“Two whole months,” Rachel murmured into his shoulder. “They’re just gonna love that.”
Somehow, after everything he and Rachel had laid down for the planet since first joining the Resistance, Jarek didn’t think anyone would begrudge it of them too much now that the sky wasn’t actively falling.
They had a lot of work to do in the coming years. An entire world to rebuild.
One day, the rakul would return. And one day far sooner than that, Jarek and Rachel would probably both be called upon to help their planet prepare.
But for now, it kind of felt like they had all the time in the world.
Epilogue
“We’re gonna be late,” Rachel said, glancing down at her comm. “Again.”
Jarek straightened from checking the oven window and made a point of straightening out the ridiculous Kiss the Cook apron he was wearing. “You can’t rush art, Goldilocks. And I’m still not sure what this ‘late’ thing is that you speak of. Back in my day …”
She couldn’t help but smile a little as Jarek launched into yet another tirade about his long years living by the sword and the absurdity of a life so luxurious and cozy that you could actually be expected to arrive at a place on time without being set upon by savage marauders or red-eyed aliens.
Back in his day. Like they hadn’t been through it all together. Like it hadn’t only been six months ago.
It was a familiar monologue, though he always varied the flavor, just for kicks. And despite the fact that everyone would already be at Pryce’s by now, she had a hard time getting too irritated by his lack of punctuality when he was clearly in such high spirits.
Plus, in his defense, it did still feel kind of weird, casually planning a party night without a care in the world barely more than ten miles from the spot the rakul invasion had officially kicked off in force just over seven months ago.
Al, as he often did, picked an opportune moment and dove into the rant alongside Jarek, seeming to feel similarly about seeing Jarek enthused about something other than sex, whiskey, and scrappy violence. Not that she minded all of the above. And not that he’d left them behind, either.
Just last week, they’d lost half of their back deck and a good chunk of the northeastern corner of their house when Jarek and Drogan’s weekly sparring match had gotten a bit out of hand.
Drogan had given awkward but courteous apologies.
Jarek, still lying in the pile of rubble, had just panted something or another about the importance of staying sharp.
Thinking about the incident, she started tapping her fingernails impatiently on the countertop. “And how long until said art is complete, Picasso?”
She actually felt bad when he absentmindedly traced the lines of the scars on his face, forming a connection she hadn’t meant to imply. They could laugh and joke all they wanted—and for the most part, they did—but the reminders of everything they’d been through, and the toll it had all taken, continued to pop up in the little details here and there, often when they least expected it.
Before she could go to him and assure him that she wouldn’t have his face any other way, Jarek’s thoughtful expression passed and his smile returned. “Couple minutes. So probably just enough time for a …”
She skewered him with her best we’re not having a quickie while we keep our friends waiting for your baked goods look.
“… kitchen dance party?” he concluded, gauging her reaction.
In the corner of the kitchen, Al’s speaker began pumping a bass-heavy rhythm without missing a beat.
“Why?” Jarek asked, wagging his eyebrows. “What’d you think I was talking about?”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
She still wasn’t sure what it was with him and this sudden obsession with baking. Something about his having lived without an oven and mostly off of canned goods, wild vegetables, and the odd bit of game here and there for nearly a decade. Guy went nuts for a loaf of fresh-baked bread.
But the baking seemed to be therapeutic for him, and the regular stream of baked goods was definitely therapeutic for her as well, so there wasn’t really any reason to complain.
Still, she couldn’t just let him off the hook that easily.
So she walked closer, adding an unnecessary sway to her hips. She always felt silly, walking like that, but she never got tired of his reaction. The excited intake of breath. The tight grip on the counter, like he was straining to keep himself from tackling her to the floor and attacking her clothes.
She drew in close. Up on her tip toes, until her lips brushed lightly against his ear. She felt the tension in his body, every fiber of him threatening to rebel against his control and pounce on her.
Gently, as sultrily as she could, she whispered, “I thought you were talking about fucking me until I forget we’re late.”
She couldn’t help but grin as he gave a little gasp and his hand slipped from the countertop.
He swallowed audibly, forced a shrug, and tilted his head at the batter-smeared mixing bowl. “Yeah, well, I’ve got, you know, very important baking stuff to do, so uh …”
She leaned closer, selling it until she felt her own genuine tingles of excitement building. He started to slide his arms around her waist, slowly, like he was hoping she somehow might not notice. She reminded herself that this was supposed to be the part where she left him hanging and got him back for his little dance party joke.
They really shouldn’t right now. She should back away. But …
He pulled her tight and kissed her hungrily. The tingles intensified. She gasped for breath. Cupped a hand on the back of his neck and—
Ding.
The chime of the oven timer hit her like a splash of cold water.
Jarek groaned and jabbed the button to kill the oven’s coils. He turned back to her, clearly intending to pick up where they’d left off.
She caught his advance with a hand to his aproned chest and gave him a measuring look. “Don’t you have important baking stuff to do?”
He just grinned and pounced on her. Or tried to.
She caught him with telekinesis this time, pecked a quick kiss on his nose, and backed away until the kitchen island was safely between them. “Pack the goodies and let’s go. Maybe later, if you’re real good …”
Jarek tilted his head questioningly. “Is this about the corner of the house still? Because that was totally Stumpy’s fault.”
“Uh-huh. Explains why I found you both in the rubble.”
“Well, yeah,” Jarek said, slipping on a big red crab claw oven mitt and pulling the oven door open. “I mean, he broke it with my face, but it was still him doing the breaking.”
Rachel took an appreciative whiff of the thick scent of chocolate filling the kitchen. “Seems kinda like a matter of perspective.”
“Yeah,” he said, setting the sizable cake pan on the stove top to cool. “Tell that to my face.”
She smiled and ran her fingers over the cool granite of the island countertop while Jarek busied himself covering the cake with some manner of dark frosting. She glanced at her comm and was unsurprised to see it free of messages. No one checking where they were.
Likely, everyone already had a fair idea.
It was kind of funny, the ways people could change from one set of circumstances to the next.
When the heat was on, no one else got shit done like Jarek Slater. Remove said heat and plop him down in new-world suburbia, and he became perpetually late and started baking cakes and talking about back in his day like a rambling old man.
Somehow, it only made her love him more.
There were still times, and plenty of them, when she couldn’t quite believe she’d stumbled so completely into this—whatever this was. Times where she felt almost as if she’d somehow betrayed some quintessential part of the person she was. Or the person she’d been, at least.
Sure, after she’d lost her parents, she’d had Michael and John. She’d had familial love. But, somewhere
deep down, she’d never really been able to stop thinking of herself as anything but a lone wolf. She’d never expected to be anything but the cold survivor who’d never be able to give herself to another person completely enough to risk being hurt again.
Sometimes, she still felt like she could never truly be anything but that person.
But then Jarek would pull her to him with this resolute certainty—like she belonged there, like he’d left a piece of himself inside her and needed to touch base with it—and those thoughts would grow quiet, overruled by tender emotions she’d never really expected to have yet somehow couldn’t imagine being without now.
Apparently, all it had ever taken to soften those walls of hers had been fighting the raknoth, uniting the planet, and surviving the rakul—all side-by-side with a certain special someone. Simple. Nothing to it, really.
And even now, it wasn’t like this thing between them was some kind of storybook happily ever after. They fought. Though said fights ended with both of them laughing at themselves as often as not.
So maybe it was happily ever after. Their version of it, at least. She couldn’t say for sure. All she knew was that their fires burned well together. That was the best way she could think to put it.
Most days, she was happier than she’d ever really expected she would be. It was more than she’d ever bothered to ask for.
“Frosting for your thoughts, m’lady?”
Rachel came back from her musings and found Jarek holding out a chocolate-glaze-laden spatula for her to lick.
“Double chocolate, huh?” she said, teetering between telling him to forget the spatula and hurry it up and tearing said spatula from his hand and devouring that glistening chocolate delight.
“Oh-ho-ho no, my sexy little concubine. I went full-on triple chocolate up in this bitch.”
Before she could formulate a reply, something shimmered at the far reaches of her senses, drawing her focus.
“Not really sure where we get off calling it triple chocolate,” Jarek continued, waving the spatula in front of her face.
She was too busy pulling up her mental defenses and warily inspecting the group of blazing mental presences that were quickly approaching outside.
“I mean I guess it sounds more snazzy than shit ton of chocolate in your chocolate,” Jarek was saying somewhere far away. “You sure you don’t want a—”
“Jarek.”
He froze at her tone, all playfulness forgotten. “What is it?”
“Haldin and Elise. They’re here.”
A glob of chocolate dripped to the countertop from the extended spatula. Jarek’s serious expression slowly shifted to one of surprised thoughtfulness. “Oh … Do you think they want a lick?”
Rachel snorted. “Nothing against your goods, but I’m guessing they’re not here for triple chocolate cake.”
What they actually were here for, she had no idea. As far as she knew, no one had seen the pair for months now. The last she’d seen them had been when they’d swung by her and Jarek’s cabin retreat after Cheyenne.
That had been toward the end of the third week of their proposed two whole months of cabin recovery time. And, as deeply enjoyable as those three weeks of complete privacy had been, the Enochians’ visit had also broken the spell and marked the day when both her and Jarek had ceased being able to justify weighing their own blissful recovery against their growing concerns for the fledgling new world order.
So they’d headed back out to rejoin the rest of the world right after Haldin and Elise had departed to do the polar opposite.
The rest of the Enochians had visited the pair somewhere in the Himalayas a few times since then, but all Rachel really knew was that Haldin and Elise—and, of course, Alton and Lietha too—had felt they had some serious shit to sort out with their new existences, and that they’d thought it best they do it in relative isolation.
Jarek tossed the spatula in the sink and wiped his hands with a towel. “What if they want us to do stuff?”
“We could probably stand to do some stuff.”
Jarek wagged his eyebrows and started to open his mouth.
“Other stuff,” she said with a grin before he could go for the low-hanging fruit.
“Gah. Seems like a whole big thing.”
“Don’t act like you’re not dying for some action. Plus, they can probably hear us right now.”
“We can,” came Haldin’s, Alton’s, and Lietha’s voices all at once.
“Just a bit,” Elise added. “And I actually wouldn’t mind that lick.”
“What is it?” Jarek asked, studying Rachel’s face. A grin broke across his mouth. “They want cake, don’t they?”
Rachel just gave an exasperated sigh.
“Come on in, boys and girls!” Jarek called.
Haldin and Elise weren’t long in reaching the front door. Surprised as she’d been to feel Haldin and Elise, Rachel hadn’t noticed Drogan was with them until he walked in and closed the door behind them. But her attention was more focused on the two beings in front of him.
The Enochians had changed. Again. It was far more subtle than their initial transformation, but they looked harder. Stronger. Haldin had finished regrowing his left arm. But there was something else too. Something about their expressions and the way they moved. Somehow, they looked both more alien and yet more themselves than they had before. It was odd.
Apparently, Jarek was less flabbergasted than her. Or at least better at hiding it.
“Well I’ll be,” he said. “The mountain hermits return, in search of epic triple chocolate cake. Nice arm, by the way.”
They smiled, and it only highlighted the change in them. Where before it had seemed like they’d merged both body and mind with Alton and Lietha, now it seemed more like they were their old selves, merely walking around in vastly more powerful bodies with a pair of raknoth comrades in tow.
“Thanks,” Haldin said, waving his regrown arm demonstratively. “But I’m afraid it’s a happy coincidence on the cake thing.”
“A happy coincidence we’ll gladly embrace, though,” Elise added after deeply inhaling the rich sweetness in the air.
Jarek turned to grab plates and paused. “You guys wanna come to Pryce’s? We were just about to head over. Whole gang’s gonna be there.”
“We actually just came from there,” Elise said
“We were hoping to catch everyone together,” Haldin said, a small grin pulling across his mouth, “but apparently some have more trouble with punctuality than others.”
“Yeah, yeah, military boy,” Jarek said, starting to slide plates from a cupboard. “Cake now, then?”
No one argued.
Rachel finally got over her surprise and found her tongue as she gestured for their guests to join her on the island stools. “So what have you guys been up to?”
“Not that much, honestly,” Haldin said, sliding onto the stool across from her. He frowned as it groaned a little under his deceptively heavy frame, but it held.
“An aggressive amount of not that much,” Elise agreed, seating herself beside Rachel. “Lots of thinking and talking. It’s pretty weird, having to discover your own body again.”
As she talked, Drogan walked over to join Jarek in the kitchen and reached a finger out to skim a taste off the top of the waiting cake. Jarek slapped his hand. They traded stares that were playful but still dangerously challenging.
Rachel cleared her throat and pointedly turned her eyes in the direction of the damage they’d caused last week.
This time, the look they traded was one of two kids who’d just been caught playing after bed time.
Jarek went back to doling out cake for their guests. Drogan grabbed forks and carried the loaded plates over.
“What about you guys?” Elise asked, smiling at the little display. “The Senate keeping you busy?”
Jarek barked a laugh. “They’d have to make their minds up about something before they could do that.”
Much as she
wanted to point out for the millionth time that the slow-going was understandable given the circumstances, Rachel couldn’t completely disagree with the heart of the sentiment.
It hadn’t taken long after leaving their little cabin retreat months ago to realize that their services, as it turned out, weren’t so readily helpful. But, then again, no one else’s seemed to be right now, either.
It was a question of application.
The world was in an odd kind of pre-golden age flux right now, with everyone ready and willing to dive in, but no one really seeming to know how or where to start. Like a bunch of kids, let loose in the world’s largest candy store.
Mostly, their efforts so far had fallen by default to rebuilding infrastructure and trying to get a proper assessment of just how badly the planet had fared through the rakul invasion—not to mention the fifteen years preceding it.
Even before the rakul, when they’d still had passable Net coverage, the presence of the raknoth and the harsh pressures of the Catastrophe’s aftermath had thoroughly discouraged the formation of anything beyond the scope of homesteads and tiny villages. Maybe they’d trade here and there. Maybe not.
Places like Newark had basically been death traps, and places like Unity had been few and far between.
All in all, it had been pretty hard to accurately gauge how Earth was doing. And after the Net came down, hard became impossible.
To that end, restoring the Net as globally as they could had been one of the only truly clear focuses off the bat. They needed to know how much devastation the rakul had wrought during their month-long occupation, and they needed to communicate with the rest of the world.
Once that had started coming together, The Senate had seemed like the natural next step. A world-wide coalition of all sorts from all places, all onboard for a better tomorrow. One where they—or their descendants, at least—were strong enough to handle whatever intergalactic threats might come their way.
Just because everyone was onboard, however, didn’t necessarily mean the ship was going to magically start moving.
It had been like pulling teeth. Especially when they’d brought in Krogoth, Brandt, and Drogan, and proposed to officially declare the few remaining raknoth of Earth as friends and allies of the planet.
Retribution: Book Four of the Harvesters Series Page 35
