Mass Effect: Reaper Dreams

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Noosa Heads, Queensland, Australia

September 20th, 2188

Jack

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Jack struggled to get through the front door without dropping her carry bags. Her balance was nearly all the way back, which was a good thing. However, she'd overestimated the amount of groceries she could manage at once.

"Should've made two trips," she muttered to herself as she helplessly watched a lime bounce on the hardwood floor.

"Shit! Miri, could I get a hand here?"

Nothing.

She was losing one of the bags.

"MIRI!" she shouted.

Two more limes hit the floor, followed by a bag of rice.

"Goddammit!"

She maneuvered across the dining room like a clown dancing on a tightrope before managing to heave the groceries onto the counter. A mess of contents scattered in every direction, some of them wound up on the floor. It took a good ten minutes and several pages worth of foul language before she got everything collected and stowed away in the cooler dry bins. When she was finished, she grabbed a cold beer on her way to the window.

It was a hell of a nice place, this little home on the beach. Not too big, not too small, and not too fancy, but the location was fucking perfect. Zaeed, that crazy old son of a bitch, had left it to her in his will. Jack wasn't quite sure what she'd done to get this far onto his good side, and she'd probably never know, but goddamn, she wasn't going to turn it down. It was the nicest thing she'd ever owned.

She took a swallow, savoring the trickle of cool amber froth, and stared out the window. Miri was out on the sand in front of the house, notepad in hand, wearing nothing but a pair of sunglasses and a piece of string around her hips that made a mockery of the local ordinance against full nudity on the beach.

Jack leaned forward, allowing her eyes to do a bit of ogling from a distance as she downed her beer. After she dropped the bottle into the recycling station, she moved to the bar and made up two drinks, one whiskey sour, and one third degree martini. She set the drinks aside, ambled down the hall to the bedroom, and shed her clothes. Pulling open the top drawer on the dresser, she located a pair of black bikini bottoms, scooped them up, and pulled them on. A few minutes later she was tap-dancing over hot sand, a drink in each hand.

Once she reached the blanket, she knelt down and held out the martini. "Your drink, princess."

Miranda Lawson turned her sunglasses in Jack's direction. Her lips, rather than forming a smile, curled into a devilish smirk. In the old days Jack used to hate that expression and what it represented. She'd take umbrage to that smirk, and she'd always want to erase it with extreme violence. Recently, however, it had taken on new context. It was still a flashpoint between the two women, but what it ignited was something else entirely.

'Uh, oh, one of these moods,' thought Jack.

She held out the martini for Miranda. Lawson took the drink in her left hand and set it aside as she leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on Jack's lips. Jack barely had a moment to savor the kiss before she felt herself being pulled down onto the blanket. Miri's sundrenched skin was slippery with oil and sweat, and smelled of coconuts, which immediately turned Jack on. And so it went, drinks forgotten or spilled, arms and legs entwined, they writhed atop the blanket like two desperate teenagers on a second date.