Page 33 of Rescued By the Convicts
Melina leaned into Reece as she often did when she needed to be held. Reece was good about touching her, making her feel wanted and loved. Not that Ivan and Jayce didn’t, but they were more reserved away from the bunker.
“Thank you, Reece,” she whispered as he nuzzled the back of her neck. “You don’t know how good it is to have you touching me. I never want to go back.”
“Go back where, little bird?” Ivan asked a few steps in front of them.
“My mates. On Baccula.”
“They weren’t your mates. We are.”
“They were your captors,” Jayce added, the first he’d spoken since they left the bunker.
Legally, she belonged to Namir, Tristen, and Patel. But The Company and Namir could do nothing about her unit here. The Company didn’t care about registering or disbanding units on a prison planet. The prisoners here were throwaways, never to enter mainstream society again. Had they been on Narkos or Kyth, Level 4 prison planets, registering as a unit would be encouraged, as The Company considered units an important aspect of life. Prisoners on Veenith had no rights, nofuture.
Screw The Company and their rules. She didn’t need to be bound to her men legally for them to be hers.
“Yes. You are my mates” she said proudly, leaning into Reece. His sweet breath fanned over her ear as he sought her lips.
“Save it,” Jayce said, clipped.
“Are we in danger?” she asked.
“It’s Veenith. We’re always in danger,” Ivan answered for him. “But he’s right. A few minutes more and then we can relax.”
She gave Reece a quick kiss on the cheek. “Sorry, babe. General’s orders.”
“I was a Squad Commander. Not even close to being a general.”
“Why are you so tense, Ivan?” she asked as Reece’s hand rested on the small of her back.
“Slag duty. It’s tedious.”
She wouldn’t have thought it was any more tedious than working in the mine, but Ivan had returned to the bunker more drained than ever each night this week. Three days ago, something had happened, but he wouldn’t say what. He’d been quiet and kept to himself ever since.
“Perhaps if you tried to explain to Obray, he’ll let you return—”
“I’m on slag duty. It’s just a job. I earn the same number of credits.”
But he was alone, without others to talk to during the day. That could be quite lonely for a man like Ivan who was used to being in the company of others, even if he was always slightly apart from them, separated by rank or mission. He wasn’t a man who liked being alone.
Before she could reply, the rock tunnel disappeared, opening up to a plateau. To their left, a cave wide enough for ten men to stand astride and at least twenty feet high. Inside, the light from a fire bounced off the walls. But it was the view to her right that took her breath away.
Fire and ice, or what looked like ice, moved in a magnificent dance of colors in the field below. Hot orange lava streams wove through the terrain like veins, reaching out to every corner. Scattered throughout, beams of blue-white light reached to the sky from pits that glowed bright blue.
Ivan chuckled. “I thought you’d like this. Quite a view, right?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said, truly stunned. “This is more magnificent than the verluz in the caverns even.”
“The processing plant does a lousy job of removing the microscopic pieces of serilium from the rock that the miners extract. The lava melts away the slag but leaves the serilium behind, forming these pits. That’s pure serilium down there, and it’s worth a fortune, but no one can touch it,” Ivan explained.
“It’s the planet saying fuck you to The Company,” Jayce added.
Melina laughed. “It’s nice when something good and wondrous comes from evil. Sort of makes up for all the pain.”
Ivan’s hands landed on her shoulders as he pulled her back against his chest, much as Reece had done earlier. She stole a glance to check on her gentle giant. He’d moved a few feet away, deferring to Ivan, but his eyes never left her despite the majesty of the view below.
“It’s the second most beautiful thing you’ll ever see on Veenith,” Ivan said, his voice deep and seductive as he slid her coat off of her. His hand slid down her side and under her shirt and caressed her stomach. “Want to know the first most beautiful thing?”
“I can answer that,” said a male voice off to her left.
