Overload Flux (19 page)

After her shower, she finger-combed and smoothed her hair back away from her face and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She was muscular, lean, and not curvy, though she’d become more rounded in the last four years, since she hadn’t been using tracker mode and constantly taxing her body’s resources. Active trackers often looked like famine victims. Her skin and coloring were night-shift pale. She doubted the rest of her scars, from where she’d removed the other tracers with her own knife, plus more recent scrapes and bruises, added to her appeal. Luka was the first person who’d ever caused her to worry about it. She wondered if he preferred his lovers to look less battered.

She found Luka attractive because of all of who he was, not just his seductively masculine form and unique scent and taste. She could only hope he was similarly inclined.

* * * * *

Luka finished his run, which was shorter than usual because he disliked treadmills and, if he was honest, because he wanted to be with Mairwen. After stopping by the kitchen, he showered and put on a T-shirt and sweatpants. He went around through the hallway to Mairwen’s door, which she’d left partly open. He knocked very lightly for the sake of politeness, knowing she already heard him coming. It made him smile as he poked his head in.

“Adams says dinner will be served in an hour,” he said. “Got a few minutes?”

“Yes,” she said, waving him in. She was sitting on the far corner of the cushioned platform, currently configured as a couch, while she fiddled with the small in-room clothes sanitizer. He sealed the door behind him and sat.

She was wearing form-fitting dark knit pants and a thin, sleeveless, white tank that barely counted as covering. Her skin was even paler than the light tan wrist sheaths she wore, and he wondered what it would look like when flushed with the heat of desire. He clasped his fingers together in his lap and focused on them instead of her, or there wouldn’t be any talking.

“I think it worked, somewhat,” he said, circumspectly referring to his experience in the exercise room. “But I started easy, and I still needed y... an anchor.” He had tried an older memory, less ferocious than most, and nothing similar to recent events. Even so, he’d nearly face-planted the first time the memory started saturating his thoughts, and the second time, he’d needed to force his talent to focus on Mairwen to cool it off.

“It’ll take practice.” She followed his lead in speaking quietly.

He knew he had to learn not to depend on her, because if he didn’t, he was afraid she’d pull away from him for his own good, and that was the last thing he wanted.

“I can’t run at a...” He stopped, frustrated at the lack of privacy. Another reason he didn’t like traveling on ships with strangers. Fortunately, she got the drift.

“Memories of a physical experience can help with… overloads.” She started the sanitizer, and a quiet humming filled the room. She drew one foot up to the couch and rested her elbow on her raised knee. “At least they do for me.”

The neckline of her tank gaped open, exposing the top swell and tip of one high, firm breast. Coherent thought was leaching out of him as he felt arousal start to rise. He looked away and down, and found his hand gripping the sweater next to him. His desire for her was surging high, and he thought she wanted him, too, but anything other than slow and easy could hurt her. Besides, he wanted their first time to be more than a frenzied coupling in a rented ship’s stateroom.

He made himself let go of her sweater and stand up. “I’d like to try again after dinner, if we can.”

“Yes.” She looked up at him, and he saw subtle hunger in her expression. Her ice-blue eyes were hypnotic.

“Ah, hell,” he said under his breath, and pulled her up tight against his chest for a heated, open-mouth kiss.

He wrenched himself away and left quickly before he lost control altogether.

To Luka’s delight, Adams’s culinary skills lived up to his claims. He served excellent fish with a light sauce and several side dishes. Ta’foulou took his plate to the nav pod, relieving the more sociable Haberville so she could join them for the meal. She chatted easily and wittily, making the meal almost feel like a party. Adams and DeBayaud enjoyed her open flirting, DeBayaud especially.

Luka, disliking her habit of constant touching, strategically placed himself well away from her when they sat at the table, with Mairwen as a buffer. It was cowardly of him, but he rationalized that, as his personal security detail, she should be protecting him from all dangers, including grabby women.

He almost felt sorry for Haberville when she tried to engage Mairwen in several personal topics, but found it heavy going with Mairwen’s mostly monosyllabic responses. Mairwen was also skilled at seemingly accidentally avoiding being touched. Haberville became increasingly ruffled by Mairwen’s bland indifference. It was petty of him, but he thought it served Haberville right.

Luka noticed that Mairwen tried tastes of everything first, then ate everything except the spicy parsnips. When she’d told him she’d led a sheltered life, she wasn’t exaggerating, at least food-wise. He made a mental note to discuss some options with Adams to give her more opportunities to try new things.

He couldn’t begin to imagine her life as a death tracker, or why someone so amazingly competent and skilled would keep herself so locked down, even after escaping the clutches of the brutal program. It satisfied his masculine pride that he’d been the one to tempt her out of the shadows, and he wanted to keep giving her reasons to stay in the daylight. To stay with him.

He wanted to be alone with her, to ask her what she was thinking. The nature of the talent he’d focused on her in his stateroom might be a variant of telepathy, but he’d never had conscious insight into anyone's thoughts, just their overall emotional outlook and essence, and it always felt uncomfortably like prying. Except with Mairwen, when it had felt stimulating and soothing at the same time. His talent had never before been soothing.

After helping Adams clean up after dinner, Luka went to the exercise room to try the control technique again. Mairwen came in a few moments later and sat, reading a portable display. Instead of running, he set the treadmill to a brisk walking pace, but it didn’t go well. Maybe he was trying too much too fast. Or maybe he was spending half his time wanting to pluck the display reader out of Mairwen’s hands and take her right there on the weight bench.

It was just as well that he was interrupted when Adams came in to use the free weights, or Luka might have completely exhausted himself. Mairwen left the room, and he found himself wanting to follow her like a puppy, which would be pathetic.

He lasted ten minutes more, doing cool-down stretches to relieve the tightness and chatting briefly with Adams, then went to his stateroom. Mairwen was already in hers. It was bittersweet comfort knowing she was so close, even if he couldn’t have her in his arms or bed.

He was cold, even though he jacked up his stateroom’s temperature several degrees. He despaired of ever getting control of his talent. And if he couldn’t, what good was he to anyone?

CHAPTER 13

* Interstellar: “Berjalan” Ship Day 02 * GDAT 3237.039 *

T
he next ship day at breakfast, DeBayaud and Adams were in rambunctious good humor. Luka moved to the other end of the table out of self-preservation.

Haberville arrived just in time to see DeBayaud narrowly evade a snap of a dishtowel from Adams. She inserted herself between them, hands on each of their chests, and smiled widely at both of them. “Now, boys, let’s use our inside manners.” The men laughed.

DeBayaud held a chair for Haberville to sit close to him, then handed her a napkin and poured a cup of coffee for her.

Luka, seated near Mairwen, wondered if she’d like that sort of solicitous behavior. He eyed her briefly, and decided against it. He’d probably have to explain it to her.

Toward the end of the meal, Haberville asked, “Would anyone mind if I used the floor of the common area for thirty minutes to exercise to a cardio dance holo?”

“Okay with me,” said Adams.

“We’ll help move the couch pieces out of the way,” said DeBayaud, pointing to himself and Adams.

“Foxe?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Sure.” He was amused to note she didn’t ask Mairwen.

Haberville left to change clothes, leaving her dirty dishes on the table as usual. By tacit agreement, Luka and Mairwen cleaned up after the meal while Adams and DeBayaud cleared a space in front of the trid entertainment unit.

Mairwen left for the exercise room. While Luka was still wiping down the counters, Haberville returned, wearing scraps of fabric that strategically covered her considerable assets. Adams smiled appreciatively, and DeBayaud watched her every move with predatory interest.

Haberville turned out to be fit and flexible, at least from what Luka could tell, and she clearly enjoyed the attention she was getting. While the others were distracted, he took the opportunity to grab his running shoes and slip into the exercise room.

Mairwen was setting up the force isolation machine for more arm work. She was wearing a loose, long-sleeved T-shirt, but it didn’t stop him from remembering the previous evening when her sweat had made the thin tank she wore effectively transparent. It had made him heat up and pant well before he stepped foot on the treadmill. Haberville’s near nakedness and blatant sexuality left him unmoved, but tantalizing glimpses of Mairwen’s body woke up everything in his.

“Trying again?” she asked.

“Yes, since the others are busy.” He slipped behind her and slid his arms around her waist to pull her against him. He dropped his head to inhale the clean smell of her.

“Unlike Haberville,” he whispered, “the only admiring audience I want is you.”

She turned in his arms and kissed his neck under his ear, sending electricity along his nerves. “Then don’t let them see you in shorts,” she murmured.

So she’d noticed. “Glad you like them.”

He kissed her because he could, then stepped away because he had to, or he’d be dragging her back to his stateroom no matter who saw them.

Running had always helped clear his head, even when he was young. He woke his legs up with a few slow lunges, then started on the treadmill at an easy pace, enjoying the impact of his feet and the bellows of his lungs.

Once he settled into a steady rhythm, he warily called up the reconstructed scene of an older woman who had been savagely beaten, stabbed with a screwdriver, and left to die. She’d left a trail of blood as she crawled from the back office to the front, where the lobby security guard found her. The splatters and casts, plus the wound patterns, told a tale of an assailant who was short, weak, and uncontrollably angry.

He called up the image of the victim’s body, but it was too much, too strong, so he dragged his mind away to focus on the pumping of his arms, the filling of his lungs. He tried again, this time remembering just the defensive wounds on the woman’s hands and arms, then moved to other aspects. In fifteen minutes, according to the clock, he had reviewed the whole crime scene and seen the phantasms of the possible, and only lost control of the rhythm of his run a couple of times. He was cautiously encouraged.

He lowered the speed but kept on running until he felt the runner’s groove, the cadence automatic. He had to know if he could handle a more horrific memory.

He called up the one he’d used to distract the telepath in the hostel room, about the boy in a forest clearing whose mother had cut out his heart, then killed herself. He balanced his visions with the physical sensations from running, speeding up the treadmill to cope with the memory as it swelled and threatened to overload him. It was hard and unnerving, and left him covered in icy sweat. He stumbled several times, but gritted his teeth and kept going while he still could. In the end, he had to focus on Mairwen, or he’d have gone under, but he’d lasted longer than he had in previous attempts. He managed to shove the memory back into its dark closet and slow the treadmill again.

He looked at the clock and was astonished to see it had taken close to fifty minutes. He counted that as progress, because it had seemed like hours. He felt like hell. He was nauseated, and his legs and sides burned like he’d been running wind sprints. His core felt as cold as when his talent ran wild. Still, it was better than waking up in another unfamiliar medical bed.

He slowed to a walk, breathing heavily as he stepped off. He grabbed a towel from a nearby rack and wiped the sweat off his face, then draped it around his neck for warmth.

He turned to Mairwen, who was doing force isolations with her lower torso, and caught an expression of concern on her face before it smoothed away. She released herself from the machine and stood to look at him.

“I’ll be okay, once I catch my breath.” His throat was parched.

He stepped closer, stopping only when their bodies were not quite touching. He put his hand on her shoulder, and he couldn’t help but smile. “I’m glad my personal security detail is worried about me.”

She twitched an eyebrow. “I’m more worried about my towel,” she said with an almost straight face.

He laughed when he remembered he hadn’t come in with one. “I’ll bring you another.”

She cocked her ear slightly toward the entrance. “No, I’m done for now.”

She turned and headed for the door, getting there just in time to cross paths with DeBayaud. Luka shook his head in wonder. Her acute hearing was astonishing.

He headed for the kitchen for something to drink before hitting the shower. The couches had been returned to their original positions. Adams was probably in his quarters, and he didn’t care where Haberville was.

The odd shift schedule they’d set up reminded him of his early days with the military police investigation division. The crime units had been chronically understaffed and overworked, and the commander was liable to send them to a crime scene halfway across the galaxy at any time. He’d been glad when he’d moved up in rank and could focus on the specialty cases. Not that they were any more conveniently timed or located, but there were fewer of them.