Desert World Rebirth (18 page)

“Please,” Shan whispered, his voice rough.

Temar bent forward until most of his weight rested on Shan’s back, his cock still deep inside his lover. “I need you on your knees,” Temar whispered. He placed a kiss on the back of Shan’s neck, smelling the sweat-musk that had gathered. When Temar started to sit up so he could pull out to reposition, he found himself lifted into the air as Shan shoved with his arm, pushing them both backward and lifting himself to his knees. Then he allowed his shoulders to collapse back to the bed, so his ass was thrust neatly up into the air.

The angle was right, and Temar pulled out before thrusting back in, slowly at first and then faster, their skin slapping as he sunk himself into Shan’s body. The gakka and their own heat gathered, the tingling growing until Temar could feel himself teeter on the brink of orgasm. Reaching around, he fisted Shan’s cock, and Shan gave one good thrust before he came, his muscles tightening around Temar’s cock as he cried out. Temar gave his own strangled cry as he finally came, his pleasure rushing through him until he could feel himself get light-headed.

Collapsing forward, Temar was vaguely aware that they were falling, Shan not able to hold them up as they collapsed back to the bed, Temar still inside Shan. His softening cock slipped free as they landed. However, Temar only had the energy to lie against Shan’s back, his breath coming in hungry gulps as he tried to recover. He’d had sex. He’d actually had more sex than he cared to think about some days. But he’d never had sex like that.

Below him, Shan moaned softly, the sort of sound someone makes when eating a truly good piece of chocolate.

“I should move,” Temar said blearily, aware that he was heavy enough to make an uncomfortable blanket.

“Don’t. You’re fine where you are,” Shan answered. Temar kissed the shoulder under his cheek and then let his eyes drift closed. Shan wasn’t as comfortable to lie on as the bed, but still… Temar didn’t want to move. 

Chapter 16

WAKING in a tangle of sheets, Temar cracked open one eye and grunted when he realized the light was spilling in from the bathroom and not the window. Dawn hadn’t come, but the bed was empty. Pushing himself onto his side, Temar reached down and scratched his crotch, the dried gakka making his skin feel tight. Curious where Shan had gone to, Temar swung his legs off the side and sat up, for a moment lacking the energy to get any farther. He sat squinting at the clock, but the light wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the long hands.

Pushing himself up, Temar shuffled to the bathroom door and pushed it open. Shan was in the sealed slosh stall and the bubbled glass showed his silhouette as he brushed the water off his body toward the drain. “Shan?” Temar called. He’d tried to be careful last night, but he was painfully aware that it had been years, possibly over a decade, since Shan had let anyone top him, and when muscles hadn’t been stretched in that long, accidents could happen.

“Temar?” Shan’s silhouette paused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” He went back to brushing the water off his skin.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Shan paused again. “I’m better than fine. I’m wondering how much privacy we’re going to have up there, because I really don’t want to wait long to do that again.”

“So, you aren’t hurt?”

Again, Shan paused, his silhouette frozen. “No. I’m fine, Temar.”

Letting out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, Temar sank down onto the closed toilet. “Happy stars,” he muttered to himself.

“Are you okay?” Shan called out.

Temar opened his mouth, ready to say that he was fine, but he wouldn’t get an honest answer out of Shan without offering up a little honesty himself. “I woke up and found you gone, and I was afraid I’d gone too fast and hurt you,” he admitted.

“If you’d gone any slower, I would have a permanent crick in my cock,” Shan said with some amusement.

Temar smiled, but then something else occurred to him. “So, why are you up?”

Shan pulled a forced air nozzle from the side of the wall and moved it down his body. Apparently, the first settlers to find themselves cut off from terraforming water had considered installing the air system on all slosh stalls to minimize the water loss, but they’d run out of supplies. The longer Temar was here at relay, the more keenly he was aware of just how short they were on so many supplies. The air machine whirred as Shan finished, and he let the hose retract before he opened the sealed door and stepped out. “I kept hearing motors. A lot of motors.”

“Really?” Temar turned and headed out into the bedroom to look out the window, but it was still pitch-black, the stars bright points against the night sky. Both moons were down and a man could break his neck in a pipe trap before he ever saw it. However, when he listened, he could hear the distant whine of motors.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but I’m suspecting Lilian,” Shan said as he came out of the bathroom with a shirt and socks on but no pants. Temar cleared his throat to keep from chuckling at the odd sight. He was fairly sure that laughing at a half-naked lover broke some unwritten rule.

“Lilian’s running a machine?”

Shan shook his head as he pulled clean workpants off a shelf. “There are too many engine noises, too many different kinds of engine noises. Sun will be up in a few minutes, and I plan to be at the top of the tower where I can see whatever she has set up.” Shan stopped with one leg in his pants and one lifted into the air as he looked at Temar. “You weren’t keeping me busy for her, were you?”

“Me? No. God, Shan, the woman makes me uncomfortable when I’m in the same room with her. I’m not going to conspire against my lover for her.”

Shan smiled when Temar said “lover” and slipped his second leg into his pants; however, the smile quickly vanished. “She makes you uncomfortable?” Shan sounded surprised.

That was a topic Temar hadn’t wanted to get into, but he’d stepped in it now. “I don’t know how to act around her.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s the one person on the council who really decided to sell me into slavery. Naite would have followed her lead, and I know you argued against slavery, and Dee’eta isn’t really one to poke sandrat nests, so I’m pretty sure it was mostly Lilian.”

Shan stopped. Right in the middle of taking a step, he simply stopped every motion. After a space of a dozen heartbeats, he turned toward Temar. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re the one who argued against slavery.” Temar made a face. “Actually, I was in favor of slavery too, since I thought the other option was exile. That makes it seem a little hypocritical to be uncomfortable around Lilian.”

“Is that why you had trouble working with Dee’eta?” Shan asked gently, apparently forgetting his self-imposed mission. “Because she didn’t argue?”

Temar shrugged. The fact was he didn’t actually know what had happened in that council room, but now that he knew so many of the people, he could take some guesses. He didn’t know how Kevin and Bari had voted, but he suspected Dee’eta hadn’t said one word either way, and he’d bet an entire season’s harvest that she’d voted with Lilian without thinking twice. Was that the only reason he’d been unable to work with her? “I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. “Part of it, maybe. Part of it was frustration because every time I tried to work the glass, I made a mistake. I screwed up things I shouldn’t have.”

“And she didn’t trust you enough to tell you to get your act together, the way Naite did,” Shan finished for him when Temar fell silent.

Again, Temar could only shrug. “If I ever get my own feelings sorted, you’ll be the first to know.”

Shan took one step closer before he stopped. The only light spilled out from the bathroom, creating a long shadow behind Shan as he frowned. “You don’t owe me answers, Temar. I have problems sorting my own emotions—so does Cyla, so does Naite, so does Tom. I’m starting to think that confusion and emotional flailing is the natural human condition and people like Div are just… weird.”

“Div’s weird?” A laugh slipped out of Temar, because of all the things he had expected Shan to say, that was about the single most surprising thing Temar could imagine.

“Oh, Div’s very weird. You just don’t know him well enough to notice,” Shan agreed. “So, are you going to get dressed and head up to the tower with me, maybe see what mischief Lilian’s up to before we get surprised?”

“Give me a second.” Temar grabbed clothes from the floor and quickly pulled them on. The new outfits made for their trip were so beautiful that Temar didn’t want to put them on without washing first. He wasn’t sure that people from water-wealthy planets would appreciate the finely woven cottons, but he did. He’d change later. Shan headed out of the bedroom as Temar pulled on his second shoe, and he hurried to follow.

As a tall man with long legs, Shan had a stride that Temar had to trot to keep up with. And the closer they came to the access ladder up to the tower, the faster Shan walked. If Lilian was playing games with this landing, Shan was going to be furious. Temar wasn’t sure, though, whether Shan would actually do anything about any schemes. It occurred to Temar that Lilian’s illness was another force, like gravity and fire, that allowed her to bend the glass.

Shan climbed the ladder faster than Temar could. He followed, finally climbing up into the observation deck, where thick glass separated them from the desert. The tower rose far above the protective cliffs on either side of the station, so that the first stain of sunrise made the dunes seem to stretch out, their long shadows reaching across the white sand hiding the valleys and the lines of rope Naite’s team had lined up to Shan’s specifications. The wooden spires marking the beginning and end of the landing zone were little more than black streaks against the land.

“Can you see anything?” Temar whispered, even though the height and tower gave them privacy.

Shan shook his head and leaned against one of the metal rails that lined the platform. “Not yet.”

Closing the distance between them, Temar rested his hand on Shan’s arm. After a quick smile over his shoulder, Shan returned to watching the north, and Temar leaned in, his cheek resting against Shan’s shoulder as they stood watch together. The desert always cooled at night, and the morning sun brought a brisk wind that stirred up dust devils and started moving the large barchan dunes farther east. Normally the sand was an unbroken sheet of white, the dunes looking like long wrinkles where some hand had failed to smooth the fabric, but Temar could see rough crags covering the north plain.

“What is that?” Temar lifted his head from Shan’s shoulder and moved closer to the glass.

“I have no idea.”

The sun crept up over the horizon, casting long, stark shadows, and Temar frowned, still not understanding what he was seeing. The spots were south of the west landing area, a long trail that thinned and thickened as it led between the far edge of the landing zone and the edge of the valley. “It looks like rocks,” Temar said, even though that was impossible. The Zhang mountains were the only source of sizable boulders in the area, and no one could haul rocks that far. No one sane, anyway.

“They aren’t. They’re vehicles,” Shan said. “It’s several hundred vehicles all parked out there.”

As Shan said it, the shapes seemed to suddenly sharpen so that Temar could see the haulers and bikes and sleds, the sand cars and the wide profiles of sand hunters, designed for shooters to stand on either side, and the rescue sleds, with their oversized engines that could power through the worst sandstorm and heavy canopies to protect crew.

“It’s thousands of vehicles,” Shan corrected himself in an awed whisper.

Temar understood the emotion. He put his hand out to touch the glass, as if the vision might vanish as the sun rose. “I didn’t know there were that many vehicles on the entire planet.”

“There aren’t,” Shan answered. Temar gave him a questioning look, and Shan shrugged. “At least there aren’t that many vehicles that run. Some of those must have been towed out here. God above, why would people tow broken loaders out here? Does Lilian think I can shove one airship full of broken haulers the way I would broken datapads?”

Temar tilted his head. From this high up, he imagined that the ship pilot who landed would see something like this, a scattering of vehicles randomly parked across the sand. With no rows or order, it looked like thousands and thousands of people had driven to the station and randomly parked wherever they wanted. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people. Hell, even if Shan was right that drivers had towed many of the vehicles out here, it must have taken hundreds of people to coordinate something like this.

“It’s Lilian’s plan,” Temar said softly as he thought about the shuttle pilot seeing a culture with so many vehicles, so many people, so much spare time that they could drop everything to come watch a ship land. It was smoke and mirrors—an illusion that wouldn’t stand up to a good poke with a stick.

“What plan?” Shan demanded.

“To make them think we’re strong. She’s trying to make them see that we’re strong enough to fight them if they try to take our world.”