The Lawgivers: Gabriel (18 page)

It took more than a few moments, in
fact, for it to penetrate the heated fog of his mind that, although
she’d returned his kiss after only a momentary resistance, she’d
planted her back against the door frame and firmly resisted his
attempt to dislodge her and sweep her inside. When that finally
clicked, he broke the kiss and lifted his head to look a question
at her.

There was uneasiness in her gaze and
nervousness in the false smile she pinned firmly on her face. “I
didn’t think you’d come by. I have … a visitor.”

Gah-re-al stared at her blankly. When
it finally sank in, he flicked a glance over her head. A quick
sweep of what he could see of her living area failed to reveal any
visitor and his mind leapt, not unnaturally, to her bed
chamber—which had been his goal—assuming he couldn’t convince her
before they got that far.

Discomfort, disappointment and anger
swept through him in quick succession. “You’re entertaining,” he
said flatly, trying to decide if the anger was from jealousy or
just vast disappointment, more than a little outraged that she’d
chosen this moment of all times to decide to fuck somebody else—in
the middle of the day at that!

She flushed. “I got the impression the
last time you were here that you didn’t care.”

His lips tightened. Her fishing
expedition for a jealous reaction, however, immediately doused his
anger. He released her and stepped away. A vague sense of nausea
washed through him.

He thought it was a physical reaction
to the abrupt deflation of his cock.

“I don’t. I just wanted to fuck,” he
said coldly.

* * * *

As dissatisfied as Gah-re-al was with
his encounter with Maya, he was even less pleased to discover when
he headed back to the campsite where he’d left the humans that a
convoy of social workers was in route with the requested supplies.
He had asked for, and expected, a supply drop. He’d chaffed at the
likelihood that they would get in no rush to deliver despite his
insistence that the supplies were urgently needed and any lengthy
delay could result in a loss of lives, but he’d known the actual
delivery wouldn’t take long since they were less than fifty clicks
from the colony of Choa-toa—his home base.

He hadn’t expected interference from
the damned social workers!

Because it hadn’t occurred to him that
command would shuttle the task off on them when the relocation
itself was a military matter and under their jurisdiction. He’d
anticipated turning his charges over when they reached the
designated location and not before. Until they were safely settled,
the villagers needed his protection. For that matter, the social
workers might need it—from the villagers. Well, he thought as he
passed over them without acknowledging them, he had every intention
of completing the transfer from village to relocation site whether
it pleased them or not!

It struck him forcefully that if
command had simply passed off the order for supplies—and clearly
they had—then Maya had known ahead of time that he was
there.

She’d been expecting him. He recalled
abruptly that she’d said she didn’t think he’d come by—but she’d
known he was there and hoped he would. That was what that entire
scene played out at her door had been about. She’d cooked it up to
play mind games with him. No doubt, she’d expected him to explode
with jealous rage at the discovery that she had someone else in her
bed.

Unfortunately for her hopes, he not
only didn’t care enough to feel any possessiveness, he’d never
believed he was the only man to occupy her bed.

Not that he hadn’t been damned
disappointed. The only thing worse than having blue balls from a
prolonged period of abstinence was having the expectation of taking
care of the problem yanked out from under you.

He spied Lexa, standing a little apart
from the villagers, as he landed a short distance from the
campsite. She’d watched his descent. He was fairly convinced she’d
been watching his approach for a while, although she very pointedly
ignored him once he had settled on the ground.

All the same, he thought he’d detected
a lightening in her expression before she turned away. Was she glad
to see him return, he wondered, or was it merely his imagination
because he wanted her to be glad?

Because it was hard to ignore the
relief he felt to see that she was alright or the realization that
he’d been on edge from concern that something might happen to her
in his absence.

Or that she might take it into her head
to take advantage of his absence to take off.

Unfortunately, he discovered it was
hard to convince himself that he hadn’t imagined she was glad to
see him return. She had avoided him since he’d tried to question
her.

“You brought … others,” Lexa said when
he reached her.

Considering his recent unpleasant
encounter with Maya he wasn’t in the mood to deal with the
accusation in Lexa’s tone. “They’re bringing supplies,” he replied
curtly.

“We’ve got a lot further to go
then?”

Gah-re-al studied her for a long
moment, trying to decide whether she actually sounded relieved or
not and if she was, why she was. Because he’d been right to begin
with and she actually had missed him? Or did she think that gave
her more opportunities to escape? “A few days.”

She nodded. “You’ll leave now, though,
right?”

He tilted his head, eyeing her
speculatively. “You think you might have the chance to escape if
I’m not here to watch you?” he asked bluntly.

Her face turned nearly the color of her
hair and then the color drained away sharply, leaving her far more
pale that she was naturally. Instead of responding, she stalked off
and sat down in the dirt near of a large group of
females.

If she thought that was going to deter
him, he thought angrily, she didn’t know him very well!

He narrowed his eyes at her and finally
followed, standing over her. “Don’t even think about it. I can and
will track you down and haul you back.”

She tipped her head back to stare up at
him, blinking owlishly, but it was impossible to guess what was
running through her mind when she blanked her expression like
that.

It annoyed him even more. Generally, it
was no great feat to figure out what was going through her mind
because the emotions her thoughts generated flashed across her
face. Apparently, she’d figured out how he was ‘reading’ her,
though, and she’d become far more cautious and
secretive.

She frowned after a moment and ducked
her head, studying the toe of her boots. He wasn’t particularly
satisfied, but he knew her well enough by now to know he wasn’t
going to get a verbal response and he stalked off to meet the group
of social workers when they arrived.

It was almost an hour before they
reached the group. He wasn’t surprised since they’d used a walker
to bring the supplies—a robot transport specifically designed to
haul large loads of supplies over rough terrain, but as slow as be
damned!—but he was angry. He thought he’d made it clear that they’d
been without water for almost a full day already—without food for
that matter, but the hunger wasn’t as dangerous as dehydration.
They’d had to ration the water before that so no one had had what
they should have had even before the water gave out considering the
heat.

He should’ve left them to requisition
supplies earlier, he thought angrily, but then he had been too
focused on his personal concerns to realize just how dire the
situation was.

And he hadn’t realized that they’d
ignored his orders to ration the water in their attempts to fill
their empty stomachs because they had so little food.

Too stupid to live popped into his
mind, but with the exception of Lexa, they weren’t used to living
on the trail as far as he knew. Water was always a problem in the
wild territories, but the villages generally sprang up where there
was a sufficient supply for the demand.

Generally.

They didn’t seem to worry much about
over-breeding for the resources available to them, but then that
might be because life was hard enough the turnover was fairly
rapid. The elderly and the very young were the most frequent
victims of the harsh life of the primitives.

There was a female he recognized in
charge of the group.

She gave him a cold look, which he
interpreted to mean she wasn’t harboring a lot of affection for him
since their last encounter—which he thought had been pleasant
enough.

He supposed departing while she was
still asleep hadn’t gone over well with her.

“If you will line up in an orderly
manner, we will issue water,” she called out to the humans as they
brought the walker to a halt.

Despite their wariness of the udai and
the uneasy way they’d watched the robot carrying the supplies
Gah-re-al wasn’t surprised when everyone immediately leapt to their
feet and charged toward the group, shoving and pushing to be
first.

“Orderly!” he bellowed. “Form a
line!”

His bellow halted the threatened
stampede. They merely gaped at him, however, as if they had no
concept of what he meant by forming a line.

The leader of the group, Phil-a-shee,
motioned to two of the men who’d accompanied her. “Draw a line and
show them how to line up. You have to be firm with them. They’re
like children—that aren’t very bright,” she said in their native
language, smiling and nodding at the primitives in direct contrast
to the insulting nature of her comments.

Gah-re-al sent her a sharp look,
feeling a touch of anger. He’d always felt pretty much the same,
but he’d never noticed that the social workers had that kind of
attitude. He’d thought of them as bleeding hearts that pitied the
savages because they didn’t realize just how dangerous they were.
Clearly, he thought wryly, he’d mistaken their empathy—or at least
Phil-a-shee’s.

Or maybe working with them had soured
her?

One of the men used the narrow tip of
his trida to scribe a line in the dirt. The other followed him,
pointing to first one human then another and then the dirt beside
the line. “You! Here. You. Here.”

They still looked confused and
frightened, but they followed the man’s directions.

Gah-re-al studied the line he was
forming for a few moments and finally yielded to the urge to
interfere. Moving down the line, he studied the faces and sent
those that appeared to be most in need of water to the front. When
he’d gone all the way down the line, he walked back to where Lexa
was standing, caught her upper arm in one hand and led her to a
place near the front, as well.

Phil-a-shee was staring at him
disapprovingly when he returned to the supply wagon to oversee the
disbursement of the water and supplies.

“We’ll get to them all. That wasn’t
necessary.”

Gah-re-al gave her a cold look. “Some
are stronger than others and fare better, longer without water.
They’re in my charge.”

She reddened slightly but merely
shrugged and turned her attention to the task at hand. “Weeding out
the weak is part of the natural process. We aren’t here to make
pets of them, but rather to teach them to take care of
themselves.”

Gah-re-al was certain the comments were
directed at him even though she spoke ‘at large’ as if she was
instructing her helpers.

Considering Maya had accused him of
much the same thing it flickered through his mind to wonder if
they’d been communicating.

Which might also account for the cold
reception, he supposed wryly, if they’d been comparing notes.
“Since I removed them from their habitat—on orders—and marched them
across a desert poorly supplied and prepared, that’s hardly
non-interference, however. They had a water source and food and
shelter where they were.”

Phil-a-shee’s lips tightened, but she
didn’t pursue the debate. “Do you plan to accompany us the
remainder of the trek?”

“Since that was my orders and I haven’t
received any instructions otherwise, yes.”

“Well, unless you have some objection,
we should set out, then, as soon as we’ve finished disbursing the
supplies. They’ve had plenty of time to rest and at the rate
they’ve been moving it’ll take another week’s march to reach the
relocation site.”

They’d made damned good time—all things
considered—and Gah-re-al knew for a fact that it wouldn’t take them
more than a couple of days more to reach the drop off point, but he
was well aware that his mood was really foul and he didn’t think a
heated verbal exchange in front of the villagers would go over well
once it was reported.

And it would be. One of the things he’d
found least attractive about Phil-a-shee was her problem with her
wagging tongue … and her propensity to spy on people so that she
had something to wag her tongue about.

It was a damned good thing he only had
to get through a couple more days of close proximity to temptation,
because he’d thought it a damned stupid idea to make a try for Lexa
before Phil-a-shee’s arrival.

Trying anything now would be
professional suicide. He’d be busted so far down the ranks for that
kind of indiscretion, he’d end up on a shithole colony worse than
this one—probably one where the life expectancy of a soldier in the
ranks was less than a month.