath where he lay. His face buried in her cunt so that he was surrounded by her. His tongue dug up into her, mimicking what he’d be doing with his prick shortly.

  She made one of her sounds, a pleading sort of moan. He knew she was close. So wet against his lips, her thigh muscles trembling where he held her apart with his shoulders.

  When she let go, she grabbed her pleasure up and wallowed in it. Trusting that there’d always be more when he was involved.

  He’d been gone two weeks, which was better than three moons, to be sure. And when he stayed it was in their home. She woke up with him every day. He took her to breakfast or out to the ocean.

  Her ring glinted on her hand as he surged up to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around him and her thighs, just as he slid into her body and she arched to get him deeper.

  He didn’t hurry. Just the slow advance and retreat. Filling her body over and over until she warmed up and accepted that he was home. She dug her nails into his ass, urging him on. “More. Deeper, harder. More.”

  “Greedy.” He kissed her again, the scruff of his beard tickling her lips.

  “Always. For you, always.”

  “I’m a lucky husband that way.” He kissed down her neck, changing his angle, hitching her hips up and giving her what she’d asked for. Harder. So hard her tits bounced as waves of pleasure shot through her with each thrust.

  “Mine,” he whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “I surely do love you, Verity Alsbaugh.”

  “Thank you, lawman. I love you too.”

  She laughed as he came. Filling her up with joy and the wonder of connection that seemed to grow stronger each day.

  He snuggled back down to the bed, remaining half inside her. “I’m home.”

  “Mmmm. Welcome back.”

  BY THE SEA OF SAND

  MEGAN HART

  To my kids,

  because you’re the best thing I’ve ever done

  1

  Life was not easy by the Sea of Sand.

  Perhaps it was not meant to be, Teila thought as she shielded her eyes against the searing glare of the triple suns overhead. If life were easier here, more would’ve come to homestead Sheir, stripping the planet’s difficult-to-find resources faster than they could be replenished. It had happened in other places. It had made war.

  Then again, she thought, there would always be reasons for war.

  “Mao?” Beside her, Stephin tugged the sleeve of her robe. “Mao, I’m hungry.”

  Teila stroked her fingers through the length of her son’s tangled blond curls, whipped by the heated wind and useless to comb. “What do you want, sweetheart?”

  The little boy jumped and clapped. “Milka! Milka!”

  Laughing, Teila scooped him up. She pressed her face into the warmth of his skin, relishing the boy’s unique scent—milka, soap from his recent bath, a hint of her own perfume and, of course, the ever-present sand.

  “Let’s see what we can find for you in the kitchen. Come.”

  But before she turned from the railing of the balcony overlooking the sea, Stephin cried out, pointing. A whale calf had breached the sands, its burnished red and orange segments glistening with the oils that protected its skin from the constant grinding of sand against it, and also what made it so valuable to whalers. The calf rolled its immense tubular body over and over, exposing first its belly, then its back, to the suns’ heat and light that fed it.

  If there was a calf, there was a mother nearby. Sure enough, in a moment the female also breached the surface. She was twice the size of her baby, her segments a deeper, duller red. Feelers topped with sensory organs vibrated, sensing the air for disturbances that would indicate a whaler or other dangers, but the sea was clear as far as Teila could see.

  She and Stephin watched the whales for a minute or so as the giant creatures rose and fell beneath the sea’s gritty, evershifting surface. As the mother rolled, her segments ground against one another, whipping her oily coating into pellets that migrated outward along the edges of her scales.

  “Oh, look, Stephin. Maybe we’ll get some fresh milka.”

  As they watched, several of the pellets, each easily the size of Teila’s entire body, worked their way free of the mother whale’s skin. Denser than the sand, the milka pellets would remain on the surface of the sea even as the whales themselves, fully fed from the sunslight, disappeared below. With no whalers or milkasloops in sight, the pellets would likely drift for days or weeks until someone discovered them or they eventually were ground to dust by the constantly grinding sands.

  Teila didn’t have a milkasloop, only a small scudder, but she was well skilled in the use of it and had all the tools to gather milka—at least for their personal use. She didn’t have the room to store more than one pellet at a time, nor the licensing to sell it. It was, in fact, illegal (if overlooked by most of the local authorities) for her to gather it herself instead of reporting it. But there was nothing better than fresh milka.

  Leaving Stephin in the capable hands of his amira, Densi, Teila quickly shucked her robe, leaving her in a sleeveless undershirt and leggings, and wrapped her hair and face in a scarf. Grabbing the long milka hook and some rope, she went down the long spiral stairs into the base of the lighthouse, then to the boathouse and the dock beyond it. Tilting the solar panels, she urged the scudder away from the dock and toward the smallest pellet.

  She’d marked the location of it from the lighthouse balcony, but of course the swelling waves had shifted it. The first pellet she came across was too big—twice the size of the scudder. Teila shifted the solars to urge the scudder a little farther from the lighthouse, skimming it along the undulating sands. The winds fluttered the edges of her scarf, and she wished she’d taken the time to slip on a pair of goggles.

  The pellet she’d been aiming for came into view. It was still easily as big as her boat, but when she hooked it and tied it behind, there was no trouble pulling it. The pellet’s smooth surface skidded without friction on top of the sands, tugging a little at the scudder’s back end as she steered it toward the lighthouse.

  She could’ve stayed out here forever, or at least much longer. As a girl she’d spent hours on the sea in this boat and an equal number on her father’s much larger whalecraft. It had been years since she’d been brave enough to leap onto a breaching whale in order to scrape free the smallest and freshest pellets, the most coveted. But once she’d been one of the best milka harvesters.

  Nobody bothered to do it that way anymore. Now the whalers came with their nets, capturing the whales and holding them above the surface while the mechanical harvesters crawled all over the creatures and scraped them raw. Then they left the poor things behind without so much as a lic of oil to coat their skins against the sea’s rough caress. Many of them died.

  By the time she got back to
the shore, Billis and Vikus had come to greet her, their curved knives at the ready. They made short work of the pellet, slicing it into thick slabs for storage, then smaller pieces for immediate consumption.

  “It’s a good one,” Vikus said, showing her the smooth white coating and the layers of red and orange inside. The center was soft and pink and sweet. “You could live the rest of your days on what you could earn from the sea.”

  “I’ll live the rest of my days a free woman, thank you,” Teila said. “I don’t have the head to be a criminal.”

  Vikus grinned. “Me and Billis . . .”

  “Shh, I don’t want to know.” Teila waved her hands. She’d known these men since they were boys, which seemed like only yesterday. It made her feel old when she realized both of them had been of legal age for as long as Stephin had been alive.

  They’d been good boys, and they were good men. Life out here could be rough, and Teila had needed to rely on Billis and Vikus for a lot. She watched them take care of the pellet, snagging a bite for herself, relishing the sweetness as it melted on her tongue. She tipped her face to the suns’ heat, savoring that as well in the last few hours before sunsdown and the world turned to ice.

  With her eyes closed against the glare, Teila thought the steady thump-thump was the rising wind. But when the sound got louder, she looked to see a large cruiser lowering itself onto the patch of rocky earth behind the lighthouse. The bits of scrub grass there had been burnt so many times by landing cruisers that there was little left to ignite, but the rocks glowed red from the heat of the thrusters.

  “I have no room,” were the first words out of her mouth when the man in the familiar uniform came down the short ramp toward where she stood waiting. “You’ve given me too many as it is. This is still a lighthouse, not a convalescent home. Or an asylum.”

  “Those convalescents,” the soldier said, “are what keep that roof over your head and food in your stomach. Nobody comes this far in this direction any more. What use is a lighthouse without those who’d need guiding?”