Catalyst (16 page)

“What the hell?”

This time, I paid attention. Jacks stood in front of the private screen he’d set up for his brother.

“What?”

“There’s a message from Clay saying he’ll see me in five.”

“Five what?” I stood and walked over to stand beside him. “When did this message arrive?” This morning’s waterfall session had been the beginning of hours spent in Jacks’ too small bed. Both men had found the sight of me naked in just boots entirely too hot and they made me keep them on all afternoon. My entire body flushed hot just thinking about all the things we’d done to Bastian. Touching, kissing and caressing from all sides. We’d put our mouths on every inch of that lovely, long body and wrung him out. He was still sprawled in bed with his feet hanging over the edge. Or he had been when we’d left him to get some work done.

Jacks slid an arm around my waist and tugged me close to his side. I placed my hand on his chest, feeling his strong heartbeat against my palm. He bent to kiss me, and it didn’t take long for that kiss to grow deeper, heated. I finally pulled back, my mouth feeling tender and swollen from all the action it had seen lately. I lightly ran my tongue over my bottom lip. “Five what?”

He shrugged. “Could be minutes. Hours. Days.” He typed something back then turned to me while we waited.

I was still tonguing my sore bottom lip.

“I bet you have a lot of sore places.” Concern pulled his eyebrows together. “We should get another rain this afternoon. This planet stays on a strange, strict weather schedule and there are usually sets of four hard rains. You two arrived to experience the last rain of the last set.” He smirked. “I know Bastian will want to bathe in the warm pools later, and I’m really looking forward to them too.”

I bit my lip, gave him a wickedly amused smile. “So what’s sore of yours?” Holding up my hand, I started counting fingers. “Let’s see. You were in me, me, Bastian, me, Bastian…all in the space of how many hours?”

“Old men like hot tubs.”

“You aren’t old.” I put both hands on his chest. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Years ago on Kithra, you wouldn’t have anything to do with me because of our age difference.”

“You were a child, Vala.”

“Bastian is two years older than I was the last time I saw you. Why don’t you have a problem making love with him?” Yes, some of those old hurts still hung around to sting a little.

Jacks cupped the sides of my face, kissing me gently. He rested his forehead on mine. “What happened to your planet changed me. Being on the run and then alone for so long, changed me. Bastian
is
very young. What I’m feeling for him did make me feel a bit like a pervert at first, but I’ve come to the realization that life is precious. We should take love when we get it—wallow in it.”

“Love?” I whispered, my gaze locked on to those light blue eyes.

“What do you think this is? It’s too powerful to be anything else. Vala, I loved you all those years ago. How could I not? Every time I turned around, there you were. This achingly lovely young Gwinarian girl who looked at me in ways that had me hunting down Crichton day and night.”

“Lucky Crichton.”

He lifted my hand, rubbed his finger over the ring on my thumb. “I knew you’d taken this and I said nothing. It’s a family ring. My brother has one just like it.”

“I felt awful taking it. I was so angry that day because you’d said you didn’t like being with women. I knew you lied to me, knew you looked at me with passion. I’m sorry I took it.” I started to tug it off.

“No.” He stilled my hands. “Wear it. I was surprised to see you still had it.” He tucked my hair behind my ear, warmth spilling from those eyes that surprised with the way they went from cold to hot. “You keeping this ring all this time proves this is love.”

The vidscreen behind us beeped and I jumped.

Chuckling, Jacks turned me in his arms, kept them wrapped tight around me. We waited for Clay’s face, but instead another typed message marched across the screen.

Your planet sucks ass.

Jacks let go of me, stepped back. The alarm on his face triggered my own. “What is it?”

“That’s not my brother.”

I frowned at the words on the screen. “It could be raining already. He could be here. Didn’t you say the landing site is right by the lake? The planet does suck when it’s raining.”

“It’s not something my brother would say.” He walked to the cabinet, pulled out one of the laser guns he’d returned after using it on the typhons and began checking its charger. “I could hide you two in the catacombs,” he muttered to himself.

“Hide us in the cata-what? There are tombs here and you want to hide us in them?” I sounded like an idiot, but anger was chasing out the fear.

“Someone is out there in my brother’s ship.” He turned to me and the blatant fear on his face made me hold my breath. “I can’t let anything happen to you or Bastian. I can hide you in the catacombs.” He stopped talking, frowned. “No, I can’t. If they have my brother, if they kill me, then you and Bastian would be stuck here forever without anyone knowing where you are.”

He strode to the set of vidscreens on the other wall, bypassing the old-fashioned keyboard he usually preferred to stand directly in front of the largest screen. He began tapping windows. I recognized the sectors he pulled up.

“No, Jacks, don’t!” I ran to him and yanked his hand down. “You don’t know for sure. You don’t! You can’t risk Saturna finding you.”

He turned anguished blue eyes on me. “That could be Saturna out there now, waiting for that rain to stop. They’ll come in here and leave nothing.” He grabbed my arms, shook me. “Don’t you understand? They’ve killed everyone I’ve managed to find and I’m pretty sure the ones I haven’t have been dead a long, long time. They can’t risk anything about those explosions and their involvement getting out. They are
ruthless
.”

He let go of me and turned back to start tapping on the screen.

“Jacks, please listen to me.”

“No,” he cut me off before murmuring, “If I don’t fight, they might not spend that much time searching the place. The catacombs are a perfect hiding place because the entrance is hard to find.”

“I thought you just said you don’t want us to be stuck here. You aren’t making sense, Jackson Canfield. Stop and take a fucking breath, will you?” I stroked my hands up and down his arms. “We can come up with a better plan.”

“For what?” Bastian asked, coming into the room munching on one of those purple fruits he loved.

“We got a message from his brother’s ship and Jacks doesn’t think it was from him.”

All the color left Bastian’s face. “Saturna?”

“Maybe.” I nodded. “He plans to hide us and distract them.”

Scoffing, Bastian stalked to Jacks and hit him. “We’re not children. Besides, you hide us and that company takes all your equipment, we’re stuck here. Nice as it is with you here, it will be awful without you. I want to go home. Vala wants to go home.”

“Jacks,” I breathed. “Please don’t send out that message.” He had Kithra on screen. With one more tap, he’d be hooked into their main communications dome. I put my hand on his arm again. “Jacks, if it’s not Saturna, you’re ruining years of hard work. This isn’t like you.”

He turned a snarl on me so fierce I stepped back.

“Do you know me, Vala? Hmm? Do you think you really know me after a couple of days of fucking?”

I took another step back, my chest knotted in pain.

Bastian hit him. Hauled off and punched the shit out of him. Jacks reeled back before turning that snarling anger on Bastian. I honestly didn’t know who would win if they really laid into each other.

“Stop. Damn it, I said to fucking
stop
!” I picked up some kind of electronic thing on the table next to me and hurled it at the wall. I picked up another—I think it was the power supply box they’d both admired—and was prepared to throw it when they both yelled.

“
No
!”

Bastian hurried over and snatched it from me, cradling it to his chest protectively. “Do you have any idea what this is? This small box can power half a sector! You can’t just destroy it!”

I put my hands on my hips. “Will it matter? Hmm? Will it matter if that stupid box is okay if we’re all dead because he gives away this location?” I looked at Jacks, begging with my eyes. “Please close that screen before someone stumbles on to your movements. Please.”

Closing his eyes, he reached out and closed it off. His shoulders slumped and he sat in the chair. His bruised cheek started to swell as he stared at Bastian for a long time before turning that look on me. “I can’t risk something happening to you two. You’ve managed to crawl into my life in a way that’s changed everything.”

“We didn’t crawl, Captain Asshole dropped us here.” I smiled.

“He was right,” Bastian said, walking to stand behind Jacks and put his hands on his shoulders. “You did need sexing up.”

The laugh that came out of Jacks held more defeat than humor. I hadn’t imagined he could be like this. Such a strong, strong man…so ready to give up.

“I love you both,” he said.

Bastian gasped, tightened his hands.

Jacks looked up at him with a rueful smile. “I do. Very much.”

The sensual heat that filled Bastian’s face made me wish Jacks had made this confession earlier.

Jacks reached up to clasp Bastian’s hand. “We can fight them, but I don’t have enough weapons to make much of a stand.”

“We could brave the forest. We’ve shown we’re capable of fighting the typhons.”

Something clattered in the doorway. “Are you talking about those badass lizard-snake things? And why fight them when you can just sit there and let me shoot him?”

I spun around, my mouth falling open when I saw Lux in the doorway holding a laser gun on Jacks. She looked awful, pale and soaked from either the rain or the waterfall or both, long black hair sticking to her face and neck. Even her lips had no color. She staggered against the doorway, but her gun didn’t waver from Jacks.

“This planet sucks ass,” she muttered.

I started laughing. She’d typed that. From Captain Asshole’s ship.

“Find somewhere to lie down before you puke again,” Jarana sneered at Lux as she passed her and strode into the room. Her hair, wet like Lux’s, had been slicked back from her face. Her leather outfit was unzipped—probably due to the heat of the rains, and the black band covering her breasts clung like a second skin. She lifted two guns and pointed them at Jacks. “Besides, I wanna shoot him.”

Stepping in front of the guns, I glared at the Tracker. “No one is shooting him.”

She smirked. “I had time to find out quite a bit on the way here.”

“You didn’t find out he’s innocent? Didn’t you talk to the captain of that ship? Wait, where’s Lux’s ship and how in
Suns
did you pull this off?”

“Pirates have nothing on this Tracker.” Lux grinned, then dropped to the floor.

There was nowhere for everyone to sit. Jarana sat on the edge of Jacks’ bed, Lux sprawled on the top of it and groaned with her hand on her stomach. I threw one of the wadded-up blankets on the floor and Bastian and I settled there. Jarana had waived off Jacks when he’d tried to carry Lux in here. She’d let Bastian do it.

“I think you should just let me kill him.” Jarana scowled at Jacks, who stood with his arms crossed, glaring at her and leaning on the stone wall across from us all. She wasn’t pointing her guns at him anymore, but she kept one in her lap. Somehow, I knew that Jacks was completely aware that she could whip that sucker up and off him faster than he could blink.

“Agreed,” Lux said. “Then we can be done and go home. I promised no more long trips.”

Jarana curled her lip. “Like you can fly in this state. What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s the humidity.” I rested against the wall, loving the cool feel of the stone on my back. The rains were coming down so hard, some of the heat had crept though all the hallways into this room. Now, I understood why Jacks had his computer room so deep in the bowels of these caverns. The humidity messed with electronics. I eyed the simulator, which had given me yellow paste yesterday when I programmed in pasta salad. Seeing Lux and Jarana made me miss Kithran food desperately.

“No wonder everyone left this planet. Too damned sticky,” Lux muttered.

“I was sick at first. Seems to affect some of us more than others. Bastian didn’t have a problem.”

“Get me off this hellhole of a planet, Tracker.”

“You’re the pilot, sweetie.” Jarana patted Lux’s thigh, then looked back at me. “So, why can’t I kill him?”

“He didn’t do it.”

“But I did,” Jacks said. “My maps helped them know where to put the explosives.”

I rolled my eyes. “He was mapping the place for Saturna Mining because they planned to buy out The Company. He was not a part of the plan to blow the place.”

Lux groaned.

Jarana patted her leg again before turning a glare toward Jacks. “I did some digging on the flight here. There’s one hell of a price on your head. Enough to finish out my obligations. Dead or alive, just so you know.” She crossed her legs, patted her gun. “There is no reason given for the bounty and no matter how hard I burrowed, I couldn’t find it. Couldn’t get any government officials to spill either. In fact, I’m positive they have no idea why you’re such a wanted man, but they all want you. And you’re telling me this is over making a few maps?”