Captive Dreams

by Angela Knight

  The idea of giving her up grated. The obsession was far from gone, despite a collection of memories that would give him a hard-on for weeks. Probably years, suggested a traitorous little voice in the back of his mind.

  Hell, Jarred suspected he’d still be remembering his nights with Celeste when he was a lonely, broken-down old ’borg boring the young agents with ancient stories. He could almost hear their mocking laughter now. You’re a lying sonuvabitch, Pops. Or else dumber than deckplate, if you had a woman like that and gave her away.

  Would Celeste remember those nights with him as fondly? Probably not. Being tied up and screwed by some rutting ’borg was not the kind of memory a woman would cherish. Anyway, she’d probably fall in love with De’Lar and forget him completely.

  Jarred set his jaw, his eyes narrowing. Like hell. At least once, he was going to make sure he’d haunt her as thoroughly as she’d always haunted him.

  Celeste woke to Jarred’s kiss. His mouth moved on hers in a deep and voluptuous possession of tongue and lips and teeth. He felt deliciously hard and strong, one big hand holding her chin. She sighed helplessly, her senses filled with him.

  In a few hours, he would take her to De’Lar and she would never see him again.

  The thought pumped desperation into her hunger. This might be the last time she ever touched him, ever kissed him. This might be the last time she felt that powerful body under her fingers. She wanted to store every sensation, every touch and kiss for the long, chill years ahead.

  With a muffled moan, she lifted a hand to the side of his face. His beard felt like raw silk against her fingers. She stroked him, savoring each hair, exploring the haughty rise of his cheekbones, the line of his temple. Fisting her fingers in his hair, she dragged him down until she could deepen her contact with that impossibly seductive mouth.

  He made a low, approving sound against her lips and pressed a chain of nibbling kisses down to the rise of her chin, then followed the curve of her jaw to find the taut, sensitive cord of her throat. His teeth closed in a gently wicked bite that sent a tingling starburst of pleasure up and down her spine. She felt her nipples harden.

  His hands grew busy, stroking and touching. The line of her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder, the sensitive hollow at the bend of her elbow. A thumb stroked the fine-grained skin of her wrist. Her hand curved up in a silent plea, and he shifted his own to twine his fingers with hers. Palm stroked palm, exchanging a silent message of need and approval.

  Jarred shifted his weight to cover her more completely, kissing his way back up her throat to her ear. “God, you feel so good,” he said, his voice sounding less silken than usual. Not so much the polished seducer as a man in the grip of something powerful. “How the hell am I going to give you up?”

  “Don’t,” she whimpered as he hungrily sucked and nibbled at the ear he’d whispered into. “Don’t give me to De’Lar. Keep me.”

  “I can’t.”

  You mean you won’t. But she didn’t say it, didn’t want to risk losing this last glorious opportunity to touch him, to pretend he loved her.

  It felt as though he did. The hands that roamed and stroked seemed impossibly tender as they lingered over hip and thigh and breast, teasing warmth and arousal from sensitive flesh. She wrapped both legs around his hips and arched her back to bring her sex in tighter contact with his. Digging her nails into his strong back, she bit her lip to keep from telling him how much she loved him. Either he wouldn’t want to hear it, or he’d gloat. This moment might be all she’d ever have, and she didn’t want to ruin it.

  He pulled out of her arms. Instinctively, she tried to hold on, but she was no match for his strength. He didn’t go far, though, just settled back onto his heels and scooped her bottom into his big hands. Lifting her hips, he angled them upward and draped her calves over his muscled forearms.

  Celeste rose onto her elbows to watch as he took his shaft in one hand and presented it to her opening. Slowly, he began to press inside, his dark eyes locked hungrily on her face. She closed her eyes, afraid the hopeless love she felt would show.

  “Look at me,” he said, in a tone so vulnerable she automatically obeyed. To her surprise, she saw something almost tortured in his black eyes as he slid to his full length in her wet, tight sex. He leaned closer, catching one of her knees to prop it on his shoulder. The position allowed him to penetrate even farther than he ever had before.

  Jarred began to thrust, rolling his hips slowly, deeply. One hand sought her breast to caress and tease as the other busied itself with her clit. Long, silken swirls of sensation spun through her body with each movement of his fingers, each stroke of his cock. All the while, those dark eyes watched her face with a kind of tender absorption unlike anything he’d shown her before. Returning that hot chocolate stare, she wondered at his metamorphosis from ruthless dominant to gentle lover.

  Until the heat he built grew so fierce she could think of nothing except how delicious it was. She could feel her orgasm building, tightening deep muscles, preparing to burst free.

  Throwing her head back, she gave herself up to it.

  Jarred watched Celeste come, felt her strong muscles milking his shaft as those beautiful green eyes widened, her soft pink mouth forming an O of pleasure. She cried out. “Tell me it’s true,” he growled, barely aware of what he said. “Tell me you love me.” He circled his hips deliberately as he stroked his thumb over the hard, engorged button of her clit.

  “God, Jarred!” She convulsed and gave him what he wanted. “I love you!”

  He came in a hot, roiling flood, pouring himself into her slick heated body with a roar.

  Oh, God. She’d told him.

  Celeste lay under his hot weight, feeling a horrible sense of vulnerability. He’d either gloat now or pretend she’d said nothing. He’d ruin it.

  Jarred lifted his head and met her eyes, and she blurted the first thing that entered her head. “Well, what did you expect? I made you up. Of course I’d fall in love with you.”

  Instantly his face closed, and it occurred to her, far too late, that his expression hadn’t been what she’d expected. There’d been something else there, something . . . what? “You didn’t make me up,” he gritted, and rolled off her onto his back.

  Oh, hell. Might as well go on the offensive. “You seem to think I’m responsible for everything else that’s ever happened to you.”

  Jarred shot her a sardonic look. “Believe it or not, I did exist before you ever wrote those books.”

  “How do you know?” she shot back. “Maybe you only think you existed.”

  “Now you’re getting delusions of grandeur.”

  “You’re the one that keeps calling me ‘goddess.’ ”

  “That’s ‘goddess’ with a little ‘g,’ not the and-on-the-seventh-day-She-rested ‘G’.”

  She snorted. “I wish it had taken me only seven days to write one of those books.”

  “You know, you’re working awfully hard to change the subject.” He shot her a coolly perceptive look. “Why are you trying so hard to distract me?”

  “I didn’t want to give you the traditional male opportunity to ruin the moment.”

  His mouth curled into a faint, mocking smile. “Particularly when you could do such a good job of that on your own.”

  Celeste rolled out of bed. “Yeah, well, now that my work here is done, I’m going to take a shower.”

  Before she could take another step, he was in front of her, one big hand on her shoulder. “Not so fast. I want to . . .”

  He stood with a whip in one big hand, saying something angry to De’Lar. Beside them, a naked blond woman lay on a bed, bound hand and foot. She turned her head to look up at them, and Celeste recognized herself.

  Suddenly feminine hands appeared in her field of view, gestured. Snaking bolts of electric energy flashed toward Jarred’s dark head . . .

  As he stared into Celeste’s eyes in irritation, all the blood abruptly drained from her face. Her body je
rked backwards, spine arching into a bow as her mouth shaped a silent scream of agony and terror. Only his cyborg reflexes allowed him to catch her before she hit the deck. “Celeste!” he bellowed, barely aware of what he said.

  As Jarred wrapped both arms around her and lowered her the rest of the way to the floor, she went into convulsions, her body lashing like an electrified doll, her eyes rolling back in her head until only the whites showed. Terror poured over him, cold and brutal as a hailstorm. God, I can’t lose her! Not her, too . . .

  He scanned her desperately as he tried to control her writhing body. The electrical activity in her brain was going wild, almost like an epileptic seizure, but more . . . organized than that. It reminded him of the precognitive visions Garr used to have, but it was far more violent.

  What the hell was happening to her?

  Just as he was about to snatch her up and run for sickbay, her eyes rolled down and focused on his face. “NO!” she screamed, and grabbed at his shoulders with desperate strength. “She’s going to kill you!”

  She’s back. Relief poured over him, but he had to find out what the hell had just happened. He snatched her off the floor and rose, headed for the door.

  “What are you . . . ?” Celeste looked around, dazed, trying to focus on her surroundings. “Where are you taking me? No, you’ve got to listen! I’ve got to tell you . . .”

  “I’m getting you to sickbay,” he gritted without breaking step. God, he’d never been more terrified in his entire life than he’d been when she collapsed. “I want to run you through the sensors there. I damn well am going to find out what just happened.”

  “Jarred . . .”

  “One minute you’re giving me a hard time, the next you’re having a seizure.” He strode down the hall with her in long, determined strides. “I shouldn’t have ignored those fucking migraines you’ve been having . . .”

  “It was a vision, Jarred.” When he looked down at her, startled, he saw she’d closed her eyes, teeth gritted. Her color was bad, almost gray. “Put me down. We need to talk.”

  “Not until I check you out.” The sickbay doors opened and he carried her inside to lay her in the treatment tube. “Cerebral strokes can produce effects people mistake for . . .”

  “It’s not a mistake, Jarred.” He looked up to see a handheld wound sealer floating through the air toward his face. “I have powers.”

  For a long moment he stared at the sealer as it hung in the air. Then, slowly, he turned to look down at her. Telekinesis was one of the rarest of the psychic powers—and one of the most potentially deadly. The closest he’d ever come to death had been at the hands of a telekinetic. “How long have you been doing that?”

  Celeste licked her lips and sat up. She tried to swing out of the treatment tube, but frowned in irritation as she realized its walls were too high. As Jarred watched, she floated off the tube bed, levitated over the side, and swung her feet down to the deck.

  He stared at her. That kind of power—and the skill to use it—did not develop overnight. She must have been honing it for days. Which meant she’d hidden it from him. I’ve been falling in love with her, and she’s been sneaking around behind my back.

  She must have read the rage growing inside him, because her eyes widened. “Uh . . .”

  “How long?” he snarled.

  She bit her lip. “A couple of weeks.”

  “What else can you do?” God, he was an idiot. She’d spent a decade fucking with him, and now she was going to start doing it again. He should have killed her when he’d had the chance. He should kill her now.

  But he couldn’t, because the little bitch had made him fall in love with her. He couldn’t touch a hair on that pretty little head—assuming she’d let him.

  They always did this to him. Every last one of them. His mother. Ayla. They made him love them, and then they betrayed him.

  Then they inflicted the greatest betrayal of all: they left him alone, bleeding and devastated.

  Jesus, he just hoped she wasn’t a telepath, too. He couldn’t stand to let her know how completely she’d broken him.

  “I can’t really do all that much.” The little idiot didn’t realize how much power she had over him—in every sense—because she was staring at him as if she was afraid he’d beat her. He should have found her fear comforting, but it only pissed him off even more. How could she believe I’d hurt her? She twisted her fingers together and hunched her shoulders. “Just precognition and telekinesis.”

  “Considering you just picked up fifty-two kilos and floated it around, that’s more than enough.” Quit looking at me like that, dammit.

  She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders as if gathering her courage. “The precog is the important part. Jarred, you’ve got to listen to me. If we go to Kyristari, somebody’s going to try to kill you.”

  He looked at her coldly. “Are they going to succeed?” “They can’t if we don’t go there.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  She gaped at him. “What?”

  “I mean are you saying you’ll make sure I die if I take you to Kyristari?”

  Celeste recoiled. “What? No! I’m just telling you what I saw. It was a vision. There was a woman. She . . . did something. I’m not sure what. There were lighting bolts or something and . . .”

  “A vision, or a plotline? Because if it’s a plotline, I’m dead regardless.” He was dying now. “You always make sure your plots happen.”

  “Jarred, I’m not doing this.” She looked desperate now, afraid. As if he could hurt her. “I did not plot this. Remember? Before you and Mykh showed up, I was blocked. I...”

  “So I owe my continued existence to a case of writer’s block. Nice. I think I’d better drop you off at Kyristari before you start feeling inspired.” He turned and started out of the room.

  She hurried after him to grab him by one shoulder. Even through his armored jacket, her touch seemed to burn. “Jarred, please, listen to me! You’re in danger! She’s going to try to kill you!”

  He looked back at her. “What do you care? You were going to cash my chips, remember?”

  Celeste looked at him as if he’d slapped her. Her lower lip trembled. “I care because I love you, Jarred.” She pulled herself to her full height. “And if you go to Kyristari, you’ll be in danger.”

  He turned away. “I’ll be a lot safer once I leave you there.”

  SEVEN

  Celeste sat staring fixedly out the window of the skycab as the Kyristari capital flashed by below. Normally she would have been enthralled by the futuristic city with its soaring, graceful architecture, surrounded by air transports that swooped between the buildings like swallows. Unfortunately, a knotted stomach and pounding temples put her in no mood for sightseeing.

  Jarred sat in the seat facing her, his eyes as cold and hard as iced black steel. If he cared that he’d never see her again, it didn’t show on his face. He hadn’t spoken to her since he’d walked out of sickbay.

  At first her nerves had stretched drum-tight, waiting for him to pounce on her in one of those humiliating, deliciously erotic displays of dominance. But he hadn’t touched her. Hell, he’d even given her clothes for the first time in two weeks.

  The black shipsuit Jarred had ordered the computer to create was so damn ugly, he’d obviously intended it as a statement of indifference. Celeste could only conclude he’d designed the whisper-thin silk shift she wore now for De’Lar’s pleasure, not his.

  Though she would have died rather than admit it, that rejection hurt. She didn’t want to lose the last chance she might ever have to make love to Jarred—to pretend, however briefly, that he loved her. But it seemed he had no intention of allowing her even that illusionary solace.

  Celeste wanted two things now: to get out of this without letting him see her cry, and to make sure the assassin didn’t succeed in killing him. She was terrified that in his icy rage, Jarred wouldn’t protect himself. He’d even warned her not to mention the
vision or her abilities to De’Lar, a piece of deliberate stupidity if ever she’d heard of one.

  “If you scare him off,” he’d growled as they’d stepped down the ship’s gangplank, “I swear to God I’m taking you to Christ Colony.”

  She couldn’t believe he meant it. Those lunatics would probably stone her as a witch the first time she had a vision. But looking at his implacable face, she’d decided not to push it.

  Now Celeste felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as the aircab began to descend toward a sprawling collection of iridescent spires she realized must be the palace. Swallowing hard, she considered throwing up on Jarred’s boots. That should shock the icy look right off his face.

  “Just let me off,” she gritted through teeth set against her rising gorge. “Don’t go in with me. I’ll find my own way.”

  He submerged her in a frigid stare. “You expect me to believe you’ll just deliver yourself to De’Lar? I don’t think so.”

  “But the assassin . . .”

  “Did you actually see her kill me?”

  Celeste frowned, trying to remember those nightmarish images. She considered lying, but Jarred’s sensors were better than a polygraph. “No. I saw her hands, I saw the energy bolts, I felt . . .”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, for what must have been the hundredth time. “I never saw her face.” Frowning, Celeste nibbled on the tip of a nail. “But we both know Ayla is the logical suspect. I have no idea how she’d manage to throw energy bolts, but it has to be her. She was a spy for the Rekan. She probably still is—and they want you dead for what you did to General K’charit.” She snorted. “They seem to take a dim view of people spacing their commanders.”

  At those words, hell blazed up in Jarred’s eyes. She knew he was remembering Garr’s bloody corpse. “I take an even dimmer view of people killing my friends.”