"Mmmm," is all he says.
That is a curious non-answer for a guy like Kaspar. I sit up on his chest, my skin still sticky with his seed, and I try to look stern and menacing despite the fact that I'm topless. "What's that 'mmmm' mean?"
Kaspar pauses. "About the distress beacon…"
37
KASPAR
Alice sits upright on my chest, her eyes wide and wary. "What about the distress beacon?"
I rub my mouth. I can still taste her on my skin. Kinda makes me want to drag her back into my arms and distract her with more licking, but I suspect she's not going to be in the mood now. "There's a bit of a problem with it."
"What. Kind. Of. Problem." She enunciates each word angrily.
Best to just get it out in the open. "The scrambler we put on our pod to prevent Shaalyn from capturing us again would have also distorted any sort of distress signal we'd send out. Basically the distress beacon is useless. No one knows where we are."
She stares down at me. Just stares.
"You're mad, aren't you?" I can tell. Her shoulders have gone stiff and her lip has curled slightly.
"At what point were you going to tell me that we're stranded and lost?" Her tone is deadly calm.
I grin at her. "When you asked. Which is now."
Alice's nostrils flare. She glares at me for a moment longer and then flings herself off of my chest. "I don't believe you," she cries out, storming away to pick up the pants she flung a short distance away. "All this time you've been letting me think that we're going to get rescued and now we're stuck here? Forever? What the fuck, Kaspar?" She gestures at the jungle around us. "I thought we were just going to be planet-side for a few days. Now you're telling me we might be stuck here FOREVER?"
I sit up, watching as she rages. "I wouldn't say forever, exactly. That's an awfully long time." When she casts another angry glare in my direction, I offer up some hope. "My brothers are going to come looking for us, remember? I'm sure that won't take too long. Couple of months, tops."
She grabs her pants and glares at me as she shoves her leg through her pants—and the tattered fabric rips in half. Frustrated, she flings her pants back down to the ground and I'm treated to a view of enticing breast jiggling as she pitches a fit. "Months? Months? Are you serious?" Alice storms back toward me. "Did you forget that we're supposed to be helping rescue your brother and Jade from the ship? The Star? The one that's supposed to be sinking into an ice field? How the hell is he going to rescue us?"
It's definitely a kink in my plans. "Mathiras is still out there. If anyone can rescue both us and Adiron, it's him. He's the responsible one."
She bites her lip, and I can't tell if she wants to start screaming at me or not. Probably so. She looks pretty keffing mad.
"It'll be fine, Sunshine," I reassure her. "You're here with me—"
"You have no gun."
"—and I'll take care of you."
"On a planet full of bugs that want to eat me and killer cats." She crosses her arms under her charming bare breasts, still wearing my dried spend, I might add. I like that visual a lot. It's definitely going to be burned in my mind for all time. Indignant, angry Alice with her seed-spattered tits heaving. It's enough to distract a male.
When she snaps her fingers at me, I realize I'm staring at the wrong thing, and she's just getting angrier. "Look, we were low on choices. It was either be re-captured by Shaalyn or take our chances with the distress signal. As far as no weapon, I'll create something." I shrug. "And the killer cats love you."
"Yes, but they want to EAT you."
That makes me grin. "Are you worried about me, Sunshine?"
"More like I'm worried that I'll be left here alone," she retorts tartly, and begins to pace. "Kaspar, we don't have food. We only have tabs for a few weeks."
I don't bring up the inukni worms, because she's made it quite clear how she feels about those. "We have time to figure out what's edible here. Your pet doesn't exactly look as if it's starving. And this place isn't deserted. There's a thriving black market out there for protector-kin which means someone's coming to this planet and looking for them. All we have to do is wait for one of those ships to land, hijack it, and we're back in business." I shrug. "I've been in worse situations. Does this involve patience? Yes. Does it mean we're going to die here? Not at all."
Alice paces. She doesn't look at me, which makes me suspect that she's not as mad. "What if it takes a long time for someone to come back here?"