And before she could say any more, tears welled up in her eyes and fell down her cheeks. Raiden scooted his chair back to go to her side. He turned her chair and kneeled down in front of her, pulling her hands from her eyes.
“Emmarie,” he said softly, capturing her gaze. “It’s going to be okay.”
“There was so much I wanted to do,” she whispered in a broken voice. “I liked living in Claring, but I wanted to see the world. I wanted to see the big cities. New York. London.”
“And now you’re in Sparta.”
The statement was so incongruous that it made her giggle. She slapped a hand over her mouth and gave a small hiccup. The tears instantly dried up.
“Thank you,” she told him.
He brushed a few strands of hair from her face. “You’re welcome, Miss Tice.”
He stood and their hands drifted apart.
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
He nodded. “You better believe it,” he said with a wink. He caressed her cheek once more and left.
Chapter Ten
Logan stared at a transcript in front of him, his mind far from trying to figure out the algorithm of the code. The language had long been cracked but the codes were harder, especially since the Kexians kept changing them.
He never thought he’d be a code breaker one day. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to be doing it. All he wanted to do was get him and Emmarie home, back to Earth, away from this…reality. Nightmare? He wasn’t quite sure what to think anymore.
He’d been poked and prodded by Doctor Payne. He’d been debriefed and questioned by Willoughbee. And he’d been abandoned by Emmarie. That pissed him off more than anything. He thought they’d had a connection since he more or less saved her ass but apparently she’d been caught up by the adventure because now she was singing in a fucking saloon.
He pushed away from the table and stood, stretching out his cramped muscles. The room was closing in on him, stifling, so he walked out. Once in the hallway he wasn’t sure where to go. It was all the same yet different, an alternate reality to the life he’d had and lost. People walked by him, smiling, through corridors of white and gray, in a mountain hidden from aliens hunting humanity. It was crazy, he felt crazy.
Not sure where to go, only knowing he needed to move, Logan started walking. He turned a corner and realized he’d found the ship hangar. The landing bay was just as he remembered, huge and busy as people worked around the spaceships.
Unbelievable. He was standing in front of ships that looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Had this been Earth, he’d be amazed but just looking at the ships lent heaviness to the ache he felt in his heart over the loss of his life. Everyone expected him to just forget, to move on and accept that this was his lot in life when all he wanted to do was get the hell home.
As he wandered through the hangar bay, his heart felt heavy. Abandoned. And he knew it was ridiculous, feeling so heavy and disoriented, but he was having a hard time reconciling the past forty-eight hours. Or had it even been two days? How long had he and Emmarie been frozen? How long had they been on that ship? Had they been declared missing? Dead?
And then another depressing thought ran through his head…no one would miss him. The only people in his life had been his colleagues, the academic community that he had bonded with through the pursuit of learning, because there hadn’t been anyone else who had cared. No family, no lover, no…one. Just books, just lectures, just driving through the rain to gain more knowledge.
“Hey, watch out!” an angry female voice called out to him.
Logan glanced up and saw he was about to walk into a low metal beam being transported with a crane over to a ship. He ducked at the last second.
“What the hell?” he snapped and looked to where the warning had come from and saw a tall, thin woman dressed in greasy overalls, hands on her hips, glaring at him. She had smooth tan skin with bright blue eyes and full lips.
“Get out of the hangar, computer boy,” she told him.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she said and turned her back on him, walking back into the ship that was obviously under repair.
Logan stood there, gaping at where she used to be. She’d almost hit him with a beam and she expected him to feel sorry? He flipped her the bird.
“Logan?”
Logan’s gaze flashed around to land on Pikon Brant.
“What are you doing here?”
“I, ah…well,” Logan started to answer and then fell silent when his brain couldn’t think of an answer. Once again he looked over to where the rude woman had been, but she and her beam had disappeared.
“You okay?”
He nodded at first, then shook his head. “No, not really.”
“You look like you could use a drink. Come on up.”
Pikon gave a jerk with his head and Logan climbed the stairs, following. They walked back to the small area that he remembered and he watched the shorter man pour a glass of pink alcohol. When he offered it, Logan took it, eyeing the liquid warily.
“I don’t know if I should drink this,” he murmured. “It did a number on Emmarie.”
Pikon smiled. “I think you can handle it. You need it, if nothing more than for fortification.”
“Ah, yes, the crux of the matter,” Logan half muttered to himself and then downed half the glass.
Pikon raised his eyebrows. “Well, you keep that up and you’ll be hitting the floor fast.”
Logan saluted him with the glass but then carefully set it down on the small table to his left. “I was staring at gibberish, trying to find the link in breaking the code, which, I might add is not easy. I’m working as a damn Code Talker.”
“What’s that?”
“On Earth, during the second World War, the Allies needed an unbreakable code so one man had the brilliant idea to use the Navajo language. It’s an extremely difficult language and best of all, at the time, it was unwritten. The language had been passed down orally from generation to generation. The Kexian language is kind of like that, I’m discovering. Unbreakable.”
“We weren’t the first slaves, you know,” Pikon mused as he took a drink. “There are two planets on this side of the belt. Before the Merloni perfected Slip Gate technology, they used the inhabitants on the last planet as ‘non-paid residents.’”
He air quoted the end.
“What happened?”
“The Durians stepped in, went to war with them on the other side, then lo and behold, the Merloni bring back humans, who are inherently a weaker race than the others and the war is over. But now the Durians are hesitant to start something back up.”
“So we have their protection but it’s a fragile truce.”
Pikon nodded. He clinked glasses with Logan’s and took another swallow.
“I really wish right now you’d take out your camera and reveal I’m Punk’D or something.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Logan waved it off. “Not important. Just…feeling slightly overwhelmed.”
“So, are you and Emmarie together?”
“No,” Logan answered promptly. “In fact, we just met.”
“Oh, ’cause I was getting that vibe.”
“What vibe?”
“That, I like you vibe. You were staring at her—”
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t reciprocate anything,” Logan said and he knew he sounded a little bitter. Pikon glanced at him sharply.
“What’s wrong, Logan?”
“Wrong? Let’s see…how about everything. It’s this whole fucking place, that’s what’s wrong.” In exasperation, he ran his fingers through his hair.
“I see.”
Logan handed him back the glass. “Nothing to see. I’ve got to go. Thanks for the drink.”
He left Pikon and the ship behind as fast as he could, wanting away from the world of science fiction turned fact. He’d said too much, gave too much of himself away. He didn’t need these
people. He didn’t trust these people. Resentment burned his gut like acid.
How the hell was he going to get himself and Emmarie back to Earth?
Chapter Eleven
Emmarie rose early the next morning and made her way down stairs. Harpo waited for her at the piano. She smiled at him while she fixed herself some toast and morning drink that resembled something like tea. The morning was set with rehearsing, each learning what songs they knew. They even worked through lunch so by the evening they had a nice repertoire to entertain.
Any nerves she might have had disappeared as soon as she saw Captain Pell Raiden sit at the table directly in front of the stage. He stared at her with his dark eyes and everything else disappeared. When she sang, she sang to him. He’d smile at her and her panties instantly became drenched with excitement. That almost made her stumble around the lyrics. She’d never felt such a visceral desire to a man before and frankly, it intimidated her a little.
But she managed to get through the set and soon, she’d gotten used to having Pell’s eyes glued to her. And when she went to sleep that night, she dreamed of him.
And so the course for the following days had been set. Rise, practice, sing at night. She watched Captain Pell Raiden every night as he sat in the front, clapping along with everyone else. As he watched her with dark, captivating eyes, she found herself flirting more and more with him from the stage.
After the third night Emmarie already knew she would have to change the playlist up considerably. There were only so many times she could sing the same song over and over, so she started experimenting with current pop songs as well as the few Country ones she knew. Harpo quickly adapted to the tunes she hummed out, writing down the melody so they could expand on it.
The one dark spot was the absence of Logan. They had started this wild journey together, and by withdrawing himself Emmarie felt almost abandoned. She understood his desire to go home, shared in his grief over losing everything, even felt his disbelief at what happened to them. And yet, she refused to weep and curse what fate had dealt. She firmly believed life too short to bemoan the hand dealt and until a new course presented itself, she embraced the good fortune of being alive and having shelter and food.
And Captain Pell Raiden.
He, most definitely, was a bonus.
* * * *
“Hey, Emmarie,” Leona called out one day as she was practicing at the piano. When she looked up she saw Leona holding a piece of paper. “Doctor Payne would like for you to stop by medical.”
“Oh,” she said, frowning. “When?”
“Go now. You know where it’s at?”
“Just that it’s at the compound.”
“Okay, let me get Dell to watch the bar and I’ll take you.”
A few minutes later Leona led her outside and they started walking toward the underground command center.
“So, what’s up with you and Pell?” Leona asked, but before Emmarie could answer, an electric car came up to them and the driver, a small man, offered them a ride. Feeling relived, Emmarie jumped onto the back while Leona took the front passenger seat.
She hadn’t wanted to walk the distance and she definitely hadn’t wanted to talk about Pell Raiden. She didn’t want to voice any of her feelings out loud, at least, not until she got used to them herself.
* * * *
The city lay nestled between two mountain ranges, offering a protection of sorts. The clash between old-fashioned and alien technology was somewhat startling. The energy for Sparta was solar and silver panels reached high above the buildings.
At the compound, Leona led her to the infirmary where Doctor Payne greeted them both with a huge smile. He guided Emmarie back to a separate office and closed the door.
“Have a seat,” he offered, gesturing to an empty chair near his desk.
Emmarie sat and suddenly became nervous. “Is there anything wrong with me?”
“Oh no, I’m sorry if I made you nervous,” he told her, smiling gently.
“I just don’t like shots,” she admitted.
He chuckled. “I don’t know many people who do. I’m just curious about your test results.”
“Oh?”
He studied her for a long moment, until Emmarie began to shift uncomfortably in her chair.
“Are you an Earthling?”
Her eyes went wide.
“I only ask because you have medical anomalies I’ve only seen from older people who came from Earth. And since someone your age would have been born in this system that leaves me with only one conclusion.”
“What anomalies?”
“Well, first of all, your dental fillings. We don’t have amalgam silver here.”
“Oh.”
“And your blood doesn’t have any inoculation whatsoever dealing with the Amarante System.”
“Have I been exposed to something bad?”
He shook his head. “No, nothing like that. You know, I was a doctor in Ohio before I was abducted in nineteen eighty-three and the one good thing I learned about the races in this system is that they have wiped out virtually all disease. So those two oddities are leading me to one conclusion.”
Emmarie took a deep breath. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
“I see,” he replied, a frown settling between his eyes. “I know what this means. How is Pell taking this news?”
“I don’t know. He keeps a lot to himself.”
“Mm. Well, we may be in another part of the galaxy, but I still uphold patient confidentially, so please don’t worry that I’ll tell anyone.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet. Now I’ve got the unfortunate task of informing you that you need some shots.”
Her heart sank. “Drat.”
* * * *
That night after the saloon closed down, there was a small knock on her door and she jumped slightly, blinking rapidly when her brain realized her eyeballs had been staring too long at nothing. Emmarie blinked and opened the door, relaxing slightly when she saw Pell Raiden. He filled the doorway with his tall, streamlined body, one arm braced on the wall above his head, which caused him to lean slightly forward.
That breathless, exciting feeling that always hit her when he was around came over her and she smiled. “Hello,” she greeted.
“Hi. I wanted to see if you’d like to go on a walk with me?”
His intense eyes locked with hers, and Emmarie had a sudden feeling that if he walked into her room right now, he wouldn’t be leaving for a long time.
“Isn’t it late?”
“There’s a full Dura tonight. Absolutely beautiful.”
Emmarie giggled. “Back home we say full moon.”
“But we are the moon.”
“Yes. It’s very odd.”
He held out his elbow. She took it with a smile and closed the door behind her.
Raiden led her out the back of the building into the cool night air. She could see the large planet of Dura hanging brightly in the sky.
“How have you been adjusting?” he asked.
“Well, I think. Leona keeps me busy.”
“Yeah, she’ll do that.”
They walked a few more steps, falling silent. But it was a silence that didn’t feel awkward. Instead, she felt content to just be by his side.
“When is your next run?”
He shrugged. “Not sure. Next week, I think.”
“You’ll be careful?”
He stopped and turned her to face him. “Of course.” He slid a hand under her chin. “I know we’ve just met but…I think I have something to come back to. Do I have something to come back to, Emmarie?”
They had only known each other about a week, but in her world that had been turned upside down, he made her feel safe and secure. Were they real feelings or was she transferring some of her fear into the sexual excitement she felt toward him? She wasn’t sure, but she wanted to find out.
Ever so slowly, she nodded. He bent his head and
kissed her, softly at first, just a mere brushing of his lips over hers. He didn’t pressure her for anything but as he pulled back, Emmarie grabbed the back of his head and opened her lips under his.
The kiss deepened and he possessed her with a groan, his tongue sweeping in to dance with hers. He brought her body flush to his, holding her hips tightly as he pulled her into the crook of his thighs.
With a shock, she realized the hardness pressing against her was his cock, already erect with his desire for her. He undulated his hips, pressing his hard-on against her pussy with enough pressure to make her juices begin to run, invoking an overwhelming need. Never had she felt such an instant lust for someone. She seemed possessed, the raw compulsion for sex something new and foreign.
It scared her and she pulled back. Immediately he broke the kiss to stare down at her, his breathing coming out shallow and labored.
“Did I scare you?”
“No,” she admitted. “I scared myself.”
He ran a tender finger down her cheek. “I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
“You say that now but you can’t predict the future.”
“True. But I know my feelings, Emmarie.”
“But how can we have these feelings after only a week? I don’t want to mistake lust for….”
“For love?” he asked softly.
“That word should never be spoken lightly,” she told him.
“I agree. But I’ve never felt like this.”
“Neither have I,” she admitted.
Raiden pulled her into a hug and leaned his forehead against hers.
“Can I see you tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Oh yes, please,” she said.
He kissed the tip of her nose and then secured her arm through his. “Then let me escort you back to your room.”
* * * *
Logan stepped from behind a tree and watched Emmarie be led away by Pell Raiden. Anger burned deep inside. He hadn’t asked to be brought here, to this godforsaken corner of the universe, abandoned by the only person who could possibly understand what losing home felt like. And now that she was in lust with the yahoo captain, she seemed to have completely forgotten that they had a real planet to get back to.
Carter, Beth D. - Star Mates (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 7