Bastien sat there, stunned, as he stared into the face of his son. He would deny it as impossible, but there was no way. The kid looked just like he had at that age. Same dark blond hair that had a tendency to appear brown, depending on the light. Same hazel eyes. He even had the same small cleft in his chin.
If not for the modern clothing, he’d swear it was a picture of either him or Quin.
“I don’t understand.”
Ember laughed hysterically. “Those prenatal photos Alura gave you? They were mine, Bastien. Alura told Barnabas I was pregnant and he stole the medical files to fool you. That was your child, and he didn’t die—not even when he almost set the house on fire when he was six. Though I felt like killing him for it. However, the only thing you had wrong was the name of the mother.”
Bastien felt ill as he thought back and remembered the times he’d heard Ember being sick and had attributed it to her being upset by his marriage to Alura. To the fact that he’d noticed she was gaining weight back then, but hadn’t dared to ask about it as his mother and sister had tutored him well on the fact that no man who valued his life, or balls, ever commented on a woman’s fluctuating weight.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She clicked the link off, but Bastien gently took it from her so that he could see more pictures of his son. “I’d just found out I was pregnant the night you asked me to marry you, after you were almost killed and your father threatened us both. I was still reeling from the shock of it all when you sprung the other on me. All I kept thinking was that your parents would force me out of the military the minute they found out I was pregnant, especially if we were married.”
He wanted to deny it, but she was right. His mother wouldn’t have stood for it and his father would have done whatever his mother demanded.
“How did Alura know?”
Her lips trembled. The expression on her face said it was from anger. “I don’t know, but when she found out I was going to tell you about Florian, she ran ahead of me and told you she was pregnant—literally a matter of hours before I’d planned to. I was just waiting for the party to end before I said anything.…”
Because Ember, unlike Alura, would have never embarrassed him in front of his family, or caused more harm to his tarnished reputation with a public scandal.
“She knew I’d marry you immediately.”
Ember nodded. “And I knew your parents would take me into custody if they learned of it.”
For the baby’s safety.
Bastien felt ill over the thought of her going through all that alone. He hated the fact that she’d kept it from him. “Did you tell anyone else?”
“Cin and Kindel knew within an hour of the test coming back positive. It was why I switched wingmen. I was terrified you’d catch on given how sick I was during the first trimester.”
It’d never entered his mind that she might be pregnant. In spite of all the paternity suits he’d been hit with, he’d never impregnated anyone else. Since they’d been using two different forms of birth control.…
He’d stupidly assumed she’d done it only to get back at him or to punish him.
“Is that why you avoided me after my proposal?”
Ember licked her lips. “I was afraid I’d tell you. And you’ve never been able to keep a secret.”
That was true enough. He told on himself even when he didn’t mean to.
Bastien stared at the boy who was a stranger to him as he flipped through her pictures. “You’ve had him in hiding all this time?”
She nodded. “I didn’t dare risk his life. My mother and father covered up my leave so that I could have him in secret. I stayed with him as much as I could when he was an infant, but once you were arrested, in spite of what my dad thought, I knew we were on borrowed time. It wasn’t long after your arrest that I learned my medical files had been hacked by Barnabas. I had no doubt since Rian was the last surviving heir of the direct ruling family that your uncle would be coming for us, so Tasi took Rian to live with her family.”
Bastien was aghast. “Her outlaw family?”
She arched a brow at his indignant tone.
“Yeah, okay, so I’m an outlaw, too.” As was Jullien. “But I’m not a member of the Dread Reckoning. I didn’t choose to be on this side of the law. I was thrown here against my wishes. Tasi’s family has never chosen to be otherwise.”
The Dread Reckoning was a lawless bunch of renegades and miscreants. While Tavali were organized and had strict laws they were bound by, the DR had nothing that came close to resembling a legal code. Or even a code of decency. Theirs was a society of derelicts and a free-for-all when it came to following rules.
Even their own.
“They’re not as bad as you think.”
Yeah, right. He didn’t believe that for a heartbeat. “Then why are you Tavali?”
“It was the only way I could keep working and have some semblance of safety for Rian. Since Tavali and the DR hate each other so much, no one would ever look for my child to be among my number one rival organizaton.”
She had a point. But he still didn’t like it.
“Does he know about me?”
“I would never have deprived him of that. He’s known all his life who his father is and why he has to remain hidden.”
Those words meant a lot more to him than she could imagine. She could have easily told their son nothing about him. The fact that she hadn’t kept him a secret from Florian …
“Thank you.”
Ember went stiff as Bastien wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Even more disturbing, he laid his head on her shoulder like he used to do when they dated. As if he were cherishing the moment with her, and she was the lifeline he needed to stay afloat.
“Can you ever forgive me for hurting you?” His whispered words were like a shout in the silence.
Biting her lip, she ran her fingers down his scarred forearm. “A part of me wants to.”
“And the other?”
“Wants to beat you till you bleed.”
She could feel his smile against her shoulder. “I’ll be happy to strip myself naked and let you spank me all you want, especially if you’re naked, too.”
A groan came out before she could stop it. “I see you’re still twisted.”
“Only around your pinkie. You always had control of me when no one else did.”
“Yeah … that’s why you slept with my sister, right?”
He went ramrod stiff and pulled away so fast it sent a chill over her body. All humor and sweetness evaporated as his mood took a sinister bend.
“What?” she teased. “No cute comeback?”
“Not really.” There was no mistaking that tone.
Ember turned to stare at him in the darkness. He was hiding something. She knew that ominous aura intimately. “What aren’t you saying?”
Pain played across his features before he sighed quietly. “I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Sleep with Alura that first time.”
Her jaw went slack. “What?”
A tic started in his cheek as he refused to meet her gaze. “She was proud to tell me all about it the day they branded me Ravin. Looked me right in the eyes and spilled the whole story on how she’d drugged me in the bar, got me home to her place, and stripped my clothes off so that in the morning I’d think we had been together. At first, they were going to blackmail me for creds if I didn’t call her for another date. Then she concocted the pregnancy, knowing that my parents would force a marriage if I didn’t propose on my own.”
Ember cursed in her head as she realized what her sister had done. That bitch! “She heard us.”
“Heard what?”
“Me and Kindel, when we were first talking about plans for the baby.” Tears choked her as it dawned on her that none of this had been his fault. Alura had connived against them both.
From the beginning.
And if she ever laid hands to her sister again, she’d choke the life out of her for it. “Those are almost verbatim my words as to why I didn’t want to tell you I was pregnant.”
He let out a fierce growl. “We both played into their hands.”
“No,” she choked. “My fears did. I should have believed in you, Bas.”
“And I should have been sober that night she came to the bar and tried to cheer me up after our fun encounter in the landing bay. But I let it get to me.”
“I shouldn’t have attacked you like that. I’m so sorry.”
He snorted. “Yeah, you should be.” In spite of the harshness of his words, there was a teasing note that took the edge off them and let her know he wasn’t being serious. “That dinner date with Alura was the worst night ever. Honestly, I had no interest in her. We didn’t even make it through the second course before I took her home and left her there—without so much as a peck on the cheek.”
A part of her wanted to deny the truth of that, but she knew him well enough to recognize the fact he wasn’t lying. Not to mention abandoning dates like that was one of the things he was famous for.
If he learned a woman was out with him for no other reason than he was a visir or if she showed more interest in his money or family than him, date over. There had even been well-publicized cases of him leaving and his security detail being sent in to escort his dates home.
Bastien didn’t play with people’s emotions.
Except for hers.
“Why did you ever go on that date?”
He laughed bitterly. “You were supposed to pitch a fit when I called that night to ask your permission, and tell me no. Show some emotion that there was hope for us. Instead, you gave me permission to date and, or, screw your sister. Those words cut me to the bone. So I thought I’d go to dinner, spend a few hours with her to agitate you, and be done with it all. But Alura got on my nerves so badly by the time we arrived at the restaurant that had she been anyone other than your sister, I’d have taken her straight home. In the end, after we were married and I came to the conclusion she hated me, I figured it was divine retribution for me trying to hurt you when I should have just been patient and given you the time you asked for.”
“Why weren’t you?”
“Damn, Ember. How can you ask that? We were practically living together. You had more stuff in my barracks cell than I did. Then I come back from PT after suffering through my brother’s reaming over my pouting about you to find that you’d cleaned out all my stuff and had me transferred over to my zusa’s division. I felt gutted. In the blink of an eye, you were gone from my life and I didn’t know why, or what I’d done to push you away.”
Bastien broke off as he relived that moment when he’d faced the corporal. It was like Ember had never existed. Like he didn’t matter enough to her for her to waste a moment of her time to explain to him what he’d done that was so awful. She was just gone from his life. He’d felt violated.
Worse, he’d felt abandoned.
“You wouldn’t even throw me a bone. After months with nothing from you, and after Alura had told me that you’d never really been interested in me—had only gone out because you were afraid of what I’d do to you and your family if you didn’t and you wanted to hurt her for the fact that you’d caught her sleeping with your ex … I figured she must be right. How else could you leave like that, without so much as a backward glance?”
Ember winced as she heard the pain in his deep voice. Damn Alura for knowing both their vulnerabilities. Her sister had put her lies right where they could do the most damage. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“Forgive you? Ember, you’re the only thing that got me through this nightmare.”
Leaning back against him, she closed her eyes and tried to come to terms with all the deceptions and years that had separated them.
Because she was an idiot.
“So where does this leave us?”
Bastien’s grip on her tightened. “I don’t know. But now that you’ve told me about Florian, I can’t let you fight with me. I won’t take his mother from him.”
“I won’t let you fight alone, and if you don’t stop Barnabas and clear your name, we have no future anyway. He’ll kill Florian if he ever finds him.”
Bastien winced at the truth. Barnabas was crazy and had even killed his brother, Jackson, when he feared Jackson might turn against him after the slaughter and expose him.
Not to mention that with Bastien’s conviction still in place, Florian was the rightful heir of Kirovar and should be on the throne. They could legitimately overthrow Barnabas, and his uncle knew it.
It was a miracle and said a lot about Ember’s exceptional skills that she’d been able to keep their son alive and safe all these years. Especially given how normal he’d sounded when they talked. Like any other child in the universe.
Instead, Florian should be in the palaces where Bastien had grown up. He should be spoiled rotten to his little core.
I screwed up everyone’s life.…
Sighing from the guilt of it all, Bastien wished he could go back in time and slap the absolute shit out of himself. “How did this become our lives, Em? All I wanted was to be holed up on some beach, drinking, and making love to you till I happily died of old age, in my sleep.”
Ember laughed at the mere thought of that as Bastien’s life. “You were never that man, Bastien. Since the day I met you, you’ve had your balls to the wall and one foot in the grave. It’s why your mother was so afraid for you. She knew you were suicidal.”
Yet for Ember, he’d have settled down. He’d been willing to give up his career to marry her. He’d even faced down her parents to date her.
A smile tugged at her lips as she remembered the first time her father and Bastien had faced off.
“Captain?” Her father had sneered at Bastien’s patch, and left off the impressive part of Bastien’s status.
“First rank,” Bastien had corrected in a move that was as stupid as it was audacious.
Her father had arched a brow at that. “You getting lippy with me, soldier?”
“No, sir. My lips are reserved solely for your daughter.”
Her father had started for his throat. But her mother had caught him before he could kill Bastien. “Brandon … calm down.” Then she’d turned to face Bastien with an evil glint in her eyes. “Are you trying to insult us?”
“No, ma’am. Just really nervous. Sadly, whenever I’m nervous, I get stupid, and things come out of my mouth that even I cringe over.”
Her father had finally laughed. “Well, at least he’s honest.”
“I am that, Commander. Again, stupidly so. And when it comes to Ember, I have a special level of moron that’s reserved solely for her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Bastien had shrugged. “That I’d jump into a decaying hole on fire during a massive bombing run and risk a building coming down on me to keep her safe and to protect whatever she loves.”
Clapping him on the back, her father had handed him an ale. “Good man. For that, I’ll let you live.”
Ember had never known anyone to charm her parents, before or after Bastien. Out of all their daughters’ boyfriends, he was the only one they’d ever liked. Him and Tasi the only two that her parents had welcomed in as their own.
Like it or not, he is family. Through their son, she would be forever tied to him.
With that thought on her mind, she leaned forward to reset his nav system.
“What are you doing?”
“Before you take off after Barnabas, don’t you want to meet your son?”
“More than anything.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
Bastien stared at her in complete disbelief that she was willing to do this. That she’d actually given him a son and hadn’t abandoned their child. It would have been so easy to give him up and free herself. Instead, she’d risked her life and that of her family to keep his son safe.
That was why he loved her so.
I’m a father.…
And with that thought came a whole new fear. “Can I ask a favor?”
“I’m not having sex with you in a fighter. You can forget it, buddy, right now. You’re not that cute in a flightsuit.”
He laughed at her droll tone. “Technically you’ve already done that. Years ago. Many times. So I am that cute in and out of a flightsuit. But that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”
She dipped her gaze down to his groin, which was painfully swollen and woefully obvious. “No?”
He shook his head. “Can we not tell Florian that I’m his father?”
“Why?”
“In case I die, I don’t want him to have to cope with the pain of it. I’d rather just be a passing stranger he meets and never thinks about again.”
Ember choked at his words and the thoughtfulness. Bastien had always been that way—except for when he’d accepted Alura’s invitation to dinner.
You can’t hold that against him.
Well, she could. Yet in all fairness to him, he had called her first, and had she not been such a bitch when he asked about it, he wouldn’t have done it. So as much as she’d like to pin it all on his shoulders, she really couldn’t.
She shared as much blame in the fiasco as he did. Unlike the other men in her past, he hadn’t acted behind her back. He’d done everything above board. It’d always been one of his more endearing qualities.
And against her common sense, she leaned back in his arms so that she could touch the dimple on his chin that their son shared. In fact, they shared a lot of traits, which was strange given that they’d never met. “He knows what you look like, Bas.”
“How?”
How? Really? All he had to do was look in a mirror. The child was a clone of his father—which had been extremely painful for her at times. They even had the same warped sense of humor, and the need to lip off at the worst possible time. It’d given her a whole new respect for Bastien’s parents and the fact that they hadn’t drowned him as a child.
She smirked at him. “I gave him a photo of you, long ago. He keeps it in his room, next to his bed. And every night after he says his prayers where he asks the gods to watch over you, he kisses it goodnight and talks to you until he falls asleep.”
Raw torment shadowed his eyes before he reached to redo the settings.
Ember stopped him. “Don’t. Let him meet you. Just once. It’s all he’s ever wanted. You both need this, especially if you’re bent on suicide.”
Bastien wasn’t so sure about that, because as she said, he didn’t think he’d make it out of this alive, but he didn’t want to argue with her anymore. He’d done that enough for ten lifetimes.
Honestly, he just wanted to be inside her. To make love to her until the universe ceased to exist.
And every heartbeat that passed with her squeezed in front of him was its own version of hell.
“I should have taken a bigger ship.”
Ember smiled at the deepness of his tone. “That’ll teach you to be practical.”
She stared at how tense his grip was on the controls. “How long has it been?”
“Since?”
“You had sex?”
Was she serious? “With someone else?”
She squeaked at the question. “Of course. Why would I ask about solo practice?”
His cock jerked at the mere mention of the word as disgust filled him. “Hell, I don’t know.”
Scowling, she leaned back so that she could meet his gaze through his crash helmet as she had yet to put hers back on. “What do you mean you don’t know? You were there, weren’t you?”
He snorted at the ridiculous question that she should know the answer to. “I’m Ravin, Em. If anyone sees the mark on my stomach, they’ll know that I’m wanted. Can’t take the risk.”
“Are you telling me that you haven’t been with anyone since Alura divorced you?”
“Since long before that.”
Both her eyebrows shot up. “Pardon?”
“You have to know that we didn’t have an amicable marriage.” And their divorce had been spectacularly violent, given that her parting gift to him had been a death sentence.
“No … Alura never said anything other than how happy she was and how much you loved her.”
In her dreams only …
“Happy because I seldom went to where she lived and she had all the creds she could spend. We consummated the marriage and then I tried to make the marriage work, but…”
“But what?”
“I called her Ember one night early on, and she basically banned me from her bed.”
“You’re kidding!”
He shook his head as a particularly nasty memory over Alura’s violent reaction went through him. She’d assaulted him like a pissed-off lorina, and left him with bleeding welts on his neck, arms, and chest. “She was convinced you and I were cheating to get back at her.” He slid his sleeve up so that she could see the four deep scars on his forearm. “That was from one of her more stellar tantrums. She’d scratch and bite every time I got near her. So I learned to stay away for fear she was going to cry rape or something worse.”
Ember flinched as she realized something worse had definitely happened. She’d accused him of murder and seen him innocently convicted of it. “Why didn’t you divorce her, then?”
“To what end? You were done with me. Last thing I wanted was to listen to my family tell me how disappointed they were that I couldn’t even manage to hold on to my pleb wife for more than a year. Quin was married almost fifteen years. Lil nine. And theirs had been political marriages, assigned to them by my father. They’d have barbecued me had I filed for divorce. Especially my mother. She was traditional Ikarian.”
“Meaning?”
“A Triosan religion where no one gets divorced. Ever. It’s why my uncle Aros never married. He wanted Cairie as his wife, and if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life locked into a loveless marriage with someone else. He kept waiting for her to abdicate her throne and live with him.”
That made her feel terrible for both of them. “I am so glad I’m not royal.”
Bastien tsked at her. “Ah, baby, you’re wrong about that.”
“Why? Because I had your son?”
He shook his head. “You were always a monidara to me,” he said, using the Kirovarian term for empress.
Ember hated the effect those words had on her. The weepy feeling they awoke. She’d forgotten how sweet her irascible captain could be.
Just like his son.
“I hate you so much, Bastien.”
“Most people do … Andarions, too.”
Bastien quirked an eyebrow as she switched on autopilot and then turned around in the seat to squat on her knees, between his. “What are you doing?”
Ember pulled his helmet off, without answering. The expression on his face was comical. He looked as if he expected her to slap him.
Instead, she loosened his hair until it fell free from its restraint over his shoulders and she could run her fingers through it. A tiny smile played at the edges of those lush, masculine lips.
“You look so feral with this hair.”
“I am feral.”
“No.” She toyed with the soft strands, reveling in the way they slid across her palm. “You’re still that man who jumped into a hole to play hero. The lunatic who scaled a building without the proper gear because you thought I’d been captured.”
“Yeah, I should have got more intel before I jumped the gun on that one.”
It wouldn’t have mattered. Rash was his middle name. Carless.
Most of all, loving.
Ember traced his lips with her fingers as her memories ran loose. He’d been so scared for her. By the time she heard what had happened, he’d rescued six of their soldiers. “You did get an accommodation and medal out of it.”
She wrapped her legs around his waist.
He sucked his breath in sharply as the center of her body collided with his groin. “Don’t toy with me, Ember. This is cruel.”
“I’m not toying with you.” She slowly unfastened his flight suit. The new scars on his torso tugged at her heart. But nothing prepared her for the horrific Ravin brand that ran from the center of his chest to his pubic bone. That had to have been excruciating. She couldn’t imagine how much it must have burned.
And then they’d turned him loose with it, still raw and bleeding, to fight for his life.
Damn them for that!
Wincing, she ran her hand over the additional scars that fell in horrific lines across both of his sides. She couldn’t imagine what had caused those. “What did they do to you?”
His heart pounded under her fingertips as his hazel gaze burned into her. “They tried to make me confess to killing my family.”
And no one could make Bastien Cabarro say or do anything he didn’t want to. “You were ever the most aggravating man alive.”
He leaned his head back as she nibbled at his jaw.
Ember savored the taste of him and forced herself not to sink her teeth into his flesh and draw blood as she remembered him at his wedding.…
To her sister.
How could she be so angry and hungry for him at the same time?
But the truth was she hadn’t been near another man in so long she could barely recall the name of her last boyfriend. Most men fled the moment they heard she had a son.
The rest, the minute they met her insane family. Indeed, her sisters scared off everyone.
Bastien had taken their open hostility toward him as a personal challenge. One by one, he’d targeted her sisters until he made them like him.
She still didn’t know how he’d managed. Especially Brand. She hated everyone.
But not Bastien.
His hands trembled as he opened her jacket and shirt until he could touch her breasts. The heated look in his eyes stole her breath. The raw hunger there was tangible. And when he dipped his head down to taste her, she growled at how good his mouth felt against her flesh. She cupped his face in her hands, relishing the sensation of his prickly whiskers scraping her palms.
How she’d missed him. And when he dipped his hand down to gently finger her she cried out in bliss.
He pulled back to stare down at her. “You’re right. I hate this fighter, because right now, I really want to taste you.”
Laughing, she shrugged her top off, then the two of them struggled with her pants. “Agreed. Next time, a bigger ship. How did we do this before?”
“Like this.” He slid her pants down until she was naked in his lap.
“Just so you know, Bas, if you get a call, I’m going to kill you.”
He snorted at her threat. “Don’t worry. I can promise you there’s no way I’ll answer. Besides, I don’t have anyone who would bother.”
Those words saddened her because she knew he wasn’t joking. Bastien had always been a loner. That had been her greatest surprise about him when they first started dating. Because of the hatchet job reporters had done against him where they ran with unverified rumors, she’d thought him a monster party animal who had dozens of friends around him at all times.
But he’d been burned so many times by people cozying up to him due to his fame and money, just so that they could be in the papers or have stories to tell to others, he’d been highly cautious about so-called friendships. Very few got past his defenses and were allowed to see the side of him that she’d known.
And that she’d cherished most.
He’d been hers alone.
Bastien sucked his breath in at how good it felt to hold Ember again. To have her hands and body sliding against his. It’d been so long since he last had any sort of tenderness. Had the scent of a woman on his skin …
It took everything he had not to rush this. And at the same time, he wanted to take as long as possible to savor every bit of it. Her scent. Her touch. Her taste. He wanted to brand all of it into his memory so that if she threw him away again, he’d have something to hold on to. Fresh memories that weren’t faded by time.
Closing his eyes, he groaned as she nibbled her way down his throat. In all his life, no one had ever touched him the way she did. Not just his skin. She penetrated all the way to his soul.
And when she finally slid herself onto him, he almost came instantly. It took everything he had to stay in check.
“You okay, baby?”
Biting his lip, he nodded. “Seeing stars.”
She laughed as she slowly rode him.
Bastien lifted his hips, driving himself even deeper into her body. Every molecule was on fire as pleasure dug its heels into him. This was where he wanted to stay for eternity.
And when she sank her nails into his back and kissed his lips, he couldn’t contain himself anymore. He came in a blinding wave.
Luckily she followed with him.
Breathless, he held her, waiting for his heart rate to slow. “I thought I was in trouble, there, for a minute.”
She lifted his chin until their gazes locked. “You almost were. But I would have forgiven you … this time.”
“That’s not what I want you to forgive me for, Elskamun.”
Ember choked on a sob at his use of her old nickname that he’d given her years ago.
He dropped his gaze to the stretch marks on her abdomen that were left behind from birthing their son. “I wish I could have been with you.”
“You didn’t miss much. I cursed you the entire time. And your parents and ancestors.”
Grinning, he leaned to kiss her belly. “I’m warning you now that if I survive taking down Barnabas, I’m going to ask you to marry me again.”
“Bas—”
He broke her words off with another kiss. “It’s okay, Elskamun. You can say no, but you can’t stop me from asking.”
She started to speak, but the alarms on the fighter went off. “What’s that?”
Bastien scowled at the panel. “Shit! Someone has their cannons locked on us. That’s their targeting system. We’re about to be blasted.”