“Not bad.” She ran her index finger along the inside edge of the elastic band of Mark’s boxer briefs. They were the same dull-colored, high-performance material as her own athletic underwear, built for durability and comfort, she supposed, and to resist stains and odors. Designed for rugged use, one of the production assistants had told her when Lori was handed her five sets of bras and panties.
“Rugged use,” Lori laughed and tugged at his briefs. Mark chuckled with her, seeming to understand the joke.
His fingers moved easily over her skin, his touch warm and fluid. His hands were brawny and big, and she felt her flesh jump as his palms slid over her. Even without her lace lingerie and scented soaps and lotions from the world outside the Mars Ho biodome, she felt intensely feminine, and intensely strong. She took his earlobe gently between her teeth, her breath catching in her throat when he moaned against her neck.
We’ll bring passion to the Red Planet. Lori sighed as Mark’s hands moved down her body and pulled off her panties. She gasped aloud when he slipped one hand between her legs even as he cradled her head with the other. There was a tenderness in his touch that conveyed just as much respect and admiration as desire. She drew up her knees and rocked against him. He kissed the side of her neck, her shoulder, the tips of her fingers, and murmured his wanting into her hair as their hands worked together to slip off her bra.
Her skin tingled against the cool grass, her body arching away from the ground as Mark’s fingers stroked her bare breast, lingering over her eager nipples to tease and encourage her desire. His tongue slipped between her lips as he grabbed hold of her hip and shifted his naked body on top of hers.
Lori moaned as he caressed her breast and ran his fingers through her hair, all while kissing her deeply and matching his breath to her own. She ran her hands down the length of his back, feeling every contour and crevice, finally rounding his backside and holding firm, then grasping and pulling as she drew him into her . . .
“Lori!” April shouted in her ear. “Lori, wake up! We’re going to be late.”
Lori’s consciousness jolted into her sleeping body, and she instinctively pushed April away and pulled her blanket up over her head. “Five more minutes,” Lori murmured into her pillow. She chased the remnants of her dream, her breath deepening as she reached again for the feel of Mark’s hands on her skin.
“Yeah, okay,” she heard April reply, her weight pressing into the mattress as she leaned close to whisper in Lori’s ear. “You’ve got plenty of time. I just wanted to wake you before you, you know, embarrassed yourself on camera.”
Lori’s eyes opened wide. The cameras. All languorous sensation from her titillating dream promptly vanished. She waited a full breath before she eased the blanket away from her face and peeked out at the cameras stationed around the bunk room. Just like everywhere else in the MHCH, the digital eyes were recessed into the walls, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them.
April stood beside the bed and stared down at her.
Lori felt cold as she tried not to imagine what the cameras might have caught. She sat up and clutched her pillow against her chest as a soft shield.
“How bad was it?” she whispered.
April kept her voice low. “Not bad at all.” She glanced at Leah, still in her own bunk, and at Cecilia who was emerging from the shared bathroom. “I don’t think anyone noticed.”
“But you did.” Lori blew out a long breath. Had she been talking—or even worse, moaning—in her sleep?
April patted Lori quickly on the knee. “Only just barely.” Her smile widened and she tapped the tablet that she seemed to have constantly in her hands. “That must have been some kiss last night. You’ll have to tell me more. You know, for science.” April laughed. “But, yeah, you should probably get up anyway. They’ve got another challenge for us today.”
Lori swung her bare feet onto the curiously warm floor. Everything inside the MHCH was regulated at the same comfortable temperature, from the air and the floors to the kitchen utensils and toilet seats. Nothing to jar the senses.
As the stinging terror of public exposure receded, Lori felt a warm smile spread across her face and guessed she probably looked pretty dopey.
The kiss. Even if the rest of it had been her dream-self’s vivid imagination, that kiss had been real enough. Replaying the feel of Mark’s mouth on her own, Lori brushed her hair out of her eyes and reached for her orange jumpsuit.
With his teammates huddled around him, Mark stared at the rectangular machine resting on the kitchen counter. The food printer—helpfully branded The Butler—was about the size of a half-dozen shoe boxes stacked together. Light from the overhead fluorescents glinted off the machine’s shiny chrome surface and black plastic knobs.
He’d never worked with a food printer before, though judging by the perplexed faces around the room, Mark guessed he wasn’t in the minority on that score. But The Butler and similar devices would be standard equipment for the Mars colony, and it was time he learned how to use it.
So why not a trial by fire? It was what Mars Ho seemed to do best. The candidates’ food printer experiments would provide entertaining fodder for a judged challenge. The candidates were divided into same-sex teams of three and four in the MHCH’s expansive kitchen and then given free rein to create their gastronomic masterpieces.
Yoshiko dragged his fingers across The Butler’s polished surface, leaving a trailing smudge of fingerprints. “How much food do we have to make?”
Oskar read aloud the challenge instructions on his tablet screen: “Teams will produce a main course dish large enough to serve six people. Allowable ingredients include the unflavored protein and fiber pastes allocated to each team, as well as a selection of dried spices.”
At the next table, Mark heard Lori suggest to her teammates that someone might sneak off to the grow unit to forage some vegetables or fresh herbs. He smiled. It wasn’t just the sound of her voice or her creative problem solving, but her mention of the grow unit. Whatever else happened inside the biodome, he’d have an especially fond memory of the grow unit.
Surrounded by dirt and manure and desperate young plants and Emily Frill’s flooded garden plot, Mark had taken Lori into his arms . . .
“Other than the rack of food colorings and dried herbs,” Oskar announced loudly to the room as he held his tablet high, “no other ingredients are allowed.”
Mark suppressed a chuckle, but just barely. Oskar sounded like a complete dick—not unlike Mark’s own behavior at various times. Was his anal adherence to the rules rubbing off on the other contestants? Or maybe, in comparison to Mark’s sudden and unflappable good mood, everyone else seemed like a jackass.
“Okay then.” Mark rested his hands on the stainless steel kitchen counter and looked to Oskar, Govind, and Yoshiko. “Anyone have any ideas on what to make for dinner?”
The next hours were an exercise in frustration, incompetence, and general silliness. At one point, a candidate at another table erupted into tears—Mark thought it might have been Oskar’s wife, Cecilia, or maybe Lindsay. But he grinned at Trent’s infantile food jokes coming from the table in the far corner. It felt good to laugh.
“Hey! What did the lettuce say to the celery?” Trent called out, then immediately cut to the punch line when the question was barely out of his mouth. “Quit stalking me!”
Trent received a muted response of groans and obligatory snorts for his trouble. With barely a pause to take a breath, Trent launched his next zinger. “So, hey! Why did the asparagus blush? Because it saw the salad dressing!” Trent sniggered and then added, “You know, because it was naked.”
Mark chuckled, earning a dirty look from Oskar. “Don’t encourage him.”
“But . . . Oh, man, I could go for a salad,” Yoshiko said mournfully.
“Asparagus, too,” Dina chimed in from the next table.
Mark looked up and caught Lori smiling at him. Her team had a big container of thick batter going, and Lori held a
tiny bottle of red food coloring above the bowl while Dina stirred with furious strokes. She hesitated when Mark smiled at her, and so didn’t pull her hand out of the way of Dina’s stainless whisk in time. She ended up dropping the bottle into the batter.
“Lori!” Dina squawked and threatened her with the batter-dripping whisk. “Wake up, will you?”
Lori scrambled for a slotted spoon to fish the coloring bottle out of the now blood-red, mystery mixture. Mark laughed when she accidentally wiped batter across her brow, and then smiled at the warmth spreading through his chest when she glanced his way with a shrug. He didn’t think she was klutzy by nature. But she was distracted, just like he was—which meant maybe she was thinking about him just as much as he was thinking about her.
“Mark.” Oskar said his name, but Mark didn’t register it at first. “Mark!” The command was sharper and louder this time, and Mark glanced at Oskar with an irritation that was no match for the German’s sour mood.
Oskar gestured toward the palm-sized foil packet in Mark’s hands. The one he’d forgotten he was holding. “The basil, if you please.”
“Right.” Mark found the tiny notch in the foil edge and tried to peel it back. But out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lori watching him and his heart sped up. He pulled hard on the foil and nearly ripped the bag in two, sending a burst of dried basil confetti into the air to cover the table, food printer, and floor in aromatic dust.
“Nicely done, Dr. Lauren,” Govind grumbled. “I think you even managed to get some of it into the food.”
Mark grimaced as he surveyed the mess, and felt the heat rise in his face when he heard Lori giggling. What was happening here? One kiss in the kale and he lost all focus?
He tried to sober himself by imagining a similar scene on Mars: inside the snug habitat units as he and seven other human beings tried to make something edible for dinner while they waited for the vegetables in the grow unit to mature. The food printer was not a novelty. Any ability to make the protein paste halfway palatable would be more than a handy talent.
And wasting a week’s worth of basil wouldn’t be a laughing matter.
The producers had cancelled breakfast and delayed lunch before the food printer exercise. They’d also deleted all food printer recipes from the candidates’ tablets. Mark’s stomach grumbled. Even the shapeless, sticky mass of uncooked, basil-dusted protein mishmash on the counter in front of him was starting to look good.
The smell of hot mush filled the air. At least one team had progressed from measuring and mixing to actual production with their Butler. At the same time, a groan of disappointment arose from the table manned by April, Seema, Chrissy, and Melissa.
“I don’t get it!” April smacked the side of her team’s food printer. “Why won’t this thing just do right?”
Chrissy was randomly adjusting the black knobs even as Seema tried to pull her hands away with complaints that she was going to break the printer.
Mark salvaged as much basil as he could from the counter and added the herbs to the large bowl of chunky batter that Oskar was mixing together.
“Sorry.” Mark’s voice was clear and contrite. “Used a bit too much force, I guess.”
The remainder of the challenge proceeded with varying degrees of failure. Not a single team managed to excel with their improvised food printer products, but their creativity was on full display.
The winning team—Trevor, Trent, Guillermo, and Lewis—proudly shared their sweetish-smelling purée with the rest of the candidates. Their “Berry Goo” tasted to Mark like a half-cooked, half-burnt peach cobbler. His own team produced a vague loaf that crumbled to powder as soon as it was prodded with a fork, and was deemed inedible and unworthy of a name. Second place went to Leah, Cecilia, and Lindsay for a lumpy, grayish-looking entree they called “Martian casserole,” that had both the aroma and consistency of soggy cardboard.
“Salmon surprise” was Lori’s team’s entry, a foul-smelling, red-tinged mush that probably would have come in dead last if not for the fifth team’s faulty printer which did nothing but spit out unmixed, star-shaped paste nuggets.
In the end, every one of the dishes—including the winning goo—was judged by the experts to be “on the whole, unfit for human consumption.”
Mark wasn’t surprised when the colonist candidates were sent to bed without any dinner.
But Lori Ridgway had kept glancing his way, grinning and making mistakes, and generally looking just as goofy as he felt. It didn’t soothe his hunger as he lay in his bunk, but it was enough. For the second consecutive night inside the MHCH, he fell asleep with a smile on his face.
“You’d better pack your bags, just in case.”
Lori slumped in the chair, the dim lighting of the confessional booth a perfect companion to her mood. Hannah had come on the screen almost as soon as Lori sat down.
“I don’t know who’s up for elimination this time.” Hannah sighed.
“I do.” Lori shifted in her seat, trying and failing to get comfortable. Her team finished next-to-last in the culinary challenge, and she’d acted like a complete fool while her teammates brainstormed how to make the “food” half-way appetizing. The experts swore the stuff was rich in vitamins and protein, but it looked and smelled like kindergarten paste.
Lori hadn’t been able to focus. Her gaze kept wandering over to Mark’s table. To Mark’s hands, his shoulders, his chest, his hair, his backside.
“I was a giggling idiot.” Lori blew out a long breath. “Crap. If I’m going to get that distracted, maybe I deserve to get booted. I don’t want to be a liability, not here and not on Mars.”
“Okay, but you also did yourself a huge favor yesterday, you and Mark, with that steamy kiss. Everybody loved that.”
Lori sank lower in the chair. Mark had warned her about the cameras, but when he’d stood up and pulled her close, she forgot about everything else.
“The show runners ate that up! And lots of people still love you as the airlock heroes, so that’s helping.” Hannah paused, getting ready to deliver bad news. “But some people view your behavior during the botany challenge as kind of bossy.”
Lori sat up straight. “I was trying to help.”
“I know that,” Hannah said, with a quick gesture toward herself. “And I think April and Mark and the others in there know that, too. But, you know, the way the video gets cut . . .”
Lori slumped again. She’d watched enough reality television to understand that every second of what got aired was expertly edited to portray the most drama and elicit the most outrage.
“The panel here still loves you,” Hannah added quickly. “They know how valuable you could be. They want to keep you, as far as I can tell. But this next elimination is by audience vote. It could go against you.”
“What about Mark?”
Hannah’s frown deepened. “Everyone’s potentially at risk.”
Lori lifted her hands in exasperation. “That doesn’t even make sense! You just said the audience loves us.”
“Most of the audience loves you. That’s what we know from some informal polls. But not everyone goes online to vote, even though we’re still contractually obligated to open at least one of the candidate eliminations to the public.”
“So there’s at least the appearance that everyone has a say in who goes to Mars to represent humanity, or whatever.”
“Exactly.”
“And there’s nothing I can do?”
Hannah shook her head. “Short of violating the terms of your contract by mounting a media campaign from inside the dome, no. Plus, you’d have to hack the servers to do that.”
Lori considered that for a moment. April had found her way past the biodome firewalls, at least far enough to access candidate elimination data. April had revealed herself when she asked for Hannah’s help to warn Lori about Charlie, but Hannah hadn’t given her up. Maybe she was a true ally.
Lori leaned toward the monitor. “And there’s nothing you can
do about it?”
“Lori, it’s already happening. The voting is going on right now. Maybe you’re thinking I have more power and influence around here than I actually do.”
“But the kitchen challenge was just yesterday.”
“And the footage ran a couple of hours later,” Hannah replied. “Things are moving fast around here. Faster than anything I’ve seen. It’s all we can do to keep ahead of the leaks about what’s happening inside—and there are a lot of leaks. Short of having everything broadcast, unedited, in real time, this is the best we can do.”
Lori let that sink in. Everything was rocketing out to the world almost as soon as it happened. Charlie already knew his betrayal had been discovered. Her family and friends had seen her make a fool of herself trying to work the food printer. And her mother had seen her making out in the dirt with Mark.
“But you’d probably get a second chance.” Hannah switched gears, sounding more upbeat. “If you get voted out, they’d probably let you hang out at The Ranch, you know, stay in quarantine and see if you can get a spot with the next round going into the dome. Maybe get a seat on the second colony ship.”
Lori heard Hannah’s words but she wasn’t really listening. Her body felt like it was made of lead. As she sat, people around the world were typing on keyboards and logging in with mobile devices to vote in a global popularity contest. The course of her life was in the hands of billions of strangers.
“This is it.” April grabbed Lori’s hand and squeezed tight.
Eighteen candidates gathered again at the airlock, with their packed Mars Ho duffel bags at their feet. The wide monitor opposite the airlock door came to life, and Gary Nelson’s perfect face filled the screen with his freakishly white smile.
“Hello, Mars Ho contestants!” Gary called out as though he were addressing a stadium full of cheering fans. Lori nearly expected him to give a shout-out to his fraternity brothers or to erupt with, “Can I get a Hey-O!” on what was no doubt a live global broadcast.
Instead, the picture zoomed out as Gary’s demeanor grew somber. He clasped his hands in front of him, his trademark move of solemnity. Somebody to Lori’s left—maybe Chrissy or Dina—muttered a sarcastic comment about the host having about as much substance as an animated mannequin. There were a few muted, short-lived chuckles.
Mars Ho! (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 1) Page 11