By the Sea of Sand

by Megan Hart

  Inside, she took her handheld into her bedroom and closed the door firmly. She tapped in the Rav Aluf’s access code, expecting to leave only an angry message and surprised when the man’s status showed him as online. She didn’t bother to choose visual access as she had no desire to look at him.

  “Why did you bring him here?” she said without preamble, her words automatically converting to text and being delivered to him. “Of all the places for him to recover, you chose the one most likely to trigger him! Is it your intent to lose him?”

  His answer didn’t come right away, but when it did, it was entirely unsatisfactory. “No.”

  “He would get better care in a medica.”

  “Nobody could care for him better than you,” came the reply.

  “He is insane,” Teila said after a moment, hating herself for it. “Worse than most of the others you’ve sent me. And there’s too much here we have to avoid. Anything could tip him over. Anything could set him off. You need to come and take him away.”

  The instant the words left her lips, she wanted to reclaim them. But it was too late since they’d been translated and transmitted. The small blinking indicator on the handheld screen told her the Rav Aluf had received the message and was replying, and Teila didn’t quite have the courage to disconnect before she heard his answer. She wasn’t in the military, and she was his daughter-in-law, but he was still one of the most powerful men in the world. Some said the Rav Aluf had more power than the Melek himself, and Teila understood how that could be true. The Melek of Sheirra might rule the world, but the Rav Aluf was in charge of keeping it safe.

  “Once you told me I had no right to take him from you. Do you remember that?”

  Of course she did. It hadn’t mattered then. “Yes. But that was different.”

  “Was it?”

  There was no way to hear tone from reading words on the screen, but she could well imagine the sound of her father-in-law’s voice. His son had mastered the same supercilious lift at the end of a sentence, though Kason had only ever done it to mock his father, never her. She took her time in voicing her reply, careful to be sure not to give him any reason to call her hysterical or irrational, or even rude.

  “Of course it was. Then you were taking away my husband from me, when we both knew he didn’t want to go. This time . . .”

  “You think he’d want to go away from you again? If he knew?”

  “But he doesn’t!” she cried, then lowered her voice. The handheld wouldn’t interpret her tone any more than it had his, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of even guessing at her distress.

  “He might, someday. And when he comes back to himself, do you want him to remember that you sent him away?”

  “He would understand,” Teila said slowly.

  No answer came for some time, while she waited impatiently. Finally, the indicator light blinked to show his message was being translated. It was not the reply she was expecting.

  “Please,” said the Rav Aluf. “You are the only one I trust with my son’s life.”

  Chapter 6

  Days passed, as they do, and if the man in the top room seemed to grow no better, at least he grew no worse. His daily nightmares had become so commonplace they no longer woke anyone but Teila, who often stopped to check on him when she was doing her nightly check of the lamp. She told herself it was what she’d have done for any of the wounded who’d been sent for her care, but she knew the truth. She went to him at night because that was when he took her.

  Kason had always been a tender lover, over careful of bruising her. Even before he’d gone into the SDF he’d been a big and strong man. His hands had once been able to span her waist. But that was no longer, she thought ruefully as she bathed herself in the quiet of her chambers. Childbirth and age had made that impossible.

  Kason had kissed her gently, held her with soft hands. He’d made love to her for hours, sometimes until both of them passed out from exhaustion, only to wake her with his face savoring between her legs. Then he’d make love to her again. He’d studied and learned her body so thoroughly she’d never thought of taking a lover, not even after the Rav Aluf had come to her with the news Kason had been captured and would never be likely to come home. No man could ever know her the way her husband had.

  Jodah, however . . . Jodah was a different man. Bigger in some ways than Kason had been, his shoulders marginally broader. Thighs thicker. The differences might’ve been minor to someone else who hadn’t studied his body as well as he’d known hers, but to Teila it was as though she traced the lines and curves of someone else who wore her husband’s face. His cock was the same, long and thick and delicious. It filled her the same, brought her the same pleasure, but he didn’t use it the same way. Kason had made love to her. Jodah fucked her. Rough and raw and hard, full of need and greed. And Teila loved it.

  The first time it happened, she’d acted on instinct, reacting to his touch. But since then she’d grown to expect and crave the way he reached for her. Now as she used scented oils to clean herself and dressed in soft robes that would open without struggle, Teila’s nipples peaked. Her cunt slicked. She was ready for him before she even went inside the room.

  He was sleeping fitfully when she opened the door. At the thin crack of light from the hall, some of it spilling over from the lamp, he stirred. She’d taken care to block out his windows from the sunslight to protect his damaged eyes, but soon they’d heal well enough for him to start to be exposed to the brightness. He threw up a hand, wincing at even this faint spill of gold across the floor.

  “I heard you cry out.” She crossed to him, not waiting for him to reach for her but settling herself next to him on the bed. The heat radiating from him was immense. Not a fever, but a byproduct of the enhancements in his system. He would run hot for the rest of his life. “You were dreaming.”

  “I’m always dreaming.” Jodah, for he was Jodah now, not Kason, rubbed at his face. His broad shoulders flexed, along with his back muscles.

  She kept herself from touching him, but only barely. Everything about his body cried out for her caress. She said nothing.

  Jodah leaned toward her. “I’m dreaming now, aren’t I?”

  “Do you want this to be a dream?”

  He seemed to study her, though she knew she had to still be nothing more than a blur. He could smell her though, and he did just that, nuzzling at her neck. Teila’s eyelids fluttered from the pleasure of that simple touch.

  “They give us this to keep us hoping,” Jodah muttered against her skin.

  Teila froze, every muscle stiff and tight.

  “Keep us hoping,” Jodah said again in a low, sing-songy voice. Gruff. A broken voice. “They give us this to keep us believing we might someday get out, get home. Isn’t that right?”

  She turned to him, but before she could speak, he’d captured her mouth. He rolled her, one of his big hands pinning both her wrists over her head. With one knee, he shoved her legs apart and pressed his erection against her. His other hand went between them to tug up her robe so he could get at her bare skin.

  He paused, fingers tracing light patterns on her inner thighs, and pushed himself off her. He’d been fully naked with her, but so far she’d always been almost completely clothed—his eagerness to get inside her had never allowed for the time to take off her robes. Tonight, though, Jodah toyed with the laces at her throat. He tugged them free, loop by loop, until her breasts lay exposed.

  Again, Teila froze at this change. She lay still beneath him, but only until he bent to tug at her nipples with his mouth. One, then the other. He sucked at the tender peaks until she gasped, writhing, her back arching. The pleasure was so intense on her super-sensitive flesh that it edged on pain.

  Pressing her breasts together with his hands, Jodah nuzzled and licked at her until she couldn’t stand it anymore. With a low, sobbing cry, Teila shattered. When the pleasure eased, she found him staring at her.

  “I want to see all of you,�
�� Jodah said. “I want to see all of this dream.”

  She wanted nothing more than to be bare with him, but she hesitated. There were no guidelines. No standard practices, other than his mind would either break or heal on its own. He believed this was a dream, that she was a projection provided to him by his enemies as a way of controlling his mind.

  What would happen when he saw tangible proof that she was his wife?

  The tattoos covering her ribs, hips, and lower back had all been expertly marked with her family crest as well as Kason’s. Later, Teila had added markings for the birth of her son. If her husband came back to her mentally as he’d done physically, there would be celebratory markings for that event, too. Her marks were unique and distinctive to her alone—but more than that, they told a story. If he could read it, would he remember her?

  And if he did, would that set off the nanotriggers that had taken up residence in his brain?

  Jodah eased her robes further off her shoulders and undid the laces all the way to the hem, then opened her clothing as carefully as a gift. On his knees on the bed in front of her he hissed an appreciative breath, though there was no way he could see more than the shape of her. His hands moved over her next, fingers spread. His palms skidded over her skin. Rough.

  His mouth moved on her throat, teeth nipping. Then down the slopes of her breasts, her nipples still tight and tender from his earlier attentions. Over her ribs, tickling, though she was too breathless to laugh. The slope of her belly was no longer unmarked or as flat as it had been when he last knew her, but his lips lingered on the silvered scars almost reverently. Then lower, lower, until at last, oh, by the Mothers, his tongue slipped delicately against her clitoris with light, feathering strokes that had her vibrating with tension in the span of a few heartbeats.

  “You’re a blur.” He kissed the inside of her thigh, adding the slick, wet press of his tongue.

  “It’s your eyes,” she managed to say. “They’ve been injured. You have to give it time.”

  “Such a pretty trick.” Surprising her, he chuckled, low.

  Tears burned the back of her eyes at the sound. She’d heard it echoed in their son, but so many nights she’d lain awake in her lonely bed, wishing more than anything to hear the sound of her husband’s laughter. She put a hand on his head, then dug into his hair to pull him again to her mouth.

  “I can taste you.” He sounded wary. His tongue stroked hers. His hands slid up her thighs, one finger, then two pressing inside her. “I can feel you. I can hear you. I can smell you. As though you’re real.”

  Arching under the pleasure he was bringing her, Teila found it difficult to think of anything but how good he felt against her. Her words were not as cautious as they should’ve been when she gasped, “It’s because I am real!”

  Kason pushed himself up on one hand to look down at her. Jodah, she reminded herself. Jodah, or else he might be forever lost to her. His fingers moved inside her, slowly but without hesitation. He was bringing her to climax again, and she was helpless against it.

  Her pleasure rose in tightly spiraling coils. Her muscles tense. She held her breath, aching for release, every nerve straining toward that pinnacle to which Jodah was so expertly bringing her. Just before she reached it, he eased the pressure inside her and slowed the pace, holding her off.

  Teila lost track of how many times he edged her. She was vaguely aware of begging him, pleading against his mouth for him to make her come. Imploring him to fill her with his cock until finally he moved over her and did as she’d asked. Her orgasm began as he entered her, and she cried out from its strength.

  When her body clenched around him, Jodah fucked deeper inside her, his thrusts ragged. He found her neck, nipping and sucking as she bucked beneath him. They finished together, and he collapsed on top of her.

  Teila relished the crush of him. When he moved off her to curl on his side, facing away, the loss was worse than it had been the other times, because it was the closest he’d seemed to be to the man she’d married. She wanted more than anything to align herself with him, to press her face into the space between his shoulder blades. To sleep with him that way until morning.

  Instead, Teila eased herself from the bed and dressed quietly so as not to wake him. She stopped herself from kissing him before she left, though the desire for it was as fierce as any she’d ever had. His voice, though, stopped her at the door.

  “None of the others,” he said, “were ever like you.”

  Chapter 7

  They are stronger than you are.

  They are faster than you are.

  They are more relentless than you will ever be.

  They will never stop.

  It had been drilled into every recruit since childhood. The Wirthera were the enemy that could not be defeated, only held back. No soldier joined the Sheirran Defense Force believing he or she could be part of destroying the Wirthera, only that they would most likely give their lives in service to keep them from consuming Sheira the way they’d already devoured and ruined so many other worlds.

  He was nameless, but not completely without memory. He knew the Wirthera could not be defeated. That had never stopped him from believing he should try. Three cycles, that’s what he remembered. Three cycles he’d spent leading his troops in the fringes of his own galaxy, far from home. Far from the life he’d had before his father had shamed him into no longer ignoring the family legacy of service. But what life had that been? All he could recall were the three cycles of cold and lonely space, fighting an unseen enemy, defending the people and world he loved against the attacks not of the Wirthera themselves, but of their advance scouts. Keeping his world a secret to keep it safe.

  Fire. Smoke. The clang of metal on metal. Screams. The brightness of starfire, so beautiful and deadly.

  Pain, always pain.

  He could not be sure what had gone wrong, only that the hornets they’d blown up had not all been destroyed. One must’ve gotten away, back through the fields of starfire that helped to protect this galaxy from detection. Found its way home. Returned with its bigger brother, an advance Wirtheran fleet.

  There’d always been rumors, of course, that the Wirthera were sneaky, distrustful even of their own technology, that sometimes they send their own troops to explore rather than relying on the fleets of hornets. That was how his ancestors’ world had been conquered, by suspicious Wirtheran ships scouting on the tail of a horde of hornets. His family had been one of the few that managed to escape, fleeing ahead of the giant cruisers that had surrounded the small planet and systematically began consuming every resource and obliterating all traces of life.

  Those ancestors had found a second home far away, not like their home planet of lush green jungles and vast seas, but instead of deserts and sand. They’d mingled and joined with the native population and homesteaders from other nearby worlds to make a new life, and generations later, their people were still hiding and fighting against the insidious, never-ending Wirtheran forces.

  Stronger. Faster. More relentless. His captors had proven themselves to be that and so much more. The Wirthera had an inhuman capacity for cruelty and an insatiable curiosity.

  They made . . . experiments.

  He had listened to the sounds of his shipmates’ screams for days. Locked in a featureless cell, no visible door or window, just smooth, polished metal that vibrated without cease and made his entire body ache. Naked, with nothing soft to lay on. Nothing to eat or drink.

  Periods of blackout, when they took him. When he woke, only the pain was left to show something had been done to him. It had been better than when they stopped making him unconscious, when they left him awake to watch the slit opening in his cell in place of the nonexistent door.

  Metal arms had cuffed him, dragged him free. The Wirtheran ’bots were different than the ones he was used to—perhaps constructed with the faces of their makers, they were alien, insectile things with multiple limbs and jointed bodies. They made no noises, no cooing ch
irps or whirrs or buzzes. Their silence was terrifying.

  In a different room, full of tools and instruments, they strapped him onto a gurney. They’d probably done it dozens of times before, but this time he was awake, fighting the bonds. It didn’t matter that he knew he couldn’t get free; the instinct to fight and survive overwhelmed all reason.

  And then . . . they came. The Wirthera, covered in their plated armor. He choked and gagged on the stink of them. He screamed at them to show their faces, but they made no answer. Always silent. Never ceasing.

  After awhile, he begged for them to make him unconscious again. Not long after that, he begged for them to let him die. That was when the dreams began.

  Then it no longer mattered what they did to his body, because he had the dreams. In some small part of his mind, he knew the sexual pleasures offered to him were all part of the experiment, though what purpose they served he couldn’t begin to guess. He knew the flavors of the food he ate at the banquets they laid out for him were as false as the caresses of the women, that all the other joys he experienced were also not real. And yet the dreams were so much better than the pain or even the monotony of being in the cell that there came a day when he begged for them to take him, to do whatever they wanted, if only he could be in the dreamworld again.

  That was when the real pain had begun.

  Chapter 8

  “How is he?” The screen flickered, first stretching, then shrinking the Rav Aluf’s face.

  “He’s . . . improving.”

  Teila didn’t bother fiddling with the controls. The sound was fine, and she didn’t need to see her father-in-law’s expression to know he looked disapproving. She continued slicing the pellet of milka as she talked. She knew it would annoy him to see her doing what he’d call menial labor, but he seemed to forget that even with the money the SDF paid her for the care and keeping of its cast-offs, it wasn’t like she could afford a retinue of servants. Besides, she liked working in the kitchen.