Holding the blanket to him so it wouldn’t slip, Pax curled back into Colt’s body. He placed a quick kiss on Colt’s lips then tucked his head back into its spot under Colt’s chin. Pax patted Colt’s chest again then closed his eyes.
“Now, rest or I won’t show you a few other positions I know about.”
“You drive a hard bargain, little bird.” Colt chuckled.
Pax smiled when he heard Colt yawn. “It’s not a bargain. It’s a promise.”
Chapter 6
Imlay opened the sick bay doors and started to walk in when he spotted the two naked men cuddled beneath a blanket on the medical bed. He shook his head as he stepped back, allowing the doors to close as he walked away.
“Nasty habit,” he grumbled.
Why men chose to show their affection in a physical manner was beyond him. Imlay never understood what was so special about sex that men seemed to lose their minds with lust. That’s exactly why he never bothered with it. It was a carnal act that made no sense.
Imlay walked into the quarters the commander had assigned him. He guessed it would have to do. There was no literature here to feed his knowledge, nothing but mind-numbing ship manuals. It was as if the crew had used this room for storage before assigning it to him.
With a handkerchief from his own pocket, Imlay began the nasty detail of wiping the cupboards and dresser off. He coughed a little, waving his hand in front of his face as dust clouds rose in the air.
“They’re all animals,” he complained as his pristine white handkerchief turned an ugly shade of black. Imlay pinched it between his fingers and walked it to the trash receptacle before allowing his fingers to part company with the disgusting filth.
He was already pissed that the chief of staff made him accompany the medical cargo. The least his boss could have done was let go of the purse strings and afford him better travel arrangements.
“Knock, knock, doc.” One of the ship’s crewmembers chuckled as he stepped into Imlay’s quarters. “Commander wanted me to check on you, make sure you’re all settled in.”
“I don’t need a sitter or a spy. I’m perfectly capable of settling in, thank you very much,” Imlay said over his shoulder as he unpacked his travel bag.
“Do you have an assistant in that bag?” the man asked.
Imlay straightened and turned around, wondering what this ridiculous man was talking about. “It’s a simple travel bag. How on Lost Star can a person fit in there?”
“I was just asking if there was another medical personnel around to remove the bug from your ass.” The man began to laugh as he shook his head. “Name’s Livewire.”
Imlay watched the man cross the room with his arm extended, stop midstride, and then cock his head. Imlay stiffened, wondering what the quirky man was up to. Livewire was just standing in the middle of Imlay’s room with his arm outstretched.
“Is there a problem?”
Livewire began to back away, shaking his head with a false grin on his face. “Nope, no problem, none whatsoever.” His arm dropped to his side as his eyes darted around the room. He chucked a thumb over his shoulder as his back hit the wall. “I’m gonna go tighten down a few bolts on my girl.” Livewire spun around and hit the wall, cursed, and then ran from the room.
Imlay sighed as he shook his head. “I’ll never understand men.”
Blade watched Livewire pace manically up and down the corridor of the lower deck. He watched the mechanic mutter a few things and then stop to look out of a porthole before taking his pacing back up again. Livewire looked agitated.
“Something wrong with the ship?” Blade asked as he slowly approached. He wasn’t sure if any sudden movements were a good thing right now. Livewire’s head snapped up. He stared at Blade for a second and then went back to pacing. Something was definitely wrong here. “Livewire, is something wrong with the ship?”
Livewire stopped pacing to stare at Blade again, his hand twitching nervously at his side. “What isn’t? And he knows about me now.” Livewire shoved his thumbnail in his mouth, chewing on it like it was a steak dinner.
Blade knew the man wasn’t all there, but this was beyond even Livewire’s abnormal behavior. “Can you be a little clearer?”
“Clearer, you want clearer?” Livewire tossed his hands up into the air as he started pacing again. “Pax had it right. The blue man was a brilliant thinker, and I didn’t even realize it. Running is such an excellent solution. I don’t think I like cake anymore.”
“Okaaaayyy,” Blade drawled slowly as he backed away.
If that was Livewire’s idea of clearer, Blade would hate to hear the man go into any in-depth explanation. Blade grabbed the railing to the steps, looked one last time at the mechanic before getting as far away as possible. The next galaxy was looking pretty damn good.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get to enjoy our day at the spa, little bird,” Colt said as he walked Pax toward the mess hall. “Maybe next time.”
“Uh-uh, nope, not happening.” Pax shook his head rapidly. His eyes were as wide as saucers. “I’m not leaving the ship again.”
Colt chuckled at the vehemence in Pax’s voice. “Pax, you’ll have to leave the ship at some point. You can’t live on it forever.”
Pax stopped suddenly. His dark brows drew together, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Bet me.”
“Paxton!” Colt couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen Pax act like this before.
“Can’t make me leave.”
Pax sounded fierce, but Colt could see his lower lip begin to tremble. Colt sighed and gathered Pax to him. “Okay, little bird, you don’t have to leave the ship until you’re ready. No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
Pax shuddered and pressed his face into Colt’s chest. “Nothing good ever happens when I leave the ship.”
Colt dropped his head down against Pax’s. It had been over a week since he’d been shot, but Pax was still trying to deal with it. Colt had no idea how to make things easier on his mate. Things happened. People got hurt and even killed. It was a fact of life. They had a dangerous life here onboard the Lady Blue.
“Want to watch a vid after dinner?” Colt asked, trying to take Pax’s mind off leaving the ship. He knew Pax loved curling up and watching movies with him on the vid-screen in the media room. They’d done it often enough.
Pax sniffled and lifted his head. Colt’s heart ached to see the tears drying on Pax’s cheeks. Colt bent down and kissed each glistening tear until Pax groaned and chased his lips with his own. Colt knew he gave in too quickly to Pax’s attempt to change the mood, but he couldn’t help it. The man kissed like a dream.
“Really!” A loud voice snapped from behind them. “Do you have to do that in the hallway? There are people walking here, you know.”
Colt growled when he felt Pax tense. He lifted his head and turned to find Imlay standing behind him, a perturbed look on the man’s face like kissing in the hallway had insulted him in some way.
“Doctor, you’re a passenger on this ship. We live here. If you don’t like us kissing in the hallway then I suggest either you don’t look or get off on the next planet. If the decision is too hard for you, I would be more than happy to escort you to an airlock.”
Imlay’s jaw dropped. Colt arched an eyebrow, daring the man to say something more. He didn’t care who Imlay was. He had no right to make Pax feel bad for kissing him. This was Pax’s home.
“Good day, doctor.” Colt turned back around and pushed Pax toward the mess hall doors, placing his hand in the small of Pax’s back.
“Should you be talking to him like that?” Pax whispered. “He is a doctor.”
“He’s a field medic, Pax, not a doctor.”
“But you called him doctor.”
“Only because I couldn’t call him a jackass.”
Imlay scurried back to his quarters. He was ticked off that the men aboard the Lady Blue blatantly exposed their sexual desire right out in the open for all to
see. Didn’t anyone believe in the privacy of their quarters anymore?
He didn’t want to see kissing and humping going on in the corridors. No self-respecting man should act that way. No man should—Imlay ran into something solid, his hands instinctively reaching out to stop himself from falling.
Livewire stood there stiff as a board, his eyes locked on the wall behind Imlay. Not one single muscle moved, but Imlay saw sweat trickle down the mechanic’s temple.
“You should watch where you are going,” Imlay snipped at Livewire as he let the man go and took a step back.
“Me?” Livewire seemed to unfreeze as soon as Imlay let him go and moved away. “Sorry my body was inconveniently blocking your progress, but I’m glad I was able to stop you from falling on your narrow-minded ass.”
Imlay narrowed his eyes at the strange and rude man. “Good day, Livewire,” Imlay said as he hurried past the mechanic. Was everyone on board this ship mental? Imlay was beginning to believe he was the only sane one.
“Wait!”
Imlay stopped in his tracks as Livewire rushed to his side. The man kept a respectable distance, which Imlay was grateful for. Standing too close to Livewire made Imlay nervous. “Yes?”
Livewire looked like he was reaching for whatever he wanted to say and then kicked his toe around the corridor floor. “What’s your name?”
Imlay stood there slack-jawed as he stared at the mechanic. “You already know my name. What are you getting at? What kind of game are you playing?”
“Your full name,” Livewire specified his want.
“Oh.” Imlay was momentarily stunned. No one had ever taken the time to ask him anything personal. His whole life was one professional question after another, nothing relevant to who he was as a person. “Imlay Jones.”
“Thanks.” Livewire’s face seemed to light up as he walked away.
Imlay stood in the corridor staring after Livewire, wondering— Imlay wasn’t sure what he was wondering or thinking at the moment. For the first time in his life, his mind was blank.
Pax walked into Gigi’s hydroponics room. He was amazed to see the progress of Gigi’s garden in such a short amount of time. He could already see red tomatoes growing and other strange colors sprouting up between the green leaves.
“This is looking good, Gigi.”
“Oh, yeah.” Gigi grinned as he looked up from watering the plants. “These little guys just needed a little love and attention. I finally understand what Livewire means about the Lady Blue. Love them, give them attention, and they grow like weeds.”
“Um…” Pax’s forehead wrinkled as he frowned. “Are we going to be eating weeds? I thought we were growing vegetables.”
“You’re hilarious, Pax,” Gigi snickered.
Pax wasn’t trying to be funny. He was serious. If Gigi wanted weeds to grow then why hadn’t he planted weeds? He had planted vegetables and fruits. It just kind of made sense to plant what you wanted to grow.
Pax shook his head. This was just another thing he didn’t understand. Maybe he never would. While he couldn’t ask for better friends than the crew of the Lady Blue, they were all nuttier than bed bugs, and from what Pax had heard, bed bugs were pretty crazy.
“So, I was wondering if you would pick some stuff up for me when we got back to End of the Line?”
“You’re not going off ship when we land?”
“Nope. Colt said I could stay onboard, and that’s where I’m staying.”
“Oh.” Gigi frowned for a moment then shrugged and went back to watering his green things. “Well, that’s too bad. Remy’s been telling me about this place he wants to take me. They actually have these machines you can ride on that go all the way up to the ceiling then drop you back down again. I was hoping we could go.”
Pax scratched his head and started slowly backing out of the room in case Gigi came toward him. He was really beginning to wonder about the man. “Why would I want to go on something like that? Or pay for it. It’s the same sensation we get when we enter a planet’s atmosphere.”
“I don’t know. I thought it might be fun.”
Pax clenched his fists then unclenched them. He really didn’t want to disappoint Gigi, but come on…a machine that shot you into the air? Wasn’t that called a spaceship?
“Can I think about it?”
“Oh, sure.” Gigi grinned.
Pax plastered a smile on his face then hurried from the room before Gigi could say anything else. He wasn’t taking any chances. Gigi could come up with some crazy schemes like catapulting them to an abandoned moon.
Pax jumped and screamed when something green and slimy suddenly scampered across the floor and right over his foot. He quickly backed up and watched the thing slither across the floor and around the corner.
“Oh, gross,” Pax said when he lifted his foot and found it covered in milky-white goo. “What is that?” Pax kicked his shoe off and lifted it in the air by the shoelace. Globs of goo dripped off his shoe and plopped onto the floor. “That’s disgusting.”
Pax held his shoe as far away from his body as he could as he walked down the corridor toward his quarters. He was giving serious thought to just tossing the shoes out an airlock, but this was his only pair of shoes.
“What the hell is that on your shoe?” Tank asked as he stepped out into the hallway.
“Something slithered across my shoe.” Pax wrinkled his face, curling his lips back. “It was covered in this stuff.”
“Something? Could you be more specific?”
Pax blinked at Tank. “It was green, and it slithered. What more do you need to know?”
“Actually, we might need to know a lot more.”
Pax swung around to see Imlay standing behind him. The man was rubbing his chin as he stared at Pax’s shoe, a thoughtful expression on his face. “More? Why?”
“If I’m not mistaken, and I hardly ever am, what you just described was an Uryclian Mucus Slug. Their mucus can be deadly when it comes into contact with other species.”
“Deadly?” Pax gulped.
He dropped the shoe.
“Will you hold the light still?” Gigi whispered as he and Pax crept around the corner of the upper deck. “It’s hard to see with the beam jiggling everywhere.”
Pax narrowed his eyes at Gigi, turning the light up to illuminate his face. “You’re only saying that because you have two shoes. Do you know what it’s like walking around with one shoe on? Walking around with one shoe isn’t fun. I can’t stop limping like one side of my body is shorter than the other. You try walking around with one shoe on, and see how you like it,” Pax whispered back.
“Just hold the dang light still. If that slug thing jumps us from behind, how are we gonna see if the light is bouncing around?” Gigi was the last person in the galaxy to run out and slay a monster slug, but he had tossed and turned half the night, constantly checking under his bed. It made for one grouchy-ass man when sleep was taken out of the equation.
“What are you going to do with that spatula anyway, smack it to death?” Pax whispered as they rounded another corner.
Gigi rolled his eyes as he pointed his large and shiny spatula at Pax. “I don’t have access to the weapons room. This was the next best thing.”
Gigi and Pax jumped when they heard something moving. Gigi listened closely for a couple of seconds, but the sound didn’t repeat. “Let’s try the kitchen. It’s bound to get hungry.”
Pax nodded his head rapidly as they moved toward the mess hall. Gigi pushed the door open an inch, sticking his head inside. He yelped when Pax pushed him, making him enter the mess hall fully. Gigi glared back at Pax, who was waving him on while still standing in the corridor.
“I can shine my light from here.” Pax pointed his light at Gigi.
“Chicken,” Gigi huffed before turning around. He was a bigger chicken, so why was he the one who had to come in here? Gigi looked above his head and saw that the ceiling was void of slug monsters. Next he got down on his hands and kne
es and peered under the table. There was nothing under there.
Gigi stilled when he heard a pot fall in the kitchen and hit the floor loudly. It was the middle of the night. Who could be in there in the middle of the night? Crewmembers could be in there in the middle of the night, but wouldn’t they turn a light on?
“Pax!” Gigi snapped the blue-skinned man’s name in a loud whisper. Pax stuck his head in from the corridor, his eyes darting around. They landed on Gigi with a questioning look.
Gigi pointed at the kitchen just as another pot clanged loudly, hitting the floor and bouncing a few times. Pax’s eyes rounded as he shook his head back and forth before pulling it back out into the corridor. One blue arm stuck in through the door, the light jiggling around as the arm shook.
Gigi got up from the floor and walked over to the door, pulling on the arm until Pax was inside the mess hall with him.
“Shouldn’t we get someone…bigger?” Pax asked as he started backing toward the door.
“I want to be sure that slug thing is in there before we make a big scene. If it’s in there, we could trap it. It may fight back, but we have the upper hand. The element of surprise.”
“But it’s only six inches long. How is it going to fight back?” Pax asked as he took one more step back.
“It could. Are you willing to take the chance?” Gigi asked as he grabbed Pax’s unwilling hand and pulled him toward the kitchen. They both stood outside the kitchen, their ears pressed firmly against the door, listening.
Pax’s eyes grew very large as the light began to shake all over the place. He gulped as he stared at Gigi. “Something just crawled across my sock.”
Gigi swallowed hard and looked down just in time to see the end of something green slither under the food replicator. He grabbed Pax’s arm to keep the light from shaking all over the place then slowly pointed it over at the food replicator.
Both Pax and Gigi screamed when two slimy green worms scurried out from under the food replicator and started slithering across the floor toward them. “Run!” Gigi shouted. They made it as far as the new extra-large table Remy had bought.
Glenn, Stormy and Hagen, Lynn - Pax's Blues [Lady Blue Crew 2] (Siren Publishing Classic ManLove) Page 7
