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Crew appeared, leaning in the doorway. He observed us, his long lashes framing his lovely eyes while they rested on me before he finally entered the room. When he did, he set something down in front of the bed. It looked like a big, decorative chair, similar to the ones that Clarke had in rooms where I did my work for him.
He winked at me before he sat down in the chair. Well, if we were going to sit in silence, at least I wasn’t doing it alone.
7
THE MAN FROM THE MOUNTAINS
Eventually, I had to move, my bladder making it urgent rather than optional. It was convenient that Crew and I were sharing silent time together, because he reached out his hand and lifted me from the bed. He only used one arm, thereby not disturbing either of his friends—really, they were probably more like brothers—from where they slept. I tried, and likely mostly failed, to pretend I wasn’t impressed with his strength. As quietly as I could, after a grateful nod to Crew, I dove into the bathroom and turned on the water. It was probably fruitless to have bothered so much with being quiet, I thought, as the sound of the water in the sink practically blasted the room with sound—or so it seemed to my hyper alert senses.
I thought about it, and I realized I didn’t envy them that particular superpower. As a regular human, I could tune things out when I slept, but they didn’t have that luxury.
All of it had been so strange. Being there, trapped on their planet, was starting to feel like a refuge—even after puking and nearly being struck by lightning. I couldn’t let it become that for me, though, since I had to go back. The more I allowed myself to get used to their way of living, the harder it would be for me to leave when the time came.
But, oh, how I enjoyed the attention they gave me. They seemed to light up when I was there, and I was enjoying each of them so much. In some ways, being with them reminded me of being with my brother and Amias, but they never made me shiver just by smiling at me. Then there was the uniqueness of the place—the many things that made their world so different from the one I’d always known . Instead of thinking of the geography, though, as the warm water rushed over my body, my mind strayed back to how handsome they all were.
I rubbed the soap in long strokes up and down my body and closed my eyes, remembering the cockeyed smile with its little dimple, the dark eyelashes fringing gorgeous eyes, and the way their skin felt against my own. I didn’t enjoy looking at people usually, not in a sexual way, although some told me a few of my clients were attractive. I gave up caring what men looked like the day I lost my virginity to a man three times my age with bad breath and cruel hands. Did it matter what a man looked like if they all wanted the same things, actions I could perform from rote memory at this point? I didn’t think about anyone sexually, male or female, and I certainly never cared about the shape of their hands before.
Maybe it was this place, these guys, or perhaps grief simply made me lose my mind, but I had to admit they were each really gorgeous. Brutal in the way all Super Soldiers, as they’d put it, were.
But gorgeous too.
If I had a kinder life and a real chance at happiness, I wondered if I’d be able to truly enjoy that aspect of them. To take pleasure in how they looked, and how they looked at me.
Not that any of my considerations mattered, as they were wildly unlikely to be interested in me in a sexual manner. After all, they went into some machine and it turned it off for them. My breath caught in my throat. I’d been curious about it, but maybe I should ask them to use it. That would be great, in fact, as I could make myself stop thinking about them in inappropriate ways entirely, thereby evening out the playing field.
The idea was still on my mind when I got out of the shower and rubbed my skin dry with the pillow-soft towel they left out for me.
Could I just go into the machine? Would it fix my problem, at least temporarily?
When it wore off, it would be fine. I’d never struggled before with such strange urges, as the men at home didn’t affect me in any way. Well, sometimes they even caused the opposite reaction, and I shuddered remembering. Of course, my reaction could simply be because they treated me as a person who might break if mishandled, rather than trying to destroy me for fun.
Tears flooded my eyes, and I fought them back with quick blinks and slow breaths. What was the matter with me? My life was my life. Thinking about my fate had never brought me to tears before.
A gentle knock came from the door, so I wiped at my face. I was covered in a towel, modest enough to let them enter. “Come in.”
The door opened slowly, revealing a gentle- eyed Gunnar. “They sent me up to get you, and I…well, I heard your tears. I could pretend I didn’t, but it feels like a lie, so I thought I’d just knock.”
“Right. The funniest things keep rolling around in my mind, possibly because it is so quiet here. Usually, I’m so busy, I just go through things. One day to the next, one foot in front of the other, no time for rumination or dissection of my motives. With a sudden wealth of time to consider things, it lets me think about feelings I never considered before.”
Gunnar stepped away from the door, so I followed him back into the room. “Boy, do I understand what you’re talking about,” he admitted, scratching at his chin with one long fingered hand.
“You do?” I sat down on the bed, knowing I should get dressed but not quite ready to.
He leaned against the wall, his strong arms crossed over his chest. “When we were first created, we were so busy fighting and destroying. It was the whole purpose of my life. Then we lost. Badly.” A muscle ticked in his jaw when he spoke those words, the frustration of defeat still clear on every tight line of his muscular body. “I never lose, but we did. Then we were running for our lives, trying not to be exterminated. When we arrived here, we really had to work to fix this place up, and our previous skill set left us woefully unprepared for the task at hand. Amias used to say we just had to keep trying, that at some point our luck would change and we’d learn the skills we needed.” He smiled at the memory, but then he shrugged. “Then we were done. Mostly. People come and hire us to do things, and we keep this township going. It’s always a struggle, and everyone has to get jobs off-planet to keep going. The whole place feels transient sometimes, but we’ve maintained it for years. And then there is this time of year. Everything goes quiet. We’re just here, just going about our lives. The first year, I had a lot of time to think about my life. Well, every year I do, I guess, but that first year, I wasn’t sure I would make it out the other end with my mind still intact. We didn’t know how long it would last, the lightning time.”
“What did you do to get through it?” I couldn’t pound on trees or climb to the peaks of barely scalable mountains to deal with my feelings of unrest, which is what I imagined Gunnar did, if he felt edgy.
He shrugged and joined me, sitting next to me on the bed. “I don’t know if I did? I think I’m still getting over it, or maybe the pain is just part of it now. Like, it’s become part of who I am. Despite that with time, things got easier to bear. It’s not that my…discomfort went away or lessened, more like the basket I was carrying it around with got bigger. Maybe that doesn’t make sense?”
“Well. ” I squeezed his arm then adjusted my towel. “It does, actually. In a big way. Hopefully, I’ll understand even more before I leave. Or I’ll just go back, fall into my old patterns, and never notice it again.”
“Because you have to go back to your version of a corporation? You have to go back to doing what you were doing, so you don’t have a permanent break.”
I nodded. “That was it exactly.”
He made a face. “They want us to go downstairs. It’s time to get ready for tonight. You don’t have to, of course, because you’re our guest, but if you want something to do tonight, we can certainly keep you busy.”
I liked the idea. I didn’t want to think. “Give me a few minutes to put on some clothes?”
