“Wow.”
He shrugs. “It’s not fresh turkey, but it’s what we have.”
This has the feel of some kind of prison…date.
Am I dating Jai?
He lifts himself onto the counter and sits cross-legged on one side of the spread of food. I hop up on the other side and sit facing him, with one leg hanging over the edge. “Mmmm. Turkey nuggets and mixed fruit.”
“Don’t forget the marble pound cake and the lemon-lime flavored beverage mix.” Jai laughs. “Seriously, though, the cake’s a little dry, but not bad.”
We eat from our envelopes of largely tasteless food, and Jai is…charming. Sweet. He’s trying so hard, and I’m not sure why he’s bothering. Does he really care how I remember him, when we’re never going to see each other again, once I leave the surface of Rhodon? Or is he just trying to get back into my pants?
Either way, the meal is pleasant, even without the fresh meat bonanza.
I wonder if there’s some way I could sneak something special into a supply drop for him. But even if I could, I have no way of knowing he’d actually be the one who wound up with it.
After dinner, he stuffs all our empty pouches and our short-handled sporks into the large envelopes our food came in, while I refill our canteens from the sink. “If we keep just throwing these out on the ground, eventually Rhodon will probably be as toxic an environment as Earth is,” he says, folding our trash into as small a bundle as he can. “Not that they care if inmates can’t breathe the air or drink the water.”
“I’m not going to argue that point.” All UA cares about, as far as I can tell, is profit. “But I can tell you that the envelopes are all made of quick-start biodegradable materials. Eventually, they’ll just…break down into part of the planet.”
“Eventually. That doesn’t sound much like ‘quick-start.’”
“They’re designed to start dissolving twenty years after the manufacture date. Which is five years after the expiration date of the food. In terms of biodegradable materials, that’s basically lightning-fast.”
“You are a virtual fount of information.” Jai takes his water pouch from me and drinks from it. Evidently the tap water doesn’t require purification?
“Is that a polite way of saying I’m boring?”
“No. In fact, you’ve been one surprise after another since you set foot on this planet.”
I smile, choosing to believe I’m being complimented. “I’m gonna—”
Jai steps toward the short hallway leading to the bathroom at the same time I do, but he stops when he sees that we have the same goal. “Go ahead. I know you miss your toilet, and I can pee just as easily outside.”
Before I can argue, he jogs across the front room and out the door.
I relieve myself and am kneeling on the grimy bathroom floor, digging through my bag for my hand sanitizer, when a shadow falls over me. I turn, already smiling, expecting to see Jai standing in the hall, blocking the light. Instead, I find a stranger—a man with a scruffy beard and relatively clean clothes.
My heart pounding, I stand slowly and back across the small space toward a sink basin set into a countertop along the far wall. “What do you want?”
The man’s gaze tracks down from my face, and he licks his lips. “Wendy’s been holding out on us. We’re going to have to discuss that, next time she makes a delivery.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“We’re one woman short, but you’ll make a great replacement for Sara.” He stalks toward me, and I try to back up, but I’m already pressed against the counter. “Orrrrr.” He makes the word last much too long. “If you don’t wanna serve, maybe you and I could work out a private arrangement for tonight, and tomorrow I’ll go get another girl from Wendy.”
What the hell is he talking about?
“So? You wanna spend tonight with me, here, or the next month in Settlement A?”
Oh. Shit. Shit! He thinks I’m a convict—a reasonable assumption—and he wants me to come prostitute myself in Settlement A, in place of a woman who ran off.
Or, I can sleep with him, and he’ll forget he ever saw me.
This place sucks.
“I’m not… I mean, you can’t…” I don’t even know how to finish that thought, without telling him I’m not one of the female inmates from Settlement B.
My hand twitches, itching for my gun, but it’s in my bag. Which I left in the middle of the floor. I’ll have to go through him to get it, but if I could go through him, I wouldn’t need the damn gun!
“What’s your name?”
Calm down, Rayla. I don’t have to fight him. I just have to stall until Jai gets back.
“What’s yours?” I counter.
“I’m Booker.”
“And you’re looking for someone named Sara?”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter who I find. It only matters that I find a woman. Preferably young, clean, and hot. You’re two for three. Let’s see your hand, sugar.”
Fuck. “I’m not clean.” I slide my bandaged right hand behind my back. “I have something…communicable.”
“Show me your hand.” He takes another step toward me, and now he’s close enough that I can see the striations in his irises.
“I hurt it. But I’m telling you, I’m not clean.”
“What do you have?” Skepticism bleeds through his every word.
“It’s…something itchy.” Why can’t I think of a single sexually transmitted disease? And why am I the worst liar in the galaxy?
“Why don’t we just verify that?” Booker lunges forward and grabs my right arm.
“No!” I scream, holding my hand behind my back as he hauls me toward him. He wrenches my arm forward, much harder than Jai did, and I flinch when pain shoots through my wrist.
“The fuck is this?” He tears at the bandage with his fingers, and I suck in a deep breath. Then I punch him as hard as I can.
My fist connects with his jaw, and his head snaps back and to the side. I’m pretty impressed with myself—until he lets me go and hits me with the back of one hand, hard enough to send me crashing into the counter.
I smack my head, and the room spins around me as I fall. Before I can draw the world back into focus, Booker grabs my foot and hauls me across the floor. My shirt rides up, and concrete skins my spine.
This time I don’t fight as he rips off my bandage, shredding it in the process. “What the hell?” He pulls my hand closer in the shadows of the unlit bathroom, further twisting my wrist in the process. “Why don’t you have a number?”
“Let me go!”
“Who the fuck are you?” he demands, pulling me to my feet.
“I’m nobody. Let me go.”
“You don’t look like nobody.” He pulls my hand closer and sniffs it. “You don’t smell like nobody.”
Damn it. I should not have brought moisturizer. Or scented hand sanitizer. Inmates don’t have those.
“You’re not a prisoner, are you sugar?” He pulls me closer, and I cringe as he sniffs my hair. But I’ve bathed in two different streams since I got here. Surely he can’t still smell my shampoo? “What kind of colossal bad luck put you here?” He grabs my left arm and drags his finger firmly down the underside, hard enough to bruise. “No locator chip. You’re not a guard. Who the hell are you, and how did you get here?” But as Booker’s puzzled gaze roams me again, I understand that what he’s actually asking is how much I’m worth.
Something scrapes the concrete at his back, but I can’t see around his broad frame. “Let her go,” Jai says, and I nearly sob with relief. Until Booker hauls me up and spins with me clutched to his chest
“I found her first,” he growls. Then I both hear and feel the hitch in his breath when he realizes Jai is aiming a gun at him.
My gun.
Shit.
“Let her go, or I’ll blow a hole in your head.”
Booker laughs. “I don’t know where you got that thing, but we both know you
can’t fire it.”
“It’s unrestricted,” Jai says, and I can see how much it costs him to say that. He didn’t want anyone else to know.
“Bullshit,” Booker splits.
Jai shrugs, then aims at the floor and pulls the trigger. It clicks ineffectually.
Booker laughs.
For a second, Jai looks confused. Then understanding dawns, and the look of betrayal in his eyes makes me ache deep inside. He blinks, and I can practically see him toss hurt and anger aside, along with my pistol, which clatters against the floor, then slides beneath the toilet stall.
“I don’t need that to kick your ass. Let her go.”
To my surprise, Booker pushes me behind him. “Hold tight, sugar. This’ll only take a minute, then you and I are gonna get to know each other real well.”
“Rayla, run,” Jai says, as Booker advances on him. But I can’t run, in part because they’re blocking the door. And in part because Booker is bigger and stronger than Jai, and I can’t abandon him, when he was trying to rescue me.
I can only stand there, pressed into a corner, while Jai dodges Booker’s blows, then throws punches of his own. They’re good hits, but Booker hardly seem to feel them. Jai holds his own, but he’s tiring. His left eye is swelling, and there’s a dark red splotch on his jaw.
Booker’s going to win. He’ll either kill Jai, or he’ll incapacitate him and leave him for dead. Then he’ll take me, and there’ll be nothing I can do to stop him. Unless…
When the scuffle moves toward the door, I lurch into the stall, where my gun still lies on the floor. I grab it and aim at Booker, my finger on the trigger. But I can’t fire. The laser could go through him into Jai.
I ease my way around them, flinching with every thud of fist into flesh, until I have a shot at Booker that won’t endanger Jai. Yet still, I can’t pull the trigger.
If I shoot Booker, he’ll die. And I’ll be a murderer.
But if I don’t, he’ll kill Jai, then he’ll take me, and I’ll be a victim.
It’d be self-defense. Right? Or at least justifiable homicide. My father would get me the best attorney in the galaxy. Or would he? I don’t have a citizen ID number. I have no idea how my arrest would play out.
Or whether it would play out at all. Maybe no one would even notice one more dead inmate on the surface of Devil’s Eye.
Jai grunts, tearing me out of my own thoughts. I pull the trigger.
Booker collapses with a smoking hole all the way through his chest. There’s a corresponding hole in the toilet stall behind him, and a deep divot in the concrete wall beyond that, where the laser exhausted its energy.
Jai stares down at the body, his fists still clenched, his knees still bent. He blinks, clearly still processing his opponent’s sudden collapse. Then he turns and sees me with the gun.
Understanding slams into place behind his eyes. “Rayla!” He steps over Booker’s body and plucks the gun from my grip, then pulls me into an embrace. “Are you okay?”
I stand there, my arms at my sides, while he hugs me. “I killed him.” My voice sounds…hollow.
“I see that.”
“I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid he’d kill you, then he’d—”
“He would have, on both counts. Booker thinks he’s the new king of Settlement A. He does whatever he wants.”
“I’m a killer.”
“That’s not the same as being a murderer. You did what you had to do. For both of us.” Jai lets me go and grabs my bag, then shoves the gun into it. “It’s not unrestricted, is it?” He hands me the bag, and I feel like an asshole when I take it.
“No. It’s my personal firearm. My dad gave it to me when I turned sixteen.”
“Why? What could you possibly need to defend yourself from in your glass bubble?”
“My father’s always been paranoid about the guards. He says it takes a certain type of man to want to work here, and that those aren’t the kind a young lady should socialize with.”
Jai snorts. “Can you imagine what he’d say if he were here now?”
“Probably something along the lines of ‘Take her into custody for murder.’”
“You think he’d have you arrested?”
“No, probably not. He’d probably use this as his latest—and sturdiest—excuse to keep me on Station Alpha. Where he can protect me from my own crime.”
“There was no crime. It was a justifiable shot.”
“We both know that wouldn’t matter, if I were anyone else.”
Jai nods. Then he turns to the body. “Will you help me with him?”
I sling my pack over my shoulder, then I grab Booker’s ankles, while Jai lifts him by his wrists. “Where are we taking him?”
He shrugs, and the body bobs between us. “Out of here. I don’t want to go to sleep with a corpse in the building.”
We carry Booker several hundred yards from the southern wall, then we dump him unceremoniously on the ground and head back. It feels weird to leave a body lying out in the open. Almost as weird as it feels for me to be out in the open.
Over the past four days, I’ve gotten used to the wide-open landscape and the sweat and dirt I accumulate by traversing it, but tonight, out here in the dark… “Disposing” of the evidence of my crime…
I feel oddly exposed and vulnerable. I feel like I should be whispering, even though there’s no one else out here, that I can tell.
Jai exhales heavily as he steps into the building behind me, and I realize he’s lost in his own thoughts. “I can’t believe I didn’t figure out the gun was yours. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”
“I’m sorry. But I had to let you think I was a prisoner.”
“And after I saw your hand?” He shoves the door, trying to make it close, but it’s hopelessly warped. “After I confessed what I’d done? Why didn’t you tell me then, when we were coming clean?”
“I was afraid you’d just leave me out here on my own, if you knew my gun would do you no good.” I set my bag next to the bed, beside his. “And after what you did to me, I kind of felt like you owed me an escort to Settlement B.”
“I wouldn’t have left, Rayla. I’m not here for the gun. Not anymore.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
I can’t be sure, with his face drenched in shadow, but he looks hurt by the question. “How could you not know that?”
“Jai, your plan was to distract the loser virgin with sex, then steal her gun. How could I trust anything you said or did, after I found that out?”
He shrugs. “You lied too, and I still trust you.”
“Why?” I wish I could see his eyes, but they’re still shrouded in darkness. “Why would you trust me?”
“Because I know you, princess.”
“You don’t—”
“I do. You find joy in the smallest things. You never complain. You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. And you would never hurt someone if you didn’t have to. The first time I saw you, you could have shot me, but you shot the dirt at my feet instead, even though you had no way of knowing I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
“I’m pretty sure that makes me stupid, not trustworthy.”
“If you were stupid, you’d have put the gun away.” Jai leans down, his mouth inching toward mine. Giving me plenty of time to step back. Or push him away. And I know I should.
But I really don’t want to.
His mouth presses against mine, softly at first. Then more firmly. He tilts his head a little and tugs my lower lip between his teeth, demanding I open for him. That I kiss him back.
I fucking know better.
But I let him in. And Jai devours me whole.
10
JAI
Rayla still kisses like a teenager. Like she’s not really sure what she’s doing, but she’s willing to learn, and that’s so hot.
I can’t keep my hands off her. I can’t keep my mouth off her. I’m going to lose her tomorrow. But I’m going to h
ave her tonight.
“Jai.” She pulls away from me, and I tug her back so I can kiss my way down her neck. “Jai,” she says. But she doesn’t push me away. She doesn’t step back. And when I make my way up to her lips again, she sighs against my mouth, and suddenly I’m painfully hard.
I lift her, my hands cradling her ass, and her legs wrap around me. “I don’t forgive you,” she whispers as I set her on the countertop.
“I don’t forgive you either.” I pull her shirt off, and she reaches back to unhook her ugly prison issue bra, releasing the most beautiful breasts I’ve ever seen. I lean down for a taste, and her nipple pebbles in my mouth. Her head falls back and she arches toward me, her hands in my hair, groaning as I flick my tongue against the hard peak.
“I want to taste all of you,” I murmur as I work my way across her sternum toward her other breast.
“Okay,” she breathes as my mouth closes over the neglected nipple. “I’ve never done that, but…yes.”
A growl rumbles from my throat as I pick her up again, then I set her on the floor and slide her pants down, along with her underwear. When the material pools over her feet, she steps out of it. I pick her up again, wishing I were already undressed, so I could feel her warm, bare skin against mine.
I lay her on the mattress, then I pull my shirt over my head. “Show me what I’m tasting, princess,” I say as I drop my tee on the floor.
Rayla flushes in a beam of moonlight. Then she slowly opens her legs.
I kneel on the mattress in front of her and run my hands over her knees, then I linger on my way down her thighs, enjoying what I can see of her body in the moonlight shining through the only window in this room.
Maybe I should have left the door open, just to let in more light.
I wish I had a bright room. A clean bed. I wish I had wine and strawberries. Or chocolate. The whole cheesy, romantic package. She deserves way more than I can give her. But I’m gonna give her every bit of what I do have. Which is me.
Dirty Lies Page 12