3. Chapter 3
Cooper was torn between the urge to apologize and gloat. He hadn’t realized the side effects of being released from the stasis blanket would be so pronounced, but he was gratified to be proven right after she discounted his warning. Since he couldn’t do either, he gave her the privacy to take care of what she needed while he changed his pants and cleaned off his boots.
He found himself amused at the fact that she mumbled to herself throughout the entire process. Her balance was still precarious because now and then she’d catch herself against the side of the truck and curse.
By the time he was done cleaning himself up, she had stopped cursing and he hoped she was feeling better. They weren’t far from his ship but it would be better if he didn’t have to wrap her in the blanket again. He came around the truck to find her leaning against the door, her uniform as neat as it could be in the circumstances and her hair cleaned up.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked.
“I am,” she said with a nod. “The world spins a little more than I’d like it to but it’s getting better so I assume it will stop soon.”
“It should,” Cooper said. “Honestly, I didn’t think it would be this much of a problem when I wrapped you up.”
“That blanket was designed for Chelions, right? Not humans? Unless you tried it out on a human first, you wouldn’t know how it would affect me.”
“It was designed for Dragor,” he said. “And adapted to Chelion and Ranel. There are modifications for each to avoid causing the problems you had. I should have known using it at max stasis for a Dragor would be dangerous for a human.”
“And now you know,” she said. “So obviously you’re not going to do the same thing you did last time.”
She was right but he didn’t think she’d care for the solution as much as she thought she might.
“You’re right,” he said. “Unfortunately, it limits my options a lot.”
“Oh? I’d think it would give you more options.”
“Are you willing to sit in the passenger seat and do nothing but talk until we reach my ship?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Are you a Marine who’s trained to fight, evade, and escape capture?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And what would you consider this? More to the point, what will your superiors think if you come along quietly? If I don’t treat you like a captive, that makes you AWOL rather than captured, right?”
“Technically, yes,” she said. “But since I don’t know where the fuck we are, it’s in my best interest to get somewhere I can call for help or resupply so I can be more sure of my escape.”
Cooper shook his head. “You’re still unsteady on your feet and I know you’ve been trained to fight while sick, tired, and injured. If you’re not running now, it’s just because you didn’t think you could get away before I caught up to you with the blanket and incapacitated you.”
“How much do you know about my training?” she asked.
“Not as much as I know about mine,” he answered. “But enough to know that I don’t want to be on the receiving end of your attempts at violence. I’d be forced to defend myself and we’d both be hurt.”
“My ‘attempts’ at violence?” Major Ozark asked, and he knew he’d said the wrong thing.
He opened his mouth to explain and she exploded at him in fury. His assessment of her steadiness had been accurate, and his body moved in ways she didn’t expect when he dodged her blows, but he didn’t want to hurt her and that was a disadvantage in this kind of fight.
Eventually, she landed an elbow strike to the side of his head that made his ears ring and knocked her on her ass. She curled up and grabbed her head while he blinked and waited for his vision to clear.
“What the fuck?” she demanded when she could talk.
“We must be unusually compatible,” Cooper told her. “It usually takes months for that kind of bond to form. I didn’t realize it was already there or I would have warned you about it.”
“What kind of bond?” she asked. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “When you triggered my secondary maturation, my brain started to bond with yours. If you’d disliked me as much as I thought you did, you would have fought the bond, and we wouldn’t now be sharing physical discomfort like this.”
“Secondary maturation? Are you saying this is some kind of psychic link because you, what, started puberty over again?”
Cooper sighed. “It’s complicated and I can explain it better when we get to my ship. If you can be patient that long, we’ll be there soon and I can help with your head. Deal?”
“Deal.”
He held out a hand to help her stand up and clamped down on the wave of dizziness that threatened to make him lose what little he’d eaten that day. “Can you walk?”
Marissa nodded then stilled. “I think I might have a concussion.”
“You might,” he allowed. “That was an excellent elbow-strike. But I think it’s mostly that you’re badly shielded and feeling some of my discomfort. I don’t know why, but it’s always the unpleasant physical stuff that’s shared first.”
“You’re going to explain that when we’re somewhere cool and dark,” she told him and he nodded.
“I’ll explain it whenever you’d like.”
He kept their pace slow and steady as they walked back to the truck and he couldn’t help but enjoy the way she held onto him. He wished it was for something besides the fact that she’d injured herself on his head, but he’d take what he could get for the moment.
Marissa screwed her face up before she sat in the passenger seat and the effort it took to get comfortable was palpable. Once she was buckled in, he draped the stasis blanket so it covered her chest and legs but it hung loose at the sides. That would keep her still and hopefully help with the pain, but left her arms and head loose.
The look she gave him when she realized she couldn’t move without effort made him grin.
“Comfortable?” he asked when he climbed into the driver’s seat.
The sound the engine made when he started it made him grit his teeth. They were long past the point of the fuel running out and he was going to be lucky if he didn’t burn out the engine before they reached his ship. As much as the additive stretched the fuel, it had its limits.
“Asshole,” she said through clenched teeth.
He nodded. “Yep, got it in one. Need to vomit?”
She swallowed and shook her head. “Not so far, no.”
“Good. We should be there soon so keep that up. No vomiting in the borrowed truck.”
“Stolen.”
“I’ll give it back. Eventually.”
“You know there’s tracking stuff all over this, right? And I had my cellphone on me. They’ll be able to track that, too.”
“No cellphone towers out here,” he said. “And I disabled the GPS before I borrowed the truck. Well, for definitions of disabled. It’s not in the truck anymore, so I figure that counts.”
She grumbled under her breath, and he grinned at her again.
“Do you want to know where I put it?”
He could tell she was torn between annoyance and curiosity. Eventually, curiosity won out and she rolled her eyes. “Alright, you obviously want to tell me, so where did you put it?”
“In the crate next to the one hiding the contraband cigarettes and alcohol. Not with them, that wouldn’t be sporting, but the one right next to them.”
Marissa laughed. “Yep, you’re definitely an asshole. Was it an empty crate, at least?”
“Nope!” he said and giggled. “That was the one with the Base Commander’s golf clubs. The ones that weren’t included in the allotted space for personal effects.”
The laughter that erupted from her warmed him to his core. It was one of his favorite sounds that humans made and hearing it coming from his mate because of something he’d done gave him a bigger sense of satisfaction than he’d ever gotten from his job.
“Not just an asshole,” Marissa said. “Actively evil.”
“I am not,” he protested. “Playful, mischievous maybe, but not actually evil.”
“I think you need a different name than Cooper,” she said.
“Oh? What do you think would work better?”
“Puck,” Marissa said and he could hear the laughter in her voice.
“I like it,” he said. “It sounds a lot like fuck and that’s my favorite human word. Especially the way you Marines use it. It’s like swearing becomes an art form and you’re determined to make it fit every position in a sentence.”
“Noun, verb, adjective, and everything in between,” she agreed.
“So, what does Puck mean? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used as a name before, but get the feeling I should have. Does it mean handsome and dashing man of adventure?”
“It’s a character from a play,” she said. “How do you know what Cooper means and not Puck?”
“It wasn’t in the baby name book I borrowed,” he said. “At least, it wasn’t in the first few lists that matched the name tags I had access to. What kind of play is he from?”
“A Shakespearean comedy.”
“Is that different from a romantic comedy? Or, um, a buddy comedy?”
“I think it was one of the original romantic comedies,” Marissa said. “Probably not the original-original one but the one that we have the best copy of. Puck is a fairy who causes problems because he thinks it’s funny and because his bosses ask him to. Everything works out in the end, though, and everybody falls in love.”
“I think I’d like this Puck,” Cooper said. “And he’s in a play? Is that like a movie?”
Cooper knew what a play was. In the six months he’d been on the planet, he’d spent his time scraping so much information from human minds that he knew bits and pieces about a wide variety of human subjects. Since he didn’t have to sleep as much as most humans, he’d done research when possible to fill in some gaps.
What he really wanted was for Marissa to keep talking to him. He liked the sound of her voice. He liked it even better when he could tell she was having fun. It had only been a few hours but he liked how her moods made him feel.