The Dark Places

by D. Martin

  Was there urgent need in his kiss? In mine? With the numbing cold enveloping me, I couldn’t tell.

  He moved back, searching my eyes. “Are you afraid of me, Kailiri?” he whispered.

  I wasn’t certain if I nodded or shook my head because the tremors had intensified and rocked my body.

  He gently grasped my chin, effectively capturing my fear-distracted attention. “You should be,” he said softly. “You have been imprinted upon my awareness. I cannot let you go now. If only I had more time to gently woo you… but I don’t. And now I can only trust that your feelings are true enough to bind you to me.”

  I tore away from his touch and stumbled back. “What are you saying?” My voice quavered. I wanted to shout the words, but my heart felt like it had lodged within my throat and blocked my outcry. Why can’t I stop trembling?

  “Come with me,” Matt said in a soft, urgent tone and held out a hand. When I didn’t move, he came close and grasped my cold hands. “If your lips haven’t lied to me, Kailiri, you have nothing to fear,” he said quietly, “but if your heart is false, your life—and mine—shall be full of pain.”

  What is he talking about? I didn’t want to know. I wanted this to still be a normal evening on a restaurant balcony. He kissed me and everything changed. My soul screamed dire warnings while the world suddenly turned mysterious and menacing. And why is it so cold? I stared in bewilderment at Matt. He had a green haze shimmering in his eyes. I hadn’t imagined that occurrence the first time it had happened, I assured myself.

  “Who are—what are you?” I whispered through stiff lips.

  “Come, Kailiri.”

  I numbly followed, his firm hand about my waist. He led me at a casual stroll past the chatting diners, and soon we were down the spiral staircase and out the restaurant’s door. He caught the attention of taxi flitter driver, and we sped along uptown Marnu’s streets. Matt held me in the backseat, my body powerless to move away. Some of the tremors subsided, but a numb, cold void filled me.

  Our taxi flitter stopped in front of Marnu’s City Records building complex. No emotions flickered within me as Matt paid the driver. I followed him without resistance past two uninterested guards on duty and then down an echoing, deserted corridor. We walked through large glass doors into the all-hours Records complex. Escalators carried us down several stair flights into the complex’s deep, underground sections and delivered us before another department entrance. I forced my brain to concentrate on the large black official script plastered upon the wide glass doors before they slid apart.

  Department of Marriage Records, it proclaimed in Alliance Basic, and New Basic, as well as T-bar Syntaxico, a unified coded language for species that didn’t use Basic.

  My quaking returned. “Matt, why are we here?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it quavered.

  “You have been imprinted upon me, Kailiri,” he said, as if that explained it all.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The chills prickling my bones felt like a vicious viral infection from frigid Dearleth had me in its grip. I opened my mouth to protest and ask for more about that imprinting matter, but Matt spoke again.

  “I never expected to find you now, at this time in my life,” he whispered and drew me into his warmth. His persuasive mouth and tongue silenced me, melting my objections.

  You’re inside the Marriage Records Department! My benumbed brain reactivated and sent up a faint warning.

  I should have pulled away and demanded further explanations, but instead my hands clung tight to Matt when he lifted his lips from mine. To my further conflicted dismay, my body ignored my brain and pressed hard against him.

  “You are also being imprinted by me, doll,” he said softly. “This is the only cure for imprinted couples.”

  Imprinted? What did he mean? He’d made no mention about love or desire. Earlier, he’d only said that he liked me and enjoyed my company. Then I recalled my parents’ meddling with my fate and gulped. This was more, at least, than what had awaited me on Dearleth. At least I had chosen this man. Or it seemed my body had done the choosing, because my brain had gone muzzy and nonfunctional in his arms.

  Before I could sort out how it happened, we stood before a bored Marnu City deputy judge inside the large, mostly empty office. In a hoarse voice barely above a whisper, I pledged my obedience, loyalty, and person to Matt Lorins. He pledged the same to me, with strong assurance in his tone.

  At Alliance Standard Time 2315, on the Fifteenth Standard Day of the Eight Standard Month of the New Empire Alliance Year 0192 A.I.C.—After Intersystem Colonization—we both signed the city, province, and planetary records forms. Then we allowed a medi-scanner to nip bits of skin tissue and to sample tiny blood droplets from our index fingers for positive genetic identification.

  Why can’t I wake from this trance and stop cooperating so tamely?

  In less than fifteen minutes, Matt led me from the complex, and we were inside another taxi flitter headed for the Marnu Grande Hotel—if my dazed brain had understood his instructions to the driver—where he likely was lodging during his stopover. Silence lay heavy between us throughout the brief ride, but I was very aware of Matt’s warm grasp upon my cold hands and his encircling arm. Was he regretting his actions?

  It wasn’t until I stood beside my companion at the hotel’s registration desk, listening while he made occupancy changes and identified me as his bride, that the reality of the past hour’s events converged on me. I just married a man about whom I know almost nothing, except that he can drink strange, deadly brews and stand upright—and that his eyes are stranger than Bilk’s.

  What have I done? How had I done it? I’d cunningly evaded the snare my traditionalistic parents had set to bind me with on Dearleth, only to end up with this one on Harnaru.

  My knees weakened and my fingers clutched the gleaming white, gold-streaked marble counter. I frantically combed my memory, trying to recall if ours was a short-term marriage tract or something longer.

  I swallowed rising panic when we walked from the desk toward the lifts. Surely it is just a short-term tract, I reassured myself, taking in the well-dressed guests of Marnu’s largest and most lavish hotel. A delicate-boned, honey-haired lady traipsed past me on sequined slippers, enveloped in a heady, flowery perfume and expensive yards of fragile, pink Barshoni Satin interwoven with silver threads. Gleaming jewelry adorned her arms, neck, and hair. Chances were great that they were all precious stones and metals.

  I wryly contrasted that ethereally groomed vision with my own unexciting appearance, garbed in mundane, formfitting black coveralls and black city boots of sturdy, synthetic material, along with unadorned and unpampered hair. The only perfume that might exist upon my person after six hours in the Lilith’s smoky interior was the deodorant soap gel I’d showered with earlier in the day.

  I glanced sideways at Matt, noticing for the first time with quiet shock that his conservative dark gray tunic and pants suddenly looked very expensive against the elegant hotel’s backdrop. The grid-patterned grain in his mottled black and dark gray boots indicated they were fashioned from real animal hide. That ring on his left index finger, gleaming beneath the lobby’s crystal chandeliers with refined elegance, could well be platinum, or something rarer. I’d dismissed it earlier as mere silver. He looked like he belonged here. I didn’t.

  I turned and assessed the distance to the hotel’s entrance, thinking if I left now, I could be back on Marnu’s portside in under an hour—if I walked fast. Matt’s strong fingers clamped onto my arm before I sidled away. He pulled me beside him into a patiently waiting glass elevator. We were alone within the deeply carpeted and mirrored interior.

  After a quick look, I avoided the stark truth reflected by the mirrors. Neither a comb, nor my fingers had tamed my hectic dark ringlets in hours, and my dark, slant-angled eyes had faint, sleep-deprived smudges beneath them. I was small and thin, and my golden skin was sallow from avoiding Harnaru’s hot sunstar during the da
y hours as I napped to rest for late-afternoon-through-evening shifts at the Lilith.

  I couldn’t understand what possible attraction Matt Lorins could have found in my outward appearance. I imprinted myself upon him, he’d said…. How?

  When we were inside his room, I questioned my sanity and wondered if I had tossed back all the Crynishan Dawns and Zyran Kickers instead of Matt. Perhaps I was stuck inside a mad dream of my own devising. My despairing stare raked over the room and encountered a small bouquet of ivory and bright red blossoms on a nearby table, accompanied by a small card engraved with a simple Congratulations! in large silver script. Only then did my distracted senses detect their lingering, sweet fragrance drifting on the air. A small, dark green wine bottle stood perspiring in an ice-filled silver bucket, with two sparkling crystal goblets close by.

  No. This isn’t a dream. I doubted my fantasies would have provided that wine and bouquet as minor, elaborate details. This is real. Evidently this fancy hotel worked small miracles behind the scenes at superfast speeds. I’m certain they’d only learned of our marriage after Matt’s visit at the front desk.

  Ignoring the tastefully decorated room’s other luxuries, my stare fastened on the door. Very well, then. This isn’t a dream. I’ve got to get away from here—and him. My heart knocked around in my chest. Why did I feel like a bird caged in with something bigger, stronger, faster?

  Matt secured additional manual locks on the door and studied me with a slow smile. “We have only a few hours here, doll, before we have to get you to your place to pack up before we leave Harnaru.”

  I started to say something—probably something witless or combative—but Matt pulled me into his arms. His lips sought mine while his hand roved with possessive assurance over my body. I couldn’t form a single lucid thought. Frost crept along my skin, and the shivering returned. Matt pressed me closer to his body, and I grew very conscious of his arousal. I no longer thought about escape. If this was a dream, I willed it to continue.

  His caresses stroked along my lower back, continuing to soothe away my inhibitions. My shivering subsided, but the deep chill didn’t go away. Despite that, my arms encircled Matt’s hard waist, and I burrowed my body into his solid frame, determined to pursue my attraction to this puzzling but compelling man.

  Why did he marry me?

  The thought haunted me as my mouth opened beneath his insistent pressure. Our tongues touched in silken sensuousness that pulled at my core and left me breathless. His tongue slipped across mine and overrode my doubts about the immediate future. I wanted him to claim more of me. Our heated kisses created melting dampness between my legs. But the nagging chill chasing through me and along my skin persisted, though his arms crushed me close to his warmth.

  Matt scooped me up in his arms and carried me to the wide, waiting bed, with its dark maroon satin coverlet. I submitted to the sublime experience of an attractive man undressing me. He patiently peeled away my boots, sockettes, and coveralls with minimum assistance from me, leaving me clad only in a dark blue silken camisole and very scanty matching briefs.

  I’d absolutely no idea that I would be getting married that night when my frantic hands snatched this particular set of silky undergarments—fortuitously situated atop the clean linen pile—in my mad scramble to dress for work. At least these were sexier than my normal staid white cottons. Finally—you got something right, Kailiri! My lips curved in self-congratulatory smile, and I wondered if Matt appreciated them.

  He removed only his tunic. I glimpsed an intriguing swirling pattern of dark hair above his navel and pant’s waistband before he laid his nicely muscled, tanned torso beside me with his head sharing my big fluffy pillow. “Something has made you smile again. It’s the first I’ve seen since we left the restaurant,” Matt said as he smoothed back a curl from my cheek. “Does this mean you’ve abandoned plans to escape me?”

  “What do you mean?” My heart and smile froze. How does he know?

  “You’re now a part of me through our imprinting.”

  Those quiet words spread more ice throughout my bones. He leaned over and claimed my lips. I wanted to draw away, but I couldn’t. When he pulled back long, breathless moments later, I forced myself to speak quickly before my treacherous body betrayed me again and my brain stopped working.

  “You keep saying that—I don’t understand what you mean when you say we’re imprinted on each other, Matt. Please tell me—what are you talking about?”

  “It’s a rare occurrence, doll. People are always rhapsodizing about waiting their entire lives to experience the one overwhelming heart affinity between two people. People on my world believe that whenever they find each other across life’s adversity and the webs of time and space, their souls enmesh and their thoughts bind each other. Imprinting is what we called it where I come from. My mother’s people said it goes beyond reason and emotion. It’s a reclaiming of a missing part of one’s soul.”

  Matt gave me a gentle, wry smile, the mesmerizing sparks in his eyes’ center glowed. “And I thought I was only rescuing a fair maiden from entrapment today upon Harnaru. I never suspected Fate would contrive to bring me the missing part in my soul now, of all times.” His brows descended in a dark frown. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve claimed and married you, Kailiri Summers Lorins. And I’m holding on to you as long as I possibly can.” He said this last part in a determined, hard tone. His hand curved around my hip and forced my stomach in flush contact upon his.

  Conflicting alarm mingling with a curious melting in my heart confused my emotions. His words sounded as if our marriage had been an unexpected interference in his life too. Something told me he hadn’t revealed everything about my imprinting. Would the full truth frighten me witless, if I knew? How should I feel? Flattered? Afraid? Intrigued? Certainly a sizzling spark within had flickered to life and responded to him at the Lilith, and his kisses had mesmerized me into marrying him. But I didn’t know if he was the one I’d waited all my life to meet. Despite his descriptions about imprinting, my overwhelming physical attraction to him, which left me brainless sometimes, didn’t feel like a forever phenomena.

  Then there was that soul-enmeshing, thought-binding matter….

  “How can you tell for certain if this is your imprinting event or just basic attraction and desire between two people?”

  “I felt the binding when I first kissed you, Kailiri. And so did you. You can’t deny it. There’s a deep chill running through you from it—right? Are you still cold?”

  “Yes….”

  “It will pass soon.” His lips captured mine, and I was left no wiser about my mysterious condition.

  Further questions slipped from my thoughts as my body arched toward his. My hands slid across his wide, sleek shoulders and along his neck. Time slowed down into crystallized moments wherein he trailed seductive kisses along my face and neck. His hand slipped beneath my camisole and caressed my breasts, then stroked along my stomach. One of my hands strayed down to the cloth-encased hard thigh lying over my legs, pinning me down.

  Matt’s warm groin pressed with growing insistence into my lower anatomy. My hand roamed up along his pants’ smooth fabric, daring and curious, until it wedged through a tiny space between us and gently cupped his arousal.

  He groaned softly and pulled away a little to allow me freedom to explore. I forgot to breathe for several moments as my hand stroked along his generous proportions. And he’s mine—for a while at least. When I sought to undo the seal on his bulging fly, he captured my hand and his body covered me again.

  “You’re determined to make me lose control, doll,” he murmured before his soft lips closed over mine and tore down my self control.

  The chill running through me decreased only a bit beneath the heat of his solid muscles. When our lips parted again, I rubbed my face along the cozy niche where his collarbone met a wide shoulder, and closed my eyes as I savored his intriguing male scent spiked with earthy, spicy undertones. I brushed my lips lingeringly ov
er his smooth skin and then kissed it. Can he feel how moist I am through my skimpy briefs with his groin pressed dead center on my sensitive parts? I wanted him…. A sensuous rhythm impelled my hips to rock beneath him.

  “Do I need to take precautions against impregnating you, before we get even closer, doll?” Matt murmured in my ear. That made my closed eyes open fast. He gently kissed my earlobe, and then he leaned back, awaiting my response.

  “No. I have Fertipressor implants.” I lifted my right arm from his shoulder to reveal a tiny blue pinhead-sized plastic nodule on my paler underskin. Everything kept reminding me how little we knew about each other, but I appreciated him caring enough to ask. Uncomfortable warmth swept up my neck and suffused my face. Despite that and also the hard, warm body over mine, an unrelenting chill continued prickling along my skin.

  “Then let’s get more comfortable,” he said in an edge-roughened voice.

  He released me with a kiss and swiftly divested himself of his boots, trousers, and then black briefs, which released his well-endowed manhood from bondage. I sat up, slipped off my undergarments, and tossed them aside on a not-too-distant leather chair where he’d earlier draped my coveralls.

  “The universe has sent me a tempting, desirable goddess,” Matt said in a husky voice. He smoothed a hand over my erect nipples, down my stomach, and then he gently stroked my damp core. My body writhed from the pleasurable sensations, and I couldn’t stifle my soft moans.

  Matt kissed my throat, breasts, and then my stomach before he kneeled over me. He eased his length in, stretching me slowly, and I rolled my hips with an urgent need for him to fill me. My fingers dug into his back, and I couldn’t breathe without panting and releasing tiny moans. It wasn’t until after he’d fully sheathed himself inside that the ice creeping along my bones melted at last.

  With each of his slow, deep thrusts, he built an entangling web around my thoughts and feelings. My skittish emotions regarding Matt Lorins soon solidified into something a bit more substantial beyond unbridled desire. A deep, dark yearning for him lodged in my soul.