Match Forged, page 2
part #0.50 of Mudden Men Series
“Can I know your name?” She asked, frustrated by his behavior. Did he really expect her to just trust him?
He turned his head to look back at her, with a crooked smile.
“Rex,” he said, stepping into the drop and disappearing.
Rex? That sounded made up. And without a last name there was no point even trying to look him up on her comm.
She worked all day every day for the rest of the week, coming home only to sleep. She had a lot to get done in a short amount of time. She didn’t give herself time to think. The very idea of going with Rex was ridiculous and dangerous, but it also made her blood hum with excitement. While on the other hand, the thought of staying home and doing nothing for months only filled her with dread. And more importantly her thoughts kept returning to that woman.
One night she cracked and read the file Rex had sent her. It was very thin, but it did suggest the woman, Lauren, was not handling the stress of the pregnancy very well. Could she forgive herself if in three months’ time she found out that Lauren had died along with her babies? As a doctor she, unfortunately, had to deal with the fact that sometimes patients died. But she always did everything in her power to ensure their safety. The idea of someone dying when she could have done something to stop it—while she sat at home and relaxed—that bothered her. A lot.
On her last day of work she woke up extra early and packed a bag while she was too sleep-deprived to question what she was even doing; preferring to stay in a half state of denial. If she didn’t think too hard about what she was about to do, she could stave off the terror of traveling in space for the first time in her life and placing her trust in someone she did not know, who was unfriendly and, worst of all, who could overpower her with his little finger.
At work, she packed whatever medical supplies she might need. Technically, it was stealing, but she didn’t want to go just to watch Lauren die, and she needed supplies to successfully deliver her babies. She’d replace everything she took later.
When she came home that night, Rex was waiting for her outside her door as promised. This time she did let him in her apartment, though he just stood by the entrance with his arms crossed the entire time it took her to change and grab her bag. Unlike most people she’d invited into her home, he did not comment on the fact that her apartment contained almost no furniture or the fact that she kept it as clean as an operating room, which she appreciated.
Once ready, she gave her apartment a quick once over, trying to ignore the sense of loss she already felt from leaving her private space behind. This was the apartment she’d moved into after graduating from medical school, it was the first and only place that she’d ever called home. She’d be back in three months, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she would come back a changed person. She gathered her strength and closed the door on her old life as she closed the door of the apartment behind her.
Chapter Two
Rex had an anti-grav car parked and waiting for them on the sixtieth-floor landing of her apartment building. They rode in silence. Too busy talking herself out of a panic attack, Elizabeth could think of nothing to say to relieve the awkwardness. Rex drove to the Tarkin City spaceport, looking like he knew his way around the city.
They left the car in a parking box and only had to wait ten minutes for the next shuttle to the Harcan Space Station. Only the government-operated shuttles were allowed to land and leave the planet. All other ships, passenger or cargo, docked at the station. Most spaceships were not built for take-off or re-entry into a planet’s atmosphere.
Once in the shuttle, Elizabeth nervously tried to strap herself to her seat.
“Never flown before?” Rex asked from the seat across from her, smirking as he watched her struggling with the belts.
“No,” she answered. Her hand, which she could keep steady in the middle of a surgery gone wrong, betrayed her now by shaking and making it difficult to bind the belts together. “I’ve lived my whole life in Tarkin City.”
Rex unstrapped himself and gently took the belt from her shaking hand. He connected the two metal ends into the third loop and snapped them together, his hand accidentally grazing her chest, making her heart beat even faster, and she hoped he did not notice the fact that her nipples were suddenly hard as rocks, and only centimeters away from his face.
“It’s not reassuring that we even need so many belts,” she said nervously, feeling light-headed from fear, or maybe from the heady smell of his cologne assaulting her senses as he straightened the straps with his large hands and pulled them tighter.
“There will be a short time between leaving the earth’s atmosphere and docking to the station when we will be weightless. The straps are to keep us from floating out of our seats.” She’d known that, but his nearness seemed to be impairing her brain function. He returned to his seat and strapped himself back up in one quick motion, suggesting he’d done this many times before.
“Did you read the report I sent you?” He asked.
She nodded her head. “It’s very bare.”
“I told you, we don’t have anyone qualified for this.”
“How is that possible? Who usually does the surgeries to deliver babies?”
“A midwife handles the deliveries,” he said, studying her face for a reaction. “No surgery required.” Right. She’d guessed that too. Most of those anti-tech cultures believed in the barbaric tradition of letting women suffer through childbirth.
“What about when something goes wrong?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“So what makes this woman so special that she gets to have a doctor?”
He leaned his head to the side, probably thinking how much he wanted to reveal to her. She didn’t know why he thought all of this needed to be kept top secret, it’s not like a pregnancy was so newsworthy.
“Her husband has power,” he finally said.
“PREPARE FOR TAKEOFF. IN TEN…” The voice on the loudspeaker blared. Elizabeth grabbed the armrests of her seat, squeezing them until her knuckles turned white.
She tried to focus on the conversation, which helped to take her mind off of the fact that she was about to be hurled into space with nothing but metal walls to protect her. And what if one of the engines stopped working and they crashed back down to the ground? Or… The possibilities of things that could go wrong whirled through her head.
“SEVEN…”
“Power to order you around and make you do his dirty work?” She asked loud enough to be heard over the countdown.
Rex gave her one of his crooked smiles that did not quite reach his eyes.
“And money,” he said.
“FOUR…”
Somehow, she did not peg him as someone motivated by money. He dressed modestly and wore no expensive adornments, unless he’d spent all his money on physical modifications. She guessed, from what she’d observed, that he probably just enjoyed his little adventures to other planets to intimidate and boss people around. Yet clearly the person who’d sent him did have money. Space travel was not cheap. And the amount of increds (the currency used by all IPAC members) they’d offered her to work for them was very generous. She’d learned from her research, that most of the backwater planets were very poor. Keeping their economies local and refusing to trade with other governments meant that even the richest backwater planets didn’t own any increds.
“ZERO.”
The shuttle shook and rattled, then came a loud roar and Elizabeth’s body sunk into her seat as they took off. She closed her eyes, her body feeling torn between the shuttle trying to take her up into space and gravity pulling her back down.
The next three minutes felt like an eternity. She couldn’t talk as she ground her teeth together and kept a death grip on the armrests, focusing on her breathing to calm herself down.
Suddenly, her body lifted from the seat, restrained only by the straps. She opened her eyes and swallowed to keep down the sudden nausea.
Rex’s pale eyes stared back at her. Had he been watching her the whole time?
“How are you doing?” He asked.
“Fine,” she said, feeling embarrassed.
“We’re almost there.”
It only took another five minutes for the shuttle to reach the station. As soon as they docked her normal weight returned as they connected to the station’s artificial gravity. She managed to unstrap herself and stood up on shaky legs. Rex reached out and grabbed her elbow to stabilize her. Again his smell combined with the sheer mass of him as he towered next to her overwhelmed her senses, making her heart beat a kilometer a minute. She straightened up and pulled away from him. Either he didn’t notice her rebuff or he didn’t care, maybe even enjoyed making people uncomfortable, as he simply stepped in front of her and led the way.
After going through security, they briskly walked through the space station’s corridors, giving Elizabeth no time to get her first good look at the station or even enjoy the view of the planet below. She promised herself she’d take her time to enjoy the sights on her trip back.
Rex stopped in front of a hatch with a small ship docked to the outside.
“Is that the spaceship?” She’d expected something bigger with lots of passengers.
Rex nodded. “That’s my ship.”
“You have your own spaceship?” She asked incredulously, knowing that only the very rich could afford to buy an entire spaceship.
He looked proudly at her. “I’m the captain.”
“Captain Rex?” she sneered.
He grinned.
“Welcome to the Star Companion.” He said, stepping through the airlock into the ship.
Rex gave her a quick tour before take-off. He explained that the Star Companion was designed for a crew of one, and the single cabin was reserved for the captain—him. The tiny bathroom only had the bare minimum of a toilet and washing facilities and made her feel claustrophobic just looking at it. He pointed to one door that he announced lead to a small cargo bay. The only other living space was the narrow hallway running through the ship, which doubled as a kitchen with a pulldown couch—her bed. Then he took her to the room that contained all the instruments necessary for a single person to navigate the ship, he called it the cockpit.
He sat in the pilot chair and instructed Elizabeth to get into the second seat while they disengaged.
Once they were both strapped in, he powered-up the ship. Unlike the shuttle, the ship made no discernible movement as the engines powered on. The lights on all the displays around her were the only hint that the ship was now functional.
Rex pressed some buttons on a holo display in front of him and stars suddenly appeared all around them. Elizabeth could just make out Harcan looking like a giant half-circle above her.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Rex looked at her then at Harcan.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Get ready for disengagement.”
He pressed some more buttons and the ship began to move away from the station.
“Two weeks to Mudden.” Rex said turning back to look at her.
“Two weeks?” Elizabeth swallowed a lump in her throat. Two weeks in a tiny spaceship with no one but Rex for company? She took a deep breath in, then out, to calm her sudden onset of claustrophobia.
Rex only nodded.
Mudden?
* * *
The rest of the day, Elizabeth spent researching the planet Mudden. Her comm still had access to the net, as long as they remained near a civilized planet, thanks to tower stations dispersed in orbits around the sun. Unfortunately she found very little information. The Mudden people were isolationists who refused anyone access to their planet. There was no information about who they were or how they lived.
She spent most of her time sitting on her couch or at the small counter in the kitchen, reading medical journals she’d selected long ago and never got around to reading. Rex in the meantime mostly stayed out of her way, preferring to stay in the cockpit or his quarters, coming out only to eat.
By the fourth day, she was going absolutely stir-crazy. She reread the files Rex had given her for the umpteenth time and noticed something new. She searched for him, but not finding him in the usual places, she went looking in the cargo bay. She opened the door and froze with her hand on the door handle.
Rex sat on a low bench facing away from her. He was shirtless and wore black shorts so small they could only be classified as underwear. His skin glistened with sweat as he lifted a bar to his chin then back down almost touching his knees. She watched, fascinated by the movement of the muscles on his back. She’d seen a lot of bodies in her years as a doctor, but she’d never seen someone this buff, this powerful. Her stomach fluttered as her eyes roamed over every bulge. She could tell now that those muscles were not the result of surgery. She noticed small discrepancies in their sizes and shapes that could only have formed with years of natural toning.
Starting to feel like a voyeur, she coughed to get his attention. He did not turn around or slow his movement.
“Rex?” she said, wondering if he’d heard her.
“Nine…” he said, lifting the bar to his chin, then down, then back up again, “Ten.”
He placed the bar down carefully, then stood up and turned around, grabbing a towel from the bench and wiping his chest down.
She couldn’t not stare as the towel moved over the ridges of his abs and pectoral muscles. Her body stirred to life. Rex raised an eyebrow, and she closed her open mouth. She cleared her throat, wiping her sweaty palms on the bottom part of her jumpsuit.
“I have a question,” she said, ignoring the sudden heat in her cheeks.
“Come in,” he said, grabbing a water bottle from the floor.
She stepped into the room, the door shutting automatically behind her. The not entirely unpleasant smell of sweat invaded her senses, making her very aware of her body, as she watched Rex drink the entire bottle in three gulps. Chastising herself for getting turned-on at the most inappropriate time—to him of all people—she tried to remember why she’d walked in there in the first place.
“Do you have the internal scans for Lauren?”
“Scans? I doubt that technology is available on Mudden.”
Seriously? She was going to have to deliver these babies without even doing a scan?
“Are you sure?” she asked, something not making sense. “The midwife constantly refers to the babies as boys, there is no way to know that without a scan.”
Rex narrowed his eyes. “It’s probably just a guess…”
She couldn’t shake the feeling he wasn’t being honest with her, but that hardly surprised her considering how secretive he was about everything.
“Thanks anyway,” she said, turning back toward the door. “By the way, you’re favoring your left bicep. It’s creating an imbalance throughout your entire back.”
The look of surprise on his face was reward enough for having wasted her time asking him questions he refused to answer.
“I injured my right arm five years ago,” he said. “I had to compensate.”
She turned back toward him, looking at the mentioned arm.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Rarely,” he said. “But it did for three years.”
“That’s even more reason to work on it then. The more you favor the left the weaker you’re making the right, because it needs to do less work to get the same results.”
He crossed his arms across his chest, making his biceps bulge even more, and considered her.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll work on it.”
She nodded and turned toward the door again.
She was halfway through the door when he called out, “Do you want to exercise?”
She walked back into the room and gave him her most sarcastic look.
“Do I look like I exercise?” She looked down at herself, the baggy jumpsuit doing nothing to hide her protruding belly and large hips, and the fact that she had no muscle tone to speak of.
He took the invitation to look over her body and did not look disappointed, especially during the slightly longer pause on her breasts. She blushed and folded her arms in front of her chest. She’d always felt awkward about her large breasts, sometimes worrying they were the only thing people saw when they looked at her.
Rex shrugged. “Mudden has a higher gravity than Harcan. It might make things easier for you if you build up muscles now when you have nothing else to do anyway.”
He might be right, but, Elizabeth had not worked out a day in her life, and she had no idea how to start.
“You mean right now?” She bit on her lower lip, considering if the benefits of exercising outweighed the discomfort she would feel staying in the cargo bay with him half-naked.
“If you want,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I can teach you.”
She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Sure.”
She walked back into the room and stood awkwardly in front of him.
“We can start with a quick warm-up.” He moved the bench out of the way and started by lightly jumping from side to side. She tried to keep her eyes on his face and not let them wander further down his body.
“Am I dressed appropriately, or do I need to get naked too?” She teased, trying to relieve the tension with humor as she followed the same motion, a little self-conscious of her bouncing breasts.
“You’re fine,” he said, the corner of his lip twitching. “You couldn’t find a baggier jumpsuit?”
“Not in my size. This is the baggiest they make them.”
He switched to kicking his butt with his heels, and Elizabeth followed.
“Why?” she said, starting to feel a little breathless. “You don’t approve? I should do like you and wear skin-tight jumpsuits that show off every muscle in my body.”
“If you wanted to look intimidating.” He moved to lifting his knees up in front of him. “And you had my body.”
The mere mention was enough for her eyes to travel back over his body on their own. Her pulse quickening, and not from the exercise, she chastised herself again and snapped her gaze back to his face.
