by Roxie Ray
“No one’s leaving you out, Marisa,” I said—even though, technically, I supposed we kind of were. And no matter how jealous and nasty she got, I wasn’t about to invite her to join us, either. “We just…fell asleep here. That’s all.”
“I heard you last night,” Marisa spat at me. “All that splashing and moaning certainly didn’t sound like any kind of sleep I’ve ever had. Not to mention…”
She turned her gaze pointedly to Gallix’s lap, where an untimely erection was clearly visible beneath the folds of his shirt.
“Nice of you to show concern,” Gallix grumbled. He didn’t try to hide himself—just stared Marisa down. “But it’s not needed. Now, apologize to Eve, then go toss rocks.”
“You… You can’t order me around,” Marisa said, but she didn’t sound so sure of that. Especially not as Gallix got up and rose to his full height, clutching his shirt to his lap.
“You wanna bet?” His eyes flashed a deep, reddish-purple. “I don’t need my kit on to know the look of a jealous nag when I see one. Your opinion isn’t welcome here. Neither are your insults. I’ve told you once now to apologize. Don’t make me tell you again.”
Marisa’s eyes flicked back and forth between Gallix and me. I could tell that she wanted to say something back to him, but her fear must’ve gotten the best of her.
I didn’t blame her. Even mostly naked, Gallix was…well, pretty formidable.
“Slut,” Marisa finally spat at me, then turned and rushed off into the trees before Gallix could make her regret it.
“Blood,” Gallix swore. He dropped his shirt and snatched his pants off the grass so he could pull them on.
“Marisa, wait!” I called after her, scrambling to my feet. “We don’t know what’s out there! It’s not safe—”
But Marisa was already gone. She leapt over the vines Ronan had strung around the perimeter of the clearing, then disappeared into the jungle in a glimmer of golden blonde hair.
My feet were moving before I even realized I’d decided to go after her. But of course I was. There was no other choice.
“Eve, wait! Just let me get my boots on and—”
“No.” I turned to Gallix and shook my head as I reached the tree line. “We don’t have time, Gallix. Follow me when you’re ready—but I have to go after her.”
“Why? She called you all those names, Eve—”
“Because she’s alone out there.” I stepped over Ronan’s vines and entered the jungle. “And if we don’t hurry, we’ll lose her trail.”
10
Gallix
There were only a few rules in life I always abided by. Never eat hot wings in a Titanian bikini bar, for example. Clean your blasters often and clean them well. If you can’t fight, prepare, and if you can’t prepare, sleep.
But one rule was more important than nearly any other in the book: don’t go off into the unknown alone, and definitely don’t do it unarmed. I’d been a soldier for too damned long to go breaking that now, of all times.
Especially now.
The taste of Eve’s cunt was still in my mouth as I went to the dying embers of last night’s fire to grab my knife and my gun. The sound of her soft little cries of pleasure were still at the forefront of my mind.
Had I screwed things up by spreading her legs and sucking her sweet, swollen clitoris into my mouth? Maybe so. I certainly could’ve done without Marisa’s judgments this morning in the aftermath, at any rate. As far as I was concerned, if Marisa got lost in the jungle and swallowed up by whatever had made the other crash survivors here disappear, it served her right.
But Eve was more soft-hearted than me. Sweet-hearted, even. Marisa had spat all sorts of nastiness Eve’s way, and still, Eve had gone after her.
I admired that about Eve. Admired it more than I liked.
“Something is wrong?” Pax asked, coming out of the wreckage of poor Bessie.
“Not for long.” I strapped on my belt, blaster at one hip, knife at the other. “Marisa took off. Eve went after her.”
“Into the jungle?” Pax looked stunned, and horrified. “Alone?”
“They left without me?” Ora tiptoed out of Bessie’s burned-out hull behind Pax and wound her arms around his bicep. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m not thrilled about it either.” I turned to Pax. “You seen Ronan?”
“I have not.” Pax blushed and gave a tentative smile down at Ora. “I have been…distracted, admittedly.”
“Looks like.” I tightened the laces of my boots then raced off in the direction Eve had disappeared in. “Stick here with your female, then. And if you see Ronan, let him know.”
The jungle beyond our clearing was dense and dark. The trees overhead were so thick that they blotted out the sun. Luckily, my Lunarian eyes could see pretty well in the dark, and my Lunarian body could move faster than either of the humans’ could.
The only problem was, there was no trail. No broken branches. No snapped twigs underfoot. This jungle was resilient. Wherever I forced it to part, it sprung back effortlessly.
I sniffed the air and wished I’d had specter blood, or even the blood of whatever ancient Lunarian subrace Ronan was descended from. Unfortunately for me, I could tell Eve’s scent was near, but faint. Too faint for me to follow. The scent of the jungle was stronger—damp, deep and full of decaying sweetness.
Not good. If I couldn’t track Eve or Marisa, I couldn’t find them. None of us knew these jungles. None of us knew what to expect in them.
Worse, while I was armed and ready to fight anything that came at me, Eve and Marisa were not.
My heart sank into my stomach as I came to a stop, listening for something—anything—that might point me in the right direction.
At first, there was just the sound of the jungle. Birds chirping, rustling around, singing their mating calls through the trees. There was the sound of the wind, gentle and soft, and the sound of my heartbeat, pounding a little harder with every passing second.
But then…
Then, I heard it.
Not chirping. Not singing. Not wind. Not heartbeat.
A scream, high and ear-splitting. It sent the birds flying and my heart shooting up into my throat instead.
Marisa. Or, worse…Eve.
I launched myself forward, moving as fast as only a Lunarian could. With that scream, I finally had direction.
But a scream also meant danger—and I still didn’t know what kind of dangers we might run into here on Edon.
Like it or not, though, I was about to find out.
I came to a skidding halt in small clearing in the trees. The abrupt stop wasn’t just because of the flash of auburn curls and terrified hazel eyes I saw on the ground there—it was also because of the ground itself. It was sinking beneath my boots and filling in around my ankles. If I hadn’t been able to backpedal blurringly fast, I would have ended up buried to my waist in just a few seconds flat.
Just like Eve was.
“Gallix!” Eve thrashed, trying to swim towards me through the dense, damp dirt all around her. But if she thought swimming in the pond last night was a doozy, trying to swim through quicksand was proving even worse.
With every move she made, she was sinking deeper. When I first walked into the clearing, she was engulfed down to her waist. Now, she was up to her shoulders in sand—and still sinking. Fast.
“Eve! Stop moving. Now!”
Eve froze. Every part of her body went stiff except for her lower lip, which was trembling.
If there weren’t several feet of quicksand and a whole world of danger between those pretty lips and my own, I would’ve kissed her until she was never scared again.
Instead, I grabbed a vine hanging from one of the branches over me and tossed one end to her.
“Grab on and hold tight,” I called over to her. “Otherwise, don’t move. I’ll pull you out.”
Eve wrapped her slender little fingers around her end of the vine and gave me a shaky nod.
“Tha
nk you, Gallix.” She grimaced. “And…um… I’m sorry about this. One minute I was running through the trees, then…”
“Don’t mention it.” I smiled down at her as I started to pull her my way. Eve’s weight wasn’t the problem, but the hold of the sand around her was strong. I kept my stance wide as I passed one hand over the other on the vine. Slowly but surely, I was able to drag her toward solid ground once more. “You see Marisa out here yet?”
“No.” Eve gulped. “But if she came this way before I did…”
“Nah. Don’t think like that.” Admittedly, that was a possibility. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but once Eve was out of this pit, I’d probably have to dive in myself, or at least poke around in it with a stick and hope I wouldn’t dredge up anything blonde. “Let’s get you out first and then—” I paused, catching a noise coming from behind me. It was low and thrumming, like an engine about to take off. Like a deep purr. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes.” Eve’s pale face grew even paler. “Gallix, what—”
“Shh.” I turned slowly and narrowed my eyes as I peered through the trees. At first, I saw nothing.
But then the shadows shifted, and I could barely roll out of the way in time.
Sharp claws. Four legs. A huge, hulking body covered in deep green fur and a snarling jowl dripping with saliva from two rows of razor-sharp teeth. The beast skidded to a halt just short of the quicksand pit. It gave a growl at Eve but didn’t approach her.
Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who’d fallen prey to the dangers of the quicksand in this jungle. I just wished that Eve had been able to spot the sand as well as whatever this…this creature had.
As the beast turned its beady brown eyes and dripping jaws toward me, I wasn’t about to give it any chances. I drew my blaster and braced myself against the ground beneath me as I fired two shots. The first hit the beast right between its eyes and vaporized the beast’s head into a mist of vibrant green blood.
The second shot blasted through the green mist and hit a second beast, this one covered in bright yellow fur. It had been crouched, creeping up on us. Sneaky rascal. But when the shot hit its mark, the yellow beast whimpered, dripping red blood from its shoulder as it limped away.
“Yeah,” I growled after it. I blew on the hot tip of my blaster, feeling a little cocky. “That’s what I thought.”
“Gallix!” Eve cried out from the quicksand. She was thrashing—which was bad—but more importantly, she was thrashing while trying to point out something behind me. “Watch out!”
The third beast hit me hard and fast from behind, knocking me face down into the dirt. Its claws sank into my shoulder and I hissed with pain.
Good to know that those were just as sharp as they looked.
The beast’s snarl was hungry and humid against my ear as its jaws snapped open. Up close and personal like this, I could tell the beast’s jaw was big enough and wide enough that he could easily chomp down on my entire head.
For obvious reasons, I couldn’t let that happen. I knocked him back with an elbow to the neck and rolled quickly, drawing my knife. This beast’s fur was red as a Rutharian’s skin, with sharp spikes of black bone running down his spine. Its eyes were black as well. Dark and hateful.
When I slashed its throat, its blood flowed black too.
“Well, that was an unnecessary bit of additional excitement.” I shoved the red-furred beast away and wiped my knife clean on my trousers before turning back to Eve. “Now, let’s get you back on solid ground and—aw, blood!”
The beasts were vanquished—for now. But in the quicksand, Eve was paying for all that flailing she’d been doing. I looked back at her just in time to catch the top of her auburn head vanishing beneath the sand.
Worst-case scenario.
She was gone.
I had to work fast. The vine I’d been pulling her toward me with before, I wrapped around the nearest tree and tied off tight. I knotted the other end of the vine around my waist, took a deep breath, clenched my eyes shut and dove in after her.
My heart thundered as the sand sucked me down. I couldn’t open my eyes, which meant I’d have to find her by touch and touch alone. Already the sand was filling my ears, drowning out all sound. It would have poured into my nose as well if I hadn’t been slowly, steadily breathing out of it.
It wasn’t just the adrenaline that was making my heart pound so hard, though.
It was her. Eve.
I couldn’t lose her. Couldn’t bear it. Not just because she was my charge, in my protection and under my guard. Not just because of what had happened last night—although, I’d kind of been hoping we might have a repeat of that moment we’d shared beneath the waterfall, and I was going to be beyond disappointed if I didn’t get a chance to make that happen.
No, I couldn’t bear losing Eve because she was good. She was kind. She’d rushed into this jungle to go to the aid of a female who had been nothing but nasty to her. She’d only sunk beneath these sands because she’d been trying to stop me from getting my head bitten off.
If I didn’t pull her out of this pit before she suffocated, I’d never forgive myself.
No matter what happened to me, I couldn’t let Eve die.
I didn’t believe in miracles, but as I reached out and felt Eve’s slender fingers clasp frantically around mine, I couldn’t help but feel like I was experiencing one. With a firm yank, I pulled her body against mine until she was gripping my waist tight. In three firm heaves on the vine that anchored me to the world above, I had us up out of the quicksand and back on solid ground once again.
“Eve?” I wiped the sand from my eyes and thumped it from my ears as I straddled her small body. “C’mon, Eve, don’t die on me here. Dammit, you’re not allowed to die!”
Her eyes were still closed, and she was covered in dark brown sand, but as I cleared it from her face, she spat out a mouthful of dirt, coughed and blinked up at me in wonder.
“You saved me,” she whispered.
“Just barely.”
“Again.” She shook her head and squinted, then blinked furiously until the sand was out of her eyes. “You saved me. Again.”
“Yeah, well…you were in need of saving. Badly.” I let out a laugh of relief. “Does this happen all the time with you, or are you just—”
My words were cut off as Eve threw her arms around my neck and planted a gritty kiss against my lips. Her tongue flicked against mine, bitter and grainy from all the sand that had been in her mouth—but I didn’t mind.
Nine hells. In exchange for a kiss like that one, I would have given my life in an instant if it meant being kissed like that just one last time.
“Hey now,” I whispered back to her. “Keep kissing me like that and…”
I smoothed her hair away from her face and stared down at her, half in exhausted ease, half in awe. It wasn’t fair that she could look so beautiful right now, covered in dirt and sand and tears. It was even less fair that she could do this to my heart. Even now that the danger was past us and the battle was won, it was still crashing against my ribs like a caged chickling desperate to break free. Not that I could tell her that, of course.
I wasn’t sure I could tell anyone that. Not Pax. Certainly not Ronan.
Moons. I was having a hard time even processing it myself.
“And what?” she asked. “Keep kissing you like that and…and what?”
“And I’m gonna have to keep saving you, vringna.” I forced a laugh and helped her back to her feet. “Come on. Let’s find your friend.”
“She’s not my friend,” Eve reminded me. She glanced down at my hand for a moment, then took it in hers. “But you’re right. We should get out of here, before more of those things come back.”
After I’d done a quick probing of the quicksand pit with an especially long branch and failed to turn up anything more than a few long, eerie bones, we set off again. Eve and I moved through the jungle hand-in-hand, a little more slowly and tentatively than be
fore. In the clearing where we’d crashed, it had been so simple to forget about the potential dangers of this place, but Edon had been quick to remind us that we weren’t entirely safe here.
Now, I had two theories as to what had happened to the missing survivors of the other crashes. Either they’d fallen into sandpits like Eve just had or… they’d been eaten. Devoured. Completely. I didn’t know what those beasts were. They were larger and more ferocious than anything on Lunaria. More dangerous than almost anything else I’d come across in all of the galaxies—except, maybe, for Rutharians.
At least when I was playing target practice with ravenous, bloodthirsty monsters here on Edon, they didn’t have the ability to shoot me back.
“What were those things?” Eve asked. She glanced nervously over her shoulder, like another of the beasts could pop out and assault us at any moment.
The unfortunate thing was, she was probably right.
“I dunno,” I admitted. “But let’s hope we don’t run into any more.”
“Is your shoulder okay?” She reached up to brush her fingers over the place where the red-furred beast had sunk its claws into me.
I hissed at her touch. It stung, but it wasn’t debilitating. “It’s tender, but all right. Wanna kiss it better?”
“Maybe after Ronan stitches you up again,” she said with a wry smile. “Or…I could this time, when we get back to camp. If you want.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know how to do that?”
Eve shrugged. “I know how to do a lot of things. More than you’d think.”
I swallowed hard as my cock swelled by half. It wasn’t an innuendo, obviously, but hey, try telling that to the stiff, hungry beast between my legs.
“Eve…about last night,” I began.
“What about it?” She squeezed my hand and stared up at me innocently. Moons—even when she was playing naive, she was the most breedable thing I’d ever seen. “You liked it, didn’t you?”
“I did.” I scratched the back of my head. “Did you?”
“I think that much was pretty obvious, Gallix.” Eve let out a laugh. “You had me moaning loud enough to wake up Marisa, after all.”