She dropped her head, self-consciously fingering the stone that glinted there at the base of her throat. The strake's presence had electrified him from the moment he'd first seen it on her this morning. Not that she'd have laid the pendant about carelessly, but still, the look of its dark beauty against her skin had caused him to tremble with an unfamiliar sensation—the thrill of having claimed a mate. She has never agreed to such a plan, Jared. Move slowly, a voice warned. But the man inside refused to back down, and the thought of proceeding cautiously seemed an unbearable task. Perhaps he could at least steal a kiss this morning? He took an intrepid step closer.
The wind kicked up around them, sweeping a twined curl of auburn hair across her face; he reached, carefully tucking it behind her ear. In an instant, he resolved that he would kiss her, and the color in her cheeks deepened as he made his move. Well aware that those inside the cabin might see him do so, he turned her face upward toward his and closed the small distance still separating them.
At that precise moment, Scott burst out onto the deck, followed by one of his troops. "Commander! We—" The soldier with him gasped, and Scott glanced from Kelsey back to Jared and then at Kelsey again.
Apparently understanding who the woman in his arms had to be, Jared's best friend actually had the gall to scowl at him. Bitterly. Then he coughed. All the while, Jared couldn't seem to activate his brain to simply release Kelsey from his grasp.
It was the other soldier who spoke at last, murmuring, "So sorry, sir," with a bow.
Jared returned the gesture and frowned blisteringly at Scott, who still stood gaping. Scott was keenly curious about humans—but probably more quizzical about this particular one. "In a moment?" Jared prompted finally, when Scott still did not turn away.
"Commander," he whispered, and turned on his heel without another word.
Jared watched them go, wondering if he'd made a mistake in not introducing Kelsey to Scott at that moment. But he wanted to do so later, when his lieutenant could spend time with her. When he might better understand his commander's attraction to the alien woman.
After both men had left them, he turned back to Kelsey. "I've asked them not to do that," he told her.
"Do what?" she asked, clearly shaken by the intrusion as well.
"Bow and treat me that way," he said, rubbing his jaw. "But I think they need it, even if I don't."
"Everyone needs to remember the reasons for what they do."
This concept resonated deeply, and he nodded. Perhaps, he thought, Kelsey might also understand the reasons behind the bond he had forced on her. She might even accept it—and forgive him for it, even as he begged her forgiveness for having gazed so deeply into her soul during that quiet flash of a moment. He wanted to believe that.
Then he reached for her hand and closed it in his larger, darker one. "Kelsey, there is much you do not know," he began, "about the war I fight. You will learn more in time, but. . . ." She squeezed his hand, urging him onward, so he continued. "I need for you to meet with my cousin, Thea Haven. You saw her last night."
"As if I could forget," she said.
He had no doubt that Kelsey had recognized Thea's possessive jealousy from the moment they'd entered the cabin. The last thing she probably wanted was to spend more time in her company. "I need you to trust my cousin," he urged. "She is a good woman and a good soldier."
"Even if she didn't like me very much?"
"She liked you fine," he disagreed. "She doesn't trust humans. But she's the one I need to pair with you because of her intuitive abilities."
Kelsey looked surprised. "Why would you want me with her?"
Jared dropped his head, his black eyebrows drawing together sharply. "Kelsey, I had to leave something in your care," he admitted, his voice thick. "That night, at the lake." Across their bond, he sensed how her mind raced—an object? A weapon? She had no idea.
"Not an object," he said, answering her unvoiced question. "Nothing like that. Information."
"Where? I don't know of—"
"Sweet human, please forgive me," he whispered.
Sweet human, please forgive me. Forgive him for what? Fear began to choke Kelsey's thoughts, because his apology seemed to portend something frightening. Gauging by the stricken expression in his dark eyes, she guessed she wasn't far off base. "What did you do to me?" she asked in a tight voice.
"The night of my crash," he began, but then halted, staring into her eyes. "Kelsey, that night something fantastic happened between us. We both know that."
Setting her jaw, she said only, "Go on, Jared. Tell me what you did to me."
"I left important information inside of you for safekeeping," he said. "Information that I feared would otherwise fall into enemy hands." With a cry of despair, he raked a hand over his hair. "I fear that you won't understand."
Her heart softened instantly. He wasn't acting odd because he'd done something horrible to her—he was afraid of somehow losing her. That she wouldn't understand a split-second decision he had made when he was horribly injured. "I did tell you that I wanted to help," she reminded him gently. "That night. Remember?"
"But it wasn't fair to you," he said, staring out across the valley. "I placed you in danger. Terrible danger."
"That's why you came for me," she said, suddenly understanding, and she couldn't fight back the wave of disappointment at realizing that he'd come for data—not for her.
He turned back to her. "Sweet Kelsey, I came for many reasons," he said in a husky voice. "Most especially for you." Had he known her thoughts? Read her mind? His words were deeply melancholy, their tone one of wistfulness—the kind used when talking about lost dreams.
"You're going to take the information and then send me away," she answered, realization dawning. "Back to Laramie. Aren't you?"
He set his features. "You do not belong here. No matter what I might want."
"I belong nowhere else," she argued. "I belong by your side." Unexpected tears stung her eyes; she thought of the past week—how it had felt to be away from him—and her heart clenched.
His black eyes narrowed. "I never denied that you belong in my life."
"Just that I couldn't be here with you," she said, and for some reason she thought of her father. Of his constant inaccessibility and the job in D.C. that always ranked ahead of her in importance.
Jared leaned close, hoping none of his soldiers would see him brushing a kiss against her forehead. "I send you away for your protection, Kelsey," he said. "I'm not safe."
"I don't want to choose safety."
"You will be missed back there," he argued, imagining that anyone who knew she had been at Mirror Lake after his crash would have a great many questions should she vanish—not to mention that she would be missed by her family. "Police will get involved, perhaps federal agents."
"We could cover my trail," she said. "There's only my father, and he lives far away. I can make this work."
"Kelsey, simply stay for now." He rubbed his jaw, studying her. "For today. Tomorrow even. But then you must go back."
"No freaking way," she snapped, clutching at his pendant where it rested at the base of her throat. "You are not just going to send me away like some child. I'm sorry, but you're not." She'd be damned if any man, alien leader or not, was going to make unilateral decisions for her. She'd had enough of strong men and their choices on her behalf: twenty-eight years as Patrick Wells's daughter had ensured that.
He shook his head. "You are far too intelligent to be disregarded in that way," he said. "I would not. But I must also make decisions based on my knowledge of this war."
"Please, whatever I need to know, tell me," she urged again. "I'm strong. I can handle whatever it is."
"Tonight," he said, with another glance toward the cabin's interior. "My people wait for me now. But tonight we will be together."
With those words he vanished inside the house, and eight or nine hours suddenly seemed an insufferable period of time to wait to see him again. Powerful
men, she mentally cursed. She had always promised herself she would steer clear of them. And then what had she done? Like some silly storybook dreamer, she'd gone and fallen in love with a king.
Chapter Seven
Night did come. Eventually. But not without behaving like a coy trickster, managing to stretch hours and minutes endlessly. At least it seemed that way to Jared, who spent the time deliberating with Scott about a new penetration plan that Anika had been devising, a way to get inside the Antousians' camp without detection. Despite having this to distract him—along with his advisers' concerns about his crashed aircraft and rumors that their enemies had infiltrated the highest ranks of the U.S. president's security—the workday had progressed at the pace of Antousian gorabung torture. And this was precisely why he had no business with a bondmate, he thought grumpily as he endured his final meeting of the day.
Even as Scott and Anika argued, he listened quietly, his mind returning to the discussion with Kelsey out on the deck. How he'd wished they could have been completely alone at that moment, so he could have cautiously—tenderly—explained the bond they'd formed with each other. But at least his confession about the mitres data had been a solid beginning: Soon Kelsey and Thea would sit down together and work to retrieve the information stored in Kelsey's mind.
He could have done Thea's job himself, at least in theory—after all, he was the one who'd left the data inside her. Beyond that, he'd gazed right into her very soul when he'd formed the bond in the first place. But his gut told him that a true intuitive—someone with the highly developed skills Thea possessed, not a low-level intuitive such as himself—would be the right choice in this instance. No matter how attached he was to Kelsey, he might well prove too clumsy, might even inadvertently hurt her somehow. No, it was worth the emotional risk of pairing Kelsey with Thea once his cousin returned from Base Ten. Perhaps after finishing out her mating cycle, Thea would be calmer and less threatened by Kelsey.
But that thought prompted another, less pleasant one: How would Kelsey feel when she learned that in forcing a bond with her, he'd invaded her innermost thoughts? That he'd seen Jamie Watson, who had crushed her heart at such a tender age by betraying her with another woman. He'd watched as her mother had died, two days shy of Kelsey's sixteenth birthday, leaving her alone at a time when a girl most needed a mother. He understood those emotions; he'd lost both his parents at age ten, and been left to decipher far too many family puzzles—to say nothing of palace intrigues and political conundrums—without their guidance. Even worse, he'd lost his beloved protector, Sabrina, a year later, when they'd been separated by conflict. She'd been as much a mother to him as his own birth mother had been, and he'd never stopped grieving that loss. He'd always prayed to find her again, but had finally given up when he'd been exiled to Earth.
Did he love Kelsey already? Perhaps. But if he did, he knew it had much to do with how intimately he'd gazed into her heart. So how could he admit to her that he knew her much more deeply than he'd so far admitted?
Wiping rain from his face, Jared entered the fire-lit main room of the guesthouse, an older stone structure dating back at least seventy-five years. As soon as he made his entrance, four of his soldiers stood and came to crisp military attention. Jared gave a quick wave of his hand and they immediately gave short bows, and then left him alone with Kelsey. Darkness had fallen, and she stood by the fire waiting for him, bathed in the glow of the flames. He wished she were bathed in nothing else, he thought, and his body tightened in reaction to the image.
"I promised you nightfall," he breathed into the shadows between them, every part of his body electrified by longing. "That we'd be together. I could hardly think of anything beyond that promise all day."
Slowly she turned to face him, her spiraling curls worn loose and long across her shoulders. He loved those curls; they weren't the soft, wavy kind. They had a life of their own, and every time he'd seen her with her hair down, his hands had burned with the need to touch them.
She laughed huskily, teasing him with her eyes. "I have no doubt that you're a man who keeps his promises, Jareshk."
With that one word, his mind filled with an unshakable image, just as it had the previous night: her pale hand caressing his royal mark. "Jareshk?" he repeated, his heartbeat quickening. It wasn't possible—she had no way of knowing that name. Or did she? "Why did you call me Jareshk?"
"I'm not sure," she said, her auburn eyebrows drawing together in a perplexed expression. "It just kind of . . . came out. I’ve heard it in my mind a few times now. Why is it so significant?"
He pressed a hand to his eyes, feeling unsteady. "You used my childhood name," he explained, swallowing hard. "A name you could not know. Surely one of my soldiers told you? Anika perhaps?"
"I just heard it in my mind."
"I have not allowed anyone to call me Jareshk since I came of age at sixteen," he told her, unable to express the loneliness that had dogged him since then. "I refused to answer to it years ago," he said. "My own parents called me by that name, as did my protector Sabrina. But years ago, without reason or explanation, I ceased allowing those who served me to address me by that name. And yet now? After so many years, you call me Jareshk and I burn inside." He shook his head. "I blaze from within, Kelsey. Do you understand? Because I do not understand my own reactions."
"Maybe you didn't like the name," she suggested gently. "Maybe it was just as simple as that."
"No, Kelsey," he said, feeling something roar to life within his soul, "my feelings for you are the furthest thing from simple." He cupped her face within his palms roughly, needing to see into her eyes. "This attraction," he breathed, "is too familiar."
"Like we've been together before," she agreed, feeling his grip on her tighten.
"Do we know each other, Kelsey? Is that it?" He searched her face with a look of utter desperation. "Did you know me ... somewhere before?"
Slowly she lifted her hands and closed them over his. "I think I've always known you, Jared," she said, expressing a thought that had been catching fire within her for days. She knew this man; everything within her recognized him. "And you me."
He nodded. "I have seen something in my mind." He dropped his hands and, turning his wrist over, rubbed its underside thoughtfully. "I must know what it means to you."
She nodded her encouragement, and very carefully he raised his other hand. A silvery beam of light spread through the air, falling on his open wrist until an undulating sphere of energy appeared between them, lighting the darkness. She gasped in wonder at the exotic beauty of it. "This is my royal emblem," he explained, his gaze never leaving her face. "I am marked for life by it."
Her whole body quivered, her hands trembled, and she had to touch the swirling mass of color and light. "I know this," she said, carefully lifting her fingertips toward his mark. "I know this, Jared! I've touched it before."
Her skin made contact with his power; the energy of it coursed into her body, and then memory exploded out of the darkness and into her being. It was a supernatural explosion on the most basic level, and Kelsey couldn't see anything except light and energy and motion—all of it rushing at her until the world turned black.
All these years, Jared thought, and we never knew. All these years, and they might never have remembered again, not if destiny hadn't had its way with them. Holding Kelsey's head in his lap, he wiped at his eyes, whispering her name over and over in an effort to wake her. Remembering what it had felt like the first time she'd caressed his mark, the way his entire body had quivered in reaction. It had been the most sensual, erotic thing he'd ever experienced in his young life. To be touched that way, the intimacy of it; few could possibly understand how erogenous his royal emblem truly was—that when she stroked it, she stroked him. More than that, her gesture had made him feel how she loved him.
And he'd loved her already then, too; it had been so easy to love her, from the very beginning.
No wonder their newly formed bond held such power over
him. Taking a mate was a rite of mystery for his people: How much more so now that he understood what Kelsey truly meant to him. He couldn't remember much, not yet, only refracted glimpses. Mirror Lake, some rocks . . . but enough to realize that bonding with her now had completed something crucial inside of him.
She stirred at last, blinking bleary eyes up at him as she came back to consciousness. "I'm confused."
"I know," he soothed, stroking her hair. Did she remember, as he did? Something had obviously made her faint, but still he chose his next words carefully. "It was too much," he said, "too fast."
"Did you remember too?" She wiped at her own eyes.
He bowed his head, unable to find words, then finally whispered, "Yes, love. I remembered a little. I remembered you; oh, gods, how I remembered you." The rain on the rooftop brought even more memories rushing to the fore. "It was raining—"
"—by the lake!" she finished for him, bolting upright. "Yes, yes! And you kissed me, there in the rain." She lifted fingertips to her mouth, brushing them over her lips in wonder. "You were my first kiss! You were the one."
His own memory was so vivid, he could feel her mouth against his, could almost see the way she'd looked, but not... quite. He reached for a lock of her hair and slowly rubbed it beneath his fingertips, hoping the texture would awaken more memories.
"I had never seen anyone so lovely in all my life," he said, feeling everything shift inside him. His mind, his memories—it all seemed to be coming into alignment. "I wanted to take you with me. I promised I'd come back for you."
"Just like I said, Jareshk," she said, resting her cheek against his shoulder. "You're a man who always keeps his promises."
"Unless I am prevented from it." He felt anger roil inside of him. How dare his people have done something like this—and who would have done it? He could recollect nothing but the dim awareness of what he'd lost, nothing more. "I am so sorry," he said.
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