by Zoey Draven
Only when she was wearing a black dress, one with capped sleeves and fitted to her slim form, did she turn to face him.
Though…she wouldn’t quite meet his eyes.
Her face was caked in cosmetics, the kind that Madame Allegria wore on a daily basis. Her face looked blurry. Not real. The color across her cheeks was too bright, the red on her lips too distracting.
Valerie seemed to notice him staring because she grabbed a cloth, dipped it in the water basin next to her bed, and scrubbed at her face.
“What…” she started before clearing her throat. “Was there something that you needed?”
Dravka very rarely ventured down here, which was no doubt why she was bewildered with his presence. And pax, he avoided coming here not only because the bottom floor was where Madame Allegria delivered her ‘punishments’…but also because Dravka didn’t trust himself to be alone with Valerie down here.
In the dark. In the quiet. When it was all too easy to imagine that it was just them and no one else in the universe existed.
Even now, as she swiped at the reddened color of her lips, he physically had to keep himself still so that he wouldn’t be tempted to snag her towards him so he could taste them.
“Where were you?” Dravka asked. It was abnormal that Valerie had left the brothel. Madame Allegria didn’t like her to leave, liked to keep her here, with the rest of them.
She didn’t answer and she still hadn’t met his gaze. Instead, she cleared her throat, tossed away the cosmetics-covered cloth, and said, “She’ll be on Genesis for the next three days. She’s already on her way there.”
Relief threaded through Dravka. Unconsciously, he took a step closer towards her and he noticed her swallow.
She turned to the side, moving to a small table, which held a golden mirror and a small vial of perfume, though he was certain Valerie had never worn perfume in her entire life. She took a slim elastic from the table and he watched, rapt, as she gathered her curled hair, neatly wrapping it in a bun on top of her head.
“Valerie,” Dravka rumbled, stepping towards her, unease beginning to thread through him. Just earlier that morning, it had been her that had been trying to speak with him. He felt ashamed of that now. For months, there had been a distance between them that hadn’t been there before…and it had only made them both miserable. “Will you look at me?”
Dravka caught her wrist gently once she smoothed her hair back, once she looked more like herself. She paused at his touch and her eyes flashed up to meet his.
He frowned, seeing something that the cosmetics had hidden. The area around her eyes was reddened, as was the tip of her nose. Her face seemed leached of color.
“You’ve been crying,” Dravka rasped, stepping closer. “Why? Tell me what’s wrong.”
Immediately, her gaze flitted away. Unable to take that again, he cupped both sides of her cheeks in his palms, gently lifting her face so she couldn’t hide from him. Up until recently, they had never hidden from one another.
Valerie closed her eyes. Briefly. He watched her swallow. When she met his gaze again, her eyes were slightly glassy but then she quickly blinked the moisture away.
“You’re freezing,” he rasped, frowning. Though it was warm in the room, her skin felt like ice beneath his hands. Without hesitating, he pulled her into his body, his arms draping around her.
She was so much smaller than him. Her forehead pushed into the middle of his chest, though her arms remained at her sides.
He didn’t know how long they stood there before he finally felt her arms coming around him, hugging him to her, her grip tightening with every passing moment.
Dravka struggled with the control over his body, taking care not to breathe in her scent.
She relaxed, ever so slightly, in his arms, burrowing her face deeper into his chest. Some primal part of Dravka liked that she sought comfort with him…even when his treacherous mind knew that it was dangerous.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded with her softly, his fingers trailing down her back, over the unseen and covered scars he’d once helped heal.
Valerie let out a shuddering sigh. But just when Dravka thought that she would confide in him, she pulled away.
Stepping out of his arms, she retreated, her gaze flitting away from him once more. Suddenly, he felt very, very cold without her, though his two hearts were pumping quickly.
“Valerie.”
“You were right, Dravka,” she whispered, shaking her head. Her arms wrapped around her middle, like she ached. “We can’t do this.”
“Valerie—”
“Who were we fooling?” she continued morosely, peering up at him, her eyes becoming glassy once more. “Only ourselves. And even then, I think we always knew.”
The sight—of her sad eyes and slumped form—damn near killed him.
“You should go,” she said, repeating the words he’d said to her just that morning after he returned from his client.
His brow furrowed. In his gut, he knew something had happened. Something was wrong.
“Please,” she begged, standing next to the pooled pink gown on the floor. “Dravka.”
He hesitated, his hand rising between them as if reaching for her.
When she saw it, she took another step back.
Then she took a deep breath and said quietly, “If you love me, Dravka, if you’ve loved me at all, you’ll leave right now.”
His jaw clenched, his expression no doubt thunderous and dumbstruck, as his hand dropped.
Of course, he loved her. But that word had never been spoken between them. Not once. Not in the five years they’d known each other.
“P-please.”
That was what broke him. That quiet, broken plea coming from her lips.
Dravka backed out of the room, keeping his eyes on hers. It killed him to leave her when she was obviously hurting, when she was in distress about something.
Before he could say anything, she rushed forward the moment he was over the threshold of the room and close the door behind him. Blocking her from his view.
Within, however, he could hear her shuddering gasps and sniffles. Next came her gentle sobs.
And as he listened, Dravka realized the last time he had felt that helpless, that useless, was the day his home planet had been destroyed.
Chapter Six
Two years earlier…
“Stop,” Valerie whispered, trying to hide her smile but failing.
“Stop what?” Dravka asked, his tone lazy and innocent as he took another bite of his meal, spread out on his bedroom floor.
Valerie was sitting against the wall, her legs straight in front of her, crossed at the ankle. She’d taken off her shoes and her toes twitched whenever Dravka’s gaze alighted on her. She hoped he didn’t notice.
But who was she kidding? This was Dravka. He noticed everything. Especially everything about her.
“Stop doing that,” she said.
“Doing what?” he purred, his voice warm and amused.
“Looking at me!”
His lips curved into a grin, one that sent her heartbeat racing. “Why would I ever want to stop looking at you?” he teased.
Valerie’s cheeks heated and she could do nothing about it. Dravka enjoyed watching her blush. Case in point, a husky laugh escaped him, further heating her face.
“You’re being annoying,” Valerie mumbled, looking away, down to the heaping mounds of food sprawled out on trays across his floor.
Keriv’i only ate two or three times a week, so their meals tended to be gigantic. In order to distract herself from the tingling buzzing that seemed to fill Dravka’s bedroom, she asked, “Did you have a favorite food on Kerivu?”
Dravka’s lips twitched, which told her he knew exactly what she was doing. Changing the subject. Ignoring the tension between them…as they always did. Valerie kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her legs pressed together, though more than once, she’d caught Dravka’s gaze on the hem of
her black dress, which ended just above her knees.
“My sister made a dish called livuru’ky.”
Valerie repeated softly, “Livuru’ky.”
“Pax,” he rumbled, his eyes flashing. Valerie had the strangest suspicion that he liked hearing his language from her lips.
“What is it?”
He lifted his shoulder in a small shrug, a purely human gesture he’d picked up over the years. Mostly from Valerie.
“It is a meat dish, cooked for weeks, and seasoned with Keriv’i spices.”
“Weeks?” she questioned, raising a brow.
“Pax,” Dravka said. “She would make it for us, for my father and I, a few times a year.”
Valerie bit her lip, regretting bringing up the question entirely. Because Dravka’s grief was something that would never end.
“It’s strange,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to the food before him...the rare steaks, the gummy potatoes in a gravy sauce, the lab-grown Brussels sprouts topped with mushroom shavings, “to think that I’ll never have it again. It’s been over twelve years since I’ve had it…but I don’t think I realized it until now.”
Valerie’s stomach knotted. Her toes twitched.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Dravka, I didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” he murmured, sliding his gaze up to her own. “Of course I know, Val.”
He resumed eating, cutting one of his five steaks into smaller pieces. It was one thing they had in common, their grief. They’d both loved their families so much. And they’d both lost them.
“If we had meat that would survive cooking for weeks,” she whispered, peeking up at him from underneath her lashes, “I would make it for you.”
Valerie felt relief when his low chuckle filled the room. His eyes came to her, those beautiful eyes that she’d always thought resembled dark opals. All blue and green swirls.
“I know you would,” was what he replied. “Maybe one day, you will.”
Valerie’s heart fluttered in her chest. She swallowed. “What do you mean?”
The corner of his mouth lifted but his expression was almost hesitant. He didn’t say anything, not a first, but Valerie knew what both of them were thinking.
Then Dravka finally rumbled out, “We could settle on a neutral colony.”
Valerie’s breath hitched.
“All of us, I mean,” Dravka amended. “Away from Everton. Away from the New Earth colonies’ reach.”
Valerie’s eyes slid down to her lap and watched as her fingers twisted together. Her fingernails were bitten down, a nervous, anxious habit that made Madame Allegria look at her with disgust.
“We could have a home. Somewhere with land, somewhere quiet. You could have a garden,” he murmured quietly. “I would build one for you.”
Longing lodged in her chest, even as her nose began to sting. She was fascinated with growing things. Back on Genesis, her mother had managed to acquire seeds from the Trader Market, seeds of a type of flower that had grown on Old Earth called a daisy.
They had planted one together in a little pot of soil in their little home. Valerie had often watched it for long hours, swearing that she could see a little bit of movement beneath the soil. Everything on the New Earth colonies was grown in labs. So it was a forbidden excitement to have seeds of something and to try to grow life from them.
The daisy had grown, slowly. Valerie had lovingly watched it and her mother had lovingly watched her. Valerie had stroked its yellow petals with gentleness and gave it a little bit of water every day. They kept it next to a small window in their apartment, so it might get a sliver of light every afternoon—though the sun was only a projection.
All too soon, the petals started to wither. They began to fall into the little nest of soil. Slowly, Valerie had watched it die.
It made her sad but it didn’t deter her. Valerie recognized that beauty was fleeting. And with enough tending, she could make something grow again.
They were some of her favorite memories, growing things in little pots—sometimes cups or jars or pieces of scrap her mother had found—until their home had been littered with them.
After her mother died, however, Valerie had never grown anything again. Not that she could find seeds on Everton anyways. But she would’ve liked to try. If only to remember…
Dravka remembered all this. He remembered because she’d told him over a year ago, just one of their whispered late afternoon conversations.
And he offered to build her a garden. Just the thought brought her such a sharp, aching, stinging kind of joy.
“You would?” she whispered, meeting his eyes once more.
“Pax,” he murmured, holding her gaze, never looking away. “As big as you would want. You could grow your daisies. Your vegetables. Your plants.”
Valerie smiled. It was a strange sensation, to feel such sadness and longing and excitement over his words. Because she knew that it would never happen…but it was nice to dream that it could. It was nice to dream of a life with Dravka, away from Everton, where they might be free to…
To be with one another. To love one another, openly. To touch him when she wanted. To smile at him. To know that he was safe and happy and free.
She decided to play along.
“And what would you want?” she whispered, her toe twitching with her bold question. “What would you want for our quiet little home with the garden that you’d build for me? A working area for all your inventions you would create?”
Dravka had told her about his hobby when he lived on Kerivu. He’d worked as a trader, within the city limits of Kerivu’s capital, to keep his sister and his father supported. But during his work, he came across little trinkets and spare parts that he would bring home and craft into something new.
He’d told her of a light he’d made for his sister, made of piping and shards of broken glass. When lit, it spun slowly and reflected shimmering stars through the glass, onto the walls of her room.
Dravka looked at Valerie now, his gaze intense and steady. She swallowed, feeling something in the room change, as it always did, and warning bells went off in her head even as her belly fluttered.
“Isn’t it obvious what I want?” he rasped.
Valerie’s lips parted at the guttural emotion she heard in his voice. All ragged and raw.
“Dravka,” she whispered, the heat in her belly blooming, trailing over her, warming the room and making her shift in her place on the floor.
She saw his gaze drop to her lips and she couldn’t help but nervously lick them, knowing that they were entering dangerous territory, as they often did. Those opal eyes flared to life, his pupils visibly dilating in the low light of the room. Valerie shivered at that look, her nipples pebbling to tight peaks underneath the band of her bra. She hoped her dress was thick enough to hide the evidence of it.
With a rough sound in the back of his throat, he tore his eyes away and silence dropped over them. All she could hear was her heartbeat in her ears, frantic and desperate.
“I want…” he started after a moment, his head tilted towards the wall in front of him, where the sole window in his room was.
It was getting dark. The shadows across the room were deepening. Clients would be arriving soon and Valerie would need to be downstairs to greet them with a smile on her face, as much as it shredded her insides. In a few hours, Dravka would be inside another human woman, releasing his seed inside her, and it made her want to crawl in his arms and never let him go.
But she couldn’t.
“I want a lot of things, Val,” Dravka finally finished.
She sobered.
What went unspoken was that he would never find what he wanted on Everton. Not while he was working in Madame Allegria’s brothel, not while he was one of the infamous Krave.
Their dream was just that. A dream.
And sometimes, they both didn’t want to wake up from it.
She wanted a home with him. She wanted to be safe and free wit
h him. She wanted him to build her a garden so she could spend long afternoons with her hands deep in fragrant, black soil. She wanted to watch him make new things from old things and watch his hands and his mind create something beautiful. She wanted a family, she wanted children with him—children with beautiful opal eyes like their father.
She wanted to love him without feeling shame for it.
“Me too,” Valerie whispered, blinking back her tears so he wouldn’t see them.
Chapter Seven
Valerie knew it was morning when she woke, though it was pitch black inside her windowless room.
Next to her small bed, a lamp flared to life when she tapped the base. She squinted, blinking, allowing her eyes to adjust as she stared up at the ceiling of her room.
She’d made the small space her own over the last five years. It was meant for storage, but it fit a small bed, a dresser, and a console table that she used to place her knick-knacks. She’d taken a rug that Madame Allegria had ordered her to dump when it grew too threadbare for the clients’ rooms and placed it on the hard flooring. The walls were dark in color but Valerie had hung old photographs she’d found years ago, photographs of Old Earth. Landscapes of hills and blue skies, of wildflower-ridden fields, of misty, mysterious forests.
Valerie was grateful for the room, though it was next to the room where Madame Allegria had whipped her, had nearly killed her. The room where she punished the Keriv’i too if they displeased her.
A room her aunt would never use again.
With that thought in mind, Valerie swung her legs out of bed and she dressed in loose black pants and a white t-shirt, soft with its use. She pulled back her hair, wrapping it up with an elastic, and toed on her shoes. After rinsing her face with cold water from the basin and toweling off, she took a deep, determined breath and left the room.
All the clients from the night before had left before midnight. All of the clients were married and they no doubt didn’t want to raise suspicion if they were absent from their beds. Some women didn’t care, or were divorced or widowed. Those were the ones that stayed into the early hours of morning.