Snatching the towel off the floor he wrapped it around his waist, his still-engorged penis straining the cloth. Hallie tumbled from the berth onto the floor as the ship dipped drastically again. Swearing, Burke punched the code to unlock the door, shouldering the metal aside before it had fully retracted.
Hallie hurried to the hygienic to retrieve her uniform. Fortunately, the fabric was made to dry quickly. She skinned into it, foregoing undergarments, then pulled Burke’s damp garment from the wall as well. As she exited the chamber she came upon Calypso, pale and tiny and naked in the corridor.
“You might want to get dressed,” she told the dancer, “and then wrap yourself in whatever you can as protection, in case you get tossed around. I don’t know what’s going on, but find somewhere you can keep a solid grip.”
Making her way toward the cabin in an unsteady process, Hallie emerged into the cramped cockpit relatively unscathed to find Burke in the pilot’s seat fighting for control of the transport and Emil on the floor. Hallie started toward him in alarm until she noticed he was frantically working at something.
“Find it yet, Emil?” Burke shouted.
“No,” came the terse reply, muffled beneath the curve of the instrument panel.
Hallie stayed out of the way clutching an upright, Burke’s uniform tucked beneath her arm. She glanced out the panel where the distant glowing orb of Citadel maintained a fairly steady position in her line of site, seeming to attest to Burke’s ability to handle the ship. At least the floor beneath her feet no longer plunged and dipped.
“Problem?” she asked.
Burke glanced at her from the corner of his eye. His lips quirked at her tone. “Nothing that won’t keep until a more opportune time.”
Hallie blushed and bit her lip, gaze sliding toward Emil to see if he had noted the implication. He was staring up at her, both brows raised, forehead wrinkled.
“You’re standing in my light, little girl,” he said, amused.
Taking a hasty step backward, Hallie held the cool, damp fabric of Burke’s uniform up to her face, waiting for the heat of her blush to recede as she watched Emil make whatever repair was needed. As soon as the ship had stabilized, the gambler stood and announced he was going to lie down for a bit and for Burke to call him when he needed someone to man the controls again. Although he didn’t look at Hallie when he said it, she felt a rush of self-consciousness.
“You have to stop blushing, sweetheart,” Burke said to her once Emil had gone. “He made his own assumptions based on my condition when I ran in here. I haven’t said a word. He knows how I feel so drew the only conclusion I would expect him to.”
With a murmured sound, Hallie went to stand at Burke’s shoulder. “I brought your uniform. Is there something you need me to do while you put it on?”
“Hold the towel?” he suggested, handing her the wide strip of cloth that had been lying in haphazard fashion across his lap. Her breath caught in her nose as she looked at him. He really was extraordinarily well made, with a hardness that accentuated every muscle, every sinew, defining his strength in as simple a movement as tugging on his clothing.
“Watching me while I get dressed with that look in your eye isn’t going to help matters,” he drawled as he sat back down.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I like it. But we’re not likely to get another chance like we just had between here and home. Although we might,” he added with a sidelong wink at her. Hallie smiled.
“Would it distract you to have me sit here with you for a while?”
“I would be happy to have you sitting beside me for as long as you like. You need some sleep, though.”
“Soon.” Hallie folded herself down onto the floor, pulling her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs. Her ribs gave her a moment’s trouble and then everything settled into place. Burke’s hand came up to rest on her shoulder, his fingers warm where they curved against her neck. She leaned her head against the side of his thigh, watching nothing in particular through the thick panel of the shield.
Physical and emotional closeness, solitude and near silence, wrapped around her. She recognized it as a moment not bound to be repeated, special and solely theirs, removed from what they had left behind and as yet untouched by what they had to face. A fragile filament in time to be banished by the next word, the next breath. Hallie closed her eyes, reluctant to speak that word, to take that breath. Against her neck Burke’s fingers stilled as if he, too, felt the profundity of the moment.
He cleared his throat, very lightly, and spoke. “It isn’t just this. The stress, the relief, the loneliness and guilt and who knows what other excuse one might make for falling in love so quickly. The circumstances that threw us together have certainly been forged for high emotion, but I’ll go right on loving you even in the quiet times, Hallie, I swear it to you.”
With a small sound Hallie lurched to her feet, climbing into his lap. One strong, lean arm went around her, while the other hand continued to manipulate the rolling control that kept the transport level. She put her arms around him, burying her face into the side of his throat in an effort to stifle her tears. “I’ll stop in a minute,” she said against his neck, “and then I’ll get out of your way.”
He laughed. Pulling her head back, she met the sobering expression in his dark eyes as the smile faded from his mouth.
“Distractions,” he whispered, “be damned,” and kissed her.
II.
ONE MOMENT TO DARE
Burke pinched the flesh at the bridge of his nose, staving off a headache. He hadn’t had one in years, but wasn’t surprised to find one starting now. “Landing this craft is going to be difficult,” he said to Emil, lifting his eyes to gauge the man’s reaction. Emil returned his gaze without flinching. “We might end up a flare across the night sky. You’re a gambling man. How would you bet?”
“I am, indeed, a gambling man. I would bet we make it just fine. The odds are stacked against that happening, so I stand to gain big if we do. And if we don’t make it, what would I be worrying about losing for anyway?”
Burke grunted, straightening in his chair. “We orbit for too long, we get noticed. That pseudo-security clearance isn’t going to hold up to that type of scrutiny. We land in an official zone, same thing. So we try for the open desert, and at night to avoid the raging heat of day. We got that, that’s understood. But the trajectory for re-entry is off. There’s got to be a way to ascertain the coordinates and correct that. I just can’t think. I need to sleep. Unfortunately, there’s no longer any time for that.”
Beside him, Emil let a breath out through his nose. “Go stick your head under cold water. Me, I’ll stay on it. Oh, hey. Come to watch me work?”
Burke turned to the cabin entryway where Calypso stood. He hadn’t troubled to ask Emil where he’d absented himself for those few hours of the night he’d been gone. Whether to sleep or some other occupation, it had been none of his business as long as he left Hallie alone, and Burke had no concerns there. Looking at the soft blue focus of Calypso’s gaze, he figured he knew exactly where the gambler had been.
“I’ll do that,” he said to Emil and stood up, stretching his long arms in the confines of the cockpit. His knuckles grazed the ceiling. With a nod to Calypso, he started to make his exit. She stopped him.
“Hallie bathing,” she said.
Again? “Got it. I won’t bother her.”
Like hell he wouldn’t.
He headed straight for the hygienic, unable to get an image of Hallie’s nude body soaking wet out of his head. Part of his inability to focus might, at this point, have as much to do with the unfinished session with Hallie the day before as with any lack of sleep. Hesitating outside of the door, he knocked.
“Hallie?”
Punching the control, he allowed the door to partially open. Steam rolled out into the corridor. Not a cold shower then.
“Hallie?”
When she didn’t answer ag
ain, he grew concerned and went inside. Her uniform hung on a hook directly inside and the water was running in the chamber. Burke shut the door to keep the steam in the room and out of the rest of the ship, then took the two steps to cross the floor. His heart squeezed in his chest, followed by the instant and more basic reaction of his body.
She stood standing with her arms against the wall, head angled forward so the spray feel directly over her crown to soak her hair and run in spraying rivulets down her spine. With the volume of water, she probably hadn’t heard him. She appeared lost in concentration. The silvery illumination of water followed the ridges of her spine down to her hips and the taut curve of her buttocks, running in a thin stream down her legs and between them. Blood rushed to his loins, making him stand up hard in response.
“Hallie.”
She jumped, lifting her head and turning to look at him over her shoulder. Water droplets clung to her double growth of lashes. With a small movement of her chin, she invited him in.
Shirking out of his uniform, he stepped inside. She hadn’t moved except to follow with her eyes the shedding of his clothes. He stepped up close behind her, slipping his fingers around her waist, then carefully along her rib cage to cup her breasts. They felt full and heavy and slick in his hands. The nipples were hard, despite the heat.
“What are you doing in here?” he whispered in her ear.
“Thinking about you.”
He groaned, closing the tips of his fingers onto the stiff peaks of her breasts, eliciting a soft expulsion of breath from her.
“I was taking a cold shower, but it wasn’t helping, so I figured I’d turn up the hot water and hope I could relax.”
“Could you?”
“No.”
Kissing the streaming side of her neck, Burke began to manipulate her nipples with the middle finger of each hand, watching in fascination as her flesh yearned toward his touch, the water splashing over her skin. Droplets ran along the rosy, puckered flesh like the trailing edge of a kiss. He wanted his mouth there, to catch each drop upon release from her skin before he closed in to bite and tease and suck, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn her around. The way she was standing was entirely too inviting. He pressed himself against the crevice where her back sloped into the curve of her buttocks and felt her shudder.
Grazing the nape of her neck with his teeth, he released one breast to trail his hand down over her warm belly. With a quick thrust of her hips, his fingers were between her legs, enveloped in her moist heat, exploring, caressing, teasing. She arched her neck, pressing her head into the ridge of his collar bone. The sounds she made were low and exquisite, vibrating up the length of her spine and straight into his chest. Pressing closer, he turned her body just enough to open his mouth over her own, the little noises of pleasure echoing into the heated hollow intensifying as he stroked her toward climax. Her fingers closed around his arm, pressing into muscle, the trembling of her hips powerful and mesmerizing. He spun her in his arms and lifted her up, balancing her aloft with her legs wrapped around his waist as he slipped into her. With long, slow, deliberate thrusts he pushed her to climax again like sweet insanity and then he let himself go, tumbling headlong into edgy, exploding, searing gratification.
After, he let her slide free of him until she was standing with her back to the wall. He leaned toward her, kissing her in fondness on the mouth, the brow, the crown of her wet head.
“If we make it through all of this, I’m going to ask you to marry me. That’s just a heads up, so you have time to think about it. Like I said to you before, I don’t know what I can offer you or if it will be enough, but I’ll do my best to do right by you.”
She looked up at him, eyes like blue-green water, her smile tender.
“We’ll make it through,” she said. It was no answer, but for the time being he knew it would have to do.
* * *
After braiding her wet hair, Hallie bent to pull her boots out from beneath the berth and put them on. Dropping to one knee, she searched blindly for the wrapped weapons she had placed behind them. Landing in the desert at night—if they managed it—was the sensible thing to do, but animals hunted the sands by night, as they did on Zebulon. These, however, were beasts she knew and, in most instances, their party contained prey too large to bring down. In most instances, but not in all.
The lyawar came to mind. Dappled beige and white and brown like the shifting dunes, the lyawar lay in wait in shallow depressions, permitting itself to be covered by the windblown sands until such time as it would leap up for its prey, dragging it down by the throat to suffocate beneath the desert.
Laying the weapons on top of the berth, she began to unwrap the towel she had used to cover them to keep anyone from getting hurt if they got tossed about the chamber in a crisis situation. She wanted to move them to a place closer to hand in case there was damage to the transport and she couldn’t return to the chamber. Pulling back the towel, Hallie rose slowly from her knee. She stared at the spear and the broken lathesa beside it, remembering her fear in the emerald twilight of Zebulon.
On the rumpled sheeting of the berth, secured to the ends of each weapon, the crystals glowed with ice-blue light.
* * *
“Nothing. We’ve found nothing. Maybe it’s a totally different anomaly.”
Hallie nodded at Burke, sucking in her upper lip with the edge of her teeth. He and Emil, armed with the two broken halves and leaving Hallie and Calypso in the cockpit with the intact spear, had searched every place imaginable that might hide one or more of the creatures.
“Little girl,” added Emil gruffly, “it’s just us here.”
Burke hooked his fingers behind her neck and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Everything’s fine. Better to check than to dismiss, right?”
“Right,” she agreed. An anomaly, a different anomaly. Okay. But what did it mean?
Stepping out of his way in the cramped space, she allowed Burke to return to the pilot’s seat. Leaning forward, he checked the timekeeper with a short nod. Hallie gathered the weapons and wrapped them up again. One by one, she, Calypso and Emil took their places, bolstered by wrapped blankets and towels and sheets. Burke secured himself into his chair.
“Well,” said Emil, “this could be it. Or it could not. Wish I had access to my bookie.”
Burke snorted in his seat. He made several adjustments to the instruments. “Time’s up. If you’re religious at all, you might want to offer up a little something right about now.”
Hallie closed her eyes to say a rushed and whispered prayer, then lifted her lids to find Burke finishing up in similar fashion. As to what passed inside Emil or Calypso’s minds she couldn’t tell. Although they had all decided on the safest nooks in the cabin, Hallie slid free of hers and closer to Burke’s chair, slipping her hand into his. He made no remark, gave no warning, but closed his fingers around hers.
Outside, the nimbus of Arias lipped the far side of Citadel. The ship began to turn away, to enter the atmosphere where it was still night. They had to time entry while Arias was still behind the opposite hemisphere in order for the temperature, the light rays, the rotation of the planet, everything to be in juxtaposition for a successful re-entry. She didn’t understand any of it, really. She only knew it was considered a dicey undertaking in an unfamiliar vessel with bastardized programming.
The ship dipped sharply, but intentionally, the artificial gravity making Hallie slide forward on the floor. Through the forward shield she saw the high nimbus clouds gray against the dark far, far below and above those clouds, so much nearer, the thinning of the swathing atmosphere into the seemingly lightless forever of space.
“Three,” whispered Burke, “…two…one.”
Squeezing Burke’s fingers, Hallie bowed her head and closed her eyes.
Vibrating so badly that her teeth knocked together, the cargo transport pierced the upper ethereal dome and slid into Citadel’s atmosphere to begin its descent. As the outer hull heated, a
deep orange glow seeped through Hallie’s closed lids, and then it was gone. Burke muttered something swift and unintelligible under his breath. The sound of the transport’s engine altered, became heavier as Burke slowed the vessel for landing.
“Almost there,” he said. “Hold tight, in case it gets bumpy.”
He and Emil had disabled the communication system so that it would give out a false and repeated message of inquiry and then stop upon entering the atmosphere, hopefully to provide them enough time to land and get away from the ship before any authority set out to aid or intercept them. Hallie released her breath and Burke’s fingers, freeing him for the task at hand.
“Shit,” he said suddenly. “Heads down! Heads down! Heads down!”
The underbelly of the transport struck heavily, bounced, then the entire vessel rolled onto its side, throwing Emil across the cabin onto Hallie. Hallie heard Calypso squeal in pain or fright and Burke swearing in a rapid undertone. He no longer had control of the ship. Sliding across sand at an extreme angle, friction was slowing its progress, but not fast enough. Hallie knew the desert. There were dunes that dropped off into the face of nowhere, places where you couldn’t see the bottom.
Abruptly the ship stopped, throwing everyone forward, then teetered, and dropped. Not far, though. Not far enough to be bottomless. They plummeted perhaps a height twice that of the Quadrate and came to a complete and harrowing stop. Hallie drew a breath into crushed lungs, assisting Emil in getting off of her. Burke was out of his chair, reaching for Calypso’s arm.
“Is she hurt?” Hallie asked. The lights in the cabin were still on, but she couldn’t see the dancer’s head to know.
“Me, all right,” Calypso said, scrambling to her feet without her usual, flawless beauty of motion. She shoved her near-white hair from her eyes. “We here?”
“We here,” answered Burke, bending to take Hallie by the elbow. Hallie rose to her feet beside him, standing on the wall of the cabin. “If we’re all in one piece, let’s get out of this ship.”
Emerald Twilight: Bundled Edition Page 20
