by H. E. Trent
“No need. I have no desire to provoke you again.”
“Okay. Good.” Luke backed toward the door, a tight smile straining his cheeks, and Hauge’s stare was wary.
It was a liar’s stare. Luke could recognize one at a hundred paces.
“Be on the ground in five minutes,” Luke said. “If I have to come up here to fetch you, you’re gonna like me even less.”
He left.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tap tap tap tap.
Marco ground the heels of his palms against his eyes and let out a ragged breath.
His sleep had been shit for weeks. He was adding to an insurmountable sleep deficit, and yet again he’d wakened for no damn reason.
Tap tap tap tap.
He dropped his arms to his sides and, squinting into the dark, furrowed his brow. “Fuckin’ ship. What the hell is it this time?”
Tap tap.
“Shut up,” he muttered and pressed his pillow over his face, hoping to muffle the sound.
All he’d wanted was six contiguous hours of sleep. That didn’t seem so much to ask after a day filled with nonstop motion. He’d taken Sera and Ara on their rounds, and then ended up on top of Dorro’s roof tinkering with one of the solar sensors that had gone haywire who-knew-how-many weeks ago. Then Courtney had sheepishly asked him to take a look at the dish sanitizer after dinner. Trigrian needed him to dislodge something from one of the farm’s larger plows. Then he’d gone fishing for eggs for Elken.
He got pecked.
Thrice.
His wrist still hurt from the last one.
Tap tap tap.
“Noooo,” he told the ship. “Break tomorrow. I’m not getting up until I need to piss.”
He’d never considered how much Owen did around the farm and in town until the guy had to leave. People seemed to think they were interchangeable and were making Marco absorb some of Owen’s established duties. Marco didn’t mind. He liked feeling like part of the community, but damned if being part of a village wasn’t exhausting on some days.
He lifted the pillow slightly, spent a thirty-count waiting to hear more of that incessant tapping from the ship’s inner workings. Hearing nothing, he wadded the pillow beneath his head and wriggled his limbs to get more comfortable on the lumpy mattress.
And then there was the familiar scraping sound of his door sliding inward. The panel hung unevenly and not everyone knew to lift the door up by the handle while simultaneously pushing it in.
He sat up, rubbing one eye and expecting to see Salehi standing in the hall, but the silhouette was too slight.
Too feminine.
“Oh,” she whispered, her head bent toward the bottom of the scraping door.
He could see that only one arm moved, then. The other was held against the front of her body.
Sera?
He wondered if he wasn’t asleep after all. What was she doing in The Tin Can? And in his room, at that?
She pulled the door closed slowly, the squealing friction against the metal floor like ceramic fingernails against a chalkboard. A violent enough sound that Marco threw his covers back and was on his feet far faster than a man of his size should have been able to.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered, nudging her hand away from the handle. He angled the door properly, slid it to the frame, and listened for the catch of the latch.
At the click, he turned to her.
The room was almost completely dark, and that was the way Marco liked to sleep. The only light came from a single red pinprick marking off the step-up to the small en suite lavatory. He’d installed the tiny beacon so he wouldn’t keep stubbing his toes at night.
“I…” Forcing back a swath of hair from her face, she grimaced. “Well. Elken wanted to sleep with Ara tonight,” she said. “She has odd whims at times.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, and I, perhaps, figured you’d be here.”
“This time of night? That’s a safe bet. Is everything okay? Is something wrong?”
“No!” she exclaimed with a blitheness that seemed a bit too false, too contrived. Her laugh was as phony as a pro wrestling match. “Not at all, I simply…needed to come.”
“Forget to tell me something earlier?” He chuckled and, gently, guided her toward the armchair in the corner. Blindly, he knocked some clothes off the seat, and nudged her to sit.
Then, he retreated to his bed. If he couldn’t sleep, he wanted to at least be horizontal. His body was so fucking weary. He was long overdue for a day off.
“I woulda thought that after all that running around, you’d want a little break from me for a while,” he said.
“No. Not at all. Why would you think that?”
“Oh, history. Ladies tend to have a pretty predictable timeline for getting rid of me.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“Ah, ignore me.” He pulled the covers up to his chin and crossed his legs at the ankles. “But don’t worry—I’ve come to terms with my patheticness.”
“I don’t believe you’re pathetic. I’m trying to understand why you would think that.”
“That’s what I’ve been told. You get to a certain age and haven’t done certain things, and some ladies will kindly inform you of what that must mean.”
He really knew how to pick them. Intellectually, he knew that there were women out there who wouldn’t care about his V-card ownership, but he’d had a knack for pursuing the ones who liked more experienced lovers.
Or the ones who’d simply wanted to be friendly with him as an inroad to Luke. Fortunately for Marco, Luke always saw right through them.
“You don’t mean that…” Sera let the query fall off, and Marco figured that was just as well. She’d be yet another woman with a very definite idea about what his inexperience meant, and shit was going to get awkward. The same as with all the rest.
Resigned, he gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes closed tight, and rolled so his back was toward the door and to her, not that she could see him well.
But then there was a subtle shifting behind him—Sera’s weight being applied to the bed’s edge, and he registered her scent the moment after. The aroma had hints of baby powder and roses. Her shampoo, probably. Fastida’s mother Cet made soaps and shampoos using old Jekhan recipes and everyone at the farm used them.
She whispered, “You haven’t…”
“No,” he said. There was no good reason to equivocate. He wasn’t ashamed, only tired of his circumstance.
“You don’t want to?”
“Desire isn’t the issue.”
“Then what?”
“A lot of things. When I was younger, religion. As I got older, I couldn’t find anyone I wanted to do it with who wanted to do it with me.”
He’d even resorted to dating sites where he unsubtly listed in is profile that he was looking for someone to be his first. A few times, he’d gotten close to sealing the deal. He took the ladies out and he’d end up back at his apartment or theirs, and when all was said and done, they could never get to the finish line. He’d been too anxious to get his cock up, and the ladies hadn’t been patient.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Please don’t pity me. I don’t think I could endure one more person pitying me.”
“I don’t pity you. I simply marvel that no one would have been more aggressive about having you.”
“I’m a virgin over thirty. In most women’s minds, there has to be something wrong with me.”
“Most men would probably think there’s something wrong with me, too. I lost track of how many men had me. I stopped counting because knowing the number hurt.”
“Shit.” Taking a deep breath, he rolled onto his back and sat up. They didn’t deserve to live, the men who’d touched her. The ones who hadn’t valued her consent. Who’d only valued her for one or two body parts, and didn’t see she carried an extraordinary heart along for the ride. “I guess we’re a study of extremes.”
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He wished he could see her face, but didn’t want to risk turning on the light. She was sitting so close, and even platonically he was getting more from the exchange than he was used to. “Sera, what happened wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask for that, and even if you had, no one would have the right to judge you now.”
“They made it a challenge.”
Marco rubbed his eyes. They stung from lack of sleep. “A challenge? What do you mean?”
“Some of the men who’d taken me,” she said softly, haltingly. “The word had gotten around that Jekhan women are hard to arouse, which isn’t the case at all. We’re just…” The bed shifted slightly—likely her shrugging. “We’re raised to not demonstrate that we’re receptive because our willingness didn’t truly matter. Whether we were enthusiastic about our circumstances or not, we still had to play our roles to support our trios.”
“I see. I’ve heard some of the Jekhans on the farm intimate something about that before.” Sometimes, the women at the farm discussed the cultural nuances, and Marco generally excused himself from the room when they did. The subject matter was far too intimate.
He had a bad habit of that, though—of ghosting from the conversations he needed to pay attention to the most. He couldn’t do that anymore, and wouldn’t do that to Sera. If she needed to talk, he’d listen. Being trusted to listen was an honor.
“They’d try to get me to want them, to make me beg, but I couldn’t,” she said. “And not because of how I was raised, but because I didn’t choose them. I didn’t want them. They were taking from me what I wouldn’t have offered. After a while, I started to tune them out. I would close my eyes and pretend nothing was happening. Mostly, they left me alone after my arm was crushed. That was the only high point to the mess, except for having Elken. When Owen told my handler that he wanted to buy me, I felt like I’d gone dead inside. I thought my respite was over. Why did he pick us?”
“Owen?”
“Yes. At the station. When you and Owen and the others were scouting for Jekhan women to purchase as a distraction for your scheme, why did he pick us?”
“I don’t know. I never asked him, and he probably doesn’t know himself. Hard to get into that guy’s head. If I have to guess, I’d say that he wanted to try to keep you with your sisters in case shit hit the fan when the rough stuff started. I think Salehi ended up doing the same.”
“Yes. The woman he purchased had her mother with her. I spoke to her last week. They live in the desert now. They had distant relatives there who happily took them in.”
“That’s good. I’m glad they had some place to go. Freaks my mom out.”
“What does?”
“We tell her about the stuff that happens here.” Marco twined his fingers behind his head and uncrossed his legs. His bottom foot had gone numb. “She’s always asking if the ladies have anywhere to go as if she’d come and adopt them all and take care of them herself.” He laughed. “She’s a nut, but I love her.”
“I think the ladies would like to know that people care.”
“Lots of people on Earth care, Sera. There’ve been more and more folks signing up to donate to Jekhan causes every day in the past year. I guess some think donating cash will help absolve them of their guilt, but that doesn’t matter. The money spends the same, and the folks here need the capital to rebuild. Fortunately, you guys aren’t too proud to take the cash.”
“There was plenty of debate,” she murmured. “Many argued that we shouldn’t take the aid, but I know Amy was one of the ones who said we should. Why should we delay our rebuilding for the sake of pride?”
“Exactly. You can’t worry about what folks think. You’ve gotta do what’s best for everyone and ignore the haters, even when the people who don’t care about you are the loudest and you can’t hear the cheers from the folks who want you to succeed.”
She shifted again and for longer, as if she were repositioning herself somehow, not saying anything.
Marco confirmed that suspicion when a moment later there was a tentative touch against his rib, and her hand moved slowly, feeling up his chest to his shoulder.
He lay still, deathly still, for fear she’d stop.
And for fear he’d put that hand to his lips or do some other novice move that would embarrass him later. He should have been more assertive, but he didn’t know what she wanted. Didn’t want to presume and be wrong like he always was.
“I’m looking for your hand,” she said quietly. “This is hard to do in the dark.”
“My hand?”
“Yes. Where is it?”
“Behind my head. What are you trying to do?”
“I… Decided something, and I’d like your hand, please.”
“Decided something about what?” He pulled his hand out from under his head and gave the back of her hand a light tap.
She squeezed his finger briefly, then moved on, grazing her fingertips over his bare shoulder and to his neck, and then teasingly up his Adam’s apple. Touching him there until he swallowed, and then stroking his beard on the underside of his chin.
No one had touched him like that before.
“When you said that no one wanted to be with you who you wanted to be with, I could understand,” she said. “I haven’t been with anyone I’ve wanted to be with. I would like that.”
He swallowed nerves again, and his gut lurched with uncertainty. “What are you telling me?” he asked, doing a fairly convincing job of keeping his apprehension out of his voice.
“I would like to choose. I’d like to be with someone who I trust and who would let me…” Her hand hovered a centimeter over his lips. He couldn’t see it, but his prickling skin and the steam of his breath warned of her proximity.
“Sera, let you what?”
“Let me…see if I like it?” She alighted her fingertips on his bottom lip and slowly traced around the edge. So gentle. So curious. So sweetly tender that his skin prickled there. He wished he’d shaved. Wished skin could meet skin.
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she whispered, still tracing, around and around his lips again.
“No, of course not. Never.”
“I would tell you yes, Marco. If you want to. Do you want to?” She abandoned his lips then and held her warm hand against his cheek. He grabbed her hand. Kissed it, even if that was corny.
Hell yes, he wanted to. Any straight man would have wanted to be on the recipient end of such a proposition, and that was part of the problem. Too many men had already taken what they wanted from her and left her hesitant to seek out what she wanted. He had to be cautious. He needed to think and not get caught up in his own selfish desires.
“Damn,” he whispered. “Sera, I know if you had anyone else to ask, you would. You want to feel good, and I don’t know if I can do that for you. I’d probably lay there like a dumbass.”
“So I could…do the rest?”
“You’d have to. I’d need you to tell me what to do. You can do better than that.”
“I don’t believe I want to try to look elsewhere. I came to you to ask you if you would, but knowing that you’re…” She drew gentle circles over his cheekbone and let out a breath. “Knowing you haven’t been with anyone only means you don’t have expectations, and I think I need that, too. Will you? Please? I have to know if the problem is me, or if the men were careless.”
“Me, though?”
“I trust you. You’re my friend, yes?”
Friend.
Marco grimaced into the dark.
“Friend” wasn’t a bad word, but he’d had it hurled at him countless times as a pejorative. An epithet, even.“But we make such good friends, Marco,” and “I think we should just leave our friendship as it is.”
He’d recovered from those slights, awkward though they were, because those women hadn’t meant anything to him. In the scheme of things, they’d simply been opportunities. Sera wasn’t merely an opportunity. They had to live on that farm together with their families and friends,
and avoiding each other would be a challenge.
“Friend,” he whispered sourly.
She skated her fingers over to his ear and fondled his hair.
Does she like it? Too long? Too short?
He didn’t know what women liked. He was a hopeless case.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a man for a friend,” she said, “except the Beshnis, but they don’t count.”
Marco swallowed again when her hand slid down his neck. He tipped his chin up for her and splayed his fingers against the mattress. He wanted to touch her so bad because he was curious, too. “No?”
“They were more like family, I suppose. More so now. Is this something friends do?”
“I have no idea. My… My closest female friends are the McGarry sisters, and the thought never crossed my mind to pursue them, probably for the same reason you don’t feel any particular way about Murk and Ben.”
“Would you mind so much? If we tried, I mean.” Sera moved beside him. He shifted his arm to feel for her position.
She was kneeling, sitting back on her heels as if waiting to service him, and he didn’t like that. She was no one’s servant.
He sat up and pulled her away from the bed’s edge so she sat on her rear end beside him. “No, I wouldn’t mind. ‘Mind’ is the absolute wrong word. I’d probably like us being together a lot. Hell, I’d probably like it too much, and then where would we be?”
She giggled and found his thigh.
He sucked in a silent breath through his teeth, and prayed she couldn’t feel the clench of his muscles under her hand. He wasn’t suave enough. Luke would have known what to do, or Escobar.
Fuck.
The courtesy hadn’t even niggled in the back of Marco’s mind. He’d been flattered by Sera’s attention that he’d forgotten that Escobar had staked his claim on her. He’d been clear about his interest, and there she was in Marco’s room, asking him to touch her.