He frowned. "He said that my nanos were overwhelmed by the extent of injury to my biological organs and that I had a thirty to fifty percent chance of recovery at this point."
"Stupid bastard," Danika muttered angrily, wishing she'd known that before he'd left so she could've shot him. "That was before. You're coming along now, though."
He looked surprised and more confused.
Danika looked around for a place to sit and finally saw a stool. When she'd pulled it close to the gurney Dane was lying on, she slipped her hand into his, giving it a squeeze. After searching her mind for a few minutes for something to distract him, she realized she couldn't think of a damned thing to coax him with except sex and he sure as hell wasn't in any shape for that! On the other hand, they all seemed pretty focused on it and a promise of it was bound to distract him from his pain and, hopefully, the stupid medic's prognosis of his condition. "Me and Seth found this really cool cave." Actually, creepy, but Seth hadn't seemed to feel the same way about it that she had. "There's a spring inside of it and a nice clear pool in front. It's close to our guard post and I was thinking it would be a great place for me and you guys to use for a little R and R."
He looked blank.
"Sex," she added bluntly.
Thatstirred him up! He shifted as if he was trying to turn over. She tightened her grip on his hand. "Be still! You aren't up to that yet!" she said with a forced chuckle. "And you won't be if you don't hold still and let the nanos fix everything."
"With me?"
She felt the urge to cry again and sent a fervent prayer to whatever gods might be listening that he would get the chance to find out that she meant it. "Of course with you! Who else would I be talking about? You're one of my guys, right? We're a team. We're supposed to take care of each other. But after ... uh ... well, I'm guessing you know, Reuel said we had to be discrete. It isn't like there's any privacy on the ship ... to be discrete.
"Hell, I was even thinking, maybe, if we were going to be here a while we could make us a little homestead. This place isn't half bad--plenty of potential--waybetter than Juno, my home world."
Chapter Fifteen
Danika was feeling tremendously relieved by the time she headed out to take her turn at guard duty. Tired, because she'd refused to leave Dane until the medic had done another scan and informed them that Dane's nanos had repaired his organs enough that he had far better odds of a full recovery. Uneasy about the commitment she'd made, but relieved.
Not that she had any intention of going back on her word!
She hadn't actually made up her mind about whether or not she was willing to take the guys on as sexual partners to keep peace within the squadbeforethe attack, but she'd been leaning that way. Now it seemed more like the right thing to do and she didn't regret, exactly, that she'd made Dane that promise.
It was just a little unnerving.
She wasn't even sure of why it unnerved her. It wasn't as if she'd never had sex before, after all. It wasn't even as if she'd never done it purely for the sake of scratching an itch.
It was because, mostly, she thought of that sort of intimacy as an emotional as well as a physical commitment.
It was because of Tommy Dancel.
She'd thought when she gave herself to him in her father's barn that it was the beginning of something big, something lasting. She'd thought that every time she'd sneaked off to meet him ... imagined the two of them having children together, growing old together ... right up until she'd run into him and Marcy McConnell at the county fair and discovered it didn't mean a damned thing to him except sex.
Tommy Dancel was the first and only man she'd ever even considered as a life partner. As hurt and angry as she'd been when she'd discovered his betrayal, as determined as she was never to forgive him for it, she hadn't met anyone since that she even wanted to envision herself with as a life partner.
How crazy was it to offer such a thing when she knew the guys didn't have a clue of what that kind of commitment meant? They'd never been a part ofanykind of family.
She shook her head at her thoughts.
They'd already become a family. Not in the same way that her family was, or even in the way she'd thought she would one day have a family of her own. They didn't know that they had any kind of future at all to look forward to--any of them. How stupid was it to worry about a future with them when the odds were probably a hundred to one against having one at all?
If they could enjoy anything about their situation, didn't all of them deserve whatever taste of happiness they could manage? Why worry about tomorrow and give up today when today might be all there ever was?
"Dane is dead?"
Seth's question not only jerked her out of her absorption, it knocked the breath out of her. If she hadn't been so worried that he wasn't going to make it, in spite of his progress, she didn't think the question would have thrown her so off kilter. But shewasstill worried and even though doubts and questions instantly arose in her mind as to how they could know more than her when she'd just left sickbay, she was instantly certain hehad. "He is?"
Seth and Niles exchanged a grim look. "His nanos could not repair the damage?" Seth asked.
It hit Danika then that he'd been asking about Dane, not announcing his death. Discomfort wafted through her. "Uh ... Sorry! I misunderstood. Yeah. He's better. Not out of the woods, yet, but definitely improving."
Niles frowned. "He is in the woods? I left him in sickbay."
Danika stared at him blankly for a long moment. "You guys have reallygotto stop taking everything I say so literally--or better yet, get used to slang and stuff like that. 'Not out of the woods' means he isn't safe, but the medic said his odds of pulling through are improving tremendously. If he makes it through the night, he's going to be ok."
