Finally, though, she needed to sleep. Sarai and the children had retired hours earlier. The alarms were set; the door was locked. It was time to go to bed.
After making sure all was secure, she made her way to the private part of the hostel. She and Sarai had rooms that were separate from the guests rooms. Her room–a luxury that always sent a thrill through her–was cool and dark as she stepped inside and locked her door. She kept a window open in the evenings because she loved the sounds of the animals in the darkness. Small insects chirped, and occasionally a night-loving bird would call in the distance. She would never get over the simple pleasure that came from living on a planet.
Pulling her dress off, Calla stepped over to the window wearing only her shift. The darkness was alive, she could feel it outside. Their small hostel was on the outskirts of town, and she could see the rainforest behind their small, walled garden. At first, the sight of all that teeming wildness had frightened her. Now she loved it. She raised her arms and stretched, enjoying the stretching sensation that raced through her muscles. This was freedom.
“Hello, Calla,” a smooth, familiar voice said in the darkness. Her heart stopped, and she froze, excitement coursing through her. It was Seth, somehow he was there, in the room with her. Her eyes moved frantically over the window, trying to decide if she could jump to the ground. Was it was too far?
“Jax is out there, just in case you try something stupid,” Seth said softly. “Why don’t you turn around so we can talk.”
Slowly, Calla turned. She couldn’t find him at first, then she realized he was actually lying on her bed, leaning back comfortably against her pillows. How long had he been waiting for her?
“What do you want?” she asked, feeling foolish. The sight of him sent a tingle of sensation through her traitorous senses. She knew his presence wasn’t good, but her body was overjoyed to see him again.
She wanted him.
His face was like stone in the darkness. He simply stared at her for a long moment, and the tension rose between them. He wanted her, too.
“We never finished things, Calla,” he said.
“Seth, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I did what I had to do. We’ll pay you back for the ship, I promise.”
“I don’t care about the damn ship,” he said tightly. “I have enough money to buy a hundred ships. What I care about is the fact that you lied to me, that you left me behind. Why didn’t you trust me? I would have helped you.”
Calla snorted in disbelief.
“Right, like I should believe that,” she muttered. “You were plenty interested in f**king a slave, but I didn’t see you offering to set me free.”
“You never gave me that option,” he said quietly.
“Why would I take that chance?” Calla replied. “Do you have any idea what happened to slaves who didn’t meet Jenner’s standards of morality? They got sold to pimps. Would you risk dying on your back in a mining camp to have a fling with guest in a hostel?”
Seth caught his breath; the thought of her being subject to men like Calvin made his skin crawl.
“No, I can understand that,” he said finally. “But all that time together–why didn’t you confide in me then? You can’t believe I would have sent you back to her.”
“I had to think with my head, not my heart,” Calla said bitterly. “And I had to rescue Jess. Would you have understood that?”
A flash of jealous anger went through him at the name.
“Jess,” he said slowly, dragging the name out on his tongue. “What about Jess? Did you ever find him?
Did he send you away? How is your husband?”
“I didn’t try to find him,” Calla said quietly. “I had no idea where to begin looking, and Sarai and I needed to get away. It was enough to know he had escaped.”
“You would leave behind a man you love so easily?”
“Jess is not my husband. I already told you that. He was my crèche-brother, we were raised together on the slave farm. He always wanted to escape, but he wouldn’t go without me. If I hadn’t been so scared he never would have ended up in that mining camp. That’s why I had to find him.”
“He was never more than a brother to you?” Seth asked, jaw tight. His tension was a palpable presence in the room.
“No, never,” Calla said, willing him to believe her. “Even when we were younger, we never experimented together. We were too close for that, even if we weren’t related biologically. Of course we might have been, for all I know. Both of us were synthesized out of the same genetic material.”
“I don’t know whether to believe you or not,” Seth said finally. He sat up and swung his legs down off the bed.
Calla sank to the floor, trying not to look too closely at him. It was too hard to be in the same room as him, feeling his hatred. He remained silent for several minutes, contemplating her as she sat. Then she grew angry. Who was he to judge her?
“Why should you care whether or not I’m telling the truth, now or then?” she finally asked. “All we had was a contract. I provided you with sex, you provided me with money. I know it didn’t work out quite right and that I still owe you, but in the long run why should you care, as long as I repay you? It’s not like we could ever have had anything more together. You must have told me a hundred times that a Saurellian could never stay with a non-Saurellian woman.”
“Maybe I was trying to convince myself of that,” Seth said finally. “But it didn’t feel that way. I wanted to stay with you.”
Calla stared at him, unsure of what to say. Part of her thrilled to his statement, but another part wondered if it was just some vengeful game he was playing.
“Well, you never told me that,” she said finally. “How was I supposed to know? If I’d told you the truth, I would have been totally in your power. I’ve seen what men can do to women. And I noticed you didn’t do a damn thing to help Sarai or her children. Why should I believe anything you say?”
“I needed to get information from Calvin,” Seth said after a long pause. “I wasn’t going to let him seriously harm Sarai, and I was going to help her escape from him.”
“After you’d gotten what you needed from Calvin, right?” Calla said skeptically. “And just when, exactly, was that magic moment going to arrive? Did you see the bruises on her face? I don’t know how you could have missed them.”