Stud (24 page)

Making yet another trip down into the valley, she searched for a spot in the stream where the water was deep and, after traipsing along its length, finally found a likely fishing hole. There was enough of a charge left on the pistol to allow for a few experimental shots, but it wouldn’t pay to use it indiscriminately. With her luck, right about the time Fred found them or they were attacked by vrelnots, the uncharged pistol would have been reduced to a useless bit of metal.

Not wanting to kill or stun every fish in the stream, she chose a fairly deep pool where she could see a few fish moving about beneath the surface. Narrowing the beam, she set the intensity to its lowest setting, took aim, and fired. The shock wave rippled across the surface of the water and she stood waiting patiently.

Four tiny fish floated to the surface.

So
much
for
that
idea.
If nothing else, she figured they would make a nice snack for Rufus, but as she watched, a much larger fish swam up from the bottom and gobbled down two of them. Lucy stood on the bank, momentarily stunned until it occurred to her to up the intensity and fire again. The fish rolled slowly onto its side. Repeating the sequence, she soon had four nice-sized fish. All she had to do was retrieve them.

Unfortunately, shooting fish in a barrel was much easier than getting them
out
of the barrel. There was a reason the water was deeper there; the banks were steep and rocky and there was a significant drop on the upstream end—almost a waterfall. The approach would be difficult from any direction. Lucy eyed her catch grimly. The rocks below made it too dangerous to simply jump, and climbing down there would be foolhardy without a rope. If she wanted those fish, she was going to have to swim upstream to get them.

Grumbling to herself, Lucy walked farther downstream and stripped to her underwear. She’d heard that pulse pistols could fire underwater, but didn’t want to risk losing it, so she left it on a slab of rock near the bank along with her clothes and moccasins. She hadn’t gone far when she discovered that her decision to go barefoot had been a mistake. The rocks were sharp and her feet were bleeding by the time she reached the pool.

Lucy had hoped that the current would be strong enough to send the fish drifting downstream, but they hadn’t moved at all and were still right out in the middle. She knew how to swim, but also knew that there could be anything at the bottom of that pool—things she couldn’t see and could only guess at. Normally she dismissed stories of monsters lurking in the depths, but now that she was actually faced with such a scenario, she wasn’t so sure. She picked her way through the rocks to the shore looking for a stick to sweep the fish toward her, but found nothing that was long enough.

Swallowing her fear, Lucy waded through the shallows and swam out gingerly, fully expecting to have her bleeding feet grabbed at any moment by some nasty creature. She corralled the fish, pushing them to the shallow end of the pool, and had almost reached the edge when she happened to glance up at the bank above her.

A vicious beast hung over the edge, jaws agape, just waiting to pounce. She let out a terrified scream before she recognized Rufus. “Where were you when I needed you?”

Rufus barked his encouragement—or his excuse. Lucy wasn’t sure which.

Tossing the fish out onto a large flat rock, she was now faced with a new dilemma. She had no way to carry them. “And I am
not
stuffing them in my underwear.”

She was about to consider stringing them on her bra straps when she spotted a vine growing near the water’s edge. Making another painful trek across the rocks, she tried, unsuccessfully, to pull it loose, learning yet another rule of living in the wilderness: Always carry a knife.

In the end, she used a sharp rock to cut the vine and returned to find Rufus sniffing at the fish. “Don’t you
dare
…”

Rufus may not have understood the words, but he clearly understood her tone of voice and backed off.

“That’s better. If you had any idea how hard it was to get those fish, you’d understand. I promise to give you some later, but right now I need to get them back up the hill.”

By the time she’d made her way back to where she’d left her clothes, her feet were in even worse shape and her empty stomach was protesting loudly. Still, she had gotten four fish, and her bra and panties were dry enough that they felt like clothing again as opposed to a second skin. Sitting on the edge of the rock where she’d left her things, she rinsed her feet and inspected the damage. It could have been worse, she decided; a few scrapes but no deep cuts. She dried her feet with her shirt and then dressed quickly and headed uphill to Tarq.

She wouldn’t have wanted him to wake up alone, but was forced to admit that returning to find him sitting up and smiling at her would have done wonders for her peace of mind.

Finally, panting and sweaty from her climb, she reached their hiding place. The fire had long since gone out, and though he looked better, Tarq still hadn’t moved. She rested for a few minutes while she attempted to banish her disappointment. He’d said a couple of days, she reminded herself, and a full day and night had yet to elapse. There was still time, and she had fish to clean.

Thankful that Fred had been one to carry a sharp knife, she gutted and filleted the fish, thinking of the last time she’d done it in the relative comfort of the café’s kitchen. Jublansk had been nearby, shaping bread dough into loaves when old Jamis had brought in his catch of the day. If only she’d thought to ask him for some tips on how to catch the big ones! Their situations were different—she was fishing out of a creek while Jamis caught his from the sea—but she was sure that similar principles applied. Still, even without bait, hooks, line, or nets she’d managed to bag four fish. Too bad she hadn’t thought to bring any of those things with her—not that an adventure in the mountains had been on her agenda at the time…

Having only a pan and a little water to cook in, she wound up poaching the fish. Without sauce or seasonings, it wasn’t particularly tasty, but after all she’d gone through to get it, Lucy was hungry enough that she didn’t care. She gave Rufus the raw scraps—something she didn’t think she’d ever be hungry enough to eat.

Her father’s words taunted her… “She’ll come back when she gets hungry enough.” No way was she admitting defeat. She still had the money Tarq had given her. If nothing else, she could go on to Yalka—and would have if it hadn’t been for Tarq.

She had no idea what he intended to do, but after what he’d been through at the hands of the locals, he would probably jump on the first ship leaving Talus. The trick would be getting him to the spaceport in Noklar, which was on the other side of the mountains. She would give him back some of the money he’d given her if necessary, though surely all of his money hadn’t been in the speeder. He was bound to have more in a bank account somewhere. If he refused to accept money from her, she’d tell him to consider it a loan and he could pay her back when he could access his funds. He had friends too. He just had to meet up with them.

And somewhere in all of that, she’d have to say good-bye to him.

Again.

Chapter 16

Tarq was having a lovely dream. Lucy was caressing his face with her tongue—an odd thing for her to be doing, especially considering the condition of his dick. He’d had boners before, but this one topped them all. He’d much rather she licked him there.

Upon opening his eyes, he discovered that Lucy had somehow turned into a dog.

Just
my
luck. I’ve gone completely insane and—

“Stop that, Rufus,” Lucy said sharply. “Tarq, are you awake?”

“Mmm.”

“Thank God! I was beginning to think I’d be giving birth in this cave.”

Tarq sat up and glanced at her with alarm. “I haven’t been out
that
long, have I?”

“Well, no,” Lucy admitted. “It’s been a little over two days, actually, but it seems more like two hundred. How do you feel?”

Blinking hard to clear his vision, he took a deep breath. The subsequent cough didn’t hurt his ribs too much—not nearly as much as his dick. Why
that
part of him would wake up first… “Okay, I think.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“Yeah, water.”
Then
I
need
you. Badly.

She handed him a bottle of water and he took a long drink. “Sorry to leave you to fend for yourself like that. I’ll do better now.”

Lucy smiled with, he thought, a touch of pride. “I did okay. Caught fish and everything.”

Despite her slightly disheveled appearance, she did seem to be glowing a bit—and it wasn’t just her pregnancy. Her fair skin had acquired a few more freckles along with a light tan. Tarq had never seen a more beautiful sight in his life.

“Probably lost a few kilos, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t afford to lose.”

“You look great.” Trying to ignore the joy juice trickling from his cock, he nodded at Rufus. “So where’d he come from?”

“Dunno,” she replied. “He was here when I woke up that first morning. No collar or anything, but a really nice dog. He goes off to hunt once in a while and I’ve been giving him fish scraps, so he hasn’t gone hungry.”

Tarq smiled. From her expression, she had a good story to tell. “You’ve been fishing, you said?”

“Yeah. I’ve gotten better at it, but that first time was a real bitch. I wouldn’t have thought I’d be any good at living off the land, but so far I haven’t done too badly.”

“I take it we weren’t followed?”

She frowned. “No—not yet anyway. With any luck, Fred’s still lying right where we left him. Would serve him right, too.” She swallowed, her lips forming a moue of distaste. “When I think of what he would’ve done if I’d gotten there a few minutes too late…” Shuddering, she sighed deeply. “I wanted to kill him… I mean I
really
wanted to kill him. To do something like that to a man who’d done him no harm at all…”

“If he comes after us, you might have to,” Tarq said soberly. “Kill him, I mean.”

Rubbing her eyes, she nodded. “You were right, though. He’s not worth it, but if it comes to defending ourselves, yeah, we might have to.”

Tarq tried not to think about what might have happened if they’d been discovered in their cave. Lucy would have had to defend herself alone; Tarq would have been no help to her at all. But that was about to change. He was responsible for everything that had happened to her, and it was up to him to get them through this.

“We should get going soon,” she went on. “I’ve been thinking about where we should go from here. We could follow the mountains back to Reltan, avoiding the road. You could contact your friends from there, and I could”—she paused, heaving a sigh—“go home.”

“Is that what you really want to do?”

“No, but I’m not sure we have much choice. We need to get you somewhere safe, and I guess my going to Nat’s wasn’t such a good idea after all. I
would
like to find out what happened to her, though. It’s hard not knowing.”

Tarq knew exactly how she felt. He’d felt the same way when the refugee ship left Zetith behind. “Once we get back to Reltan, we can make some inquiries and maybe get to the bottom of what’s been happening in Yalka.”

“Too bad the spaceport is in Noklar, but it’s on the other side of the mountains.”

Tarq eyed her curiously. “Why the spaceport?”

“I figure you’d want to leave this planet as quickly as possible.” Her head drooped as she looked down at her hands. “You’re probably wishing you’d never come here in the first place.”

In a way, she was right. Tarq
did
wish he’d never come to Talus, but not for the reasons she suspected. When he left this world, he’d be leaving more than his unborn children behind. He’d be leaving Lucy—and his heart.

“What about you? Would you rather go to Noklar? You could live there and not have to go home—unless that’s what you really want.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to go home. Noklar would be a good place to live and work—people are certainly much more liberal there, it being the spaceport city and all. But to get there, we’d have to either go through the Eradics or around them.”

From her tone, she didn’t relish taking either path. “Then we’ll go back to Reltan. I can access my funds from there and buy another speeder to take us both to Noklar. We wouldn’t have to see your family at all.”

“That sounds like the best plan to me. I—”

Tarq put up a hand to silence her. He heard something in the distance: the high-pitched whine of a speeder engine. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered. He crawled from his blankets and moved toward the sound. Peering through the bushes that shrouded the cave entrance, he spotted them. Two men standing by a speeder.
His
speeder. A long way down the valley, but… “How far are we from the crest of this hill?”