Free Dark Solstice by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page B

tried that, tried to get a grip. It wasn’t going to happen, not where Rhea was concerned.
    Rhea recognized the voice even though she’d never heard it before except through the tinny, scratchy comm. units that altered the voices it piped through the low quality receivers in the PECs. Still reeling with exhaustion, it took her a moment, though, to recall the conversation Kyle Justice was referring to. When the memory surfaced, it roused her enough to pry one eyelid up and scan the cell.
    The cell door was open. The discovery sent a jolt of uneasiness and surprise through her to join the prickle of wariness the question had already aroused.
    She wasn’t aware of making any noise, and yet Raathe turned his head slightly in her direction and slid a narrow eyed, assessing look at her.
    “What makes you think you have anything I’m interested in?” he finally responded, his voice as cold and unwelcoming as ice.
    “I have information—a piece of code.”
    Frowning, Rhea pushed herself upright, straining to hear the conversation. Low to begin with, Justice’s voice dropped another notch as he made that announcement. Raathe’s reaction, as minute as the signs were, was telling. He tilted his head, assessing the other man. “What would I do with it?” he finally responded, his nostrils flaring slightly and one corner of his lips curling in a sneer.
    Kyle sent her an indecipherable look before he returned his attention to Raathe. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll take it to somebody else.”
    Raathe shrugged. “And maybe they’ll have some use for it.”
    Kyle’s faced hardened, but he merely nodded and then shrugged and turned away. He paused at the door and glanced at Raathe again. “I’ve got a schedule to go with it.”
    Rhea studied Raathe for several moments after Kyle had left, wondering what the conversation had meant. That it was far from idle chit chat, she had no doubt. She just couldn’t seem to fit the pieces she’d heard together to make any sense. Giving up the effort after a few moments, she struggled out of the bunk and moved to the facilities. Either because he was too deep in thought to really be aware of her, or out of politeness, he remained in the opening of the cell, his back to her, staring down the corridor in the direction Kyle had disappeared.
    She felt only marginally more alert when she’d finished. Without any real downtime from the first trip to the Mars surface, the second excursion had pushed her further toward complete collapse from exhaustion than she’d ever been in her life. They’d returned only the night before after another four day stint, been processed, and finally allowed to return to the cell.
    Raathe had woken her some time after they’d collapsed onto the bunk together.
    She still wasn’t certain that he’d been awake himself. In fact, she was almost convinced that he hadn’t been. He’d made love to her. As brain dead with exhaustion as she’d been, she’d retained enough reasoning ability to know the vast difference between an animalistic coupling and the tenderness he’d exhibited when he caressed and aroused her to heights she’d never experienced before.
    He’d called her Amy—again. That was the most telling clue, next to his tenderness, that he’d been asleep and had no idea who the woman was that he was making love to.
    She still had no idea who Amy was, but she no longer had any doubts about the relationship. It was the woman he’d loved—the iceman—a man so reputedly cold that ice water ran through his veins, pumped through a frozen heart, who was closer to reptilian in nature than human.
    Her throat closed at the thoughts, the memory of his touch, clogging with an unidentifiable emotion she had no desire to examine.
    There was a spark of humanity in him and, at least at one time, there’d been goodness. Maybe it was all gone now, or maybe it was just buried so deeply that it might as well have been, but she was as certain as