Tor (Women of Earth Book 2) (16 page)

Chapter 17

Wynne was alone in the kitchen when Tor came from the bedroom. She didn't turn around, but knew it was him when there was no greeting, only slow and easy movement toward her. She kept her back to him and kept her eyes on the long yellow roots on the counter. They looked more like a skinny carrots or parsnips, but were similar in taste to potato. Her hand gripped their wilted leafy tops more tightly than necessary as if they might try to escape the vicious slice, slice, slice of her knife.

She should have spoken up, stopped him before he reached her. The steady rhythm of the knife faltered when he moved to stand behind her. It stopped altogether when he slid his arms around her waist.

"Good morning," he rumbled in a voice still lazy from sleep.

This would be so much easier if his chest didn't feel so warm against her back, if his encircling arms didn't remind her of what they'd shared the night before. She had to force herself to keep her head erect and not tilt it to the side to give him better access when he kissed her neck.

Tor wasn't deterred. He nuzzled the collar of her shirt aside and kissed the top of her shoulder and before she knew it her head was tilting.

She would lose her anger if he kept it up. She was already losing it. It took all her resolve not to turn in his arms and slip her own arms about his neck and kiss him back.

His lips moved up her neck to the ticklish place behind the lobe of her ear.

"Please don't," she said. Who knew those two simple words would be so hard to say? "I can't do this if you're doing that."

Tor's body tensed, but he didn't let go. He pulled his head away from her neck, but only so he could whisper quietly in her ear. "Do what? What's wrong?"

"You. You're wrong." Wynne tried to remember the last time she told someone they were wrong and couldn't.

She felt him smile against her neck before he kissed it again. "Wrong? The last I remember, I was doing everything right, unless I misinterpreted your hoo-boys, oh-my-gods, and can-we-do that-agains. I think there were a few damn-that-felt-goods in there, too."

She felt the color rise to her face. Tell him what you like, Mira said. Was it her fault that she liked it all? "I talked too much, didn't I?"

His breath tickled the spot behind her ear and sent a shiver right down to her toes, but the heat of it settled somewhere else. She tried to shake it off by reminding herself there was ass chewing to do.

His quiet rumble of laughter made her forget that, too. God, she loved that laugh. She felt it as much as heard it. It was like a secret he shared only with her.

"Your enthusiasm was refreshing. Your experimentation was pretty damned enjoyable, too." His hands slid over her hips and around to her abdomen. "So how did I go wrong when I never left the bed? Did I snore?" The gentle pressure of his hands slackened and she felt his smile fade. "Or do you have morning after regrets?"

"Neither." She shook her head in an attempt to clear her thoughts. "Both."

He did step back at that. His brows rose like eagles' wings. "Could you clarify that? Just a little?"

"You do snore, but not badly." Should she tell him how much she enjoyed that comforting rumble beneath her ear? That she thought he would send her back to her own cold bed when his needs were met? Should she tell him how warm and secure it felt when he gathered her close to pillow her head on his chest? She turned in his arms. "And I don't regret sleeping with you. How could I? It was wonderful." She couldn't lie, not about something like that. "It was..."

Mohawk saved her from folding under feelings that had nothing to do with her mission.

"Ha," he shouted, much louder than he needed to. "Finally got the old meat whistle calling her tune, did ya? "Bout time. Bet she danced a jolly jig to it, too. The quiet ones always do once the ice is broken."

Wynne ducked around Tor and marched toward the grinning Perithian who'd fanned the dying embers of her anger. He could tell all the off color tales he liked about his own sexcapades, but he wasn't adding hers to his repertoire. What she'd done wasn't a jolly jig. It wasn't something to be joked about. It had meaning.

Mohawk must have seen it in her face, because he took a step back. "Oh-oh."

"You bet oh-oh."

Wynne had her finger up, ready to read him the riot act. Her sex life was not up for discussion. It was none of his business. What came out, however, was quite different from her intent.

"Whose side are you on?"

Mohawk blinked and looked past her to Tor. "What did you do to her?" he asked angrily. "You knew she'd never been danced around the pole. What the hell were you thinking, man? You've got to ease 'em into the more... um... catterwhumping stuff."

Wynne had no idea what any of that meant and knowing Mohawk, she probably didn't want to.

"I didn't..." Tor started to answer.

"Don't." She turned her warning finger on him. "This has nothing to do with sex."

Posy glided into the room, his long robe skimming the tops of his sandaled feet. "Everything has to do with sex. Isn't that right, Ish?" he said over his shoulder.

"Fuck you." Ish followed him into the room.

Posy spread his hands. "You see?"

Wynne ignored him and kept her focus on Mohawk. "You knew Tor was going to abandon us on Celos."

"I wasn't going to abandon you," Tor interrupted.

"Don't interrupt." Those two words were much easier to say now that he was ten feet away. "I'll get to you in a minute."

Mohawks face had become a determined mask. "The important thing is to get you to Mishra," he argued dutifully, though with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

"No. The important thing is you didn't ask me."

"One ride on the comet and you tell all? I thought I could trust you." At the dagger eyes he shot at Tor, Wynne sighed.

"Will you please get your mind out of my bed? That has nothing to do with this. I have other fish to fry here."

"Didn't sound like nothing last night." Posy winked at Tor.

"Oh, my God," Wynne moaned. "Are you not hearing me? Do you not see the look on my face? Do you not get that I'm serious here?"

Ish strolled over to the cook top, peered into the pan, and began eating with her fingers. "There is no fish in here." She curled her lip. "No meat either. So what does sex have to do with frying fish?"

"It's a saying and it has nothing to do with sex. It means I have other things to talk about," Wynne explained. She saw Mohawk wink at Posy and the other man grin. Her patience plummeting to new lows. She threw up her hands in frustration. "I don't know why everyone is so interested in my sex life," she muttered.

"Because you have one." Posy looked longingly at Ish.

They were trying to distract her, just as Tor had tried in the escape pod. Did they think she was so dimwitted she'd fall for it? Wynne threw up her hands in. "Then you'll have to make one up because mine is off limits. Am I clear on that or do you need a translation?"

Hands down on the tabletop, she leaned in and looked from face to face before glaring over her shoulder at Ish. She received a disappointed nod from Posy and an indifferent shrug from Ish. Tor's face had become a solid mask of...she wasn't sure what, but at least he wasn't grinning like Mohawk. That grin became the subject of her first attack.

"And you can just wipe that smile off you face, mister. Don't think I'm finished with you or that you can shift the blame to someone else. I don't know whether it was your idea or Tor's, but here's a newsflash. Neither one of you has the right to make my decisions for me. Or for Truca. She has a right to have a say in her own future."

She was surprised when it was Ish who spoke up.

"With us, she has no future. She's better off with you."

"How can you say that? You don't even like me."

"So? I don't like most people. What's that got to do with it?" Ish looked at her as if she was stupid. She picked up the spoon lying next to the skillet and began eating from the pan. "Don't you want her?"

"Of course I want her. That's not the point." Wynne said as she marched back around the counter to the cook top. She snatched the now empty spoon from Ish's hand and threatened her with it. "No food until you tell me what's going on."

"It is the point, Wynne. With your connections, she's the easiest one to save," Tor said quietly.

"Save from what?"

"From life on a penal colony. Once you're in the hands of the peacekeepers, you tell them everything that happened until we got to the compound. You dealt with me and only me. Once here, you met Truca. She'd been abused. She helped you escape. Beyond that, none of you know where I'm going or what my plans are."

"No," Truca said from the doorway. "I won't do it. I won't let them think you did this to me. I won't."

"You won't have to," Wynne assured her.

"She must," Tor insisted. "She has to be cleared of any involvement. You refused, Truca, and I beat you for it."

"No. It isn't true and I won't say it. I won't." Truca sniffed loudly and clamped her jaws tight to stop the quivering of her chin. The tears spilled anyway.

"You will. You have to. If Chubo and Nix are still on the Sky Hawk, they'll need your testimony that they had no choice. It's the best we can do for them. The peacekeepers have to believe Digger and I set up the whole thing. When Lusomo didn't agree, I killed him. Chubo and Nix knew you'd be next if they didn't cooperate."

"But you didn't kill him," the girl cried. "I did. I let them in. I opened the door. It was my fault, Tor. You told me to keep the door locked. I opened it. Lusomo found us in the hallway when they were taking me back. He died because of me."

Wynne was already moving toward Truca. "No," she said, so sharply that the girl's head jerked as if she'd been slapped. "You aren't responsible for any of this. It started long before you opened that door. I won't let you blame yourself. None of this was your fault, Truca, none of it."

"But it is. All of it," Truca sobbed. Her eyes shifted from Wynne to Ish. "I lied to you and Posy. I told you I thought I heard Tor coming back to the room. I didn't. I was going out. I was angry with all of you for going out to have fun, for leaving me behind. I was going to show you I wasn't a child." She wiped her cheeks with her hands and her nose with her sleeve. "I wasn't going to do anything bad. Just go out. Alone. On my own."

The crew was Truca's family, and like every family, she'd been assigned her place. Wynne knew only too well what that was like. And what it was like to have your one quiet moment of rebellion end in tragedy.

As she gathered the girl in her arms, Wynne whispered the words no one had ever said to her. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault."

"Why couldn't you save them?" her brother David had asked when the building collapsed from the air strike. He was only a little boy at the time and still thought grownups had the miraculous power to fix the unfixable.

"I thought you were with them," Mira had said.

Neither meant it as an accusation, but the words stuck with Wynne.

Her father was tired, worn out with worry. Her mother was sick and weak. She needed help to use the stairs and the stairwell was where they died. Logically, Wynne knew there was little she could have done. There was no guarantee her being there would have saved them, but she wasn't there to try, and her guilt wasn't swayed by logic or reason. She couldn't let Truca's unearned guilt do to her what Wynne had allowed her own guilt to do to herself.

"You had no crystal ball, sweetheart. You had no way of seeing the future." She looked up at the others, but her words were for Tor. "None of you did. This wasn't your fault."

Tor ignored the hint. "She's right, Truca. None of this is your fault," he said stiffly, "But it doesn't change our current circumstance. I can use the credits we found here to buy Ish and Posy alibis to prove they left the ship before this happened. I can't do that for Chubo and Nix. I need a reason for their cooperation. I'll make sure they look like they were forced if they don't look that way already. It's the only thing I can think of to give them a chance."

"Why me?" Truca asked. "Why not Posy or Ish? They got taken, too."

Wynne knew why. Truca was young and innocent looking and she was the only one who showed obvious signs of abuse. Her battered face and body was bound to evoke sympathy. It would lend credence to Tor's lie, particularly if Wynne and Mohawk claimed the girl helped them escape.

"And then what?" she asked before anyone could answer. "Everyone is taken care of but you, Tor. What happens to you?"

Posy found something to look at on the floor. Ish's face hardened into a mask of stone. Even Mohawk refused to look at her. Wynne wasn't alone in her objection.

Wynne raised her finger to Tor. "You're going to find the Sky Hawk, make sure everyone has the best chance of surviving this, and then turn yourself in and take the blame. You're not coming back, because you'll be in one of those prison colonies. You're asking your crew to perjure themselves to convict you. You're asking them to commit a crime to convict you of a crime you didn't commit. How does that make sense, Tor? And why are you agreeing to it?" she asked the others.