Home in the Stars Box Set

by Mason, Jolie

  She reached up to cup his head, sliding her hand into his thick hair. “So, rest. We’ll catch the bad guys tomorrow.”

  His hands circled her waist, pulling her in like a tide. She felt his weakness, his strain, and she had to heal it. Her whole heart demanded it. She let him pull her to him and into his lap. He moved carefully back onto the hospital bed bringing her with him and trying hard to avoid the sore places. Once they were stretched out side by side on his bed, he pulled the blankets over them before folding his body around hers protectively. Ari felt hidden under his weight, and some of her own weariness caught up with her causing a yawn.

  The last sensation she felt was the soft tickle of his breath across her face as they both drifted off to sleep with nothing resolved but that they needed to hold each other.

  *****#*****

  Chapter Six

  Two days later, Caden felt more like himself again as they walked onto the deck of the Carry Bell. Jace’s recovery would be long and difficult, so he left several people from his staff at the hospital to see that his care progressed and report any changes while he and Ari hunted whoever wanted them in Starfall. Abernathy had charge of the security detail, and the hospital was working overtime to please his wealthy father. Jace would be fine, he told himself once again.

  Ari had no intentions of going to the authorities about her friend. She’d already told him no on that score vehemently. She feared they’d just kill him and move on till they found another time to strike.

  The worst part was; she wasn’t wrong. The trap revealed a great deal about the enemy. He suspected they were operating like the pirates they’d always been. They wanted funds, knew his connection to Ari, and expected to extort money or information from him. She was a great risk; a soft target, high value, his weakness. No longer his only weakness.

  Caden dropped his bag on the pristine bunk in his quarters aboard the Bell and walked to the small sink to splash his face with the trickle of water a space vessel allotted for crew. He grabbed a white towel and wiped his face dry. In the mirror, his eyes wore dark circles. He hadn’t shaved in the last standard. Worn around the edges. That’s how he’d describe the reflection staring back at him.

  His mind slipped to Ari again, as it always did. He wondered if she’d settled in yet. The launch had come and gone with him strapped in his cabin. She’d been quiet on the way to the dock. Not hostile, he thought, just thoughtful. Ari was more a woman of action. When her brain really started turning on something, he couldn’t be sure where it would come down.

  He listened for a few moments to the hum of the ship, the movement of the crew outside his guest cabin, the soft chime, chime of the antiquated bell system he didn’t fully understand. This was her world. And why did he find it all so very.. . seductive? He’d gone on with his life, sort of. Building onto the empire that had been his father’s had been more than blind ambition or familial legacy. Taarken was a frontier planet. Taarken City was the only major city on the planet, though he’d been trying to encourage settlers into the wastes. It was a harsh environment, but he believed it could be tamed into a home.

  If he was honest with himself, it might have been a way to keep Ari off his mind. His focus on the mine and making things right hadn’t been about him. He hated mining as a business, found it dull. He loved the results, loved watching Prime take shape. He enjoyed the civic lessons he’d learned trying to form a local elected government, rather than running it as a company asset. Under his father, the company had ruled the small populous like baby kings. Managers running the company town with intimidation were the only government. Criminal enterprise became his father’s means of enforcing his wishes. Maybe, he had tried to correct the familial legacy just a bit, but he, mostly, just wanted his planet back the way it should be. He’d grown up on Taarken Prime, and he loved it all.

  Always, in the back of his mind, he suspected his drive to rebuild Prime related to Ari and what he thought she’d want. Perhaps, he hoped she wouldn’t, as he suspected she did, equate him with his father’s cruelty. He laughed to himself, the sound grating in the very empty little cabin.

  It hadn’t been that simple, had it? They were like twin stars. One day, they were destined to crash into each other, and it would end either in a world being created or total destruction. It was anybody’s guess. It was who they were.

  Caden wasn’t the boy she’d fallen in love with all those years ago, and he knew it. He’d seen darkness and embraced some of his own. She’d seen disappointment, and it forged her into a woman with authority and capability, the kind of woman who chased down pirates who offended her.

  He looked at his baggage and sighed. This trip, there would be no briefing among players, just Ari steering her whole ship into a viper’s nest. When the scout had registered nothing at Starfall, no ships of any real size or questionable registry, she’d determined they would just go and see what was wrong.

  He’d determined they needed back up. She’d be miffed that he’d done it, but he’d called in the Imperial Guard’s best liaison, and his only real contact with the empire, who agreed this was worth looking into. Mainly because, his own trail had gone dead cold. This was the only link to these particular pirates, even if it was a slim one. Right now, they were simply acting on Ari’s feelings.

  The Guard would hold back, waiting for his signal that this was a possible link to the empress’s missing weapon or a threat to citizenry of the realm. His own fleet was on alert to jump in from a neighboring backwater planet because Caden had a feeling the weapon ship was close. The Meriweather was, in fact, finished offloading the miners on Taarken and should be in position shortly to investigate a lead that he’d “accidentally” forgotten to include in his conversation with Valek Morgan. The Meriweather should be semi-safe from the weapon. Its mission was to scan for ships in the Terminus system where one of the Carnes satellites had picked up something before going dead, and, should they find an unregistered ship with an unidentifiable signature, blow it out of the sky. Expedient and efficient, and very likely to get him in deep with the Empire, if it played out the way he wanted.

  Caden’s hatchway door remained open as he’d stood lost in his own rather troubled thoughts. He’d forgotten to hit the control before launch. He heard a light knock knock on the metal bulkhead behind him and turned to find the Sorian framed in the door. He wore the Bell uniform, but always left off the long sleeved shirt beneath to reveal banded arms that appeared stronger than any human’s. His green skin changed hue periodically, with mood he’d been told. At the moment, it was bright and vibrant like the smile he flashed from a face that looked very, very human. Most of the Sorian adaptations of human physiology appeared cosmetic, though he had always suspected there were things they didn’t tell the Universe they could do.

  As fighters, they were almost supernatural in their ability to intuit an opponent’s moves and they were ridiculously fast. If the Three Planets, as they referred to the home worlds, had real technology of their own, he believed the Universe might be easily subdued. As it was, Sorians were mainly a slave race, bartered and sold legally in some places.

  Caden nodded politely as the other man smiled. The Sorian’s traditional braid fell in a thick, shiny white rope just past his shoulders. A silver triangle gleamed from among the threads, as did several other pieces of jewelry. He noted a slim bead that curved etched lines around in gentle simulation of a woman holding a child and another silver outline of a traditional Kamlek blade used by Sorians in ancient combat. Each had some spiritual significance, though Caden could only conjecture about the symbolism.

  “Women, huh?” The navigator’s smile broadened. “We finished loading the supplies.

  Ari’s in her cabin.”

  “Did she send you for me?”, he asked sceptically. Ari’d been avoiding him like something infectious since they got on board. He decided earlier to give her space. Take some time to really think out an approach instead of jumping in with both feet.

  “No, but t
hat doesn’t mean you can’t go talk to her now while she’s in her cabin. Alone. With no excuses.”

  A moment’s pause passed as Caden watched the young man’s eyebrow lift in a prompt of some kind. Realization set in soon after. Caden laughed. “You’re matchmaking?”

  The man nodded regally. “It’s a time honored tradition among my people. We get bored.”

  “Obviously”, Caden said. “You been with Ari a long time?”

  The man let go of the wall and stepped in to lean on the door. “Ari found me just after she bought the Carry Bell. She found all of us somewhere or other. I’d been enslaved on my home world, but hauled off to some Rim planet. Ever been to a slave auction?”

  Caden shook his head.

  The man nodded. “It’s the kind of experience that could break a man. People touching you. Counting your teeth and looking at you like you’re a dumb animal. I was a boy living through that. Ari won’t trade there now because she’s loyal.” The Sorian’s voice grew as distant as his eyes as he remembered. He shook his head as though to wipe the thought.

  “I resisted one of the women looking for a consort slave, and the slaver lashed me to the ground when Ari appeared out of the crowd. She picked me up, tossed a bag and a threat at the slaver. Told him, ‘the boy is mine’. The Bell is my home. Ari is the mother of my heart. She always will be, and you are the only thing she will ever regret. I wish that my mother could live without regret. It is a simple thing.”

  He straightened. As the man started to leave again, Caden asked, “What is your name?”

  “Ra’dan”, he answered. “Just Ra around here. Ari calls me Ra’ddy, but that’s not something I’ll let just anyone do.”

  Watching the young man leave, Caden leaned in the hatchway, his mind turning over this new puzzle piece. She collected people like some collected sea shells. She brought them here and put them in this box, the Carry Bell, like hidden treasure. Caden looked down at his sleek black shoes. Because so many had been taken from her? He wondered.

  He shook his head from side to side. Ari was a hard woman to hate. He felt all that anger disintegrating as he tapped the button on the hatchway wall to shut and lock the cabin, then he started off toward Ari’s cabin where she was alone. With no excuses.

  *****#*****

  She’d poured herself a Sorian brandy while Ra’ddy had been here, and it sat glowing blue green on the desk beside her as she read the trading manifest again, looking for the error that almost cost her a ridiculous amount of money. The hatch chirped insistently, but Ari only sipped the bright aquamarine brandy and said come in. She hadn’t locked it, nor did she look up from the pad.

  “Jack, did you find that case of fabric yet? Constantin is driving me nuts on the Comm.”

  “You should ask Jack.”

  She raised her head sharply. “Caden.”

  “Yes”, he said. She hated herself for it, but she drank him in for a bit just like the brandy. A smooth white shirt over his now trademark black soldier’s pants with pockets everywhere and shiny black boots. He left the light jacket off shipboard as if he didn’t feel the chill of space like the rest of the mere humans.

  “Yes”, she said blankly.

  He’d stopped just inside the hatch, and, suddenly, slapped a hand on the lock-pad causing it to shut them both in with a hiss. Ari watched him warily as he took first one step and then another. “It’s a bit early in the run to be drinking, don’t you think?”

  She looked at the clock. “It’s eight bells. I’m off watch. Have trouble sleeping.” She lifted the brandy to her mouth again and took a big gulp. “Did you need something?”

  He made his way calmly around her desk, moved the pad from her hand to the shelf behind her and sat down on the sturdy white surface. “You don’t sleep well,” he said with a quiet hum in his voice. Ari felt a little dizzy now that he was so far into her space and looking at her like he might eat her. She wondered if she should run or stand her ground.

  He reached for her hair and tugged at the pins holding it back. “Have you seen someone about this insomnia?”

  His hand wound a little tighter pulling her, tugging at her. He moved her forward, propelled her up and out of the seat and into his arms. The breathy gasp of surprise she made floated on the air between them.

  “Yes,” she whispered. Her hands clutched his shoulders and her voice sounded like someone else’s. Her body felt like someone else’s. She breathed in deeply when his other hand ran deftly up her spine, leaving a prickly trail through her clothes, to meet the other tangled in her hair.

  “Brandy was the best they could come up with on short notice?”

  She nodded as he hypnotically massaged his fingers over her neck and scalp. “Pills don’t work.”

  “What does work?” He said it softly into the skin of her face and brushed his other hand over her ear to move her hair out of his way.

  “Brandy”, she answered shaking a little, quivering low in her gut where her self-discipline was supposed to be. His tongue darted out to curl over her ear lobe. Then she felt his teeth, and need uncurled like a sleeping tiger inside her. Her hands crept on their own up to his neck, to clutch at his nape and wrap themselves in his wavy hair. Her face turned to his mouth seeking something, anything to stop the burning pain she’d lived with most of her life.

  Holding her body, he turned on the desk and reached for the half empty glass of brandy. Lifting it to his lips, he drained it and put the glass back down. “I have a different treatment in mind.”

  “What are you doing?” Ari asked.

  “Getting over it”, he answered cryptically.

  He stood and pulled her body toward the wide bed. He didn’t push her down on it though. He un-zipped her uniform jacket and peeled it away before hanging it across her only sitting chair. The short sleeved black undershirt clung to her body showing every flaw like the minute roll over her waistband, but the perusal he gave her body removed all self-consciousness. He returned to her to run a long finger along the fabric of the shirt lightly, down her neckline and over the tip of one breast. She stared at his face in fascination.

  Each hitching breath, each dilation of his pupils. His eyes followed his finger, but hers were locked on his face.

  “Have I mentioned how much I love the Bell uniform?”

  She shook her head.

  “No?”, he said running his hands along her waist in teasing little tugs. “Well, it is truly efficient and spectacular.”

  “Thank you”, she whispered. He, suddenly, peeled the shirt away revealing Ari to his searching eyes. The smooth white fabric of her underwear dipped in a tight v between her breasts. It was a revolutionary new design needing no wires, no seams, no straps. It melded to her like a second skin, so that most of the time Ari didn’t know she had it on. Right now, she was very aware of the bra. It clung to her body. It clenched at her tight, aroused nipples. He exhaled noisily.

  “Best. Uniform. Ever.” He gathered her to pepper kisses slowly over her neck and down.

  She breathed her answer into his ear. “I don’t know. I’m pretty impressed with those Meriweather uniforms. Sleek. Manly. Maybe a little staid with the lapels.”

  “Aricka”, he said as his mouth and hands worked up her neck toward her lips. “Shut up.” His mouth pressed into hers with force. She buckled. Any resistance she had caved at the touch of his kiss. Without thinking, her hands worked wildly to part his shirt. When she had him bare, she touched every part of him she could reach moving faster and faster. Her mind tried hard to reconcile all the sensory information of sliding tongues and hands on firm bodies growing more frantic. Her kiss slowed and stopped altogether, as she computed what she felt beneath her fingers. Ridges hard against his flesh. Smooth, unnatural feeling skin.

  There was a pattern on his body, she realized, a raised pattern. Slowly, she comprehended scars. He had scars everywhere along the hard ridges of his abdomen and shoulders.

  She pulled back to yank the shirt over his head and s
tare in shock. Something like regret crept past his arousal as she watched his face, then asked, “When?”

  “I was taken at the Academy. Kidnapped. Several of us were. Kids of corporate officers, government officials, dignitaries. A group of pirates specializing in extortion and kidnapping. Abernathy saved all of us.” She pulled away to study all the lines across his body. They crossed one another and formed curly-ques like someone had tried to paint on him using a knife. Her fingers touched the raised marks reverently, gently. She walked around him, studying his body, processing his pain. The history of it, how it must have felt. A soft sob escaped her mouth. His back was the worst. She pressed her face gently to the scars there wishing with all the strength of zealous prayer that she could go back and make it not happen. Tears tracked along his back as she cried and clutched him stiffly. “How did I not know?”

  He turned slowly, taking her into his arms. “It’s done. I’m fine.”

  “You are not fine. That was torture, right? The pirates?”

  “One pirate. He’s gone now.”

  He ignored the tears tracking down her face and drew her back to his kiss. She tasted salt as he pushed into her mouth seeking something from her, anything to make the pain stop maybe. He whispered her name.

  He kissed like he was dying. That’s what she remembered about him most. He always had, like this kiss was the last one he’d ever get. Sometimes, it would be gentle and other times intense, but it always felt like goodbye. That bothered her; partly, because she wondered if he believed everything would end, and, partly, because she believed he’d been very much alone for twelve years.

  She grew tired of goodbyes. It was really all about what they made up their minds to accept, wasn’t it? How many people had she walked away from or watched walk away? What if she didn’t want it to be over? Even if it was going to end, why start there?

  Ari pushed at his shoulders and reached for his belt. She began to do more than respond to his body pressed against hers. She wanted to be the one giving, the one taking. She wanted to be the hero for a change. Her hands ran along his bare waist, making him suck in a breath as they drifted lower. He pulled them off quickly and tossed them aside. She didn’t even see where they went because her visual was all for him. Strong and lean, he was tanned and much more muscular than she was. Her spacer physique wasn’t quite a match for this.