His heavy arm draped over her ribs and his fingertips had found the bare strip of skin between her tank and briefs. She tried to shift out from under his arm, but he growled softly and pulled her closer, her ass nestled against his groin.
“Sleep while you can,
courra
. The sun will rise soon.”
“Where are Lo and Carn?” They’d made one big pallet, so Lo had crawled in with them and slept curled up on the other side of Mercury but he was gone now. She’d expected Carn to return before nightfall but he’d never crawled into the shelter—at least not that she remembered.
“They’re close.” He hesitated, rubbing his chin against the crown of her head. “If you can’t sleep, I can pleasure you instead.” He rocked his hips for emphasis and Samantha’s heart sped at the impossible to miss press of his hard cock against her ass. His hand drifted lower on her belly and she grabbed his wrist to try to stop him. His hand didn’t even slow. He stroked downward to slide across her briefs and cup her mound. She groaned and arched into his touch against her better judgment.
“Mercury, no.”
He froze. “Are you injured?”
“No, I’m fine, but—” She struggled for words then huffed out her exasperation. “Where are my clothes?”
With a sigh, he released her and twisted to reach for her things. The blanket stretched across his hips, but it was easy to see he was still sporting an erection.
He followed her gaze as he pressed her clothes into her hand. He stroked one hand along her leg. “I want to pleasure you again.”
Her stomach did a traitorous flip at his directness. She pulled her shirt on over her under-tank then flipped her hair free from her collar. Mercury relented, letting her move away. She scooted to the edge of the pallet and tugged on her pants and boots then twisted her hair into a quick braid while he dug through one of the packs.
Lo and Carn appeared out of the trees as she got to her feet.
Fatigue had smudged dark half-moons below his eyes and his hands hung limp at his sides as if he no longer had the strength to resist gravity. He lumbered into the camp, exhaustion weighing down every step.
“Stars,” she swore. She strode toward him but stopped short, remembering his distress at her last attempt to touch him. “You need to rest and get some food.” She pointed to the circle of crates where they’d eaten their evening meal. “Sit. I’ll get you a ration bar.”
Carn sat with all the grace of a mining platform trying to dock with an orbital tug. “They show no signs of coming after us.”
Lo frowned. “That’s not like the whip-master.”
“You destroyed their weapons,” Samantha pointed out, “and you reinjured Resler.”
Mercury turned thoughtful. “They might believe they’re better off waiting until help comes.”
“True,” said Carn, propping his arms on his thighs and leaning forward to let his head hang low.
Mercury brushed past her, the casual touch of skin like a secret caress that refocused her attention squarely on him. The whisper of touch reignited all of her nerve endings.
She strained to focus. “It will probably be a couple of weeks before anyone makes it to this system and comes down to look for survivors.”
Samantha dug through one of the crates and handed Carn his meal. He took it, but she thought his wince and the lines etched in his face were less an aversion for her and more… evidence of pain. “Are you okay?”
He nodded unconvincingly then took a bite from the bar. Samantha sat down on the crate beside him, careful not to touch. “There’s a med kit in my pack. If you’re hurt, please let me help you.”
He stared back at her, head titled to the side as if she were a strange bug who’d crawled into the middle of his dinner. The lines carved into his prominent forehead were deeper than she remembered. The ring of gold around his black eyes, wider than she’d seen. His ears, more rounded than Mercury’s or Lo’s, lay flat back against his head.
She forced a careful smile. “We’re going to be here a while, but we
will
eventually get out of here. You need to stay strong.”
His head swung back toward Mercury and his gaze landed heavily.
Mercury frowned. “The low-noise.”
Carn’s head dipped to hang down from his shoulders. “It never stops.”
She’d been right. Pain. It sat heavily on his shoulders but the big lug wouldn’t say the word out loud. “I’ll get a pain blocker—”
Before she could get to her feet Mercury appeared in front of her. He crouched next to where she sat, his knees brushed hers and his broad shoulders dominated her field of vision.
“No drugs.” His face was tight, leaving no room for discussion.
“Okay.” She touched his thigh, some instinct driving her to reassure him—and nodded through her frown. “Is there something else?”
His face softened. “No,
courra
. We’re used to pain. He’ll be okay.”
She scowled. “He doesn’t look okay.” Mercury’s thigh muscle hardened under her hand as he slipped one of his knees between hers. A move guaranteed to focus all of her attention on him.
“Leave him to me. We take care of our own.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, we’re back to that. I’m the outsider again.” She tried to move away, prepared for a good rant, but he gripped her hips and pinned her in place. He said nothing but the frustration still etched into the brackets around his mouth made it clear he had no interest in the fight she offered. It hit her then, the deliberate way he gently squeezed her hips and the measured distance, or lack of, he’d kept between them.
Samantha stroked along that tense thigh muscle under her hand. Was he feeling unsure of her because she’d ignored his offers of early morning sex? A part of her wanted to soothe away his concerns, but her head reminded her some distance might be called for.
“So what’s up with this low-sound?
“Our hearing is different from humans. We can hear in a wider range. Carn is hearing a low pulse.”
If quiet sounds made them ill, they’d all be sick all the time. “When you say low, you don’t mean not loud, do you?”
“No,” said Mercury. He tapped a spot near the bottom of his breastbone and growled out a bass note. “Low here.” His eyes shifted to Carn and back. “I think this one is like a small tap.” He lifted one had to brush a line down her nose then tapped three times lightly on her forehead. “Even a soft hit will cause pain over time.”
“And he’s been getting tapped since?”
“Since we arrived here.”
She turned to Carn. “Sorry to be talking about you like you aren’t here, but
stars
you big lug, shouldn’t you go lay down or something?”
He laughed. Carn laughed. The rich sound eased the tension that has been thick moments before. Without a word he got to his feet and headed toward the shelter.
Across the campsite, Lo leaned with his but against a boulder—half sitting, half standing. He looked fine. Tightly wound, but that was Lo.
Samantha squeezed Mercury’s thigh. “But you and Lo are okay?”
He nodded. “We aren’t all alike in our abilities…or physiology.”
His voice trailed off as if the uniqueness of their genetic make-up was disconcerting or maybe just a reminder of their genetically engineered status.
Samantha wrapped her hands around his jaw. “Maybe I should call you snowflake.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Well, I’ve only seen them once. They were beautiful. Millions of them. Ice crystals that fall from the sky. My father told me each flake of crystals is unique, but when you look at them together after they’ve fallen, they all make this uniform blanket of white that’s spectacular.”
Mercury kept silent, but his eyes had widened and they sparkled with wonder as he met hers.
“I hope I get to see them some day.” Lo’s voice drifted across the campsite like a lazy stroke. She looked up to see him staring at her as if she were the snow.
“Me too.” She smiled hesitantly at him before turning back to Mercury. “I think you’re talking about what I’d call low frequency or infrasound. You can make those kinds of sounds too, can’t you?”
He frowned.
“Back on the ship, I detected a low frequency sound coming from the cargo-hold.”
The wonder left his eyes and his checks flushed. She didn’t bother to tell him that she’d somehow felt it. That part still didn’t make sense. Sure she’d always been more sensitive to the vibrations ships made, but no way could she hear low frequency.
“Yes,” he said. We can make them and Lo and I can hear them, but Carn’s abilities in that area are much stronger.”
“So, what are we going to do about this?”
“I don’t know,
courra
. If it’s part of this world, what can we do about it?”
He’d only ever been on Roma before and inside a habitation-dome, so it shouldn’t have surprised her that he might think something like this was natural. “I suppose a planet could have a low frequency background noise for some reason, but you said it’s a steady tap. That doesn’t sound natural to me.”
“You said the planet was uninhabited.” Small frown lines creased Mercury’s forehead and his thigh muscle tensed beneath her hand.
“As far as I could tell. I didn’t see any sign of civilization. But somebody terraformed this world. That means someone was here at some point, even if it was just the terraforming crews.” He seemed to be following and his frown lines had started to disappear, so she didn’t stop to explain terraforming. “It could be some old piece of machinery causing the noise.”
“Something we could stop,” he said.
“Yes. And if Carn’s this sick after two days…”
A look passed between Mercury and Lo.
Mercury put a finger under her chin and his eyes locked on to her face. When he looked at her that way she had no idea what he saw. All she knew was that he wasn’t thinking of her as a hated human and it wasn’t lust either.
The moment stretched out until she had to fight not to lean into him.
Lo shifted and made a chuffing noise. “When do we leave?”
“Carn needs to sleep,” answered Mercury. “We should hide the supplies. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone or how long the whip-master will decide to wait before he comes looking.”
“You could travel faster without me.” Samantha did want Carn’s pain to stop as soon as possible, but she didn’t really want to stay behind.
“We stay together.” Mercury’s answer came quick as lightning. No hesitation. No indecision. “I have a feeling you’ll prove useful.”
She couldn’t help but grin. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
He looked skeptical. “Because you enjoy long hikes on unknown planets.”
“It might just be some wreckage or space junk, but if it is something left behind by the people who terraformed this place, it’s been here a long time. And the terraforming platform we ran into…it didn’t look like any design I’ve seen before. I’m curious as a sand-cat about who they are and why they’ve left this place to sit so long.”
He tapped her nose. “You do realize if we find it, we’ll be destroying it?”
“Yeah. Of course.” She sobered. “I don’t want Carn to suffer any more than you do.”
It hurt that he could doubt that. Setting them free may have earned her some acceptance, but that didn’t make her one of them and she needed to remember that. Right now they needed her. Maybe Mercury even wanted her. But things could change. She’d learned that the hard way. They were smart and strong and they had each other. When they adapted to their new-found freedom, got off the planet, they might not need her. When they had a choice, their gratitude wouldn’t bind them to her.
Samantha went through the supplies and pulled together what she thought would serve them best. She planned to distribute them between the packs they’d taken from the escape-pod. First, she distributed everything else among the indestructible, meter square cargo cases, making sure each case held a variety of supplies. That way, if some of the cases were discovered and stolen while they were gone they’d still have the things they might need. Mercury and Lo carried the cases into the woods in different directions while Samantha filled up their packs and turned off the cargo-drop’s beacon. There was no real way to hide the bulky drop, but they worked together to pull limbs over and around it to make it less visible.
Samantha used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe sweat from her face. “At least they won’t be able to spot it through the trees. They’ll have to stumble across it.”
Lo swept a small branch across the ground to scatter leaves and obscure the evidence of their efforts. “Even if they do, it will do them no good.”
Mercury lifted the packs and slung them over his shoulder. “It is better that they have fewer clues for finding our supplies or setting a trap.”
Lo growled softly in the back of his throat. “The whip-master would be a fool to try to take us now.”
“Yes,” agreed Mercury. “But we don’t know how long we’ll be gone from here. By the time we return others might have joined him and brought weapons. Never underestimate the opponent.”
Lo scowled, his lips pulled back to display his prominent canines. “You use his words?”
“He’s no fool and what he taught us is no less true now that we’re nearly free of the man. It would be senseless to set aside those teachings now.”
Lo humphed, transforming his face back to the less threatening Lo she’d been learning to appreciate. “True, but I don’t need his words from your mouth just now. Reminds me too much of how badly I want to rip out his throat.”
There was a brief moment of silence that made Samantha feel awkward and in the way. Mercury had to feel the same as Lo. Only he didn’t say it because she was there. There was something wrong in that, but she wasn’t sure exactly what. Did she think he was wrong to hate Drake? No. Drake deserved their hatred. Was it that she thought their easiness with the idea of killing made them evil? No, but she wasn’t exactly comfortable with it either. She knew she couldn’t expect them to think about things as she did.
Mercury’s breath on the back of her neck pulled her out of her thoughts and focused her attention on the shiver of pleasure that skated down her shoulders.
“You’re thinking too hard. Unless you are thinking of letting me pleasure you before we leave, it might be better to return to camp and help the others break down the shelter.”