Chapter Ten

Niva

I lie back on the sex lounger to catch my breath, the curves of the sofa cradling my sated body.

Graven stands, hand braced against the window, staring at the view of the mountains and the lake, bared to the waist. He was hot and sweaty, so he took off the top of his uniform.

Fuck the view; I could stare at him all day.

His muscles are enormous, round and hard and bulging, and I don’t care how sated I am, how much he made me feel, how much his mouth—gods, his mouth.

I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed so much. The Fellamana, as needy as we are for sex because of having to satisfy the desidre every day from the time we enter full maturity, don’t spend much time on nonsexual foreplay.

I didn’t realize what I was missing.

I want to repay him, touch him, and run my tongue over every inch of those fabulous muscles until he’s as mad for me as I am for him. He let me go so easily, walked away from me without satisfying himself. I was so ready for him to fuck me good, but he just shook his head and left me lying in the oral chair.

“It’s a nice view,” I say, still unable to look away from him.

He grunts an affirmative, not turning around, which is fine. His chiseled back with the defined lats and that long divot, the length of his spine, are all mine.

I stand and go to him, my bare feet moving silently across the smooth floor. I move close enough to him so I can feel the heat radiating from his body. I lift my fingers and trail them across his defined shoulder blades with delicate lightness, expecting him to flinch, but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t react at all.

Strange.

I lightly trace the dip of his spine such that if he’s ticklish, it will make him jump, but again, he makes no movement. He doesn’t tense; his breathing doesn’t alter. He doesn’t turn or acknowledge my presence behind him.

I strengthen my touch, making it heavier. Still, no reaction. His aura doesn’t change or alter from the hints of desire. It’s still jerking and starting around him in his blocked emotions.

“Graven?” I whisper.

He jumps like I’ve slapped him and whirls to face me. “Niva.” His breathing heightens. “You startled me.”

“I touched your back. Why did…?” I don’t even know what to ask. “Could you not…?”

He lets out a long breath and drops his gaze to the floor. “I have problems. I’m sorry.”

“I know you do.” I lay a reassuring hand on his arm, not wanting to embarrass him. “I brought you here to heal you.”

He gazes at my hand on his arm but doesn’t react. He doesn’t seem to like it or notice it.

I pull my hand back with the realization. “You don’t like me touching you.” From what he’s saying, it’s related to his problems, but it doesn’t change the pang of regret and hurt that runs through my chest—rejection. I don’t know how to react to this feeling.

“Niva…” He swallows hard. “It’s not that I don’t like you touching me.” He lifts my hand and lays a delicate kiss to my palm. “It’s that…I can’t feel.”

“You can’t…as in it’s not good? It’s painful?”

“No. I can’t feel anything. Not even my hand in yours right now.” He stares at his hand cupping mine, and his touch is so delicate, as though he’s terrified of hurting me. In general, his touches have been so light, I’d never know he wanted me. It’s only by his mouth, his eyes, that I can tell he desires me.

“You can’t feel”—I ask, shocked and horrified—“anything?”

“Anything. Nothing but pressure, but if you touch me lightly, not even that.” He swallows, nervous, his head ducked. “I can taste you, but I have no idea what your skin is like, except…” He hesitates. “Well…for some reason, I was able to feel you with my lips just now, though that’s never happened before. And at the Sex Games, I actually felt…something when I came.”

“That’s why you like the kissing so much.”

“Yes.” He stares longingly at my mouth.

I lift my hand and delicately trace his thick, full mouth. He shudders, and his eyes fall closed—the reaction I was expecting and didn’t get when I touched his back.

With his eyes still shut, I graze my fingers across his cheek. No reaction. Nothing.

“Do it again,” he says, not opening his eyes.

I press my fingers to his lips again, and he moans this time and kisses them. I stand on tiptoe and manage to kiss his chin, but he has no reaction. I reach up and pull his head down to mine. He feels that pressure, I guess, and obeys, bending and letting me kiss his mouth.

The reactions of his lips and tongue are hungry and insatiable, but his hands only lay limply on my arms. I don’t know why I never noticed this before.

I pull back. “You truly can’t feel anything?” I’m only beginning to understand what this must be like for him.

“No.”

“Have you always been this way?”

“No.” He takes a heavy breath and stands away from me. “Only since I was fifteen and my father started experimenting on me.”

“Experimenting on you?” My heart slams against my ribs in horror. I can’t even fathom that. “Your father?”

He nods. “He wanted to make me the biggest of super soldiers.” He holds out his arms, expanding to his full enormous size. “He succeeded, but the cost…” He shakes his head and drops his arms, unable to complete his thought.

“The cost was to your nervous system. Your nerve endings were damaged in the process.”

“Yes. Something like that. I really don’t know what’s wrong with me exactly. No one bothered to figure it out. They cared only how much weight I could lift. And I was afraid if I told the doctors, they would do more experiments on me.” He meets my eyes. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

My chest tightens. “Since you were fifteen?”

He nods.

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“That’s twelve years, Graven.” I can’t keep the rising outrage from my voice. “You’ve been living like this, in silence, for that long?”

He shrugs. “I had no choice.”

I shake my head, horrified. My life on Fellamana with my overly compassionate father has been sheltered in safety. I adore my people with my life. I’d die to save any one of them. I love every Fellamana as my own family. My whole existence is about healing and loving them, and I’d never give that up. I had no idea people could hurt each other like Graven has been hurt. And by his father.

Humans. I don’t understand them.

“Well…” I try to find the positive in the present. “It’s a good thing you joined the rebellion and escaped the Ten Systems.”

He turns his gaze away for some reason.

“Your father isn’t with the rebellion, is he?”

“No, no. Captain Dargule was here. He was in the Ten System’s ship that landed and tried to take out the rebellion. He destroyed their ship, but he left before he could finish them.” He smiles bitterly. “He couldn’t handle the desidre. It drove him from the planet.”

“And the doctors who experimented on you? Are they with the rebellion?”

“No. That doctor left with Captain Dargule. They should’ve been executed after the rebels commandeered their ship.” A true smile of relief enters his eyes. “I hope they gave my father a brutal death. He deserves it for all the people he tortured.”

I gulp down the sudden terror that revolts in my stomach. To have a father so horrible, to wish him not only dead but a horrible death… “I’m glad you’re here and you met me.” I have the urge to hold his hand and comfort him, but knowing he can’t feel it, the only way I can comfort him is with a kiss.

I press my lips to his. “I can heal you.”

He kisses me again and holds my lips with his for a delicious moment. “I’m not sure I’m fully healable, Niva.”

“Nonsense. I can heal everything.” I have never met a condition I couldn’t heal with my Exstare power. “The Exstare is absolute.” I press my hands to his chest. “Now that I know what’s truly wrong with you, I should be able to fix you in one burst.”

His eyes widen with a trace of hope. “Okay.”

“Brace yourself. I’ve been known to knock people down with this one.” It’ll take a full blast to reach the entirety of his nervous system, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work.

He braces his hand against the window. “Give it a try.”

“It’s going to make you orgasm,” I warn.

His brows go up. “Maybe I should sit down then.”

I quirk a smile. “Yes.”

He moves to the sex lounger and sits in the curve with one arm braced on the back and the other grasping the raised bump that’s there to support the knees.

“Widen your legs,” I tell him. He does and I step between them, putting my palms flat once more against his chest. “Ready?”

His eyes glow with anticipation, and he surrenders himself to me. “I’m yours.”

It warms me to hear him say it. I press a kiss to his lips and loose my power into him.

I start small, my hands lighting up first, the energy filtering into his chest. He lets out a ragged sigh. Good. He feels it, but my power quickly meets a block inside him. The same thing happened at the Sex Games, but I was so worried about the council and the crowd and everything that I forgot to think about it.

The Exstare touches him within his chest. I sense his heart beating, and I send power there, wanting it to beat stronger, increasing blood flow to his veins, to try to clear his blocked emotional state. But when I strengthen my power and try to reach his spinal column, the root of his nervous system, I’m blocked. I surge into him and…

Nothing. No movement.

I open my eyes to see his reaction. I see his aura flowing more cleanly around his chest. He’s experiencing more emotions, riots of colors, some of which I recognize, others I don’t. But his expression…his face is scrunched in agony, and his breathing is fast and harsh.

His heart beats erratically. I worry for him, that I’ve altered something in him, that I’ve hurt him rather than healed him. Usually at this point, my patients’ expressions are relaxing, their bodies becoming pliant, already having orgasmed and just basking in the light and bliss of the Exstare. But he hasn’t even come yet. And I don’t understand.

This is so strange.

He starts to gasp and groan like he’s hurt, and he whispers something I can’t understand. I try more power, wanting to fix him. I can’t leave him in pain. There has to be some way I can repair the damage. But the more I sink my energy into him, the more he groans until finally, his voice rises, and I realize he’s saying, “Stop, stop, please. I can’t take anymore.”

I do. I let go of my power and retract it back into myself.

My breathing is fast, too, and I’m weak. I don’t usually have to expend that much of myself, and for me to do it without actually healing him completely…it’s…I…

Failure.

Complete and total failure.

Something else, like rejection, which I’ve never experienced before.

He pushes me away, not hard, but fast enough I stumble backward. He drops his head in his hands and breaths hard, gasping, and ragged. His aura pulses—if I could hear it and not just see it, I would say it surges loudly, hotly. The emotions pour from him, too many to name, viciously strong and overwhelming, even to me, just to see. They’re still blocked, only flowing around his chest, his heart, not totally around his body as they should be if his emotional state was fully healed and healthy. But it’s almost like it makes it more agonizing to experience such strong emotions in only his chest and not with his whole body. He must be in extreme pain.

I didn’t help him. I’ve hurt him. “Graven, I’m so sorry. I didn’t—I tried—I’ve never—”

He gives a hard shout and bursts to his feet. He doesn’t even look at me but wrenches his hands in his hair and turns in circles as though looking for relief, searching for something. “I can’t—gods, what is this?!” He claws at his chest as though trying and failing to rip it open. “I have to—gah!”

He runs, tears away from the room, and races down the hall out the door. I watch through the windows and see him charge down the path around the house to the lake, as though if he runs hard enough, it will relieve some of his agony.

It could. It might. Whatever it is, he wants away from me.

I hurt him. I did this to him. It’s my fault.

I know another emotion I’ve never felt before: guilt.