KNOX KNEW he’d hurt Edward that night by the fire, that night when the desire had been written on Edward’s face and Knox had accused him… of what? He could not even remember now why he’d been angry or what he’d accused Edward of. Something about planning to force him to have sex because he was a slave? It seemed very foolish, in hindsight. Edward had always been kind; he wouldn’t force Knox to do anything he didn’t want to do.
Now Edward was careful to appear friendly but distant. The workdays were shorter, the winter dark came early, and the evenings in the library were long. They continued to read and discuss books, and sometimes they played chess on a board. Knox found he remembered the rules and the strategy. He let Edward win sometimes. It seemed like the polite thing to do.
Edward’s eyes now rarely lingered on Knox for more than a few seconds at a time, not when Knox was looking back.
Knox noticed Edward’s awkwardness, but his mind was occupied elsewhere. Inside, Knox was changing. The responsibility of managing the spore harvest, being in the house, reading, and, most specifically, Edward’s company and the dialogue they shared, these things all required him to be more—to be human, intelligent, thoughtful, civilized, self-aware. As the days grew shorter, the sun ever more pale and weak, and the winds harsher, the fog in Knox’s mind was clearing too, just like the Kalanese mist. The mental fuzziness lessened day by day, and so did the panicked sense of disassociation. The thread of terror over what had happened to him—that he had been condemned, murdered without emotion or qualm, and his brain put into another man’s body—gradually dulled, like any other horror of the past. The periods when he felt like a stranger in this body grew more and more infrequent.
Knox spent hours in the evening, when he should be sleeping, staring at the mirror in the bathroom at his face, at his eyes, finding himself inside this great, powerful shell.
One night after a shower, he stood in front of the mirror naked and explored himself—his large and muscled arms, his hands—wide-palmed and shorter-fingered than his own, he thought, but not ugly. His chest and stomach were muscled and ridged and bore a light mat of dark hair. He memorized the colors and lines of his tattoos. He explored his cock, which seemed to be the most alert part of this body. Its demands were becoming more frequent and more aggravated the better Knox felt. The cock was long and thick and the foreskin encased it completely when it was flaccid. It rose easily and often, and the pleasure it gave him when he stroked it was intense, its seed copious and milky white. This body was younger than the one he had left, he was sure of it, definitely stronger—and more coarsely sensual, more virile.
When he stroked that cock he sometimes saw it as someone else’s, as if he were touching another man, and sometimes he was able to feel it was his own. He tried to think of the male lover he sometimes had memories of, but that was too far away and too vague. His mind had one subject it returned to at such times: Edward.
Edward was so young. Knox guessed he was no more than twenty-five. He was too young to be left alone with a responsibility like the spore farm, young to have to shoulder the entire weight of a family’s legacy, young to have lost mother, father, brother, wife, work partner.
As Knox’s facilities become sharper, he could see, understand, more about Edward. There was something strong and good and optimistic at the core of him. He was kind, intelligent, and curious. No matter how tired he was, he loved to stay up late talking like a little child who refused to go to bed when there was something more interesting to do. And he was beautiful. He had a smooth jaw, long lashes over expressive brown eyes, full lips, and a small nose. He was sweetly handsome as only a young man could be. It was those lips and eyes Knox thought of as he touched himself, and of Edward’s body writhing beneath him, his hard cock in Knox’s hand.
Though Edward tried to hide it now, Knox still sometimes caught him looking at night in front of the fire or in the factory as he unloaded the harvesters. Edward lusted after this body, big and masculine as it was. Knox rather thought the man he’d been before would have lusted after it too.
And this body lusted after Edward. Knox knew he could take the young man easily and that they would enjoy the pleasures of the flesh together. But something held him back. It was not only that he knew that to have relations with a recon would shame Edward should anyone find out, something he would protect the young man from if he could. But also… while Knox’s mind was healing itself in some ways, he still could not remember who he’d been before or what he had done. There were blocks in his mind that prevented it, and when he tried to push past them, intense headaches would quickly overwhelm him. Still, he had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach—one he recognized as guilt and shame. Whatever he’d been or done, if Edward knew, he would hate him. Knox believed this. He kept his distance.
ONE NIGHT, Knox was awoken by a shrill cry that seemed to weave in and out of the howl of the wind outside. He sat up and listened, wondering if he had dreamt it. But the sound grew clearer and he realized it was coming from inside the house. It was not a human voice; it was an alarm. Knox got out of bed and quickly pulled on his work pants and laced up his boots as fast as he could. He wore only a thin sleeveless undershirt on top, but he didn’t bother to find something better. He raced downstairs.
Edward’s bedroom door was open and the room was empty. On the ground floor, the alarm clamored relentlessly. He found Edward in the library on the console. Moll was beside him, dressed in her hair pins and robe. Edward looked at Knox with wild eyes but he spoke calmly.
“It’s the house air filtration system. It’s gone down. I—I don’t know how to fix it.”
Without thinking, Knox strode over to the console in great steps. The air filtration system. It rang alarms in his head that were more worrying that the audible one. In a spaceship, such a system was life or death. Here on Kalan, it would keep the house free of the spores so Edward and Moll could breathe. They needed filter masks whenever they went outside.
“Where are your masks?” Knox asked, even as he crossed the room.
“Yes,” Edward blinked in surprise. “Moll, go get the masks from the kitchen.”
Moll hurried to obey.
“I don’t know what to do, Knox,” Edward said, the panic escalating in his voice as he tried taping keys on the console. “It’s flashing yellow, which means imminent system failure, but I don’t know what to do!”
Knox reached out. He was only going to touch the flashing screen, try to get a better look at the system error. But suddenly his mind, which had been dulled from sleep and then distracted by the crisis, shifted into gear, and he saw the console keyboard. He was close to it, only a foot or so away, and the pain and panic knifed into him with angry severity as if he’d touched a live wire. He suddenly saw the keyboard crawling with large and deadly-looking wasps, swarming over and under Edward’s hands as he tried punching keys.
Knox screamed and scrambled backward.
“Knox!” Edward shouted, his face a mask of fear. “Knox, please! I need your help!”
But Edward’s voice was muffled and remote, baffled by the sound of the alarm and by Knox’s rising terror. He turned and fled. He found his way to the front door somehow, tore it open, and ran into the night. Behind him, he could hear Edward screaming something about the wind, but then it was gone and there was just the black night, Knox’s pounding feet, and the wind ripping at him with icy, demonic fingers.
He didn’t know how long he ran or how he managed it. The rocks were ragged under his boots as he stumbled forward in the dark. The wind buffeted him first one way and then another, whipping his hair into endlessly changing contortions and often blinding his eyes. By some miracle, he didn’t fall and break a leg. But when the rocks grew from mere boulders to jagged pinnacles beneath his feet, he fell, hard, face first.
The glassy rocks cut his hands, chest, face, tore through the tough fabric of his pants. He knew then where he was—these were the black rocks of borderlands, the natural strata that ran between the Kalanite that was such an excellent host to the lichen. Lifeless and sharp, the black rocks flaked in slivers like knives and chewed into him.
The pain finally brought him back to himself, overcame the internal panic. He howled, his voice snatched and dispersed by the wind.
He managed to crawl to his feet, causing more cuts as he did so, and he carefully picked his way off the black rocks. Exhausted, bleeding, and bruised, he realized that he was outside in the dark and the wind. He started back toward the house, head bowed against the oncoming gale.
EDWARD WATCHED Knox tear out of the house and he cursed his ridiculous solitude as never before. Whatever they’d done to Knox to keep him away from computers, it was some heinous programming. He’d been out of his mind when he’d run out, into the dark, into the killing wind. And Edward could not go after him. He had to stay here and get this damned filtration system fixed or they could die.
Edward slammed the door shut against the wind and the spores as Moll ran in from the kitchen. She wore one filtration mask and carried another one.
“He’s out there?” she asked, her voice hollow through the mask.
Edward nodded, upset. He put the mask on and went back into the library.
He still had no idea what to do with the system, but the sound of the alarm was driving him mad and the console was not responding to any of the keys he hit. He could get on the grid and ask for help from his neighbors, but between the dead-of-night hour and the wind, it was unlikely anyone could come to his rescue. He stared at the flashing yellow warning, his eyes hot.
How had he ended up here? Why had his father and brother died? Why had Signis not trained him on the system? Why had Signis died? Why did his one helpmate, Knox, who had more than enough intelligence to help him figure this out, have to be a recon who ran screaming at the mere sight of a computer?
For a moment, the self-pity swamped him. He felt Moll’s hand, shaky, on his arm, offering him strength. He took a deep breath and fought down the emotion. Right. The air filtration system had not failed yet. He just had to get this damned alarm to go off so he could think clearly and try to figure out what the warning lights were telling him.
He knew his father had always warned about a hard reboot of the system, but Edward didn’t think he had a choice. Praying he wasn’t making things worse, he opened the clear cover over the master power button. He pushed and released it.
The console went black at once; the siren cut off as if it had never existed. Edward’s ears rang in its absence. The faint white noise of the air filter system, so prevalent he never noticed it, shut down, making the house eerily quiet. And then the console flickered as it rebooted. After several anxious minutes, a prompt appeared: Unauthorized system power down. Reboot all systems?
Edward typed Y for yes and watched the system restart itself. He heard the air filtration system kick back on. When the main console screen reappeared, there was no error, and all systems were green.
Oh thank the gods. Edward slumped back in the desk chair and pulled off his mask.
Moll pulled hers off too. “Oh, Edward.” She still sounded frightened.
“I’ll send out a message first thing in the morning, see if we can get someone to come check the system.”
She nodded, her lips pressed tight. “What about him?”
Knox. Edward felt his a stab of fear in his gut. “I have to go look for him.”
“Oh, not in this wind. Edward, ya can’t!”
He didn’t bother to waste energy arguing. He knew Moll didn’t like Knox and probably wouldn’t care if he died out there. Edward just pushed himself out of the chair and jogged upstairs. He pulled on his heaviest clothes and boots. Back down in the entryway, Moll was waiting for him.
“Please, please think about this! I just checked the sensors. The wind speed is sixty. Ya can’t go out in this! He’s just a recon. He’s not worth it.” She dragged on his arm, her old woman’s face harsh with determination.
“Moll, I need Knox to help me run the farm and… he’s my friend. I’ve got to try!”
Edward shook her off and grasped at the front door. When he pulled it open, he nearly tripped over Knox, who was just coming up the steps.
“Knox!” Edward screamed, the wind battering him even here, at the door. Knox was bleeding from a dozen cuts on his chest, arms, and face. He was only wearing a thin sleeveless shirt, now ripped and bloody. But his eyes were his own as he stared down into Edward’s, not those of the panicked animal he’d been earlier.
Edward grabbed him and pulled him inside. Between him and Moll, they managed to get the door closed. Knox collapsed on the floor inside the doorway.
“By the heavens, Knox!” Edward wasn’t sure if he was relieved Knox was alive or upset that he was so cut up and bloodied.
“I’ll fetch the disinfectant,” Moll tsked. She was shaking her head as she left, as if the whole world had gone mad.
“Are you all right?” Edward asked Knox, a ridiculous question, yet Knox nodded.
“Yes. Nothing is broken.”
“Thank the gods. Come on, let’s get you upstairs. We have to wash out every single one of those cuts.”
Edward helped Knox to his feet and then tried to put an arm around his waist to help him up the stairs, but Knox pushed his hands away as if to say that he could do it.
On the way up the stairs, Edward stayed behind Knox. He could see tears up and down his trousers and, through them, bloody cuts. “You hit the borderlands,” Edward said, upset.
“Yes.”
“Hells, that rock is like cut glass.”
Knox said nothing more. On the second floor, he paused, as if unsure if he should continue to the attic, but Edward was having none of it.
“You need to soak in the tub. The only one is mine. Come on.”
When they got to the bathroom, Edward turned the taps to hot and began to fill the bath, but Knox just stood there, looking down. He held out his hands, palms up. He had a gash along the back of one hand that dripped onto the floor.
“Oh my heavens,” Moll said with an annoyed huff as she appeared in the doorway. She had the medical kit and the large bottle of spore-killing disinfectant. “He’s blood from head to toe!”
Edward took the supplies from her and set them on the floor. “Thank you, Moll.”
“I’ll do it,” Moll said crisply, trying to shove Edward out. “I can wash them cuts as well as anyone. Don’t look like any of them will need stitchin’ or likewise anythin’ fancy.”
Edward held his ground. “No. I don’t think he’d be comfortable with you doing it. You’d best go.”
Moll’s mouth dropped open and her face grew distressed. “Edward, please. It’s… not right. Ya mustn’t do this by yourself. It’s not yer place, and it’s… it’s not right!”
Edward understood what he saw in her eyes, and knew her fears were not really about the task being below his station. She saw through him. And she was right. His stomach burned with shame, but he clenched his jaw stubbornly. “Moll, go to bed. I’ll take care of it.” His tone brooked no argument. He saw the resignation come into her eyes, resignation and a hardening too, a hardening against him. He didn’t care. “Now, Moll.”
She left, shutting the door quietly behind her. Edward turned to Knox, who was watching him with dark, intent eyes.
“You probably remember from when I had my cut,” Edward said, trying for a casual tone. “Any opening in the skin has to be washed thoroughly with spore killer. It stings like hell but it must be done. If there are spores in the wounds, they can embed into the body and, well, it’s not pretty.”
Edward tried to smile encouragingly at Knox, but he was shaking. The hot water of the bath was making steam rise in the room. Edward adjusted the water temperature and then poured a liberal amount of the disinfectant into the water. He stepped closer to Knox and his fingers tugged at the bottom of what was left of Knox’s shirt. It didn’t have buttons and needed to come off over the head. Knox raised his arms and Edward pulled it up and off. As Knox’s chest came into view—muscled, lightly hairy, and with the caged heart tattoo—he was undressing Knox—arousal bit deep into Edward’s lower belly, sudden as the strike of a snake. He sucked in his cheeks to muffle a cry.
Knox said nothing, but his gaze never left Edward’s face. Edward’s heart was trying to push its way out of his chest as he dropped his fingers to the button of Knox’s work pants. In his peripheral vision, he could see the blood still dripping from Knox’s hand to the floor, and it reminded Edward of his erotic dream, the blood dripping from the tattoo. He could see that tattoo now, and the peaked nipple to the left of it. Edward was not a short man, but Knox was taller still by a good head and his bare chest was so close.
Edward managed to open the button and, his fingers visibly trembling now, he tugged on the zipper. His hand brushed against a very large erection straining behind the fabric. He gasped and froze, his knees going weak as desire slammed into him. Knox closed one hand over Edward’s elbow to steady him. The other hand closed over his own, still immobile on the zipper tab, and helped him tug the zipper down. Edward shut his eyes, a moan emerging, unwelcome, from his throat. When the pants were open, Knox pushed Edward’s palm against the pulsing flesh inside. His hand wrapped around the hard cock of its own accord. He moved closer, desperate to rut his own erection into Knox’s thigh, desperate for everything.
And then he realized they couldn’t do this.
“Ah! We… we can’t. We have to get your cuts cleaned,” Edward panted. He forced himself to let go and take a step back. He cursed his timing as he opened his eyes and saw the naked hunger on Knox’s face. He wanted nothing more than to let Knox completely possess him this very second, but the cuts had to be tended to. It was life or death. “Please get in the bath,” he whispered.
Knox grunted and dropped his gaze. He shoved down his pants and stepped out of them. The sight of his cock, hard enough to stick up toward his belly, thick and heavy and veined, made another moan rise in Edward’s throat. He swallowed it. Knox turned toward the bath. “I can do it alone.”
“No,” Edward said firmly. “I won’t breathe easy until I know every cut has been scrubbed.”
Knox stepped into the tub. His back was a marvel—huge, sculpted muscles, a firm ass, and the rope tattoo that lay across the top of his shoulders. As he sank into the water, Edward remembered to speak a warning. “It’s going to sting.”
But he was a little late. As the water hit the back of Knox’s legs, he bowed up and hissed in pain.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Edward grabbed a rough cloth and knelt beside the tub. “The sting fades, but we might as well get it all over with at once. Can you lie back completely?”
Knox glared at him. “That’s easy for you to say.”
Edward couldn’t suppress a smile. “Get everything in the water now and the pain will be gone in five minutes, I promise.” Well, except for the scrubbing part. “And close your eyes tight. If the disinfectant gets in them it will really hurt.”
Knox sank down in the tub, his knees bending and coming out of the water. He went under, his eyes squeezed shut. Edward saw a shiver of pain race though him but he stayed down. Edward began to work the cloth at the cuts on his arms. Then Knox came up, gasping.
“Ow!” he bellowed loudly.
“Hang on. Here!” Edward grabbed a towel and gave it to Knox so he could rub his eyes enough to open them.
Edward couldn’t help but notice that, although Knox’s erection had flagged, it had not completely vanished. He steeled himself to ignore it, though, as he squirted disinfecting soap onto the cloth and scrubbed all the cuts he could see on Knox’s arms and chest, then moved around to his back. He could tell when the overall sting of the spore killer began to fade and the pain of the pressure he applied to each cut took the forefront. But Knox stoically bore it all.
“Stand up,” Edward ordered when he’d done all the cuts on the upper body.
Like a giant rising out of the sea, the great body stood up, displacing the water, rivulets running down his torso. This put Knox’s cock almost level with Edward’s face, an ungodly temptation, but he willed himself to ignore it. He ignored the magnificent body in front of him too as he scrubbed at the cuts on the thighs and knees and then, grabbing Knox’s hips and urging him to turn, at the gashes on the backs of his legs.
None of the wounds were bad enough to need stitching, nor were they bleeding anymore. Already the spore killer had begun to dry out the tissue in the wounds. Even the gash on the back of his hand, which Edward tended to gently, was no longer dripping blood.
When Edward had scrubbed the last cut, he couldn’t help but stop and stare in appreciation at the firm waist, the curve of the broad back, the lavish expanse of shoulders, and the rounded muscles of Knox’s ass. It was truly the most beautiful body Edward had ever seen or could even imagine. He dropped the cloth in the water and ran his fingers lightly over one hip.
Knox started a little. “Am I done?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Y-yes.” Edward’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “If you dry off, I can put some ointment on—”
Knox turned and stepped out of the tub. One look at his face and the words dried up in Edward’s mouth. Oh gods.