“Eh?” he asked, nodding at the screen. “Eh?”
Hadley nodded.
Jules felt dizzy with lust. Curt eased her down onto the ground, and the moss and ferns seemed softer than the mattress back in the cabin, warmer, there were no creaks, and the gentle scent of nature drifted around her as they explored each other’s bodies.
She heaved herself up and they rolled, Curt beneath her now. She propped herself on one elbow for a moment, her hand traveling down across his washboard stomach and delving beneath his belt. He held his breath, she held back for just a moment, then she closed her hand around him and he groaned.
—Sitterson turned a dial less than a degree, increasing the humidity infinitesimally, and it was an adjustment he knew many other people would have never found cause to make. But that was why he and Hadley were the best. They were more than just technicians, they were craftsmen, as concerned with the journey as the outcome itself.
He knew very well that the chase was better than the catch.
Sitterson hummed to himself, then whistled a little, glancing across at his partner and swapping a contented nod. They were such a great team. If he had his concerns, Hadley would pick up on them right away, and the converse was true.
“Okay,” Hadley said softly, “boobies, boobies.”
“Show us the goods,” Sitterson muttered.
From behind him came Truman’s uncomfortable cough. Sitterson had known this moment would come; he’d sensed the confusions in the kid, and more than that, the doubt. There’d been others like him before, and mostly they were given other tasks in the facility, taken away from Control where they could see everything that was going on and given menial tasks that held no obvious outcome. But there had also been two others who’d come this far and then refused to go any further.
They’d been taken care of. Sitterson had succeeded in forgetting even their names. But he’d also vowed to coach any new guys past such dangerous concerns.
“Does it really matter if we see—?” Truman began, and Hadley cut in quickly.
“We’re not the only ones watching, kid.”
“Got to keep the customer satisfied,” Sitterson added, glancing over his shoulder at the soldier. “You understand what’s at stake here?”
“Sorry,” Truman said, nodding.
Sitterson turned back to his screen, considered asking for some coffee, but decided that—
—Her lust was all-consuming, her breath fast, and she yearned for him, lifting her butt to allow him to pull off her jeans. He bent forward and ran his tongue up her right leg, her thigh, passing her panties and gripping the elasticated waist instead. He pulled it up and growled, letting it snap back across her stomach, and Jules laughed.
Then the growl faded away as he dipped his face down between her thighs, and Jules’s head fell back as she felt the first touch of his tongue.
“Oh,” Truman said, but Sitterson ignored him. That was another thing with these newbies—the first few times were porn.
Sitterson adjusted a dial, tapped some buttons on his computer, checked some readouts. All seemed good.
“Oh!” Truman said again.
Hadley upped the volume on the speakers, Control was filled with groaning, and Sitterson grinned. Bastard was just winding the kid up. And… well, Hadley got a lot out of this, too. Sitterson guessed all the married guys did, because it was allowable. It was part of the job.
For just a moment he imagined Lin lying there on the moss with his face pressed between…
But that was too much of a distraction, at least for now.
“Looking good,” he said, checking more readouts. He glanced up at the screen again, humming softly.
“Looking good.”
Jules sat up and pushed Curt aside, sitting astride him and undoing the final couple of buttons on her shirt. She teased… touching her stomach… fingers stroking the edges of the fabric while Curt panted beneath her. And then she pulled at both edges and let it drop from her shoulders, quickly slipping down her strapless bra and exposing what she knew were just about the best breasts in the Northern hemisphere.
And Curt was a guy. Though he’d seen them a thousand times before, he still caught his breath and looked up at her in silent, worshipful wonder.
“You look so—”
“—good,” Hadley said. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Sitterson said, “great tits.” But it was the voice of a man admiring a particular work of art. The girl leaned forward, the guy wrapped his arms around her.
“Score,” Hadley muttered.
“Eat that, Stockholm,” Sitterson said.
Beside him, Hadley sighed. Sitterson checked more dials and readouts, then he glanced to the left where he’d seen movement on one of the other monitors. Hadley had seen it as well.
“Oh,” Truman said again. “She’s…wow.”
But like he’d had to do, the kid would need to learn the hard way.
Curt rolled her over and slid his hand into her panties, his fingers expert at touching her where and how she most desired. She groaned out load and looked up at the tree canopy, her left hand freeing him from his jeans as he worked at her, her right hand splaying out on the ground and clasping a handful of the scented, warm moss.
Something slammed into her hand and she could no longer move it. It felt warm, then suddenly cold again.
Curt’s fingers were inside her, but she no longer felt them. She grew cold again. The ground pricked against her bare skin.
And then the pain bit in and she screamed, looking at her hand and seeing the thick rusty blade that had passed through her palm and pinned her to the ground.
“Curt!” she screamed, bucking him off, because nothing else she saw around her made any sense. “
SIX
For the first few seconds Curt could not move, or speak, nor could he feel his heart beating. Like him, it was frozen in shock.
When it did kick back in he almost collapsed from the impact, coughing as it pummeled his ribs, trying to rise from his knees, and painfully aware that the love of his life was about to die in front of him.
