by H. E. Trent
While he patted a divot of grain into a moist patty, Courtney turned her attention to Murk. She walked to his side at the table and stuffed her hands into her cargo pants pockets.
Gods, that unfeminine garb. He reached up and grabbed her cap.
“Hey!” Growling, she patted her wild hair back into place.
If she thought growling at him would deter him from having a better look at those startling blue eyes, she needed to think again.
Such a beautiful woman.
A perfect match to his pretty farm boy.
Every male I encounter while having my mates on my arms will go impotent with envy.
Courtney narrowed her eyes at him. “I was just going to ask you how you were feeling, but maybe I can guess by the way your pants are tented at the crotch.”
He was hungry, and not for more stew.
Sit on it. He pulled Courtney onto his lap and tucked his chin over her shoulder. A queen on her throne.
She reached for his e-pad as he untucked her uniform shirt at the front. He’d had his hands snaking up her warm, silky skin when she poked his arm with the tablet.
“How about talking to me with words and not your cock?”
He couldn’t help his body’s response to her. Even with the painful climax, sex with her that morning had been amongst the most memorable events of his life. Perhaps her lack of sexual inhibition was so incredibly stimulating. Or maybe the fact she seemed to have some actual affection for him, and Trig, too. Every time he tried to be logical and talk himself out of his infatuation of her, he couldn’t make the resistance stick. And why should I?
Sighing, he took the tablet, and leaning it against her back, wrote, “A little stronger, thanks to you.”
She read and laughed. “I’ve never heard of sex being used as medicine before.”
Grabbing her hips, he ground his cock against her bottom. He was due for another dose.
Trig slipped a bowl in front of her along with a spoon and gave Murk a scolding look. “Are you going to let her eat, or do I need to take her from you?”
Murk’s laugh would have probably been barking loud if he had a voice. Instead, the jerks of his body made Courtney turn on his lap and sigh at him.
“I’m kind of feeling like you two see me as a shared toy that’s going to get you both in trouble.” She tried to stand, but he pulled her back down.
He leaned forward and wrote, “Stay there. I’ll behave.”
“Sure you will.” She wriggled her ass atop him, obviously just to torture him, and he groaned inwardly.
“Are you done now?” Trig asked him.
Murk made a, “Yes, thank you for asking” gesture.
Trig pointed to her spoon. “Courtney, the grain is a staple called dishe that is—was—grown in abundance here. It’s filling and a bit sweet. Good with bitter vegetables. Scoop up a little with each bite.”
“Okay,” she said.
Murk tucked his chin over her shoulder again and watched her bring a spoonful of broth and dishe to her mouth. He held his breath, waiting.
Tolerating two men who looked more or less human aside from their coloring was one thing, but to embrace their foods? Their culture? That may have been asking too much.
“The grain is creamy,” she said, and there was a note of surprise in her voice, not revulsion.
“Yes. Dishe cooks rather quickly, so it goes into the bowl raw. By the time the food is at the table, the fiber breaks down. Do you…like it?”
“I do, actually.” She scooped up another portion. “I’m trying to think of some things to compare it to, but I’m having a hard time. Where’d you get it? I know for certain I didn’t have any here.”
“As I said, dishe is a staple for us and very portable. That was the last of what I had in my bag.”
“Oh.” She set down her spoon. Looked at him. “Thank you. For sharing your food with me, I mean. You didn’t have to.”
He looked down at his feet. “It needed to be eaten.”
Not only that.
Murk knew him too well, and knew what feeding people meant to Trig. Maybe the grain had been reaching the point of expiration, but he’d also wanted Courtney to have some. Food was important to Jekhans, not just because it nourished the body, but the ingredients one chose and served were more often than not symbolic.
Fruits could show attraction or passion. Certain vegetables could indicate wishes for ongoing health and wellness. Some sweets showed affection.
Dishe, however, was a staple across Jekh. No matter the dialect the people spoke, no matter the continent or city-state, the grain always meant hope. And hope could take so many forms. Maybe Trig saw it in the woman on Murk’s lap, even if his brain hadn’t yet put the pieces together.
“The meal is delicious,” she said. “Thank you.”
Trig nodded and returned to the sink.
Murk chafed her arms as she ate. When she paused her eating to bend down and scratch Jerry’s head, Murk wrote into the tablet, “What did you bring home?”
After swallowing, she said, “Some deadbolts Trigrian can install while I’m at work tomorrow. Those were hard to get, by the way. The salesman insisted on giving me the third degree about why I needed them, and I finally had to stoop to flirting.”
Cold rage tightened Murk’s already stiff body, and he had no hopes she didn’t notice. His hands had formed fists right next to her bowl.
“Hey.” She gently squeezed his wrists. “Remember? There’s a woman shortage here. Sometimes, the best two ways to resolve certain situations involve me resorting to tactics I wouldn’t have taken back on Earth. If I need to accomplish something, I either flirt with or zap the guy with my personal stunner.”
“I’m sure Murk would prefer you’d stun them,” Trig said.
As would you, pretty one. Murk would take the blame for a lot of things because he knew himself very well, but if Trig was going to be disingenuous about his own jealousy regarding Courtney, Murk would have to start confronting him about his behavior.
“So would I, most of the time,” Court said, “but I’m a cop. I need to be careful about how much force I use when I’m off-duty. My job situation is weird enough already. I finally got assigned a beat today, but the area is so small and quiet. I know that they’re just placating me.”
“You want danger?” Trig asked with one eyebrow raised high.
“No. I want a fair chance to do the job that I’m good at. That’s all.”
“I see.” He sounded placated, though Murk knew that wouldn’t last. “What else did you get?” He nodded at the bag on the table.
“Oh. Odds and ends. Girly stuff,” she said mysteriously.
Trig was obviously as mystified by that statement as Murk, because he canted his head to the side and stared at her in that boyish way he did whenever he was confused.
Courtney groaned and shifted atop Murk’s lap. “I keep forgetting how the demographics skews what’s available in stores. I can’t even find deodorant that doesn’t smell like a pine forest, so apologies if you don’t like that scent.”
“What’s pine?” Trigrian asked.
“A kind of evergreen tree that has needle-like leaves. Makes a god-awful sap that’ll make your fingers stick together for days. Lots of folks make tea out of the needles for Vitamin C, I think, but I’ve never tried it. I’m not much of a tea drinker, anyway.”
Murk pulled the pad closer. “We make teas of many things and for different reasons, simple pleasure being amongst them.”
“McGarrys tend to be coffee drinkers. The stronger the better.”
“Never had coffee.”
“Probably best you don’t start the habit. Coffee is an addiction you don’t want to have, given how difficult getting decent beans here is. I wonder if the soil pH can bear them. Hmm.” She rubbed her chin and leaned back against his chest.
Felt nice, and whatever “pine” was supposed to smell like, on her, he liked her smell well enough.
“They’re def
initely a cash crop,” she said. “A luxury item. Someone could make good money if they found a suitable bit of land to grow them here.”
“What kind of plants do coffee beans grow on?” Trig asked.
“Shrubs or small trees. On Earth, they grow in hot, tropical places. Need a lot of water, I guess. And a lot of sun.”
He set another dish into the drying rack and turned off the tap. “Can you show me more about them?”
“Yeah. I can bring up some databases for you on the house’s computer. I’m sure there are a lot of different varieties. I don’t know anything about them beyond which ones go into the ground blends I like most.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Murk wrote, “He knows plants. They make sense to him. He’d be able to tell you if they would grow.”
She turned on Murk’s lap to spot Trig, who was waiting in the doorway between the kitchen and small office.
“Be right back,” she said, and eased off him.
Knowing she’d be returning imminently didn’t make letting go of her any easier.
When she returned, she made a circuitous route back to him via the refrigerator, where she paused to pour filtered water into a glass. “He was hypnotized,” she said. “He might be entranced for the next hour or so staring at coffee growing articles.”
Murk nodded. Trig must have thought he could make them grow. His family had grown mostly vegetables and some fruits, but his second father had always had a mind toward expanding to plants that could be acquired for production of value-added goods like tea and perfumes. He’d died before the growing season in which he’d hoped to start the farm’s new phase.
Murk wrote, “Can the beans be grown in pots? I think Trig having something of his own to tend would be good for him.”
She bent to read, sipped her water, and then scrunched her nose. “No idea. I can’t keep so much as a cactus alive. Dogs are easier. I can look into having my sister send me some seeds, though.”
“Can you not order them from an Earth grower?”
“I could, but I learned from my friend Amy that any package coming direct from a business gets all of its contents itemized in the manifest, whereas parcels from one person to another only get basic categorization in the logs. I don’t want people in my business.”
He could certainly understand that.
“I wish I could get live plants, but it’s illegal to ship them because of possible contamination risks, but Erin could send seeds that have been dried and stored in vacuum-sealed packages. As of right now, there’s no restriction on what can be planted here from seed.”
“They’re idiots.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Pretty sure Southern Americans learned that lesson the hard way with an invasive little plant called Kudzu. Non-native, and they haven’t yet found a way to eradicate all the vines.”
He patted his lap and wrote, “Come back.”
She shook her head and grinned. “Nuh-uh. Hard to talk to you like that.”
He wasn’t so sure he considered what they were doing talking. Communicating, yes, but scribbling words onto a tablet was nothing like having a voice. He sighed, and wrote, “You wouldn’t need to talk.”
“I dumped the last guy who told me that.”
He let out a ragged breath and pondered which of the numerous Tyneali gods he should strike a bargain with to get his voice back. He was tired of feeling so damned feeble, when in the past, he could get a man to back up ten paces just by quietly uttering a single word. People knew not to toy with him. It was hard to take a man seriously when his arguments came on a delay.
He wrote, “I didn’t mean the words that way. only that you shouldn’t feel obligated to talk. I want to hold you.”
“Would you want to hold me if you didn’t need to?”
Not dignifying the question with a response, he patted his lap again.
“Murki, what are we doing?” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, seriously, what are we doing? I found you guys hiding in my house, agreed that you could stay because I didn’t like the idea of you having your freedom of movement fettered, and then we somehow ended up in bed together. I don’t regret that at all, but it dawns on me that I don’t really know anything about you. I’ve had enough one-night stands that I don’t feel any particular shade of guilt about that, but if you stay, I have to look at you every day. Talk to you. You’ve got to give me a little something.”
He put up his hands and shook his head. What is she going on about?
Of course he was going to stay. The fact she was their feminine third was perfectly evident to him. Perhaps humans had no such vision.
He wrote, “What would you like to know? What would put you at ease?”
“For one thing—and this is a big thing—how long are you going to be around?”
“In Buinet?”
“No! In this life, Murki. I don’t want to get attached to you. I really don’t. Not if—”
He reached up and pressed a hand over her lips. He shook his head and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. He gave her a gentle pull forward, and she complied, and then sat.
“Stay near me and I’ll be fine.”
“For how long?”
Medically, he didn’t know. He felt better at the moment, but that didn’t mean anything. For all he knew, he could have been in the midst of his swan song, as Terrans might have said. Emotionally was far easier to speculate on. “Until you go away.”
“I go away every day for work.”
“But you come back. That’s what matters.”
She fiddled the base of the water glass between her palms and stared down into it.
He slid his hands up the inside of her shirt and pressed them against her belly. With any luck, there’d be new life growing there. If his timing was right. Her scent had changed subtly already. He may have already been too late for this month, but there was always the next one. They could have fun practicing. Maybe the sex would hurt less each time.
“I shouldn’t like you so much,” she whispered after a while. “I don’t know anything about you. Anything about your people, for that matter, except what’s been fed to me.”
Reluctantly, he removed a hand from her warm torso to write, “I’ll teach you everything you want to know.”
“So start with telling me who you are. More than your name. Tell me who you would have been if Terrans hadn’t come.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and pushed some air through his teeth. He tried not to think about “what-ifs.” Fretting about things he could no longer have always left him angry, and that wasn’t fair for Trig. Murk was difficult to be around when he couldn’t rein in his anger. Trig was used to his moods—had been there when the swings had started when they were but adolescents—but Murk still tried to shield him from his unstable temperament the best he could.
He drew in a deep breath, and wrote, “That’s a very long story. I would need some time to write it.”
“Tomorrow when I’m gone, you’ll have plenty of time. While Trig is installing the deadbolts. No distractions.”
“Fine. Tell me about you, then. Everything important.” He put his hand under her shirt again, pressing the palm beneath her breasts. He loved the fullness of them. The weight of them against his hands. The nourishment potential they held for the sons and daughters she’d give him and Trig, forever entwining them through their legacies.
She let out a breath. “Everything important? Wow. I don’t know what’s important. I’ll tell you the basics, and if you want to know more, you can ask. I was born in Boston in the United States. I’m more or less Irish on my father’s side. Less clear-cut on my mother’s. My mother is mixed with a bunch of stuff. Typical melting pot American, I guess. I look like all four of my grandparents, which makes me atypical of a McGarry kid. We usually look like just one. My sister looks like my maternal grandmother. She was always her favorite.”
Murk chuckled quietly. He knew that sort
of favoritism. His brother Esteben had been their mother’s favorite.
Murk tucked his chin over her shoulder yet again and closed his eyes. He gave her a gentle squeeze. Go ahead.
“I was kind of…well, not kind of—I was definitely poor growing up. Things were tight. My parents were always working but getting ahead was hard because of all the hell-raising my grandfather had done. Even before the mess with Jekh, he was a very vocal opponent of the US government contributing funds to private-enterprise space colonization. The endeavor was on the radar long before the Jekhans showed up, I assure you.” She sighed. “Lobbyists are so fucking gross.”
He didn’t know what a lobbyist was, but he didn’t want to interrupt. He could look the word up in Courtney’s computer later.
“My grandfather thought we could learn a lot from peaceful diplomacy with the Jekhans. I guess no one wanted to hear that. Your mistake was bringing those speculators here and showing them everything you had. Why would you do that? You had to know they wanted to do more than set up an embassy.”
He didn’t know. He’d always wondered that, himself.
“I came here, in part, because I just can’t believe the stories the government fed to us about how he died. He wasn’t the kind of guy who could be taken down easily, and we deserve to know the truth.” Gently, she pried his hands from under her shirt and stood.
“That’s the long and short of it. I’m persona non grata in a lot of circles. Even here.”
Even here.
Rubbing his chin, he suspected that was why someone had thought to give her that bracelet. Like Trig, he didn’t think her receipt of it was an accident. Someone wanted to send out a message that she wasn’t to be harmed, and though he was very curious about who she’d been rubbing elbows with, he was grateful someone had taken it upon themselves to look after her. Jekh wasn’t a safe place for Jekhans, and the planet sure as hell wasn’t a safe one for sympathizers, either.
Sympathizers.
He gave the table a light pound.
McGarry. That’s right. That name had become a verb—an insult. That was why the name had seemed familiar. The news reports he and Trig had managed to get their hands on early on during settlement had called the act of disagreeing with settlement policies “McGarrying.”