Touch of Danger (Three Worlds)

by Strickland, Carol A.

  “I mean...” Londo swallowed and then set his jaw, staring her down. “Do you get a thrill out of making it with Valiant? Or is it something you have to prove to yourself as a psychic? Is it still something you’re doing out of pity? Or maybe a story you can tell the people back at the office?”

  She stood there, stunned. “How can you ask such things!”

  “I have to be sure. Why do you want to be with me?”

  “Why, I want to help you. I took a vow, remember?”

  “And I didn’t ask for help this time, priest. Why are you doing this?”

  “Oh, suddenly there’s something wrong with helping others?”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  Lina turned her back on him. Too personal! She didn’t want to think about her own selfish reason. She didn’t want to face it. She’d spent a lifetime building up barriers. This was no time to unveil a vulnerable point.

  **Vulnerable,** he said wonderingly in her mind. **What leaves you vulnerable?**

  He’d know if she tried to lie or fudge her way out of this. But how could she tell him when she couldn’t even tell herself?

  “What are you afraid of? Tell me. You can tell me anything.” He stood behind her now, barely touching her, afraid of his own power, but he was there.

  “No,” she breathed. “I can’t.”

  “You can. Tell me. Tell me.”

  She clenched her fists and finally released them with a shake. “Oh hell, it’s just too stupid,” she muttered and moved away, knowing that he wouldn’t touch her. But he followed her, shadowed her so she could feel his breath on her ears.

  “What is? Say it out loud.”

  “Oh god. Okay.”

  She steeled herself for it and couldn’t do it. A lump in her chest kept the words from rising.

  “Say it.”

  She felt sick. Don’t make her do this! “Okay.” She tried to catch her breath, to summon up energy to make her mouth work. “Okay. I think I’m in love with you. Is that good enough?”

  Her eyes welled with tears and she clapped her hand over her mouth. She made sure he couldn’t see her face. I get laid for the first time, and I fall in love with the guy! Stupid! Stupid! She ran to the other side of the clearing, her back facing him.

  “It took you the hell long enough!” he called after her. He followed her with a deliberate step, slower than hers. “You’re afraid to love,” he accused her. “Of course. You’re not good enough; you’re not worthy of love, so you turn it around and say you can’t allow yourself to love someone. Like me with all my abandonment issues. I feel abandoned; therefore I abandon. You abandon people who want to love you. You deny them and you deny yourself.”

  Lina made a noncommittal noise.

  “Just because you hate your father is no reason to hate all men!”

  She shook her head. “I don’t... I don’t hate my...”

  “And they make you tell him that you love him. Crisse, you don’t have any idea what love is! You think it’s some kind of punishment. Well, it’s not, no matter how bad the circumstances are.”

  She wanted to leave. Now. Maybe she could teleport home. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hide. Pull the earth energy up around herself...

  “You can’t hide from me that way.” He stood behind her. “Lina, say it again.”

  She might as well. It was out of the bag now and she couldn’t outrun Valiant. “I think I’m in love with you.” Barely audible, but it took all her energy. She slid to the ground in a little heap at his feet.

  “Now say it with pink polka-dots.”

  “I’m in love with you.” Her voice was muffled by her position but it was stronger, even if she didn’t notice.

  “Now with giant parakeets making rude comments.”

  “I’m in love with you.” She gave a small, strangled laugh as her insides clenched.

  He walked around in front of her and squatted on the sand. “Look at me,” he told her in a no-nonsense voice. Slowly her head rose from the huddle. “Now quantify it,” Londo said softer, amazed at the depth of blush on her cheeks. “How deep is it?”

  She was serious now, not afraid to meet his eyes anymore. She’d jumped in; might as well finish it off and drown. “Deeper than any ocean. Brighter than the sun. Sharp as a knife in my heart. Don’t go, Lon. Don’t leave me. Please.”

  “I’m here. I want you to listen to me, and I want you to believe me for once. Trust me. Carolina, I love you. Higher than the moon, big as the sky, tender as your breast under my hand. I love you, dammit!”

  “Oh.”

  Did the entire universe tip over, upside down? A wave of wonder and then utter rapture washed over her as she tumbled with it. Falling, falling—

  He knelt next to her. “I’m crazy about you, kitten. I thought I’d been in love before, but it was never like this. Never!”

  Lina rose uncertainly to her knees and laid her hand on top of his. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Then you’ve got to recalibrate, Lon. Please.”

  He smiled at her crookedly. “Yes, love. We’ll recalibrate.” He shook his head. “A training program. I’ve never heard of one like this. What’s our goal?”

  To fuck each other until our brains turn to jelly, Lina immediately thought.

  Lon laughed.

  “Oh god, you didn’t hear that, did you? I don’t know where that came from. I can be so crude sometimes.” Lina was embarrassed down to her toenails. Lon probably thought she was some kind of gutter trash now, she thought miserably. Dad always said she’d wind up in a gutter.

  “I don’t know, it sounded like an honest goal to me. I just caught it before it went through any kind of filter. If I’m going to be a telepath, I’ll have to get used to that kind of thing.”

  “I’m used to reading other people and not being read myself. I’ll watch my language next time.”

  “At any rate, we have Goal A.” Londo grinned at Lina’s blush. What a radiant face she had, even like this. “Now, where to begin?” So carefully he picked up her right hand and held it very lightly between his. Human flesh was the most fragile of eggshells.

  He gazed into her eyes and she into his for a long time until the unnaturalness of his touch reached Lina’s mind. She looked at his hands—at Valiant’s hands. The hands that could shred steel with an easy twist.

  “Ah... It’s not that I don’t trust you, Lon,” Lina said. “But I’m right-handed. Could you do this with my left hand?”

  “This does not bode well...”

  “Oh, hush. Just because I’m in love with you doesn’t mean I can’t be practical.”

  “D’accord, fair enough.” He picked up her left hand, and she noticed how very rigid his touch was even though his hand trembled ever so slightly.

  “Feel it from my point of view.”

  He tried but his attempt was clumsy. Lina decided to work on her own loop and narrowed her concentration to his fingers. She felt what he felt: a kind of static from the double barrier of his normal invulnerability and of fear because he was steeled to not hurt her.

  “Relax more,” she told him. She unwedged her hand from his and unsuccessfully tried to shake the immovable object until he let it swing free in her grasp. “That’s better. Try again.”

  She returned her concentration to his hand and found herself diving deep, talking to the cells there. **Hi, guys; it’s just me. Lina. Nothing to hurt you here. You don’t have to be afraid.** She sent out loving thoughts to the cells, thanking them for doing their jobs so well. **Good cells. Don’t be afraid.**

  Fear permeated them. She used her other hand to stroke the etheric level, just inches from the skin. She drew the fear out and down into the earth. Magnetic passes gathered the excess electrical buildup.

  **It’s just me. Recognize me.** She kept her thoughts gentle and brought them up to the level of the fingers. **Recognize me. Recognize me,** she repeated, and then expanded her awareness to the entire hand. **Calm, relax, easy.**

  “Lin
a, what in the world are you doing?” Lon’s voice brought her out of it.

  “Talking to your hand, sorry. I should have been concentrating more on emphasizing my own reactions so you could... read them...” She realized that he was gently massaging her hand, and that it felt very nice indeed. And he knew it.

  “Well, do it some more,” he said. “All of a sudden I felt relaxed, and it was easy to establish the feedback. Very natural sensation, like I wasn’t doing anything.” He carefully placed her hand down on her leg and then ran his fingers up her arm to the shoulder. She could still feel tension permeating him.

  “Hmm.”

  “You have an idea,” he grinned, crooking an eyebrow at her. “Keep it slow, whatever it is.”

  “You need to relax all over,” she declared. “How about a back massage? I’m not certified, but I’ve never had any complaints.”

  He shook his head. “It won’t work, not with my powers. I’m invulnerable.”

  “So, that means you can’t relax? It’s the relaxation we’re after. We get that, and the feedback loop might start to work everywhere.”

  He shook his head again.

  “At least let me try.”

  “Eh, rapport, whatever.”

  “Awright, what a great attitude.” She tried to figure out how to do this. Oh well, if she got it wrong she could always try again. And he’d let her, wouldn’t he? He said he loved her. Londo said he loved her! “Vest and shirt have to go.”

  He obeyed, grumbling a bit about the impossibility of it all.

  “Oh, lie down.” She pushed him. Absolutely nothing happened. It was as if she’d tried to push a gigantic marble statue or a building or the Rock of Gibraltar. He was, after all, Valiant, and was able to stand up to just about anything.

  The enormity of the task at hand hit her. Still, she couldn’t afford to think about it. It might daunt him and send him back to being worse than before. “I said, lie down, please.” And he did.

  “Carve out a place for your face in the sand,” she ordered. “I don’t want you to have any excess tension right here.” She drew a line across his neck and shoulders with her fingers to show him. He did as he was told.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Lon said in a “let’s humor her” manner. He glanced back over his shoulder at her.

  “I’m not.” Her voice muffled as she pulled her tee shirt over her head, then smoothed out her hair. She gave him an innocent look as he stared at the lacy, low-cut black bra.

  “Anything more coming off?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Maybe later,” Lina said, tossing the shirt aside. “I get very warm with all the energies when I’m working. Now lie down.”

  Nothing like a little incentive. She got to work. Lon caught the thought and chuckled. Good. She rubbed her hands together, working up energy, as she considered his back. His beautiful broad, ripply-brown back above the narrowed waist.

  Wait. There was some oil in the product samples cabinet back at work. She could picture it on the shelf. And now it was in her hand. She poured the fragrant oil into a little puddle into her palms, then rubbed them together to warm it. Mm, roses for relaxation.

  She dipped her hands down to his physical body and just let them lie there while her mind went down into the cells. **Hi, back, it’s me,** Lina said to it.

  She let her own strong etheric field, which ended just three or four inches from her own body, brush up against Lon’s, so much stronger. She’d never seen an etheric field go so far—it must extend a foot from him—but she didn’t let it faze her.

  **Recognize me. I’m the one who loves you. Relax. Tensions out, relaxation in. All is calm. All is love.**

  She moved her hands around the tissue she was talking to and extended her awareness into the entire muscle. Slowly, she rubbed and massaged the muscle, and it started to flow with the movement of her hands.

  **Good muscle,** she cooed to it. She sang a wordless song softly to his body as she worked. **Relax and recognize me.**

  Every few minutes she had to take her hands off and redirect the toxic energy that flowed out of the muscles away from Lon and herself, and down into the earth which could recycle it and use it well. She used her breath to bring white light into the muscles, turning the light to blue to relax them.

  In a while she realized that the massage was now a normal one, with Lon’s back reacting the way anyone else’s muscles would. She settled into giving him a thorough massage along his back and arms to relax him everywhere. **Recognize me,** she chanted to the cells as they began to relax all over. **I will never hurt you. I love you.**

  God, how she loved him. She loved everything about him. She loved the tiniest cells in his body; she loved the electrical currents that crackled and flowed through the nerves. She loved the deep colors of his blood, the strength of his bones, and his strong heartbeat that proved that he was as real as could be. She massaged the love into him and the tensions relaxed. There was nothing for them to fight; they welcomed her.

  “Don’t fall asleep on me, Lon,” she chided gently as she eased back to take a break. He was limp under her and she regarded the job with pride and hope. She had stopped at the waistband of his pants. They’d see how this went. If she had to massage every inch of him to get this to work, she’d happily do it.

  “Hmm...” He had been dozing, or almost. “I’m awake.”

  “Good. Time to roll over. Let’s do the front.”

  “Um. Okay.” He rolled on his side to lean on his elbow, blinking himself more awake.

  She slid over and sat next to him. She waited for him to assume the position and then stretched to let out the tensions in her own back. Massage was strenuous work under ordinary circumstances.

  Londo paused to stretch himself, feeling in wonder the incredibly relaxing effects of the massage as he lifted each shoulder in turn and rotated it. He settled to look at her as she took her break, her arm resting on her knee. Some locks of hair stuck wetly to her face. A fine sheen of sweat on her body dried in the cool late-morning breeze here in the shade at the edge of the forest. It would leave her skin salty and sweet, he remembered. God, she had great breasts. Long, shapely legs. Great everything. Lush. And those green eyes...

  She turned to look at something in the forest, squinting in the sunlight. The breeze lifted her hair and fanned it out around her.

  Londo surged toward her. She turned to the movement, turned to look into his eyes. Gathering her into his arms, he kissed her tenderly. For a moment he concentrated on the feedback loop but then all there was was Lina and Lina’s sweet mouth. He smoothed the wet hair back from her face and kissed her eyelids, then ran his mouth back down to hers. She shifted in his arms to better reach him.

  **Relax,** he told her, told her body. **Recognize me.**

  His hands traveled over her shoulders, down her back—and into an obstacle. He unhooked the bra with little difficulty and slid it from her shoulders. “Better,” he whispered to her, and then bent to his pleasurable work.

  She trembled on all fours in front of him, clutching blindly at the grass as she groaned. Behind her, he knelt conscious only of giving it all he had, while monitors in his brain and hers confirmed that no physical harm was done.

  Londo’s breath rebounded from her warm neck as he bent over her. They rocked together like a storm building against the ocean, elemental forces of creation. He slowed and tightened and bucked with a wordless shout. So in tune with him, she let out a cry and welcomed it.

  Lon released her in one way, but took her in his arms and rolled with her on the packed sand, both of them laughing and out of breath. Then he gathered her close and smoothed the thick, tangled hair away from her face so he could kiss her.

  “I don’t know about you, but my brain certainly turned to jelly,” she said, still laughing.

  “I’ll tell you what happened to mine if I ever recover,” he replied. “Thanks, coach.” He was suddenly serious. “Thank you, Lina. Thank you so much.” And he slowly kissed her
all over her face, her neck, her shoulders. He loved her so much... and now they had all the time in the world.

  “Anytime, Londo,” he realized she was whispering in his ear. “Anytime you need me for this, all you have to do is call.”

  He gazed into her eyes and knew that when she looked at him she saw the scared little boy, the lonely man, the parahero, all in one. Accepting of all of them and more.

  “Or if you just need me to listen, I’ll be there,” she whispered.

  “Tell me,” he urged her. “Tell me. Tell me.”

  “I love you, Londo,” she told him, speaking to his soul. “I love you forever!”

  He buried his face against the softness of her as the tears ran from his eyes.

  Now his dark head lay against hers as he slept. Lina regarded him wonderingly. Imagine, someone loving her, Lina Muttbutt, Lina the Unlovable! This wasn’t some fantasy she’d dreamed up. This was the most wonderful of realities. This was the universe finally saving her, the universe finally loving her. The universe was Londo, and he was all there was.

  She had Londo Rand here in her arms and eternity coursing through her soul. She had Londo to live for now, Londo to love. All her goals were shifting to make room for this new priority: protect and support Londo Rand for as long as he wanted her and beyond. There was nothing as important, as exciting, as fulfilling as that.

  The prospect of living in a reality that held such a being as him was suddenly the most wonderful of fates. Here she’d thought that God spent His days playing her for a laugh, when He had been smiling on her all the time. Certainly she was the most blessed of women!

  “Thank you, God,” Lina whispered. She could feel the love everywhere now. It pulsed in every living thing from the tiniest speck of dust in the air to the gigantic planet below and around her. She wanted to throw her arms wide and shout her love in return. Thank you, thank you! I love all of you! Londo stirred in her arms, God’s personal answer to her:

  I love you, too.

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  The full moon floated just above an indigo horizon. Beneath it silver rippled the South Pacific in a band that stretched toward the two of them on the shore.