Higher Ground (32 page)

“Hello, Simon,” he heard Korrie say and turned to see her unbutton the bag she carried. “I have something for you. Amina was a little frightened on the flight, and she was worried you might be too when your turn came, so she asked me to bring you this.” She took a rag doll with long striped legs from the bag. “I think she called her Peggy, but you probably know that better than me. Anyway, she said she thought Peggy would help you not to be scared.” She smiled. “She and Visha are fine. They’re taking care of Tuzo for me until we get back.”

Simon took the doll, staring at it, then looked at Korrie. “Thank you.” His voice came out choked, and he turned and walked away abruptly. Simon, their rock, would never want them to see him cry. But in less than a day, he’d give the doll back to his child and hold her in his arms. He wouldn’t be able to hide his tears then.

“Hey,” Korrie said, taking Adam’s arm suddenly. He’d stumbled as he’d turned back from watching Simon, and his head swam. She looked into his face and scowled. “How long since you had enough food, water, and sleep? Too long, I’ll bet.” She took his arm and led him away. “Let’s get you working on the sleep part first.”

* * * *

Zach knew he’d seen Adam several times over the last couple of days but hadn’t had a coherent conversation. The drugs the doctors gave him were much more exciting than the ones in Glyn’s medical kit. Even when hypothetically awake, he’d been only dimly aware of the world.

But at last he reached what he could finally call a state of full consciousness to find himself in a bed in a hospital ward. This must be the infirmary on Dunbarrow outpost. There were a half dozen other beds in the ward, all unoccupied and dark, the only light in the room over his bed. His broken leg was held immobile in a plasti-cast from ankle to thigh, only the site of the incision from the surgery exposed.

Ah yes, he’d had surgery; he remembered going into the OR when they’d arrived at the outpost. His leg felt heavy and numb but not painful. Probably full of local anesthetic. Everything else seemed to be in order, he thought, looking down at himself. He had a few dressings on cuts. And he felt the freshest he had for days. When he raised a hand to touch it, his hair felt soft and clean. He’d been shaved recently; his chin was smooth.

“You’re awake.”

A quiet but delighted voice. Adam stepped out of the shadows where he’d been looking out of a window into darkness. Clean and shaved, like Zach, but, unlike Zach—who wore only a hospital gown—dressed in utilitarian and unflattering basic fatigues he must have got here at the outpost. Somehow he made them look good. He didn’t look tired anymore either. He had color back in his face, and the dark circles under his eyes had faded.

“Adam, you look wonderful.”

Adam laughed. “You know how to start a conversation, I must say.” He sat down by the bed, rested his elbows on it, and took Zach’s hand.

“Is this Dunbarrow?” Zach asked.

“Yes. We’ve been here nearly two days.” He nodded around the empty ward. “You’re the last of the casualties. Everyone else has been discharged. Long-range transport ships are on the way to pick us up and take us out of here.”

“Take us where?”

Adam shrugged. “Still being straightened out. We’re waiting to hear from the Terraforming Authority. Most of us are under contract to them. And who knows what’s going to happen to a couple of scofflaws like us? Sending illegal distress calls, waving guns around, stealing trucks.” He was grinning, which made Zach suspect Glyn hadn’t made any of his threatened complaints against Adam or Torres.

“Yes, clearly we’ll be tossed in jail.”

“As long as they put us in the same cell, I’m happy.”

“I think I’d be in the prison hospital for a while.”

“True,” Adam said, looking at Zach’s bad leg.

He reached out and touched the good leg, resting his hand on the bare thigh, close to the hem of the gown, under which Zach had no underwear. He’d have to have a word with someone soon about the gown. He felt sure he was putting far too much on display. But later. Now he wanted to enjoy the warmth of Adam’s hand on him in an intimate gesture which felt like one of ownership, reminding them both of the permission he had to touch Zach.

“What about us?” Zach asked. “We kept saying we’d talk about things afterward. It’s afterward.”

“Yes, it is.” He didn’t move his hand from Zach’s thigh. “I want to be with you, Zach. I know, it’s been strange so far, everything moving too fast. We definitely need to take it slowly for a while.”

Zach gestured at his leg. “I’m going to be taking everything slowly for a while.”

“Quite. And I’m volunteering to take care of you while you’re laid up.”

It didn’t surprise Zach. Adam had done so the last few days as naturally as if he’d been doing it all his life. With anyone else, Zach might have felt belittled and emasculated being so dependent. But all he’d felt with Adam was trust and gratitude.

“I accept your offer.”

“Good.” Adam grinned. “They figure it’ll be about six weeks before you’re walking normally again. Then a few months of physiotherapy. If we can still stand the sight of each other after six weeks of being together all day, then I guess we can call it love.”

“I can call it love now.”

“Me too. But let’s see if it can survive real tests, you know, like who gets which side of the bed. By comparison, earthquakes are a piece of cake.”

“Adam, would you kiss me, please?”

Adam chuckled. “I do love the way you talk, you know?”

“I can’t do what I want to do, which is grab you and throw you down on this bed and ravish you. So if you’d, please, just kiss me.”

Chuckling, Adam stood up and leaned in. Zach raised his arms, which ached with the effort. But he forgot the ache quickly when he put them around Adam and their lips touched. Adam slid his arms around Zach, more cautious than usual. The feel of him through the light hospital gown raised goose bumps all over Zach. He opened his mouth, inviting and welcoming, and touched Adam’s tongue with his.

When they parted, he relaxed back into the pillows with a sigh, Adam still leaning over him, smiling.

“Go on,” Adam said. “You know you want to say it.”

Zach looked at him, puzzled for a moment, then got it. He smiled back.

“Thank you.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The apartment door slammed, and Zach clicked his tongue. Adam could never just
close
a door.

“Hi.” Adam stuck his head round the door into the living room. Zach looked up from typing at his terminal. “I bought some groceries. I’ll put them away and then come bother you, okay?”

“Sounds good,” Zach said. He went back to typing while Adam banged around in the kitchen. In a few minutes, the noise subsided, and Adam came in carrying a couple of glasses of orange juice.

“You looked thirsty,” he said, putting one down on the desk and leaning over to kiss Zach. “How was physio today?”

“Good, thank you.” He sipped the juice. “How was work?”

“Same old same old. But I’m making some good progress with my experiments.” He put his glass on a table and flopped onto the couch with a sigh.

Zach turned back to his terminal. He smiled to himself. Adam would start trying to seduce him away from here at any moment, if his record of the last few weeks was anything to go by. Meanwhile, he typed away steadily. He’d learned a lot about teasing since he met Adam.

“Ann sent me her revisions for the paper,” he said. He’d insisted Korrie coauthor the paper about the Zahara disaster, since if she hadn’t taken her copy of his data with her when she left, he’d have nothing at all. His original data had been lost somewhere on the mountain. He and Adam had left with little more than the clothes on their backs. Zach hadn’t even had boots. “I think we’ll finish it by the end of the week.”

“Great,” Adam said. The couch creaked. Was he undressing back there? Unexpected nudity was one of his favorite tricks. He’d wait until Zach was busy with his back to Adam or had gone into another room for a few minutes, and when Zach looked around or returned, entirely unsuspecting, he’d find Adam wearing nothing but a cheeky grin.

“Well, I think I’ll do some reading,” Adam said in a fake-sounding tone. Zach heard a couple of soft beeps from his Link. “Now, where was I up to? Ah, here we are. ‘Zachary displays exceptional facility with building blocks.’”

Zach groaned and spun his chair around. “Don’t! I still can’t work out how you persuaded my mother to let you have that.”

“You know me, I ’ave ze great charm with ze ladeez.”

Indeed he had. He’d sweet-talked Zach’s mother within minutes of meeting her when they arrived back on Earth a month ago. She thought he was wonderful.

“I simply told her I wanted to get to know you better and how I’d heard so much about the
amazing
baby journal she kept about you. Naturally, she sent me over a copy immediately.” He grinned.

“Well, don’t read it aloud.”

“But it’s so sweet. I’ll bet she talks for another five pages about how you’re probably going to be an architect because you put one block on top of another.”

Zach groaned and turned back to his terminal.

“She’s obviously very proud of you.” Adam’s voice became more serious. “Your dad too.”

“Your parents are proud of you too. Though they are wondering when you’re going to stop sponging off them.”

“Sponging!” Adam bit, reacting to the teasing. “Hey, out of the two of us, which one is working right now?”

The Terraforming Authority had given Adam a temporary job in one of their research labs here in San Francisco and time to work on his doctoral research, while Zach had extended leave both to recover from his injuries and to write up his paper. After that, who knew where they’d go? But they’d go together.

Zach looked back over his shoulder. “Touchy tonight, aren’t we?” Yes, he’d learned a lot about teasing. Adam frowned at him.

“You’ll pay for that, mister.”

“That’s ‘doctor.’”

“Oh, rub it in, why don’t you? Is it my fault a year’s worth of research material vanished into the sea?”

“Maybe you should have stayed. They might have awarded your doctorate posthumously.”

“A lot of good that would do me.” He lay back again with his Link. “Right, I think I’ll jump ahead to the section on potty training.”

That was quite enough. Zach spun out of his chair and tried to jump on Adam. Too slow. Adam leaped off the couch and ran behind it, keeping it between them. He grinned and waved the Link provocatively.

“You want this? Come get it.”

He started backing up, glancing over his shoulder. Zach smirked. Adam was heading toward the bedroom door. He followed slowly, waiting for his chance to make a grab for the Link. Adam backed up to the door and fumbled behind himself for the handle. Seizing his moment, Zach pounced on Adam, grabbing for the Link.

The bedroom door opened, and they almost fell inside, wrestling, laughing like idiots, until their staggering progress dropped them on the bed. Adam first held the Link up out of Zach’s reach, then thought better of this tactic and shoved it underneath himself. This, of course, forced Zach to wrestle him some more to try to get it.

“You really are getting your strength back, aren’t you?” Adam said with a grin suggesting he liked it.

Zach pressed Adam’s arms down by the wrists over his head. Adam stilled, went silent, his struggles and laughter stopped. With serious eyes, he looked up into Zach’s face. Slowly, Zach ran his fingers down Adam’s arms, along the smooth insides of the forearms, the bend of the inside of the elbow, the muscular biceps. Adam. His right-hand man. His strong right arm. He’d be dead without him.

Their relationship might have begun fast, and Zach might have liked that, thinking he was a mayfly, fearing the depth of the past behind him and the height of the future ahead. But seeing Zahara sink had been a shock to a man who thought of a million years as a short time. Things which should happen slowly could happen fast. Things he used to think should happen fast could happen slowly—if he chose to make them happen that way.

He chose.

He bent his head down, and Adam raised his, their mouths meeting each other halfway. Their tongues did the little dance Zach loved so much. The contact sent a wave of heat surging through him, and he began to harden quickly. Adam groaned and shifted until he could wrap his legs around Zach. He broke the kiss and nuzzled Zach’s ear.

“Never let you go,” he murmured. He reached for the buttons of Zach’s shirt. Zach did nothing in return yet, just waited as Adam undid all the buttons and ran his hands over Zach’s chest, teasing the nipples to full hardness. This forced a groan from Zach and made him grind his hips against Adam, feeling Adam’s erection slide against his. Too many clothes between them.

They shuffled about until they were on their sides. Adam tossed the now uncontested Link to the floor, then ran his hand through Zach’s hair, as if hating to take his hands off Zach even for a second. Now both of them could easily unbutton and unzip clothes and expose skin to kisses and stroking.

Getting completely naked together still felt like a luxury after so many cramped and half-dressed encounters in the tent. Zach never wanted to go camping again, or not until a long enough time had passed to make him nostalgic about the good moments of the whole Zahara ordeal. Most of the good moments involved Adam.

Zach wrapped his hand around Adam’s cock, making him moan loudly. Another luxury—decent walls, not tent canvas, allowing them to express enjoyment without telling the entire neighborhood what they were up to. Though the people in the apartment next door had banged on the wall one time they got a little too vocal, making Adam collapse in a fit of giggles.

He wasn’t giggling this time. Zach pushed him onto his back and began to work down his body, kissing ears, neck, throat, lingering for some time in the little hollow between his collarbones. Each well-tanned and freckled shoulder got some attention until Adam was grinding his cock into Zach’s hand and begging him for mercy.

Zach moved on, down Adam’s chest, stimulating his nipples some more until they seemed hard as diamonds. He squeezed the base of Adam’s cock gently to slow him down. For once, Adam was the one in a hurry, and Zach loved to keep him waiting. They had no plans for the evening. Only dinner together, perhaps a walk, to give Zach some fresh air. He didn’t get enough, according to Adam. Though Zach argued he’d had enough fresh air climbing the mountain to last him a lifetime, he’d take a stroll in the twilight on a fine Californian evening anytime Adam liked.