by Rebecca York
Wearing a pair of short pants, with the folding crutch replacing his prosthesis, he limped slowly toward the lounger. He was rather amazed with himself, that he’d let her see him this way. But then, he decided, maybe it gave him an advantage.
The twisted logic brought a low chuckle to his lips.
“What’s funny?” she inquired.
“I was thinking—how frightened can you be of a cripple?”
“Link, I can’t think of you as crippled.”
He snorted, disbelieving.
“You’re a war hero.”
“I’m no hero,” he denied.
“Do they give rich holdings like this one to all the troopers?”
“No. But they knew my father was training me to run an estate, so they figured I had a better chance at producing rokam for them than some store clerk.”
“It was more than that. They knew you had the will to succeed.”
There was no point in arguing, he thought as he eased onto the cushioned lounger. Neither of them spoke as she sat on the edge of it and began to rub the healing medicine into his injured flesh. It wasn’t long before her innocent caresses once again made his body grow hard.
He felt her touch falter, heard her breath catch.
He lay very still with his eyes closed and his arms at his sides, his fists clenched. And when he made no move to reach for her, she kept up her ministration.
“Thank you,” he whispered, when she had finished. “Kasi, you’ve changed my life with that salve—given me new hope. But I’m not good at speaking the things in my heart. Words aren’t enough. I can’t tell you how I feel unless I touch you.”
He heard her breath catch and went on quickly. “I’ll keep my hands flat on the cushions. I just . . . I just want to kiss you. On the cheek.”
She didn’t draw back as he pushed himself up and brushed a whisper- soft kiss against her tender flesh. When she stayed where she was, he stroked his way down to her jaw line, then back up to the corner of her eye. He felt a little shiver go through her.
He turned his head, moved his mouth gently against her lashes, feeling them flutter at the touch, feeling his own body tighten painfully in response.
He wanted more, but he was ready to deny himself further pleasure. “Thank you.” He drew away from her, but she stayed where she was, her eyes closed.
“Would you . . . do it again?” she whispered, her voice shaky.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Oh, yes.” This time he nibbled gently at her neck, feeling her skin heat and her breath grow thready, and he had to grip the lounger beneath him to keep from reaching for her. Raising his head, he planted small kisses on her chin and cheeks. Her lips were moist and parted. He wanted to devour them. Instead he stroked the curve of one beautiful brow.
“Link.” His name was a breathy sigh. For long moments she sat very quietly, then tipped her face toward him. “Do you know, no man has kissed me on the mouth,” she whispered.
He felt something catch in his throat.
“If you kiss me the way men and women kiss, it will belong only to the two of us.”
He couldn’t speak, could only nod as she slid millimeters closer to him. He kept his hands at his sides, leaning forward until his mouth touched hers.
He felt the tension in her. Slowly he brushed his mouth back and forth against hers, increasing the pressure by slow degrees, until her lips were sealed to his.
Heat leaped inside him as he felt the yielding softness of her, heard the low, purring sound in her throat. Yet he kept his hands where they were, the only contact point his mouth on hers as he opened her lips and gently probed the warmth and softness beyond.
When he lifted his head, her breath was ragged, and her eyes were soft and pleading.
“I want . . .” she whispered, the sentence trailing off.
“Anything,” he answered, offering her his soul.
“I’m afraid of what I want.”
“You don’t have to be afraid. Not with me.”
“I know. At least, part of me knows. The other part is terrified that you’ll grab me and . . .”
“I won’t.”
“How do I know?”
“Because a man doesn’t get any more aroused than I am right now,” he grated. “But the part of me that frightens you doesn’t control my actions. My brain does. And my brain knows that anything worth doing with you is worth waiting for.”
Her gaze went to his face, searching. He kept his own gaze steady.
She laid her head against his shoulder, and they sat silently in the darkness.
When she began to speak, her voice was wispy. “Do you remember the day I put my pet palistan in a boat and it drifted out into the lake?”
“I found you standing on the shore crying,” he answered thickly.
“And you jumped in and towed the boat back to me. Your father came along and found you all wet, and you got a whipping.”
He nodded, remembering.
“That was the day I fell in love with you,” she breathed.
He stared at her, wondering if he’d heard correctly. She loved him?
“Until then you were just the big boy who was the leader of all the young people on the estate. That day, I lost my heart to you.”
He started to reach for her, and her lower lip trembled though her eyes were soft and warm. Then her expression suddenly changed to deep alarm.
“What? Did I frighten you?”
“No. I saw something.”
He turned, looked in the same direction, detected nothing but the blue moonlight on the stark hills. “What?”
“A man.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Her gaze stayed trained on the rise of ground as she sucked in a little breath. “Two men. Three. Dorre. Crouching, using the rocks for cover.”
“How do you know they’re Dorre?”
“By the way they’re moving. They can’t see where to put their feet. But they have weapons. A lot of weapons.”
He swore under his breath, snapping into combat mode, his training taking over. The intruders weren’t walking up to the front door. They were approaching by stealth, at night. Probably they were deserters, desperate men who wouldn’t take prisoners.
“I guess they aren’t here to beg food rations,” he said aloud.
“What are we going to do?” she asked, the question coming out in a thin gasp, and he knew she was remembering what the soldiers had done to her.
“Make them wish they’d sneaked up on someone else.”
“What if you can’t?”
His hand closed over her wrist, feeling the blood thundering in her veins. “I will not let them get anywhere near you,” he swore.
She sat still as a statue. He watched her rigid features and knew her terror might swallow her whole.
“Kasi, trust me to keep you safe.”
At first he wondered if she were capable even of hearing his words. Then her shoulders straightened, and she raised her face to his. He saw the effort she was making to push away the terror and knew she was doing it for him as much as for herself.
Turning, she looked toward the intruders, then spoke with a detached, steely calm. “They have night viewers. But they haven’t spotted us.”
“Good.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Kasi, you’re going to have to get my leg. And the laser pistol on the bed stand. I’ll meet you in the computer room.”
She nodded, darted into the building. Grabbing the crutch, he followed as fast as he could.
In the nerve center of the house, he scanned the alarms. Nothing. The intruders were too far away. They might have been there for days, watching, planning their move. If he got Kasi and himself out of this alive, he’d have to booby trap the hills.
If.
Bringing his mind back to the crisis, he activated the long-range scanners. He was rewarded by three sensor readings on the view screen. Three Dorre men, as she’d said, and they were moving this way.
Kasi came in
with the prosthesis. It hurt to put the damned thing on so soon after he’d taken it off, but he ignored the pain, grateful that he could walk almost normally.
He kept his eye on the scanner. The raiding party had stopped. They must know he’d armed a protective ring around the house and the fields. Did they have torpedo launchers?
“I need them closer,” he muttered.
“I know how to do that,” she said with the same quiet calm that she’d summoned on the patio.
His head jerked toward her. “No!”
Ignoring the protest, she went on. “I can go outside—pretend I’m trespassing on the property. They’ll jump at the chance to get their hands on me.”
He stared at her, astonished. “Don’t even think about it!”
“Do you have a better idea?” she asked, her voice remarkably steady.
He tried to think of one. Spenserville might send help. But he couldn’t count on that—or on reinforcements coming in time. He looked in the weapons locker again. He had his own portable torpedo launchers. Not the most desirable of weapons, particularly since he’d bought them when he was almost out of money. He’d settled for the older models that the high command had taken out of service. Too bad he hadn’t had a chance to test them.
Cursing under his breath, he thought about the tricky procedure for setting them up. He’d have to do it outside where the explosive gases couldn’t collect. If he used a light, the intruders would see what he was doing. If he tried to work in the dark, he could blow himself up.
He raised his gaze to Kasi’s. “I can’t risk a light. If I tell you what to do, could you set up a torpedo launcher?”
She managed a little nod.
He pulled out the heavy case, opened it, and showed her the parts that had to fit together. Then he closed the carrier again and hoisted it to his shoulder. Outside, he picked a patch of ground partly screened by bushes.
He didn’t tell her the danger of an accidental explosion. Instead, he explained each step while she fitted the parts together, her white fingers moving in the moonlight as she fit the launcher into the tripod and went through the check sequence. Holding his breath, he lifted a missile from the case and helped her guide it into the tube. Then he attached the computer cable. With a silent prayer, he pressed the activation button.
For heartbeats, nothing happened, and he thought it had all been for nothing. Then the screen flickered to life. As he tuned the probe, the same three blips he’d seen earlier came into focus.
A hissing noise overhead was followed by an explosion to the right. The slat-eaters were using rockets. Less sophisticated than computer-guided torpedoes—but just as lethal when they hit their target.
Kasi screamed as dirt and plant debris flew through the air. Link pushed her to the ground and worked the controls, adjusting the targeting. There was no time for fine-tuning, he realized as another explosion took off the roof above his left shoulder. All he could do was press the launch button and watch as the torpedo streaked into the sky.
The explosion was a lot more powerful than the previous two. The ground shook, and the night itself seemed to explode. Then, suddenly, everything went silent. He raised his head and looked at the targeting screen. Where the three blips had been there was only a concave depression— a crater twenty meters across.
It was over. The intruders were dead, and he’d killed them. His own people. At least he’d been spared from having to look into their eyes.
Beside him, Kasi whimpered, and when she raised her head, he saw blood seeping from a long gash on her temple.
“Damn the bastards!” he exclaimed, quickly moving to assess the extent of her injury.
“I’m all right,” she told him, then slumped against his shoulder in a dead faint.
He managed to lift her, managed to carry her into the house without the leg giving way. His bed was the closest place he could lay her. Turning on the light, he examined the wound. It looked as if she’d been hit by a flying chunk of the building. Quickly he soaked a towel in water and cleaned the blood away—and sighed in relief when he saw that the cut wasn’t deep. While he was dabbing on an antibacterial, her eyelids flickered open. She seemed confused for a moment. Then her beautiful green eyes focused on him.
“Did we stop them?” she whispered.
He nodded, captured by her gaze. “Yes. I thought I was through with killing, but. . . .” He drew a ragged breath. “Kasi, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
“We did what we had to,” she answered, her gaze steady as it met his.
He had thought he knew her strength, but he realized he’d only scratched the surface. “You have more courage than half the men in my patrol.”
She gave a little shrug. “I wanted us to be the ones who survived.”
His throat ached as he found her hand and clasped it. “Yes. Us.”
Her fingers tightened on his. “Stay with me.”
“Here? In my bed?”
She tried to nod and winced. “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” This time the answer was stronger.
He turned off all but the small light in the corner and unstrapped the plastic leg before easing onto the bed. He planned to stay awake in case she needed him, but he was too exhausted to manage it.
When his eyes opened again, he could see a faint glow in the western sky. Kasi was awake.
“How are you?” he asked softly.
“Better,” she said, her gaze fixed on the wall across the room. When she offered no more, he lay beside her in the big bed, listening to the thumping of his heart.
After a long time, she began to speak in a barely audible voice. “At first, I was afraid to tell you what happened to me. I was afraid you wouldn’t want me here, in your home, if you knew.”
“I hope, by now, you’ve figured out you were wrong.” He turned toward her, his urgent gaze catching hers, holding. “I want you. For my wife. If you’ll have me.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. “Your wife?”
He nodded, but when he spoke, he couldn’t quite keep the anxiety out of his voice. “Will you? Would you marry a Dorre?”
“Link . . .” She smiled. “I would follow you to the end of the world.” With a laugh, she added, “I did follow you to the end of the world. But what if . . . if I can’t . . .”
The question went unfinished, but he knew what she was asking.
“I want to know you’re mine,” he assured her. “On any terms I can get you.”
“Oh, Link.”
“Say yes.”
He saw her even white teeth clamp her bottom lip.
“Say yes,” he urged again. “We’ll worry about the rest later.”
“I can’t . . . not until . . .” She swallowed audibly. “I want to . . . to love you. Your body joined with mine.”
The words might be halting, but the look in her eyes told him she would only surrender on her own terms.
“I need to do everything—give you everything,” she continued. “And I want to do it now.”
“We will. But we don’t have to do it all today,” he answered, wishing she didn’t have to push herself—or him.
“What are you afraid of ?” she suddenly asked, and he knew she had read the hesitation in his expression.
He managed a rough laugh. “Not much, except that I haven’t been with a woman since . . . the leg. It could make things a little awkward.”
“Oh,” she answered in a breathy whisper, and he knew that his doubts gave her a measure of confidence. Good. Score another one for the damned stump.
He turned toward her, gently stroking his knuckle across her lips, looking into her trusting but anxious face. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Don’t you?”
“Only if you make me a promise—that you’ll tell me if I do anything that frightens you.”
“I promise.”
He kissed her tenderly, then drew back and deliberately began to open the fastener
s down the front of her tunic, watching her face, ready to call a halt.
She said nothing, but he saw the edge of panic in her eyes.
“Does it worry you when I reach for you, with my hands?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll show you how much pleasure I can give you with just my mouth.”
Dipping his head, he kissed her neck, then the slender ridges of her collar bone, before edging toward the tops of her breasts.
Delicately he pushed the fabric of the tunic apart with his face, his kisses gliding over the soft warmth of her breasts until he captured one distended nipple between his lips.
She made a strangled sound, and her hands came up to cradle his head and hold him to her as he took his pleasure and gave it back to her in kind.
He kept the pace easy, demanding nothing of her. Between kisses, he talked to her quietly, ardently, as he stoked the fires of her arousal— first with his lips and then with only the lightest of fingertip strokes.
Her body was long and lithe and so beautiful. He could barely breathe as he watched arousal bring a warm flush to her pale skin.
Aroused or not, when his hand drifted over the soft curve of her abdomen, downward to the triangle of fiery hair that covered her mound, she stiffened.
“Okay?”
Her face was tense.
“It’s all right. We can stop any time you want,” he promised, his words denying the clamoring of his body.
“I’m scared, but I don’t want to stop.”
“Good. Because I’m just going to touch you,” he murmured. “Just my hand, stroking you, making you feel good.”
“Yes . . . I already feel . . .”
“How?”
“Like a kriver flying too close to the sun.”
“I promise, I’m not going to let you get burned.”
“I know.” Still, the breath hissed out of her, and she squeezed her eyes shut as his fingers slid downward, parting her silky folds and stroking her soft, sensitive flesh.
She was hot and wet to his touch, and he made a low sound of appreciation as he dipped one finger into her, moving his hand to give her maximum pleasure.
“That’s good. So good,” she gasped.
“Yes, love. Yes.”
She was panting, rocking against him, and he whispered low, encouraging words while he pushed her higher, closer to climax, until all at once he felt her body go tense and ripples of sensation beat against his hand as she cried out his name.