Sirens wailing. Explosions. People running, shouting, trying to stem the damage. Fear, and helplessness.
A face, male and light-haired. A smile that rent the heart. "Don't blame yourself, Cyn. It wasn't your doing." Coughing, and bright blood. "Right now we have to save the ship."
Sirens and voices fading. Hands touching, the light dying in his green eyes. But not before the whole world changed.
Ronan snapped the contact. Cynara lunged from the bench, striking blindly into the shrubbery. Just as blind, Ronan pursued her and caught her wrists in his hands.
Vision cleared. Cynara's face was contorted like the mask of a primitive shaauri demon, but there was no evil in it. Only unbearable sorrow and loss.
Ronan pulled her close and folded his arms around her. She stiffened and then went boneless, neither fighting his hold nor responding to it. He did what felt right and natural, stroking her back with the flat of his palm until her trembling stilled. His own heartbeat slowed to match. The top of her head fit just under his chin, and her hair smelled of the white flowers.
He was filled with her—her scent, the blended strength and softness of her body, the complexity of mind and emotion that was Cynara D'Accorso. With a little effort, he could penetrate the outer layers of her thoughts and take what he needed without the cover of seduction.
"You grieve for your cousin," he said. "But his last words to you absolved you of blame. Why do you not believe it?"
"I became captain of the Pegasus… only because of him. Because of what he gave me."
All at once the tangle of images and memories made sense. Tyr D'Accorso, dying as the result of a shaauri attack, held in his cousin's arms. Two telepaths, one confident and one untried and suppressed, touching minds at the moment of passing. Knowledge bursting into a virgin mind, overwhelming it with everything a man's life could hold.
Memory ended. Cynara stepped away and held up her hand with its glittering golden rings.
'These were Tyr's betrothal gift," she whispered. "I couldn't take them off… after he died. I had to remember. Because of him, I inherited the captaincy. Oh, there were protests, and outrage. But there were none as qualified, not even among Jesper's best students." She laughed in self-mockery. "I had finally made progress for Dharman women everywhere."
Any hope Ronan had of piercing Cynara's mental shield was gone. She had thrown up all her defenses with a vengeance, and he could no longer interpret the subtle meaning behind her words. Everything associated with the Pegasus was buried and beyond his reach.
He didn't care. He saw her pain, and that was enough. "You doubt your worthiness," he said. "I do not."
"You don't know me, Ronan."
"Our minds have touched. How can I not?"
"Maybe you see what you wish to see. You've been lonely a very long time." She took another step away. "It's getting late. You need sleep, and so do I. First thing in the morning, Jesper and I will prepare you to meet the Council."
Ronan let her go. His opportunity had passed, lost to irresolution and sympathy. He had pitied her—she who rejected pity as he did, and held herself aloof from those who might see emotion as weakness.
Now he understood why she feared any display of vulnerability. It was not merely that she was First with a place to hold against rivals, as he would expect among shaauri, or that she was a woman among humans who regarded females as unfit for high rank.
For her it was personal. She could not forget that the status she possessed, the life she desired above all others, had been bestowed as a gift and not earned in the human way or even properly selected in Walkabout.
There was more to her fears than even those considerations, grave though they were in her mind. And she held those mysteries to herself as fiercely as she guarded the secrets of her unusual ship.
When he learned one, he would learn the other. The plan he had devised on the Pegasus must continue, no matter the penalty to his own peace of mind. That price he paid gladly so long as Cynara did not suffer.
Suffer? If you succeed, you will take from her the very thing she values above all.
He shut such enfeebling thoughts from his mind and followed Cynara into the house. He met Jesper as the old man turned a corner into the entrance hall.
"Well, my friend," he said with generous good humor. "You missed dinner tonight. Quite disappointing. I trust that you enjoyed your tour of our city?"
"You see this in my mind?" Ronan asked bluntly.
He waved his hands. "No, no. I just put myself in your place. If I were a young man with so much yet to discover, I wouldn't waste time puttering around an old man's house. You must have been discreet, or I'd have heard of it by now." He glanced toward the guest wing. "You've been to the D'Accorso palace."
"Yes."
"Fortunate that you didn't run into Cynara's parents. They can be difficult." He paused. "Did she tell you how she became captain of the Pegasus?"
"Yes."
'Then you have been granted a rare privilege. I hope you value the gift of her trust." Without waiting for Ronan's answer, he changed the subject. "Cynara wishes to discuss your meeting with the Trade Council in the morning. If you're hungry, I've had my cook set aside a portion in the kitchen." He clapped Ronan's shoulder. "Go to bed, my young friend. I'll make sure you're up in time for breakfast."
Jesper strode down the hall to the second wing of the house, which Ronan had determined held the elder's quarters and the room given to Cynara. Ronan returned to his own chamber, his feet heavy on the polished wood floor.
Va Jesper meant nothing but good for him, like Cynara. These were folk who wished to help and accepted him for what he was, free of suspicion and prejudice.
I must betray you in your own House, Aho'Va. Forgive me.
For a time, while Ronan chanted to nourish his resolve, the house echoed with the light steps of Jesper's an'laik'i and the distant clatter of pottery in the kitchen. When all was still, Ronan knew he could wait no longer.
He entered the dark and deserted corridor. A few quick steps to the grand entry hall, and another turn. The family wing was lit by a single glowball held in an outstretched hand. Gentle light bathed Cynara's features and softened every shadow.
She moved almost as quietly as he, wrapped in a thick robe belted at the waist. Ronan could smell damp flesh beneath. She paused when she saw him, lifting the light.
"Ronan?"
He did not answer. Her voice gave his name a thousand meanings, and every one of them shouted wanting. Her mind burned with it, as did his.
She took a step back, globe held high. He followed. At the end of the hall stood an open door. Cynara slipped inside.
There is no other way.
Ronan entered the room, and Cynara closed the door behind him. The dimly lit chamber was twice the size of Ronan's and, like her cabin on the Pegasus, arrayed with many curious objects.
"The spoils of my travels," Cynara said. She picked up a small animal carved of black rock and turned it over in her hands. "I try to pick up some memento of every world we visit." She set down the sculpture and sat on the edge of a wide bed laid with a coverlet woven in tones of wood and earth. 'This quilt is from Ys, one of the Concordat worlds. The hangings were created by the artisans of Serengeti. I have yet to collect a souvenir from a shaauri world."
Ronan crouched at the foot of the bed. "I have little to offer you."
"No?" She stroked the coverlet over and over with one hand, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. "Why are you here, Ronan?"
One question concealed many unspoken, but he chose a single answer. "I come for instruction."
"In what?"
"In how to be human."
Her eyes caught the light as she looked at him. "Are you worried about meeting the Council?"
"No. Only one thing concerns me."
She continued to gaze at him, waiting. The scent of her flesh overwhelmed all others in the room. Her thoughts were barely within her control.
He drew closer to the
bed, muscles flowing from one position into the next as if he hardly moved at all. "I am concerned only with your judgment, Cynara. I wish to be a worthy human in your eyes."
"You're already that, Ronan. You have nothing to prove to me."
She spoke falsely—not as one courting or being courted, but as a companion… a "friend" who bore him some affection and nothing more.
"Do you consider me your equal?" he asked.
"You can't seem to decide if you're a servant or a commander. On the ship—"
"You are captain. Aho'Va."
"You called yourself unworthy then."
"But here it is not the same."
"Because I'm just a woman?"
Anger. Challenge. She tried to dismiss them, but they lay there always, at the heart of her being. " 'Just' is a human term," he said. "There is no 'just' in you, Cynara."
She laughed nervously. "It seems you've learned the human knack of giving compliments. Who taught you? Kord?"
"There is another human word, 'seduction.' Can you explain?"
"It's something I'm sure you could learn very quickly if you tried." She tugged at the ends of her sash. "I'm certainly not the one to ask."
"You have had few… lovers."
"Didn't I answer these questions before?"
"You were to be married, and that ended. Your own people turned against you. Kord is not your mate. There have been others?"
She didn't answer, but his mind grasped vague, troubling images of a much younger Cynara, hardly out of childhood, engaging in another small act of rebellion with a young Dharman male of her age. Shame accompanied the memory, but it was not the only one of its kind. She had taken sexual pleasure several times before she left her homeworld.
He could find no reference to sexual contact after she became captain of the Pegasus.
"You have avoided mating," he said, as if he merely guessed.
"A captain doesn't disrupt the morale of her crew with personal entanglements." She got up from the bed and walked across the room. "Discussion of my love life isn't likely to help you become more human. Maybe you'd better go back to sleep."
He followed her and stopped within a hand's touch of her back. "Why did you come to find me, Cynara?"
He heard her internal debate, weighing more deception against the truth she feared. "Sometimes I'm just not very good with words."
"Shaauri," he said, "do not use many words when they wish to mate. The body speaks instead."
Her back stiffened. "And what do you think I'm saying now?"
"That you are afraid without need." He cupped her shoulders in his hands. A violent tremor shook her body. "I could not harm you, Cynara. I demand nothing. I know you are alone among your own kind. Such loneliness may find ease, if only for an hour."
"As you did with those Kinswomen?"
"It was for the body, which gives strength to the mind, as the mind strengthens the body."
"Shaauri philosophy?"
He turned her about until his breath mingled with hers. "Sihvaaro taught me that all beings crave union with something—the universe, perfect knowledge, another of their own kind. I am not far along the Eightfold Way, Cynara. Since I came to the Pegasus, I have craved only you."
"And you asked me what seduction meant." She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. "Just when I think I'm starting to understand you—"
He caught her hand and pressed it to his mouth. He opened his mind just enough so that she could see what was in his outermost heart: admiration, respect, and desire so powerful that it made him shake like a be'laik'in at his first mating.
This was his first. His first with a woman who wanted him, whose own need met his without hesitation or disdain.
"It… it makes no sense," Cynara whispered, fitting his hand to her cheek. "When you came aboard the Pegasus—even then you weren't a stranger. It's as if I'd known you all my life."
"It is Walkabout," he said. "There is no wrong, no shame. Only discovery."
"I don't know which of us has more to learn. I guess we're about to find out."
And she kissed him. There was no likeness to the previous times. All such comparisons fled his mind. He banked his hunger and gave himself up to this purely human pleasure: lips touching, mouths opening, tongues twining in a dance humans must have known for millennia before they reached the stars.
If he had been shaauri, he would have felt disgust. If he had been shaauri, he would forgo all sexual pleasure rather than embrace a furless, voiceless human.
You are not shaauri. You never will be, no matter what you do to earn the right…
He growled and nipped her shoulder. She gasped.
"Is that what you call… a love bite?"
He peeled back her robe and licked the sensitized skin beneath. "Does it please you?"
"I don't know yet."
"Remove your covering."
She laughed. "That sounds like a command."
"Do humans not prefer nakedness in mating?"
She clutched the edges of her robe. "What do you prefer?"
In answer he stepped back and stripped off the loose shirt and trousers the house servants had left him for sleeping clothes. He folded the clothing neatly and set it on a nearby chair.
"Is it satisfactory?" he asked, suddenly uncertain. "Does this body please you?"
She closed her eyes. "Mother Sea," she whispered. "It does."
* * *
Chapter 13
« ^ »
Cynara had seen Ronan naked aboard the ship, when he was under Dr. Zheng's care in the infirmary. Then he had been a vulnerable patient. There was nothing vulnerable about him now.
His readiness was obvious, and he was certainly not ashamed of it. Why should he be? He'd always been clear about what he wanted, even when he seemed to contradict himself. During his adult life, sex had been virtually his only link to humanity.
For Cynara, sex had become a pleasure unsought and nearly unthinkable. Until now, she had hardly missed it. To crave such contact would mean testing the very nature of her sexuality, discovering once and for all if Tyr had banished all desire or altered it beyond recognition.
But what she felt for Ronan had nothing to do with Tyr. It wasn't just sex. Oh, that was part of it… a very large part in more than one sense. She was almost prepared to jump on top of him before he moved a muscle.
She'd known this was coming since the moment Ronan walked onto her bridge, though she'd denied it again and again. Tonight she had gone to Ronan, and he'd met her halfway. There could be no violence in this joining, no matter how urgently they wanted each other. It might be their only chance.
"You are very handsome by human standards," she said, finding her voice. "Did none of those women ever tell you?"
He shook his head. "It would not have mattered."
Because of the scars? Had they looked upon those numerous ridges and stripes on his body and deemed him disgusting?
For the first time Cynara felt no pity for his suffering. He felt none for himself. He was strong, and beautiful.
As she was not.
"I would see you," he said, very quietly. "Will you remove your covering now?"
How very formal and polite. She wanted to laugh, but there was nothing amusing about the knot in her stomach.
Utterly irrational. She knew that when she took off the robe, the body underneath would be exactly as it was before Tyr's dying gift. The various parts would be in all the right places. Nothing would have appeared that shouldn't be there.
She knew. Yet, in her mind, the body she wore was wrong. When she dared to look into a mirror, she expected to see her curves vanished, breasts diminished, waist thickened like that of some bizarre androgynous mutation.
"Wait," she said. "Let me turn out the lights."
Ronan grasped the end of her sash. A gentle tug opened the robe from neck to ankle. He rested his hands on her shoulders and pushed the garment down her arms.
Cynara closed her eyes. He was breathin
g very deeply, speaking not a word. Curse him.
His palm stroked her cheek and slid down to her neck. "Cynara," he whispered. "You are beautiful."
"You may not be the most accurate judge of human beauty."
"You are strong," he said. He began to run his hands over her, illustrating with intimate touches as he spoke. "Your face is symmetrical in its lines, and firm in the jaw. Your teeth are white and even. Your nose is not too small. Your eyes are large and bright." He kissed her closed eyelids. "Your neck is long and graceful, like that of a la'salo. Your hair—"
He combed his fingers through it, fanning the strands about her shoulders. "Your hair is soft and smells of your night flowers."
"Red," she said. "Like shaauri—"
"Like Cynara." His hands sifted her hair and let it fall again. "I am glad that your mouth is not like a shaauri female's."
The kiss was so gentle that she barely felt it. When she reached to take him into her arms, he stopped her with that same firm gentleness.
"I have not finished," he said. He began to massage her tight shoulders with consummate skill. "Your arms are well shaped. Your hands are graceful." He lifted one of her hands and flattened it to his, palm to palm. "So small against mine."
"They're not—" She caught her breath as he drew one of her fingers into his mouth.
"Graceful fingers," he said when he had sampled each one. He stroked his hands up her arms. "Your breasts…"
He cradled her beneath, and her breasts felt tight and aching and heavy.
"These, too, are beautiful." His voice grew husky as he ran his thumbs across her nipples. "They give nourishment, but I do not remember what it is like to taste it."
Poseidon. Cynara shivered. "They… don't give nourishment unless—"
Words died. Ronan's mouth closed around one of her nipples, and he began to suckle with all the hunger that instinct built into humankind. He used his lips and tongue in amazing ways no amount of experience could have taught him.
He worshipped her, but not as a servant. He celebrated all that was female in her, neither captain nor inferior, but herself whole and complete. He pressed his face between her breasts and she buried her fingers in his hair, swallowing a cry of triumph.
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