“Sevrin,” she whispered. “Sevrin.”
Over and over she called to his emotions. His scrotum tightened and the tremors in his core erupted. He lowered his body onto hers. She clung to him, crying out. In response, his orgasm ripped through him as quickly as the steam-trekker raced over an open wasteland route. His vocal cords quavered under the strain and unlike Rye’s, his sound of relief came in the form of stuttering grunts.
Ecstasy flooded him as he hugged her tight and rode out the pulsating jolts still moving him. Then he lowered her. They remained entwined, gasping to catch their breath. When he lifted, she held his arms, preventing him from moving off her.
“Wait.” She breathed heavily.
He hovered with his cock still in her twitching cunt. “You are so beautiful.” He slid a caressing touch over her head. “What’s your full name, Rye?”
“Mariah Sanborn,” she purred.
“Well, Mariah Sanborn, you enchant me.”
“I know just how that feels.” A satisfied smile came with a glowing sparkle of joy in her eyes. “I haven’t felt this fulfilled in a long time.” She lifted to him and he bowed to catch her kiss.
Pride swept through him, calming his muscles. His cock shrank and slipped free sooner than he hoped. He flipped off her onto his back, took in a lungful of air and let it out in a quick puff. He waited for Rye to say more, anything to keep him from blurting out the overpowering way he felt. At the same time, he didn’t want her to think him a callous cretin by ignoring her.
“Come here.” He pulled her close and hugged her to him. “You’ve had your way with me, now will you get some rest?”
Her contented sigh let him believe she accepted the quiet end to having sex. He appreciated she wasn’t pushy with talk. When she slid her arm over him, he relaxed. All was good between them.
Sevrin looked forward to the morning and getting to know everything about Mariah Sanborn.
Chapter Five
Rye jolted awake from a nightmare that had dragged her back into her abductor’s clutches. Tiny embers of pain skittered through her chest and immediately she clutched her breast.
“What’s wrong?” Sevrin asked, sleepily alert and rising.
“Nothing,” she whispered, pushing him back down. “Just readjusting my position.”
“Uncomfortable?” He pulled her close, encouraging her to rest her head on his shoulder.
She pretended he had solved all her problems and lay quietly so he’d fall back asleep. Time ticked by slowly, but she held her impatience in check. If he moved, she stroked his brow, soothing him. It amazed her at how trusting he was of his surroundings—of her. She had no experience in trusting anyone other than her sister.
When she thought he was well back into a deep sleep, she lifted his heavy arm and scooted out from under it. Carefully, she put his arm down and tucked the blanket against him. He moved slightly, mumbled a sound of disturbance and then quieted.
She waited patiently before easing herself over him, trying not to touch. Her foot slipped on the edge of the rock shelf and she jumped to the floor to avoid contact with Sevrin. The thud of her landing echoed in the small space. She hovered in the half-crouched position a few moments. Silently rising, she crept to the other part of the cavern, back near the fire.
She looked over the piles of items she had decided had come out of the crate. In the mess of odds and ends she found more clothing. She kept on the shirt Sevrin had given her. It was her souvenir—her piece of a man who had treated her with tender kindness and respect. She’d never forget him.
Not worried about size, she took a pair of dark-blue cloth pants from the other clothing. A few holes, some wear to the knees and a small size, they obviously never belonged to Sevrin. She glanced at the other items as she tucked in her shirt. From the looks of everything in the old mining shaft’s cavern, it appeared Sevrin was a wasteland salvager.
“Not a very good one either,” she grumbled, sorting through the ragged, useless items until she came upon a brown leather jacket. She recognized it wasn’t common lizard skin as so many items were made of, but from the even texture and one-piece design, she suspected it to be rare.
Animals in the wasteland were nonexistent. She had heard stories of larger creatures in the east. While it had a missing sleeve and matched the pants, not in fabric or color, just excessive wear, she put it on. When would she ever have the chance to acquire something so extraordinary again, in any condition?
Footwear was the hardest thing to find. While she located piles of them, none fit. She couldn’t walk in sloppy loose lizard-skinned boots. The woven rope sandals were so tiny they had to be from a child. Then she found an odd pair of knee-high boots with tall heels, not at all practical. The slick material was foreign and unusually red. She thought about the weapon Hamner called a razor and looked around at the oddities Sevrin had stored in the cavern. The unfamiliar objects suggested he traveled to places she had never seen before. Did he make deals with the scientists the same way Hamner implied he did?
She steered her thoughts away from forming troubling conclusions. First she had to get out of the mineshaft and resume her quest to find her sister.
She tried on the impractical footwear.
“That figures, they’re the right size.” She stretched out her leg to survey the fit and immediately put her foot down to steady herself.
She decided she’d wear them until she found something more suitable. Choices had to be better in the next mineshaft or wasteland camp.
Rye added another log to the fire. If comfortably warm, Sevrin would not wake from a chill in the air and ultimately know she was gone. By morning, he’d forget his feelings of misplaced obligation to drive her where she needed to go.
Besides, Hamner was dangerous. She didn’t want to involve Sevrin in her manhunt.
Rye walked back into the dark niche and looked at Sevrin with regret.
“I don’t know how or why, but you stirred something inside me that I’ll never forget. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to explore my feelings. I won’t have time for myself until I find my sister.”
The thought of never seeing Sevrin again made Rye ache inside. They had bonded through blood. In time, that complexity of her lamian nature would fade, but there was another emotion tethering her heart to him that she doubted she’d ever be free from feeling.
She placed her hand against her chest and rubbed, already knowing it wasn’t possible to soothe a broken heart. Shay’s disappearance had created the deep wound and Sevrin widened it. Would she ever know happiness again?
She reached to touch Sevrin’s lips and then thought better of disturbing him. This was the beginning and the end of their too-brief affair.
“Goodbye,” she whispered.
Quickly Rye made her way across the cavern to the ladder leading out of the mineshaft. In the dim light of the fire, she avoided making any disruptive noises.
Grabbing the rung of the ladder, she started to climb toward the trapdoor above. Mineshaft entrances often had a shack built above them. She assumed she’d find the same above this cavern.
Halfway up, she stopped. A sound of a low moan gripped her as tight as if someone had grabbed her ankles. Her limbs began to shake out of fear, anxiety. Sevrin wouldn’t keep her against her will. He had shown her too much patience and kindness.
Tears dripped onto her cheeks.
If she looked back, would she change her mind about leaving? She took the chance. The distance and the darkness prevented her from seeing him as anything more than a lump in the shadows.
All the better, she decided. She sucked in a deep breath and willed away the gnawing regret that had her second-guessing her decision to leave Sevrin’s irresistibly perfect lovemaking. She had Shay to think about. Her sister had to be her one and only concern.
Climbing to the top of the ladder, Rye crawled out into the small shack she anticipated covering the shaft’s entrance. She lowered the trapdoor back into place. With a mindful tho
ught to Sevrin sleeping below, she tiptoed across the room and carefully opened the door to the brightness of the outside world, then directed her thoughts toward her next step.
A vehicle seemed a promising mode of transportation. She looked for Sevrin’s steam-trekker. Not only would she cover territory quicker, the vehicle might contain weapons and other handy supplies.
She found the machine parked beneath camouflage netting. Near it, she spotted steel storage boxes with government markings. Since the day she was born, the government had been nonexistent except in stories passed down from older generations. Sevrin was too young to have been a part of the Century Wars that wiped out trillions of humans and turned vast areas of the world into wastelands. So where did he acquire such beneficial items?
With no time to waste pondering Sevrin’s accumulated wealth, she climbed onto the metal-ribbed track wheel, opened the door on the vehicle and slid into the driver’s seat. She studied the gauges on the panel in front of her, recalling what she did of the things Sevrin did to make it go. She had never operated a motorized anything before.
“How hard can it be?”
The red button on the panel beckoned her first. She pressed it. Nothing happened. She turned a black knob. Still nothing. She flipped a switch that produced a gurgling burp like water made in a pipe. As she listened, a seething hiss similar to the sound her water kettle made when heated appeared to start things. The needle in one gauge moved. When it passed a thick white line, she tried the switch, the knob and then the red button. One of them brought the engine roaring to life.
The loudness startled her. Would Sevrin hear it?
Hastily, she pushed the right-hand pedal on the floorboard. The vehicle lurched forward. It crashed into the stack of steel boxes, climbing over and crushing them. She took her foot from the pedal, but it didn’t stop the steam-trekker as she thought it would and she jammed her left foot against the left pedal. No help.
The massive machine continued to pulverize what it could until too many mangled boxes wedged the un-propelled vehicle and stopped it from rolling forward. She tried the middle pedal and the steam-trekker lumbered in reverse, the track wheel squashing everything caught beneath.
As she came out from under the propped-up netting, she glanced at the mineshaft shack’s door. Sevrin had to have felt the vibrations in the cavern. How quickly could he climb the ladder and emerge from the building? Would he stop and put on clothing?
That would be a glorious sight, his nudity a veritable delight to any female’s eye. Her insides trembled when she recalled the sensations she experienced by his passionate lovemaking. The touch of his fingers as he glided them over her skin gave her goose bumps. His sweet kisses made her feel special. She thought of his concern for her health and the gentle ways he cared for her as she recovered from the blood poison.
Tears welled in her eyes and she swatted away the ones that escaped to her cheeks.
Shaking off the memories and hardening her resolve with reminders that Shay needed her help, she turned the steering wheel and pushed the forward motion pedal.
Aimed toward the sunrise, she relied on instinct as a guide. It didn’t take long to roll out of sight of the shack and away from Sevrin possibly stopping her.
Rye covered a great distance with the vehicle, much quicker than she imagined. When the unmerciful heat of the sun gave her a headache, she considered stopping. She favored sleeping in the day, especially in the afternoon, but she pushed on. Then the engine produced a few grumbling sounds of exhaustion and quit, making the choice for her.
She pressed the red button to restart it. A dull roaring followed a clickety-clack and then nothing.
“Well, I’m farther along than if I walked.” She opened the door to get out and then stopped and looked in the back for useful items to take with her.
She turned and knelt on the seat to reach as far as she could for another lizard-skinned flask Sevrin obviously owned. If there were weapons, they weren’t visible. She remembered the long lizard-skinned coat that Sevrin had swaddled her in when she lay in the ditch but she didn’t see it. Naturally, if he treasures it, he’ll keep it with him.
Rye shook the flask expecting it to be partially empty and discovered it full. “Of course.” She smiled. “He clearly has a knack for efficiency and refilled it at the pond.”
She considered her next steps as she glanced out the window. The horizon went on forever. She couldn’t leave behind the only means of traversing the wastelands with as much expediency as the steam-trekker offered. But how did she make the vehicle go?
“What do we have here?” a man’s voice said from out of nowhere.
In that same instant, he grabbed her around her upper body. Every muscle in Rye’s body tensed as he pointed a knife to her throat.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” he warned. “I always keep my blade coated with allium juice.”
Fear immobilized Rye. Her thoughts shot back to her recent imprisonment by Hamner. Did he really have allium on it? An unusually strong scent rose to confirm his threat. How much did he have? Would he make sure she was dead before he left her? In all her years, she had never run into so many humans threatening to kill her with the blood poison.
“What do you want?” she asked, weighing her options.
“Why, everything you got.” His foul breath reached her nose and she tried not to cringe.
“That isn’t much.”
“You have a vehicle. That’s a good start.”
“It’s broken.”
“We’ll just see about that.” He pulled her from the steam-trekker and forced her down off the track wheel while he remained on it.
She had already determined her need of the steam-trekker and a plan formed.
“I know where you can find a treasure trove of luxuries,” she said, hoping to keep him from fixing the vehicle and stealing it without giving her an opportunity to get the better of him.
He turned his long lanky frame and looked down at her through tired muddy eyes. His thick brows rose, displaying interest. “Like what?” he asked.
“I don’t know, exactly. I didn’t look. It’s back where I got this vehicle. I saw a lot of government boxes. Could be anything in them.”
“Why didn’t you look?” He scratched hard at his whiskered jaw as if he attacked bugs hiding in the filth.
“And get caught by the owner?” She shook her head. “I’m just a female, what could I do against him?”
“You’re lamian, what’s it to you to get into a little scuffle?” he questioned.
“Maybe the owner of that stuff wouldn’t be as considerate as you were by warning me he had allium,” she countered. “I don’t know what kind of weapons he has.”
“Where is this stuff you speak of?”
“I’ll take you there if you can get that vehicle running,” she told him flat out.
“How can I trust you?”
“You’re the one with the allium-dipped blade,” she reminded him.
He raised his arm and looked at the knife in his bony hand. “Oh yeah, right.” Then he shook his head. “Nah, I think I’ll settle for just this vehicle.” He hopped down and walked around to the other side.
When his lack of caution gave her room to run or attempt to overpower him, she thought of Sevrin. She had just put him in danger by what she told the stranger.
The man came back around, climbed up on the track and got in the steam-trekker. He closed the door. She listened to him banging something on the inside. He finally hit the ignition button. It didn’t start as it had for her. Every rumble and sputter died with a long groan.
Finally, the door swung open. “What’s wrong with this hunk of junk?” he demanded.
Rye shrugged. The steamy hiss suddenly gave her a clue.
“You said you’d take me to that stash you found, so you must know how to fix this machine.” He hopped down and waved his knife at her. “Get this thing running. I wanna see what’s in those boxes you mentioned.”
Thinking of the metal cans she had seen in the cargo area, she suspected the steam engine needed water. “And you’ll take me with you?”
He rubbed his arm against his drippy nose, wiping it dry. “Why should I?”
“Maybe there’s something in those boxes you’ll need help getting,” she said and then added, “Two of us would have a much better chance against the man who has the stuff.”
He took a few moments seemingly to think over the idea and then asked, “And you know exactly where that stash is hidden?”
“I do. So, do we go?”
When he nodded, he proved he was as dumb as he looked. Taking her was a big mistake, at least for one of them, so she’d have to stay alert.
Chapter Six
Sevrin woke slowly. Semiconscious of his surroundings, he lingered in the halfway point between still asleep and fully awake. Without movement next to him, he lay motionless and silent to give Rye all the time she needed to rest. It wasn’t as if he had any schedule to keep.
He thought of his sleep vision, one in which he found a settling contentment. Often his dreams had a senseless, unimportant aspect to them, the themes random and unrelated. Rye had fully invaded his subconscious thoughts that night. She made an impression that took him by surprise. Her presence brought clarity to his future.
In the past, he had seen his share of beautiful, intelligent females, each ordinary and unmemorable. Rye was different. Since his sympathetic nature often dragged him into situations a less noble man might avoid, the circumstances of their meeting might have had some effect on his view. Still, she had a unique and appealing influence on his emotions.
He turned his head and looked at the dwindling fire. He debated adding wood to keep the cavern warmer for Rye. Then a better idea sprouted. What better way to warm up than in each other’s arms?
He shifted and rolled to his side to face her, to gather her close and embrace her in his heart, as he had never thought he’d want to do. Especially with someone he had just met and had little knowledge about.
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