Full House

by Susan Hayes

  The cold water sapped her strength quickly, until even the slightest movement was a battle. All her life she’d been stronger than everyone else; one of the advantages of her mixed-species heritage. Being weak wasn’t something she was used to.

  Sevda was struggling to keep her head above water by the time she spotted the outcropping of rock rising ahead of her. It was her last chance. If she didn’t catch hold of it, the river would win, and she’d die here on this nameless, starsforsaken planet with not so much as a grave to mark her final resting place.

  The cold had made her weak and slow, but fortunately for her, there was one part of her that wasn’t affected. She fought to get herself into the best possible position, and as she was swept past the rocks, she latched onto it with her right hand. The cybernetic limb responded, gripping the slick surface with inhuman strength. It wouldn’t release as long as she remained conscious. Now, it was a matter of willpower. If she could withstand the flood, the cold, and exhaustion, she’d live. All her life, people had accused her of being too stubborn. It was time to find out if they were right. She gritted her chattering teeth and hung on.

  2

  Raze made it to the valley floor just as the first bolts of lightning seared the sky. He eyed the trees around him and questioned his sanity for the hundredth time since leaving the cabin. The odds were good that his unwelcome visitor was safe in her ship, riding out the storm in total comfort while he traipsed around the woods, soaked to the skin and risking electrocution.

  Being down in this valley with a storm in full force triggered a flood of memories he didn’t want to revisit. Every crack of thunder ratcheted his tension up another notch, and he started falling into old habits, scanning the woods for enemies that didn’t exist.

  He stubbornly pushed on, as much to defy the ghosts of the past as to check on the ship’s crew. He made it to the swollen edge of the river and followed it across the valley floor. He kept an eye on the flood waters, just in case he was wrong, and his visitor was foolish enough to be out in this storm.

  He’d acquired several grazers in floods just like this one, fishing them out of the water and carrying them home to add to his herd. It wasn’t a grazer he spotted this time, though. It was a flash of red that caught his eye. It vanished almost immediately, but he was watching now, and when the flash appeared again he got a better look—and started running. He wasn’t the only one outside in this miserable storm, after all.

  There were still thirty feet between him and the woman when she latched onto the rock with one hand. He expected her to last about two seconds. No human could have held on against the force of the current, but somehow, she did. The rock she was holding onto was only a few feet from the start of shallower water, but she had no way to reach it.

  Options for getting out to her were limited, but he couldn’t leave her there to die. “That’s two she owes me,” he said as he unslung the pack and started pulling out what he’d need.

  “Can you hear me?” he shouted to her. He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t react. The water was likely deafeningly loud where she was, and the rock was between them, blocking her view.

  He made preparations quickly, fastening one end of the rope to a tree, then putting on his safety harness and clipping himself to the rope. A few test pulls to ensure the knots held, and he waded into the water, bracing himself against the violent current by keeping a tight hold of the rope and letting it play out slowly. He considered calling out again, but if he startled her and she lost her grip, he’d only have a second to catch her before she was swept away. Whatever strength she was using to keep hold of the rocks, he doubted she had enough left to save herself a second time.

  When the rope was taut, and he was in position a few feet behind her, Raze braced his legs against the river bottom and made his presence known. “You picked a lousy day to go swimming,” he said in Galactic Standard. It was the one language nearly everyone in the galaxy knew at least a few words of.

  Her head whipped around and Raze found himself staring into a pair of dark brown eyes. To his surprise, her sudden movement didn’t cause her to lose her grip.

  “How? Where the fraxx did y-you come fr-rom?” she answered in the same language, though her words were broken by her chattering teeth.

  He grinned. This one had nerves of steel, and a grip to match. “I live here. Do you really want to have this conversation here and now? I’m not up to my ass in cold water for my health here, sweetling. Let go of the rock, and I’ll get you to shore.”

  “You b-better catch me, or I’m going to come b-back and haunt you as a very p-pissed-off ghost,” she warned, her gaze locked on his.

  “I’ve got you,” he promised and opened his arms.

  She nodded once and let go without another word. It was a demonstration of trust that hit him hard. No one had looked at him like that since… He cut off that line of thinking and focused on keeping his feet as she slammed into him with the full force of the river behind her.

  There was an awkward tangle of limbs as they grappled with each other, but then she managed to wrap her legs around his waist, locking them together.

  It was the first contact he’d had with another living soul in almost five years. The part of his heart he thought had gone cold and dark forever flared back to life, and so did his cock, which was a minor miracle considering the temperature of the water he was standing in. That’s not going to happen, he reminded himself as he reached around her to grab hold of the rope and start pulling them both back to shore as fast as he could. Standing in the middle of a river during a thunderstorm wasn’t the stupidest thing he had ever done, but it was in the top three.

  Despite their circumstances, he couldn’t help admiring the woman in his arms. She had to be close to six feet tall, and she held onto him with a strength some men couldn’t have matched. She had guts, too. Letting go of that rock and trusting him to save her couldn’t have been easy. She stayed silent and still, letting him concentrate on getting them to safety. If it wasn’t for the fact he could feel her heart pound where they were pressed together, he wouldn’t be able to tell she was anxious at all.

  The second they were on dry land she released her legs from around his hips and let go of him, but her legs weren’t steady enough for her to stay on her feet. He caught her as she started to drop, scooping her into his arms and carrying her to the tree where he’d left his things.

  “You can p-put me down any t-time now,” she said, shoving at his chest in mild annoyance.

  “I will in a second. You’ve got to be tired and sore, not to mention cold. I’m fraxxing cold, and I was only in the water a few minutes.” He paused. “And you’re welcome, by the way.”

  She blushed slightly, bringing a faint touch of color to her cheeks. “S-sorry. Thanks for saving my life. Now, can you please p-put me down?”

  “Sure thing, scout.” He knelt down and set her carefully on the ground at the base of the tree. “You got a name?”

  “Sevda. Sevda Rem, Scout, F-first class, Torex Mining Corporation exploration fleet. Nice to meet you—strange m-man who just happens to b-be wandering around an uninhabited planet. Please, if you’re a smuggler, criminal, or lunatic, I’d rather n-not know your name, that way I won’t have anything to put on my report.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “None of the above. Name’s Raze. I have a place on the eastern slope. You’re the first person I’ve seen since I got here. What’s a scout ship doing on the ground? You can’t scan much from down here.”

  She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to stay warm. Judging by the faint tint of blue in her lips and the way her teeth where chattering, she didn’t have much body heat left to conserve. She needed to get somewhere warm and dry. Her ship would be best. She could dry off and be headed back to wherever she came from the moment the storm ended

  He handed her the blanket, and she accepted it with a grateful smile that made his breath catch. Even soaking wet, covered in mud, an
d with a fresh bruise blooming on her cheek, she was damned attractive.

  Annoyed with himself for even noticing, he made himself get to his feet and put some much-needed distance between them.

  “You okay to walk? Your ship is about a ten-minute walk from here, and we should probably get going. You’re not going to get any drier sitting out here in the rain, and with your luck, this tree will get hit by lightning any second.”

  She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and nodded. “I’m ready when you are. Veth. Hang on a s-second, let me try and contact Eddi.”

  “Your crewmate let you go outside, alone, in this?” he demanded, waving at the storm overhead.

  “Eddi’s my ship’s AI, and despite her attempts to nag me into doing what I’m told, I don’t need her to let me do anything.” Sevda pulled out a comm device and shook most of the water off of it. “Good thing these devices are waterproof. Eddi, do you read me?”

  “You have been out of contact for some time, Pilot Rem. I have been monitoring your position and status as best I could. You are some distance from my location and appear to be with another person. Are you in danger? Should I send a distress signal?”

  “Stand down, Eddi, I’m fine. I got caught in the flood waters and a local fished me out.”

  “I did warn you that a flood was highly probable.”

  Raze didn’t bother to hide his amusement and allowed himself a chuckle. Sevda was right, her ship’s AI was a nag.

  Sevda shot him an irritated look before continuing her conversation. “I’m returning to your position now. How are repairs going? And for that matter, why are comms working so well, now?”

  “Repairs are underway. When your signal began moving rapidly, I reconfigured communications and increased power to boost the signal in case you needed to call for assistance. As for returning here, I do not recommend that course of action. I am currently surrounded by flood waters. Depth, three feet and rising.”

  “Tell Eddi you’ll be staying with me until the storm ends and the water recedes.”

  What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t want this corporate scout on his planet, never mind in his home, disrupting his life. It was a bad idea, and he would know, he’d had his fair share of them.

  Sevda blinked at him in surprise. “Stay with you?”

  Apparently, she didn’t think it was a good idea either, which pissed him off even more than his own stupidity. What was wrong with coming home with him? He had saved her life, after all. It’s not like he was more dangerous than the storm. “You’ve got three choices. Swim back to your ship, stay out here, or come with me.” He gathered up his things and stuffed them into his pack. “What’s it going to be?”

  She shrugged and spoke into her comms. “Eddi, I’m going with Raze. The local resident I told you about. He’s offered me shelter. Please monitor my location and initiate Sunrise Protocols.”

  He recognized the military code for ‘monitor the situation and request back up as needed,’ and chuckled again. “You’re not going to need your ship to call for help, Sevda. You have my word, you’ll be perfectly safe. If you vanish, Torex is going to come looking for you, and I have no interest dealing with them, or any corporation, ever again.”

  “You were military? How did an IAF soldier wind up way the hell out here?” She gestured around them at the empty planet.

  “I wasn’t with the Interstellar Armed Forces, but I do know the lingo. I’m out here because I like solitude.”

  “If you want to keep your solitude and avoid the corporations, you’re going to have to pick a new planet to call home. This whole system is being assessed for future processing. I may be the first one here, but I won't be the last.”

  This day just kept getting better. He’d already guessed as much, but suspecting something and having it confirmed weren’t the same thing. He was going to lose everything, again. “You can tell me about Torex’s grand plans for this place while we make the hike to my place. If I’m going to lose my home, it would be nice to know the details.”

  3

  Sevda’s brain was as scrambled and battered as her body. She was cold, bruised, and exhausted from her ordeal in the water. Now her only choice was to go with a giant of a man with a surly disposition to a cabin that shouldn’t even be here, on a world that hadn’t even been cursorily investigated yet.

  Where the hell had he come from, and why was he way the fraxx out here? He’d pulled her out of the river, so she had at least one reason to trust him, but there were too many unknowns to be sure.

  Then there was the other issue: he was hot as hell. A man that grumpy shouldn’t be sexy, but he was. He had a full beard, but it didn’t completely hide the fact he had several small scars on his face. There was a streak of white in his hair, but instead of detracting from his looks, it gave him character, and an air of danger.

  His skin was deeply tanned, and his sun-streaked brown hair fell halfway down his back. There were callouses on his hands, too. She’d felt them snag on her clothes when he’d held her, and again when he passed her the blanket. This was a man who spent a lot of time working outdoors and had the body to prove it. She had been wrapped around him only a few minutes ago, and he was solid muscle and strength. Exactly the kind of man that made her weak in the knees - and in the head, apparently. The last thing she should be thinking right now was what he looked like under the heavy leather rain gear he was wearing, or what those calloused hands would feel like on her bare skin.

  “I must have hit my head on one of those blasted rocks,” she muttered to herself as she got to her feet. She was still half-frozen and bone-tired, but her legs were steadier and her teeth had stopped chattering. She was good to go.

  “What was that?” Raze asked glancing over his shoulder.

  “Nothing.” She looked up at the sky and noted with some relief that the thunder and lightning seemed to have stopped while they were talking. “Looks like the storm is weakening.”

  He barked with laughter. “Not even close. That was the opening salvo. If we’re lucky, we’ll be undercover before the next one hits. If not, well, we can’t get much wetter than we already are.”

  He set a brisk pace, and she had to scramble to catch up. She could have asked him to slow down, but she had a little pride left, and it wouldn’t let her ask for any more favors. She owed him too much already. Besides, the sooner they got out of this weather, the happier she’d be. The wind was an icy knife that cut right through her, stealing what little body heat she had left.

  They walked in silence for a while, but then he surprised her with a question. “How long do I have before I need to move on?”

  She had been focusing all her energy on putting one foot in front of the other, and it surprised her how difficult it was to hold a conversation at the same time. “Hard to say. I was only supposed to do scans from polar orbit and move on to the next planet. I send the data as I finish each scan, and someone back at HQ reviews it all and figures out which planets are worth mining for resources. Usually, it takes about two years from first scans to a final decision, but that can change if the planet has exceptional value.”

  “And does it? This one, I mean. You’ve seen the scans, right? And what are you doing down here if you were supposed to stay in orbit?”

  “I saw the first three hours of data. Then my ship was shredded by a micro-meteor swarm and I had to land to make emergency repairs.”

  “You really have had a lousy day, haven’t you?”

  She snorted with bitter laughter. “You could say that, yeah.” As if to emphasize the point, she stumbled over a rock and went down in a tangled, sodden heap.

  “Fraxx.” Sevda tried to stand, but her body didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Suddenly all she wanted to do was curl up and nap for a little while. A little rest and then she could start walking again.

  “That’s it. You’re done.” For the second time that day she found herself in Raze’s arms, and this time she was too tired to muster any kind of pr
otest. To be honest, she was damned impressed he could lift her at all. Most men couldn’t have done it. She was starting to suspect there was more to her rescuer’s physique than just a lot of time spent outdoors.

  “You sure you want to touch me? All this bad luck might be contagious.” Her words came out a little slurred, and she frowned in frustration. What was wrong with her? Maybe she had hit her head on a rock during her involuntary swim.

  He looked down at her with an odd half-smile. “I’ll take my chances. You’re in no shape to make the rest of the hike before the next storm hits.” He settled her into his arms and started walking along the narrow trail that seemed to lead straight up the mountain.

  One look at the trek they had to make, and she knew he was right. She didn’t have the strength for that kind of climb. “You live way the hell up there? You really must not want visitors. “

  “I don’t.”

  “Don’t you get lonely?” She gestured to her bruised cheek, then frowned when she noticed that her hand was still shaking. “What happens if you were seriously hurt? Don’t you have a family or friends who worry about you?”

  “If I got seriously hurt? I’d heal, or I’d die.” He shrugged slightly, using the movement to shift her in his arms, so she was snuggled in tight to his body.

  It was both distracting and comforting to be in such close contact with him, and because of that, it took her a moment to notice that he hadn’t answered her second question.

  “So, you’re indifferent to your survival. No family then?” She had guessed the answer already. People with families didn’t choose this kind of life.

  “Nope.”

  She waited to see if he was going to say anything else, but apparently, that was all she was getting. Instead of trying to continue the conversation, she shut her eyes and tried to rest. There was no way he could carry her the whole way, and she was going to need all the energy she could muster once she was back on her feet.