Down

by Ally Blue

  Mo nodded, his smile soft. “Yeah. I get it.” He kissed the end of Armin’s nose. “I’m coming to your quarters tonight, though. Maybe I can change your mind.” He waggled his eyebrows.

  Armin laughed, and they both went back to getting dressed. But something told him that Mo hadn’t been joking.

  Later, when the approach to researching the impossible rock had been discussed by the team and said rock had been safely locked in the lab vault, after dinner and mutual congratulations, Armin took Mo back to his quarters. Mo sucked him off in the shower, then laid him down on the unmade bed and fucked him until his vision blurred and he couldn’t have formed words even if he’d wanted to.

  Afterward, he curled into Mo’s arms with a sense of completion he’d rarely felt in his life. Had never felt, in fact, with a lover. Not that he made a habit of staying with the men he bedded, or inviting them to stay with him. His one and only long-term relationship hadn’t ended well, and he’d never felt the need to involve himself with anyone since then. He wasn’t sure what to make of this unexpected connection with Mo. It was a bit frightening, and a lot exhilarating.

  Why should I fight it? he wondered, breathing in Mo’s warm male scent. I’ll be here a few weeks at the most. Why shouldn’t I enjoy his company while I’m here?

  Mo started to get up. Armin tightened his grip. “Don’t go.”

  The muscular body in his arms tensed. “Huh?”

  “I said, don’t go.” Armin tilted his head back enough to peer at Mo through half-closed eyes. “You can stay here tonight, if you’d like.”

  One dark eyebrow lifted. “Can I?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Grinning, Armin slung a leg across Mo’s thighs. “Don’t go.”

  For a long moment, Mo watched him with a strange glitter in his eyes. Armin felt like a prize stallion being admired by a potential buyer. Logically, he shouldn’t have enjoyed it. Yet he did. His skin heated under Mo’s stare, and he wondered at the strength of his own libido.

  Finally, when Armin’s breath began to come short and he’d started to wonder if he might actually get hard again, Mo favored him with a wide smile. “I’d love to stay.” He slipped a hand between Armin’s legs. “Can we play doctor again?”

  Laughing, Armin pulled Mo down into a kiss.

  Mo got up an hour early the next day so he could go to the lab before his shift started and see how Doc Armin and crew were doing with the mysterious rock. He expected he’d have to sweet-talk Armin into telling him anything, but after yesterday, he held out real hope for success. Especially after last night, when Armin had looked at him with big, soft, vulnerable eyes and asked him to stay.

  The fact that he’d done it without a second thought was a whole other thing. One that he didn’t much want to examine too closely. Maybe he could keep seeing this thing as a multi-night stand, as long as he ignored the warmth that filled him every time Armin smiled, or laughed, or creased his brow and started explaining some complex scientific thing or other. Which was weird, maybe, but there it was.

  So, yeah. He’d expected to talk his way around Armin’s professional reserve when it came to work. What he didn’t expect was Ryal guarding the lab door, refusing to let him in.

  “All I know is, Dr. Savage-Hall sent me out here and told me not to let anyone in except his team. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what the hell they’re doing in there. Except Hannah gets to be in there and I don’t, which is stupid.” Ryal’s round face radiated irritation and boredom. He leaned against the wall, a covered mug of what smelled like extra-strong coffee in one hand, and the other drumming a random rhythm against his thigh. “Sorry, Mo.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I was just curious anyway.” It was a big fat lie, of course, not that Ryal needed to know that. A thought struck Mo, and he grinned. “I bet Dr. Poole loves being locked out of his own lab.”

  “Oh, he’s thrilled, all right.” Ryal smirked. “He’s in Youssouf’s office right now complaining.”

  Mo snickered. He wished he could see Poole’s face when Dr. Youssouf told him to suck it up and quit bitching. BathyTech 3’s head of operations was nothing if not a woman of her word, and she’d promised Armin and his team the run of BT3’s lab facilities for as long as they needed it. She wouldn’t go back on that just because Armin wanted to keep everyone else—even Poole—out of the loop and out of the lab.

  As much as Mo savored it, though, the delicious schadenfreude wasn’t enough to hide the bitter taste of being left out. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t hoped whatever was brewing between him and Armin would buy him a ticket inside. The fact that it didn’t rankled.

  The nagging idea that Armin might not want to hook up again bugged him even more. Which irritated him all by itself. He’d never had a problem being someone’s one-night stand before. Or in this case, two-night stand. So far. He wouldn’t pretend not to hope for more. Armin had taken up residence in his head and didn't seem inclined to leave. He kept seeing those big black eyes every time he blinked, kept thinking of Armin’s smile, hearing him breathe oh, oh like a prayer when Mo slid inside him. Did Armin think of him too? The question nagged at him.

  Fucking hell. This was why he’d sworn off men a couple of years ago. Unsuccessfully, sure, but still. They always made you suffer one way or another. No-strings sex outside of paying for it was a myth. No matter how hard either partner tried to make the relationship work, there was always this evil merry-go-round of anger, competition, and wounded pride.

  Or maybe it was just him. His last serious lover had told him as much before packing up and leaving for good. Said Mo was too damned possessive. Held on so tight a man didn’t have room to breathe. Mo had never believed it, but everyone could be wrong sometimes.

  Realizing his mind had wandered, Mo forced his face into his best approximation of a smile before Ryal could start asking him personal questions. “Well. Guess I’ll go grab some breakfast, then.”

  “’Kay. See you later.” Ryal sipped his coffee, his attention already drifting off someplace else.

  As Mo turned away, the lab door slid open. He swiveled to face it again, hoping to catch Armin coming out. Instead Neil Douglas emerged, yawning. He smiled. “Hey, Mo. Can I help you with something?”

  Mo swallowed his disappointment. “No, I was just leaving.” He thought about asking Dr. Douglas to tell Armin he said hi, and decided against it. He wasn’t that desperate. “All right, then. See you.”

  He walked away, smothering the urge to look back.

  In the cafeteria, he swallowed powdered protein made to resemble eggs, and gulped overcooked coffee without tasting it. His mind was in the lab, pondering the thing they’d brought back from Richards Deep and the unusual circumstances surrounding it. Why had the mapping scans read it as a tiny little blank space? Why had Rover gotten vid of it—however poor quality—but not recognized it as a physical object that could be retrieved? It didn’t make any damn sense. He’d seen it himself, and it’d looked like a rock.

  Okay, not an ordinary rock. Armin’s suit had scanned it as blank space, just like the mapping software. Just like Rover. Those scans were anything but ordinary.

  Well, now that he thought about it, the rock hadn’t looked entirely ordinary. Natural stones weren’t that perfectly round. And the way Armin’s wrist lights had glistened on its smooth, glassy surface during the one brief glimpse Mo had gotten before it went in the box . . . To Mo it had felt like a pretense, as if something inside was trying to disguise its own glow by mimicking a normal reflection.

  He imagined the thing breaking open like a geode to reveal a dark, shifting glitter like captured starlight infused with an impossible life.

  The mental picture was vivid, disturbing, and seductive for reasons he couldn’t name, and it stuck with him as he finished his coffee and made his way to the go-cart bay to start his shift.

  Jem raised her eyebrows at him when he wandered in, last of the team to arrive in spite of having gotten up early. “Nice of you to join us, Rees.�
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  Marcell, busy running the last of the checks on the go-cart’s hull, glanced up long enough to grin at Mo. “You get busy with that hot piece of doc from upside? I know you tried, so don’t bother saying you didn’t.”

  “None of your damn business.” Ignoring Marcell’s promise to pester it out of him, Mo crossed to the scanner, which he really should’ve already tested by now. His walking partner Yvonne was running through the series of tests required prior to every shift. He shot her a guilty smile when she looked up at him. “Hey. Sorry I’m late.”

  “No big deal. It’s the first time I know of.” She stretched, both hands pressed to her lower back. “Computer. Tests complete. Load mining array scanner into go-cart bay and sync with go-cart computer.”

  “Understood, Yvonne.”

  Mo raised his eyebrows when he heard the computer’s low, masculine purr. “You been reprogramming again, Yvie?”

  “That’s what happens when you get here late. You get my dream man on the computer.” She smiled, brown eyes shining. “Thought you’d be into it.”

  Before he could tell her that he liked it a lot, actually, something went click-click-click behind him. He whirled, pulse racing, picturing some kind of malfunction with the Mist compressor.

  In the split second as he turned toward the machinery, several small black somethings skittered behind the compressor and disappeared.

  Bugs? There couldn’t be bugs down here. It wasn’t possible.

  He crossed to the compressor without looking away. Nothing moved. He peered around the curve of the machinery. Nothing continued to move. There were no bugs.

  Well, of course there weren’t. The only bugs on BT3 were the ones Hannah had delivered in a special freeze-dried container every month to feed her pet tarantula, Daisy. The pesticides had kept any stray wild creepy-crawlies out of the pod ever since it was built. No reason to think they’d suddenly made their way down here now.

  Right?

  “Mo.”

  He started, and could’ve kicked himself for it. Damn it, he could not be jumpy out on a walk. He faked a calmness he didn’t feel and met his fellow miner Rashmi’s questioning look. “Hm? Yeah?”

  “We’re ready to go.” Rashmi frowned, putting a deep crease between his brown eyes. “Are you all right?”

  Translation: Are you in any shape to walk? Are the rest of us going to be in danger because you’re distracted?

  Mo gave it a moment’s thought because walking at seven thousand meters was serious business and he owed it to his team to make sure he could do it safely. “I’m kind of tired,” he admitted after a few seconds. “But I’m okay to walk.”

  Rashmi nodded, his expression solemn. “If you change your mind, say so. There’s no shame in stepping out.”

  “I know. I’ll be fine.” Mo clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

  Rashmi walked away with a smile and an assessing look. Mo followed him into the go-cart, doing his best not to stare at the Mist compressor. If this place suddenly had a vermin problem, he didn’t want to know. At least not right now. He fucking hated bugs.

  Mo couldn’t help thinking that the only reason he got through his shift without a hitch was that the process of walking the mineral collector circuits on the vents had become embedded into his brain cells and muscle memory; anything the slightest bit out of the ordinary would have set off his inner alarm bells.

  Good thing, because in fifteen years of marine mineral mining, he’d never been so distracted. For the first time, the sea felt unfriendly. Like an enemy. Like something was sidling up to him with sinister intent whenever he put his back to the endless night of the deep. He had no idea what to make of it. He’d always been perfectly comfortable at the bottom of the ocean. This new sense of tension—he didn’t like to call it fear—annoyed him, even while it brought out his innate urge to poke at things he probably shouldn’t. He felt fidgety with the need to delve into the reasons behind his own nervousness.

  Arriving back in the airlock at the end of his shift was a relief. It shouldn’t have been. It never had been before. Walking had always calmed him, soothing his spirit regardless of its purpose. Now a strange, formless anxiety had invaded the cold, quiet darkness he loved, and he didn’t know what to do. His chest felt hollow, his throat tight and burning.

  He stomped out of the go-cart and across the bay to Yvonne, who’d already started the postwalk tests. “Yvie, can you manage without me today? I . . . I don’t feel so good.”

  Her eyebrows shot skyward, but she nodded without asking questions. “Sure. Go lie down. You look like shit.”

  He managed a feeble laugh. “Thanks. I’ll do the testing next shift.”

  She waved a dismissive hand his way and went back to her work. He turned away, grateful that his partner didn’t want to know about other people’s business.

  Everyone was allowed an off day. This was his.

  “Rees. Hold up.”

  Shit. Scowling, he slowed his pace to let Jem catch up to him. “What do you want?”

  “I want to know what the ever lovin’ fuck’s wrong with you.” She scampered in front of him, planted one small hand in the middle of his chest and her feet on the floor, and dug in, forcing him to stop in spite of his superior size. She peered up at him with a familiar, annoying determination. “Nobody’s perfect, and everybody’s business is their own, as far as I’m concerned. But your mind was a million kilometers away out there. You could’ve gotten somebody killed, including yourself. So you’d better damn well tell me what’s up.”

  She was right, which only made it harder to swallow. He sighed and raked a hand through his sweat-and-Mist-damp hair. “I don’t know, and that’s the truth. I just kept feeling like something was watching me. Like it was about to jump on me and eat me or something.”

  She dropped her hand and frowned up at him. “There’s nothing out there but us and some fish.”

  “I know, okay? I know it doesn’t make any sense.” He rubbed a hand over his face. He almost told her about the bugs, but didn’t. Why mention what was probably just a trick of the light? “Maybe I’m just tired. I dunno.”

  She watched him for a long, uncomfortable moment while the rest of the team filed past, shooting curious glances at the pair of them. Once they were alone again, Jem reached out and touched his arm. “Look. If you don’t feel back to normal by next shift, let me know, okay? I’d rather you take some leave time than endanger the whole team by trying to tough it out.” She studied his face with an intensity that made him want to squirm. “Am I understood?”

  “Yeah. Understood.” He stepped back, uncomfortable with her touch and her penetrating stare. “Thanks, Jem.”

  “No problem.” She gave him an awkward pat. “I’m off to The Beach. You coming?”

  Normally, Mo would’ve hung out at the pod’s ironically named bar with the rest of the crew for a while. Tonight? He didn’t feel in the mood. “I think I’m just gonna go to bed.”

  Thankfully, Jem didn’t say anything about it. “All right. See you later.”

  “Yeah. See you.”

  They parted ways without another word. He aimed his gaze at the bland gray metal beneath his feet and strode out of the bay into the hallway. The sooner he got to his quarters, the better.

  He wasn’t sure what to think when he found Armin waiting for him, pacing the floor in front of his door and gnawing one thumbnail ragged. Mo stopped and stared. They hadn’t known each other long, but he’d already gotten used to calm-Armin. Agitated-Armin was something new and unsettling. “Doc? What’s wrong?”

  Armin started like he hadn’t seen him coming. He blinked and focused on Mo’s face, those big dark eyes full of something that made Mo’s heart gallop. “Could we go into your quarters?” He stepped forward into Mo’s personal space, never breaking eye contact. “I’d like to talk to you in private.”

  Mo breathed in, caught a heady whiff of desire, and decided to let his dick overrule his brain for now. Sliding his h
and into the thick black hair at the nape of Armin’s neck, he pulled the man close and planted a hard, claiming kiss on his mouth. “Sex first. Then talk.”

  Armin’s breath ran out in a warm, whiskey-scented rush against his lips. “I hoped you would say that.”

  The heat in Mo’s gut flared into a full-blown fire. Grinning, he led Armin through the door and into his suite.

  The sex was every bit as good as before, but Mo could feel the undercurrent of distracted nervousness beneath his partner’s passion. As soon as they finished and he caught his breath, he rolled onto his side to face Armin, who was lying on his back with his eyes shut, breathing hard, a faint smile tipping up the corners of his mouth.

  Mo reached over and traced a fingertip around the curve of Armin’s lower lip. Armin’s eyes opened, and Mo smiled at him. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong now?”

  Armin blinked, a lazy sweep of those long black lashes. “Wrong?”

  “I get the feeling you didn’t show up here tonight just to talk about the weather.” He smoothed his thumb over the worried crease already digging itself between Armin’s eyes again. “What’s wrong, Armin?”

  “Maybe nothing.” Armin tucked an arm beneath his head and stared at the ceiling. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but . . . Well. The rock we found . . .”

  Mo prodded when he failed to continue. “What about it?”

  “I’ve seen it before. We have. Mandala, Carlo, Neil, and I. We’ve seen it—or something that looks like it—before.”

  The implications of that tensed Mo’s body with intrigue and excitement. “What do you mean, you’ve seen it before? I keep up with the journals. I haven’t read about anything like this.”