Awakened by His Touch (7 page)

She and Morgan’s were as symbiotic as queens and their colonies: one couldn’t exist without the other. But, as reverent as they were while the Queen lived, ultimately when she was lost the colony just made a new one. They kept the hive strong.

It wasn’t personal with bees.

So why was Elliott trying to personalise this? Why was he trying to hang Morgan’s
success around her neck, all millstone-ish? And why was he working his way up to making Morgan’s continued success contingent somehow on her...what had he called it...?

Her pioneering spirit.

As if that was a prerequisite for something to come.

‘Good morning.’

Wilbur slowed her to a halt halfway to the chalet. ‘Morning, Elliott. Sleep well?’

‘I slept brilliantly. May I?’

How did she know what he was asking? Yet she did. ‘Sure.’

She unclipped her harness and gave Elliott the moment he’d asked for with Captain Furry-Pants. Released, Wilbur knew he was allowed to enjoy it. Just be a dog. The two of them enjoyed a mutual rough-house until they naturally parted, all done.

She buckled up the harness again and Wilbur sat at attention by her leg. ‘No possums this time?’

‘Nothing I didn’t sleep through.’

Bully for him. She’d slept as badly as
those possums. ‘Have you had breakfast?’

‘I’ve had coffee. Close enough.’

‘That might work for you in the city, but here a coffee doesn’t fuel you until morning tea. You’d better have a reasonable lunch.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She tipped her head. ‘I don’t want to have to carry you if you faint.’

His chuckle carried them across the paddock. ‘So what’s the plan for this morning?’

‘I thought I’d show you where we make the queens and the Royal Jelly. Two more of our sidelines.’

‘You
make
the queens?’

‘Well, the bees do it. We just give them a nudge.’

Elliott followed Laney and Wilbur between fences and along the crunch of a gravel path towards the plant sector. Inside, a pair of workers chatted to each other over the
whirr-whirr
of the centrifuge harvester
as they worked. It was exactly per the videos Elliott had watched for research. But over in the corner progress was more silent and studied. And that was where Laney was leading him.

If she’d walked him off a cliff he’d have considered following.

Which went to show how desperate he’d become in his hunt for the meaning of life.

‘Hi, Laney.’ Two voices piped up at the same time.

Laney introduced them and then launched into presentation mode.

‘So, when the Queen is ready to step down, she creates special cells and her attendants know to pack them with super-nutritious jelly instead of honey.’ She ran her long fingers along the work her staff were doing until she found the enlarged cells. ‘It’s the exclusive diet of Royal Jelly which produces a fertile virgin queen instead of an infertile worker bee. Hence the name.’

The way she said it—with such a
ta-da!
in her voice... It made him wish he hadn’t already done so much reading up. That way her passion could infect him for real. ‘So you place artificial cells in the hive and the attendants just fill it? No questions asked?’

She passed him a row of artificial queen cups to examine. ‘Bees aren’t good with the big picture. And this is the most important moment in their bee career. Thousands of bees will be born and die without ever facing such responsibility.’

Jeez—if he’d waited for opportunities to come to him he’d have withered and died right there in his tiny alley-facing office.

‘So a new queen hatches and the hive is happy ever after?’

Her laugh was overly loud even in the busy plant. ‘No, multiple virgin queens emerge and fight to the death until only the strongest is left standing.’

Okay, that hadn’t been in any of his pre-reading. ‘That’s very...Machiavellian.’

‘Once the victor emerges she has a couple of days to gather her strength and then she mates with as many drones from unrelated hives as she can in a day in a special yard we set up.’

‘Bloodied and hepped up on battle frenzy? I’m amazed she gets any takers at all.’

‘The drones are highly motivated. Every egg a queen will ever produce in her lifetime comes from that single blazing day of sexual excess.’

‘When I come back I want to be a drone,’ he said. ‘Sounds like they have it best.’

‘Sure. If you don’t mind getting your genitals torn out for your troubles.’

His,
‘Sorry...?’
was more of a choke.

‘When the drone yard is littered with disembowelled corpses she flies back to her starter hive and then lays for the rest of her months-long life.’

Lucky she couldn’t see his gape.

‘I thought you were this gentle, sweet farm girl. I take it all back. You are as ruthless as they come, Helena Morgan.’

She didn’t look the slightest bit put out—if anything she looked pleased. ‘Surely that’s a compliment, coming from you? Besides, if you don’t like that then maybe we shouldn’t show you how Royal Jelly is produced.’

‘What could possibly top pimping, disembowelment, sanctioned orgies and virgins fighting to the death?’

One of Laney’s staff busied himself melting the wax seal on the rest of the queen cells with a heat lamp and then scooped out the Royal Jelly onto the edge of a collection container, plucked a tiny grub out and squashed it on the table.

Laney’s face was comically grave. ‘Bee-o-cide.’

For some reason that shocked him more than anything else she’d done or said. In his mind Laney was as peace-and-love as any hippy, so bee-slaughter didn’t sit comfortably. ‘But you go to so much trouble to save the other bees?’

‘Has it only just dawned on you that we’re farmers, Elliott? These ones would have fought to the death anyway. We just pre-pick the survivor.’

‘So you play God?’

‘They’re essentially clones. The ethics get a little murky. Besides, the grubs are tiny when they’re swamped in Royal Jelly. Virtually insentient.’

‘Wow.’ He shook his surprise free. ‘Here I was, feeling sorry for the worker bees who slave away keeping the voracious Queen and her royal young in riches, but I think they might actually have the best of the lot. They spend their days seeing the world, scooping up nectar in the warm sunshine, stretching their wings.’

Her pretty face tightened. ‘I thought you would have identified more with the Queen.’

‘Why?’

‘Entombed in your office cell. Growing large on gathered riches. Fighting for supremacy against your colleagues until you run the show and then working yourself to death until you either create your own replacement or someone knocks you off.’

That dismal view of Ashmore Coolidge really wasn’t all that far off reality. On its worst days. ‘You make my job sound a lot more exciting than it is. I just sit in an office and try to be smart.’

‘Bees have a system. It’s worked for them for a very long time. We don’t mess with it—we just work with it. And we birth a heck of a lot more bees than we kill.’

And this
was
a farm, after all. Primary production. They did the dirty work so the rest of the country could eat. Had he really expected it to include no death at all just because it was bees and not beef?

He watched the process a few times over and got a sense of how fast the two employees could work, how many queens could be created in a day, and how much Royal Jelly was harvested. Then he multiplied that by the number of hives their production report said were in play at any one time and the number of times a year that this process happened to the same hive.

‘That’s a lot of jelly in a year.’ At a small fortune per kilo. Sticky gold. ‘What do you do with all the Queens?’

His unease about Laney’s straight-faced acceptance of bee-o-cide couldn’t outlast his curiosity. His mind buzzed with thoughts of global expansion potential and operational ramifications. An increasing number of northern hemisphere countries were losing entire apiaries as their winters worsened. Southern hemisphere breeders could ship them new hives, ready to go in spring and keep their agriculture alive.

The possibilities, the income—and Ashmore Coolidge’s commission—were endless.

‘Come on—show me the honey extraction.’

CHAPTER SIX

L
ANEY
HAD
BEEN
right
about breakfast. He should have eaten before starting. It wasn’t even noon yet and he was flagging already.

‘I blame it on the country air,’ he grumbled when she queried his increasing quietness.

‘You’re standing in a shed full of energy.’

‘I can’t eat the honey your staff have gone to so much trouble to extract.’

‘No. But you can eat honey that
you’ve
gone to trouble to extract. Come on. I’ll show you our smallest sideline.’

Two sun-bleached girls—one brunette, one Nordic-looking—sat with a plastic crate of fresh honeycomb between them, squeezing the honey out by hand.

‘Here,’ Laney said, nudging an empty stool with her foot. She pulled another over from the corner and sat it next to his.

The Nordic girl handed him a chunk of whole messy honeycomb, complete with the odd bee carcass.

‘Have you ever milked a cow?’ Laney asked.

Of course he hadn’t. That would have required a normal childhood visit to a farm. But she couldn’t see his pointed look so he was forced to reconsider his sarcasm.

‘No.’

‘Okay, then. Um...have you ever caught a fish?’

‘Yes.’ That he
had
done. He and Danny on
Misfit
. Though, to be fair, their boat trips were more about talking and drinking than any concerted effort at catching a fish.

‘Okay, so harvesting honey manually is the same kind of slow, steady action as when you’re running a fishing line. Squeeze, release. Squeeze, release.’ She demonstrated on thin air.

He glanced at the girl next to him, got a sense of the action and then tried it. A chunk of his honeycomb immediately came away and fell into the collection container—wax and all—with a dull thud.

‘Too hard.’ Laney laughed and bent to retrieve it before squeezing its honey free herself. ‘Squeeze...release...’ she repeated, and then leaned half over him to place her hands around his. ‘Here, like this...’

Her strong fingers closed gently around his which, in turn, closed much less gently around the honeycomb. Instantly he got a sense of how light his touch had to be.

‘Squeeze...’ She did so and it was steady and gentle, yet oddly firm at the same time. ‘And release...’

Releasing came with a slight twist of her wrists that somehow compelled the honey out of the comb while keeping the waxy parts more or less in hand. She repeated both motions again, brushing more fully against him on the ‘squeeze’ and then retreating slightly on the ‘release’.

The action definitely reminded him of something, but it sure as heck wasn’t fishing. And he sure as heck shouldn’t be thinking about it now. But with Laney this close, all clean and warm and stretched across him as she was, it was hard to think of anything else.

‘You do this manually?’ He forced words from his lips just as she was doing with the honey from the honeycomb. Just to return some normality to this highly charged moment. ‘Why?’

‘It’s good training for new staff, but there’s also a small market for naturally harvested honey. Wax, dead bees and all. We sell it as Morgan’s
Naturále.’

Au naturále
was not something he should be thinking about right now any more than the sensual squeeze and release action of Laney’s hands coiled so intimately around his. He concentrated on the action, on the accumulating pool of raw honey in the container between his legs, and very much
not
on the earthy woman by his side.

She released his hands and sat back, leaving hers dripping over the collection container while he continued.

Eventually Laney spoke. ‘Stasia?’

The girl to his right peered into his bucket and then said in accented English, ‘Not bad.’

Stasia tapped another tub with her foot and Elliott tossed the remaining ball of waxy mush in with hers. His hands were honey-coated, like sticky, sweet gloves. Stasia took his container and upended his honey into her own as Laney stood. Elliott automatically turned for the sinks that they’d used before the little demonstration.

‘No.’ Laney caught him with a gentle body-block, given her hands were as honey-coated as his. Her block meant she brushed into him much harder than she already had. ‘That’s the whole point.’

‘Then how do I get it off?’

‘Like this.’

She lifted her hand and moved her lips close to where a rivulet of dark honey ran down her wrist. As he watched her tongue came out and caught it, tracing it back up her wrist to its source. His body responded immediately.

Are you freaking kidding me?

‘It’s the best bit,’ she purred. ‘You wanted some energy.’

Ah, no...
Energy was not going to be a problem now. His bloodstream was suddenly awash with adrenaline and a dozen hormones designed to get—and hold—his attention. But he followed her lead, sucking the honey off his own fingers one by one, watching her do the same to hers. The warm, sweet goo stuck to his lips—and to hers—exactly as his gaze was bonded to Laney. He fully exploited the opportunity to watch her without her knowing.

He closed his mouth around his own finger as she did the same with hers, the real sweetness merging with the imagined sweetness of what her lips were doing as they made steady work of the honey.

If he timed it just right it was almost as if their two mouths were meeting each other through the sticky goodness. His imagination just about exploded over how amazing that might be.

‘Nice, huh?’ Stasia said from behind him, reminding him that the two of them weren’t
actually
alone in a dark place, kissing the heck out of each other.

‘Yeah.’ He stumbled back a half-step, breaking Laney’s spell. Hopefully she’d chalk that deep husk in his voice to honey appreciation.

‘It’s jarrah,’ Laney said. ‘From the state forest bees. Nothing quite like it.’ Her ponytail tilted. ‘Have you had enough?’

Nope. Nowhere near.
‘Just about.’

He finished the stickiest bits off and then joined Laney at the wash-trough to scrub the rest free. His body cried out at the wasted opportunity. And he’d never taste honey again without remembering the past few minutes.

And Laney.

‘So now what?’ he asked, when he was sure his voice would hold.

‘I wondered if you’d like to see more of the property? To understand its scope?’

Her simple suggestion was saturated with pride. And of course he did. But he would have said yes to just about anything that would have meant more time with Laney.

‘That sounds like a bigger job than Wilbur will be up for.’

‘Oh, definitely. I only take him up there occasionally. Both of us lack the stamina required.’

He’d beg to differ. Every part of her screamed endurance.

‘If you don’t mind driving we can take one of the Morgan’s utes. I’ll pack us a lunch.’

More time alone with Laney. More time to learn about the business—and about her—and food for his hollow stomach into the bargain. It was just a pity she couldn’t pack something to fill his empty soul.

‘Sounds great.’

‘Okay. Let’s head back to the house and you can pick up the ute while I throw together something to eat.’

* * *

Throw together
.

As if this was just a casual thing. As if her heart wasn’t doing the whole
Riverdance
thing on her diaphragm.

The ute slowed to a rumbly idle and Elliott turned to her. ‘Now where?’

‘Is there nothing in front of us but ocean?’

‘From here to the horizon.’

‘Okay, turn right along the coast track.’

‘How far?’

‘Until you see dense trees to the north.’

‘And to the south?’

‘The south is a little sketchy—as you discovered the first day you were here.’ The day he’d watched her dancing and being a fool with Wilbur, wading in the water with her skirt hiked up to her hips—all of the above—without realising he was partly on Morgan land.

They turned north onto the coast track and Laney lowered her window to enjoy the closeness of the sea. It filled the ute’s cabin with the smell of ocean and the slight dampness of salty spray.

‘You love the ocean?’ Elliott asked.

‘I love the coast, generally.’

‘Well, you certainly picked the right place to grow up, then. It’s beautiful.’

She didn’t need to agree aloud. Her sigh said it for her.

‘How do you experience it?’ he risked. ‘The coast.’

‘I can smell the vastness of the ocean on the air. And the sounds coming off the land are more...muted than the ones from the sea. So, to me, the coast is all about space and open air and beauty and deep, fresh breaths.’

She heard the moment he clicked his teeth closed on whatever he’d been about to say.

‘What? Go ahead and ask.’

‘It wasn’t a question,’ he said. ‘I just... It saddens me that you’ll never see it. So you can see how right you are.’

Don’t feel sorry for me...

‘Have you ever heard a bee quack?’

As subject-changers went, that was pretty solid. Though hardly subtle.

But she was rewarded with one of Elliott’s warm laughs. ‘Can’t say I have.’

‘It’s more of a battle cry, really. The first virgin queen to hatch out
toots
to taunt the yet-to-be-born queens and they
quack
back at her from inside their cells, calling her on her challenge and begging to be let out so they can fight her.’

‘Uh-huh...’

‘But they’re not actually making a sound—they’re communicating with vibrations. We just hear it as sound because we lack the sensory perception to feel it as vibration.’

‘A vibratory Morse code?’

‘Yeah. But it doesn’t make the experience any less real for us because we hear it as sound. It’s just a different way of perceiving the same thing. I’m no more deprived by not seeing something than the bees are by not hearing their own toots. We both still experience it.’

‘Wouldn’t you like someone to experience the world your way sometimes?’

No one had ever asked her that before. They were usually more concerned about
her
sharing
their
experiences. ‘Can any of us ever truly share our own perceptions? I’ve had other blind kids here and even we didn’t experience things the same way.’

‘Maybe not.’

‘My joys and disappointments are as relative as yours. I get more pleasure from the ocean than just about anything else. I get the least pleasure from thinking about the day I’ll need to let Captain Furry-Pants go. And there are a thousand differentials in between.’

‘Really? Your dog more than your family?’

‘Any of them will break my heart, of course, but Wilbur... He has meant freedom and trust—’
and love
‘—for me for so long. I know that’s going to be a really, really bad day.’

Vulnerability saturated her voice and she wondered what he’d do with it.

‘I get it, you know. Why you get tired of people focussing on your blindness.’

‘Actually, that’s not it. Not exclusively anyway. I just...’

‘Just what?’

‘
Ugh
. This whole conversation is harder because of what you do.’

‘Realising?’

‘It’s your job to look at things in terms of their potential.’

‘You don’t want me looking at your potential?’

‘No.’
Because that means you’re not looking at me.
‘Because people are more than just the sum of their achievements.’

‘Yeah. But I’m not paid to assess how nice people are. I’m trained to look at what they’ve done and what they still could do.’

Right. She did somehow manage to keep forgetting that. This was
work
for him. ‘So what happens to the businesses you work with that aren’t realising their potential? Or that have none?’

‘I cut them free. Find something with more return on the investment of my time.’

The implication tugged at her heart hard enough to hurt. ‘Does that go for people, too?’

His silence was filled with a frown.

She tried a different approach. ‘Tell me... Do you have any ordinary friends?’

‘Depends what you mean by “ordinary”.’

‘Do you have any friends who aren’t high achievers, or leaders in their field, or go-getters like you?’

‘No. But the world I live in tends to be filled with high achievers. We all move at the same pace.’

Just like the bees. All one frequency. And someone new to the hive had to match it or get out of the way.

‘Do you not have a single person in your life who is just a regular person? With no great ambitions or plans? Someone who just lives the life they are presented with?’

Elliott’s snort was immediate. ‘You just described my mother.’

‘Really? Yet you ended up so different?’

‘Thank you.’

Discomfort dribbled like cool water down her spine. But she held her judgement.

He heard it, anyway, in her silence.

‘My childhood was not like yours, Laney.’

Not if he’d left the country at the first opportunity, no. ‘Was it bad?’

‘It wasn’t
hell,
but we struggled for everything we had. We existed, with our noses just poking up above the poverty line. And that seemed sufficient for my mother.’

‘But it wasn’t enough for you?’

‘No. It was not. Not when I could see what others had. I always fought to be better. Brighter. More secure.’

‘She didn’t share your ambition?’

‘She did not.’

Anyone else probably wouldn’t have heard his quiet words as he turned them out through the far window. But Laney did. Of course she did. She heard the individual pitch differences between two bees—she wasn’t going to have any trouble with gravelly tones less than a foot away from her, no matter how whispered.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I rose above it—got out.’

‘No. I meant I’m sorry that you don’t have a good relationship with your mother. Mothers are important.’

Silence.

‘It’s not a bad relationship,’ he defended, finally. ‘We’re just very different. I think I inherited more of my father’s traits.’

‘Maybe that made things harder for your mother? That you were like him?’