“What about you?”
“I’ll be on sentry duty.” Eyebrows raised, he seemed surprised she had to ask.
“We should share the task. I can stand guard as well as you can and you need your rest. I used to work the night shift at the hospital when I was an intern.
Camron quirked an eyebrow. She was ready to lecture him if he took her suggestion lightly but instead he said, “As you wish. I meant no disrespect. Of course a woman who kept two Khagrish tracker beasts off my back with her spear can stand as sentry.”
“Damn straight.” Disarmed by his easy acceptance of her offer, she peered more closely at him. “Did I say something humorous?”
“I was merely reflecting how my Alpha’s mate would have reprimanded me if I’d dared to suggest she not be included in the rotation of guards. Jill is a fierce warrior, one of your soldiers by training and nature. It wouldn’t have been a pretty scene.” Now Camron gave her a full smile. “I know the amazing capabilities of human women, you see. I gave in to my instinct to protect beings smaller and more fragile than myself which made me want to spare you the night duty. I won’t make the same mistake again.”
“Partners. Team,” she said, pointing at him and then at herself. “We get through this together or not at all.”
“As you say. You can take the second watch, once we decide to call it a day.”
Satisfied, she moved closer to him, and he put his arm around her companionably. “Did you want to hear the story of this cache now? Or my best guess anyway? I can take the annoying bracelets off while I talk.” Camron opened a small box and removed a few tools, setting them in a neat row on the rock next to him.
“Please.” The longer she was with Camron, the more she longed to know about him and his people.
“The Khagrish created us in their labs approximately eight hundred years ago and have been doing experiments on Badari ever since. There were three strains – mine, with feline DNA mixed in, another with canine elements and the third were infused with reptilian fragments. They call themselves the Tzibir and have diverged the most since our original creation.” He stirred the fire and added wood to make the flames blaze higher. “The customer recently picked them as the one line to continue.”
“You sound as if you don’t like them much.”
He shrugged. “I respect them as soldiers but it’s more difficult to view them as brother Badari.”
Leaning against him, Gemma watched the fire, enjoying the play of colors as minerals in the wood burned. “Is there more to the story? Nothing like telling tales in front of a campfire.”
“One of our most cherished legends or myths is the story of the one man who managed to escape the labs. He was from an early generation, maybe even the first one.” Camron’s eyes took on a distant focus, as if he was thinking about those earlier Badari.
Gemma held her breath then broke into his reverie. “What was his name?”
Recalled to the present, Camron shook his head and went to work on the metal band on her wrist. In no time at all he’d cracked the metal circle open. As it fell to the ground, he said, “No one knows. Our ancestral memory encoded in the DNA gives us our language, knowledge of our beliefs and culture, the blessings of our goddess, but obviously not specific historical facts.”
She did a double take. “But no one from his time passed along his name?” Her voice rose a little.
Camron picked up the broken shards of the cuff and set them next to the tool box. He reached for her hand, curling his fingers around her slender digits but whether to give comfort or to take it, she wasn’t sure. “You have to understand the Khagrish custom was to kill off each generation at a preset age, early thirties usually, and our contact with the next generations was limited. Knowledge was lost and had to be rediscovered. My pack, my generation, was close to the termination age when we escaped, in fact.”
Gemma forgot to breathe. What he’d explained so matter-of-factly was one of the most horrific, saddest things she’d ever heard. Swallowing hard, she reverted to the topic of the original escapee. “How did he manage to break out?”
Camron shook his head. “No one knows, which of course made the tale feel like a myth, meant to keep hope alive.” Now he made quick work of removing the cuff on his own wrist, throwing the offending metal of both restraints into the farthest reaches of the small cave and meticulously replacing the tools in their kit one by one.
Biting her lip, she took a look at the crates and the lamps. “But you believe he’s the one who left all this here for us?”
“He wouldn’t have known about us specifically.” Camron laughed. “But he must have hoped over time other Badari would manage to escape as well, and he established these caches to help.”
She had questions crowding her mind and picked one to begin with. “And in eight hundred years there was only one escapee? Until you all broke out somehow?”
“Yes. The Khagrish were highly effective in prisoner management. I’m not ashamed to admit the fact. The only reason we’ve escaped now is due to the addition of the humans into the mix. The enemy badly underestimated a human woman who was a former soldier and she escaped. She freed a few other humans and the tiny group managed to set us free.” His voice was firm, and she heard a note of affection when he spoke of the woman who engineered the mass escape.
Trying not to feel jealous over his obvious admiration of the other human, she said, “I hope I get to meet her someday.”
He studied her as if hearing the reservation underneath her bland comment but chose not to comment with respect to Gemma’s attitude. “You will, when we reach the sanctuary valley. Her name is Jill and she’s my Alpha’s mate. I spoke of her earlier, when we were establishing our guard roster for tonight. She’s second in command of all the Badari. But we’re a long way away from there. Many miles to hike.”
Gemma liked the idea this paragon Jill was evidently married to someone else. But the distance wasn’t their only problem right now. “And Parryfilmunn to evade.”
“Or kill.” Camron’s voice was flat, his lip curled in disdain. The tips of his talons emerged from his fingers and retracted as quickly as they’d deployed.
“Getting back to your mysterious man, how did he get his hands on all this?” She waved at the bins stacked against the wall. “And if he could manage to obtain clothes and food and stasis boxes, why couldn’t he get weapons? Or help more of you—well, more of the previous generations—escape?”
“It was seven hundred years or so ago—there’ll never be any certain answers to your questions,” Camron said. “For tonight I’m basking in the excitement of proving the myth is reality. And thanking the goddess the Wanderer spent his life as a free man salting the planet with caches. Since gaining our freedom, we’ve come to learn the Khagrish overbuilt when they established this world as a research facility. There are countless labs of all types scattered across the continent, many completely unused or only occupied for a time and then abandoned. The Wanderer may have been able to break into some of the complexes and loot to his heart’s content.”
“A lonely life, though." She sniffed as the thought of the man wandering the planet alone until he died made her teary eyed. She wondered what she would have done in the same situation.
“True.” Camron added more small logs to the blaze as if he felt the need to be in motion. “The first generation or two of Badari weren’t telepathic, we don’t think. So he couldn’t even stay in touch with his pack while he was on the run. As the Khagrish manipulated our DNA, we added capabilities. Some attributes were ones the customer requested be bred into us and others were goddess-given as unexpected consequences. We try to keep those a tight held secret amongst ourselves.”
Gemma shivered, thinking about how cold blooded the Khagrish were in their treatment of the Badari, not to mention the motives of the Chimmer who actually commissioned all the perverted ‘research’.
Yawning, she reluctantly peeled the wrapping from a ration bar and bit into it, chew
“Have at least one more,” Camron said. “Please. You’ll need energy tomorrow.”
“All right, since you put it so nicely.” Smiling, she accepted a second bar from him and worked her way through it. The way he was always thinking of her comfort and well-being was something she could get used to.
“Why don’t you lie down now? If you keep yawning wide enough to lock your jaw every few minutes, I’ll be yawning too.”
“All right.” She wrapped up in the two blankets and lay with her head pillowed on the few extra garments which had been stored in the container. As Gemma closed her eyes, Camron was moving to the stack of containers, apparently to forage for anything else useful to them in the current situation.
CHAPTER SEVEN
While he examined the boxes the Wanderer had seen fit to assemble, Camron kept part of his attention focused on Gemma. She dropped off into sleep immediately, proving he was right in his assessment of her exhausted state. The blanket had fallen away from her shoulders so he moved to cover her again. Managing the feat without wakening her, he stretched and decided now was as good a time as any to do a quick patrol and see what the situation outside the cave might be.
Despite his decision, Camron stayed rooted to the spot, reluctant to leave Gemma alone, even briefly. She was his responsibility but more than duty held him unmoving. Emotions he’d never faced before were running rampant in his heart and he wasn’t sure what to do about them.
She attracted him on so many levels, not least of which was physical desire, but the primary element was this previously unknown feeling of being a partner with a woman. She wasn’t his equal in strength or military skills but she had a courageous heart and a brave spirit. Camron shook his head—there was no simple way to quantify what drew him to Gemma. Certainly there were other brave, strong women in the valley but he’d never felt this deep connection to any of them. It wasn’t any one thing, it was everything, from her delicious scent to her sense of humor, to the way she’d saved his life the first time they met, to the expression on her face as she concentrated on a task…
Straightening and unkinking his muscles, he forced himself to head for the exit and proceed to the spot where the primary cavern opened, behind the waterfall. Moving with great caution, all senses on the alert, he scanned the lake and the cliffs, finding no indication of pursuit. The darkness of night was no barrier for his enhanced vision. Their good luck probably wouldn’t last forever because Parryfilmunn was a determined adversary but Camron vowed to the goddess he’d do his utmost to save Gemma’s life. He’d even give himself up to be killed if doing so would ensure Gemma got away.
She won’t let me make such a sacrifice on her behalf. She’d expect to go down fighting at my side.
The belief in Gemma was rock solid in his heart as both a reassurance and a worry because her survival meant everything to him. A world without her presence was unthinkable.
And he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life.
Continuing to assess the surrounding terrain, Camron was a bit shocked at the power and certainty of his feelings for Gemma. When had he slipped over the line from being a man who didn’t need or especially even want a mate, to making this commitment to Gemma?
On his return trip to the Wanderer’s cache room, he pondered his new self-knowledge and concluded he had no regrets. Now he understood the terror—yes, that was the right and only possible word to use—other Badari men had undergone while waiting to learn if the woman they desired for a mate would feel the same about them. A woman’s heart couldn’t be forced.
I didn’t give the mated males enough credit. This emotional stuff is so far beyond anything we were ever prepared for, never expected to experience despite the dreams the goddess sent—it makes my mind reel.
Which was far from an ideal state for a soldier in enemy territory, trying to keep the woman he wanted for his mate alive against badly stacked odds.
He’d do his best and hope the Great Mother would intervene to help his cause.
Sounds of distress from the cache chamber ahead caused him to break into a sprint.
“You have to wake up, Gemma— you’re having a nightmare.”
Gemma came awake with a violent start an unknown time later, her throat raw from screaming, tears dripping down her cheeks. Camron held her tight as he attempted to soothe her. He kept his voice soft as he rubbed her back.
“I don’t know what you were dreaming,” he said, “But it must have been horrific. I couldn’t get you to wake up.”
Shaking, she put her arms around him too. “I was in the pirate ship and they killed the cruise liner ship’s captain and then the crew was sealing me into the stasis envelope and I knew how awful it was going to be. And there were Khagrish in my dream and—”
“We’re safe in the cave for tonight. I went outside briefly while you were deep asleep and patrolled and there was no sign of Parryfilmunn or any pursuit,” he said in a reassuring tone. “In fact, it’s raining, which will encourage the bastards to stay cozy in their tents or whatever he brought for his hunt. Your skin is clammy and pebbled from the cold—want me to build up the fire again?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.” She released her hold on him, and he tucked the blankets in carefully before he rose to fix the fire.
When he sat down again, he held his arm out in a silent invitation and she curled by his side gratefully. She desperately wanted the contact to keep the nightmares at bay.
“I promise you, I’m going to do my best to keep us out of the hands of the Khagrish. To keep Parryfilmunn from collecting the trophies he wants.” His voice was deep and rang with sincerity.
“I know you will. You’ve been so considerate all day, and I know you could be long gone and safe without me. I must be quite a burden.”
He framed her face gently with both of his huge hands. “Do I wish you weren’t in danger from the enemy? Yes. Do I regret having you at my side? No. You’re an excellent partner. I—I’m glad we met on the doomed flyer.”
As if there was a magnet pulling them together he bent over her, and she strained upward to put her arms around his neck. The attraction was a force, pulling her deeper into his embrace. When their lips met, it was a sweet kiss, warm and promising, his lips a bit rough and callused under hers. Shyly she plied her tongue, licking his lips and asking for entry, which he allowed. She couldn’t define what Camron tasted like, but some wonderful spice was mixed into the sensation, as if he was an ingredient she’d been missing all her life.
Shaken by the intensity of the kiss, she pulled back and instantly he released her, although he kept his gaze locked onto her face. “Did I assume too much?” he asked softly. “You appeal to me as no other woman ever has.”
“Even under these circumstances?” She tried a laugh, which sounded shaky to her, as she gestured at her cobbled together outfit.
“I tried not to make you uncomfortable today, not any more than you already were,” he said. “But I think you’re a beautiful person, inside and out.”
“I appreciated your consideration and, to tell the truth, I tried not to stare at you too much either.” Now she was blushing, her cheeks and the tips of her ears gone hot. There was an ache at the core of her, a craving so deep she was astounded. She wanted Camron, and she wanted him now.
“I wouldn’t presume to touch you without permission,” he said. “You know I was mistreated by Yunnivannx when I was a young man—I know what it is to have no choice and to be forced. I’m incapable of committing such an outrageous act against another person. Especially not to a woman I care about as much as I do for you. But I dare to hope someday, if we win free of this challenge, you might be willing to allow me to plead my case.”
“I’d be more than willing,” she said. “Kiss me again?”
When he took her in his arms this time, she slid onto his lap smiling inside at his surprised grunt, and ran her fingers under the edge of his shirt. She allowed herself to glide her fingertips across his massive chest, pausing to tease the flat nipples with delicate touches, then ran her hand across his taut abdomen as she’d longed to do. She toyed with the waistband of his trousers. All the while, Camron was kissing her with intensity and passion and the impossibly long, hard cock pushing insistently against her bottom through the layers of clothes testified to her effect on him.
Gemma broke off the kiss, took one of his hands and directed him wordlessly to caress her breast. “I like to be touched,” she said.
Camron stared at her, mouth slightly agape, although he left his hand where she’d placed it, rubbing his thumb across her nipple, which pebbled for him. He lowered his head and took the tip of her breast into his mouth, suckling through the thin material of the tee shirt, then blowing on the damp cloth which made it her turn to squirm.
She tugged the shirt over her head and threw it aside so he could have direct access to her body, then placed her hands under her full breasts to lift them for his attention. “Please.”
Carefully, he laid her back, making sure the blankets were under her for a bit of cushioning, and kissed her other breast while kneading the right side. He kept the bulk of his weight off her much smaller frame and Gemma reached between them to slide her hand over the front of his pants, cupping the impressive bulge and pressing hard. He thrust against her as if unable to stop himself.
“I like to be touched too,” he said. “By you.”
Gemma needed no further invitation but undid the fastening of his utilities and allowed his erect cock to spring free, where she could admire the length and girth and stroke her hand from root to tip. She’d made her best efforts all day not to ogle him while they were both in the undressed state enforced by Parryfilmunn, but now they’d decided to be together, and she was free to explore. She’d been intrigued by glimpses of the ridges on his shaft, which stood out and promised extra pleasure for the woman who bedded Camron. Running her hands over the enhancement now, she murmured her approval.
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