Tor (Women of Earth Book 2) (3 page)

"Oxygen supply insufficient for current capacity overload," the neutral voice of the pod informed them.

His back and neck muscles strained as he fought against the automatic power of the lid.

"Hit the override," he ordered.

"We won't have enough oxygen," Wynne argued even as she curled her body over his and stretched her arms along his legs to the console.

"We won't need oxygen if those blood suckers get us first," he gritted out. "Hit the damn override."

"Where is it?"

"On the left." His voice was so strained she could barely understand the words. "Blue one."

There were three blue ones. Wynne poked them all. One lit up and there was a soft hiss as the lid was released. The computer acknowledged the manual override, but repeated its warning.

"We're good," he said and then he turned onto his back, shifting Wynne's body as he did so.

That left her sprawled along his front with her face pressed into a pair of muscular thighs. She tried to push up and shift back from the console, but with the lid closed, there was little room above her to maneuver. She heard him snicker. It was the same kind of snicker her brother and his cadet friends used when they told dirty jokes to each other.

Legs splayed to either side of his head, her latest position had left his face dangerously close to a place no stranger's nose should be. She felt the hem of her skirt rise as his hands slid up her thighs. He laughed when her attempts to swat at him had little effect.

"There are worse ways to go, I suppose," he said as if she'd made a suggestion. "Awkward, but if you insist, I'm sure we can make it work."

"Stop it," she demanded. "You're not funny."

"Who said I was joking," he said, but he laughed again.

Wynne struggled to turn and was rewarded when her elbow caught him between the legs and he grunted with pain.

"Who's laughing now," she said, not the least bit sorry.

There was more grunting and groaning on both their parts until, with his help, she'd turned herself around and they were face to face. He grinned and winked.

"This is much better. I'd rather work my way from top to bottom anyway, wouldn't you? The journey can be as interesting as the destination. It's good to get to know each other a bit before our better parts get acquainted. Don't you think?"

Wynne stared at him. "What I think is that Ahnyis is right."

"Ahnyis?"

"A Katarin healer and my friend. She says it doesn't matter where they're from or what they look like, all sentient males have one flight plan and they're all headed to the same docking station."

"I don't know where this healer friend of yours gets her information, but it is not true." He jutted his chin and closed his eyes at the insult. "There are several docking stations to choose from, all of which offer first class accommodations."

~*~

Two little creases formed above her eyes when she frowned. "I know why you're doing this, you know."

The neck of her blouse hung open just enough to give him a glimpse of the cleft between her breasts. They were encased in a plain white garment that held them firmly in place. They were very nice breasts from what he could see and under other circumstances he might be tempted to see more.

Tor let his eyes linger on those luscious breasts for a moment before he offered her a lascivious smile along with his wink. "I didn't think my intent was a secret. I'm trying to get you to show me what you're hiding under all that cloth."

Her sour look told him what she thought of that.

He shrugged. "Fine. I'll show you what I'm hiding, then you can show me yours."

The corners of her mouth tilted upward, but dignity prevailed, and she caught herself before the smile was fully formed. She closed her eyes and pursed her lips in a show of displeasure. He should have kissed her then. She might dress like a prudish princess, but those full and pouty lips were definitely kissable. He missed his chance to find out if they tasted as sweet as they looked.

"Do lines like that usually work for you?"

He responded with a wry half smile. "Only with the highly intelligent and truly beautiful."

"Your standards of intelligence must be very low," she answered without missing a beat. "Sex isn't going help us get out of this mess."

He tried again. "No, but it would be a pleasant way to spend the time until the storm passes." He hooked a finger in the neck of the concealing garment. She slapped his hand away.

"Or until the carbon dioxide levels get too high," she countered. "But what the hell? Maybe we won't notice our increased respiratory rate. Heavy breathing comes with the territory, doesn't it? Maybe we'll blame the tachycardia on the hot and heavy exertions of our lovemaking too, and arrhythmia could be just another way of saying my heart skipped a beat. People say that all the time, don't they? I suppose we could write off the impaired consciousness to the sexual high that occurs with climax, but the convulsions and coma are going to be pretty hard to rationalize."

Hadrid save him from a woman with a brain, a sarcastic brain at that. "You're a regular little bone chiller, aren't you?"

"A what?"

To demonstrate, he raised his index finger and then slowly curled it downward.

"Oh." The color rose in her cheeks, but she didn't deny it. "One of us has to use our head."

"I was trying to."

"The other head," she said, not batting an eye.

Tor laughed. He'd begun this bit of verbal foreplay as a distraction to keep her mind off the very real danger they were in. He never expected to enjoy it.

"I already have," he told her. There was no point in trying to protect her from the truth. She'd already figured it out. "The only choice we have is to wait it out."

"We could make a run for it," she suggested.

"We could if we were further into the trees which is where I was headed until a certain young woman refused to follow my directions."

"I didn't refuse anything. I thought I was following your directions. How was I to know a wave of your hand meant 'Come to me' and not 'Do what I do'?"

He returned her exasperated look. "Why would I expect a princess to haul her own craft?"

She snorted her disbelief. "Why would you think I was a princess?"

How stupid did she think he was? Or did she think her dowdy clothing really worked as a disguise? "Oh, I don't know, maybe it was the separate first class cabin or," he stretched the word out, "Maybe it was your Perithian guard."

"Mohawk? He's not my guard," she protested, but Tor could see her hesitation. "He's my companion, um, my friend."

"Then I beg your forgiveness," he said, not meaning a word of it.

If that bowlegged watchdog was her Companion, she wouldn't be so hesitant toward his offer of sex. She would have quoted her fees or told him he couldn't afford her. And she sure wouldn't be hiding her wares under such unattractive clothing. The woman was no high class Beyah Popo, or if she was, she was damned good at playing coy.

Tor didn't press the issue. Let her think he believed it. He might even be able to use it to his advantage. If the fucking storm would let up. If he could find a way off this miserable mistake of a planetoid. If the wildlife didn't eat them first. If, if, if.

"If we try to leave now, that rain will burn the flesh right off your bones," he told her.

"Why? What makes it so hot? Is it acid of some sort? Why doesn't it hurt the trees?"

"How in Hadrid's hell should I know? Do I look like a scientist?"

"How in Hadrid's hell should I know?" she repeated his question mimicking his tone. "I've never met a scientist. Do they all look alike?" She looked like she was about to say something else, changed her mind, and then changed it again. "If you must know, you look like a scarier version of Westley in
The Princess Bride
. He wore the same kind of silly mask, but he carried a sword instead of a bloody knife in his boot. And he didn't cut off people's..." It was as if someone pulled a plug and all the blood in her body drained away.

Her reaction was the one he'd been trying to avoid. He tried to stroke her back to calm her, but his touch drove her further away. She scooted back until her rear end hit the console.

"Careful, Princess," he warned, cautious and quiet. "You don't want to hit anything that might open the hatch."

She stopped moving, but she didn't relax.

Her back was arched to match the curve of the pod's lid and her brown eyes were wide with fear. They darted from side to side and then upward, searching for an escape, and landed on the gaping maw of a blood sucker. She gasped, pulled her head away, and dove for his chest. Her eyes widened just before contact and she pushed away from him again. She closed her eyes again shutting both he and the bloodsuckers out.

Tor wasn't surprised at her fear of him. He expected it to rise up sooner or later. What he didn't expect was how it would make him feel.

"Look," he said as he tore the cloth from his head. It was a ridiculous looking thing, but he'd had no choice in the matter. With everything that had happened, he'd forgotten he had it on. "No mask. Nothing to be afraid of."

Her long lashes lifted and kept lifting until her eyes were wide with shock.

Tor began to wonder if he shouldn't have left the mask on.

Chapter 4

Nothing to be afraid of? Wynne thought it was just the opposite.

She'd seen, of course, the long and perfectly shaped oval of his head, the shaded dent of the faint cleft that divided his rounded chin, and the slightly crooked mouth with lips too full to be cruel, yet set too firm to be soft. With the mask in place, she'd thought his nose too large, but with the upper half and bridge uncovered, she saw that it fit naturally with his face. Slightly hawkish, it drew a clear, straight line from his mouth to his piercing blue eyes. Dark brows flared upward like the wings of a bird.

He was Godan, something she'd been unsure of when his face was half hidden. In addition to the shape of his brows, his ears were long and slightly pointed at the tips. His forehead was permanently furrowed with the prominent bone structure of the race and would deepen to greater prominence with age. His dark hair was close cropped and only slightly longer than his day's growth of beard.

Like most Godan, his look was slightly predatory. He was neither handsome nor ugly, but was most definitely masculine in a very attractive way and her reaction to that attractiveness frightened her. The man chopped off hands for heaven's sake. She should be repelled, shouldn't she?

He didn't look too dangerous at the moment. That little boy lost look of regret combined with his naughty boy charm, could prove to be deadly in a very different sort of way.

The voice from the console gave another warning. "Oxygen levels critical for current capacity. Systems powering down."

The fear left her as quickly as it arrived. If he was going to harm her, he would have done it by now. He could have left her behind. He could have left her in her own little coffin. He could have left her to boil away in the storm. There were other, more important things to worry about than cutting off someone's...

The return of that thought made her close her eyes as if shutting out light could shut off the picture that formed in her mind. The strategy worked, but another image replaced the first; a picture of death by asphyxiation.

They'd been blabbing away, wasting what little air they had on nonsensical banter. Wynne knew his talk was nothing but one big line of bull. It meant nothing. He was simply trying to distract her from the dire straits they were in. She knew that and yet she'd played along. She'd allowed him to distract her, because it kept away the image of a heavenly accountant running his finger down a column of figures and finding the mistake in the balance of life and death.

"No more talk for a while, Princess," he whispered. "Rest and relax."

He pulled her down to rest against his chest and Wynne didn't argue. She didn't protest when he wrapped his arms around her and gently stroked her back. His gentleness, however, did her in. Tears gathered where none had been before.

Once, long ago, before the alien invasion and death became commonplace, they'd lost a distant cousin to a freakish and terrible accident. Through her tears at the news, Nona Donazetto had told them what she believed.

"Each of us is given our number of days at birth. When our time is up, God takes us home. If we are worthy," she'd added, because nothing their grandmother said came without a warning. "That's why it's important to see each day as a precious gift, to live that day as if it might be your last, and show kindness to others in all things."

She said much the same thing when cancer invaded her body and she outlived the doctor's predictions.

"Only God knows the number of my days, not some damned doctor. He'll take me home when those days are gone and not a minute sooner."

On her good days, Nona cooked and sent Wynne and her sister to deliver her goodness to friends and neighbors. Six months later she died.

As she did with most of Nona's beliefs and warnings, Wynne's sister took this as another of the woman's threats of a fire based future in Hell if the rules were broken. It was right up there with the ones about wearing your skirts too short or skipping Mass because you were out partying the night before.

Wynne wasn't Mira. Though she laughed at many of Nona's admonitions, she wasn't entirely sure they were false. She wore her skirts at a modest length and never partied, not that she'd ever been asked. While she didn't really believe that God would send a little girl to hell because she forgot to say her bedtime prayers, on the rare occasion when she forgot, she always apologized the following night. Just in case. The warning about your given number of days, she took seriously too, though not until the day her parents died.

She should have been home that day when the bombing began. She should have been with her parents when the building collapsed around them. She'd always felt guilty that she wasn't. For days afterward, she reacted like an automaton doing what she was told, but little else. Mira thought her silent shock was her overwhelming grief, but that was only part of it. The rest was based on an extension of Nona's belief.

Wynne had cheated death. Her days were numbered and her number had been skipped. She took it as a sign from God. She believed in signs and thought her lack of sex appeal might be her calling to be a nun.

After much thought and prayer, Wynne decided that until such time as the celestial mistake was rectified, she would devote her life to the care and comfort of others, beginning with her sister and brother. The orphaned children she found on the street were extensions of this resolve. She did her best to be kind and understanding to all. She told no one, and their wartime life made the sacrifice easier. There were few other options.

Mira was happily paired with a man who suited her to a tee. Her younger brother, David, filled with teenaged angst fueled by a heavy dose of anger and resentment, had finally found his place in the world under the tutelage of the taciturn soldier, Harm. The children were happy and surrounded by those who loved them as much as she did.

It almost seemed fitting that the mistake of her extended life be corrected now. Her makeshift family was as safe and as happy as circumstance would allow and their future would be looking brighter every day.

Wynne knew she should accept her fate with grace just as she tried to accept the last seven years. She should be grateful for the extra days she'd been given. She wasn't grateful, however. With the warm comfort of the intriguing stranger's body beneath her and his fingers stroking lovingly through her hair, Wynne suddenly felt cheated.

His strong body, the strange feelings that his teasing brought her, and his now gentle touch, reminded her of all that she'd missed. She'd lived as a nun, quiet and devout in her dedication to her vocation, but she now realized it wasn't a vocation of her choosing. It had been thrust upon her by guilt and grief and it saddened her that she would never know what it was like to be loved for herself –not as daughter, or sister, or caregiver, but as Wynne. Just Wynne.

Her eyes misted over with tears for a life never lived.

"I don't know your name," she whispered against his chest.

"Tor," he whispered back.

"Like a mountain?" The translator called it a crest, so similar to its English counterpart, but mountain seemed more fitting.

"Like a mountain," he agreed. His breath was a long tug of worthless air.

"I like it."

It seemed a fitting name for this giant of a man. She snuggled into the mountain of his body in the hope that her determined but false calm would ease his struggle against what was coming. It was getting harder to breathe. Each breath left her wanting more.

"I'm Wynne."

"I know."

"You know?" Something wasn't right about that.

"Shush, Princess," he whispered into her hair just as the computer made its final pronouncement. Their oxygen supply had run out.

"Oh shit," she said, though she hadn't meant to.

She heard the rumble of a laugh in Tor's chest. "Not nearly so bad as that, Wynne. Listen."

Brain fogged and fighting the panic that grew with each insufficient breath, Wynne tried to follow his instructions. All she heard was the heavy thud of another ugly tentacle slapping over the pod. She pulled in two more deep breaths before she understood that Tor wasn't referring to sound, but the lack of it.

The burning rain had stopped.

Thinking only of the air outside their coffin, Wynne fumbled for a latch that would open the lid. His hand stopped hers.

"Not yet."

Deprived of the air that was only inches away, the panic she'd fought to keep at bay broke through and she fought him. She would have clawed her way through the glass if he'd let her. Strong arms held her close.

"Listen," he ordered harshly. His voice was like a slap that brought Wynne to her senses long enough to obey, "The latch is on the panel. I can't reach it, you can. First, I need my knife. It's in my..."

Wynne was already moving, not caring where her knee or elbow struck. Air. Air. Air.

"Knife." Tor's voice snapped like a whip.

She knew where it was. She'd seen the hilt of it at the top of his boot the first time she'd reached for the controls. There was something wrong with it, something she'd forced herself to ignore.

She grabbed the spattered hilt, and tossed it behind her. She cared nothing for blood or knives, only air.

He was talking again, shouting, or maybe it only sounded that way to her fog shrouded mind. The pounding of her pulse in her ears drowned out all else. Her hands slammed buttons whether they were meant to be pushed or not. Her fingers worked switches. Unable to tell if she hit them all, she began again. At last she found several she missed, not on the front panel, but to the side. She slammed her hand against them, over and over, until her fingers dipped into a square space that tactile memory recognized as a latch.

She pulled, the coffin hissed, the lid began to rise, and fresh air leaked through; warm, moist, but blessedly oxygenated air.

Which was almost immediately cut off.

"No!"

She'd no sooner shouted her protest than the air came again. Tor's voice came with it.

"Could use some help here."

Wynne wiggled around to see him fighting both the automatic opening of the lid and the creatures that tried to force their way in each time it did. It became a contest to see who would win. An inch of opening was enough for the finger like tips of the tentacle to reach in and lift with a frightening muscular power.

Battered by Tor's knees and elbows as he turned and twisted to stab at the creatures now invading from the three sides, Wynne helped as best she could to bring the lid down. At last they succeeded, but only temporarily. Their previous lack, added to the heavy breathing of their exertions, ate up the fresh air that filled the pod almost as quickly as they let it in. They had no choice but to open it again.

"As the water recedes, so will they," Tor assured her after their third battle.

"What are they?"

"Predators like everything else on this island. I've only heard them called bloodsuckers."

Not very scientific, but descriptive nonetheless.

"How long before the water recedes?"

Her hands were bleeding from the fine lines of scratches left by the needle sharp projections at the tentacles' tips. Tor's were worse. His hand was bleeding badly enough that it slickened his hold on the knife.

"Don't know. The sun's out, which should help, but I can't tell if it's sinking or rising. The sun is on our side. The dark is on theirs. As long as there's moisture, they'll stay.

Wynne was facing away from him, watching the edges of the lid, terrified those probing tentacles would find a way in. Whether it was the smell of blood or the sensing of warm bodies within that drew them, once the lid was open, the creatures swarmed. How Tor could tell the sun was shining was a mystery to her. She couldn't see anything beyond the dark mass of flattened tentacles and gaping red mouths.

"Will you be all right?" he asked when they'd closed the lid yet again.

"Do I have a choice?" she asked in return.

She was surprised by the laughter in his voice. "Of course you have a choice. Fight on or be dinner."

"That's no choice, but next time it would be helpful if you brought another knife in your other boot."

"Next time?"

She felt him run his hand down her back, stroking the hair that now fell to her waist. What once had been a neat braid rolled in a cushion of bun at the back of her head was now a tangled mess.

"You shouldn't hide this."

"Hide what?" she asked before she realized he was referring to her hair.

He ran his fingers through the loose tail, gently combing out the snarls. "A man could get lost in this."

The way he said it sent a strange yet pleasant shiver through her body, but it didn't stop her from turning her head and giving him what her family called the evil eye.

"You're thinking about that at a time like this?"

He shrugged and grinned. "What else is there to think about?"

Wynne turned back to her watching. "Gee, I don't know, how about where we are, how we're going to get out of here, what we're going to eat. You know, all those piddling, inconsequential things that are so much less important than sex."