Arrival (Planet of Last Resort #1)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

“ A lready done, doc, which is what inspired the trapped infected to make noise. I’ll rescue anyone we come across who wants to be rescued but it’s not looking good currently for finding uninfected survivors.” He opened the next door and made a gesture for her to precede him into the hallway beyond. “But what we did find is pretty exceptional.”

At the end of a short corridor there was an elaborate wooden double door with a burned out lock, which Jeff opened for her and Melly walked into what seemed like a dream. It was a gorgeous living room, with one whole wall consisting of floor to ceiling windows giving a spectacular view of the city. The furniture and objects of art scattered tastefully around made her feel as if she was in a trideo about homes of the generational billionaires and the art on the walls was undoubtedly priceless. A formal dining room was off to the left.

“Whoever lived here was way above my pay grade,” Jeff said as she stepped further inside, lost in her awe at the surroundings. “I’m sure the owners won’t mind if we use this as our safe harbor for the night.”

“How—how does this place have power?” she asked, realizing the lights were on.

“Not sure but my guess is the building has an emergency backup generator. The rich go to great lengths to avoid being inconvenienced.” As if he was a tour guide touting the amenities of a spa, he added, “Better yet, the water is running and there’s plenty of hot water if you want to grab a shower. Freshen up. Do what women do to feel better—you sure earned the downtime after today. No telling when you may get the chance again with the way things are on the planet.”

A little dazed at the change in his tone as well as the topic, she stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

Forehead furrowed in a frown, he said, “Doc, I promise you complete privacy. We put your things in the master bedroom and it has its own bathroom fit for a queen. The guys and I will bed down in the guest bedrooms. After you’re done we’ll take turn rinsing off in the other bathroom.”

Trent burst out of the kitchen with a small container in his hand. “This guy has real Terran coffee! Not the cheap synth stuff but real-from-Old-Earth coffee. More than one flavor. I’m so having a gallon of this.”

“Are we—are we safe enough for me to risk a shower?” she asked, realizing he’d misinterpreted her misgiving. She wasn’t worried about him or his men intruding on her privacy. “You’re sure there aren’t any infected in this penthouse or loose in the building?” The idea of being trapped in the shower by infected predators was horrifying. She wasn’t sure she could handle being so vulnerable, even with the soldiers right outside.

Jeff took her hand and drew her closer. “I give you my word we’ll be all right. We’ll keep a constant guard and an overwatch and at the first sign the infected might be threatening this building, we’ll be out of here. I do think we should avail ourselves of whatever amenities there are here while we can. Trust me, the owner isn’t going to show up and throw us out.”

“Or call the cops,” Trent added with a laugh.

“All right, you’ve convinced me.” She had all kinds of aches and pains from her fall earlier, not to mention the strenuous climbing and running she’d done and a hot shower would loosen up those muscles.

“The kitchen stasis keepers are full too,” Trent said. “Three of the biggest units I ever saw. It’s like a grocery store. We’ll eat well tonight.”

Leading her to the closest white leather couch, Jeff urged her to sit. “I’ll help you get the battle armor off.”

“I appreciate that, thanks.” She sat patiently while he activated the controls and the armor retracted, falling away from her body and morphing into small cubes on the carpet. “It’s amazing how comfortable those are. I forgot I was wearing it.”

“A full battlesuit can be pretty cumbersome,” he said with amusement. “We didn’t bring any of those.”

“What were you going to use it for on a ranch?” she asked. “Or all those drones Cody flies around?”

He hesitated for an instant and an odd expression flickered across his face but it was gone before Melly could be positive. “You know herd beasts wander, get lost, fences get broken…we planned to use the drones to keep an eye on the remote parts of the spread, once we got up and running.”

She noticed he avoided the battle armor part of her question but decided to let it go. “All right, lead me to this magnificent bedroom.”

He escorted her out of the living room, past a library and an office, and opened a door into a sumptuous bedroom fit for royalty. Melly walked into the center of the expensive carpet and spun in a lazy circle. “Who lives like this? I’m going to have to think of it as a hotel to make myself comfortable. It’s all too much.”

“Whatever you need, doc. I’m sure if whoever owned this condo knew we were here and why, they’d be fine about it. You going to be okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said, taking her backpack off and setting it on the pristine bed where the scruffy old thing looked so wrong she immediately moved it to the floor instead.

“I’ll leave you to it then. If you need anything, use the com.” He closed the door behind him.

Melly took a deep breath, fighting her unease about taking up residence in a total stranger’s apartment. A filthy rich total stranger. There hadn’t been any personal items or holos in the living room and as she glanced around the bedroom, there were none here either. She saw an ornate holo base across the room on the bureau and tried to resist the urge to go turn it on and see if there was a picture of the unwitting host. Taking her boots off required time and then she unholstered her blaster and laid it aside. After shrugging out of her jacket and sweater, she wandered barefoot on the plush carpet into the bathroom and paused in astonishment. The fixtures were glittering gold and the sinks and tub were obviously high end genuine marble. A luxury label refresher booth occupied one nook and a walk-in shower was next to it. The tub was a glorious huge expanse which cried out for a long luxurious bubble bath but Melly wasn’t in the mood for decadence today. She wanted to scrub off, feel clean again and rejoin her companions. Being alone was scary right now. As a compromise she decided on the shower.

The cabinets opened readily to her touch, revealing washcloths and towels thick enough to serve as bathmats and enough high end products to stock a boutique. She recognized the names but had never aspired to use anything but the cheap shampoo and other care items available in the hospital commissary. She’d had no budget for expensive designer branded goods.

Melly went to retrieve her toothbrush and hairbrush and paused once more, staring at the holo base. “Oh what the hell.” She stalked across the room and triggered the control. Immediately she wished she hadn’t. A smiling family of five sprang up in the holo field, two parents, two small boys and a baby girl, judging by the whimsical bow in her hair. Melly slammed the off button. “Maybe you weren’t even here,” she said fiercely. “Maybe this is a temporary residence when you’re in town.” After all, there’d been no personal items, much less signs of children or a baby in the rooms she’d seen so far. The condo appeared to have been freshly cleaned relatively recently and not touched since. “I hope you all got out of town safely,” she whispered as she finished undressing

As she padded into the bathroom, clutching her brushes, Melly had to work hard not to think about her own parents and her brother. She’d been keeping up a brave front for Jeff and the others, insisting her family had to be safe at home, but the scope of the disaster was plainly so huge, she had to admit they might not be, which sent a crushing pain through her chest.

Melly adjusted the water to the warmth she preferred and let the pulsating stream loosen the tension in her muscles. There were several large bruises coming up from where she’d fallen earlier. She washed her hair and conditioned it, taking Jeff’s words to heart that they had no idea when there might be another opportunity to enjoy a thorough shower. After bathing with a miracle soap so replenishing it left her skin silky, she leaned her head against the cool tile wall and sobbed, unable to hold back her emotions any longer. Ever since they’d set off across the landing field and the first horde of infected came after them she’d been bottling up the terror and grief deep inside and trying to get through the ordeal and on to the next challenge, trying to be as little trouble as possible for the soldiers. Surely they didn’t really welcome having to babysit a civilian in this dangerous new world they’d landed in, even if she was a doctor. All her skill and training were to no avail against the virus creating the infected.

Her knees buckled and she slid to the floor of the shower, weeping and abandoning the effort to hold herself together.

Jeff was growing concerned at how long Melly had been absent from the group. “I’m going to check on her, make sure she’s all right,” he said finally, finishing the last ounce or so of the excellent coffee and getting to his feet. “She took quite a fall there and we put her through a lot today.”

His soldiers held their tongues although he was sure the men had all kinds of razzing remarks they could have made. It was no doubt abundantly apparent to them how interested he was in Dr. Jericho, pretty much from the moment he’d arrived on the planet. As he walked down the hall, he wished these were normal times, when a man could flirt, invite a woman out to dinner, get to know her and then eventually wind up in the bedroom. Instead he had to rescue Melly from hordes of slavering infected and make her run for her life.

Not an auspicious start.

As he got closer to the bedroom he thought he heard weeping. Speeding up he rushed into the bedroom and then into the bathroom where he found Melly curled up in the shower, lost in tears, water pouring down on her. Grabbing one of the huge bath towels, he picked her up and wrapped her in the soft cotton, murmuring soothing comments as he did so. He carried her into the bedroom, choosing to sit in one of the big wingback chairs instead of on the bed and holding her in his lap.

He had no experience with weeping women but it tore at his heart to see her in such despair. “What’s the matter, doc? You can tell me—no judgment here. You’ve had a rough few days.”

She turned her tear-stained face to him. “I’m s-sorry. I don’t know what came over me but it just became too much. And then I couldn’t stop crying.”

“Doc, I totally get it. You’ve been under a huge strain and then today was a lot of pure adrenaline. You’re crashing and it’s perfectly natural. Hell, you should know the physiology involved better than I do—you’re the doctor here.” He made his voice teasing and got a small smile as a reward. Unable to resist, he lowered his face to hers and brushed a kiss across her lips. “You’ve done a great job so far, Dr. Jericho.”

She loosened the towel he had her wrapped in, flashing him a glimpse of her generous breasts and looped her arms around his neck, drawing him close for another, longer kiss. Her tongue traced the seam of his lips and he opened to give her the access she sought. His arousal lengthened and hardened as the woman he’d thought so much about for the past two days kissed him enthusiastically. The fact she was naked under the towel had him hot and hungry but he retained enough control to pull back. Smoothing her wet hair away from her face, he said softly, “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, it’s an emotional moment, lotta adrenaline surging…I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

Melly stared at him and Jeff was lost in the depths of her beautiful hazel eyes. “Would you have asked me out if there hadn’t been this whole infected outbreak situation?”

“Of course. Never doubt that for a moment. I wasn’t leaving the spaceport without your number. I would have followed up.”

“And we would have taken a while to get to this point, right?” She pulled at the hem of his tee shirt.

“You’re a woman to be wined and dined and carefully wooed,” he said, helping her remove the shirt, which was damp after rescuing her from the shower.

“I would have said yes, to the first date and all the others to follow,” she said, kissing his now bare chest and running her hand over his abs to dip below the belt, where his cock throbbed, aching for her touch. “Could we both die tomorrow if we get surrounded by the infected?”

“You know I’ll defend you to my last breath,” he said, having a little trouble breathing as she wrapped her hand around his shaft.

“But we could die, right?” Head tilted, she challenged him, holding him in a tight grip which made him want to grind himself against her. He used all his dwindling willpower to resist the urge.

“My men and I’ll work hard to be sure that doesn’t happen, I promise.”

“The point is, we don’t have time for all those societal niceties,” Melly said firmly. “Life could literally be too short. And I don’t think it’s ever going back to normal on Randal Four either in spite of all my protests to the contrary. And maybe no one answers the beacon you risked your life to turn on. I don’t want to die without having known you, Jeff Pearson, in the most intimate meaning of the word possible. We’re living on a speeded up timeline here with no guarantees.”

Unable to resist any longer, Jeff captured her lips in a crushing kiss, taking what he wanted, what she was offering. The towel fell away as he rose to his feet, Melly in his arms and strode to the bed, where he deposited her on top of the quilted comforter. She released him reluctantly as he took off his boots and then shed his pants and briefs. Jeff reflected how her examining him in a clinical mode to see if he’d been bitten or scratched by an infected and therefore going to die had been one thing although her hands on him had made it hard to keep his cock down. Melly watching him with eyes glistening, licking her lips as he bared his body for her in order to make love to her was quite another. Her gaze lingered on his shaft standing proud and ready so with a grin Jeff gave himself two strokes root to tip while she watched.

“Like what you see?”

“Absolutely.” She made a beckoning gesture. “Bring all that sexy male energy over here—you’re too far away.”

Coming over her on the bed, his cock beaded with precum, he marveled at how beautiful she was. Summoning discipline he was barely hanging onto, he said, “One last time, because after I’m inside you it’ll be too late to stop—you want this, right?”

Digging her fingers into his butt, she pulled him closer, his arousal cushioned by the vee of her thighs, so close to where he wanted to be. “I want you.” She curled her leg over his, opening herself to him. “I’ve had the inject and I’m clean, had a physical before I left the MidSectors.”

“I had a clean bill of health before we set out on this mission—uh, our retirement,” he said, sensation overwhelming him as the sensitive head of his manhood brushed against her soft folds. Lowering his head, he captured one of her tightly furled nipples in his mouth and suckled while she arched under him and made small sounds of satisfaction.

They were both too impatient to spend much time on foreplay or exploring each other’s bodies. In the back of his mind, the small number of cells thinking rather than feeling, he hoped they’d have a better opportunity for playfulness and exploration another day. Right now he wanted to make furious love to her and she gave every sign of wanting it hard and fast. She was undeniably ready, creaming for him. He slid into her, moaning with pleasure over how tightly her hot slick body held him. Melly met him move for move, her fingernails drawing light scratches on his back, not enough to hurt but spurring him on. He thrust in and out, going deep, going hard, and it was a challenge to keep himself from climaxing much too soon. He’d never been with a woman bareback before and Melly was everything he’d ever dreamed of having in a partner. She teased him with the things her body could do to his and it was with gratitude he realized her climax was imminent. The tensing and tremors he felt coursing through her body transmitted an unmistakable signal. He muffled her scream of ecstasy with an involved kiss, allowing himself to give in to his own powerful orgasm and they clung together through the intoxicating maelstrom of sensation.

When he finally raised himself onto his elbows, gazing at her flushed, happy face, Jeff said, “You’re an amazing woman, Melly Jericho. In all this chaos and danger, I was blessed by the Lords of Space to find you and I intend to protect you till my last breath.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said, kissing him lightly. “I want so much more for us, not just this although the sex was mind blowing, let me assure you. I never believed in instalove and maybe this—whatever is between us—isn’t at that level yet but I want us to have time together, the way we should have if the universe hadn’t become upended by a mystery virus.”

“I’ll do my best to give you what you’re asking for,” he said, recklessly promising a world of tomorrows he couldn’t ensure would occur. “I want the same.”

She fluttered one hand to her brow, pushing aside strands of loose hair. “I’ll be embarrassed to face your men after this.”

“Don’t be. They won’t say anything out of line. My team are good guys, respectful. They don’t begrudge me this and they like you, doc. They know how much I’ve been intrigued by you. It’ll be fine.” He wouldn’t deny the guys had razzed him out of her hearing but he was confident his comrades wouldn’t embarrass Melly.

“We—we’d better get dressed and rejoin them,” she said.

He rose and went to the bathroom to clean up, after which he brought her a warm washcloth to do the same. They dressed in silence, Melly pulling fresh clothing for herself from her backpack. When she was done and had brushed her hair, he held out his hand, which she took readily. “I think Cody was going to cook us a meal,” he said. “Guy has mad skills in the kitchen, coulda been a chef if he hadn’t wanted to be a badass Special Forces operator. There was plenty of food in the stasis keepers and we can’t be sure when we’ll get another hot meal.”

She hugged him. “Thank you.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” he joked.

Right before he opened the bedroom door he gave her another kiss, sweet and full of promise.

Melly clung to Jeff’s hand as she walked down the hallway and into the kitchen. Despite his reassurance, she expected the soldiers would say something. She didn’t regret their time together in the least and she was a grown woman after all, not a blushing teenager (never mind the flush in her cheeks right now). She’d never had a to face a group of people who probably heard what she and the captain had been doing in bed, immediately after the interlude ended. Melly was a private person by nature.

Cody was at the stove and the aroma of whatever he was cooking was enticing. Zach sat at the kitchen table, cleaning his blaster.

“Where’s Samms?” Jeff asked.

“Sacked out in one of the spare bedrooms,” Zach said, not diverting his attention from his task. “Trent is doing overwatch on the roof, per orders. No change in status although he thinks some of the infected are drifting away from the building.”

I’m back on the comlink now , Jeff said to the group, including Melly. “Dinner smells terrific, Cody. Much better than survival rations.”

“These people had all the spices and ingredients a chef could ask for,” Cody replied, stirring the mixture one more time. “We’re having an Azrigone beef roast as the main course. Gonna be hard to walk away from all this fresh food but we can’t take it with us.”

“I saw them,” Melly said, sinking into the nearest chair. “There was a holo base in the bedroom. Nice little family of five, including a baby. I wish I hadn’t been so curious.”

Jeff brought her a mug of the real Terran coffee. “Yeah, we wondered. One of the bedrooms was clearly shared by two kids and there’s a nursery. But you know there aren’t any signs of a rushed exit, no evidence anyone was sick here. The family might have made it out okay.”

Taking a sip of the rare beverage, she nodded. “I’m going to assume the best case possible.”

“We stay on this planet long enough, we’re going to see a lot worse sights,” Zach said, brow furrowed in a frown. “Just a fact, doc.”

“I’m grateful for this haven right now,” was her heart felt answer.

The group ate in the kitchen as no one wanted to venture into the formal dining room, using dishes which probably cost more than her medical school tuition. Melly and Zach loaded the dishes into the cleaner after the meal, including a dessert made up of five kinds of cake and pastry from the stasis keeper, was finished.

“You don’t have to do clean up, doc,” Jeff said, relaxed in his chair, savoring the last of his coffee. “No one’s coming back.”

“I know but I feel wrong not doing it.” She pushed her hair behind her ears. “Civilization’s norms haven’t faded for me yet. I want to be a good houseguest.”

“They ain’t gonna be inviting us to drop in again either way,” Zach said bluntly. After a glare from the captain, he added, “But you do you.”

“I intend to.” Melly had to live with herself and the world might be upside down right now but she wasn’t going to bed with dirty dishes here in the kitchen. Cody seemed to agree with her, having cleaned up his cooking utensils and the stove before leaving the room.

Leftovers were set aside for Trent when he finished his stint of guard duty on the roof and for Samms, who slept through the meal. Then they adjourned to the living room where the soldiers broke out a battered pack of cards and played hand after hand of poker for imaginary stakes. Melly wandered into the library, which held real books as well as holo discs, and picked a few to sample. She curled up in one of the big chairs in the living room and whiled away the day reading and listening to the soldiers talk. She took a nap in the midafternoon.

Her dreams were chaotic and she was in the midst of one where she was trapped in the spaceport terminal, trying to get to her family, who were on an upper balcony about to board a shuttle. In her dream the infected chased her, getting ever closer and she screamed and struck out as one touched her shoulder.