THE OFF WORLD COLLECTION (Short, Steamy Science Fiction Romances) (Off-World Series) (10 page)

“Yeah.”

“Let me help you.” She pulled out one of the chairs. “Sit down.”

He sat and she moved to his left side, easing the shirt off his shoulder and down his arm. He gritted his teeth and tried not to curse again when she worked the charred fabric off mangled flesh.

The other side was easier, and he was soon sitting at the table naked to the waist, conscious of her gaze on him.

“The med kit’s in the storage bay. The double doors in back of me.”

She retrieved the plastic box and set it on the table, then looked inside and found sterile wipes, antiseptic salve and bandages.

“Can you turn a little?”

He swiveled in his seat so that the overhead light was shining more directly on the wound. She leaned over him, her breasts close to his face, her scent filling his nostrils.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“You lucked out. The beam grazed you.”

“Uh huh.”

She worked on the wound, her touch gentle and sure as she used a wipe to clean the area, then soothed on salve with another pad before pressing on a bandage. He knew that she wasn’t afraid to deal with an injury, but his mind wandered from her practical skills. They were close to each other, even closer than they’d been in the hauler, and he felt the tension between them.

“Thanks.”

“I’m glad I was here to tend to it.”

oOo

The man sitting beside Beka was half naked, and she tried not to stare at his broad chest and hard muscles. His skin was tanned, telling her that he must go shirtless on hot days when he was working outside.

He was attractive in a rough kind of way. Not just physically. She liked a lot of the choices he’d made. From her brief view of his farmstead, she could tell he was a hard worker, determined to succeed in this wide-open environment, and he’d taught himself the skills he needed to do it.

He’d taken a risk, rescuing her back at the spaceport. What kind of risks would he take now?

She swallowed, struggling not to react to him or to the intimacy of the moment. She had agreed to come to this isolated homestead. He’d said there was a
comms unit she could use if she got into trouble. But what if the trouble came from her own husband? Would anybody respond to that?

Probably not. She couldn’t stop her thoughts from circling back to her initial fears that he could do anything he wanted to her. On the other hand, she thought from the way he was acting that he was jittery about being thrown together with a wife he had met only a couple of hours earlier. That could be an advantage for her.

But now there was something she’d better say before they got much farther into the physical part of the relationship. And maybe that was a sort of test. Was he going to get angry when he got the bad news?

She cleared her throat. “You’re probably expecting . . .”

When he said nothing, she said, “I have to tell you something.”

She saw him tense. “What?”

“I’m having my period.”

Several seconds passed before he said, “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

Chapter Three

By the powers, she’d hoped he’d know what it meant. But then she reminded herself that up until the past few months, all the colonists sent to Palomar had been men. She hadn’t considered the full implications of that fact until this moment.

Now what was she supposed to do? All sorts of explanations leaped into her mind, all of them making assumptions about his knowledge of basic biology and sexual relations.

She felt her face grow hot as she tried to decide where to start and heard herself blurting, “Do you know where babies come from?”

Now his face flushed. “I told you I have livestock out in the barn,” he snapped. “Of course I know.”

“Uh—female animals go into heat. And uh, when they do, they’re receptive to the males.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not exactly like that with women. They can get pregnant any time of the year. I mean if it’s the right time of the month.”

He gave a tight nod.

She wanted to sink into the floor, but she forced herself to keep standing there, facing him. “So every month their body gets ready to carry a child. And if they don’t get pregnant, their body has to get rid of the preparations.”

When he didn’t say anything, she continued. “That means we can’t . . . do anything . . . I mean we could, but it would be a bloody mess.”

When he finally got it, she watched the conflicting emotions on his face. He was embarrassed by the frank details, but she thought he was also relieved. Maybe he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of taking his new bride home and rushing her right to bed. Well, she amended, they’d be sleeping in the same bed, but they weren’t going to have sex. At least she didn’t think so.

“Okay,” he clipped out, then stood up so abruptly that she was forced to take a step back.

“I should go out and check the stock,” he said.

“I could fix dinner. If you tell me where things are.”

“Right.” He turned toward the prep area. “I keep fresh food in the cold box. Some meat is in the freeze unit. You can thaw it fast in the micro. My labels are like hen scratches, though. Maybe I should get you out a kilo of ground beef.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

He pulled one from the freezer and set it on the counter.

“Packaged goods from off world are in the storage unit. The pots and pans are in the lower cabinet. Don’t try to do anything fancy until you get to know the place. If you don’t want to use the meat, eggs would be fine.”

“Meat will be a treat after the rations on the trip over.”

“They were bad?”

“Not horrible but boring.”

He opened drawers and cabinets, showing her where to find equipment.

“There’s running water,” he said, turning on the tap. “And in the bathroom, too.”

“Good.” She cleared her throat. “You don’t have incineration units, do you?”

“No.”

“Then I probably need a trash can in the bathroom. I mean . . .”

He cut her off. “I already put one in there.” Switching back to the kitchen, he said, “The cooker is a little temperamental. You turn on the gas.” He demonstrated. “Then light it with a match. If the flame is off, you got to make sure the gas is off too.”

He pulled a match from a canister on the counter, struck it against the side, and touched it to the jet. When the flame sprang up, he turned it down. “I’ll leave it on for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Anything else you need to know right now?”

“I don’t think so.”

He started to exit the house, then turned abruptly and went into the bedroom. When he came back, he was wearing a clean shirt.

“The burned one?” she asked.

“Throw it in the rag bin.” He showed her where that was, then exited the house quickly. When he was gone, she breathed out a little sigh, glad to be alone for the moment. Probably he was, too.

oOo

Caleb headed for the barn, annoyed that he needed to escape from his own house—and from the woman standing in his food prep area. Sagan’s balls, what an idiot. It had taken him a couple of minutes to figure out what she was trying to tell him about her physical condition.

He’d read about menstruation in the instruction manual. He just hadn’t known it was called “having my period.” But yeah, you had to figure women would have a way to talk about it that wasn’t clinical. And, of course, he hadn’t been thinking they’d jump right in to that time of the month. But maybe it was an advantage. He wasn’t going to have to . . .

He cut that thought off and started again. It wasn’t “have to.” He “wanted to.” He just didn’t know much about it. Yeah, he had seen porn vids with naked men and women doing it. All the guys on Palomar had, unless they were homers. And there was porn for
them
, too.

You could make the 3-D images so large that it was like you were practically in bed with the flipping couple. But was what they showed in a flip vid the way real people did stuff in real life? Well, the guy was going to end up putting his pump handle inside the gal’s furrow. That was pretty clear. But what about the touching and kissing part? How much of that did you do first? He’d read something in the book about a man needing to arouse a woman so it would be good for her. But in the vids, the gals were always
rarin’ to go. And they always came, although he’d heard guys say that a gal could fake it.

And then there was the way the guys in the pornos always pulled out so you could see them pump off. That couldn’t be right. Not if you wanted to have a baby.

He cursed under his breath, wishing he weren’t getting hard thinking about this stuff. And wishing he knew more about what to do in bed. His new wife had grown up in a normal place where men and women were available to each other. Probably she knew a lot more than he did. What was she going to think when he started fumbling around?

He fed the stock, then checked on Silla, the mare who was due to foal soon. She seemed a little restless, and he figured he’d have to keep an eye on her.

Next he stepped into the garden house and checked the temperature, the humidity and the nutrients. When there wasn’t anything more to do outside, he went back in.

As soon as he opened the door, the aroma of food curled around him. When he crossed rapidly to the kitchen, he found
Beka stirring something in a skillet.

“I found vegetables in the cold box and made sort of a stir fry with the ground beef.”

“It smells good.”

“I hope it tastes good.”

She’d set the table with plates, cutlery and mugs.

“I didn’t know what you drink.”

“Water’s fine. Or I could make coffee.”

“No. The water here tastes good. Not like when they put in a lot of chemicals.”

“It’s from my well.”

While he washed his hands, she scooped meat and vegetables onto his plate, then served herself.

They sat across from each other, both of them forking up food and eating it.

“This is good.”

“Thank you. I put in onions. I could tell you which spices would give it more flavor.”

“Okay. We can add them to the supply list.”

The conversation died, and he scrambled for something to say.

“The planet where you were living.”

“Elmen.”

“What was it like?”

She pushed at a piece of carrot on her plate. “Does it matter? I mean I’m here now.”

The answer told him something. She didn’t want to talk about her past life. Because this was a fresh start? Or because she was trying to hide her background?

He wanted to ask if she’d lived with her family. Or lived with a man. And if she had, why had she left? But he thought it might be better to leave that for the time being.

Instead, he said, “The colonists had a travel allowance for household goods, and we came here with some of the furniture from our old house on
Centorus. The bed’s from there and also a couple of chests of drawers in the bedroom. I cleared out the one on the right for you.”

“Thank you.”

“You could unpack after dinner.”

“The dishes . . .”

“You cooked. I can clean up.”

“Thanks.” She lifted her face. “You’re not one of those guys who makes a distinction between men and women’s work?”

He laughed. “All the work here was my work. I’m glad to have someone to share it.”

“Right.”

He carried her crate into the bedroom and set it near the dresser that his father had used. “Any of the drawers in here.”

“You’re sure you don’t need them?”

“No.”

He was about to leave when she said, “Is it all right for me to take a shower?”

“Of course. You don’t have to ask permission. This is your home.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “I didn’t know if you had hot water restrictions.”

“No. I left a towel for you. It’s on the rack to the right when you step inside.” He stayed where he was, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I could sleep on the couch.”

She answered immediately. “No. I don’t want to start off that way. I want us to feel comfortable with each other.”

Yeah, sure. What he said was, “Okay.”

She stayed where she was. “You were going to show me how to communicate with
Listerville if I needed to.”

He snapped his fingers. “Slat. I mean, uh . . .” He stopped and sighed, wondering how he was going to break the habit of a lifetime.

Starting again, he said, “Let me show you my comms unit.”

He pulled a flat box about ten centimeters by fifteen out of his pocket.

When he said, “open,” a cube appeared in the air beside the thing.

“You have these on
Elmen, right?”

“Actually, no.”

“Why not? I thought you were more advanced than we are.”

“Yeah, but we aren’t as isolated. It’s not as critical for us.” She flapped her hand. “I mean it wasn’t. On
Elmen they have units that are a little bigger, but the picture’s on the screen.”

He nodded. “Okay, here you’re always online with
Listerville,” he told her. “And notice that the input and output are separate from the device itself. You can get the various functions with hand gestures.”

“Which I don’t know,” she murmured.

“You’ll learn them. But you can also use voice commands like I did to open it. In a nutshell, it’s got everything. News feed. Personal communications.” He moved his fingers in front of the cube, expanding it. When it was about half a meter on a side, he flicked his fingers and brought up a holio image of a man giving a weather report.

“Can I just ask for weather?” she asked.

“Yes. And news. And entertainment. And if you want to talk in real time to someone, you ask for the address book. And you call SOS for emergencies.” He laughed. “I think SOS has been around for centuries. Since old Earth.”

“Yes.”

“And how fast can they get here if we need help?”

“It will take as long as it took for us to fly over from
Listerville. Unless there are no units available.”

“So we’re on our own for an hour.”

“Yeah.”

“I made a friend while we were on the bride ship. Kenna O’Brien. Well that’s not her name now. Would it be okay for me to call her sometime?”

“Sure. Who did she marry?”

“Mack Logan.”

“He’s a good, steady guy.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“You’d use his homestead address to get her.” He pulled up a directory on the screen. “Mlogan.”

She nodded.

“Let me show you some of the other features.” He used another hand gesture, and she saw an ensemble of men and women with instruments—accompanied by twangy pop music.

“Okay. Thanks.”

He reached into the drawer of the desk and brought out a device that was like the one in his hand and held it out to her. “This one was my dad’s.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died.”

“How?”

“In a mine cave-in.”

She winced.

“I saved his unit,” he said, changing the subject. “No reason to pitch it.”

She took it, weighing it in her hand, looking reluctant. “It’s complicated.”

“I know it seems that way, but you’ll get used to it.”

“Do you have something that shows the hand gestures?”

He flicked his fingers at the screen, and a three-dimensional picture of a hand appeared. When he said “on,” the hand moved. When he said “news” and made another gesture, a small figure of a man appeared. He looked like he was standing at the spaceport where they’d been earlier, and he was giving an account of her abduction, complete with a vid of the hostage scene.

She caught her breath when she saw herself being held by the luggage jockey—and then her and Caleb working together to free her. “Did they have to show that?”