by Kate Rudolph
“There are things about me you don’t know,” Wood said, still resisting. “Things that might make you think differently.”
“You just scared off the creepiest guy in the colony. There’s not much you could say right now that would turn me off.” She meant it as a joke, but Wood’s face got even more serious.
“I won’t take you out of gratitude.” This time he did pull away and stand.
How had this conversation gone so wrong? Red shot up from her chair and stood in front of him, cutting in front of the path to the exit. “This isn’t gratitude. I mean, I am grateful you showed up, your timing is absolutely perfect, but everything I feel for you, I felt before today. Anything that I’m offering has nothing to do with what happened with Wolf. It’s between us.”
“I don’t want scraps.” Wood was breathing heavily and his eyes looked darker than normal, almost black, even in the bright light of the greenhouse.
“What do you want?”
“I want everything.” The low throated growl rumbled through her and Red was unprepared when Wood closed the distance between them and captured her mouth, wrapping his arms tight around her and pulling her close.
There was no question who was in control of this kiss. He plundered her, conquered her, took her over and made her anew, and Red reveled in it. She opened for him, yielding without thought and melting into his embrace. He tasted nothing like what she’d imagined, and yet perfect in a way she’d never known before. The moan that escaped her throat was inhuman and primal, a sound of pure need that wrapped around them. Wood nipped at her bottom lip and Red dug her fingers into his shoulders, as if she could bind them together through touch alone. Her heart beat fast and she could feel the blood pumping though her veins, aware of herself, of her body, in a way she’d never felt before. She forgot where they were, and it was only when she brushed against the thick berry bush growing along the path that she started to come back to herself.
Wood broke the kiss, but he didn’t let her go, his own breathing hard, his lips swollen and wet.
Red swallowed, her mind roiling and blank of everything except the man in front of her. She pressed her fingers to her lips, as if she could trap the feel of Wood pressed against her forever.
“Are you done for the day?” he asked, showing he clearly had more functioning brain cells than she did at the moment. “It’s getting late.”
Red finally found two that weren’t occupied with a happy dance and rubbed them together, realizing he was talking about the greenhouse. She checked her watch and saw the time. “Yeah, I can be done.”
“I’ll walk you back to your quarters.”
That declaration sent another celebration through her and Red had to bite her lip to keep from making an undignified sound of joy. He’d finally kissed her. He was walking her back to her room! Coffee, she reminded herself. She needed to ask if he wanted coffee. Or a drink. Or her laid out on her mattress, naked and waiting for him. The time for subtlety was gone, blown out of space by that kiss.
It only took a minute for her to get her supplies put away, and Wood waited silently while she worked. She was probably forgetting something, her brain was still too scrambled to catch up, but whatever it was, it could wait until morning. As long as she locked up behind herself, nothing too dire could happen in a single night.
Once everything was done, Wood reached out a hand and she laced their fingers together, squeezing a little as if to reassure herself that he was really right there. Her mouth was still swollen, just this side of bruised from his kiss, and she could still taste him. But she was afraid that if she let go he would evaporate and she’d realize this was all only a dream.
She didn’t want it to be a dream. She wanted it to be real so bad that she ached.
They wended their way through the rows of greenery and out the main exit when Red froze. Wood took an extra step, but she tugged him back and he stopped. “What is it?” he asked.
Red dropped his hand and reached out, tracing a series of scratches on the wall. They looked like they’d come from some sort of wild animal, deep and ragged along the edges, nothing like the precision work of a laser or a medbot. There were no predators on Mars, and the few animals in residence were carefully monitored to ensure that none ran wild. But what she was looking at now looked more like it belonged in some medieval forest than on the wall of a Martian colony. “This looks like…” She couldn’t even say it. It couldn’t be real.
Wood stepped up beside her and placed a calming hand on her back. “It’s probably just a prank. I wouldn’t put it past Wolf to do something like this. He seems to take joy from others’ fear.”
“Do you know him? I mean, did you before you came to Mars? You and he… you’re not…”
“Friends?” Wood smiled ruefully. “I’ll admit that he’s not my favorite person in the colony. We are… unexpectedly similar in some ways, and it means we clash. And given his propensity for targeting those who want to say no, I’ll never like the man. He has no control, no manners.”
Manners were the least of her worries when it came to Wolf, but Wood’s reaction comforted her. If he thought this was just some stupid prank, it was probably true. Red didn’t need to worry about feral wild animals crawling around the colony, looking to eat unsuspecting botanists. “I’ll call it in to security. They can check the vid feed and see who did it.”
“Good idea.” They continued back to her room and Red more or less forgot about the scratches. It was something stupid, something she didn’t want to bother focusing on when Wood was walking right beside her.
At her door, he tipped her head up and kissed her again, scrambling her thoughts once more, but before Red could get it together to invite him inside, Wood was already bidding her goodnight and walking back down the hall. Still, she couldn’t feel all bad about it. The handsome man that she’d had her heart set on since she’d first seen him had finally kissed her. Nothing could ruin her night.
Chapter Four
Her night wasn’t ruined, but the next morning was. Red woke up exhausted and got to work late, something that hadn’t ever happened before. What made it even worse was that her grandma was nowhere to be found. It was almost lunch when Grandma Sylvie stumbled in, her hair unkempt, face clean of all makeup, and a giant sweater dwarfing her shoulders. She looked like hell, but when Red insisted that she go back to her quarters and sleep off whatever bug she’d picked up, Sylvie waved her off.
“I’ve been doing this a fair bit longer than you, my dear, I know what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve taken some pills. Just give them a little bit to kick in and I’ll be as spry as a fifty-year-old.” At least, that was what Red thought she said. It all came out muffled through the sweater and snot that made up 90% of her grandmother.
“Please,” Red begged, “take a nap. There’s nothing so important that it can’t wait for you to get better. We’re all good. I promise.” Her own slow, drowsy morning dissolved in concern for her grams. She’d happily go a month without enough sleep to make sure that her grandmother stayed healthy for another few decades.
“If everything is alright, then why was security leaving when I walked in?” Grandma Sylvie reached for something high on one of the shelves and seemed to rethink her decision. She looked ready to wobble, so Red rushed up to her and guided her to a stool at the central table.
Their office was built in the center of one of the greenhouses, surrounded by walls of plants on all sides. It could get a bit humid and steamy, but the fresh air around them was worth it. They saw the red sky of the planet overhead, but the sun couldn’t cook them due to the treatment on the greenhouse windows. As far as Red was concerned, this was the best place on the colony to work. She didn’t know how anyone else did it, locked up in their little boxes and left with artificial light and recycled air. It sounded terrible. Even her own quarters had plants that she’d adopted out of the greenhouse and tended like they were precious pets.
Red had been waiting for her grandma to arrive s
o she could explain the situation, but now she knew she could handle it alone. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, just a stupid prank. Security is going to review the footage and see if there’s anything that can be done.”
“What kind of prank?” Grandma Sylvie was fading fast. Instead of jumping up and rounding on Red, demanding to be included, she just tilted her head to the side and stared at her, waiting for her to respond.
Red sighed; there was no way she was going to keep her grandma out of this, so the best option was to make sure she knew that Red had everything under control. “Someone made some scratches in the wall by the entrance. It kind of looked like a wild animal or something. Obviously there are no wild animals in the colony, so someone had to be playing a joke. I think it was—” No, now wasn’t the time for wild speculation.
Of course, her grandma was always up for wild speculation. “Who?”
Red looked around to make sure that they were still alone, that no one could overhear them. The other botanists were busy at work and far out of earshot, and they didn’t have to worry about any other colonists coming into this office unattended. “Wolf was giving me some shit. Wood showed up and scared him off. We got to… talking and it was a little while before we left the greenhouse.”
Yeah, her grandma didn’t miss that pause. “You left together?” Her grin looked painful on her sick face.
“He walked me back to my room.” And left her completely frustrated, a mass of hormones looking for an outlet, one that Wood so cruelly deprived her of.
“And?” prompted grandma Sylvie.
“And then he left, we just walked back to my room. But back to the scratches, you know the thing that security was checking out. Can we talk about that?” Red crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows, giving her grandmother a challenging look.
Sylvie waved her on and though she made no mention of it, Red knew that she’d be coming back to the Wood thing in no time.
“It was creepy, like a threat or something. Right outside the main entrance to my greenhouse. Wolf shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but you know that it’s useless to leave the doors locked while we’re working.” It had been a point of frustration for the botanists in the early days of the colony. Security protocols stated that all greenhouses should be locked up tight all the time to protect their supplies, but the automatic sensors were faulty and couldn’t sense who was trying to come through the doors, which meant the botanists had to manually unlock them every time they went through. If they hadn’t had to carry supplies and samples from greenhouse to greenhouse, it probably wouldn’t have been a big deal, but when their arms were full and their carts overflowing, it became too much of a hassle. By the time Red had moved to Mandela Colony, it was standard practice to leave the greenhouses unlocked while a botanist was inside and only lock them when they were unattended.
“Yes, of course. Have you been having a problem with visitors?” Red didn’t know if her grandmother’s sinuses were clearing or if she was just getting used to hearing her muffled voice.
“If you’re asking about Wolf, no, not really. I mean, we saw him the other day, but that was in Greenhouse One and he’s allowed to be in there. This was the first time that I know of that he came into a restricted section. He was…” She shuddered, remembering all of the things that he had said. “I think he was trying to flirt, it was gross, and I want that dude to stay far away from me. I don’t know if he would’ve done anything, but Wood showed up and between the two of us we were able to make him go away.”
“Did they fight?” A seventy-year-old woman should not have been that excited at the thought of two grown men brawling. But Grandma Sylvie had never been a normal seventy-year-old woman.
“No, Grandma, they did not fight. I made sure of it. What the hell? Anyway, we saw the scratches not long after that. Maybe Wolf had a tool of some kind, something that let him scratch the wall that deep. I’m sure we’ll get it fixed soon enough.” In the light of day, in a nicely populated greenhouse, and with her grandmother right beside her, Red didn’t feel nearly as freaked out as she had been last night. The security guards had seemed to agree that it must’ve been a prank, so with that consensus, she was willing to let it drop. Security could handle Wolf, she was happy to leave him in their care.
“When you’ve got two men like that raring to go, I say let them at each other. Get their blood up. Believe me, whichever one you want, you’ll thank me.”
Red had to cover her face with her hands and groan. “Grandma! Really? No. Not cool. Especially not Wolf. Ew. Yuck. No.”
“So you’re telling me that you don’t want to see your Wood all hot and sweaty and excited from a fight?” Despite her illness, Grandma Sylvie’s eyes glittered.
“No, I don’t want to see him hurt. And fighting is barbaric, especially over a romantic conquest or whatever. I wouldn’t choose Wolf if he was the last person on the colony. I don’t need Wood to make some grand statement by pounding that creepy dude into the soil. Besides, I don’t want Wolf to contaminate anything.”
Grandma Sylvie’s laugh quickly transformed into a cough and she slumped down on the table as if it were too much effort to sit up.
“Grandma, please, go back to bed. A little rest and you’ll feel so much better. If you don’t, you know you’re going to be laid up for the next week.” Red was close to getting on her knees to beg. Though her grandma seemed young and healthy most of the time, it was days like these that Red was reminded of her age, was reminded that Grandma Sylvie wouldn’t be around forever.
“I’ll be fine. Stop worrying. Go to your work.” Her grandma pushed herself up from the table and gathered a tablet close, scrolling through data that had been collected the day before.
Red stared at her for several moments. In the end, she walked away. Her grandmother was a grown woman who could make those decisions for herself, no matter how much it hurt Red to see her sick. But on her way out of the greenhouse she pulled aside her fellow botanist, Aiko, and asked her to keep an eye on Sylvie. Aiko promised that she would let Red know if her grandmother got worse, and that was the most that Red could hope for. But if her grandmother wasn’t better the next day, she’d put her foot down and threaten to call in the colony medic if Grams didn’t go back to bed.
It turned out that Red didn’t need to threaten her grandmother. The next day there was a message waiting for her on her communicator stating that Grandma Sylvie was going to take the day to sleep her tiny, annoying cold off. Red put in an order for chicken soup to be delivered to her grandmother’s quarters and that night when she was done with her duties, she poked her head into her grandmother’s room to check on her. But Grandma Sylvie was sleeping and she didn’t want to wake her up.
When her grandmother didn’t come into work the next two days, Red really began to be concerned. She knew that a cold could knock someone off their feet, and sicknesses tended to last a bit longer for humans who weren’t living on Earth. Terraforming environments could wreak havoc on immune systems. She had barely even noticed that Wood had kept away from the greenhouses since their kiss. But once she thought of it, she wondered if the man was avoiding her.
It had been a hell of a kiss, something she dreamed about every night since it happened, and sometimes daydreamed when her work got monotonous. But between her work in the greenhouse and her concern for her grandmother, she’d been too busy to chase Wood down.
Wolf had appeared on the security feeds a few times, but he hadn’t gotten near her. Sometimes the hairs on the back of Red’s neck stood up, as if she was being watched, but whenever she looked around she didn’t see anyone. Security told her that something had screwed up the feed right around the time the scratches showed up, and they said that Wolf had shown up on a separate feed in the cafeteria only a few minutes before the video blacked out. He wouldn’t have had enough time to make it to the greenhouse and to somehow disable the video according to the timeline they had created. That excuse rang hollow in Red’s mind,
but she had nothing else to offer, so she let the matter drop.
On the fourth day of her grandmother’s sickness, Wolf showed up. She’d been assigned some minor gardening duties in Greenhouse One, and though she wanted to sic security on him, she had to remind herself that the public had access to this area, and he was allowed to be there.
“It’s so good to see you. I missed you after our little talk the other day,” Wolf crooned at her.
Red kept her head down, working hard at her task and hoping that if she ignored the man he would go away. Given Wood’s disappearing act, she doubted she could count on him to save her this time. But she was a grown ass woman and she wasn’t going to rely on a man to protect her when she could protect herself.
“Still not claimed, I see,” Wolf continued, as if she wasn’t doing her best to ignore him.
Claimed? What the hell did that mean? Red bit the inside of her cheek to keep from asking. She didn’t want to encourage him.
“Our Wood certainly wants things done his way, doesn’t he?” Wolf asked. He bent down beside her, and Red was ready to do something if he laid a hand on her. But he only took a deep breath, taking in the verdant scent of the greenhouse around them.
Our Wood? Did he really know Wood? Now that she thought about it, Wood hadn’t answered when she asked if he knew Wolf, not directly. But no, she still wasn’t going to respond. Wolf had to get bored eventually if she refused to play his game. Red clung tightly to that hope.