“You need a better water collection system. Given the rate of population here, you’re vastly underequipped. One cistern is not enough.”
“I know. It’s on the list of projects. But the list is long.”
“There are thirty-one adults living here. Most of them are able-bodied. Why are they not all working on it now?”
They’d asked for volunteers, but it was slow going. Not everyone had the expertise, and she told him so.
“Does everyone here drink and use the water for home and cooking? Yes. Everyone here eats the produce from Taryn’s greenhouses. There’s no volunteering when it comes to using the water, so why not assign people a task? You can’t make this work if everyone isn’t invested.”
Kenner had made a similar comment, but coming from Andrei, it was easier to hear for some reason.
“They look to you for direction, Piper. It’s why they stay. They could live in town if they wanted. But they choose to be here, and you provide them with something. Let them be invested in this place, too. Starting with giving them some shovels and getting some pits for the cisterns started. I can draw out some rough plans for the cisterns themselves.”
Eleven years later, he walks back into her life and begins taking care of her again. “I’ll discuss it with the others. Thank you. Where’d you learn all this?” She indicated the tabletop strewn with bits of metal.
“I was stuck on Parron once. Eight standard months.” He shuddered as he made some quick calculations and began to measure out the piece he needed to replace. “The place I stayed in was little more than a pile of broken shit.”
The way he was now might have been different than he’d been before, but there was something very comfortable about being with him. The way he moved was graceful and predatory. His focus as he cut and worked the threading on the new parts to slide together was impressive.
“So you taught yourself all this?”
He shrugged with one shoulder. “Either that or deal with broken crap and time in lockup for assaulting the owner for not taking care of business.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time you were in lockup for knocking heads.”
“No. But I don’t do that anymore.”
“All right. What do you do then?”
He looked up at her briefly. “Pretty much what I did before, only I don’t go to lockup for it. What do
you
do then?”
She snorted at his evasion, waving a hand around. “This is what I do. I run cargo. My crew isn’t so big as to attract unwanted attention but big enough that most of the time we’re left alone by the others. That took a while. I’ve got a great right hook, or so I’m told.”
“I remember that about you.”
That warmed her. Odd as it was.
They fell into long, quiet periods as she cleaned her weapons.
She was conscious of him on a whole different level, in ways she hadn’t known to even be at seventeen. She knew it now. There hadn’t been a steady man in a long time, but there had been enough of them for her to recognize that purely female fascination with an attractive male. Even through the sharp scent of the lubricant and heated metal, she could pick him up. He smelled good. Like warm earth and a hint of something else. Something wholly male. There was darkness in his eyes. Enough a wise woman would understand and avoid. But she was never very wise.
His hands were nearly delicate as he worked. Hoping he didn’t notice how much she stared, she continued to watch him. His shoulders were nice and wide. He’d taken off his sweater so he was in a short-sleeved, snug-fitting shirt. A dusting of dark hair lay against the golden toned skin of his arms.
There was nothing left of the boy he’d been, not physically. The years had done him good. Fleshed him out. Brought a gloss to his hair. Self-conscious, she patted a hand over the ropes of her braids, captured at the base of her neck.
“I like it that way.”
Surprised, she drew her fingers back, blinking. She couldn’t have stopped her pleased smile to save her life. She’d inherited her mother’s hair. They had the photographs to prove it. Jiao Roundtree had been a beautiful woman. Strong, but three children, several miscarriages, famine and violence had done her in.
Piper shook her head to free that memory and send it away.
It was silly to have long hair when her job had her traveling all over the place in storms and intense heat and cold. But she hadn’t allowed herself many luxuries, and her hair was one of those few.
It made her feel like a woman. Even if her hands were work-rough and her nails were a mess. “I should cut it,” she said, hoping he’d argue.
“That would be a shame. Though your face is certainly beautiful enough that short hair wouldn’t harm it.”
“Thank you. I hope you won’t cut yours either.”
“Not unless I absolutely have to.”
There was a story that went with the way he worded that, but he didn’t add anything. “You’re . . . taciturn, yes, that’s the word.”
His laugh did things to her. Low, dirty things, and she allowed herself to wallow in them a bit.
“Shooting your mouth off can get you in a lot of trouble.”
“Thank you.” She said it quickly and with finality.
“For what? Not shooting my mouth off?” He looked up from his work, all the focus in those eyes on her.
She wondered what he’d be like in bed as a man. They’d been in a sweet, young, passionate love. A smile she couldn’t stop came to her mouth. There was not much evidence of the boy who’d been just as virginal as she had been. This Andrei would most assuredly know his way around a woman’s best parts.
“For the courier packets.”
He shook his head and went back to work. “Nothing to thank me for.”
“I beg to differ. Also, Andrei Solace, I have known you a very long time. Don’t you presume to know what I do and don’t need to thank a body for.” She crossed her arms and gave him her best glare.
He chuckled rather than skittering off like so many did. He put time into her, attention. She narrowed her eyes, waiting.
“Okay then. You’re right, and you’re welcome.”
She played through his words, looking for any sign that he’d patronized her, and found none.
“Last night I noticed you didn’t have guards posted, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t have anyone here in medtech training?”
“You’ve been busy.” Anyone but him poking around that much, and she’d be suspicious and angry. She respected his opinion, and it helped that he was right.
“Just took a look around. I spoke with Kenner about doing some defense training while I’m here. That can address the lack of posted guards. Really, Piper, with all this upheaval around you, there should be guards posted every moment of the day. Perhaps a little update on munitions would be helpful as well.” He shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.
“How long will you be here?”
“Long as it takes.”
“You used to be nice to me,” she teased with a laugh. If she hadn’t, she might have blurted out how glad she was to see him. How much she’d missed him.
He looked up again, amusement clear on his features. Her gut squeezed at how he looked, at the way it felt to simply be with him again. She fisted her hands rather than let them shake.
He went back to work, the smile still on his lips. “You used to say that all the time. Usually when you wanted to be involved in something inherently dangerous, and I said no.”
Unwillingly, she snorted, totally guilty. She supposed she might have—at one point in her life when she was very young and had the most beautiful boy around—been a tad spoiled. He’d guarded her. Protected her. Everyone had known she was his, and because of that, no one dared harm her.
“You wound me.” She sniffed delicately and looked back to the valve in his hands. She still had the little tributes he’d brought back to her. A bracelet made from the shiniest of baubles he’d boosted from some outlander down at the Portal. A picture in a delicate frame. Someone else taken somewhere else, but the lady in it had been regal and beautifully exotic to Piper’s eyes. A scarf, a pin, a hat, gloves. Most precious of all were the books. Two classics from Earth. Because he knew it meant something to her. And a collection of poetry from Ravena’s top modern poet, Eleni Portony.
“I read
Little Women
to Eiriq and Lune’s children.”
He swallowed and licked his lips. Inside, in that place she hadn’t wanted to face, the place where the voice in her head had told her he didn’t care anymore, that place eased, dissolved like smoke.
She
did
still affect him. To what extent she didn’t know. But it hadn’t been some memory she’d embellished over the years. That connection, that bright spark that she’d always felt was special and unique, really
was
between them.
Then and now. Perched near him, watching him work and enjoying his presence, it was as if those years hadn’t existed. It was so very simple to her. She wanted him now, as she’d wanted him then. No, no, she wanted him more. She was older. More experienced. Harder in many ways. She wanted to know what he felt like, naked, against her back. His lips on hers. Wanted to know what it felt to have his cock inside her when they didn’t have to worry about getting caught. When they both knew a few more things about pleasure.
“Do they get any schooling?” he asked, bringing her back from the dirty place in her head where she’d been riding his cock, his hands all over her.
“The children here? The town school sends out teachers a few times each lunar cycle. We supplement with practical life work. Taryn works with them in the greenhouses and nurseries.”
Her grin lightened his heart. “He told me you were able to provide eighty percent of the food for the compound with the produce from his greenhouses.” Taryn had also let it slip that it originally had been the credits Andrei had sent that had financed the rows of indoor growing areas within the well-guarded fences around the compound.
“Taryn’s greenhouses have brought us through many rough patches. Kenner teaches them how to hunt. How to use weapons. How to fix things. I teach some of them how to fly, and I like to read to them, too. I don’t want them to only have the rough parts of life.” She hopped down from the stool and began to pace.
“Of course they have to know how to fix a generator and how to make effective dust seals. But I want
more
for them. I don’t want them just existing. I want them to live their lives with enthusiasm and happiness. I want art and music in their lives.”
The soft hope in her voice tore at him. That she still had the book he’d given her so long ago
really
tore at him. That it had meant anything to anyone but Andrei had been something shattering to him.
Books were so fine and beautiful. They were the very symbol of what made humanity special. There hadn’t been very many books in Andrei’s life until he started with Phantom Corps. But when he came by one, he did all he could do to make it his.
To that day, when he held a book in his hands, it was a sign of how far he’d come in his life. The spine, cracked or supple, was the backbone of whatever journey the pages took him on. There was nothing in the Known Universes like a book.
“I can send books. If you need them, that is.” He kept his head down, tried not to think of how desperate he’d been for them as a child. “The wife of one of my friends is a teacher. She would most likely have some good suggestions.”
“I . . . I’d like that. Thank you.”
He wanted to touch her. Wished he could just let himself want her without feeling guilt or shame.
Instead he continued to rebuild the valve, thankful for that diversion. He’d jerked off twice since he arrived, and it hadn’t helped at all. Andrei wasn’t a slave to his prick, but damn it if his cock wasn’t at attention every second in her presence.
It was stupid of him to be here this way. There were other merc camps on Asphodel. None of them had this . . . baggage. This weight of memory.
He repeated to himself that this was the best option. And it was. He knew enough to understand the Roundtrees were the only mercenary group where he’d get the trust and access he needed.
He needed to keep his dick in check. Needed to keep his focus on the mission. If there had been any time in his life where it had been more important to avoid mistakes, he wasn’t aware of it. The cost of failure here was higher than he was willing to pay.
It didn’t mean he couldn’t help out while he was there. It would be good for his cover if he acted like one of them anyway, so why not combine it with getting a few things repaired and helping with some skill building.
And it would keep her safer. He still needed that. Accepted a long time ago that he would always feel that need and that he would obey it when he could.
She mattered in a way no one else ever had or would.
A flash hit him then, straight in the gut. Piper’s braids in his fist as he fucked into her body from behind. Her pussy, hot and creamy around his cock as she writhed against him, pushing back to meet each of his thrusts.