Dark Solstice (29 page)

Justice stiffened, but he answered easily enough. “I did a stint.”

“Special forces. I saw the tattoo.”

Kyle’s lips tightened, but he didn’t deny it. “Why don’t you tell her about me, Raathe, since you seem to have it all figured out?”

Raathe’s lips curled but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

Rhea watched until Raathe had pushed through the brush and disappeared before she returned her attention to Kyle. “What was that all about?”

Kyle shook his head. Lifting the suit he’d been working on, he studied it critically and finally began twisting it in his hands to wring the excess water out. Rhea examined the one she’d been working on and discovered it didn’t look a lot cleaner than it had when she’d started. Her fingers were half frozen, however, and her back and shoulders were already burning with the strain. It would have to do, she decided, trying to twist the water out as Kyle had. He returned while she was still working on it, took it from her, and finished the job.

She studied him as he moved across the clearing again and, after shaking the suit out, carefully draped it over a rock to dry. “It isn’t just me, is it?” she asked him when he returned.

He looked a question at her, but she knew he was just trying to stave her off.

“There’s something going on between you two that has nothing to do with me, isn’t there?” she clarified.

He considered the question for several moments. “No man lives to be as old as Raathe has—doing what he did—without having trust issues,” he finally said wryly.

Rhea studied his profile curiously for several moments. “You admire him,” she said, surprised, although she supposed she shouldn’t have been. She admired him because he was such a manly man. Men tended to admire other men they were forced to respect—men whom they felt were their equal or better.

She found it hard to believe that Kyle would feel that Raathe was a better man, though. He was as strong, as smart, and as resourceful as Raathe was from what she could see—very much like Raathe, actually, even while they seemed polar opposites in some respects. She suspected that was one of the reasons she’d fallen for both of them.

He sent her a sharp glance, his dark brows lifted in surprise for a moment before they descended in an angry scowl. After a long moment, he uttered a disgusted breath. “Maybe. It’s hard not to admire a man like Raathe, even though he … ended up in Phobos.”

The hesitation was telling. Rhea just didn’t know what he’d meant to say instead.

In some ways, it almost made her feel better to know that she wasn’t the reason for the animosity between them. Unfortunately, it was also very deflating that every time she’d managed to convince herself that she meant something to them she discovered something new to flatten her ego.

When they’d finished cleaning the suits the best they could, she and Kyle followed the sounds of chopping and found that Raathe had been busy clearing an area of vegetation with his knife to make camp. Despite the coolness of the air, he’d peeled the upper half of his suit down to the waist. A fine sheen of sweat gleamed on the muscles of his torso as he worked, mesmerizing Rhea. She didn’t realize she’d gone catatonic with admiration until she blinked out of it and discovered that Raathe was studying her with a quizzical expression.

Reddening, she clamped her slack lips together and looked around for something to occupy herself with. The vegetation he’d cut lay all over the clearing. She bent down to gather it up and move it.

“Careful with that,” Kyle cautioned. “We don’t know what might be toxic.”

Rhea dropped her bundle instantly, studying her hands. Discovering the sticky sap of the vegetation on her hands, she headed back to the pool to wash them, hoping she wouldn’t develop a rash—or worse. Kyle and Raathe both sent her a look of amusement when she returned with a pair of gauntlets she’d extracted from the supply packs, but neither of them commented.

“A fire would probably keep most anything at bay,” Kyle said thoughtfully after a while.

Rhea sent him a startled look. “Fire? You mean like flames? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” She frowned. “How would you even make one?”

Kyle stared at her a long moment and finally shared a grin with Raathe that irritated the hell out of her. Chuckling at some private joke, he left the area, returning a short while later with an armload of rocks.

“Those burn?” Rhea asked doubtfully. Moving closer to examine the rocks, she discovered that none of them had properties that would make them burn and looked at Kyle with a mixture of suspicion and irritation.

Kyle took them from her, forming a small circle with them and then left the clearing again. Raathe, apparently satisfied with the area he’d cleared, followed him.

Rhea stared at the stones, glanced around at the vegetation that crowded the little clearing and decided she didn’t want to wait by herself. She heard the engines of the skimmers before she’d gone far and met up with Kyle and Raathe near the pool. Pushing at the vegetation on either side of the path they’d trod between the clearing and the pool, they inched the skimmers forward until they could set them down at the edge of the clearing.

Rhea followed them back, only to discover that both Kyle and Raathe had disappeared again. Plunking her hands on her hips, she scanned the shadowy area around the clearing and finally decided to unload the packs from the skimmers instead of going in search of them again. By the time they returned, she unloaded the supplies and spread the sleep bags out around the circle Kyle had made.

Both men were carrying armloads of what looked like dead vegetation. Kyle piled his carefully inside the ring of stones and pulled his laser pistol. Adjusting it, he pointed at the plants and fired. Smoke rose almost instantly and a flicker of flame, as well. The flickering flames were mesmerizing. Rhea simply stared at it for a time and finally moved a little closer, holding her hand out toward the dancing light.

Raathe caught her wrist and snatched her hand back. “Careful. You’ll get burned.”

She glanced at him in surprise. “It’s hot enough to burn? It’s just … dead plants.”

“You’ve never camped out, I take it,” Kyle said with wry amusement.

She sent him an irritated look. “Of course I have! I’m a geologist! Sometimes I can’t make it back before dark. That’s why I always have a full range of camping supplies with me—a module, a sleep bag, pillows, a stove and chemical toilet, portable shower, s-rations, water—everything I might need.”

Raathe and Kyle stared at her in fascination while she ticked off her supply list.

Ignoring them, she settled on her sleep bag to watch the fire consume the dead brush. “It smokes,” she pointed out presently. “Won’t they know where we are?”

Raathe shrugged, settling on his own sleep bag. “As long as they can’t reach us it doesn’t matter. They would’ve figured out we’d been here anyway.”

“It isn’t very warm … unless you’re close.”

Raathe grunted an agreement and got up to search for food. Dragging out three s-rations, he tossed one to Kyle and one to Rhea and grabbed a container of water.

Rhea studied her s-rations. “Would it heat these up?”

Raathe examined his package. “Nope. Wrong kind of radiation. If we put this in the fire it would just burn up.”

Vaguely disappointed, Rhea opened her food and peered at it in the flickering light. Truthfully, it was better than what they’d had in the prison—not by much, but still better, even cold. She wasn’t particularly impressed with the fire. It didn’t give up much heat or light. It smoked horribly, stank, and it couldn’t even be used to heat the food. No wonder nobody used fire anymore—except, apparently, men who’d been soldiers.

She supposed it made sense that they would trained to handle really primitive situations in case they got cut off and weren’t able to reach supplies.

It was actually rather fascinating, though, to watch the fire burn, almost hypnotic.

When she’d finished eating, she left the clearing to find privacy for her needs and then returned to the pool to wash up. Kyle had disappeared when she returned.

Raathe was sprawled full length on his side on his bedding again, his head propped in one hand.

“Where’s Kyle?”

“Taking first watch,” Raathe responded, smiling at her lazily and lifting a hand in invitation. “He lost the toss.”

A rush of warmth went through her, a touch of shyness, but she moved toward him without hesitation, feeling weak all over from the promise in his eyes. Flipping back the top edge of the sleep bag, he sat up to meet her as she dropped to her knees beside him, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her down on top of him. They studied one another almost nose to nose for a long moment and then Rhea lowered her head to touch her lips to his, exploring the feel of his hard mouth by nibbling at his lips with her own.

He rolled after a moment, carrying her with him. Lifting slightly away from her once she’d settled on her back, holding her gaze, he slipped a hand into the neck of her suit and pulled the closure open, parting it slowly from neck to groin.

Rhea watched him, caught by his gaze at first and then the slow tightening of his expression with desire as his gaze followed the path of his hand. When he’d opened the closure completely, he hesitated for several moments, as if undecided how to proceed, and finally dipped his head and followed the opening with his lips down the center of her body from her throat to her lower belly.

She sucked in a sharp breath as he reached the sensitive skin of her belly, feeling the muscles within tighten, a fluttery rush of acute sensation along the surface with each brush of his lips. He lifted his head to stare at her for a long moment when he’d nuzzled the material aside and thoroughly familiarized himself with her belly.

Returning to his original position almost as slowly as he’d descended, he carefully pushed the sides of the suit wider, as if he was unwrapping a present, containing his impatience to enjoy the anticipation. Rhea felt her own anticipation reach an anxious pitch as she watched him, waiting for the next touch, the next caress of his lips. It grew as he contented himself with merely studying her, lightly touching her flesh, cupping a hand around one breast and squeezing gently, tracing a finger over the hard, expectant nub at the peak, running a palm over her ribs to her waist and then skating it over her quivering belly.

She’d begun to wonder at his strange mood when he lifted his head and met her gaze again. He swallowed thickly. “You’re a beautiful woman, Rae. You take my breath,” he murmured hoarsely.

He took her breath—with his words, the way he looked at her, instantly banishing her self-doubts.

Leaning toward her, he caught his weight on his elbows, framing her face with his upper arms and dipping his head to nuzzle her face with his own, cheek to cheek, nose to nose, and finally lifted his head slightly and tilted it to match his lips to her own. Heat scored her insides as he took her mouth, body, and soul captive with his lips. Lifting her hands, she gripped his hard, bulging biceps, surging eagerly to meet him, drinking in the heat and taste and feel of his mouth and tongue on hers with a hunger that matched the fierce need he’d abruptly unleashed on her.

She released her grip on his arms after a moment, searching the front of his suit until she found the closure and tugging at it. He broke the kiss when he felt her intent, levering himself upright and jerking the suit open and peeling it off his upper body. Torn between the urge to watch and the need to be free of her own clothing, Rhea struggled to do both at once, shrug out of her suit and study his torso in the flickering firelight. He shucked his own suit first. She’d only managed to free her upper body in the same time. He grabbed it at her waist and peeled it from her lower body and legs, falling over her the moment he tossed it aside.

She managed to prevent him from pinning her completely, lifting one leg out of his way and curling it around his hips when he settled against her. He met her lips again in a brief kiss filled with the rawness of his need, skimming his hand over her at wild random at the same time, squeezing a hip, her waist, and finally capturing one breast and kneading it. She explored him as feverishly, familiarizing herself with the feel of his flesh from shoulder to hip before she dug between them in search of the hard evidence of his arousal.

She couldn’t quite reach it. Undulating beneath him, she tried to wiggle down far enough to grab his cock and guide it home. He broke the kiss, thwarting her efforts by shifting downward to cover the tip of the breast he’d been kneading with his hand. Frustration flickered through her briefly. The hot, moist adhesion of his mouth on her nipple chased it from her mind with an electric jolt through her system that caused her flesh to pebble from her neck all the way to her toes. She sucked in a sobbing breath, struggling against the dizzying haze that scattered her thoughts into random, unconnected bits and pieces, no longer certain what she wanted most.

The need to feel him inside of her gained the upper hand as he moved from the first breast to the second, briefly, before another jolt cut through her, shattering any attempt at thought, then resurfaced when he left that breast to explore her throat with his lips.

“John!” she gasped a little desperately, groping for his cock and finally grabbing it when he shifted toward her ear. A fresh rash of goose-bumps erupted all over her when he sucked the shell of her ear into his mouth. She ignored it, focused completely on trying to wedge his cock where she wanted it.

Either the message finally connected with his own brain, or he realized she couldn’t manage it on her own. He reached between them, pried her fingers off of his turgid flesh and guided it home. She surged up to meet him as he made the connection, tightening her thighs around him and trying to impale herself on his shaft.

He released a hiss of pain. “Easy, baby,” he said roughly, shifting for better leverage and pressing deeper.

Groaning at the exquisite feel of his hard flesh pressing against the walls of her sex, Rhea collapsed against the ground, curling her hips to meet his thrusts until her body cradled the entire length of his flesh. She curled herself around him then, holding herself tightly to him, wanting nothing more that to hold him just as he was, deeply inside of her. He allowed it for a handful of seconds, gasping hoarsely for breath near her ear and stirring more gooseflesh with his heated breath. Then he began to move and she instantly forgot the need to simply hold him inside as she felt his flesh glide along her channel, surging against that spot inside of her that ached for his touch. Each slow, deep stroke drove the fire a little higher until she was nearly sobbing for breath in her effort to reach the pinnacle that hovered just beyond her reach.