Winona’s head tipped to the right and then far to the left while the little creases between her eyes deepened. “I can’t read her, Samuel. What about you?”
Sam shook his head. “No. It’s still the same as it’s been ever since the shuttle docked. There’s a presence there, but no emotions. She’s blocking us completely.”
“That’s crazy,” I told him. “You know I can’t block you.”
“Well, you’re doing it. Can you open back up?”
“I don’t know how. I’m afraid. I’ve never screwed things up this badly before. I don’t want either of you to see what’s inside me. I don’t want to see what’s inside me.”
“Oh, enough of this.” Winona took two steps toward me and whacked her finger against my forehead.
I felt undone. Winn was inside my brain and all of my thoughts and memories were open to her. It was the same as when we’d touched Merrimac together for the first time and we could see each other’s souls glowing in the group mind.
“Oh,” she whispered, and then a moment later, “Oh, Duse. What he did to you.”
“I can feel her again now.” Sam’s voice came to me from somewhere far away.
It took a moment for my vision to clear after she stepped back from me. “How did you do that? Were you really reading my thoughts?”
“Yeah. Don’t know how I did it. I saw all of it. Your memories. I felt it. I was you.” She shivered.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be me right now.”
She frowned. “I saw that too. Don’t be an idiot.” She turned her back to me. “I wanted to hate you for how you treated Kal and me, and your own lover. But now, after seeing all that? Damn it. You’re right about Kastanje. You did the right thing.”
“She did?” Sam sounded surprised.
“I did?”
“You did.”
“You don’t hate me?”
“Still deciding.”
“Can we eat while you decide? I’ve been living on nothing but KDF field rations for days. I want something that’s not mushy.” I was feeling better. Winona didn’t hate me and my lover was standing less than a meter away. I liked thinking about him that way. It made me feel warm inside.
“How can you be hungry? Winona is able to read your mind, you were blocking us without even trying, and the Union might transfer us into the middle of a civil war at any minute. I’ve been reading about the factions down there. I’m not sure I’ll ever be hungry again.”
I grabbed his arm and started us walking toward the mess hall. “Um, I don’t think we’re being transferred. Storm got new orders while I was talking to the Captain. The Union has assigned the Esprit Orageux to be liaison to the Provisional Government. We’re all staying. I had to tell her what I had done after that message came through.” I squeezed his arm. “And she didn’t kill me, at least not yet.”
“I’ll bet she wants to.”
“Maybe, but she says I can’t be killed. She called me ‘an elemental demonic force drifting through the universe, destroying everything I touch’. Do you think that’s true?” I grinned at Sam, but Winona answered.
“Marguerite is one of the most perceptive women I’ve ever met, a close second to Hannah and even better in some ways. I’m surprised it’s taken her this long to see something that is so obvious.”
“Winona, I am not demonic. I just, you know…”
“Destroy everything you touch?”
“Yeah, that part’s right. But I don’t mean to, and I haven’t destroyed you or Sam.”
“Not yet.” Winn put her hand on the keypad and the door to the mess hall slid open.
Everyone turned to stare at me when I walked in. I thought it might be because I was the prodigal daughter, returned to life. Then the muttering started.
“Uniform,” Sam whispered in my ear.
“Forgot,” I whispered back. “I was going to change first.”
“Put your shoulders back and stand up straight,” Winona advised. “It’s too late now. Bluff your way through. You are brave.”
“Damn right I am.”
I stopped at a couple of the tables on my way to the chow line to greet people I knew. They smiled back at me and told me how glad they were that I was back, mostly because several of Storm’s systems were down.
We got in line to pick up food, and Winona and Sam were talking about me again as if I wasn’t there. “Did you see that, Samuel? She just gets bolder after every event like what happened in the Redoubt. There’s no fear in her, no shaking.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Is it? I’m not so sure.”
“You told me to be brave, Winn.” I lifted one hundred-seventy grams of freshly printed steak onto my plate and covered it with mushrooms. “Did I do it wrong?”
“That’s not the point. You are not immortal and I don’t want to die. I have things to live for.”
I stopped with a spoonful of red potatoes half way to my plate. “Where is Kal? I want to see him. And Colin.”
Winn looked away from me and her blocks went up.
“Kal needs a little bit more time. He, uh, he wasn’t too happy when Winona told him that she might be leaving.”
“Oh. Then he should be OK once you tell him that all of us are staying, right?”
Sam closed his eyes, looking like I’d hurt him.
“Just when you think she’s making progress, she says something like that.” Winona walked away from me to an empty table, but she didn’t sit. “You two have a nice dinner. I’m going to go eat with my lover and give him the ‘good’ news.”
Sam and I sat, and I pushed my food around on my plate for a while trying to understand why Winona was mad at me. Sam wasn’t mad at me. He couldn’t stay mad at me anymore than I could with him.
“MD?”
“Huh?” I refocused on him. Blue eyes stared back at me. I love it when he stares at me.
“I know you’ve already told me all of the events that happened on the Redoubt.”
“I have.”
He reached across and took my hand. “Maybe now you can tell me what it did to you.”
I bit my lower lip and held his gaze. “Not right now. Not here.” I twisted my fingers around his. “Can we leave? I think I’m done eating. I wish I could have a drink, but I probably shouldn’t.” I rubbed my belly.
“Your stomach is bothering you?”
I giggled and then realized I hadn’t talked to him about it. I had just assumed that Winona had told him when he came on board, or the Captain had, or someone. “You really don’t know?” I rubbed my stomach again and grinned at him.
“You’re kidding, right? We did it on the first try? In the back of your parents’ car?”
“Yeah, we did.”
“Wow.” His gaze had shifted downward as if I should be starting to show.
“She’s only about this big, Sam.” I held my thumb and finger a millimeter apart. “You can’t see anything yet.”
“But she’s in there? She?”
I shrugged. “She. That’s what the Puca told me.”
His goofy grin dissolved into a worried frown. “We need to talk about what they did to you.”
“I know. Let’s go to our cabin and talk there.”
He took my arm as I stood, as if I need help, and carried my small duffle for me. “OK, but we are going to talk.”
“Yes, of course. Eventually.”
CHAPTER 12
CONSEQUENCES
I held his hand while we walked. “I’ve dreamt about this, being able to have you while we’re on board ship.”
“Really? Since when?”
We stopped outside our cabin and he waited for me to answer before putting his hand on the keypad. “Since the night I first kissed you. You walked me to my cabin door, just like this one, and I
asked Wandering Star if it would be OK if I gave you a goodnight kiss. And then I did this.” I kissed him hard for about five seconds. “Now do you remember?”
“I remember the kiss, but I didn’t know you were thinking about having me spend the night. We’d known each other for what, a few days?”
“I was sixteen, and, well…I was sixteen. But I knew you were the one.” I kissed him again, gently this time, my hands braced on his chest to maintain my balance. “Open the door, Sam.”
It took him a moment to find the keypad because I wasn’t letting him turn away from my mouth long enough to look. I heard the soft swish of the door opening. Sam grabbed the front of my uniform blouse with both hands, pulled me inside, and about crushed all the air out of me. I gasped, and then heard a little moan escape from me as I tipped my head back. His mouth moved slowly down my neck and then back up to my ear, teeth lightly tugging.
He stepped back from me and started undoing buttons. “I like the camo pattern the KDF uses. It’s attractive and it works well in environments like the Redoubt. You look really beautiful wearing it, blonde hair against the dark grays, but this has to go right now.”
“That’s the same thing Captain Rostron said. She told me she never wanted to see me wearing it again. Do you suppose she wants me to just walk around the ship naked?”
“You could try that, but I think it might reduce your efficiency.”
The last of the buttons came undone and I wiggled my shoulders to let the blouse fall on the floor. “Just my efficiency?”
Sam’s attention was on my t-shirt now, lifting the bottom of it and sliding one finger, then two, inside against my skin. “OK, mine too. I’d follow you around everywhere.”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
“Panting.”
“I’d like that too.”
He chuckled. “I’d expect you to be panting too.”
“I’m close already.” I lifted my arms over my head and Sam obliged by lifting my shirt off and letting it fall next to my blouse.
“Storm, change lights to 1800 Kelvin, please.”
A warm red-orange glow filled the room, like candle light. “Nice,” I told him. “You’ve been planning.”
“Maybe a little. I dream sometimes too.” He kissed my bare shoulder and then picked me up and carried me to the bunk.
He sat next to me undoing my boots while I arranged the pillows under my head. “This isn’t fair, you know.”
“What?”
“Look at me. I’m already half naked and you’re still…” He turned and looked at me. It made it hard for me to talk. I was able to whisper, “Whatever it is you’re doing, don’t let me stop you.”
“You’ll get your turn.”
He took off my boots and socks and started rubbing my feet, massaging each toe and working up from there. When he finished with them, I undid my pants and let him pull them off me.
“You’re out of uniform, Mala Dusa.”
“Not completely. I still have these.” I rubbed the last bit of fabric covering me.
Sam reached up with both hands, lingered for a moment, and pulled.
“OK. Now I am. Completely.”
His hands slid back down to my ankles, rubbing and caressing. Kissing me. I could feel the desire in him. He wanted to throw himself on me and take me hard and fast. Yet there he was, rubbing my legs, letting the desire build, taking pleasure in the warmth of my skin and the shape and feel of me. His kisses sent shivers through me and I could feel each one echo back in his mind.
I was breathing hard by the time that his mouth and hands had reached the insides of my thighs. I spread my legs apart and moved to the rhythm of him.
“I think I screamed,” I told him a few minutes later, after I had caught my breath.
He looked up at me from where his head was resting between my hips. “You did.”
“Sorry. Was it loud?”
“Not too loud. I’ll try harder next time.”
“Try any harder and you might kill me.”
He moved up across my body, kissed my mouth and then settled his head on my chest.
I touched his hair. “Don’t get too comfortable there. You promised me a turn.” I reached down to pull his shirt over his head and then he helped me with the rest of his clothes.
Sam’s desires that first night were pretty basic. No overall body massage for him. There was a lot of kissing and touching, and somehow we tumbled onto the floor in a jumble of sheets and blankets at some point. That led to me giggling uncontrollably while we tried to sort everything back out, and I had to explain to Storm that no one was hurt. More kissing followed and I taught Sam a couple of the things that FAC Zero Nine had suggested. They were good, and I still had another dozen for us to try in the future.
At some point, our kisses became slow and deep, and I could feel Sam’s emotions simplifying and becoming more primal. I was on top of him and I moved downward, nipping at his skin with my teeth, down his chest and across his stomach. He grabbed my arms hard before I could finish, making me gasp, and flipped me onto my back. A few minutes later we both screamed, the feel of him moving inside my mind and my body making it inevitable.
I laid there under him, breathing hard, heart pounding, my body quivering with aftershocks.
“MD?”
“Humpf,” I answered him.
“I love you. More than life. Thank you. For not dying. For coming back. To me.”
I opened my eyes a tiny slit to look at him past the tangle of my hair. He was still trying to catch his breath, eyes closed, mouth open, and I thought to myself, I did that. It made me proud. “Always will come back. Can’t live without you. Wouldn’t want to.” I kissed the side of his neck and it tasted salty from his sweat. I bit gently and a soft moan answered me. We slept that way for a while, our bodies all happy and tangled together.
I woke about 02:00, aware of him moving from on top of me in the dark. He kissed my nose. “Back in a minute. Want to clean up a bit.”
“OK. Me next.”
The cabin had a small bathroom area and the lights seemed too bright even at their lowest setting. Once my eyes adjusted, I found my toothbrush, miraculously moved from my old cabin, and clean towels. I washed up, brushed my teeth and snuggled back into Sam’s warmth under the covers.
“Is this what it will be like?” My eyes were open in the dark, watching the dim profile of Sam’s face in the radiant glow of the wall plates.
“What? Sleeping with me?”
“No, more than that. I mean being married to each other. Is this what it will be like?”
“I don’t think so. This was just the beginning. The rest of our lives together will be much better.”
“That’s good. We’ve already been married almost a month and this is the first time we’ve been able to spend more than thirty minutes naked together. I was starting to worry.”
He kissed my forehead.
“But I want the nights to be like this. I never want the desire I feel in you to fade.”
“It won’t.”
“I have a lot to do tomorrow.” I looked across him at the clock. 02:38. “I mean later today. I should sleep, but I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have volunteered all of us to stay on Kastanje. That was so stupid. I’m going to be a good engineer and a good officer. I’m going to do whatever the Captain tells me to do, no resistance. I’m going to– Oh, shit!”
“What?”
“I’m supposed to have an updated AAR ready by 05:00, one that has the truth in it.”
“You lied in your After Action Report?”
“Yes, a little. And I’m still going to lie. She’ll never believe the parts about the Puca. I should get up right now and do it.” I didn’t move. “Sam, tell me to get up right now and do it.”
“Let me hold you a few more minutes.”
&
nbsp; “You’re no help.” I pulled away from him, dragging the blanket with me.
“I was using that.”
“Go get another blanket. This one is mine.”
“Wasn’t talking about the blanket.”
I sat at the desk and brought up my AAR. Sam followed a moment later, having found a t-shirt and shorts to keep himself warm. He stood behind me and started gently rubbing my shoulders. I closed my eyes, enjoying his touch. “I’m not sure I can get this done with you here. You’re damn distracting.”
He chuckled. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your language. Did you learn to swear like that at the Academy, or from your mom? Or me?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. My dad gets mad at me when I do it around him, but he thinks I’m still sixteen.” I wrapped one arm around Sam’s leg, marveling that he was really there with me. “When the Puca were doing what they did to me, messing with my brain and making me feel things I didn’t want to feel,” I lowered my voice, “I used the F-word. I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you. I’d have said a lot worse.”
“Thanks. Can you bring me a cup of coffee? This really shouldn’t take too long.”
“Are you sure you want coffee then? We could sleep a couple more hours when you’re done.”
“I’m not tired.” I leaned against his leg. “Actually, I feel good.” I closed my eyes and felt the Tarakana hum somewhere in the distance. Part of Merrimac was on this side of the DSH now. “Yeah, I feel really good.”
I posted my AAR at 04:10 and climbed back in bed next to Sam. He was asleep, having given up on me sometime after 03:00. He rolled over and snuggled up against my back. I took his hand, pulled it across me, kissed it, and placed it on my chest. “Have good dreams, my love.” I slept, despite the coffee, and dreamed that the Puca were watching me.
“Well, look at you. No standard issue RuComm clothes today?”
I watched Winona, trying to tell if she was still mad at me before I answered. “Nope. Union all the way for me from now on.”
Wandering Storm Page 18