“My canteen is just about dry. Maybe we should break to refill.” Without waiting for her answer, he lowered his half of Jaren’s litter carefully to the ground, her mirroring his movements, and then straightened to roll his shoulders, relieved to have the weight off.
Petros crouched as she lowered her packs and took out her canister, then moved down the slight slope toward the stream they’d followed all day.
With a long sigh, he retrieved his canteen. He tipped out the warmish contents and went to join her. She was kneeling on a flat rock, leaning over while she filled her bottle. As he crouched down next to her, she set her bottle aside and splashed water over her face.
He paused halfway to dipping his container, watching as rivulets ran down her neck to wet the collar of her shirt. He swallowed, throat dry for something water wasn’t going to help with.
Damn it to hell. His thoughts had teetered on the edge of nose-diving toward the inappropriate all day. Several adrenaline highs pounded into each other, which, along with him spending an hour all over her, kicked his libido into hyper-drive, tightened his body, and primed him. The need for a release of pressure was usually something that didn’t bother him. But out here, with no other distractions or ways to combat the surging feelings, his mind and body locked onto an impossible target: the too-practical but damn alluring Lieutenant Marshal Petros.
As if this situation wasn’t screwed up enough. Wanting the woman who was here for her own agenda was irrational. But, goddamn it, the lieutenant had him twisted up five ways from Sunday, frustration at her evasiveness melting into a blend of lust and suspicion until he couldn’t tell either heated sensation apart.
Petros used the hem of her shirt to wipe her face and then glanced over at him. “Is it just me, or does this water feel unusually warm?”
Clearing his throat, he plunged his hand and the canister into the gently flowing stream. Tepid water washed over his skin, much warmer than he would have expected it to be.
“You’re right. It is a little on the mild side.” Damn. And he’d been looking forward to a soothing, cool drink. But it was liquid, and it’d keep him hydrated.
Petros glanced upstream. “I wonder…”
She stood up and picked her way to the top of the rocks and then surveyed the terrain around them. A moment later, she came back down again, seeming more energized. A spark lit her slate-gray eyes, giving them a diamond-like gleam he liked way more than he should.
“I think there’s a good chance we’ll find hot springs farther upstream. Probably before we make camp, considering the temperature of the water.”
Hot springs? Christ almighty. Salvation. His whole body clenched at the idea of sinking into a pool of bubbling-hot water.
“It’s about damn time we caught a break,” he muttered as he finished filling up his canteen and stood. “Though considering how the past day and a half have gone, I’m assuming there’ll be water snakes or flesh-eating fish in the springs and we won’t be able to go in anyway.”
Her lips twitched, as though she wanted to smile, but she managed to keep her expression bland. “Look on the bright side. Maybe the snakes and fish will be edible, and then we won’t be stuck with just MREs tonight.”
He found himself fighting a grin, too. Damn, but it was so much harder to remember he had to be wary of her when she made jokes with that irreverent glint in her eyes.
“I can catch us something once we make camp.”
Her expression took on an edge of skepticism. “You can?”
He returned to where they’d dropped the packs earlier, with her trailing a step behind him. “Those eight months I spent on Minnea cut off from supplies? We had to learn pretty quickly how to catch our own meals, or we would have starved to death long before the IPC managed to get us out.”
“Rian told me a few stories, but it’s one of a long list of things he doesn’t talk about much. He said you guys eventually ran out of ammo and pretty much held the lines through booby traps and homemade explosives.”
A cold trickle ran down his spine, the same one he always got when remembering too closely things like those extreme months on Minnea. Every day spent feeling like he was standing on a crumbing precipice, waking up wondering if that day would be the one to end them all. Of course, he could now say he’d been fortunate Minnea had been the worst thing he’d experienced during the war. What had happened to Rian afterward had been so much worse, an unimaginable horror.
He glanced at Petros, shoving down the uneasy chill. Did she know Rian’s fate during those missing years, when he’d been taken and tortured by the Reidar? If she knew him so well, did that mean she also knew about the shape-shifting aliens? Part of him wanted to know. But the bigger, more sensible part that didn’t trust her—no matter who her friends were—kept him from asking.
“Minnea was a lot of years ago, and some of those stories have been totally exaggerated.” He bent down to put his flask back into one of the packs.
“But it’s part of what led you to becoming the youngest person ever appointed captain admiral, isn’t it?”
He dropped the pack and straightened, the sense that she was working him over for information returning with a vengeance, making the heat within him boil up again.
“And why are you so interested, Lieutenant?” He advanced on her, and she took two steps backward then crossed her arms and held her ground with a glare.
“You were the one who brought it up.”
Damn it, she was right. So why did he feel like he’d been lured into it? She had him on his toes, not knowing if he should be on the defensive around her or let his guard down enough for them to rely on each other to get out of this forest. Usually, he was the one in charge and held absolute assurance the people around him had his back. He hated not feeling in control, like there was a blade on a fraying thread hanging over him that would drop at any moment.
Petros sighed, her shoulders dropping a fraction. “Look, we’re both on edge and I know you don’t trust me, but if we’re going to get out of this wilderness alive, we have to put that aside and work together.”
Her sensible logic only wound the tension within him tighter, the furious heat hitting scorching point.
“Because it’s that simple?”
She nodded, the action hinting at her stubbornness. “Clearly someone is trying to kill one or both of us. If you want to live, it should be, yes.”
He took a step forward, but she didn’t retreat, leaving him standing over her. “If I want to live, maybe I should cuff you to the nearest tree so I can get out with Jaren on my own and send a military prison transport back for you.”
She tipped her chin up to meet his gaze, not seeming the least bit intimidated.
“Try it, Graydon, and see how far it gets you.”
He reached up and clamped a hand on the back of her neck. “You picked the wrong person to play.”
She grabbed a handful of his shirt at the collar, pulling herself closer. “Yeah, well, I have no idea how you haven’t managed to get yourself killed before now, since that ridiculously huge ego keeps getting in the way of your common sense, Captain Admiral.”
She said his title with just the right amount of disdain to snap the last strand holding onto his temper. Except instead of restraining her like he’d planned, somehow he ended up yanking her against him, closing the last small distance between them and capturing her mouth in a punishing kiss.
Her hands gripped his shoulders, short nails digging through his shirt into his skin, and she kissed him back just as fiercely. Like nearly every other encounter between them all day, it was a battle of wills, and he lost his head in a nanosecond flat, had no idea where stable ground was any longer as she pressed her lithe body into him.
Though there was already nothing between them, he pulled her harder against him, deepening the kiss, the blaze within him flaring into a white-hot burst that ruptured through his body with furious, searing intensity. But in its wake came a stark moment of clarity, and t
hough his brain had gone into meltdown and he couldn’t grasp a single coherent thought, he shoved away, breaking the kiss and staggering back to put some distance between them.
He stared at her, and she returned his wary gaze, her breathing erratic. Damn it to hell, that should not have happened. But he wasn’t going to emphasize it by putting the unmitigated error into words. He was going to regain control and forget that irrational, intense kiss had ever happened.
“We’ve got to make camp before that storm hits, Lieutenant.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth then turned away to snatch up the packs, not saying another word as he went to stand at his end of Jaren’s makeshift stretcher.
Either she’d grab her packs and follow him, or she could stay here for all he cared. Whatever the case, he was going to find the source of the hot springs, set up camp, catch himself a fat bird or game animal for dinner, and avoid any thoughts about Lieutenant Marshal Mae Petros.
Her expression and efficient movements were wary, but with a definite hint of antagonism as she positioned herself at Jaren’s feet.
Crouching down, he cast a quick glance over the younger man and then froze, something in his stillness seeming different to the other hundred times he’d already checked the kid today.
Instead of taking the handholds of the litter, he dropped to one knee, leaning over to press his fingers into Jaren’s neck. But even as he waited for a pulse to register, he couldn’t detect any rise and fall in the officer’s chest.
“No.” He scrambled around to Jaren’s side. “No, no—come on, Jaren, don’t do this.”
He braced his hands against the middle of Jaren’s chest, pumping, making ribs crack, but not letting up as he compressed the organ. He was not walking out of this frecking forest without Mikel’s kid brother. No way in hell.
He paused, his chest heaving from exhaustion and fact that somehow the air seemed too thin all of a sudden, like there was nothing sustaining his lungs. Reaching up, he pressed a hand into Jaren’s neck again, but still there was nothing, no pulsation of life beneath his fingertips.
Glancing up, he found Petros still crouched in position at the end of the litter next to Jaren’s feet.
“Don’t just sit there, get over here and breathe for him. Now!” He resumed compression, counting through breaths that were too shallow in his lungs. But Petros didn’t move a muscle to help.
Anger overtook him in a tidal wave, and he shoved back from Jaren, reaching over to grab Petros by the arm.
“I gave you a direct order.” His words were hoarse, only a decibel lower than an outright yell.
Petros didn’t seem the least bit intimidated, or like she planned on following through. Instead, she reached up to cover his hand where he held her arm in a bruising grip.
“He’s gone. You can’t do anything else for him now.”
“No!” He wheeled away from her to start compressions again, but when he went to shove down, his arms didn’t lock, muscles failing him, and he half collapsed over the body. “I can’t let him die— His brother. I promised. I can’t—”
An arm curled around his shoulder, but all he could do in that moment was gasp for air, trying to get a handle on the surges within him. Devastating confusion, rage, and fear welled up from the memories of Mikel, holding his chest closed with one arm, grasping for him with the other hand, wrenching a promise out of him that he’d take care of Jaren, while in the background gas grenades brought down entire city blocks.
“Let him go, Zander.” Mae’s voice in his ear was quiet but strong, and he anchored himself onto the words. The next breath he took cleared his lungs, made his head stop spinning, and he pulled himself free of the lieutenant’s hold.
Though he still felt numb all over, he reached for one of the packs, pulling out the same trowel he’d used to bury Nazari that morning.
“If you want to help, then get the other shovel. I don’t need your sympathy.” Why the hell he was saying that, when she was the one who’d pulled him back from the edge, he had no idea. He just knew that for a second there, he’d forgotten to be suspicious of her. Forgotten he needed to keep her at arm’s length. Forgotten he was a captain admiral and people were supposed to rely on him, not the other way around.
He didn’t wait to see how she’d react but took a few steps away from Jaren’s body and stabbed his trowel into the sandy earth of the creek bank.
…
Mae stayed a few steps behind Graydon as they continued along the edge of the stream, happy to keep her own company and not be tempted to look at his stupid, arrogant face or get caught up in those hard, toffee-colored eyes that had started damaging her common sense at some point during the day without her even noticing.
God, had she really kissed him? A gale of self-reproach blasted through her chest, filling her with a weird hot-cold flush.
That hadn’t been a simple kiss. It had been like a baptism by raging wildfire, exploding out of control from the tiniest spark. One second she’d been ready to punch him in the face if he didn’t step off being a jerk, and the next she’d been about ready to lose her head when his mouth took hers in an unapologetic incursion of heat and command.
It was bad enough that she’d kissed her supposed commanding officer, a man who didn’t trust her, maybe didn’t even like her. Add to the fact that she didn’t know if he was human, and it made her stomach get all tight. She’d kissed the last man in the entire universe she should have.
Worse, maybe that kiss had been a galactic-size bad move on both their parts, but did he really need to wipe it off after, like he was totally disgusted by it? Yeah, that right there had seriously pissed her off. But whatever. It wasn’t like he was the one who’d kissed someone who might not even be human. By all rights, she should have been the one washing out her mouth with disinfectant.
It would have been so easy to hold on to her antagonism toward him for at least the next fifty years—certainly long enough to make it out of this wilderness without getting within touching distance again. But then Jaren had died, and for a moment, she’d truly thought the legendary, hardened, tenacious Zander Graydon was going to fall apart on her. Obviously there was something more to Graydon’s relationship with the young officer. He’d said something about a promise, and presumably the brother he’d mentioned had been Jaren’s.
How was she supposed to continue hanging onto her anger toward him in the face of so much buried pain? If not for the unfortunate turn of events, she never would have guessed that Graydon had that much agony entombed so deeply within him.
Except then he’d reverted right back into an alphahole, ordering her to help him dig Jaren’s grave and throwing her weak moment of comforting him in her face.
She blew out a near-silent sigh, tension heavy in her shoulders and upper back. This had gotten about as screwed up as it possibly could, with no end in sight. And quite possibly, before the two of them managed to get out of this forest, things would get even more messed up, assuming whoever was trying to kill them came back for another attempt. If she wasn’t so exhausted from the futile effort of carrying Jaren all day, she would have taken a leaf out of Graydon’s suggested playbook—cuffed him to a tree and left him in the wilderness while she hiked the rest of the way out and contacted Rian for a pickup. She would have even been magnanimous enough to leave him a knife in case one of those gray bears turned up and got a little too friendly.
The sandy, leaf-littered riverbank they’d been following gave way to large slabs of stone, cracked in some places where steam escaped. Looked like they’d found the hot springs. Fat raindrops had begun plunking to the ground, slow and random, but considering how dark and heavy the clouds appeared, there would be one heck of a storm in the next few hours.
Maybe once she got five minutes to herself and washed the past two days off in the hot tub–like water, she’d be better equipped to deal with the next day or so it would take them to get back to civilization.
Graydon still hadn’t said anything to her,
and she silently followed him as he switched directions, heading for a kind of sheer cliff face that shot up out of the ground about a hundred feet from where warm water flowed out of the cracks, down the gently sloping rocks, into a swirling pool that looked like the perfect sheltered place for a dip.
He ducked his head into a wide opening and then ventured into what turned out to be a shallow cave with a sandy floor. Silently, they each checked the far corners for signs of animal habitation, but it looked clear.
Graydon dropped his pack near the mouth. “If we want a fire tonight, we’d better collect some wood before the rain sets in.”
He didn’t wait for her to reply and left the cave.
This time, the sigh she huffed came out long and heavy. So this was how it would be for however long they were stuck together—him treating her with barely any civility whatsoever.
She put down her packs and went out to help him collect some wood. While she made several trips in and out of the cave and stacked an adequate supply, Graydon did his old-fashioned fire-lighting trick again. Once they had a decent blaze going, he pushed to his feet and took the knife out of his belt, checking over the blade.
“I’m going to catch something for dinner. If you’re planning to go into the springs, you might as well take the privacy while I’m gone.”
She wanted to tell him he could go jump in the springs himself, but the urge left her feeling juvenile and petty, so instead she settled on glaring at his back as he left. After a moment, she returned outside, glancing around at the surrounding forest, but she couldn’t see where he’d disappeared to.
She slouched against the nearby rock wall, relaxing her guard for the first time since she’d joined the Swift Brion crew and taken that shuttle to pick up Captain Admiral Graydon. The man had her strung out like a zero-G junkie, ratcheting her tension, like no matter what move she made, it would only mire her deeper in this mess.
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