Unchained Memory (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 1) Read online

  He felt a familiar tightening in his groin as his body showed it was clearly pleased at the prospect. He released a breath that was almost a growl. “Oh, God, Asia. You’re killing me.”

  By the time I got home I’d already called myself an idiot for my behavior with Ethan; enough that I was tired of it. The Outlaw Jesse James took up the challenge, though, offended that I hadn’t been there to top up his Meow Mix or entertain him sufficiently, this being a Saturday and all. I gave JJ some love, poured myself a big glass of cabernet, and went to run water for a long, hot bath.

  While the tub filled, I paced the living room, trying to make sense of the story that had played out in my mind, under the influence of Ethan’s machine. That place—it was like no place on Earth, but it was as recognizable as the skyline outside my window. And the woman who’d helped me—Dozen—I knew her better than I knew Rita or Sherry or anyone else in this world. How could that be? A dream couldn’t be that real, could it? But if it wasn’t a dream—

  I shook my head and set the thought aside. I was too tired to think about it anymore. Besides, everything else that had happened that afternoon needed consideration. I stripped off my clothes and settled into the tub, letting the bubbles and the warmth leach the tension from my muscles. Then I let my mind wander over what had passed between me and Ethan.

  I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like the kind of exchange we’d had went way beyond what was supposed to happen between doctor and patient.

  That was your fault.

  Damn it. What did I think I was trying to do, anyway?

  You know.

  Yeah, I knew. I’d wanted to know what his status was. Was there someone else who had a claim on him? Turns out there was—and she held the most heartbreaking, most unassailable claim of all. A claim I had no business challenging, even if I wasn’t Ethan’s patient. My heart twisted in my chest, thinking of the way his eyes had burned with cobalt fire when he’d told me. Grief and guilt nearly as flammable as my own fed that fire. He’d be a long time extinguishing the flames, and any woman who got too near him in the meantime was likely to get burned.

  So how could I have glimpsed something else in his eyes? Had I imagined fire of another kind sparking in the space between us, smoldering under the surface of his skin—and mine?

  He’s a man. Past or no past, he’s gonna act like one.

  Yes, Lord, he was. And the thought of treating him like a man was driving me to absolute distraction. The suspicion that he might respond to being treated that way—that he might need it as much as I did—was tempting to the point of intoxication.

  I longed to step inside that circle of professional distance he’d created to keep us apart, to be close enough to dissolve his pain and mine in the steamy heat we could create between us. I wanted to slip my hands under that soft, loose shirt, to slide them over the smooth skin of his chest, his back, his belly. I wanted to lift the fabric over his head so I could have the pleasure of looking at him half-naked, the hard muscles under the pale skin, the breath rising and falling in his chest.

  In my fantasy now I’m naked, completely so, and I wrap my arms around his neck so I can press my aching breasts to his chest. His arms enfold me and hold me close. The denim of his jeans is rough against my skin, but I don’t mind; I can feel the hot ridge of his erection behind it, and that’s what I crave. His hands slide down to my ass to press me against him. I moan, encouraging him. He bends to kiss me, his unshaven cheek scratching my face. His tongue carries his taste into my mouth—sweet, hot, demanding.

  His hands, warm and strong, sweep up my sides to cup my breasts, his thumbs coaxing the nipples to taut attention beneath his touch. Blood pulses between my legs in response, flooding me with need. I’m desperate for the feel of his hands, his tongue, his—

  “God damn it!” My fantasy shattered as JJ leaped onto the edge of the tub and skittered across the wet surface. Water geysered out of the tub as I bolted upright, sputtering and cursing, and pushed the cat back off onto the bathroom floor. He took a moment to glare at me and shake himself in disgust before sauntering out of the room, his intrusive work done.

  “Stupid freaking animal!” I took a breath, trying to calm my heart, pounding now for more than one reason. But it was no good. My pulse was still reverberating deep inside with an ache of desire for a man I knew I could never have. I groaned with frustration.

  “Oh, God, Ethan. You’re killing me.”

  I had to admit I had a hard time looking Ethan in the eye when I arrived for Tuesday’s session. Some evil part of my personality insisted on directing my gaze below his belt, and my fevered imagination supplied a larger than usual bulge in his weathered jeans when that gaze happened to land in the right spot. Ethan himself seemed a little nervous that day. I could only think I’d made him uncomfortable with my questions the last time. I put a leash on my bad girl and made an effort to behave.

  He started in once I’d settled in on the couch. “Have you been sleeping any better?”

  “Those pills are like falling into a black hole.” I wasn’t complaining. “But if I stopped taking them, the dreams would come back, wouldn’t they?”

  “I suspect so. Until we figure out what’s causing the dreams.”

  “What kind of weird symbolism can it be anyway? Slave labor? Mines? Crystals? I mean, I know sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but this?” I’d been trying to puzzle it out all weekend and my frustration was showing. Something so richly detailed, yet it made no sense.

  Ethan shook his head, and I could see he was choosing his words very carefully. Either he had no idea, or he was afraid to say what he thought.

  “The human mind is a wonderful thing, Asia. Creative. Imaginative. Devious. Playful. Protective of its owner in the extreme. Any or all of those things may be at work here.”

  “But nothing about what I remembered Saturday was particularly frightening. Unpleasant, yes, but . . . why do I wake up screaming?”

  He met my eyes. “I don’t know, Asia. We have to keep looking. Are you ready?”

  I took a breath and swung my legs up onto the couch. “Hook me up, Doc.”

  Fourteen-oh-eight huddled in a shivering mass under the thin blanket. The cold seeped into her bones, contracting her muscles as they tried in vain to hold onto her body heat. In the unquiet dark of the barracks, the others snuffled and rasped in sleep or cried out in dreams. Yet, despite the depth of her fatigue, 1408 could not find her own way to oblivion.

  If it had not been so cold, she wouldn’t have minded. Her day in the cavern with Dozen had given her so many new things—extraordinary things—to think about. The play of light off the crystalline walls, the arch of stone high overhead, the colors splashed over the rock at her feet—these alone were enough to lift her mind above the squalor of the camp.

  But Dozen—there was a puzzle to challenge her stupor and awaken her dulled senses. Dozen was like no one else she had encountered here. (Here? As opposed to where? She could not remember any other place.) The tiny woman was alive with an energy no one else seemed to possess. She saw, she felt, she knew things in a way 1408 was now aware she herself could not. Comparing herself to the blazer made her feel stupid and slow. She should have resented it, but instead she felt the stirring of something that had lain dormant so long she hardly recognized it. She was curious, intrigued. For the first time she could remember, 1408 actually looked forward to living another day.

  She turned over in her bunk, willing herself to sleep. She had nearly drifted off when the door at the end of the barracks hall banged open. She jumped, but struggled to stay still, lifeless, hidden. Even with her eyes tightly closed she knew that the light in the doorway revealed the silhouette of one or more of the guards. She could hear his progress down the row of bunks—heavy-footed, clumsy with drink, cursing as he stumbled into bunk frames along the way.

  Was it one like her? She prayed it was one of the others—she was too thin and pale for them. There were only a few guards that had the small nose
and ears, the smooth, light skin of her kind. Most nights it was one of the others. They blundered into the bunks around hers and grabbed the women sleeping there. The bigger women—2217 or 1530—went with them without complaint. The guards usually chuckled and staggered out with their prizes, leaving the barracks quiet again, and relieved.

  But tonight was different. Tonight the guard was one named Tomar—tall and angular, his skin the color of the gruel that served as food. He was of her kind, and he had chosen others of her kind from the barracks before. But not her, never her. She cowered under the blanket and did not dare to breathe.

  It did no good. It was as if he had chosen her before he even came to the barracks, as if he’d come looking just for her. He loomed over her bunk.

  “Fourteen-oh-eight. Come with me.”

  There was no use resisting. She would only be beaten and then taken. She had seen it happen to others. The barracks might be full of women, but the guards were all male. There would be no sympathy—and no help—from them. Quivering, she slipped out from under the blanket and pulled on her boots.

  “Hurry up. I don’t have all night.” He waited another ten seconds, then turned and stalked back toward the barracks door, expecting her to follow him. She did, her heart thundering. In the light from the corridor she saw faces turned in her direction, saw apathy, fear, even envy. Envy? For the crumb of food she would be given in exchange for the brutality she would endure?

  She followed the man across the quad to another building, not the guards’ quarters, as she expected, but a storage shed behind it. He opened the door and pushed her inside, into a dark as profound as that of the mines. The door slammed behind them, then his body pressed hard up against hers.

  “You’re nothing but bones.” His breath was sour in her face. “Still, I guess you’ll have to do.”

  His fingers entwined in her hair and yanked her head back, exposing her neck. He licked at her skin, causing a shiver of revulsion to bleed from the agony of her scalp down her spine. She stumbled, nearly losing her footing as he pulled her back against him. His hips slammed against hers, grinding his erection into her backside.

  His cruel laughter was in her ear. “Don’t worry. You’ll be on your knees soon enough.”

  He ripped at the fastening of her jumpsuit, stuck a cold hand inside to grope her breast. His panting breath became a grunt, and after a moment he released her hair. He backed away slightly, fumbling in the dark. With his clothes? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to guess. She stood blindly, shaking, and waited for the assault.

  It never came.

  She heard a rustle of movement, a crack of bones twisted beyond human tolerance and a stifled scream. Then she heard a snarl, deep and low.

  “This one is mine, Tomar. I told you that. I paid the camp director for the privilege.”

  “Bullshit!” Tomar hissed and spat, his voice distorted with pain. “That much . . . ah, shalssit! . . . for a mine cunt?”

  “You believe what you want to believe, but if I see you near her again, I’ll cut your dick off. And no one will give a shit if I do.”

  “And once I report you for breaking my fucking arm?”

  “You’re right. Maybe I should just kill you now and throw you down the mine shaft. Save myself a lot of trouble later.”

  More movement. Another muffled whine. “Okay, okay, I get it. Baraz! What is it about this bitch anyway? She’s as thin as a stick.”

  “That’s my business. Get your ass out of here.”

  She heard the door to the shed open and frigid air brushed her as Tomar stumbled past. Then it closed and there was nothing but the dark—and the stranger who now owned her. She drew her prison rags together over her breasts, fighting nausea at the memory of Tomar’s hands on her.

  She heard a scritch in the darkness, and a small pool of light flared—a tiny light cell in the hands of the man who had saved her. He held it up so she could see his face. She recognized one of the other guards, another that looked like her, except for eyes the color of a cat’s, with no whites around the outside.

  “My name is Mose. I’m a friend of Dozen’s.”

  She watched him, waiting.

  He nodded as if he understood. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m okay.”

  He took a step forward, but she backed up and he stopped. “I have some food for you.” He took a small package out of his jacket pocket and held it out to her.

  Her mouth watered, but she stayed where she was.

  “No strings attached.”

  Somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind, that phrase made sense. The meaning flitted back and forth there like the shadow of a lamp on a cavern wall.

  “No strings,” she repeated.

  He exhaled slowly. “Sphinx. That’s what Dozen calls you, right?”

  She nodded.

  He smiled. “I can see why. I’m here to help you. Dozen asked me to look after you. When Tomar went down to the barracks tonight I followed him.”

  “You didn’t pay for me?”

  “Well, yes. I did.”

  “What?” Her question indicated only confusion, not outrage. The limits of her life left no room for that kind of emotion.

  “The people we work with are looking out for you,” he explained. “We can’t do it for everyone, but we do it for a few.”

  “Why?”

  His eyes glowed. “Because you resist them, Sphinx, though you don’t know it.”

  None of what he was saying made sense. Her mind simply would not process it.

  She moved toward the door. “I have to go back.”

  He offered the package again. “Aren’t you going to take this?”

  Her stomach gurgled. She reached out and took the package from him, tore it open.

  “Oh, my God.” The grateful words tumbled from her lips when she saw what it was. She smelled the small cube of cheese, put the delicious morsel in her mouth, chewed and swallowed around the tears that threatened to choke her.

  He smiled, his cat eyes bright. “I can bring you some more in a few shifts. Next time I’ll come for you myself—keep up the pretense that you’re my, uh, lover. That okay with you?”

  She nodded, savoring the taste of the cheese in her mouth. Later, curled in her bunk in the freezing barracks, she could still taste the tangy, nutty flavor of that cheese on her tongue as she drifted off to sleep.

  “Asia?” The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Asia, wake up. Tell me where you are.”

  I looked up, saw Ethan hovering over me with concern swirling like a dark storm in his eyes. “Ethan? What’s wrong?”

  The frown between his eyebrows relaxed. It took him a moment to say anything. “Are you all right?”

  I attempted to sit up, but he put a hand firmly on my shoulder. “Stay put a minute.”

  “How am I supposed to tell you if I’m okay if I can’t even sit up?” I frowned, annoyed.

  “This was a rough session. Do you remember any of it?”

  I thought back and began to shake. “I remember everything.” The taste of the cheese was still in my mouth. “Do you think I could get some of that tea?”

  Ethan looked at me closely. “Sure. I’ll be right back.”

  When Ethan brought the tea back, I sat up and wrapped my cold hands around the mug. I blew my breath across the surface, watching the rising steam scatter and reform. I couldn’t get warm enough, and the shivering was sloshing the tea over my fingers. Ethan gave me a napkin to wrap around the mug and draped a blanket around my shoulders.

  “I didn’t fight him.” My face reddened with shame. “It never even occurred to me to fight him.”

  “You were afraid of being beaten. You had seen others beaten and raped. You had no hope that fighting would save you. There’s no shame in wanting to avoid a brutal beating, Asia. What you were ready to do took courage enough.”

  “But that’s . . . that’s not like me. I was so different there.�
�� I shook my head. “Everything was so different.”

  “Is it really so surprising to find things are different in a dream? Even certain aspects of your personality?”

  Anger flared. “No! They had altered my personality.”

  He stared at me, unformed questions drawing his brows together.

  “And this can’t be a dream.”

  He took a breath. “Why not, Asia?”

  I met his eyes. “Because if this was a dream, I wouldn’t be able to remember all the times Mose helped me. How kind he was.” Grief blew through me like a bitter wind.

  Ethan caught my shudder. “He became . . . important to you. A lover?”

  I shook my head. “He was my friend, my protector. Until word came one night that he’d been killed in a tunnel collapse. An accident, they said.”

  Ethan watched my every move as I talked—my eyes, my hands, the way I held my body. There was an intensity about him, as if just below his skin he was vibrating wildly, though he was as calm and deliberate as always.

  When I stopped talking he simply asked me, “You remember these things?”

  “As if they happened yesterday.” I leaned forward. “How can that be, Ethan?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He shook his head. “There is no logical explanation for it.”

  “So you’re saying I’m crazy.” For some reason, I wasn’t angry. I was almost relieved.

  “Delusional would be the correct term,” he said absently, his gaze directed out the window. “But these are like no delusions I’ve ever encountered. Except once.”

  He seemed fascinated by the puzzle I presented, but at a loss for what to do about me. I wasn’t sure whether to feel sorrier for him or for me.