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BELLE
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Charlie shrieks.
She’s shaking with anger, water dripping off her hair as she clenches her fist and raises them over her head. Asia and I look at each other, both of us trying to keep from laughing, but it’s not possible. Bahr stares, but even he has a small smile playing at the corners of his lips.
“Sorry Charlie,” I say, and Asia loses the battle to not laugh.
It’s contagious. The instant Asia cracks, I’m there with her. The pattering of the rain on the canopy overhead is a constant, but none of us expected it to break through in a sudden waterfall; or that Charlie would have the bad luck to be there when it did.
“This isn’t funny,” she says, pulling at her shirt and shaking her head. “At all.”
“But… look at you… it really… it is,” Asia laughs.
I’m laughing so hard my eyes are watering. There’s an edge to our laughter. We’re not laughing at Charlie, but at the absurdity of the entire situation. I dry my eyes and look a Bahr. He’s watching me. He does that a lot. I give him a smile and his eyes dance with delight as he returns it.
“We must move,” Bahr says.
“I’m soaked,” Charlie grouses.
“Yes,” Bahr agrees.
Got to love a Zmaj. These guys are so freaking literal it’s almost ridiculous. As Bahr turns and walks away, I admire his incredibly tight backside. A tingle tightens my core and I wonder, not for the first time, what his cock looks like.
My infatuation could just be he’s the only available lover around, but I don’t think that’s all it is. I’m not a fool. After all, I know when my heart is talking. Stupid heart, who has time for you? I walk over to Charlie to distract myself from my own internal dialogue and gather up her hair then help her ring it out.
“Sorry I laughed,” I say. “It was funny.”
“For you,” she sighs. “Fine, it was funny. But now I’m wet and it sucks.”
“You won’t be for long,” Asia offers. “It’s so freaking hot you’ll be back to only being wet with sweat in no time.”
“Joy,” Charlie says.
The three of us fall back into following Bahr, carefully putting our feet only in his steps. It didn’t take long here on Tajss to learn the ultimate truth. Everything is trying to kill you. The sooner you figure that out, the longer you’re likely to survive.
And survive we are. Somehow. The few of us who managed to escape the wrecking of the generation ship we were supposed to live and die on, never setting foot on an actual planet. I don’t know how many people were on the ship, thousands or even hundreds of thousands, but out of all those people, we’re the only survivors.
“There must be others, right?” Asia asks as if she’s reading my mind.
“Has to be,” I say. “Mathematically it only makes sense.”
“Does it really matter?” Charlie asks. “Unless we escape the Order, we’ll be wishing we didn’t survive.”
“True.”
The Order. A mysterious, cult-like group of Zmaj who want my friends and I for one purpose. Breeding. Not even nice enough to say, hey I’d like to have sex with you. Nope, they purely want us to pop babies. Thanks, but no thanks.
“Bahr?” I ask.
He doesn’t pause tramping through the jungle but he does turn his head, so I know he’s listening. His tail stops twitching and his wings are partially open and I don’t know why, but it is so sexy. I bet he could do things to me with that tail.
“How much further?”
“Two days,” he says. “We are going south then coming up.”
“I know, but I thought it wouldn’t take this long,” I say.
