He squirmed lower into the cockpit, reaching for the open ignition system, but it was hard to maneuver with Val pinned against him. He held his breath to duck his head between his legs.
“What are you doing?” Val asked, still shooting. “And where’d they go? They’re hiding behind that fighter in the corner, damn it.”
“Please keep track of their positions for me.”
“Oh, I’m keeping track.”
Gregor could barely see what he was doing, but he carefully, so very carefully, scraped off the tiniest smidgen of the explosive. He wiped his fingers, lessening the amount on his nail even more. There, an infinitesimal amount. He scraped it on the top of the laser knife’s hilt, the part where the “blade” would be emitted when it was turned on.
“I’m going to assume you’re doing something crafty down there,” Val said, slumping low to change out charger packs, “and not simply cowering with your head between your legs.”
“Good,” Gregor said though he was concentrating and barely heard her. He lifted his head, his thumb on the switch for the knife. “Where are they? Still behind that fighter?”
More people in the crowd were firing back now and a couple of groups were trying to work their way around other planes, so they could reach the intruders. Maybe Gregor should wait and let them handle it. His plan could get a lot of people hurt, especially if he had miscalculated the amount of damage that tiny smudge of explosive could do.
“Look out,” someone yelled. “Grenade.”
A compact cylindrical object lofted through the air on a trajectory that would take it into the crowd. No, Gregor realized, it would sail over the crowd and toward the fighter he and Val were sitting in.
“If that gets close—” was all he had time to blurt, envisioning fiery shrapnel striking the open panel and igniting the Flash-5 on the wiring, the wiring
he
had exposed.
Val was already firing, not shooting at the hidden fighters this time, but at the grenade. Her beam sliced through the air, striking the explosive. It blew up at its zenith.
Gregor flung himself over the open circuits, terrified burning debris would find its way into the cockpit. A spark was all it would take to blow up the entire mountain.
But Val had caught the grenade far enough away. It exploded with a boom that rattled the fighters, and fiery orange lit the hangar like a sun, but only a few pieces of shrapnel reached their cockpit. They struck Gregor’s back, cutting through his shirt like steel thorns, but nothing got through him to touch the Flash-5.
If the intruders had more grenades, Gregor dared not hesitate again. There was no more time for second-guessing. He stood, aimed carefully, and thumbed the switch on the laser knife. He flung it toward the spot from which the grenade had been launched.
“Stop them before they throw any more bombs,” someone below yelled.
Gregor almost responded that he was trying, but the three seconds passed first. The laser must have ignited, for a second boom filled the hangar, this one doing more than rattling the fighter. A shockwave slammed into Gregor, hurling him out of the cockpit. As he fell, he glimpsed others being flung through the air like dolls too. With his ears stunned by the boom, he couldn’t hear people’s shouts; he could only see their wide-open mouths, their bulging eyes. Wreckage flew through the air was well, clanging into fighters all around him.
A mistake. He’d made a mistake. That was all Gregor could think as he slammed to the ground.
The fall knocked all of the air from his lungs, stunning him. He had the presence of mind to cover his face—the shrapnel raining down from his explosion made that from the grenade seem pitiful—but nothing more. He couldn’t have said whether seconds or minutes passed as he waited for the inevitable, for the mountain to collapse atop him, atop them all.
But eventually, sound returned, muted sound. Things weren’t as clear as they should have been. He lowered his arm and blinked up toward the ceiling. It was still up there. He didn’t see any cracks, any sign of debris plummeting down to bury them. Dare he hope…?
A gray-haired figure stepped up to his side and scowled down at him. “Thatcher, you’re a loon. The military would have kicked you out if you hadn’t left.”
Huh. Admiral Summers. The man had more lives than a Modarian flying cat.
“That means you wouldn’t want him here to fly with your people, right, Admiral?” Val said, appearing at Summers’s side.
Seeing her alive made Gregor’s soul soar. Her hair was sticking out in a dozen directions, and her shirt had been torn, but she was standing and giving the admiral her sarcastic smile. Delightful.
“What’s there left to fly? Those two fighters were utterly destroyed and more are damaged.” Summers flung his hand toward something Gregor couldn’t see from his spot flat on his back. “I see
your
shuttles weren’t touched.”
“Have all of the intruders been nullified?” Gregor couldn’t tell if the admiral was sarcastic-angry or sarcastic-exasperated, but he definitely understood that the man wasn’t pleased with him. Did that mean he would be thrust back into his room with a guard on the door? For two years?
“The two that were lofting grenades have been obliterated,” Val said.
“A professional should attend to the explosive material, so it can be disposed of promptly and is no longer a threat.”
“
Thank
you for the advice, mercenary, but we’ll figure things out on our own from here on out. I want you and your team out of my mountain and off my planet as soon as your rust buckets are able to fly.” Summers stalked away. His tone had been so irritated that it took Gregor a moment for the admiral’s words to sink in. Had he… just been released?
Gregor struggled to push himself into a sitting position, wincing at the pain and stiffness in his back. He had landed a half dozen meters from the fighter. Val knelt beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. The crowd was departing along with Summers, but Pilot Zimmerman gave him a salute before following the others.
“We appreciate the help, Thatcher,” she said. “And if I were you, I’d leave first thing in the morning, before he changes his mind.”
“I understand, yes.”
“I will talk to the repair crew,” Gregor told Val after Zimmerman walked away. “If they work through the rest of the night, the shuttles may be ready for a morning departure. They can sleep on the way back to the ship.” Wherever the ship was. He would have to check in with the captain soon and let him know he was no longer a prisoner.
“But as the pilots,
we
should sleep for a few hours, right? To ensure we’re rested enough to fly?” The corner of her mouth crooked up.
“That might be wise.”
“Would you mind sharing your room with me? Mine is, uh…” She grimaced, and he remembered the dead guard was on the floor in her quarters. It was likely someone would remove him, but she might object to sleeping in a room where a man had been slain. It wouldn’t bother him, but she might be more superstitious.
Val lifted her brows, and it dawned on him that she was asking to share his room. His
bed
, presumably, since there was only the one in there.
“Is sleep all you have in mind?” Gregor did not think his injuries would preclude a night of amorous coupling. He could probably find one of those wound-relief tabs to be certain, in case Val preferred vigorous lovemaking.
“After all this, it
would
be difficult to quiet the mind for sleep right away. Perhaps we can find a way to distract our brains together.” She cocked an eyebrow as she considered. “But, hm. Are you
prepared
for distractions? After all, you were already distracting yourself earlier when I walked in.”
Gregor flushed. Even though masturbation was a perfectly normal human activity—the physiology and psychology journal he had consulted around age thirteen had assured him of that—it was, nonetheless, one he usually engaged in only in private. Val’s twinkling eyes were promising—at least she didn’t think him some kind of aberration—but did not entirely alleviate his embarrassment. Still, he mustered admirable dignity when he said, “Surviving assassins, laser fire, and explosions has a way of reinvigorating a man. I assure you I’m
very
prepared.”
* * *
Val followed Gregor into his room, closing the door behind them, scarcely believing they might have a few hours of privacy. With the base personnel handling cleanup and getting their shields back online and the rest of the mercenaries handling the final repairs of the shuttle, everyone should be too busy to bother them. She was tempted to fling herself at Gregor—she had been rerunning those last kisses in her mind as they walked back to his room together—but she wanted to make sure those pain meds he had taken had kicked in before jumping into his arms and wrapping her legs around him. He had been thrown out of the fighter
hard
. She had been lucky that she had still been ducking after the grenade exploded. The force of the shockwave had made the fighter skid several inches, but it hadn’t hurled her from the craft.
Gregor faced Val and clasped her hands. “We were discussing preparedness. I wish for you to be as prepared as I am. Do you have a list of preferred types of preliminary sexual stimulation?”
“A… list?”
“Yes. If you give me a list, I can be certain to address your desires in a manner that will thoroughly prepare you for coitus.”
Val wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the idea of handing him a list or to be touched that he wanted to make sure she had a good time too. And, hell, how many men had she slept with who had actually asked what she liked? Especially for the first time?
“Do you want a, ah, verbal list or shall I… transfer a file to you?” She imagined him consulting his tablet in the middle and bit her lip so she wouldn’t giggle.
“Whichever is more comfortable to you. I will remember, either way. With a file, you can include diagrams though.” Gregor dug in his pocket, produced his tablet, and raised his eyebrows.
“Diagrams? This is starting to sound like homework.”
“Ah, no need then. I’m well versed in female anatomy.”
“Really? And here I thought it was only airplane and spaceship anatomy that fascinated you.” Val sat on the edge of the bed and brought up the keyboard to type in her list. Somehow saying what she liked out loud seemed too silly. Not that composing a list wasn’t silly, too, but… it would please him. And somewhere along the way, she had started wanting to do that.
“It does, but I’ve found that when you’re an… atypical representative of the male sex, biological knowledge of the female of the species can help alleviate the discomforts caused by certain social awkwardnesses.”
Val withheld another giggle. He was being especially wordy and, yes, socially awkward tonight. Nervous, was he? She thought about pointing out that if he kept his mouth shut and subdued that aloof, arrogant expression of his, he wouldn’t be atypical at all, at least not in a bad way. But she’d grown oddly fond of his verbosity and wouldn’t want to say anything that might make him clam up. As for the rest, he
was
a good kisser—after he got over the surprise that someone was kissing him—so she wouldn’t dismiss that his biological knowledge might come in handy.
“So you’re promising me a good time tonight?” was all she said out loud.
“I do hope so.”
Gregor sat next to her on the bed, his thigh touching hers. His warmth contrasted with the cold of the room, and she leaned against him. She thought about tossing the tablet aside and simply kissing him. Surely, they could figure things out from there. It wasn’t as if she was shy about blurting out what she liked in the heat of the moment.
Perhaps thinking the same thing, Gregor lifted a hand, as if he might stroke her hair, but he lowered it to his lap instead.
“Waiting to see the list?” Val asked.
“Yes. I did not want to presume beforehand.”
“I do like having my hair played with. Braided… unbraided… stroked… soft little tugs on the ends. Oh, and neck and shoulder massages are delightful.” She beamed up at him.
He leaned close, and she thought he might skip it all and kiss her—that would be fine, too, because those last two kisses had been plenty to get her riled up and
prepared
. If only they hadn’t kept getting interrupted. Ah, but he was peering at what she had typed rather than kissing her.
“Hair is not on the list,” he observed. His eyes crinkled as he watched her sidelong.
Val suspected he was teasing her. As long as his lips were that close, maybe she would tease him back.
She lifted a hand to stroke his jaw, his skin stubbled after a long day of fighting and being imprisoned, and gave him a little kiss. She caught his bottom lip with her teeth, sucking at it playfully. His body stiffened, and his hands twitched in his lap. He must want very much to move them. She would have laughed at this warring of his instincts with his mental need for order, but her lips were too busy for that. He kissed her back, leaning closer, his chest pressing against her shoulder, and he finally gave in, letting one of his hands slip free. It came to rest on the back of her neck, his thumb and fingers massaging her weary muscles. Ah, yes, that was on the list. He paid attention well.
Remembering her intent to tease him, Val pulled her mouth away from his. A protesting rumble came from his throat, but she bent back over the tablet and started typing. She bit her lip again, fighting back a grin, aware of the deep rise and fall of his chest, the fact that the humor in his eyes had turned into a more intense emotion.
“I’ll put those things at zero-point-five,” she announced calmly. “They’re not necessary for arousal, but I do find them delightfully relaxing.” Though she could feel his eyes upon her—he had to be thinking of grabbing that tablet and tossing it across the room—she continued typing.
When she had drawn away, his massage of her neck had paused, but he resumed it, bringing both hands in and kneading her shoulders, as well. Ah, that was nice. His warm breaths tickled her ear as his fingers drifted up to her head, alternating between raking through her hair and massaging her scalp. Gooseflesh arose all along her spine. She hadn’t been joking about liking her hair played with, and it didn’t take long before she was struggling to concentrate on her list. Warm heat curled through her body, and her mind lingered on the kiss she had given him. She might have wanted to tease him, but his lips had enticed her in turn.