Chapter Twenty-Three

Edie and V’kyrri had bruised the thick, springy anethum moss. It smelled like the tiny, exotically sweet berries it produced in the fall. Sap, sharp and clean-scented, folded around them on the blanket of warm spring air.

Visible through a gap in the leaves, the first and largest moon hung near the tops of the trees, the crescent barely illuminated. The twins would follow, a pair of tidally locked bodies that couldn’t properly be called moons, but her culture did anyway, and planned important events around the rare occasions all three were full and visible in the night sky at the same time.

She sighed. She hadn’t let herself miss her world before, and now she stood to lose it to the Chekydran.

V’kyrri brushed her cheekbones with gentle fingertips. The touch resonated through her nerves, lighting up pathways in the darkest parts of her brain, in places the SEM never accessed. He closed the door between their minds. She gasped.

Desire twisted her the way she’d twist ignition wires.

He caught her lips with his.

Every ounce of Edie narrowed to that contact. To the subtle, sweet taste of him. Old scabs came off her wounded heart.

He deepened the kiss, lingering, taking his time, testing her response, seeming to delight in every gasp and in the quiver running through her muscles.

Lost in the sea of him, she wrapped her arms around V’kyrri. The weight and heat in her lower belly built to an ache. As if she’d been engineered specifically for him, the stroke of his lips and brush of his tongue left her at the edge of her control.

Panting when he drew a breath away, she muttered a protest. He smoothed a palm up her ribs to cup her breast through her clothes.

She arched into the caress, her body starved for tender attention. To her mortification, her eyes prickled. She pushed against him, weak, muscles barely functioning through the haze of seduction.

His lips returned to hers. Moving. Whispering words she couldn’t hope to comprehend. He kissed the single trail of moisture that spilled, still breathing words against her cheek as if he believed they could sink through her permeable skin.

Maybe they could. Her nerves settled as he gentled and soothed her. Something no one else had bothered to do after her parents had died.

His tenderness tore at her senses.

He seemed to register that and lingered, giving her the time and space to assimilate the turmoil of her emotions.

Except she couldn’t. It was too big a task—the past a minefield of wounds each more mortal than the last. But maybe she could drown them briefly. In him.

Edie directed his mouth to hers and applied herself to learning every nuance of his response to her. How his breath stopped in his chest when she gently closed her teeth on his bottom lip. The way he groaned when she unbuttoned his shirt and worked her hands into contact with his skin. His chest expanded to meet her touch. He broke the kiss and encircled her wrist, stilling her hands. He breathed a laugh against her cheekbone and shook his head.

Impatience kicked her. She didn’t deserve his tenderness or his care. The thought jolted her. She reflexively shoved it into shadows.

“We’re wearing too many clothes,” she rasped, tugging against his grasp.

He put a finger to her lips.

She looked at him.

A teasing, self-satisfied gleam lit his eyes. “So impatient.”

Heat rushed to her face. She couldn’t hear. How in the hell had he managed to caress those words down her spine with the shapes of the letters on his lips?

“Will you stay with me?” he asked.

“Do I get to strip you?”

He grinned, sending her senses spinning. “Eventually.”

“I’m in.”

“My line.”

She sucked in a heated breath at the sly dig. “Hurry.”

He crouched before her and undid her boots.

Edie stepped out of them.

V’kyrri set them aside and swept her into his arms. He carried her the last few steps to the bedding. He sat on the edge, shifting his grasp to cradle her against his chest.

Shaking, she hooked a hand around his neck, drawing his lips to hers.

His kiss consumed her, first stealing her breath. Then her thoughts. With the first brush of his tongue against hers, his kiss stole her will to do anything but dive into him.

He left her lips, kissing her eyes closed, brushing her temples. He buried his face in her hair and breathed deep.

She shivered with need.

He rolled her to her feet, facing him, holding tight when she swayed. His smile made promises that had her body clenching and damp.

She swallowed against the rising sense of not knowing herself and met his eye, not certain what was expected.

He opened her shirt, blocking her attempts to rip the garment off. Her wrists wrapped in his grip and held captive at her waist, she could only stand, locking unsteady knees while he set his lips against the thin line of exposed skin.

Heat piled higher. She could barely breathe. No matter how she protested or strained against him, V’kyrri would not be hurried. His notion of undressing her turned to torture. With every twitch, every gasp, every moan he wrested from her, he smiled against her skin, stealing every vestige of control until she was reduced to pleading even as her body bowed, eager for his hands splayed across her back, and the shock of his teeth on exquisitely sensitive nipples.

He tripped the release for her trousers. They slid from her hips. He removed her underwear.

She might have sobbed in relief. Her body hummed in anticipation.

V’kyrri held her at arms’ length and looked. No. Admired. His face flushed and his eyes stormy with desire. Pulling in an impossibly long breath, he rose.

She reached for him.

Again, he intercepted her, wrapping her hands in his. “Not yet. You destroy my control, and I’m not done with yours.”

A disbelieving laugh scraped out of her. “Me begging isn’t enough?”

“It’s damned flattering.” He turned them and backed her onto the bed. His lips in the center of her chest pressed her into the pillows. He came back to claim her lips.

“Invite me in,” he murmured against her mouth. Needed no translation. How did he know? Whole new meaning to reading his lips. It took her breath. “Can’t otherwise. Ethics.”

“Yes. Please. I want you. Now.”

As if drawn, he leaned in to press his lips against the center of her forehead.

Via that innocent kiss, V’kyrri slipped into her head, into her sense of self, caressing into her awareness, into what she’d once naively imagined were the private places guarded by the impermeable envelope of her flesh and bone. They’d been here before, when he’d substituted for her SEM. In no way had that felt like this.

She sucked in a ragged breath that did nothing to cool the desire coating every nerve and fiber of her. She’d gotten far more than she’d bargained for. This was entirely sexual. Entirely vulnerable. Him to her. Her to him. She had nowhere to hide. And more, she no longer wanted to. Not from him. Given his tender regard, maybe not even from herself. She wanted to be the woman he seemed to see.

She didn’t know if she could be. She did want to try. For him. For herself.

His desire tangled with hers. His trembling breath matched hers. It should have hurt. Should have scared her senseless. Instead, heat and light expanded in her lower belly. Sizzling heat and desire ravaged her.

She moaned.

“It’ll settle,” he whispered.

She shook her head, pulled back. He opened his eyes, trepidation in his frown. Steeling himself for the pain of anticipated rejection.

She took his face in her hands and gave herself up to drowning in his eyes as if she, too, could enter his psyche the way he had hers.

“I invited you in,” she rasped, speaking aloud even though she didn’t need to, not when he was buried deep in who and what she was. How could they be together like this, so intimately, and still be separated physically? “You have ten seconds to accommodate me. You won’t like my solution for getting you naked.”

His flash of a grin knocked her pulse out of regular rhythm. “No rushing. I’m learning to savor the burn.”

“You’re burning me to the ground,” she groaned and levered up to press her lips to the pulse point in his neck. Answering sensation lit her skin, a phantom of the two of them mentally and emotionally entangled.

His pulse tripped, hammering against her caress in answer. His chest expanded in the same instant she drew breath.

She couldn’t tell where she ended and he began. Only that he’d taken such careful time setting her afire and prying her open, she badly wanted to do the same to him.

“Next time,” he whispered into the places they collided. “This is for you.” He pulled off his shirt, then shed his pants.

She stared, stunned by the sheer beauty of him, her breath catching at his assurance that there would be a next time for them. The glimmering ghurra light rendered every line of muscle sharp enough to cut her fingers.

Pleasure not her own suffused her. He returned, stretching out against her.

She finally set trembling hands to his skin. He arched into the touch. She gasped at the ghost of it tracing her skin as if it were his. She closed her eyes, savoring shared sensation.

He kissed her, and her head swam.

She utterly lost her mooring. Was she kissing or being kissed? Her system quivered with confusion and delight at being immersed in two sets of experiences. They created a feedback loop, driving one another beyond control. Past reason.

When at last, he set a shield in place that cut him away from her, she gasped and froze. She opened her eyes. “Oh Gods. Please don’t stop.”

“For you,” he said, and pressed into her in slow motion.

She wanted to scream but couldn’t find the air.

He teased his way in.

She drew in a sob of relief when he seated himself and rested his weight against her. He claimed her mouth again not moving. He held her, pinned, every fiber of her being crying for release.

Had he not been kissing her, she’d have been begging. Maybe she was. Mentally. Emotionally. On all the levels that counted.

She flexed her fingers in his backside, silently urging him to move.

His shield fractured. Sensation flooded her. The two of them. Together. Whose weight rested against whose, blurred. Who filled, and who was filled merged into one taut bundle of nerve-endings seeking completion. Wholeness.

They moved. Fire and water. He was a tidal force surging, drowning her in sensation, yet she burned, her body the fuse he’d lit. Each stroke, each shiver and every cry spiraled around them, through them, winding them tighter.

In the surge and roll of all-encompassing mental, emotional, and exquisite physical stimulation, passion ignited, caught and detonated. She went up in flames.

As if her release triggered his, V’kyrri arched and shuddered, groaning, before he draped himself across her sweat-dampened skin.

The thunder of their hearts knocked against her ribs, hers from inside her body, his from outside. They lay still entwined as the substance of who and what they were cooled, coalesced, and fell back to bodies on the bed.

He shifted, rising on one elbow, and kissed her.

She met him, every cell aware of every aspect of him, tuned to his need for the assurance that she wanted him still. That though she was newly his, she’d been made for him, and gifted to him.

Not rational. But then, neither was succumbing to him.

The joy trembling in him scraped her raw inside.

“You’re safe,” he whispered into her head. “You can be happy. It’s okay.”

“It’s…” She forced herself to stare at the thought she’d spent the past fifteen years running from. “It’s just that being happy means everyone I love dies.”

V’kyrri froze. Still. Silent. His wide eyes reflected gharru light.

Pain knifed her ribs, taking her breath.

His. He pressed a fist against his breastbone and bowed his head. He retreated mentally to the point that only an echo of his pain remained in her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered inside her mind. “That’s…I…Let me hold you? For tonight.”

Because neither of them could talk about living. Not while planning to whack a Chekydran nest.

Edie tried a sip of air. “I’d like that.”

Yet, once Edie nestled against V’kyrri’s side, her head on his shoulder, captive to the irregular beat of his pulse, and his arms closed around her, she couldn’t sleep.

A sweet, intoxicating sense of safety enshrouded her, lulling her, tempting her to sink into V’kyrri and everything he offered.

Ridiculous. He was Claugh.

She was not.

They were together by necessity. Maybe she’d gotten a little emotional and nostalgic. It didn’t change anything. It was just another night. Just biology.

Wasn’t it?

Her heart’s whispered no kept her awake for a very long time.

****

Edie made damned sure to wake at first light. Before any of her former companions came looking for them.

As she dressed, V’kyrri woke, going from sleep to alert without a single stage in between.

“Got to take down the perimeter,” she signed.

“And the bed,” he asked in kind, scowling, “so no one knows you slept with the enemy?”

Edie stepped back from the stab of accusation. “I slept with you. Not the uniform.”

He rolled to standing and yanked on clothes, brows lowered, and lips tight.

Temper flaring, Edie rounded the bed.

He straightened to face her, muscles in his glorious bare chest tightening, bracing for a fight.

If that’s what he wanted… Edie tapped him between the eyes, then tapped her forehead. “Get in here and tell me what the hell is really going on.”

V’kyrri opened into her awareness. For a split second, agony dug hot pokers into her skull. Nausea slugged Edie in the stomach.

Squinting, she gasped and swayed.

V’kyrri twitched. The tenor of his frown shifted. The corners of his eyes creased. Meeting her gaze, he blinked confusion.

Pain and queasiness drained away.

“What was that?” she asked aloud. “An attack?”

Lips outlined in white, he squared his shoulders. “It was. And I have no idea why. I am sorry.”

No question of that. Not with him speaking inside her head. He turned inward, not shutting her out while he absorbed recrimination, and ran a set of filters through the minutes they’d spent sniping at one another since he’d awakened.

“Want to talk about it?”

He flung his hands wide. “Love to, if I had any clue what had me so out of my head as to overcome decades of training and deep ethical conviction.”

“Hey.” Edie risked setting a palm to his cheek.

His breath caught, and he leaned into the touch before he’d focused on her. Weird. It was as if she’d awakened a stranger and had just now gotten V’kyrri back. “You could have mentioned you’re not a morning person.”

Laughing, he took her hand from his face and kissed her palm. The mental weight of him lightened. The creases in his forehead vanished.

“I don’t like not knowing what happened.”

“Right there with you.”

“I’ll break camp while you clear perimeter. Is breakfast a part of the plan? I’m going to need food before I finish plotting the demise of a Chekydran mothership.”

Edie grinned, her own stomach grumbling.

He released her.

She put on the SEM and ran a quick scan of the grasslands. Bio-signs. None of them humanoid. Or Chekydran. Edie jogged a quick circuit, snatching up sensors as she went.

They trekked to the cave, led by the smell of breakfast cooking. Cargo containers had been lined up, their contents sorted and stacked in a supply line.

From it, Edie managed to half-fill her backpack. Mostly consumables. Food. Water. Simple explosives.

A boy with a black eye and a broken arm motioned them to the cooking fire.

The rest of the farmers-turned-reluctant-revolutionaries tramped into camp, stinking of wood smoke.

Povora sat opposite Edie and accepted a cup of flavorless tea.

Edie took off her SEM glasses and met the woman’s eye. “You burned it?”

Povora set her tea down, and said, “If the bugs brought plague, we can no longer walk where they have.”

“You’ll send everyone into the mines?” Edie asked.

Povora lifted a shoulder and sipped tea. Her nose wrinkled.

“Translate?” V’kyrri murmured, joining them.

“They burned down the village,” Edie replied in sign. Internally, she said, “Cultural thing. It’s unforgivably rude to deliberately take advantage of the fact that someone doesn’t hear.”

He glanced at the SEM glasses lying beside her. “Thank you for telling me.”

“The village was torched because of the plague?” he signed.

“Lore from planet fall,” Edie said. “Our forebearers quickly found out which creatures on world carried disease. Until treatments for Sylga palm tragit, a disfiguring disease, were developed, people habitually burned anything the Sylga palm herdones touched.”

He shook his head. “What the hell are herdones?”

“We’ll have to find a tourist’s guide for your Claugh friend,” Povora said, her grin cutting.

“If any of us expect to survive,” Edie countered in sharp, short gestures. V’kyrri gave her a headache digging into her skull to comprehend. “Captain V’kyrri is your new best friend.”

The malice in Povora’s grin deepened. “Sure seems to be yours. You’ve given up everything we are.”

“What is that? Has-beens who’ve honed our skills and instincts birthing razor-tooth hoppers? Do you imagine I don’t still hold a grudge about the war? And if I do, yet I’ve learned to trust V’kyrri…”

He clapped her shoulder, grinning. “Hey. You don’t have to protect my honor.”

Edie snort-laughed at her words said back to her.

“What Edie hasn’t said is that I’m the second in command of the Murbaasch Tu, reporting to Her Majesty’s Aurnach Riorchjan,” V’kyrri said, rising to make his hands visible to everyone.

Edie did her damnedest to keep her features smooth. Placid. She hadn’t told anyone because it was news to her that she’d slept with a spy.