by Jade Lee
She had her own center back now, and it pulsed beside him, beating in the joyful tempo of life. And subtly, it pushed him out. Her subconscious mind recognized the alien presence and strove to oust him from her newly-regained body. How like his Jane. Always striving for her independence.
He took his leave, returning to himself, solitary again, alone in his own body. He took a deep breath, rejoicing in his wholeness even while mourning the loss of their communion.
He opened his eyes.
And so did she. Her eyes were dilated, her skin a sickly gray. But she breathed. She was alive.
Beside them, Steve let out a breath, burying his face in her shoulder as he shuddered in reaction. Absently, she reached up and stroked his head, her eyes blinking up at Daken in confusion as she sought to orient herself.
Their battle had been waged in the depths of her subconscious. She would never remember what they shared.
Stifling a sigh, Daken pushed to his feet, and collapsed back down on the ground, his breathing heavy, his head spinning like a mating buzzfish.
"We should get out of here," he gasped into the floor, struggling to sit back up. "Jane needs to rest. We've got to tell Ginsen what happened." But his thoughts were actually on Kyree's gruesome body. He didn't want Jane to see it, didn't want her exposed to the butchery and ugliness of battle.
Finally, he pushed himself to his feet, using Kyree's workbench for leverage and still stumbling as his own weakness ate at his balance.
Then he looked at Jane. "Can you walk?"
He was worried about her. From within she seemed bathed in light and life, but now he saw that was only in comparison to the overwhelming presence of the deadly poison. Looking at her now, as a doctor views his patient, he saw the weakness of her aura, the deeply etched lines of fatigue and confusion.
Nevertheless, she nodded. "I..." Her voice was thready, barely above a whisper. She drew another breath, "I think so. Will you help me, Steve?"
Still shaking violently in her arms, the boy didn't seem to hear.
"Steve?" she repeated, her voice growing stronger with each word. "I need you. Just for a little longer. Think you can do it?"
Daken turned away, the faint tang of bitterness souring his mouth. He'd just saved her life, and now she turned to the boy, asking for his help. But of course, she didn't know what they'd just shared. She didn't remember, and so for her, they were still Oracle and King, Council Member and Petitioner.
Suddenly fed up with the situation, Daken made a resolution. Once she was fully recovered, once his own strength came back, they would talk. Or rather, he would correct her mistaken impression. There would always be more between them than cold, political ties. When he finally got her alone, he vowed, he would show her just how much they shared.
For now, there was business to attend to. Waiting beside her, he counted the seconds while she coaxed Steve out of his shock. Then all three together stumbled to the stairway.
She saw Kyree, of course. There was precious little possibility she'd miss the expanding pool of drying blood. She let out a brief gasp and turned her sickened eyes to Daken, her expression horrified, her accusation clear.
"He tried to kill all three of us," he said, the bite of his anger in every word. "If you had a better idea, why didn't you do it?"
Jane bit her lip and carefully skirted the gore. "I'm sorry. I've just never seen... I mean not in real life. A body..."
Daken nodded, feeling his insides churn with the movement. "It's nasty, brutal butchery, Jane. And I'm very good at it." He took a deep breath, hating the self-disgust that ate at his insides. "But without it, all three of us would be dead."
"And Kyree would be well on his way to butchering thousands more people the world over. Thank you, Daken." She glanced up at him, her eyes shining with love and gratitude. "Thank you for everything."
Daken acknowledged her thanks with a grunt. It wasn't gratitude he wanted from her. "We'll talk later," he muttered, his attention focused on getting the three of them up the stairs.
It wasn't until they'd made it to the top that Daken realized Kyree's hands were empty.
The gun was gone.
Chapter 13
Jane ground her teeth into the blanket, wrapping her arms around her body. The chills hadn't set in until after Daken left her. He had to tell Ginsen what happened, he'd said, and so she let him go, assuring him she would be fine.
But the moment he left her side, the chills began. It was as though Daken's presence held off the sickness, and now with him gone, she was vulnerable to a thousand pains.
She didn't call for Steve. The boy was sleeping, curled up in a tight ball near the fire. He was exhausted, his limp form looking more like a big pillow than a guard dog. Nevertheless, she knew he would stir at the slightest sound.
She lay in her bed as silently as possible while spasms racked her body. Between gasping breaths, she prayed for Daken to come back, his name dropping like a litany from her lips. She knew his very presence would soothe her tormented body.
She heard him the moment the door opened. From her position in bed, she could see into the outer room as he sent Steve away. "I'll watch her tonight," he said to the sleepy boy. "Take my chamber and don't let anyone wake you until you're ready to get up."
Steve left, and a moment later, Daken was in her room, his large form a comfort rather than the diminishment she used to feel.
"By the Father! You're shaking like a leaf. Why didn't you say something?"
"N-n-nothing he-e-e could d-d-do."
She heard his muttered curses as he stripped off all his clothes except his undergarments—soft breeches that looked like long biker shorts. Then without another word, he settled into her bed, pulling her flush against the heat of his body before settling the blankets over them.
"Th-th-thanks-s." Already the spasms were subsiding into mere shivers. Soon they would be gone altogether.
"Shhh," he whispered into her hair. "Try to sleep."
"You too-oo. You're t-tired too." She nuzzled deeper against him, the downy soft hairs of his chest tickling her nose.
She slept.
* * *
She woke hours later. From the silence of the campus, Jane knew it must be past midnight, maybe later. Despite the terror of all she experienced, her encounter with Kyree had lasted less than an hour. Daken had joined her in bed long before most of the campus was asleep.
Feeling warm and comfortable as she hadn't in years, Jane snuggled against the hard planes of Daken's chest. Beneath her ear, she could hear the steady beat of his heart. She sighed happily, curling her fingers into his chest hairs.
She didn't know what tipped her off that he was awake. His chest continued to rise and fall with a slow, steady rhythm. Perhaps it was the gentle pressure of his arm around her back, keeping her flush against him. Or perhaps it was a side effect of the communication spell. Whatever the reason, Jane lifted her head to look down into the dark well of his eyes.
"Daken?"
A shudder ran through him, and his other arm came around her, locking her against his chest with a ferocity as startling as it was welcome. She returned the bear hug as best she could, showing him with her touch that she needed him as well.
"I almost lost you," he rasped, his voice a low rumble of anguish translated directly from his body into hers.
"But you didn't. I'm alive, thanks to you."
His hold gentled as he partially withdrew into himself. "Not thanks to me. Thanks to Steve."
"No—"
But his words continued, flowing like blood from a wound that wouldn't close. "Steve made me try. I'd never seen poison like that before. I was... I was so sure you were dead." His voice broke on his last word and once again, he crushed her against him.
She let the embrace continue, returning as much as she received. Eventually, she pushed away, raising up on her elbow so she could see his face.
"But you did try, and you did save my life. I owe you more than I could ever repay.
I owe you everything."
He reached up a hand to brush the hair from her eyes. She turned into his palm, kissing the calluses she found there.
"You don't owe me anything," he said. When she turned to deny it, he pulled her down to him, taking her lips in a kiss both hungry and afraid. She returned his desperation with passion, opening herself to him as easily as a bud opens to the sun.
He plundered her mouth. Touching, stroking, tasting her in a frenzy of movement, and she was nearly overcome with the sensuous assault. It was just a kiss, but he attacked it like a man fighting to keep gold in a leaky sieve.
Instead of matching his furor, she did her best to soothe him. She gave herself to him, telling him as best she could that she was alive, and she was his.
He still held her, one hand at the back of her head, pulling her down to him. In time, after her lips were bruised and swollen, he finally gentled his touch. Then he broke away, taking a shaky breath as he buried his face in her shoulder.
"I'm alive, Daken. Very, very alive," she whispered to him.
"No." He shook his head against her shoulder, his coarse stubble scraping her skin. "You're still sick. I can feel it."
She bit her lip, wondered how much he understood about radiation poisoning, then decided now wasn't the time to explain. She lifted up, pulling his face from her body as she dropped light kisses along the clenched lines of his jaw, lips, cheeks, and eyes.
"When you're stronger, you can take care of that too." She drew back, releasing a laugh half in amazement, half in awe. "You're a miracle, my warrior healer. I don't think you realize how much of your life—all life—is a miracle."
His body stilled while he studied her words. She shook her head, trying to push her thoughts into coherence.
"You're fighting all the time, Daken. Against the Tarveen, against Kyree, against yourself. You have to be a good king and a good healer. You have to eradicate the Tarveen and bring your lands into prominence with the Elven Lord. When will you stop fighting everyone and allow yourself to be the miracle you are?"
His laugh was harsh and bitter. "Don't romanticize me, Jane. Don't forget the butchery I made of Kyree a few hundred feet below us."
Jane repressed a shudder at the memory, but she kept her expression soft, her eyes loving. "Yes, and that must be very hard for a man who is a healer."
Daken shook his head. "Killing Kyree wasn't hard at all."
Jane settled back down on his chest. "No, but convincing me of its necessity was." More than the sight of Kyree's body, Jane felt haunted by the hurt in Daken's eyes at her shocked realization of his violent side.
"There's no convincing, Jane. You either understand or you don't." Though his voice was flat, his body was rigid and angry.
Jane looked up at him again, her words slow though no less fervent. "Violence destroyed my world. It took away everyone I loved, flattened everything I knew, and changed my entire race so now I'm the alien. It's hard for me to reconcile that fact with the knowledge of violence as sometimes necessary."
His eyes were dark and intense. "You do understand?"
She nodded. "I do."
"But you're still disgusted I was the one who did it. That I was, I am, capable of such brutality."
"No," she said, raising up to emphasize her words. "I'm grateful that it's you. You're smart and wise and very, very self-controlled. You'd never descend into mindless brutality. Necessary force is what we used to call it."
"I'm not a saint, Jane."
"You're not a demon, either. You're a warrior and a healer. Reconciling the two must be very hard."
He ground his teeth together, his body tightening as he fought with his words. "I can't forget, Jane. I remember the faces of every man and beast I've killed. Even the Tarveen."
She was silent a long time, watching the pain etch lines of granite into his face. Then slowly, she kissed each hard edge, soothing away the strain with her lips while her tears wet the spaces between them.
She couldn't take away his pain or give him the answers he sought, but she could give him her love, her total and complete acceptance of who and what he was.
"I love you," she whispered into his lips. "I always have and always will. Even when you order me around and call me a fool."
Suddenly, he surged forward, rolling her over until he pressed her down into the bed. Other than a soft gasp of surprise, she offered no resistance, loving the weight and the solid feel of him.
"You are a fool," he rasped, "to give your heart to me."
She smiled, a teasing quirk to her lips. "That thought had occurred to me."
He kissed her again, and this time there was no pain in his touch, no fear in his caress. It was tender and sweet and filled with awe. She returned it all a hundred-fold to him.
There was no embarrassment when he lifted off the shift she wore at night. She was naked before him, her body exposed in all its thousands of little flaws. But he already knew the worst of her—her temper and her failures. If he accepted those and could still gaze at her with eyes like blue fire shot with gold, then he wouldn't mind the mismatched shape of her breasts or unattractive clumps of cellulite.
Or so she told herself as he stared at her, his hands still between them, his breathing shallow.
"You're beautiful," he whispered, and she flushed from the top of her hair to the tips of her toes.
Then he caressed her, tracing her curves with the palm of his hand, trailing his fingers from her face to her hip. She felt his every callous as it scraped against her skin, and her nipples tightened at the erotic feel of it.
After he explored her body with the broad strokes of his hand, he bent down to worship her every hollow and peak with his lips. His first kiss landed over the pulse in her neck, and he held it there as though he needed to reassure himself she was still alive. Later he trailed down to her collar bone, stroking its sloping curve with his tongue.
His first touch at her breast was off center, to the right of her peak, and she cried out at the sweet torment. He pulled at the flesh there, alternately sucking and soothing, but never on the target she craved.
When at last his lips found her nipple, she bucked beneath him, shocked to the core by the tremors that filled her. She was orgasming? From what he did to her nipple? The surprise of that fell away as she rode the tide of pleasure.
Then, when she could breathe again, she focused on his cocky grin. "How do you do that? It's like all you have to do is to wet your lips, and I'm a pile of quivering flesh."
He leaned down, whispering his words into her ear. "The same way you do it to me." He pressed his groin against her for emphasis, his swollen shaft a hot brand even through the thin material of his shorts.
She smiled and pressed back, wiggling her hips to make him groan.
"Woman, you unman me."
She laughed at his old style phrasing. "I certainly hope not. Maybe we should check." Pushing him flat on his back, she sat up and started to pull off his shorts. His gasp of shock at her outrageousness only pushed her to further excesses. "You know, I don't think you ever answered my question," she said.
"What question?" His voice was hoarse as he lifted his hips, allowing her to strip away the last of his clothes.
"You never told me if the women of this time are as energetic, as, um, bold as I am." To punctuate her remark, she grasped him in her hand, alternating her words with quick, staccato squeezes.
"By the Father!" he exclaimed, nearly jumping out of the bed. But he quickly fell back down, overcome by her enthusiasm.
"Well, Daken? Are they?" She switched to long, pulling strokes.
"Ah," he said, groping for his thoughts. "Energetic, yes. Bold, no. A charging zlebaar isn't as bold as you."
"Oh," she said, slowly removing her hand from his body. Then she leaned down and gave him one long, wet, lingering kiss before withdrawing. "Then you don't like it?" She raised her eyebrows in an expression of total innocence that he took for the teasing challenge it was.
; Faster than she thought possible, he surged up from the bed, once again capturing her and pinning her beneath his weight. "Yes, my little bold one. I liked it. But no, you won't be allowed to continue." He wedged his knees between hers, slowly spreading her thighs apart. "It's time I staked my claim in you."
He was hot and hard as he pressed against her entrance, but she arched away from him, drawing herself up onto her elbows. "Staked your claim? Excuse me, I'm not some plot of land you can just claim."
He drew back onto his knees, trailing his hands lowly, lovingly over her breasts and belly. "Did I say you were?"
"No. You said you were staking your claim. Let me tell you..." She gasped as he ran his hands further down, trailing in her soft triangle of hair. She swallowed, then tried to speak again. "Nobody owns..." His thumbs probed lower, spreading her delicate petals. "Owns me. No..." He shifted his position quickly. One moment he was towering over her, then the next, he was off the bed, his face between her thighs. Her words faded into a gasp as his lips began to explore the same flesh his fingers teased. "Oh, wow," she breathed, temporarily abandoning her feminist stand as she gave herself totally over to pleasure. "Do that again."
He did.
And he did much more until she writhed beneath him, her back arched, her arms aching as she strained forward, needing the fulfillment only he could give her.
"Now, Daken. Come to me now."
But he waited, withdrawing his caresses as her passion ebbed.
"Oh Daken, you're cruel," she accused without rancor. "You're good, but you're cruel."
He punished her for that comment, teasing around her but never within until she was once more pleading with him for her release. Then he stopped, looking up with an expression of total innocence. "Does that mean you don't like it?"
She groaned, knowing now he'd gotten his revenge for the way she'd teased him before. She sat up, pulling him to her for a deep, heavy, mind-numbing kiss. And while he followed her lead, she still had the impression he stalked her. Like a predator about to take his fill, he moved over her body, dropping delightful nibbles where the fancy struck him, slowly, relentlessly pressing her backward onto the bed.