Lord of the Storm

by Justine Davis

  “Stop calling me captain,” she snapped.

  She truly had startled him then; it flashed across his face, but he recovered quickly. He glanced around her small yet comfortable quarters, and she saw his eyes pause on the set of exquisite antique drawings hanging on the bulkhead directly over her desk. She knew he had to recognize the vivid colors and details of Triotian roses, but he said nothing.

  His gaze snagged again on the hologram that was carefully fastened to the table beside the bunk. He studied the images there, and Shaylah instinctively knew he was searching for any resemblance to her. She also knew he would find them; she had her mother’s sleek mass of long, black hair, and her small, delicate features. But her eyes were her father’s, seemingly passed on direct and undiluted, bright, vivid, snapping blue fringed with thick, dark lashes. She also knew no one could miss the emotion, the love, that fairly crackled between her mother and father, even in a mere holographic image.

  “Your parents,” Wolf said at last, an observation, not a question.

  She nodded. “I have a cinefilm of them that I found after my father died. They made it after I was born and added to it as I grew up. I can’t . . . look at it very often, but I had that made from it.”

  “At least you have that,” he said quietly, then stiffened as soon as the words were out, as if he regretted saying even that much.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But my memories are much dearer, much more clear to me than a few minutes of a hologram. And no one can ever take those from me.”

  For an instant his eyes closed, as if against great pain. Then, slowly, the golden lashes lifted, and she felt the intensity of his green gaze once more.

  “I suppose you expect me to thank you,” he said, his voice much too flat to be anything but grudging.

  “No.”

  One brow quirked upward. “No?”

  “You don’t owe me any thanks.” One corner of Shaylah’s mouth twisted bitterly. “You were enslaved by the Coalition I represent, the Coalition I’ve worked for and fought for. That was bad enough, but then you wound up in that . . . hole because of me. I’m the one who owes, Wolf. You owe me nothing, except perhaps your hatred.”

  “You know,” he said conversationally, as if discussing nothing more than an asteroid shower viewed at a safe distance, “you make it very hard for me to hate you.”

  He uncrossed his arms and seemed to unbend slightly before he went on. His tone had changed, to something gentler, something that reminded her of the days they’d spent together before that wonderful, disastrous night. “Moreover, I think you’re hating yourself enough for both of us.”

  Shaylah stared at him, scarcely daring to believe the undertone of forgiveness she heard in his words. She shook her head in wonder, at a loss for words. Wolf smiled, an odd, pensive little curve of his lips.

  “I had a lot of time to think in that cell,” he said, not a trace of irony in his voice. “It helped take my mind off of . . . things.”

  “You mean what they were doing to you?” Shaylah asked harshly.

  Wolf shrugged. “That was only bodily pain. You . . . you invaded my mind. I couldn’t get rid of you, so I tried to put myself in your place. I realized you had no malicious intent, that you truly thought you could . . . give us both some moments of peace, of pleasure . . . to forget the reality.”

  Shaylah held her breath, not daring to look at him. Did he remember what he had admitted to her in those moments when the remnants of the stimulant had been warring with his overwhelming exhaustion? Had those words been born of a real need to be wanted by her for himself, or had it been merely bruised masculine ego?

  But he had had years of being used only as an object of others’ pleasure, she thought suddenly. Why would he care why she had wanted him? She risked a quick glance at him and saw realization flood his face the moment he saw her expression.

  “I told you, didn’t I?”

  She didn’t try to pretend she didn’t understand. She nodded silently. Wolf let out a compressed breath. “It seems I can’t keep my silence around you.”

  He shifted in the bunk sharply, as if angry with himself. He winced and sucked in a short breath. She saw him clench his jaw against any sound, and he blinked as if his vision had blurred.

  “Don’t try to move yet,” she said, reaching out, then drawing her hand back uncertainly; just because he didn’t hate her didn’t mean he wanted to be touched by her. “You need to take it easy awhile longer.”

  He looked at her, his expression as level as if that instant of pain had never been. “How long . . . ?”

  Shaylah smiled ruefully. “I don’t know. I kind of lost track. I could look it up in the ship’s navcom, but . . .” She shrugged. “It didn’t seem to matter, at the time.”

  “Where . . . are we?”

  “Orbiting an asteroid in Sector Theta 22. The emptiest place I could find.”

  He frowned. “Beyond Antares?”

  One dark, silky brow lifted. “Yes. You know it?”

  He shrugged. “Of it. Tough place. I’ve heard that skypirates have found it . . . hospitable.” At her look of surprise, he said wryly, “Few people worry about speaking freely in front of slaves.”

  Shaylah winced inwardly. Was it always to be there between them? Yet how could it not be? She sighed. “We shouldn’t get any casual visitors way out here. If anybody sets off the scanner alarms, then we’ll know we’ve got unwelcome company.”

  He studied her for a moment. “You’re not talking about just pirates, are you?”

  “Let’s say I’d just as soon not run into any of my Coalition colleagues at the moment, either.”

  Wolf stared at her, then lowered his eyes. His hands flexed atop the thermoactive cover. He studied them as if he’d never seen them, then rubbed at his scarred left wrist.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I was so intent on understanding why you came for me at all that I didn’t think until now about what you have risked to do it. If you are found out—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about the Coalition, or anything connected with it. Not now.” Her voice was sharp, and he raised his head. “Anything,” she repeated flatly, her glance skittering away from the collar that banded his neck. “Especially . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, and Shaylah shook her head sharply. “Not now,” she repeated. “I’ll fix some food. You must be hungry. All you’ve had is some rockfowl broth.”

  A golden brow lifted again. “You . . . fed me?”

  “Well, you couldn’t do it yourself,” Shaylah pointed out as she slid off the bunk, her back to him, irritated at his surprise that she had done the simplest of compassionate things for him. “And fun it was, a drop at a time.”

  “Now who’s being prickly?”

  She jerked around to stare at him, brows furrowing as she searched his face. She found no clue in his expression. Then she looked at his eyes, and it was there, a glint of humor that lit the green depths. Even after what he’d been through, he could laugh.

  An emotion she’d never known before flooded Shaylah. She didn’t even know what it was, only that it made her want to throw her arms around him and hug him fiercely. As if he’d read the urge in her, the harsh line of his mouth softened. One corner curled, barely enough to be called a smile, but it was enough to make Shaylah turn and dart out of the room before she gave in to that unfamiliar urge.

  WOLF BEGAN TO regain his strength with the first meal of solid food. Shaylah could see that he didn’t have much appetite, but he acknowledged the necessity of it and forced himself to eat. Of course, she admitted wryly, his reluctance could be due to the fact that the prepackaged, precooked, Zap-heated meals didn’t exactly blow reveille for your taste buds.

  When Wolf was able to walk, Shaylah found a flight suit that he could wea
r, although it was a little snug across his broad chest and shoulders, and he had to leave it open at the top. She found the expanse of chest left bare distracting, but much less so than the skimpy, revealing trewscloth.

  She showed him the Sunbird, proud of her ship, if not whom she flew it for. He listened and looked around with obvious interest, asking questions that surprised her with their astuteness and understanding.

  When they reached the shuttle bay, he stared as if he wasn’t sure he’d seen it before, a measure of just how near the edge he had been when they had at last made it here. Instinctively she omitted the weapons stations from the tour; only when she felt Wolf’s steady, emotionless gaze fastened on her did she realize that he knew perfectly well what she was doing.

  “You seem familiar with the workings of a fighter,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice. She was only taking normal precautions, she told herself. There was no reason to feel guilty about it.

  Wolf shrugged. “I’ve never been on one of these,” he said, answering yet not answering her implied question.

  Shaylah didn’t bother to pursue her curiosity; she knew from experience that when he didn’t want to talk, he just reverted to that submissive, slavelike silence that drove her so quickly to fury. She knew as well that he did it intentionally; whether because he liked to see her get angry or because it successfully changed the subject, she didn’t know.

  When she offered him his choice of the empty cabins, he eyed her speculatively. “You would let me out of your sight . . . aboard your ship?”

  “Maybe I just want my quarters back,” she snapped. “Besides, where would you go?”

  Unexpectedly he smiled, albeit ruefully. “An excellent point, Captain.”

  “I said don’t call me that,” she grated. She took a deep breath and tried again. “If you don’t trust me by now . . .” Her words trailed off. She sighed. “I just wanted you to have your own place . . . by choice this time. A place to come and go from, as you wish. Freely.”

  And I want you out of my bed, she added to herself grimly. It was all right when he’d been so weak, but this recovering, stronger Wolf was a potent, golden temptation, a lure she wasn’t certain she could resist. But not for her life would she force him to her again. She was relieved when he merely nodded toward Keleth’s empty quarters. The young first officer would probably be enraged if he were ever to find out, but Shaylah doubted that would happen; never before had she been so uncertain about the future.

  They spent the days in quiet conversation, although once again it seemed to Shaylah that she did most of the talking. She told him of her dream of flying, the encouragement of her parents, and the pure joy she found in charting her own swift course in a star-filled sky. And carefully avoided any mention of the means by which she did it.

  They kept carefully apart, touching only by accident, and then one or both of them recoiling as if burned. If memories of that last night burned in Wolf’s mind as they did constantly in Shaylah’s, he never gave her an inkling.

  As on Carelia, only rarely did they tread on shaky ground. There were moments when, sitting in the observation port, they would look at each other and know that they were merely delaying the inevitable; they couldn’t stay here forever. And once, when he found Shaylah staring at her framed Coalition Commission, which hung near the hatchway to the conroom, he came silently up behind her.

  “Perhaps you should have left well enough alone.”

  She whirled, startled. “What?”

  “You should have left me there. I had decided to stop fighting. To let myself be sold. It would—”

  “No!” A vivid image of the slave market, of beaten, chained souls paraded naked before a shouting crowd flashed through her mind and seared her soul. “No,” she said again, shakily, her voice breaking. “No.”

  “Sshh,” he said, for the first time reaching out to touch her, to gently grip her shoulders and steady her. “I only meant it might have been possible for me to escape from . . . whoever bought me.”

  His gentleness broke her. Smothering a sob, she buried her face against his chest. “Oh, Wolf, I’m so sorry.”

  He tensed, moving as if to push her away from him. Then, with an odd little sound, his arms went around her, and he held her close.

  “I know, Shaylah. I know.”

  He stood there holding her, and for a moment Shaylah let herself forget about the hopelessness of their situation.

  Chapter 8

  HE CAME TO HER that night. Shaylah was lying awake in her bunk, staring at the object in her hands. She had been doing so ever since she had at last emptied the pack she’d used the night she’d come for him. She had put away everything but the chains and the controller she held now; the shackles would find their way into deep space tomorrow, she had decided. The controller would have to stay until they found a way to disarm the explosive that made the golden collar lethal.

  As she had so often lately, she found herself drifting off, her mind wandering as she sat there motionless, holding the device that had both made real her dreams and destroyed them. Wolf, his body teaching hers how to fly on its own, making her long for him now with a power that nearly frightened her.

  A whisper of movement in the open doorway brought her out of her reverie. The only light beyond the small halo from the bunk lamp was the reddish glow of the hatchway illuminators, but it was enough to see the puzzled expression he wore.

  “Wolf?”

  He stepped into the room. He glanced at her desk, at the chains that gleamed even in the faint light, then back at her. And at the controller she held. When he spoke, there was an undertone in his voice she couldn’t name. An odd tone, a mixture that sounded part disbelief, part acceptance, all of it tinged with a sour note of pain that she didn’t understand.

  “You . . . were waiting for me?”

  Eos, had he somehow read her mind, sensed her erotic thoughts? Shaylah sat up straighter, pushing aside the absurd thought as she quickly set the repulsive piece of equipment she wished she could destroy on the shelf above her head. She felt herself color as Wolf looked at her, very conscious that she wore only a short, filmy gown she’d picked up on a trip home to Arellia, its gossamer weight like a caress against her skin.

  She clutched the thermoactive cover and pulled it up to hide the swell of her breasts as he walked toward her. He stopped at the edge of the bunk. He was wearing only his old trewscloth, as clean as it could be made now, but still a bloodstained reminder of his imprisonment. And he was, she couldn’t help but see, aroused.

  Shaylah took in a quick, gasping breath. He wanted her! He had come to her, of his own will, to her, not to the long-dead Brielle, not under the control of that damned lust-inducing machine.

  Joy poured through her, and she bit back a cry of shock at the strength of what she was feeling. Never had she reacted like this; never had any man made her feel this all-consuming need. Only that unmistakable note of resignation and pain in his voice gave her pause; she lowered her eyes, afraid of what he might read there.

  Wolf let out a breath, long and low and sounding very much like a sigh. “It’s all right,” he said at last. “I understand.” She saw his mouth twist wryly. “And I cannot say that I mind.”

  Shaylah held her breath when he came down on the bunk beside her. She shivered as he pulled her to him, threading his fingers through the dark silk of her hair. His thumb traced the full curve of her lower lip, so lightly it made her tingle down to her toes.

  “Wolf—”

  “Sshh,” he whispered. “I’m glad, really. It’s been eating me alive, wondering what it would be like . . .”

  “Oh, Wolf,” she breathed, “it has me, too.”

  He glanced up at the shelf where she had put the controller. Then Wolf studied her for a moment before he said slowly, “Only you and me, Shaylah. No hypnosis this time. No ghost
s.”

  “Yes,” Shaylah said recklessly, damning the consequences even as she knew she was so far out of control she might lose herself forever. “Just you and me.”

  She didn’t care if she was being a fool. He was here, where she had dreamed him, wished him, and he was hot and hard and real. Then he was kissing her, his lips gentle, coaxing, and she let out a shimmering little sigh of pleasure. It changed to a gasp when his tongue flicked over her lips, then between them. Without a thought she opened her mouth to him; it was the only thing possible for her to do.

  She felt the hot, wet velvet of him probing, tracing the ridge of her teeth, sending a rolling wave of heat through her. Then, as he plunged forward and stroked her tongue with the tip of his own, that heat became a billowing wave that forced his name from her on a rush of breath.

  “Wolf!”

  He drew back a little. “Tell me what you wish,” he said a little thickly, his lips brushing against her cheek. “What do you want me to do?”

  Annoyance crinkled Shaylah’s brow for an instant; he was speaking as if he were still the slave and she the master, holding that damned controller over him. “I want you to do what you wish.”

  “Ah, Shaylah, you give me too many choices. It would take days to do everything I wish with you.”

  Heat flooded her anew. “Then take days,” she said huskily.

  He smiled at her then, a slow, lazy smile that sent her heart swiftly toward light speed. He began to touch her, his hands sliding over her with exquisite care, testing, stroking, searching for the places that made her gasp.

  In her exultation that he had come to her, Shaylah gave herself over to him with a kind of abandon she’d never known. Gave herself up to the endless gentle fondling of his hands, followed by the hot, searing caress of his mouth on her body.