Dark Solstice (7 page)

“That’s it, baby,” he muttered harshly. “Come for me.”

The moment he demanded it, she did, as if he held full command of her body and her senses. She sucked in a sharp breath, stilled as the first wave jolted through her and then gasped another keen breath as the next wave hit a new high.

It wasn’t until she was drifting to sleep that it flickered through her mind to wonder if he’d said ‘baby’ or ‘Amy’.

Who was Amy, she wondered? And what had she been to him?

* * * *

Dismay filled Rhea as they filed out of the mess hall the following day and the guard directed them down the corridor that led to the shuttles. “They don’t rotate?” she demanded in an outraged whisper as she trudged down the corridor ahead of Raathe.

He made a harsh sound that held little humor. “When they feel like it.”

Rhea threw a quick glance at him over her shoulder. “But … it’s not right! We just got back from the surface!”

“It’s the price I paid for keeping you with me,” he retorted.

We
paid, she thought angrily, glaring at him this time when she glanced at him. “Why did you then?”

He gave her an assessing look. “To keep the others off of you,” he growled. “If you don’t have a problem with that, by all means let me know. I don’t particularly like this fucking detail myself.”

The comment stunned her to silence. She considered it with suspicion once the shock had worn off, wondering if there was actually any truth to it, but why say it if it wasn’t true? How would that explanation even occur to him if that wasn’t why he’d insisted that she stay with him?

If it was true, though, why would he do it when he certainly had nothing to gain from it if what he’d implied was also true—that they were both being punished for his rebellion by sending them to work the surface detail without any respite? All of the prisoners certainly didn’t go. Most of the men she saw around her weren’t the same ones that had gone with them the time before.

Kyle Justice, she recognized, though, and wondered if he’d been singled out to punish for some reason like they had.

That must the case. She hadn’t dared pay the other prisoners much attention for fear that it would make them notice her more, but she’d had to work next to them for days the last time, been cramped in tight quarters with them at night. With very few exceptions, the men headed down the corridor with them now weren’t the same men that had had to work the Mars detail the last time.

“Why?” she asked Raathe quietly while they were rushing to get in to their PEC suits.

He sent her a frowning glance but didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Chances are, you would’ve been dead when I got back.”

She’d figured that much. It still sent a shaft of cold fear through her, and it still didn’t answer the question. She could see he wasn’t going to answer it, though. She could make of it whatever she wanted.

Actual concern for her as a person would have been nice, but she didn’t think that was likely. The only other possibility that came to mind was that he thought she might be useful to him in some way. One of those ways was obvious or at least seemed so. She didn’t think she was of enormous value to him only for his comfort and convenience, though. There had to be more to it than that. After all, he’d made it clear that he hadn’t been in the arena out of choice, hadn’t even known she was a prize in the offing.

Now that he had her, though ….

Inwardly, she shrugged. Raathe was not the sort of man, as far as she could see, who had any great need for anyone else. He didn’t even attempt to fraternize with any of the other prisoners, although most of them seemed to have at least one ‘friend’ among the other inmates.

She had the sense that Kyle Justice had been working for a while to befriend Raathe—
why
she didn’t know—but she sensed he had and that his interest was neither new nor only because Raathe now had her as an ‘asset’.

Just as obviously, Raathe had no mutual interest. Hard suspicion threaded every look that passed between them and caution every word spoken. Raathe didn’t trust Justice—at all.

Did that mean she couldn’t either? Was Raathe the best judge of character?

In a way, she thought he probably was. He’d seen the worst of the worst. If anyone could recognize the hidden monsters, it was probably him. On the other hand, his life had to have jaded him to people in general. Maybe it wasn’t just that he could see the hidden monsters? Maybe he saw monsters even when they weren’t there because he
expected
the worst?

Then again, they didn’t send minor offenders to Phobos Prison. Whatever it was that Kyle Justice had done, it must be something on a par with the crime that had landed John Raathe in the prison—murder.

Except she was beginning to wonder how much faith she could place in all the stories she’d heard about John Raathe. News people always tried to sensationalize their stories. Strictly speaking, even though John Raathe had been a trained assassin for the government long before he’d gone to work for Johann Solutions, he’d been a soldier in service to his government and any killing he’d done was sanctioned, not murder. And yet the media had played that up at the time of his trial, not as heroism or service to his government but as an example of his cold bloodedness, suggesting he’d sought out service because it gave him the opportunity to kill. The suggestion had landed on fertile soil. They’d ended up convicting him as much on his service record because of his number of kills as they had for the murder he was supposedly being tried for.

She’d been outraged at the injustice of that aspect of his trial. Raathe’s service record was above reproach. He’d been discharged honorably after a long, distinguished career—in the view of his superior officers. It shouldn’t have been held against him that he was so good at what he did when that was what he’d been trained for.

Not that she, personally, saw it as anything to admire. She appreciated that the military protected the life and liberty she enjoyed and yet she didn’t see war as the answer civilized people should consider or that killing was ever a solution, even in war.

She certainly hadn’t before, at any rate. She’d come to realize that she had been far more naïve and sheltered than she’d believed she was. If she hadn’t been, she might not be where she was now. She might have realized that the law wouldn’t protect her—couldn’t—against men ruthless enough to ignore the laws and powerful enough to get away with it.

Maybe Raathe didn’t see the difference between being on the government’s payroll to kill and being on someone else’s?

And beyond the fact that one was legal and the other not, how much difference was there morally? One assumed that soldiers were only directed to kill enemies and their job was strictly to serve the people and protect them, but politicians were people, not gods. They were just as prone to strive for personal gain and just as prone to personal likes and dislikes, and they had the power to wield against anyone that thwarted them or that they hated for any reason. How often, she wondered, were soldiers used purely for the personal gain of those in power?

Maybe Raathe hadn’t seen the difference because there wasn’t a hair’s worth?

She shook that thought off. She didn’t want to begin to believe that killing might actually be a necessary solution in some cases and that some people just needed killing to protect the vulnerable and naïve from the wolves that preyed upon them. It went against everything she’d ever believed and held dear—that people were basically good and mankind as a whole was too civilized to behave like the animals they’d evolved from.

She knew that wasn’t true of everyone, knew it now in a way that she hadn’t before she’d landed in Phobos Prison, but she wanted to hold on to the belief in mankind’s basic worthiness. She wasn’t going to allow herself to go down that road.
She
was civilized. She might not be a saint, but she was basically a good person and she couldn’t feel that way about herself if she allowed herself to feel enough hate to want the people who’d done this to her to die.

She wanted them brought to justice—that was all.

And there was no point at all in even thinking about that when the likelihood of her ever getting off of Phobos was slim to none.

The only thing of any real importance to her now was whether or not John Raathe was human as she’d always thought of human beings. Was there some basic goodness in him despite everything she’d heard to the contrary? Or was he the cold blooded killer he’d been painted?

Because her life depended on whether he was or not.

Chapter Seven

Kyle sensed a change in both Raathe and Rhea that set his belly to churning with barely suppressed rage. He wanted to put it down to pure imagination and an unhealthy dose of jealousy, but, unfortunately for his peace of mind, he couldn’t.

The wariness still flickered in Rhea’s eyes whenever she looked at Raathe, but there was feminine curiosity there, too, and knowledge that hadn’t been there before.

He knew that look. He’d seen it reflected back at him more than once or twice when he’d fucked a woman senseless with pleasure. The wariness never really left their eyes because they knew what he was, and they knew that the sex was just that. It meant no more to him than the appeasement of his needs … and yet they wanted more, more than he could give them.

He also recognized the satisfied glint in Raathe’s eyes whenever they rested on Rhea, the look of speculation.

It had been good and he was wondering if it would feel that good the next time.

He’d had a taste of her and he’d liked it—a lot.

Maybe he was even smitten with her.

Kyle would’ve loved to have dismissed that notion as pure, undiluted jealousy, but, as faint as the softening of his expression was when Raathe looked at Rhea, it was still evident to him—because he suspected he had that same lost look on his face when he looked at her.

It was going to be harder to separate him from his prize now that he knew what it felt like to be inside of her.

The fucking bastard!

It took every ounce of acting ability he possessed to even try to hide his feelings on the subject and struggle to keep his focus on his objective. He was pretty fucking sure he wouldn’t have carried it off, though, if not for the fact that Raathe and Rhea both were too focused on each other and struggling to pretend they had no interest in each other to really notice him.

In that respect, he supposed it was a godsend that Raathe was too preoccupied to watch him as keenly as he generally did, but the truth was it didn’t help him that much. His struggle to pretend he wasn’t aware of the undercurrents occupied him so fully that his wits, beyond that, deserted him entirely.

* * * *

Exhaustion wasn’t exactly conducive to clear thinking, but it had a way of sweeping aside deep emotion that tended to cloud a person’s judgment, Rhea thought wryly. After their latest stint on Mars she was obliged to admit, to herself at least, that she’d developed a growing, unhealthy fascination with Raathe.

It would almost have been easier if she could’ve put it down to a physical, chemical attraction and the pleasure he’d given her. It certainly would’ve been easier if she could’ve maintained the illusion that she was only doing what she needed to to survive.

It went beyond that, though, and she knew it, reached a point where she couldn’t deny it.

John Raathe was not only the most fascinatingly complex man she’d ever met. He was a man tortured by his past and her growing certainty of that as a fact pulled at something inside of her that she’d never been aware of before—the need to give succor, the driving compulsion to try to heal the wounds he hid so well even while she called herself a complete fool for feeling such things.

It was like feeling pity for a coiled serpent that had been wounded and was therefore twice as dangerous because of its pain.

It gave rise to the anxiety that her trials had seriously undermined her reason.

She’d always known she had a capacity for empathy for her fellow man. It was part of being human, part of what defined man from animal and not something she wanted to even try to crush, but neither had she tried to nurture it. Self-preservation dictated that a person be wary of giving that part of themselves too readily. Too many people were waiting to use that particular weakness to their advantage.

A healthy dose of self-preservation certainly should’ve kicked in in this particular case, because she knew John Raathe didn’t really need or want that from her and that he was likely to crush it ruthlessly if he became aware of it—not use it against her. He not only had no need of it to get what he wanted from her, but she thought it very likely that he’d be more enraged that she’d detected any weakness in him at all than pleased that it had undermined her defenses.

It was far too late, though, to try to shore up her barricades. He’d slipped under her defenses before she even realized they’d been breached, seducing her with the very weapon she’d thought to use against him, building a sense of trust and comforting familiarity with the light, pleasurable caress of his hands and lips.

She was fully aroused before her mind even achieved consciousness that the tingling warmth spreading through her was real and not a dream, but awareness only heightened the warm lethargy to a blossoming of heated want. There was nothing furtive or tentative about his touch. Instead, there was surety in the hands stroking her, as if he knew every inch of her, every tiny patch of flesh that was exquisitely sensitive to his touch and just how to touch her to bring her the fullness of pleasure to be had.

And there was tenderness in his touch that made her throat close with emotion even as it aroused the need in her to fever pitch. He nuzzled his face beneath her breasts, nipping at the soft underside before he caressed her lower, grazing the soft flesh at the juncture of her ribcage with his lips.

“Amy,” he murmured huskily.

It sent a jolt through her and into him. He paused for so long Rhea was certain he’d awakened, and then resumed his exploration with a ragged sigh that belied her presumption, teasing her breasts with the pull of his mouth until she descended once more into the sea of bliss he’d already created to suck her down.