In Enemy Hands (12 page)

Slowly, her right hand moved down, under the waistband of her loose-fitting sleep pants. Her groin felt hot and damp. Had she drifted off, dreamt about him and forgotten it? Wouldn’t that just fit the on-off pace of their romance, she thought.

But it was a physical need that was driving Moon now, and she was determined to enjoy it. Her kinked hair was rough but she dipped below that with two fingers, parting her labia in one smooth movement. The hood of her clitoris was still dry, but as her fingers explored farther down, they touched silky wetness.

Dipping into that pool, she brought the moisture back to her clitoris, massaging it over and around the small nub, feeling it getting hard and erect. Would this be how Srin touched her? Would his masculine fingers be subtle in their wanderings, or direct? She matched imaginings to actions, spreading her legs so she could once more sink into the musky lubrication, and her breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had touched herself like this, let alone somebody else.

But, no, this wasn’t her. It was Srin plunging into her. It was him she could feel pressing against the wall of her vagina. She contracted against the welcome intrusion, consciously at first, and then her body took over, spasming rhythmically as she moaned.

She wanted to make it last, wanted to tease herself, bringing herself to the peak before stopping before the summit. She wanted to do that multiple times, building up the delicious tension. But it had been too long. Of its own volition, her hand withdrew and moved back to her swollen, wet clitoris, pressing and rubbing against it in short, fast strokes.

Moon opened her legs some more, bending them at the knees so they fell open, accentuating the posture of openness and availability, enhancing the feeling of sex and readying for penetration. The seam of her pants rubbed against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, moving to touch her sex every now and then as she squirmed. She could almost believe it was someone else adding his caresses to feed the orgasm building inside her.

It couldn’t last, not the way she wanted and not for how long she wanted. Her body trembled, then bucked. Curt, frantic cries emerged from her throat as the climax took control. The friction against her clitoris was overwhelming, but Moon insistently maintained her punishing fingertip flicks, punishing herself for her lack of control. She continued convulsing, the overload of sensation delivering a too-brief reprieve, before the spasms hit again, now almost painful with pleasure.

With a gasp, she stopped and slowly withdrew her hand, licking herself off her fingers. She tasted bitter, as if the battle in her mind had translated into a physical undertaste.

With a sigh, she turned to her side and wished for sleep to come.

With an efficiency born of discipline, the
Differential
continued on its way the following afternoon. It had no choice. It was already beyond the halfway point of the voyage and Drue’s orders had been unequivocal? he had to get to the Suzuki Mass, and Moon Thadin had to real-test her theories.

The only bright point of Moon’s day was when Srin walked into the lab. This would have been Day-One Srin, but he approached her confidently and greeted her with a wide grin. She was left frozen and dumbstruck.

“You remember me,” she finally said. It was an incredibly inane remark, but the only one her stunned brain could form.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” he rejoined, the grin still slashing his face. “Day Three. And I can remember what happened on Days One and Two. It’s like being let out of a cage.”

Overcome, she flung her arms around him. At first it was just an expression of joy and relief? how she had worried herself to a restless sleep after her talk with Drue! But it soon changed into something more charged and elemental.

Srin nuzzled at her neck, and she felt his breath against her skin, brushing against the sensitive hair at her nape, and heard as he took a deep breath, as if wanting to fill his body with the scent of her. As if she was life to him. The thought melted what faint resistance there was in her, and she held his head in her hands as she lifted her lips to meet his.

It had been too long. Too many events, too much work, had intruded, pulling them apart when all Moon wanted was the touch of his hands on her body. She felt them now, large and capable, as they stroked her back and skimmed her hips. The argument they had on the eve of the
Differential
’s accident was forgotten.

“Life’s too short,” he whispered when she finally let his mouth escape her hungry kiss. “Forgive me for thinking otherwise.”

There was poetry in his quiet words, in the fluidity of his fingers as they kneaded her flesh, and even in the feel of his body pressing against hers—a primal, insistent poetry. It was a rhythm she wanted to lose herself in, with him.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she protested, but both of them knew there was no heat to her words. Her arms were now wound around his neck, and she was close enough to him to see tiny gold flecks in the grey depths of his eyes. It added a touch of fire to his usual calm.

“No, we shouldn’t.” This time it was he who captured her mouth, parting her lips and thrusting a hot tongue between them, finding, duelling, with hers, then withdrawing slightly so he could gently bite her bottom lip, pulling it, then kissing it before letting go.

“It might be a long time ago, but I think I remember how to kiss,” he teased. “How would you say I did?”

Moon pinned a mock frown on her face. “I think we’ll need to do more research,” she said, attempting to sound serious. “Initial data is inconclusive.”

He chuckled, a warm sound that started deep within his chest. “That’s all I need? a provocative scientist.”

She smiled, then slowly sobered. “We really need to get back to work,” she told him reluctantly, pulling her hands back. “There’s more at stake here than I realised.”

“Such as?”

Moon shook her head. She wasn’t comfortable sharing Drue’s conversation, even with Srin. “A lot depends on the work I do.”

“I’m sure it does.” She could plainly see he was curious, but he didn’t push her. “Let’s get back to it, then. I see you’ve had help moving the databanks back in position.”

“Drue sent down a work crew this morning.” She herself had wondered where Srin was while this was happening. His helpfulness was something she had taken for granted. When she didn’t have it, she felt its loss keenly.

“I was in the infirmary,” he explained. Had he read her mind?

She stopped the reflexive clenching of her jaw and kept her voice pleasant. “And how is he?”

“He keeps dropping in and out of consciousness, although I think that’s just a side-effect of the medication he’s taking. He was awake for an hour this morning, but didn’t say anything important.” There was a grim tightening at the edge of his eyes as he told her, and she wondered if he really cared that much for Savic. What was that ancient legend about coming to care for one’s captor?

“Well, I hope he starts to feel better soon.” She knew her words sounded lacklustre, but they were the best she could muster, and she tried not to remember the less-charitable thoughts that often invaded her mind.

It turned out to be a necessary but essentially useless day. The databanks, as Srin noted, had been moved back into their proper positions, and the lab had been reconnected to the ship’s main energy grid. But that didn’t mean they could start up work again, continuing where they had left off. Diagnostics needed to be run on each of the information units, to check that every bit of information was still exactly where it should be, and not lost in some electronic netherworld. So, one by one, she and Srin kicked off the series of data and storage medium integrity tests, the ones she hadn’t got to before he arrived. Then it was a case of sitting, worrying and waiting.

“Do you really remember the past two days?” Moon asked, as the shipboard afternoon slipped into evening.

“Everything. All the details. Crystal clear in my head.” He frowned. “It’s a bit disconcerting, because I wasn’t expecting such clarity. I had got used to the fuzziness in my head, as though my brain was wrapped in insulation. And now…” He shrugged, obviously unable to put into words exactly how he felt.

She, too, felt a little uneasy. Of course it was wonderful news that he retained his memories of two days ago. From the looks of things, Savic was the only person who was entrusted? or let himself be entrusted? with delivering Srin’s regular dose of drugs.

The common sense in her insisted that no person could be on such a regimented medical schedule for almost twenty years without suffering some side-effects. It just wasn’t logical. Yet, here was Srin, upright and ambulatory, with that same knock-out smile lighting his face, that same toe-curling intensity in his eyes, those same kiss-me creases dimpling his cheeks. All she wanted to do was put her frontal lobe on standby and give in to every dirty thought her animal brain could come up with.

“We should get something to eat,” she suggested. It was early, but she was thinking of getting one ritual out of the way so they could perhaps start on another.

His lips twitched. “I think that’s a good idea. Maybe I could go get something for us.”

She didn’t hide the gratitude in the look she shot him. With everything else going on aboard the
Differential
, there would be no cloth-draped table, exquisitely cooked dishes or pilfered wine to consume. The only option was to go to one of the canteens, and the soldiers already looked grim enough to Moon without throwing the latest mishap into the mix.

“I can’t guarantee I’ll return with anything edible,” he teased, “but I’ll try my best.”

He left and while he was gone Moon checked the interim results of the databank diagnostics. Unlike the
Differential
? and Drue? it appeared that her luck still held. The fusion crucible in the cargo bay was fine and now it looked like all her data and equations had come through equally unscathed. But, rather than relieved, she was more than a little disappointed.

Despite her best intentions of feigning ignorance, the truth could no longer be ignored. The Republic didn’t want her research because they wanted to nurture life. They wanted it because they wanted to destroy it. All this time, in an effort to recapture her old life, she had tuned out every wisp of dissent, telling herself that what she was doing was noble and pure, and that the Republic regarded what she was trying to do in the same light. But now, she knew she had been deluding herself. The pieces of the puzzle were too big, too obvious, to continue ignoring.

She knew of the ruthlessness of her government. Even before she felt the personal touch of their casual brutality, she had heard stories of dissident scientists who suddenly disappeared, of protests mercilessly crushed. She understood why Kad Minslok had taken the opportunity to flee, rather than plead his case, because she knew that the only other choice open to him was lifetime imprisonment on the hellhole Bliss. Or execution.

But now the mountain of evidence was too great to ignore. Where did she begin in tabulating the Republic’s latest excesses? In Srin, a man with startling abilities who had to be subdued, had to have his entire life taken away from him, in case he risked walking away? In Hen, who basked in reflected glory while he happily drugged a fellow being, content to continue for as long as he collected accolades for work he had never done? In Drue, who had to prove himself and his loyalty over and over again, because of the compassion of his grandmother?

She thought back to the Phyllis Centre, to the sparse layout of the lab, the databanks that were dwarfed by the ones that now surrounded her. And she remembered Kad, one of the most brilliant researchers she had ever met, driven to plot against the government by a burning need that she was only now beginning to comprehend.

So, while she was professionally pleased that her work had survived the accident intact, she couldn’t be happy about it. Part of her now wished that, at the very least, the crucible had cracked or the databanks scrambled. That would give her an excuse to terminate her research while she figured out what to do. But such a respite would only be won at the possible expense of Drue’s freedom. She had stood by helpless and uncomprehending while Kad evaded the Security Force, but she would not be a willing party to another’s imprisonment.

By herself, she didn’t think she could make a stand against the Republic. Stand? Who was she kidding? She wasn’t thinking about defiant resistance, she was thinking about escape. As a lone scientist with scant resources, there was little she could do. But perhaps if she and Srin planned an escape together, there was the faint hope it could work.

The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Srin was intelligent, quick-witted and resourceful. He had proven all that when he confided in her that he knew something was wrong, despite the constant drugging he was subjected to. Neither of them had detailed knowledge of the
Differential
. So they couldn’t exploit any of its weaknesses? if it had any. But she was sure that, between the two of them, they would think of something.

Dare she hope for another accident, one that didn’t throw immediate suspicion on Drue? Or an unexpected incident they could exploit? maybe being attacked by the pirate bands that sometimes roamed Republic space, or a distress signal from a planet along their modified route.

The door slid open and Srin entered. He lifted the blue trays he was carrying into the air and shot her a lopsided grin as he approached.

“It’s not much above rations, from the looks of things,” he told her as he set the trays down. They were compartmentalised and filled with a variety of dishes. It didn’t look as appetising as the previous dinners she’d had with Srin and Drue, but it still smelt good? so much so that her stomach rumbled.

“Looks fine to me,” she reassured him, and they started eating.

It was only near the end of the meal that she worked up enough courage to broach the subject that had consumed her while he was away. She started the conversation obliquely.

“Are you sure your memory’s fine?”

He looked up at her, his expression lightening and his eyes creasing in an effort to placate her worries. Was she that obvious? “It seems to be functioning perfectly,” he told her. “I can remember our argument, for example.”

He grinned as she felt herself flush.

“And all the stupid things I said. I can remember the kiss we exchanged. I’m not sure if there’s anything else of importance to recollect.”

She bit her bottom lip to temper her amusement and keep her mind on track. “And there seem to be no side-effects from the drugs Hen pumped you with?”

“However he did it.” Srin shrugged. “I still haven’t figured that out. But no.”

That didn’t really make sense, but Moon wasn’t about to turn down any scrap of good luck, not if it meant they could somehow escape their latest prison.

“Do you want to escape?” she asked, breathless.

Srin put down his cutlery with deliberate movements. When he looked at her again, his gaze pierced her with its intensity. His silent answer was unmistakable.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

Yes, there was no doubt he wanted to slip the Republic’s choke chain, but it was also obvious that he wasn’t confident about her own motivations.

“They’ll use my research to destroy people,” she told him quietly. “You were right. I can see that now.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Time. Time to think. Time to get over my own blindness.”

“It will mean leaving your work behind,” he warned.

Her small laugh was shaky. “Believe me, this is one line of research I’ll be happy to stop.”

“And your friends and family.”

“They ceased mattering to me a long time ago,” she said sadly.

“They’ll come after us,” he insisted. “We could be condemned to Bliss.”

“I know. But they’ll have to find us first.” She heard a determination in her voice she didn’t realise she had.

He smiled at her. The effect was like a punch in the gut. She knew then that she would do anything to have him by her side, smiling at her like that. Smiling, and putting every gram of his feelings for her into the searing passion of his gaze. She didn’t know how it happened? she hadn’t wanted it to happen? but she had fallen in love with Srin Flerovs. The insight made it even more imperative that they escape because, after this set of experiments was over, Srin would be moved to another project. She might not ever see him again. It seemed inconceivable a few scant months ago, but she was willing to give up her life’s work to ensure she stayed by his side. And it looked like that was exactly what was required. The truth of it was, she didn’t mind.

“What should we do now?” The query was innocent enough, but Moon smiled when she saw the glint in his eyes.