Chapter 6
Velda woke up stiff but actually quite cozy.
The sleeping bag was warm and she snuggled a bit deeper, watching Ethan build the fire back up.
She realized him moving around had woken her, and he seemed to realize she was watching him, because his gaze locked onto hers.
“Sorry,” he said. “We need to get going.”
She sighed and wriggled out of the bag, rolling it up tight and setting it aside before she went off to the stream. She took the pot with her and came back with water to boil.
They moved together quietly, making jah and heating breakfast, then tidying up the overhang so there was almost no sign of their presence.
“A good tracker will know we’ve been here, but that can’t be helped.” Ethan studied their little camp site.
He handed her a pack, which looked a lot lighter than his one.
They both also had their personal bags to carry.
She guessed he’d just give her the look he’d given her in Nanganya if she tried to persuade him to give her an equal turn with the heavier pack. And what the heck, he was clearly much bigger and stronger than she was.
“Those mountains look pretty high,” she said, staring at them, hands on hips.
“We’ll go through the valleys between them, not over them,” Ethan said. “It isn’t as bad as it looks.”
She shot him a disbelieving look and he smiled at her, his face much lighter than it had been last night.
His coloring was the opposite to her own, his hair light to her dark, his eyes blue to her dark brown. He looked gilded in the morning sun.
He suddenly turned, the movement quick and somehow dangerous, and he tilted his head. “Something’s coming,” he said. “We’ve run out of time.”
He started walking and she fell into step behind him, and as they got into the trees she heard the sound of a hover coming down the valley.
Rescue was half an hour away if they wanted it, but Ethan was right, the ship that had downed them might try again, and she didn’t want to risk her and Ethan’s lives, as well as the lives of their rescuers.
Not when the stakes were this high.
If it was a rescue team they could hear, and not their enemies, it would take them time to find the hover, work out she and Ethan weren’t in it, and then start to look for them, and given the pace Ethan was setting, they would leave them far behind.
They stopped for a break and something to eat and drink near midday, and Velda realized she was more out of shape than she thought she was.
She hadn’t dropped into a basic training camp for nearly six months, and it showed.
She leaned back against the damp rock beside the waterfall Ethan had led them to and closed her eyes, worried that if she sat down, she might have trouble standing again.
“Water,” Ethan said, and she opened her eyes and found him right in front of her, holding out a water bottle.
“Thanks.” She took it, sipping slowly, and watched him crouch down and light the small portable heater from the hover’s emergency stash and prepare them lunch.
It was nice here, she realized. The sound of birds, the splash of the waterfall, and the warmth of the sun in the little clearing.
Ethan Hyt looked up at her and their eyes met for a moment.
She froze in place, because there was a flare of heat there that she could not pretend she hadn’t seen.
She had sensed . . . something from him before. She’d been unsure if she was reading him right or if it was just wishful thinking on her part, because she had liked the look of Ethan Hyt since the day she’d met him.
There was a crash in the bush, and it broke the tension of the moment.
Ethan turned and rose to his feet, looking toward the sound.
“An animal?” she asked.
“Probably a granib. They’re common here.”
Granibs were small mammals with delicate hooves and tiny horns, as cute as cute could be, and Velda wished it had shown itself—she had always wanted to see one in the wild.
Ethan took the meals off the heat in exchange for a pot of water, and Velda forced her legs to move.
She carefully lowered herself down on a rock to sit, and Ethan shot her a quick grin.
“Stiff?”
“Barely mobile,” she agreed. “Whereas you look like you’re unaffected.”
“I train every day,” he said, giving a shrug. “You kept up well enough.”
She peeled the top off her meal and focused on it for a bit, then considered offering to make the jah, before she realized that wasn’t going to happen without a lot of groaning, so she let Ethan do that, too.
They drank it in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes.
“How long do you think they’ll look for us along the river?” Velda asked, suddenly desperate to fill in the silence.
“A while,” Ethan said. “They’ll assume we want to be found, and it will take them time to work out we’ve deliberately vanished.”
She wondered if anyone would work out the reason for that. They hadn’t heard or seen any sign of the rescue party since they’d made it into the forest, but sooner or later, someone would begin to look further afield.
She forced herself to her feet and helped Ethan clean up, then let him lead the way again.
The rest and food had given her the boost she needed, and the way he took them wasn’t as steep from here, as they dipped into a deep valley between two mountains.
By the late afternoon, though, it got harder. Things got dark quickly in the lee of the mountain, and the cliffs cast long, dark shadows across their path.
The next time they heard water, Ethan took them down a gentle slope toward it, and while there was no pool or waterfall here, the river was wide and deep—good enough to clean up in—and there was a flat area of ground up against the same slope with a scoop out of it that was almost a cave.
It looked as if the river had flooded at some point and burrowed into the hill and it would make a decent camp, with some overhead cover for a fire.
“Happy?” he asked.
“If you’d told me we could stop walking, I’d be happy. This looks like luxury.” She set her bags down with a groan of relief, and started taking off her clothes.
“What are you doing?” He had always controlled his expressions around her, but now he looked shocked.
“I’m getting out of my clothes so I can jump in that river before it gets too dark and cold,” she told him. They were Aponi, after all. Going naked was not that scandalous.
“I’ll get a fire going, and then join you,” he said, and she decided that she wasn’t going to feel guilty about not helping him, because as he said, he trained every day.
She was the amateur.
She was glad she’d made it without slowing him down too much. Or maybe she had, and he was just too polite to tell her.
When she was naked, she took her personal pack with her to the river bank and left it on a rock near the water, then gingerly slid in. Her gasp had Ethan glancing over at her, and she looked at him over her bare shoulder. “Cold,” she said.
Then she forced herself to go all the way in.
She loosened the tie in her hair and then ducked down, scrubbing at her scalp.
The mountain water was freezing, but the weightless sensation was heaven.
The river cradled her, after a day with a heavy pack and a long walk.
She moved to her pack and lifted out of the water a little, getting soap and shampoo, and after she was clean, she turned to the bank to find Ethan sliding into the water with her, a fire crackling behind him.
“Thank you.” She shivered in the water, glad there was a warm fire to go to when she got out.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Yes, but it’s still lovely.” She sighed and sank down to her shoulders, letting her hands take her weight on the river floor so her legs could float in front of her.
Ethan had brought a change of clothes and his own soap down to the water, and she let her eyes flutter closed to give him some privacy.
Something nudged her arm, and she forced herself to look down, and then, with a shriek, leapt to her feet. “Thing,” she gasped, pointing as it swam away.
“Fish?” he asked, and when she turned to him, she saw his eyes crinkled in amusement.
“Very ugly, for a fish,” she said, and shivered, suddenly cold now she was wet and in the evening air.
“Fuck it,” he said, and stepped up to her, lifted her out of the river and onto the bank.
She stood, astonished, as he pulled a thin, quick drying towel around her shoulders and hauled her close.
She grabbed the ends and put her hands around his neck, encasing them together in the warm cocoon. “Couldn’t resist me anymore, huh?” she asked.
“No, I couldn’t.” His hands were warm as they rested on the small of her back. “I was waiting for your contract to end, but then you got into a river naked with me.”
“You got in the river naked with me,” she corrected. “I was in there first.”
He laughed.
Threw his head back and laughed.
Then he bent his head and kissed her.