Chapter Six
The pillow was lumpy.
Rachel huffed out a breath and banged the back of her head into it, searching for a comfortable spot. Fatigue ate at her, a dog gnawing a well-chewed bone, and her head ached from lack of sleep. Moonlight filtered through the curtains in thin wisps, illuminating the rumpled sheets scarcely covering her bare legs, the closet door half ajar, the shorts she’d dropped on the floor after that blood-heating kiss.
That kiss.
She rolled over onto her stomach and thumped her face into the pillow for good measure. One kiss out of Dyuvad hadn’t been enough, more fool her. She’d asked for another and another, and danged if he hadn’t given her exactly what she’d wanted, exploring her mouth with his in a slow symphony of rising passion. Hours later, desire stung her skin still, pooling in her nethers in a delicious slide of wet heat.
She was half tempted to crawl out of her bed and into his, and wouldn’t that be a sight. He’d likely welcome her, given how hard his manhood had been against her sex when they’d cuddled together under the endless, star-filled sky.
Like teenagers out on their first romp.
And her a divorced woman with two young’uns asleep down the hallway. So there she’d stay in her bed, tempted as she was to sneak into his .
First thing she could get into town, though, she was getting new pillows and that was all there was to it. The way she and Dyuvad were going, they were gonna smooch again. Next time, she wanted a comfortable place to rest her head afterward, even if she didn’t get a wink of shut eye.
The front porch creaked and wind sighed around the house, wafting tea rose scented air into her room through the open window. Dew damp mornings on a long summer day. She sighed and relaxed into the bed, smiling at memories old and new. Her and Fate whittling fishing poles out of saplings and carting a pail of freshly dug night crawlers down to the creek. “Catch a mess for supper,” Mama would say, and catch them they would, along with every other critter daring to dip a toe into the clear, cold stream.
Had Dyuvad done the same when he was a kid, sneaking out of chores with a sturdy pole?
Maybe him and Fate could go together. Maybe—
A low curse drifted to her, two voices, both male, and her heart jumped into her throat. Lordy be, somebody was outside, a stranger probably. Who else would come a-calling at that time of day? Family would knock or, more likely, call first, seeing as how nothing but an emergency would drag them onto her porch at that ungodly hour.
But if not them, then who? A lost tourist, out too early for good sense on the local twisted roads? Kids out making mischief, thinking a single woman with two young daughters made a good target?
They were about to find out different.
Rachel eased her hand out, groping for the end of the aluminum baseball bat she’d stashed between her bed and the nightstand. Dang it all, she should’ve gotten the shotgun from Fate’s. A warning shot did a heck of a lot to scare folks off what weren’t supposed to be around, and if that didn’t work, a well-aimed blast of rock salt to the hind end usually did.
Footsteps scuffled on the porch and something crashed, breaking against the wood. A thwup rent the night air, oddly familiar, and Dyuvad said, “The next shot will be to your heart. ”
“Fuck it, man,” an accented voice said, and Rachel’s heart sank. Latinos, maybe members of Juan’s old gang, dang him. What the heck were they doing on her front porch?
“You have three ticks to make it to the road,” Dyuvad said. “One.”
Muttered curses broke out, followed by scrambling feet and another crash. Dyuvad calmly counted to three. Two thwups sounded, one right after the other, and a man screamed high and long. Dyuvad grunted, and before she could let go of the baseball bat, before she could collect herself and get out of bed, before she could do anything other than marvel at the bizarre events she’d just overheard, his hands parted her gauze curtains and his head popped into the dim light thrown by the crescent moon.
“Stay in bed, beauty,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’ll be back.”
He was gone in a flash. She let go of the bat, inhaled a shaky breath. Realized she was trembling from head to toe, and that wouldn’t do at all, would it? A mountain woman didn’t tremble in front of anybody but God. That’s the way it had been, was, and always would be. Besides, the girls needed checking on, and danged if Rachel would sit in bed while her renter handled clean up.
She sucked in another breath and got out of bed, not bothering to pull her shorts on over her undies. A few tiptoes later, she peeked in on Kelly, and melted. Her eldest was lying on her side facing the door. Tiny rested behind her, barely visible beyond her big sister. She must’ve snuck in during the middle of the night, abandoning her own room for her sister’s company.
Exactly the way it should be. What was childhood without late night gossip and early morning hijinks?
Rachel pulled the door almost shut and crept back to her own room. Lordy, what a night. Dinner with her favorite people, kisses touched by starlight, and trespassers. She peered blearily at her clock’s red digital numbers. Nearly three a.m., past time for sleep.
Dyuvad appeared in her doorway, startling her. “The property is secure. ”
She placed a hand over her thudding heart and plopped onto the edge of her bed. “I reckon I need to check on the damage.”
“In the morning.” He strolled in, one loose limbed stride at a time, his eyes on her bare legs and the stretch of pink panties barely visible in the darkened room beneath the hem of her t-shirt. “I’m sleeping in here for the rest of the night. Tomorrow, Fate and I are reopening the passage between your room and mine.”
Her head was shaking before he stopped talking, but he just grunted, set his odd-looking gun on the nightstand, and unbuttoned the waistband of his shorts. “Bed now, beauty. There is much to be done when we wake.”
And with that, he dropped his shorts and stepped out of them, more than six feet of solidly built man, gloriously nude from head to toe. Rachel’s breath clogged in her throat, and for the life of her, she couldn’t find a single way to tell him no . He crawled into bed behind her and tugged her down beside him, spooning her, and a minute later, his breaths eased against her neck, evening into those of deep sleep.
She stared at her closet, blinking gritty eyes against the darkness. Dyuvad was in her bed. He was in her bed naked , holding her as a lover did. For some reason, it tickled her funny bone good. She covered a giggle with her hand and relaxed, and let humor carry her into sleep.
A solid weight rested on Dyuvad’s upper abdomen. He pried one sleep-deprived eye open. Tiny’s smiling face swam into focus. She was straddling him, one chubby leg on either side of his torso, with the bedding bunched up between them.
He tucked an arm behind his head and grinned at her. “Myengen dun arig, Lady Bettina.”
“Mengen arig, Dooda.”
She patted his chest as she prattled on in Pruxn?, describing a trip they’d taken on his spaceship with Kelly and Rachel to Abyw .
Except she’d never been on his ship and wasn’t likely to ever be. Another curiosity to add to the growing collection, each a singular piece of the puzzle as to why he might be here protecting her.
Why was she so important to the Net telepaths? Earth was in the middle of nowhere, a virtual backwater planet. Humans here hadn’t even re-mastered space travel to any real degree. They hadn’t journeyed outside their own solar system, hadn’t established contact with any other space faring civilization, and they were too far from civilized space to reliably hook into the Net without help, let alone take advantage of its possibilities.
Rachel bounced into the doorway, already dressed for the day ahead, and skidded to a halt. Her smile faded into a blank stare. “Oh. You’re not up yet.”
He patted Tiny’s thigh and grinned at Rachel. “We were discussing travelling to my home.”
“You really understand her?”
Only when the toddler spoke his language or another he’d acquired. Rachel undoubtedly would not react well to learning that, and so, he held his tongue. He plucked Tiny off his chest and dropped her into the cushiony bed, goosing her ribs for good measure. She giggled and squirmed away from him off the bed, and away she went, half bouncing, half running past her mother into the house at large.
Dyuvad patted the mattress beside his hip. “There’s time yet before breakfast. Come to bed and kiss me.”
Her cheeks flared bright red. “Dyuvad!” she hissed. “The girls are right down the hallway.”
“Shut the door.”
“I am not shutting the door,” she gritted out. “It was bad enough you slept with me last night—”
“The first of many.”
“—and Tiny caught you in my bed, and now you want to…” She stopped in mid tirade, blinking at him. “What was that?”
“It was the first night of many.” And she wasn’t coming back to bed. Stubborn woman. He sat up, flung the sheet aside, and stood. There’d be time for romance later, when he could corner her again as he had early that morning after shooing off their trespassers. In the meantime, he had work to do, starting with undoing the damage those trespassers had inflicted on Rachel’s property. “You should’ve awakened me when you arose.”
“Oh. Well. Ha.” She cleared her throat and fixed her gaze on the far wall, well away from his nude body. “I figured you could use a minute or two more sleep, seeing as how you were up in the middle of the night.”
“As were you, beauty.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t the one doing the chasing and shooting. And I really appreciate that, by the way. Don’t know what me and the girls would’ve done if you hadn’t been here.”
He shoved his legs into his shorts and yanked them on. “It’s what I’m here for.”
One corner of her mouth turned down. “Is it really?”
“Have I not said so?” He zipped the shorts and, without bothering to button them, strode across the room and hauled her against him. “On Abyw, a woman greets her man with a kiss.”
“On where?”
He nearly cursed the slip. She was too easy to be around, too comfortable. He’d have to watch that, unless he wanted to panic her with the truth. “My home,” he said simply, and buried his face in her throat, breathing in her warm scent. “From now on, you will never leave my bed without kissing me.”
She sputtered out a laugh and thwacked a hand into his side. “There will be no more bed sharing, Dyuvad.”
Yes, there would be, as soon as he could manage it again. He nipped her throat, smirked when she sucked in a sharp breath and melted against him. His beauty was ripe for the pleasure he could give her, but there was time yet for that, when he’d done what he’d come here to do.
When he’d wooed Rachel as a man should.
He let her go and followed her into the kitchen, smug over her dazed expression and not quite steady progress through her home. Kelly and Tiny were sitting at the kitchen table, huddled together over one of Kelly’s books about space. Kelly’s quiet voice filled the room as she read the text out loud to her sister.
She stopped abruptly when he and Rachel entered, and grinned, her brown eyes dancing. “We got too much to do to lay in bed all day, lazy bones.”
Rachel gasped, but Dyuvad laughed. He tousled the girl’s hair, earning another mischievous grin, and dropped into a chair beside her. “Hold your tongue, little one, else I won’t talk your mother into taking us to the lake this week.”
Kelly’s eyes widened and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You reckon she’ll really let us go?”
“I can hear you,” Rachel said drily from her station at the stove.
Dyuvad waggled his eyebrows at Kelly and lowered his voice likewise. “Maybe if we work really hard, she’ll take us. What do you think?”
“Still listening,” Rachel sang out, and Kelly giggled and rocked back and forth in her chair.
Fate arrived ten minutes later, just as Rachel turned the eye off under the heaping pan of meat and vegetable laced scrambled eggs she’d made. He sat down next to Dyuvad, his narrow face set in firm, unhappy lines. “Rach called me earlier, told me about you know what . Me and you need to have a little talk later, ol’ son. Get this mess straightened out, you hear?”
Dyuvad caught the glance Rachel slid his way and understood exactly. “When the girls nap this afternoon.”
Fate nodded and leaned his chair back, balancing it on two legs with his hands sprawled out across the worn denim covering his lean thighs. “I got some ideas.”
“As do I.”
Rachel smacked a plate onto the counter. “This is still my home.”
But the determined gleam in Fate’s eyes matched Dyuvad’s will. A man took care of his own, no matter what part of the galaxy he hailed from, even when his own was a stubborn Earthling with enough gumption to fill a universe .
The chance for a man to man talk came sooner than either had anticipated. Rachel kept the girls busy in the back of the house with the goats and the garden while Fate and Dyuvad attempted to clean sprayed paint off the front of the house.
Dyuvad hadn’t taken the time to translate the partial word scrawled across the front door after chasing the intruders off, but now that he had, a slow burn roiled in his gut. What kind of men thought it acceptable to vandalize a woman’s home with a derogatory term? Thank Fryw his alarms had gone off the moment the aggressors had set foot on Rachel’s property, else they may have had time to complete their profanity laden task.
Fate clucked his tongue as he backed screws out of hinges. “Good thing you was here to scare them bastards off.”
Dyuvad held the open front door still, out of the way of Fate’s work. “Rachel could’ve handled them on her own.”
“Maybe. Glad she didn’t have to.”
Dyuvad grunted an agreement.
“Heard you wound up inside the house after,” Fate continued.
“Seemed like the best place to watch over everyone,” Dyuvad said mildly. “You have ideas on how to handle this situation?”
Fate cut a side-eyed glance at him, his grin a little too knowing. “Which situation you talking about? The fact that them hombres is messing with my sister or the fact that you are?”
Dyuvad ground his teeth together. Damned if he’d apologize for winding up in Rachel’s bed, holding her through the rest of the night. He’d enjoyed it and so had she. As long as they were both in accord, what business was it of anyone else? “I’m not messing with her. Now, can we please discuss a strategy for dealing with these winyu runners?”
“Eh, what’s a winyu runner?”
Dyuvad stifled a wince. Two slips in one day. If he stayed around much longer, he was likely to give away every secret he’d ever held. “A hoodlum.”
“If you say so.” Fate twisted the last screw out and dropped it into his pocket. “I was thinking if things got much worse, we orta hit the source at home. Take off the head, so to speak.”
“Eliminate Miguel Ramirez.”
“That’d be the one. I reckon a little mischief ain’t worth the trouble, but if things this time get as bad as the last…”
“We will not let it go that far.”
“Damn straight.”
Together, they wiggled the door off the frame and hauled it outside, and in spite of Fate’s good-natured needling, he and Dyuvad fell into the easy banter exchanged between two men of like mind and purpose, easing away Dyuvad’s anger over what had happened to Rachel. They formulated a loose plan over a long day of repairs and routine maintenance, in between a midday meal and interruptions by the womenfolk, and agreed to keep it to themselves.
“Rach’ll have a fit if she finds out,” Fate cautioned sotto voce.
From what Dyuvad knew of his landlady, he figured her brother had Rachel’s reaction pegged.
She did seem suspicious. From time to time, she settled a level gaze on first Fate, then Dyuvad, but she said nothing about the vandalism or Ramirez.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t thinking about it. Dyuvad might not have spent a lot of time around women, but he’d learned enough observing his female kin to be certain of that. Rachel was biding her time, waiting for the right moment to ferret his and Fate’s plans out of one of them.
Dyuvad had revealed as many secrets as he intended to, at least until he gained her trust.
Or until he completed his ‘path directed errand on Earth and was free to court Rachel as a man should, tucked safely onto his ship on their way to the Choosing.
He grinned and threw himself into work, his mind on the many possibilities presented by the tantalizing image of Rachel tied to his shipboard bed.