by Cara Bristol
She watched as March sampled the tompani. The thick citrus-like skin had been peeled away and the fruit sliced. It had the consistency of an apple but tasted like a cross between a peach and a grape.
“It’s like a fruit salad all in one,” he said.
She nodded. “Terran foods are simpler; ours are more complex, more like mash-ups.”
Complicated, like the recent turn of political events.
“You’re not hungry?” He paused, his utensil midway to his mouth.
“I’ve been enjoying your reactions.” To put him at ease, she broke off a piece of bread and ate it and followed it up with a piece of meat.
“Were you able to get in touch with your father?”
She chewed slowly. “Yes.”
“Even with the communication difficulties?”
She lowered her gaze to the sliced fruit and stabbed at a piece. “Surprising, but yes.” She bit into the fruit hurriedly.
March placed his utensil on the table. “What did he say about me being here?”
“Nothing much.”
“He had no comment about a strange man visiting his soon-to-be bonded daughter?”
Hopefully not too soon. “You and I are not strangers.”
“Does he know that?”
“I didn’t see a reason to tell him of our past.” Truth. “ It is not germane to anything.” Lie. That they’d been lovers was germane to everything.
He narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t tell him. You didn’t notify him at all.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. One, it doesn’t make sense your father wouldn’t question my presence, and two, your face betrays you.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Xenian eyes were good at keeping secrets, and as future empress, she’d had a lot of practice schooling her facial muscles to mask her emotions.
March leaned forward and traced a finger across her cheekbone, searing her skin with the heat of his touch. “Sweetheart, you blush when you lie.” He tossed out the endearment casually, but it was anything but to her. He used to call her sweetheart when they were together.
“I’m not blushing.” Of that, she was certain.
“Xenians don’t redden like Terrans, but you acquire an imperceptible pink tinge.”
“If it’s imperceptible, how can you see it?”
He did not reply, and positions shifted. She sensed his discomfort. “Well?” she demanded.
“Because…I’m different now.”
“Different how?”
His eyes shuttered, becoming as expressionless as a Xenian’s. “I became a cyborg.”
“Oh. That explains a lot.” She swept her gaze over him, knowledge adding understanding to the changes she’d noticed: greater height, sculpted musculature, the alertness he projected, the way he carried himself, his power and strength. He’d been physically and mentally modified by biomimetic engineering.
He stiffened. “Like what?”
“How you healed after the yacuni gored you, and how you did so well in the Sha’A’la. Kur and Naimo had been practicing for weeks.”
“They’re not fighters.”
“You are? Are you in the military?”
“I work for a spacecraft manufacturing plant.”
And that made him a fighter? He’d planned to become a university professor. The pieces didn’t connect. “How did you become a cyborg?”
“I was teaching at the university and took a sabbatical off planet for research. There was an explosion, a terrorist attack, and I was critically injured. They patched me up as best they could and sent me home to Terra. A man approached me with an offer to participate in an experimental cybernetic program.” He shrugged. “Of course, I said yes. Who wouldn’t?”
“Who was the man?”
“You wouldn’t know him.”
“Who did he work for?”
“I can’t tell you. A lot of what I’ve been doing is classified.”
“But it involves fighting?”
He nodded. “As a last resort, but often, yes.”
“I’ve heard cyborgs have special abilities.”
“We do. It varies depending on our software.” He tapped his head. “And the kind of prostheses, if any, that we have and what our nanocytes are programmed to do. But, in general, we’re larger—” He made a wry face. “You may have noticed that. Our muscles are enhanced, making us stronger and faster. Our bodies aren’t indestructible, but nanos can heal many injuries quite quickly. The computer processor works in tandem with our biological brain to give us greater mental acuity and memory.
“I’m part man…part machine.” A vein throbbed below his left eye. “A human android, I’ve been called.”
“You’re a man in all the ways that count.” She covered his clenched fist with her hand. He tried to pull away, but she tightened her grip. “Look at me,” she ordered gently.
He met her gaze with a shuttered one.
“Do you think so little of me that you believe a few medical enhancements would matter?” she asked.
“It’s more than a few, and it does to some.” He stared at their hands.
“I’m not some. You’re alive. That’s what counts. You’re still the same man I knew.” Only more. Her hearted thudded as she drew on her courage to stroke his fingers. Once he’d had the unmarred, smooth skin of an academic, a man consigned to spend his work days in teaching theaters, his off hours in pursuit of greater learning. If she’d needed any proof he had become a fighter, his hands confirmed it, the backs and palms rough and calloused. Hard, masculine. Desire kindled in the pit of her stomach.
“Why am I here, Jules?” He watched her, his eyes so very blue and wary, but his thumb circled hers. Tingles traveled up her arm. Longing raged, and the idea of coupling with Naimo or any man other than March seemed unbearable. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and weep. To tear away the walls and their clothing and ascend to that sublime state they’d reached together, where life was a dream shared, where their hearts beat only for each other. She wanted what they used to have before she threw it all away for duty.
“I needed to see you,” she replied.
“You sent me away.”
“I never expected you to show up on Xenia. I was shocked. I didn’t know how to react.” She still didn’t. For a woman about to be bonded, she was making all the wrong choices.
“Did you ever look me up?” he asked.
She swallowed. “I couldn’t.” Instead, I thought of you every day. Cried in secret for months. “Did you search for me?”
“I never stopped.”
“So you knew I was the emperor’s daughter when you arrived?”
He leaned back in his chair. “No. I had no idea. I hoped to meet somebody who knew you. There are many Juleses, and I didn’t know it wasn’t your real name.”
Guilt stabbed at her, even though she’d never intended to mislead him. She’d adopted the alias for university registration, never imagining she’d meet a special man and fall in love. “There is only one Julietta. Certain names are reserved for the imperial family; no one else can use them. I wanted to be anonymous when I enrolled at the Terran Technical Institute. Julietta would have been a dead giveaway. So I picked a name that was close, but common.”
“No wonder I couldn’t find you,” he said.
“Are you finished with your meal?” she asked. He’d eaten only half his food, and other than a couple of bites to demonstrate its safety, she hadn’t touched hers.
“Delicious, thank you. But yes, I’m done.”
Shadows crept over the weakening light outside. She could lie and insist he spend the night on the grounds it wasn’t safe outside, but little threat existed unless he encountered a nursing yacuni. He’d already proven he could handle himself. She did not want to sully their time together with more falsehoods. She’d fabricated too much already.
As evening progressed so did destiny. The sun would rise, Naimo would recover, and duty would demand fulfillment.
She would be sealed into a life of pretense, with no way out until she reached her fifty-first solar cycle and passed the scepter to her firstborn. Even then, she would still be bonded to a man she did not love. Only the idea of holding a babe in her arms brought her any pleasure, but it was offset by what would be required to get that babe.
“M-maybe you would like to see the rest of the palace?” She held her breath, waiting for an answer.
He smiled. “Will you serve as the tour guide?”
She nodded.
“Lead the way, then.”
Chapter Thirteen
Like a wraith, she floated, as if gravity were hers to command. Cascading curls framed her face and danced down her slender back. The intricate designs painted on her cheeks emphasized her exotic beauty. Her gaze revealed little, those black eyes holding onto her mysteries, but her rare smiles were as sad as they were sweet.
She hid her emotions well, but he could read her, and his chest tightened with a painful ache.
Jules still cared.
“The library of ancient books is one of the largest we have,” Jules said as they strolled down the corridor. “Of course, most everything we read these days is on the electronic network, but much of the ancient wisdom is still recorded in paper volumes.”
Books. According to his cyberbrain, they had visited a library. His human brain didn’t remember because he’d been too busy staring at Jules, absorbing her presence into his consciousness.
“Rumor has it the seer consults with the Book of Prognostications before pairing mates.”
“The seer chose your mate based on something written in a book a thousand years old?”
“Not exactly. She gets visions of who should be matched, but she checks with the ancient verses for clarity.”
“It might be time to retire that book,” March muttered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.” Maybe if the crone had consulted something a half millennium more modern she wouldn’t have ruined two lives. Three, counting Jules’s would-be consort. Naimo would be better served with someone as desirous of the bonding as he.
Jules peered at him through her lashes, and one of her rare smiles lit up her face. There was no sadness, only an unexpected playfulness. “I saved the best for last.”
“And that is?”
“The grotto.”
“We’re going outside?” He glanced out the window. Nightfall bruised the sky; before too much longer blackness would prevail.
“You’ll see…” She skipped away and beckoned with a curved finger.
I shouldn’t be here. This is playing with fire.
Years of hurt and longing melted to naked awareness. Passion clung to the air like the portent of a Terran thunderstorm. He breathed in desire and then exhaled it . It flowed in his blood, resistant to the commands of his nanos. It sizzled and snapped with the slightest contact. Her skirts swept against his legs, and his breath caught. She brushed his arm, and his heart pounded. He caught a whiff of her hair, and he grew rock-hard.
Through no fault of his own, he’d already aroused suspicion among the imperial court. If he ignited a full-blown political incident, Carter would have his ass. Dale would kick whatever was left. Penelope Aaron would take a piece of him, too. His presence threatened the amity the Association of Planets had worked hard to secure, would jeopardize Dale’s spacecraft contract, and would dash any hopes of establishing a Cy-Ops base.
Julietta maintained her secretive smile as she led him through the corridors. His cyborg brain could remember where they’d been and how he’d gotten there, but he had no schematic of this palace to orient himself to guess where they were headed.
“How far is it?” he asked. They’d walked for fifteen minutes. She was obviously eager to get to her destination, because she’d skipped most of the rooms they’d passed. As a tour guide, she omitted a lot.
“Not much farther.” She sped up.
Around the corner, she stopped outside a massive arched wooden door. She opened it with a touch to the screen beside it. They entered a courtyard of sorts. Vines clung to rough walls hewn from stone. Stunted trees with spiraling trunks sprouted out of the hard-packed ground. Flowers perfumed the air, which buzzed with the twitter of small creatures.
“Is this an indoor park?”
“Close.” She ran to a scrolled metal gate. She pushed it open, peered back at him, and smiled seductively. “Follow me!” She slipped inside.
How could he resist? He darted after her. A small waterfall hummed a lullaby as it tumbled into an iridescent pool. Mist wafted toward an open sky, sparkling with stars. Twin moons beamed like two spotlights on the grotto.
A mossy stone path led to the pool’s edge where pygmy trees drank from the pond. Flowers had tucked their heads into their pods for the night, but would bloom with riotous color in the day. Had they left the palace? March squinted, and his cyborg vision spotted a barrier encompassing the grotto.
Beneath his feet, a spongy lavender moss padded the ground. Glancing back, he spied the deep impressions of his footprints and much shallower ones left by Julietta.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Remarkable. Beautiful,” he said. “Amazing they could build something like this inside the palace complex.”
“They didn’t build it. It’s natural.” She kicked off her slippers. “A previous emperor constructed the palace around the grotto. The water springs up from underground.” She unfastened her dress.
Desire curled low in his abdomen. “W-What are you doing?”
“Going for a swim.”
“Here?” Though his cyborg brain debunked the notion, he’d swear all his blood rushed from his head to his groin.
Jules laughed, light and melodious, sweeter than any birdsong, and shifted her gaze to the pool. “Where else?” She paused. “Care to join me?”
“I, uh, didn’t bring anything to swim in.”
“Neither did I.” Her dress fluttered to the mossy ground next to her shoes. Jules wore a simple bra and panties. The Terran underwear surprised him, but clothing ceased to matter at all when those undergarments landed atop her dress. In the moonlight, her naked body glowed. She was sleek and lithe, her curves gentle and slender. This was the Jules he remembered: the one who warmed his bed, the one he tumbled in her dorm room, who laughed with him in the tight confines of his PeeVee parked on a deserted road under the stars. He flew back in time to when it was him and her and a future undecided but possible.
Julietta arched and dove in, disappearing beneath the surface.
She popped up to tread water in the middle of the pool, her gleaming hair sleek against her scalp, streaming behind her like a veil. A nymph. A sexy siren luring him to his doom. They had no future. A moment of bliss would be paid for with years of recriminations and heartache.
Nanos gave him the strength of five men, but one beckoning smile from Jules, the only woman he’d ever loved, the one he loved still, rendered him powerless to resist temptation. He shouldn’t be with her like this, but he yanked off his borrowed clothing and plunged headfirst into the water.
He touched a bottom covered with pearly stones and then broke the surface to find Jules nearby.
“The pond is warm,” he said, pretending normalcy. The pool was also slightly pink. Like many things on Xenia, it had a rosy cast—or perhaps his love-stricken state tinted everything.
“It’s what you Terrans call a hot spring. I’m glad you decided to join me.”
Emotions muddled together. Need, desire, guilt. Ethics? Until this trip, he’d believed they were rock solid. Get out of the pool. Now.
Jules glided closer.
Her toes brushed his legs. Her breath kissed his wet face.
Last chance. He lunged for willpower. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” He flung himself toward the bank.
“I’m not proceeding with the bonding ceremony!”
March stopped moving and sank like stone. He kicked to th
e surface and shook his head. “What did you say?”
“I’m not going to bond. Not with Naimo or any other man.”
Because of me? He forgot to tread water and started to sink. He moved choppily to stay afloat. “Then how will you become empress?”
“I won’t.”
His heart rejoiced with a thudding beat, but he couldn’t trust yet. “Who will be empress, then?”
“I don’t know, but it won’t be me.”
“What will you do?”
“That depends on you.” She hesitated. “On whether you still want me…”
Want her? She burrowed into his head, his blood, his marrow. Whispers of her voice sang in his ears. Memories of her touch heated his blood. He still dreamed of her and awakened each morning bereft to find her gone. She had created both the void and the love that could fill it.
“I can’t let you make that decision based on me,” he said hoarsely. His entire chest knotted into a ball of hurt.
“I’ve regretted every single moment of my life since I left you.”
If his actions threw her planet into political turmoil and jeopardized alliances with the rest of the galaxy, Carter would kill him. So would the peace-promoting AOP, Penelope Aaron, Dale Homme, and every citizen on Xenia. The future of a world rested on what they did. “Why now? What changed your feelings?”
“My feelings haven’t changed, only the courage to act on them. I was torn between obligation and love, but now it is no struggle at all. With every passing second since you arrived, duty’s grasp weakened. The moment I saw you at the banquet, my heart knew I wouldn’t let you go again.” Julietta glided toward him. Water droplets beaded on her face like tears. “Will you love me like you used to?”
“I never stopped,” he said.
Who moved first, he had no idea, but Jules, his Jules, was in his arms. Their mouths joined. Limbs entwined as they clung to each other and sank beneath the surface, the water washing away the sorrow and pain, soothing the ravages of separation.
March brought them to the surface. Jules laughed through tears and plastered kisses to his face. His heart bursting with desperation, he kissed her hard and deep, needing the connection, the reassurance she was real, that he wouldn’t lose her again. Finesse would come later. For now, there was a driving need for consummation. For confirmation. He did not doubt her sincerity, but history had proven that what one hoped for didn’t always pan out. Intention alone couldn’t always grant wishes.