by Susan Grant
“I’m deeply ashamed, Lara. You have suffered because of the Federation’s shortcomings. But with Rom’s son-by-marriage as the crown prince, I believe we can change what is wrong.”
She assumed her familiar, defiant stance. “The fact he’s not Vash Nadah makes me more inclined to believe it.”
Gann suppressed a smile. He supposed that was as close as he’d get to an “I think you may be right.” He also had the feeling he’d come as close as he was going to get for a kiss. But there were two-point-four days left to remedy that. He was more attracted to Lara than ever before.
He glanced over at a furry lump curled in her chair. “Look. Cat’s helped herself to our ship.”
Lara surprised him with a pleased, throaty laugh, clearly recognizing his reference to her earlier comment. “Your ship, Vash. My ship’s impounded. Thanks to my idiot associate, Eston.”
She sauntered to her seat and buckled in. “That’s the only reason I’m traipsing around the frontier, looking for a spoiled girl too half-witted to recognize how good she had it at home. Someone should tell her.”
Gann winced. Poor Tee’ah Dar. The soon-to-be-rescued princess had no idea what she was be in for once she met Lara, master tracker, face to face.
Chapter Fifteen
Outside the ship, a slow rosy Grüman dawn melted away the shadows. Inside the Sun Devil, the day was well underway. Tee’ah returned to Ian’s quarters with tock and coffee, though, at that point, having been up most of the night, she was certain she was well beyond the benefits of stimulating beverages.
“It is Tee,” she said at the door. The hatch slid open with a soft hiss, revealing his uncluttered, shipshape bedchamber. The few pieces of furniture were simple and masculine, and the fabrics covering the bed and floor cushions were dyed in desert tones of ocher, russet, and light brown. But just as she learned that Ian was not as he first appeared, so the room’s neutral hues were unexpectedly spiked with brilliant colors: a pillow of pure turquoise, a yellow bowl, an old-fashioned wax candle in bright red. In fact, she found the effect extremely pleasing.
She stepped around a lumpy piece of metal that looked like it belonged to the Harley. Next to it was a neatly folded polishing rag. A razor and the barest of toiletries were stuck to the magnetic shelf above Ian’s sink. Nothing in the chamber indicated that Ian would, upon Rom’s retirement to the Great Council of Elders, ascend to the most powerful ruling position in the galaxy.
But Ian looked every inch a leader—especially as he, Quin, and Muffin huddled around a holographic map of Grüma. She poured the hot drinks, looking up to find Ian’s eyes seeking hers. His smile made her heart do a little flip-flop.
He doesn’t know who you are. For the hundredth time since discovering who Ian was, she reassured herself of that fact.
His face taut with tension, he reiterated the day’s plans with his men. “With the very good chance that Klark will make another attempt at sabotage, I’m separating the two main elements I’ll need to fly off-planet—the Sun Devil and Tee. She’ll come with me. Muffin, you have the ship; and Quin, keep plugging away repairing the thruster. Gredda and Push will be stationed downtown, looking for any sign of Klark—or Randall, should he not be at his ship. Everyone remains in comm contact at all times, with check-ins every hour.”
Despite the grim silence, knowing looks broadcast the men’s approval of the plan.
Ian reached for the holographic map. “Display sector 3-A.” A tiny, forested ridge appeared in front of them, a replica of the green-blue hills above downtown Grüma. “This morning Tee and I will do surveillance from the ridge above the fortress where Randall landed his ship. This afternoon, if all checks out okay, I’ll head down there.
“Have you loaded the food and water onto the Harley?” Ian asked Tee’ah, closing the holo-map.
“Yes. Everything is ready,” she said, wondering if he’d given any thought to what happened when they’d last ridden together.
Muffin and Quin departed for their assigned duties, and Ian unlocked a safe, out of which he plucked a smallish brown box. Open, the box emitted the pungent sweetness of fragrant wood. Carefully he spilled the contents onto the desktop: unfamiliar coins and a thick roll of green-and-white old-fashioned paper credits—Earth money, she guessed—and a leather pouch.
He explained in a quiet voice, “I suppose if labels and titles define a person, then these would be me.”
She could hardly breathe as she watched him take a long beaded chain with a curious golden charm—a cross with a tiny man pinned to it—from the pouch and set it aside. “Rosary beads. I was raised Catholic,” he explained, translating the English words into Basic with some apparent difficulty. Next, he laid out two gold rings. One carved band had a blue gem and the Earth runes A.S.U. “My class ring. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in finance.” The study of money and trade, she gathered, although again she suspected that several words didn’t translate exactly.
He placed the second gold band in her hand. “This is what I will be wearing when I see Randall.” The ring was weighty and ornately forged with etched runes far more familiar to her than those on the other. Fealty, fidelity, family, it said. The triad comprised the ancient code of the Vash warrior, one that stressed the control and self-discipline, that underpinned her entire civilization.
But this wasn’t just any Vash Nadah signet ring. Age-old Siennan symbols indicated that it was of the house of B’kah, a ring only the galactic crown prince could wear.
Hearing Ian’s declaration of his identity was one thing; seeing the proof sitting in her palm was another. She met his gaze with her most stoic face—one that she’d learned in her years at her father’s court—and hoped that she could conceal her inner turmoil.
“Thank you for letting me see your personal things,” she said, handing the ring back to him. He slipped it on his finger.
As long as he doesn’t know who you are, you’re safe, she reminded herself as they walked into the corridor. In fact, none of her plans needed to change—from her goal to save money and pay for her own starship to any of her other hopes. Especially her most personal quest to lose her virginity. Wasn’t giving her innocence to the man of her choice the ultimate physical expression of her liberation? And could she imagine a man she would choose more readily than Ian Hamilton?
And yet, in doing so, she’d forever close the door to returning home. The thought exacerbated an ache that hadn’t yet disappeared for good. Vash Nadah men were subject to far fewer restrictions than their female counterparts. While Ian was unmarried, he might make love to her and suffer none of the far-reaching consequences she herself would endure. If she made love to him, she could never go back.
Ian waited for her to climb down the gangway to the exit hatch before he followed. His Earth jeans stretched deliciously tight across his toned, muscular buttocks. Fastening her coat all the way up to her neck, she bit back a sigh. Oddly, the image that filled her mind was not of Ian making love to her, but of her giving him the gift of pleasure…of watching his expression as she wrapped the waistband of his jeans around her knuckles and eased his pants lower. Desire would make her eager, and eagerness would make her tremble as her breath whispered over his bare, sensitive skin. At first only her fingertips would stroke his hardened flesh: then, as she’d been taught in countless readings, she’d take him into her mouth loving him with her lips, her teeth, her tongue, until…
“Are you all right?” Ian gave her a funny look.
Tee’ah’s skin felt oddly warm all over, and her pulse echoed in the most intimate places. “Yes, fine; a little sleep deprivation, is all.”
“You’ll have time to rest later.”
Would she? Her hot little fantasy was disconcerting to say the least, but it had also provided her with an intriguing inspiration.
On the outskirts of the planetary system that included Grüma, the Quillie left cruising speed. “Decelerating,” Lara confirmed.
“Ah. I don’t think there’s a
sweeter sounding word.”
From where she sat at the controls of the craft, she glanced over her shoulder. “Why? Because you know the unprotected and frightened Dar princess is awaiting your rescuing arms?”
“Something like that.”
One corner of her mouth quirked. “I knew it.”
He found himself mildly annoyed. “Why would you ridicule the idea of a man coming to the aid of a distressed female? I find the concept inherently romantic.”
“I think it’s the act of saving that you’re in love with. The princess…the ketta-cat—though it’s debatable as to whether you really ‘saved’ it…and then, of course, there’s me.” As if in agreement, the ketta-cat in her lap blinked sleepily over at him.
Gann didn’t know how to respond. He acknowledged that she was right in that he hoped to rescue her in some sense. But wasn’t that what he wanted for himself, as well? Rescue from his two-dimensional existence as an instrument of his king? He’d long-imagined himself in his older years finding a trusted companion with whom he could share his life…and perhaps come to love, but that had eluded him for most of his adult life. Of course, he’d managed to keep himself relatively well satisfied when it came to physical concerns—at least until now. Never had his plans to take a woman to bed been so delayed. Not that he’d ever wanted anyone else as much as he did Lara.
She turned away with a satisfied smirk. “I didn’t think you’d want to answer that one, Vash. Besides, I don’t need rescuing, so stop trying. What would you do with me, anyhow, once you’d saved me?”
I’d make love to you until we were both too exhausted for anything but sleep and too sated to care, he almost said. But her shadowed eyes and sad little mouth pricked his protective instincts instead. “I’d pamper you, as you deserve to be. I’d treat you like a princess, because you’d be one to me,” he said with simple frankness.
She’d turned, so he couldn’t see her face. But her hunched shoulders told him she heard every word.
“But I honestly wonder, Lara, if you’d ever view my efforts as anything other than sympathy.”
After what seemed like eternity, she answered him. “It depends how you define it. Feeling sorry for oneself is pity. When you feel sorry for another, then, yes, it’s sympathy. But if the sympathy is mutual, that would be commiseration, I think.”
“You…feel sorry for me?”
She looked at him as if he hadn’t an atom of self-awareness. “You’re as lonely as I am. More, maybe.”
He fell back in his chair. He was lonely, a lonesome and sometimes melancholy old warrior who missed the excitement of the old days. Only it was disconcerting hearing the diagnosis from Lara.
She shifted so that he could see her profile. “No, I wouldn’t call what we feel toward each other sympathy. Maybe…compassion, reciprocated.” Then she grimaced. “Gah! Did I just say that? It sounds like something you’d come up with.”
He laughed. “So it does.”
As always, silence fell between them. Only this time it was different. Something had eased, although he couldn’t define what it was. Instead of trying, he kept quiet and watched her fly as she resumed her preparations for entry into Grüma’s crowded space lanes.
The rumbling of the ship’s massive star-drive shook the floor beneath his boots. They dropped out of light speed, the stars outside shrinking from elongated streamers to pinpricks of light. One of those lights was Grüma.
Tee’s arms tightened around Ian’s waist as he maneuvered the Harley away from the landing pad, bouncing along the dirt path until they reached Grüma’s version of a highway. No speed limits here, he thought. Accelerating, he lowered his body into the wind and gave in to the addictive freedom of riding, a rush of sensation made more powerful by the necessity to see Randall before the senator left for Earth.
Downtown Grüma and its surrounding forest faded to a hazy smear in his rear-view mirrors. The road narrowed and climbed higher into pristine tree-and-boulder-strewn hills. Watch your back. He put his senses on full alert, scanning the landscape ahead and behind. So charged were his muscles that, when one of Tee’s hands crept from his waist down to his thigh, he almost swerved the Harley onto the shoulder.
Her thumb began moving back and forth along the crease where his leg met his hip. He slapped his gloved hand over hers and squashed the subtle movement of her fingers. Then he pointedly placed her hand back on his waist and silently thanked her for keeping it there.
Road signs in block-like Basic runes pointed toward the area of the ancient ruins where Randall was based. The road grew steeper and narrower as they progressed. When they finally reached the summit of the ridge overlooking the fortress, he veered off the pavement and killed the engine.
A vast unspoiled forest spread out before them, green-blue under a lavender sky. To the east, the remains of an ancient wall snaked along the tops of distant hills, reminding him of when he’d visited the Great Wall of China in the outskirts of Beijing. Far below was a group of ancient sprawling buildings, most of them crumbling stone.
He raised his binoculars and studied the ruins. On a landing pad sat a workhorse of a starship, no sleek lines or graceful delta shape, only a blunt fuselage and short, blocky wings meant for long-term deep-space travel. Most importantly, the ship wasn’t issuing the telltale signs of being readied for launch. “Where are you, Randall?”
Tee lowered her own binoculars. “It doesn’t look like anyone is home.”
“They could be inside.”
“Shall we check?” she asked somewhat uneasily.
“Not yet. It’s early. He hasn’t started his day. When he does, I want to see where he goes and what he does.”
“So we wait then? We might as well enjoy the scenery.” She walked to the edge of the ridge, and he watched the gentle sway of her backside and the way her pants clung to her long legs. His body reacted instantly. “It’s incredible, is it not?” she called over her shoulder.
“Very.” Discipline. He opened one of the saddlebags and moved to hand her a membrane filled with water. She tipped her head back and drank with lusty, unselfconscious enjoyment.
He chuckled. “You appreciate the simple pleasures, do you?”
She contemplated him as she dabbed the back of her hand to her mouth. “And the not-so-simple ones too, Ian.” Her eyes downright scorched him.
He pretended he hadn’t heard the implicit invitation. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll put some oil in the hog. You can rest.”
She followed him back to the Harley. “We’ve worked nonstop for weeks now. I say we’ve both earned a little rest,” she said. A reasonable argument, he thought…until her fingers closed on either side of his jaw.
She turned his head, forcefully, then pressed her soft lips to his. “Is this not relaxing?” she murmured against his mouth.
It was anything but. “Tee,” he mumbled.
“Shush, Earth dweller.” Her fingertips slid into his damp hair. Closing his eyes, he savored her sweet touch. Fighting his physical reaction to her had been a struggle since the beginning. Now he was battling against an intellectual and emotional response, too. Plain old lust he could handle, because he refused to be the man his father was. But this—it was crazy. In an amazingly short time, she’d become a part of his life that he didn’t want to give up, and that turned their flirtation into a personal risk he really couldn’t afford.
His spread hands hovered by her head, reflecting his evaporating restraint as she pressed her lips to his mouth, his chin, his forehead. But when she opened her mouth over his and slipped her tongue inside, her enthusiasm couldn’t quite cover her awkwardness.
The combination boggled his senses. He’d thought she was experienced.
“Casual, uncomplicated liaisons are what I prefer.”
So what if she wasn’t as knowledgeable as she claimed? he thought.
All the more reason to stop what they were doing.
She began suckling his tongue, and his thoughts went blank.
The sound he made in his throat was one of desperation. His hands landed on her head, and he dragged her to him, guiding her into a long, lush, open-mouthed kiss. His resistance was fading.
Don’t cross the line.
Groaning, he thrust her to arm’s-length, holding her there. “Tee, we can’t.”
A determined smile played across her lips. “You have a terrible habit of ending kisses just when they are getting good,” she complained, then splayed one hand on his chest and marched him backward. “I must train you not to do that.”
He warned, “I’m not free to be with you.”
“I know.” The sorrow that clouded her eyes vanished in an instant. “I’m not free to be with you either. This is all I want.” His back bumped flat against a tree trunk. “Pleasure,” she breathed, coming up on her toes. “Accept this gift I offer you. It will do us both a world of good.”
Not only did she look like a Vash, she thought like a Vash. “Tee—”
She rolled her eyes. “Must you always argue?” Then she cut off his answer by covering his mouth with hers and yanked his T-shirt out of his jeans.
He framed her sweet, flushed face in his hands. “Pixie. What are you doing?”
She snatched his hands and pointedly placed them by his hips. “Relax. You will enjoy this.”
His laugh was cut short as she unzipped his jeans.
He couldn’t believe it. The woman who fired his fantasies night after night had thrown him against a tree and was demanding he let her have her way with him? Only the cool air washing over his bare thighs warned him it wasn’t a dream. But when she gathered the waistband of his boxers in her hands and lowered them, he didn’t stop her. He’d always followed the rules. Until Tee, sweet, wild Tee.
Her hot hand cupped him intimately, and the back of his head slammed into the tree. Bark pattered onto his face. “Dear heaven, you’re beautiful,” he heard her say.
He was so hard, so sensitive, that he nearly exploded with those first, exploratory touches. She must have realized, because she circled her fingers around him, squeezing but not stroking. Just as he gained control, she took him fully into her mouth.