Chapter Twelve
“Good girl,” Connor murmured when he’d pulled up the graph for Belle’s monitor, feeling his pulse leap as he scanned it. She was going to be at peak just in time for shift change on the Artemis and she hadn’t been on rotation since they’d left it in orbit.
The timing was as near perfect as he could have hoped for.
And there would be plenty of opportunity and both the possibility for privacy and comfort to pursue it.
Just to be on the safe side, he silenced the alert on her monitor so she wouldn’t know when she hit the peak.
There was still a chance that she might actually check, but, in a general way, she tended to be pretty focused on her tasks and absentminded about things extraneous to what she was doing at any given time.
The urge to find her immediately and inform her that she was on rotation on the Artemis for the week hit him as soon as he left his office. He checked as soon as he’d left the admin hab, however, remembering she’d gone out with a group that was being taught gathering by some of the Izun.
Lifting his head at that thought, he checked the sun’s position and decided it was far enough down the sky that the group might already have returned.
They generally gathered to eat the evening meal before dark to conserve on energy usage.
He debated briefly, but he didn’t want to take a chance that she would be off doing something else when he rounded up the people he was taking to the ship.
He couldn’t decide whether it was a good thing or a very, very bad thing that he decided to look, because he had just reached the gate and stepped through when movement caught his attention and he instinctively followed the movement with his gaze.
So he saw when Ryne landed and settled Belle gently to her feet on the ground.
It made it worse that his first thought was that she’d been hurt and alarm shot through him in a knee weakening surge … before he saw the way Ryne touched her as she slowly removed her arms from around his neck.
He found himself striding toward them with no clear idea of his intentions, struggling to beat back the pure rage threatening to take hold of him, telling himself there was no surer way to lose her to the son-of-a-bitch than to give vent to the sickening wave of jealousy that enveloped him.
He thought he might have ignored the voice of reason if Belle hadn’t turned to look at him just then.
Her eyes rounded like saucers. He could see the whites all the way around her pupils.
The blood drained from her face until she looked like death and then surged back in a painful, blistering red tide.
It stopped him in his tracks--almost like he’d hit a wall.
The wave of nausea that hit him that time was more like the horrible sense of stepping off into open space when you were a mile from the ground.
Dizzy from the abrupt descent, he planted his hands on his hips, struggling to bring his respiration and his seesawing emotions under control, watching them as they moved slowly toward him.
Ryne.
Belle looked like she wanted to run … the other way.
Since he was standing between her and the gate, though, she scurried in his direction--then around him--and dashed through the gate as if she more than half expected him to give chase.
The expression on Ryne’s face broke his control. Uttering a roar of pure fury, he slung his fist at the bastard’s smug face, focused on crushing it into something unrecognizable.
Security arrived before they’d run out of energy trying to pulverize one another.
Once they’d surrounded the battling titans, they held back indecisively .
They couldn’t decide what to do since one of the antagonists was their commanding officer.
Finally, his second lifted his gun, checked the setting to make sure it was a weak stun, and lit both of them up.
The men surged forward and cuffed both of the fighters while they were still twitching with the current running through their nervous system.
Then they hauled both of them up and inside and half carried, half dragged them to the detention center.
* * * *
Belle was in a lighthearted mood when she left the commissary after she’d eaten breakfast. She’d been picked, again, to go with a group who was learning how and what to gather from nature to eat.
She had enjoyed the first excursion.
It was just so amazing and gratifying to walk out into a wilderness and find food.
Of course, there was everything out there. Some were delicious to eat, some poison, some not so enjoyable but still filling and nutritious and there were wild herbs, as well, to season the food that had little taste of its own.
There was even some vegetation that could be used for medicine.
Not that they had need of that. At least, not at the moment. They had the Artemis and everything they’d needed during their travels had been produced on the ship. But there was the future to be considered.
The child she hoped to have would need things.
Not that she could truly envision that, even though she’d made the appointment.
She thought that was a good bit of her happiness, though, and the sense of peace.
She’d considered it carefully. She’d made a decision and, for once, it seemed everyone had accepted it and she wouldn’t have to defend her choice.
Of course, she hadn’t actually informed anyone … yet. She did tell Ryne and Torr that she had chosen the site for her hab and they hadn’t gotten angry with her or tried to talk her out of it, tried to make her see their side of the situation.
They accepted it.
Not that she understood why they had when they’d seemed set on taking her as a mate.
At least … that had been her understanding.
So maybe she was wrong to begin with? She’d misunderstood? And there had never actually been a threat in that direction? That they might … convince her to yield her desires in order to please them?
It seemed likely she’d just misunderstood.
Otherwise they would’ve been upset with her, she thought.
And she was glad they weren’t.
It would’ve been … uncomfortable being mentored by them on the ways of their people, their understanding of the flora and fauna of their world, if they disliked her because she’d decided she … was just scared of the idea of going off to live with alien people on an alien world.
Not that she didn’t think they were just extraordinary in every way--amazingly kind and polite and patient.
But of course, this situation was about teaching the Earth people to get along in the wilderness so that they wouldn’t create problems for the indigenous people.
And everyone on both sides, she was sure, was on their best behavior to make a good impression.
It was nothing like living with someone.
And they wouldn’t live in the colony with Earth people--which was sort of a shame because she didn’t think she would be afraid of the idea if she could still be around things and people familiar.
She really didn’t do well with changes. Especially drastic changes.
It unsettled her to a degree that made it impossible for her to relax and attain anything approaching tranquility.
So even though she’d begun to feel fond of Ryne and Torr--not just bowled over by how truly phenomenal they were ….
Well actually because she’d begun to feel fond she had to face the facts--and the fact was that she was not the woman for them.
They needed someone who could really handle anything with aplomb, not somebody that was going to freeze up, freak out, or fall apart at any time something she wasn’t used to popped up. She would make them miserable, she knew, and that just wasn’t right.
And then of course, she would just be crazy about them and crushed when they took her back and dumped her.
Because they would. She knew they would.
It was like …. Connor had just ignored her practically her whole life. Never knew she existed and now all of a sudden he was making her life so complicated and unsettling.
And really just wrecking her peace.
She knew it meant nothing to him. He wasn’t really interested. He was a total magnet for the female of the species.
He’d probably just finally realized he’d missed her when he was making the rounds ….
She was so deeply into her internal self annihilation that she nearly jumped out of her skin when Ryne abruptly appeared, knelt right beside her when she hadn’t even heard his approach, and grasped her hands. “What do, luv? You ok?”
Belle blinked at him and then looked down at her collecting basket and discovered she’d filled it so full everything was falling out and she’d just been scooping it up and putting it back in again--on autopilot--and still looking around for more to put in it.
“Oh. Uh … Well! Do you think this is enough?” she asked, trying hard not to blush with discomfort.
Ryne smiled at her with an effort, trying to decide why she was so uneasy and distracted, and if that was something he needed to be worried about.
“Dis good.” He jerked his head at Torr and Torr moved closer, dropped to his knees, and scooped up the roots she’d gathered, stuffing them into a satchel he was carrying on a strap across his shoulder.
Ryne helped her to her feet while Torr was stowing her collection. “Hab some ting show you. You come see?”
Belle smiled up at him a little absently. “Sure!” she said agreeably.
“Is liddle way. I take you. Keep safe. No be scare.”
Confusion flickered through Belle. She looked around, discovering in the process that she couldn’t see anyone else nearby. “Where is everybody?” she asked blankly.
“Move down by water,” Torr responded. “Dey fine water plant.”
“Oh. I must have been off in my own little world,” Belle responded with depreciating amusement. “I didn’t notice.”
Ryne moved closer to her, lifted one hand and lightly touched her cheek. “Put arms round my shoulders.”
Disconcerted, Belle sucked in a breath of surprise.
“I take up.”
“Oh?” Belle responded a little doubtfully. “It’s up high?”
“Yes.” He took her hands and coiled her arms around his neck, then he instructed her to lift her legs, helped her wrap her legs around his waist. Then he cinched her tightly against his length, ran a couple of steps and leapt upward, lifting his wings, spreading them wide, and then pushing them down toward the ground to lift them higher from the surface.
“Uh oh,” Belle said more than a little uneasily.
Even she wasn’t certain, though, whether she was more alarmed about what felt to her like a struggle to get into the air or the fact that he meant to take her up at all.
She tightened everything coiled around him as tightly as she could the moment she felt her weight shifting and thought he might drop her.
Or fall with her and break her something when he landed on her.
He was a big man.
She didn’t think she’d ever properly appreciated just how big until she tried wrapping herself around him and discovered it was hard even to get her legs around his waist when he had a trim waist--comparatively speaking--to himself.
It was almost as hard to reach his neck to get a tight grip with her arms--because his torso was longer than she’d thought--and her arms shorter.
It was weird that she had only to measure herself against him to abruptly have a totally different perspective of his size.
Very quickly, though, she began to get the feeling that he’d flown up really high and that redirected her focus to the height.
She wasn’t certain how she got that feeling, because she’d squeezed her eyes tightly shut and she couldn’t bring herself to look, but she did have that feeling and she felt her jaw cramp with tension and then her muscles began to shimmy and pretty soon her teeth were trying to clack together.
It seemed she was fighting dread for a very, very long time before it filtered into her panicked mind that she felt like they were going down. She unclenched her teeth. “Are we almost there?” she asked hopefully, her voice vibrating with the tremors running through her.
Ryne dipped his head to brush his cheek against hers. “Yes, lub. I take care. No let my baby be hurt, ok?”
His reassurance was surprisingly soothing to her frazzled nerves.
Either that or it was the fact that she felt the impact as he landed and heard an echo of something solid when he settled.
“Is ok look now,” he said in a crooning voice, stroking his big hands over her back.
It took an effort to loosen her frantic hold on him, but she mentally forced the tension down and lifted her head, glancing around.
Surprise flickered through her when she discovered they were inside … something. It was dim inside, but there was enough light filtering in that it took no more than a moment for her vision to adjust. “What is this place?” she whispered.
He seemed in no great hurry to set her down, but when she’d loosened her hold and begun to look around, he lowered her carefully, waited until she was balanced and then released her.
“Was ting where Izun peoples make tings … long time ago. A little … broke. But still … solid. Me and Torr make better.”
Belle met his gaze for a long moment when she’d looked around and seen that there was a large pallet in one corner and unidentifiable odds and ends stacked around the perimeter of the wall. Even a couple of things that looked like it might be furniture of some kind. Or had been.
She stepped away from him and moved toward what appeared to be a window, covered with something that let light in--fabric of some kind?
Torr followed her and lifted the edges back to expose a window …
. A hole where one had been. And she discovered they weren’t on the ground at all.
They were several stories above the ground.
“Izun people?” She turned to look at him. “Your people?”
He frowned. “Before sky people come and destroy. Long time ago … now. Is still solid. Would be shelter for little while. Den we build better some ting for live.”
Belle stared at him, mentally translating that speech, but more than half her mind was caught up in the questions that arose from the discovery. And the realization that she was right when she’d thought they were not primitives but survivors of something horrific that had happened on their world.
“You and Torr don’t live here now?”
He frowned and flicked a look at Torr. “Camp close to Ert colony. So be close Belle. Get to know … so make feel safe … trust.”
Belle felt the sudden urge to cry. She wasn’t even sure of where it had come from or why.
Maybe because she felt so bad that she’d thought of them as primitives--for far more than a handful of moments.
Even though she’d also thought they were …
just extraordinary beings. But she knew it was prejudice and it had been lurking somewhere in her head that they were just … inferior to humans.
Shame.
That was a big part of it, she knew.
And maybe why she didn’t even flinch when he abruptly surged toward her and gathered her close, pressing her tightly against his length with shaking hands.
Then he shifted away just enough to capture her head between two hands that were so enormous they locked around her skull and dragged her up to meet his descent.
She was still frozen in those moments with indecision.
But his hard mouth softened and melded to hers in gentle suction and his essence flowed into her like a scalding tide and lit up everything between her lips and her she-cave … And that immediately began to clamor for the hard log of flesh digging into her belly.
As limited as her actual experience was with anything even remotely sexual, the link was so instantaneous and potent there would’ve been no denying it if she’d been inclined.
She didn’t know if she was inclined or not, though, because her brain short circuited almost the instant his lips engulfed hers and he thrust his tongue into her mouth and stirred it, sending jolts through her in every direction--as if he’d tied in to her nervous system.