~ I'll Be With You ~

by

Tamia Dawn Osburn

Someone pounded on the escape pod waking Lesley. She looked up through the window and her heart stopped, then pounded again at seeing Dage after three years. She was so shocked to see him standing there in the flesh that she could only stare up at him with wide green eyes. She figured that she must still be dreaming, because he couldn’t possibly be standing right outside her pod. Her mouth closed tightly as her eyes closed for a moment then opened.

“Dage,” she whispered as her eyes widened at the sight of him before her. He’d been her last thought just before falling asleep. She looked around her. Going into Reimche’s atmosphere  she must have been tossed around in the escape pod, since her safety harness was ripped in places, which puzzled her for a brief moment. Then she undid the red and white-striped harness. When she had first opened her eyes, she thought that her mind was playing tricks on her, now she knew that was not the case. He was actually in front her. She had a sudden urge to reach out and touch his solid, hard flesh.

Dage smiled down at her as he reached over and released the door from the outside. He held a hand out to her. Lesley took his offered hand in hers and he gently pulled her out. His hand felt real and warm in hers. She blinked her eyes up at him, confused at this sudden turn of events.

“I knew we’d see each other again, but not like this,” he said softly as he reached out with his hand and touched her forehead. He noticed a lump was forming at her temple and it was bleeding.

“Oww,” Lesley said as she pulled away from his touch and placed her own hand on her forehead while staring up at him with wide green eyes. The spot was tender and swollen. And bloodied, she noticed on her fingers as she pulled them away from her forehead. She stared down at the blood on her fingertips then looked up at Dage.

Is he for real, or am I hallucinating? she asked herself as her heart began to beat. After all the time that had passed between them, she still wanted him with her entire being.

Dage offered her a dark-blue bandana; she took it then placed the cloth on her forehead for a moment until the bleeding stopped.

“What happened?” Dage pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against him. He tried to block out his body’s response of her and it wasn’t working. Not when he could feel the lush curves next to his, her softness against his hardness.

His heat filled her, as it did once before when they were on Earth. “I was attacked by space pirates,” Lesley said. Her voice seemed dried and hoarse as she glanced down at the hard packed dirt. She couldn’t look him in the eyes at the moment, not with her heart racing inside of her chest.

~ * ~

Dage eased away from her and walked over where he had dropped his pack on the ground when he’d noticed the escape pod and had rushed over to help whomever was in there. His heart nearly pounded out of his chest when he saw that it was Lesley, the one female who held his heart. At least she did once, until she had broken it into a million pieces.

“Why did they attack you?” Dage spoke in a hard voice, as he held out a plastic bottle of water to her. His eyes were hard and lethal as he looked down at her.

She took the water and drank about half of the bottle before she answered him. “I don’t know why they attacked my ship.” Lesley drank the other half of the water and gave the bottle back to him. “How far away are we from civilization?” she asked as she scanned the horizon. She didn’t want him to see the expression of tenderness on her face. She still had strong feelings for the man, no matter how much time had passed between them.

Even after the terrible ordeal when she went to see her family, Lesley had wanted to search for him, needed his comforting arms around her. She had forced herself to get on with her life. The Alliance wouldn’t allow them to be together, so it was best to let him go.

“A few miles,” Dage answered as he took his fill of gazing at her with a puzzled expression. She seemed to be giving him a cold shoulder. Why? After all that we shared on Earth? he wondered to himself. “I’m sorry,” Dage said all of a sudden. He wasn’t sure why he had spoken those words to her. They just fell from his lips and he was startled that he had spoken them in the first place.

Lesley turned to him with a surprised look on her face. “For what?” she asked as she reached up and tugged a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear. Her hand slowly caressed down the side of her neck as she stared up at him. She wanted to know why he was apologizing to her.

“For everything,” Dage shrugged his shoulder as he bent down and placed the water bottle in his pack and slung his pack over his shoulder. He didn’t want to see the sensual picture she made. Not the way that his libido was out of control from seeing after three years. He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling away, the way his body grew hard and throbbed with life whenever he came close to her.

“We should get started, it’s going to get dark soon.” He looked up at the sky and at the noonday sun as it sat high in the sky. “I only have two bottles of water left. And you already drank one. It is a long walk back to town.” He pulled the black pack onto his shoulders and shifted the weight to even it out, then began to walk west in the direction of the town he had just come from.

Dage was already a few feet ahead of her when Lesley started to follow him in slow hesitating steps. Her eyes were on his back as she walked, then she tilted her head to the side considering his broad back. Why is he treating me like this? Lesley asked herself as she followed him. Giving his back a hard look as she slowly made her way behind him. Is it because of the way that I left him three years ago? Guess he should be mad at the way that I left him. I was scared.

They walked for several minutes before a red laser beam flew at them from nowhere. The red laser fire landed in the dirt near Dage’s feet. Lesley nearly screamed out as she fell to the hard ground. Dage helped Lesley up and, dragging her with him, they ducked behind a gray boulder a few feet away from them. Dage drew his laser and paused when another red laser fire hit the boulder right in front of them. Dage looked over the edge of the boulder and aimed his laser, then fired. Sweat beaded on his forehead while Lesley hugged herself against the boulder. Without a weapon, she was a liability, so made herself as small a target as possible.

“What’s going on, Lesley?” he asked her as someone returned fire and missed the boulder. The laser fire was mere inches from them.

“I don’t know. I was doing some undercover work when my ship was attacked by the pirates. Do you have any more weapons on you?” she asked as she breathed hard and fast from this new attack. She was really getting to be annoyed by these attacks on her person. And now Dage was being attacked because of her.

Dage shook his head and spoke in an annoyed voice as he returned fire. “This is the only one that I have at the moment.”

Moments passed as Dage returned fire at their unknown assailants. They continued to exchange laser fire until their unknown attackers finally gave up and took off suddenly. Dage watched them go, fighting the urge to run after them. He didn’t need Lesley chasing after them as well, considering her condition after the attack and being knocked around in the escape pod.

“The desert elements will get to them before we do,” Dage said to Lesley as they started to walk toward the town of Rhiannon once more. He wiped the sweat off his forehead before he picked up his pack. He placed the laser in the back of his trousers.

Lesley stood up and wiped the sand off her pants and looked in the direction where their assailants had run, after they had fired upon them. “I wonder if they were the same people that attacked my ship,” she muttered out loud as she started to walk next to Dage, who wanted to get to town quickly--you never knew who else could be laying in wait for them.

Dage stopped walking and whirled to face her with a hard expression on his face.

“More than likely they were. What kind of undercover work were you doing?” he asked in a hard voice while he looked her up and down.

“You know that I am not at liberty to say,” Lesley said in a much harder voice as she looked up at him while he towered mere inches from her. Her heart was beating at a fast pace. She wanted to fling herself into his arms--after all he had just saved her from a terrible death. She wanted to feel his arms around her, to taste him once more. She couldn’t, not with the way that he was looking at her with that hard look that made her shiver. Instead, Lesley placed her hands on her hips and continued to glare up at him.

The Alliance still had a policy about relationships with other crew members. She didn’t want to take that chance with her life. It still pained her to break her relationship with him once they’d left Earth.

“You are not at liberty to say. I should have known you would say that.” Dage grimaced. He turned away from her as he started the trek to Rhiannon in hard, fast steps.

“You know how it is, Dage. We can’t talk about it,” Lesley spoke softly as she walked behind him.

“I know.” Dage sighed as he continued the walk. His ears were open for any sound that was made that was not part of the desert. He was not in the mood to be ambushed again. He scanned his surroundings every few seconds for any changes along the way since he had first walked this path earlier when he’d found Lesley in the escape pod. It still terrified him to see her that way. His heart pounded as he tried to shake the image from his mind.

An hour passed with neither saying a word, just walking in silence. Lesley decided she’d had enough. “Have you heard from Shannon and Darr?” she asked, trying to lighten Dage’s mood and to ease the tension that was quickly building between them. She had also wondered about the couple during the past three years. There were times when she had wanted to visit them, but she had chosen not to do so. She didn’t want to take the risk of seeing Dage there, the place that her love for him had grown, the one place that she had broken his heart.

She would never forgive herself for destroying his hopes for them. When they were on Wiccan, Dage was beginning to make plans for them to live on Earth. He wanted to get away from the life of the Alliance. Lesley’s urge to see her family one last time was stronger that night. After a night of fulfilling lovemaking, she had left in the early morning hours; she had hoped that Dage would understand her need.

He must still be angry about waking that morning on Wiccan and finding that I was long gone. Angered and upset about the way I left him. Lesley sighed as she continued walking. Not that I could blame him.  He has a right to be upset, even if it was for the best for both of us.

“They are doing fine. They have a daughter named Alexandria. She is the spitting image of her father.” Dage smiled at the warm memory. He quickly frowned at the lost hopes of life that he had wanted to share with Lesley and that she didn’t want any part of that life with him.

Lesley also smiled; she could picture the happy family in her mind. Then she frowned as she remembered how her family had treated her. Her heart constricted as she remembered her mother’s words that day.

“You are not my daughter. I never gave birth to a girl child,” Emily said in a sad voice as she looked away from Lesley. She didn’t miss the sad look that had passed over the older woman’s face before she looked away.

Lesley shivered whenever she thought back to that day. She turned to her father and he stood there shaking his head with a sad look in his eyes. She sighed as she spun on her heel and walked away from them. She had found a private spot in the park and had sat down and leaned her elbow on her knees with her face cupped in the palm of her hands. She dared not cry, she was an Alliance officer, after all. But that didn’t stop the tears from flowing down her face.