by Claire Kent
She racked her mind for what it might be, and every idea she came up with terrified her.
She wanted so much to go to him.
She knew better now however. She was stronger and wiser and more like Jenelle.
She wasn’t going to buy into silly ideas of love and romance.
Desh might want her, but he didn’t want her enough.
And she didn’t live in a world where a truth like that could ever change.
Seven
The next day, Talia was sitting in the common room of the suite, trying to act like everything was normal.
It wasn’t normal.
It was miserable.
And the days, weeks, months, years of her life that would follow this morning felt equally miserable, interminable.
But she didn’t know what she could do about it.
Maybe it had always been this way, and she’d been too blind to know it.
When the main doors slid open, all the escorts in the room straightened up, hoping for a new partner who would choose them.
Talia didn’t straighten up—not until she saw the newcomer was Desh. He was dressed in his normal clothes and wearing his Combatant’s mask.
After remaining frozen for a moment, processing his presence and the surge of joy and then fear that followed it, she got up to walk out of the room.
“Talia,” he said, striding over toward her. “Don’t leave.”
She stopped. Doing otherwise would cause a scene, and everyone’s eyes were on her right now.
“I wanted to talk,” Desh said in a softer voice.
She looked at him blankly, her throat not working enough to form a response.
It was wrong. It didn’t make sense.
There was no reason for her heart to have exploded into feeling like this from nothing more than his standing so close to her.
His eyes searched her face, but as he opened his mouth to speak, he seemed suddenly aware that they were in the middle of a room full of other people, all of whom were watching them curiously.
“Can we talk somewhere?” he asked hoarsely.
“We can talk here.”
“Somewhere private?”
“I told you yesterday—”
“I know what you told me. I just want to talk. Nothing else.”
He seemed to mean it, and ridiculously his sincerity hurt her. Proof that whatever they’d had was over.
But it was clearly for the best, so she nodded stiffly and then gestured down the hall that led to the playrooms.
Most of them were empty at this time of day, so she made her way down the end of the hall to the very last one.
It was the smallest and the simplest, with no sexy paraphernalia or decorations.
Her body was already reacting to Desh’s presence beside her, so she didn’t want any sort of additional temptation.
When she closed the doors behind them, she turned to face him.
They stared at each other in silence for almost a minute.
Then she finally said, “I meant what I said yesterday. I’m not going to change my mind.”
“I know.” He took off his mask and then took a step closer to her but almost immediately stepped back again. He clenched his hands at his side. “I’m not here to try to persuade you otherwise.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I wanted to say you were right. You were right about everything.”
This wasn’t at all what she’d expected. She crossed her arms over her chest. “About what?”
“About how I’m not good for you. I…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve never felt so good as when I’m with you. Not just my body. All of me. All of me felt so good. With you. I… wanted it to last for as long as it could. But that was wrong. That was selfish.”
She dropped her eyes, trying to deal with a new surge of feeling at his words. Unable to stop herself, she darted her gaze back up to his face. “It’s only selfish if you can’t give me anything in return.”
“I can’t,” he said in close to a whisper.
Her eyes dropped again. So did her heart.
“There’s something else I need to do. Something more important.”
She’d known this almost from the first time she’d met him. He had a different priority. A secret one. Something he was doing here other than winning the Tournament. Whatever it was, was dangerous. He was dangerous.
She had no business being so crushed about hearing those words from him now.
He’d made it clear then. He’d made it clear yesterday.
He was making it clear now.
She was the foolish one who kept hoping for something different, based on nothing more than that look she kept imagining to see in his eyes.
“So I need to apologize about yesterday. I was acting on emotion, and it was wrong. I never should have demanded you give me more when I can’t… give you everything.”
Her throat had completely closed up again, so she just nodded mutely, keeping her eyes on the floor.
“So I came to say I’m sorry.” His voice was so gravelly he had to clear it before he added, “And to say goodbye.”
She gasped, her eyes flying up to his face. “Goodbye?”
His expression was aching and tender and soft. So incredibly soft. “Yes. Goodbye.”
“Where… where are you going?”
“The Tournament is over.”
“But the celebrations—”
He gave a shrug, brushing it off like it was nothing. “I’ll go to the banquet tonight. That will be it. My… work here is almost over.”
“What work?”
“I can’t tell you that, Talia.”
“Why not? You know I won’t tell anyone. I would keep your secrets.” She twisted her hands together, suddenly terrified by the look she saw on his face.
Determined.
Doomed.
Final.
“What are you going to do, Desh?”
“What I should have done from the beginning instead of enjoying myself with you.”
“What does that mean?” She forgot her resolution to never touch him again and stepped over to grab one of his arms. “Desh, what are you going to do?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. What—”
“I’m going to do what I came here to do.” Very gently he pulled his arm out of her grip. “What I need to do. Someone has to answer for what’s wrong in this world.”
She’d heard that note in his voice before, although back then she hadn’t known how to understand it. Now she did. A wave of terror slammed into her. “And you think you’re the one who has to answer it?”
He stared at her for a long, shuddering moment. “There’s no one else who can.”
Had she thought through his words and meaning rationally, she would have seen them as illogical, as suspicious, as arrogant. But she didn’t think them through.
She just instinctively understood them as true.
“Desh, please don’t do anything stupid,” she whispered.
“Of course I will,” he murmured, leaning over to kiss her just on the corner of her mouth. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“But—”
He covered her lips with two of his fingers. “I love you, Talia. I never expected anything like it, but I do.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
He kissed her again. “Goodbye, sweetheart. You’ve given me joy I’ve never known before.”
She was wracked by waves of grief, so she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t stop him.
He turned around and walked out of the room.
When she could finally move, she hurried after him. He was already down the hall and through the common room, walking out through the exit to the suite.
She caught up with him in the corridor just outside the entrance. “Desh!”
He turned around at her cry, and she reached him at last. He’d put on his mask before he’d left the playroom, so she couldn’t see his expression. She
clung to his arm. “Desh, I don’t want you to do this.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you do! You could—”
He shook off her arm. “I can’t do anything else.”
Despite his firm tone, she was going to object again. She was going to argue. She didn’t know exactly what Desh was planning to do, but she knew it was stupid, reckless, dangerous.
She knew it was going to get him killed.
He’d told her once that, by the time he was recognized, it would be too late.
Too late felt like it was upon them right now.
But before she could get any more words out, a new voice broke out in the hall. It was male, authoritative, loud. Familiar. “What’s going on here?”
She literally jumped. She whirled around to see Marshall, a subcommander of Coalition Special Forces. He was with two guards, and he was heading toward her now in long, sure strides.
“Is he hurting you?” Marshall demanded, turning to glare at Desh, who had lifted a hand to straighten his mask.
“No!” Talia tried to make her voice cool and casual, but didn’t really succeed. “No, of course not.”
“Why are you crying?”
“I was—” She had absolutely no idea what to say, what excuse she could give for weeping in the hall with Desh like this.
“She was being unreasonable,” Desh cut in sharply, in a pitiless voice that wasn’t anything like his real self. “So I had to speak harshly to her. Women cry easily.”
The words were like physical wounds in her chest. Not because Desh meant them, but because he was trying to protect her by acting like a heartless ass.
Marshall narrowed his eyes as he looked Desh over from top to bottom. “The Tournament is over,” he said at last. “Why are you still wearing the mask?”
“Habit.”
“Take it off.”
Desh didn’t move.
Marshall moved his hand to his sidearm. “Do it now.”
Very slowly Desh removed his mask.
Talia was holding her breath, but she didn’t know why.
Marshall studied Desh’s face but obviously didn’t know him. “Hold out your arm.” He pulled out his scanner and pressed it against Desh’s skin.
It would pull up an identity record to match his DNA.
Talia didn’t know what Marshall was seeing in the record, but it was obviously not a problem. He frowned but didn’t react suspiciously.
“You can leave,” Marshall said at last. “But the escorts are protected here. You can’t treat them like cheap whores. If you make another one cry, you’ll face consequences.”
Talia saw a brief struggle on Desh’s face, as if he had a problem with what Marshall had said, but he dropped his eyes and murmured, “My mistake. I apologize.”
Then he was turning away.
Talia watched his back as he walked away from her, and it occurred to her then that she’d never see him again.
This was it.
He glanced back once, meeting her eyes, before he turned down another hallway.
She was shaking helplessly as she wiped her tears away.
Marshall was still standing beside her. She couldn’t let down her guard yet.
“Are you all right?” he asked, turning to face her.
“Yes, yes, of course. He wasn’t nice, but he didn’t hurt me.”
“You shouldn’t let men like that bother you. Just don’t give them any time.”
She nodded. “I won’t. Thank you.”
Marshall was still frowning thoughtfully in the direction Desh had disappeared in. “How many times have you seen him?”
She almost choked on the tension in her throat. “I… uh, I don’t really remember. Several.”
She tried to make it vague, but she couldn’t lie to him. If Marshall checked, he would easily find out she hadn’t told him the truth, and that would be the most dangerous thing she could do.
“He was the one who was talking about those rebellions you looked up a few weeks back, wasn’t he?”
She stifled a gasp.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
“N-no. That wasn’t him.”
Marshall turned his head, studying her face closely. “Why are you trying to protect him?”
“I’m not! I just… I just don’t want any trouble.”
“You won’t get into trouble. You haven’t done anything wrong.” He reached out to stroke her cheek. “Don’t look so scared. It’s not your fault if he’s up to trouble. I need to check out a few things, but I’ll come to find you later.”
She swallowed hard and managed to smile. “I’ll be waiting.”
Marshall left with the other guards, and Talia’s knees almost buckled.
He obviously suspected Desh. He was going to check up on him somehow.
Whoever Desh was, he’d obviously managed to create a convincing identity in Coalition records, but there might be some other way for Marshall to find out about him.
What if he found out that Desh was a criminal, that he was here for reasons of his own?
Desh would be immediately arrested, and his sentence would be a prison planet for sure—those were utterly inescapable—rather than the slightly easier sentence of a planet dump.
Desh—her handsome, gentle Desh—stuck in a hellhole prison until he died.
She couldn’t stand for that to happen. She could barely even process the thought in her mind.
But how was she supposed to stop it from happening?
Desh had made it clear that things were over between them, and that was obviously for the best. She had to think about herself. She had to protect herself.
Any further involvement with Desh would only put her in very real danger.
Desh didn’t want her help anyway.
Plus there was absolutely nothing she could do.
Confused and trembling and almost numb with so much emotion, Talia went back into the leisure suite.
She couldn’t face the curious looks of Breann and the others, so she kept walking through the common room, turning down a hall that led to Jenelle’s room.
Jenelle invited her in at her buzz, and Talia stepped in to the small, pretty bedroom—that had once been the pinnacle of Talia’s ambitions.
“What’s wrong?” Jenelle asked urgently, obviously seeing signs of distress on Talia’s face.
Talia sank into a chair. “I… I don’t know. Desh is in trouble, I think.”
“Of course he’s in trouble. I knew something was up with him. I told you to stay away from him.”
“I know you did.” She slumped her shoulders and admitted, “He said goodbye. He doesn’t want to see me again.”
Jenelle’s face was sympathetic, but she shook her head. “Didn’t I tell you that would happen?”
“Yes. You did.”
“But you fell for him anyway.” It wasn’t a question.
Talia closed her eyes. “Yes. I’m afraid I did.”
Jenelle was silent for a long time before she said, “Well, don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Surprised, Talia shot a quick look at her. “You’ve been warning me for weeks now.”
“I know I have. But wise warnings don’t have a chance of making a dent when your heart gets in the way.” Jenelle was smiling poignantly. “It happens to all of us. You’ll get over it.”
More confused than ever, Talia asked slowly, “It happens to all of us?”
“Well, most of us. Eventually. There’s always one of our partners we like too much, who we start to get hopes about.”
“It happened to you?”
“Why do you look so surprised?”
“I don’t know,” Talia admitted. “You just always seem too… cool and in control, keeping things in perspective.”
“Now I am, yes. I wasn’t always this way.”
“You let yourself hope in someone?”
“Yes.” Jenelle’s smile faded, and she stared at Talia blindly
for a moment. “I did. I was disappointed. All of us were. We’re escorts. We’re not potential lifetime partners. The sooner you accept this, the better off you’ll be. No matter what you dream about, men are never going to see you in any other way.”
Talia sat motionless, her mind racing.
Desh had seen her differently.
He’d seen her as more than a body.
She was convinced of it.
“Don’t try to persuade yourself that some silly, romanticized version of the world is the true one,” Jenelle added, sounding almost tired. “I can see on your face what’s happening in your mind, and I’m telling you now it will end in more heartache. Men will always be men. They might talk pretty for a while, but in the end they’ll just take what they want from us.”
“Not all men—”
“Yes, all men! The ones who don’t just don’t have the power to do it. But give them the power, and they’ll do the exact same thing. All this civilized equality is nothing but a pretense. You’ve been here long enough. You should know that by now. Sex is about power, and those with power use it against everyone else. That’s the world that we live in. So take any power you have, and make the best of it, like everyone else.”
Talia stared at her friend, her mentor, shocked and saddened by the bitterness in her voice.
The bitterness she understood though.
Jenelle might be a favorite of a powerful man. She might have her own room and privileges that Talia had only dreamed of.
But that was all Jenelle knew.
That was all she had to hope for.
Talia knew there was more now.
There was more, better, deeper.
She was more, better, deeper than the sex object she’d been raised to become.
And a life that was more, better, deeper was what she wanted.
Even if it meant taking risks.
Even if it meant risking everything.
She finally understood what motivated all the heroes in her favorite stories, that queen who should have been only a sex object but who had managed to save her people.
Some things were worth more than safety.
And Talia’s world was different now. And she’d rather be dead than live an empty, barren existence—the life she’d lived for so long now.
She didn’t want it anymore.
She wanted… something else.
She wanted to be something else.