Page 83 of Stealing Mercury
Lo growled a wordless response that communicated frustration.
She grinned at him. “You know...” She spoke softly, not wanting Mikal or her mother to overhear. “Your eyes looked just like that the first time you were inside me.” Lo’s snarl died away and his features softened. She let go of his hair and stroked his head. “Let him up, please.”
Lo eased back and was on his feet in another blur of motion. He put an arm around her and pulled her to his side. Samantha glanced back at Mercury. His look was approving. He was still alert and wary of Knock as the man held his hands up and muttered an apology.
“Joking,” he said. “Just joking.”
“Mercury, Lo, meet Knock, a member of my father’s crew. The man in the other room is Mikal, the tool slinger on theBucket.” She started to introduce Mercury and her throat tightened. She knew what he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t. She swallowed hard and took a steadying breath. “Knock, this is Mercury and his pack brothers Lo and, in the other room, Carn.”
Mercury pressed along her back, a quiver of emotion rippling through his body.
Knock held his hands out in a show of surrender. “Sure, sure, whatever, but can you tell them to put something on, or at least cover up those monster dicks?” He made a shivering motion. “All that meat swinging around gives a man the willies.”
Samantha chuckled. “Jealous?”
“Hell yes. After this, I may develop a complex or something.”
Samantha remembered that Carn had actually been wearing something as he’d flashed by on his way out of the room. That was some consolation, since her mother was out there with him.
She sent Knock out to wait with Mikal and Carn, then pulled on her own indie-gray pants and paired them with a soft yellow top that clung to her curves. She fingered the soft material. One of the perks of coming home was a vast improvement in her wardrobe. She tugged on her freighter boots and smoothed the trim that matched Knock’s. Her father had bought his whole crew new boots as a celebration a week before his death. Knock and Mikal’s visit meant theBucketwas at the port. She couldn’t help but wonder if Shred still wore the same boots.
Samantha helped Mercury and Lo with the unfamiliar clothes her Mother had secured for them. They looked almost normal in the full length trousers and loose shirts. Mercury pulled his hair back with a small tie. The effect was startling. He looked more civilized and less human. Without the fall of hair around his face all the angles of his face appeared sharper and more pronounced.
Civilized or savage, he became more a part of her every day. What would be left when he ripped those parts away?
***
“Why are you here?” Samantha put her hands on her hips and stared Knock down. He sat at her mother’s table, stuffing a biscuit into his mouth. He had to work it down and chase it with fruit-water before he could answer.
“Moira, I never understood how you always seem to have the best foodstuffs from Sedona.” Knock wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
His comment struck her as funny, considering it was her father’s connections that ensured her mother’s regular shipments from Haverlee’s sister city—an Eden nestled on the planet’s most verdant continent.
He shifted his focus to Samantha and stopped eating. “Sammie, I came to say I was wrong. Wrong to let Shred leave you behind. Wrong not to tell you so sooner.” He smoothed his hands along the table until he realized what he was doing, then he stopped and held still. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
She straightened. “Sure. I’m going to say, if that’s all, you’re done and you can go.”
“You’re skeptical.” He put a hand to his heart. “I’m hurt.”
“You’re a soft spined letch with a hard head and no common sense, Knock. I doubt I could hurt you if I dropped a skipdrive on your head.”
“Now that’s mean, Sammie. I’d have thought you’d be in a better mood after...” He waved a hand at Mercury and Lo who flanked her.
“I want a serious answer, Knock.”
He leaned so far forward he almost landed in his plate. “I mean it, Samantha. I tried to talk Shred out of it before and I tried to talk him into going back after. I left the ship at the next port.”
“I didn’t,” said Mikal. He looked much the same as she remembered, tall and rangy with a face that had seen too many bar brawls. The streaks of gray had nearly taken over his once auburn hair—that was new. “Sorry Sammie, but work is work. But you should believe him.” He nodded to Knock. “The idiot even spent his own credits to go after you. Leastways, he said he was going to. He did leave the ship for a few months. That much I know.”
Samantha sat in one of the chairs and reached for the sugared grain and nut mix her mother had set out. “Is that true, Knock?”
He frowned, drawing his brows together and puffing out his slender cheeks. “For all the good it did me. You’d already gotten off planet by the time I got there. We were friends, Sammie. Real friends. You know I never had anybody give a damn about me before your dad and you.”
Mikal cleared his throat but left a ring of sugar around his mouth. “Chief told us you might be looking for a ride off this ball of sand.”
“He had no business telling you anything.” She poured cream over the grain and nut mix and passed it to Mercury who’d taken a seat between her and Mikal.
“Look at you—” Mikal snickered. “Feeding your man. I didn’t know you had any of your mom’s domestic, man-pleaser genes.”
