Catalyst (8 page)

“I know you’re tired, so just stand there and let me take care of you.”

I got to my knees and took him into my mouth while still stroking my fingers over his backside. He groaned, thrusting gently into my mouth. I knew that tiredness kept him from pushing harder, but I also realized that Bastian was always gentle with me—like he held a part of himself back, afraid to hurt me.

When we were back on Kithra, I planned to show him how to let himself loose. Completely. But for now, I offered nothing more than a release. I licked the tip of his cock, swirling my tongue around, enjoying the silky texture of his skin. Hollowing my cheeks, I sucked him in until he touched the back of my throat, licking around his width as I pulled back before pressing in again. The air dryer still hummed and would continue as long as it sensed moisture. Bastian and I both had long, thick hair that wouldn’t dry completely inside this stall, but I had no intention of doing this out there. I couldn’t see if Jacks had come back but I didn’t think he would.

Bastian groaned again, sliding his fingers into my hair. I peered up to find him watching me. Our gazes locked as I slid back and forth until I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer. Closing them, I focused on giving him the perfect rhythm of movement, loving the sexy groans. He began to pump his hips again then stopped.

I pulled off long enough to whisper, “You can move. I like it.”

A long, low moan spilled from his throat as he held my head and pumped his hips again. Still gently, still holding himself back. I gripped him with my lips, loving the long slow glide, the almost involuntary thrust of his hips. I wished for lubricant for my fingers because as I stroked my fingers over his backside, his cries grew louder, deeper. He liked stimulation there, and I wanted to slide my fingers into the heat of his body and make him crazy.

“I’m coming, Vala.” he said on a grunt. He tried to pull my head off him, but I held on fast, surprised when he gripped his hand so tight around himself, it had to hurt. I did pull off then, frowned up at him as I gently tugged at his hand, sliding my own palm around his throbbing member.

He groaned and spilled, some of it landing on my chest to slide down to my belly. He sagged against the wall, stared down at me. “Sorry.”

I stood. “I’ll wash. Bastian, you don’t have to pull out of my mouth like that.” Mandatory inoculations against sexually transmitted disease were enforced on every planet I knew—even the nastiest ones.

He didn’t say anything. Curiosity burned inside me as I tried to read his expression, but he only offered a sleepy smile. “I owe you one,” he whispered.

“You owe me nothing. Come on. Let’s take the man’s bed.”

“Thought you didn’t want anywhere near it?”

“We’re too tired for the floor.” I palmed the water back on, holding my hair out of the way so the spray could wash my chest and belly.

After another quick dry, we stepped from the shower to find our satchels on the floor. Heat crawled up my neck to burn in my cheeks. Apparently, Jacks
had
come back. I hadn’t planned to give him that much of a show.

“Guess he got an eyeful,” Bastian muttered as he pulled out fresh clothes. Brown pants and an ugly green T-shirt that was not going to look good on him at all.

Chuckling, I pulled out another T-shirt in an awful shade of electric blue. “Guess the pirates gave us the stuff they didn’t want.” I tugged the blue shirt over me. It fell to mid-thigh. There wasn’t any underwear in the bags, only a pair of brown pants. I slid them on, then held the waist bunched in one fist. The hem of the pants spilled over my feet. “These aren’t going to work for me.”

Bastian laughed. “You look cute.”

“My stuff is in there, but it’s so dirty, it stinks.” I bent to roll up the legs of the pants and nearly lost them. Sighing, I clutched the waist in one fist and worked to roll the pants with my other. “I left that belt I was using next to the lake.”

“We’ll look for it after we sleep.” Bastian pushed me toward the room with the bed. “You do look cute. The blue in the shirt matches some of the ink on your arms.”

Jacks had thrown dark cloths over the bowls of replicant stones, so the room was dark. I left the light on in the room with the shower and was wondering how he powered the place as I fell onto the bed. I didn’t even finish the thought before Bastian curled around my back. I sensed Jacks somewhere in the room, but the only thing I could truly focus on in that moment was sleep.

The thing with being gassed in flight is the recovery time the body takes to get over it. Some companies used gas to make passengers sleep on longer flights, offering up some bullshit about it being safer than other modes of long-term travel. I preferred a cryo sleep myself—being put into a frozen state and gradually warmed to wakefulness. With gas, you felt like shit for days. All the fluffy promises of it being the preferred style of travel were just that. Fluffy.

Add in being dumped on a strange planet, fighting lizard monsters and seeing the man I’d loved and now hated with a fiery passion? It was no wonder I slept for over twenty-four hours. When I finally rolled and dragged my sore body from a bed I had no intention of getting back into, I felt like I could drink half the lake outside and still be thirsty. I was halfway across the room to the simulator when I realized I no longer wore the silly big pants. But I vaguely remembered sitting up to yank them off and throw them after they slipped down to tangle up my legs one too many times. I was surprised I still had the T-shirt on. Normally, I slept naked.

“Those might be the most beautiful legs I’ve ever seen. Feeling better?”

I jumped and spun around to find Jacks sitting in a chair that hadn’t been there before. He was by the bed, on the side I’d been sleeping. I’d rolled to the other side to get up because it was closer to the simulator. “You were watching me sleep?”

“Yes.”

I waited for him to say more, then shrugged and hurried to the simulator. “I don’t suppose you have any real juice stocked in this thing?”

He shook his head. “No, but there are some good native fruits we could juice. By hand. As you can see, not too many modern amenities here.”

I programmed water and drank half a tube before frowning. “Where’s Bastian?”

“Exploring. He didn’t want to leave you but he started prowling the room like a caged creature.” He stretched out his legs. “I make him nervous. He tensed up anytime I took a step toward him.”

“He did?” That surprised me after his little impassioned speech. I took a sip of water, loving its coolness on my raspy throat. “He’s very nice to look at—did you try something with him?”

Jacks shook his head. “Now that would just be in poor taste after kidnapping him.”

“According to you, the kidnapping blame falls to your brother. But I do remember you liking pretty men. That man you were seeing on Kithra? He was tall and lean, like Bastian. Only he had pale blond hair and those weird lavender eyes. Graceful like Bastian, too.” I shot him a challenging glare. “He’s just your type.”

“And you think you aren’t?”

I didn’t want to go there.

“Interesting color on your arms. You get that done in the Toquerian Sector?”

I shook my head. “One of the Earths.” Taking a deep breath, I turned all my focus on Jacks. “I’m rested now. Tell me what happened on Kithra, Jacks.”

He didn’t say anything for a time, but I waited because I could tell he wasn’t going to leave me hanging.

“You might as well sit and get comfortable. It’s not a short story.” He leaned back in his chair. “It basically boils down to the fact that I was a spy for Saturna.”

“The mining company? The one that lost the bid on kithronite mining?”

He nodded. “I’d been with them for years, had drawn the maps for several other planets with mining potential. My employers never got over losing that bid.”

“Of course they didn’t. Kithronite is priceless.”

“No, it has a price.” He stood, movements jerky with anger as he paced to the simulator and then to me. He touched my cheek gently and the raw grief that flashed through his eyes gutted me. He dropped his hand. “Nearly an entire beautiful race paid its price, Vala.”

Sorrow, like a heavy black cloak, draped my shoulders and I stumbled back to the bed. “They killed… Saturna blew up my people for
metal
?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. I’ve been hacking into their files for years and I’ve come across plans to blow a section of the mines only.” He sat again. “Back then, my job was to map the mines. I was told they planned to buy out The Company, was shown legal paperwork that proved beyond a doubt that they had everything in place for an old-fashioned corporate raid takeover. My maps were supposed to be nothing more than a little nudge to get them ahead of the game before they came in to take over the mining. At the time, The Company had stretched its resources, taken out too many loans—it was in bad shape.”

“I never heard anything about that.”

The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. “You were just a kid, Vala.”

“But why blow the whole planet up? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Something went wrong. I’ve spent all this time digging for answers. I’m one of the few still alive who knows a part of what happened. Everyone else is either missing or dead. I kept on the move for years. My brother knew about this planet and brought me here, helped set up the electronic system I’m using and we invented a program called Third Degree.”

“You’re the one behind Third Degree? That’s impressive.” Bastian came into the room behind Jacks, carrying three round purple things in his hand. “Are these edible, because they smell good.”

“They are. But ask before you eat any of the others. Most of the fruit on the trees outside are beautiful, but some are deadly.”

Horror knotted my gut. “You went into the trees?”

Bastian shook his head. “Not the ones outside. There’s a kind of mini forest in the middle of this mountain. Strangest and most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He handed me one of the fruits and tossed the other to Jacks.

I was surprised he’d brought the other man food. “Did you hear what we were talking about?”

“Software.” He took a bite of the fruit and groaned. “Good.”

Shaking my head, I turned back to Jacks. “So you came here and invented the most popular hacking software in the universes?”

“Partly. My brother and a coder named Anders did a lot of the work.”

“Even split three ways, that software has to have given you a better way of life than this.” I looked at the barren room. “Where do you do your digging?”

“I have top-of-the-line computer systems set up here. Deeper in the caverns. I can hack into anything. Well, almost anything. There are three ex-Saturna employees I’ve yet to find. My brother is searching for them as well.”

“So he’s not really a pirate.”

He shrugged. “He does take down Saturna ships when he comes upon them. He’s angry that I’ve had to go into seclusion, angry over how I was used. Mostly angry about Kithra. He loved the planet. Planned to move there.”

I crossed my legs and tugged the white sheet over my legs. “How were you used, Jacks?”

“By Crichton.”

“The pretty blond?”

He inclined his head. “The pretty blond. I loved him. Trusted him. To this day, I don’t know what he was after, but he set those explosives.”

Bastian wiped juice from his chin. “I could eat this fruit all day.” He licked his lips. “What kind of explosives? Because none I know of could have done that kind of damage.”

“That’s the other answer I’ve been unable to find. I think he used some kind of alien explosive, but I don’t know what. My hacks into Saturna Mining have turned up a lot. They
did
plan to blow the mines and set back production because it would have sent the already damaged Company into financial ruin. Remember how everyone was offered double pay for a few months?”

Horror kept me from trying the fruit. I cradled it in my lap, bit down hard on my bottom lip, waiting until I could actually form words before speaking. “The Company called all the Gwinarians and human miners back to work.”

Jacks leaned forward. “They had landed a lucrative contract that would be paid in full upon delivery of the kithronite. Saturna found out about it and knew all their efforts to take over the business would fail. They hurried things up. I don’t think they planned to blow the mines when so many were on planet, and I don’t think they expected the release of gases. At least, I have to think that way because the alternative…”

“They couldn’t have known what would happen,” I said. “Saturna couldn’t get on planet. They still can’t. There wasn’t enough kithronite off planet to build more ships.”

He inclined his head. “No one expected the poisoning of the atmosphere.”

“Why devastate an entire planet like that?”

“Something went wrong. Something Crichton did. When you saw me running from the mines, I was on my way to confront him. He used some kind of substance—I don’t know where it came from—but it was like nothing I’ve ever seen. And it didn’t come from Saturna.”

“Why do you think Crichton was guilty?”

“Because he’d been off planet in meetings and when he got back, he wasn’t acting like himself. The last day I saw him, he apologized for taking my maps. He—” Jacks broke off, stared at his hands. “He looked shattered that day.”