“And Tenthil was the name he chose for you?” Abella asked.
“He said it was the name the Void whispered to him.”
She frowned. “The Void?”
He nodded. He’d told her enough already to earn himself a place at the bottom of the Well of Secrets; why stop now? “It is the entity to which the Order is dedicated. The nothingness between the stars. It is said to touch everything, to know everything…to be the ultimate keeper of secrets.”
“So…some kind of god, or a higher power. Do you believe in it?”
“When I was young.” He pressed his hand a little more firmly on her back, massaging the muscle beneath it. “But I have seen the true powers in the universe. I know where his secrets come from, and it is not the Void. He is arrogant, or mad. Both.”
Abella moved her hand to his face, lightly tracing one of his scars with her thumb. “I think you’ve proved yourself a capable hunter by now, don’t you? What name would you pick for yourself?”
He shifted his gaze to stare into her entrancing green eyes.
I can be whoever I choose.
The thought had never occurred to him, despite his rebellious nature, despite his resistance to the system into which he’d been thrust—he could define himself.
He lifted a hand and settled it on her cheek. “Tenthil. It became my own once it came from your lips.”
Her cheeks reddened, and she ducked her head down. He could feel her smile against his chest. “Tenthil it is then.”
Silence stretched between them again, and Tenthil closed his eyes, content to hold her close, to feel her body against his.
“What else do you remember from your home?” Abella asked.
He closed his eyes and released a long, slow breath. “Not much. More people like me. Grass stretching on and on, broken only by a river and a nearby forest. The trees had green and violet leaves. I remember…singing. Dancing. But not like yours.”
“What kind of dancing was it?”
“Wild,” he replied with a chuckle as the fragmented, unfocused memories flitted through his mind. “The people chanted and banged on drums, faster and faster, and the beat was so loud, so strong, that almost everyone had to move to it. And that’s what they did. Just…moved however they felt the song told them.”
Abella lifted her head, and Tenthil opened his eyes to see her smiling down at him.
“I think that’s the first time I heard you laugh,” she said.
He chuckled again; it felt good. “Me, too.”
Something in her eyes softened. “We have dances on Earth like what you described. I can almost imagine it.”
“Can everyone from your world dance like you?”
“There are lots of people who dance better than me. But no…only those who put years of practice into it can dance like I do.” She tilted her head, plucked up a strand of his hair, and twirled it around her finger. “I’ve loved dancing ever since I was little. My mom was a dancer, too, so I used to watch her all the time, fascinated by the way she moved. She retired early after having kids and started teaching classes. As soon as I could walk, I was dancing with her, always eager to learn more.”
Abella grinned. “My dad used to come home after work and see us practicing, and he’d pick me up and twirl me around and around and around. I was his little ballerina. After high school, I went to a performing arts school, hoping to eventually become a professional dancer. I was on my way back from a rehearsal the night I was taken.”
Though she spoke large in a universal speech, a few of her words—like ballerina—were in her native tongue, and his translator offered no satisfactory understanding of them. Fortunately, her story gave him enough information to infer her general meaning—dancing was her life. It was what she’d chosen, what she loved.
The first time he’d ever chased something for himself, something he desired, had been when he’d followed Abella down to the dance floor in Twisted Nethers.
“What is it like to have a family?” he asked. His own memories were so distant, his own experiences so different, that he couldn’t imagine it.
Her smile—which had fallen when she spoke of her kidnapping—returned, though it was not as wide or bright as it had been. “Like you’re never alone. It doesn’t matter if you’ve gone hours, days, or months without seeing each other, you know they’re always there. They uplift you, care for you, encourage you, and even if you don’t always get along, you know you still love each other.”
Tenthil’s jaw clenched. That was what he denied her by refusing to take her to the terran embassy. That was what his mate had longed for since she was taken, what she’d yearned for above all else. The emotions inside him, driven by primal instincts, were conflicting—he wanted her, needed her, could not let go of her, but he also wanted to make her happy. He wanted to fulfill her every desire. He wanted to take away her sadness and pain.
But he could not go to the terran embassy. If he gave her what she wanted—if he gave her that—he would lose her.
Abella cupped his cheek. “What’s wrong, Tenthil?”
“I’m not what you chose,” he said, forcing the words up from his ragged throat, “but I want to be all that to you.”
Tears welled in her eyes as she searched his face. There was conflict within them—longing, sadness, uncertainty, even a hint of affection, all in a chaotic, indecipherable swirl. Her lips parted as though to speak, but she closed them and leaned forward to brush them across his instead.
He wrapped his arms around her and slipped a hand into her dark hair, holding her closer and deepening the kiss. She opened to him, and their tongues met as they tasted one another.
Warmth kindled in his chest and spread through his body, coalescing into a flame deep in his belly. His cock pulsed and slowly hardened as his awareness of her—of her scent, taste, and feel—heightened.
Breaking the kiss, Abella opened her eyes and met his. She slid down his chest, spreading her thighs to either side of him as she sat up and positioned her sex against the tip of his shaft. Slowly, so slowly, she pushed down, taking him into her tight, wet heat.
Tenthil gritted his teeth and placed his hands on her hips, hissing with the sensation of her enveloping him.
She rose up on her knees and sank back down upon him just as slowly, over and over again. Her lashes fluttered, but she kept her eyes on his. What her movements lacked in speed and intensity they made up for in deliberate sensuality; with each thrust so prolonged, the resulting pleasure was amplified by a building sense of anticipation.
He lowered his gaze to the point where their bodies were connected. His fingers flexed as he released a growl; the sight of his cock—glistening with her nectar—sliding in and out of her sex rocketed his desire beyond anything in the known universe. It was the rawest evidence of what he knew in his heart—she was his.
Her thigh muscles trembled as a series of soft moans escaped her. She moved her hands to her chest, cupping her breasts as she continued her slow rise and fall, and her pace faltered as her breath quickened and her moans intensified.
“Tenthil,” she pleaded, her eyes dark with desire. “Love me.”
Love.
Tenthil understood what it meant only indirectly—the Master loved secrets, loved the Void; some of the acolytes seemed to love their work; Abella loved dancing and her family. Perhaps his parents had loved each other. But what did he really know of love other than that he longed for it from Abella, that the jumble of emotions he felt toward her might’ve been love?
He knew that he’d risked everything to have her, that he’d risk far more to keep her, that he’d make the choice to go to her again and again regardless of the consequences.
This was different than claiming a mate; this was deeper, on an even more primal level.
Love.
That was a true connection between souls, wasn’t it? Not all the races in the Infinite City talked about it, but enough did for Tenthil to have heard.
He sat up, guiding
her legs around his sides. Abella wrapped her arms around his neck as he rested his forehead against hers. He stared into her eyes, and she stared back. This moment was more than fucking, more than a claiming. It was a joining at the highest level. She hadn’t voiced what she wanted, but she was showing him with her expression, with her eyes, with her body.
And he wanted it, too. Wanted to know there was one person in all the universe he was closer to than anyone, that there was one person for whom he’d do anything, one person who would do anything for him.
He slid his hands to her ass and rocked her back and forth on his cock, continuing the slow, deliberate pace she had set, and watched her face as their mutual pleasure grew. He increased the speed only when the pressure in him bordered on pain.
Instinct bade him to claim her with his bite, but he held back, kissing her instead. Her wicked little tongue slid along his fangs to sample the venom flowing from them. When he felt the first stirrings of her climax, he rocked her harder, faster, and deeper, pushing her over the edge. The quivering of her tight sex dragged him along with her, plunging him into a chasm of ecstasy as his seed spilled into her.
Breaking the kiss, she screamed his name, and he roared hers as they came undone in each other’s arms.
Twelve
Abella ate from one of the bland-tasting food packages and watched Tenthil clean and reload the blasters. She focused on the play of tendons beneath his skin when his fingers moved, on the definition lines as the muscles of his forearms flexed and relaxed, on the way his claws extended when he curled his fingers just enough.
She’d felt those hands, those claws, all over her body.
A shiver raced through her, and she squeezed her thighs together to alleviate the sudden pulsing of her sex. If not for the soreness between her legs, she’d have stripped her clothes off just to feel his hands upon her again, to feel his lips brush over her skin, to experience the delicious friction of each ridge and knot as his cock moved inside her.
Hell, she was tempted to despite her soreness.
Abella’s gaze roamed to his face. His brow was creased in thought, and his cheek scars stood out starkly against his pale gray skin.
He was beautiful.
He’s my captor…
But he’s also my savior.
Her heart sped as his earlier words echoed in her head.
I am not what you chose, but I want to be all that to you.
Abella forced herself to look away from Tenthil. He was so…lonely. He’d given up everything, had turned against everyone he knew, for her. She was all he wanted. And in his eyes, she was already his.
She raised her hand and lightly touched the tiny puncture wounds in the tender spot between her neck and shoulder. They didn’t really hurt; whatever venom he’d injected into her had not only heightened her pleasure but had acted a healing agent, sealing the wounds far faster than they would have naturally.
If he continued biting her there, she’d likely end up with some scarring; she found the thought of it oddly appealing.
Sometimes, it was easy to forget Tenthil wasn’t human, that he’d been raised in an entirely different culture. The Order had shaped him, but whatever upbringing he’d had before that, with his own people, was far removed from Abella’s experiences. From what he’d told her, his species lived in hunter-gatherer tribes that would’ve been more at home on Earth ten thousand years ago than here in this city of claustrophobic technology.
The rules and values with which Abella had been instilled didn’t necessarily apply to Tenthil.
For all his intelligence and skill, Tenthil was still a member of that primitive, bestial race. The blood of an instinct-driven animal flowed beneath the veneer of training and education the Order had provided him; that instinct had pushed him to stake his claim upon her. A claim she couldn’t bring herself to reject.
What did that say about her?
She knew the rules, knew what was right and what was wrong. She didn’t have to accept his claim because of what he was or what he’d done for her. And yet…she did accept it. Tenthil wasn’t the one who’d taken her from home, wasn’t the one who’d enslaved and humiliated her, wasn’t the one who’d hurt her repeatedly over the last four years.
He’d saved her.
He just happened to have grown a little too attached along the way. And maybe she had, too.
Would it be so bad to be his mate, to claim him as hers?
Abella stilled.
I had sex with him.
The realization of what she’d done suddenly struck her. She had sex with an alien.
Fuck!
She’d had sex with an alien multiple times, and not once before now had she considered any of the potential consequences. Her birth control implant had expired two years ago.
Could he impregnate her? They were from two different species, so there was no way she could conceive his child…right?
Abella dropped her free hand to her belly.
Though she would’ve expected the very notion of carrying a half-alien child to scare the hell out of her, she found herself surprisingly calm as she thought about it. She wouldn’t lie to herself—it was scary, but not for the reasons it should have been. Their child would have been the most protected little thing in the entire universe thanks to Tenthil, but what kind of life would that child know? Constantly on the run, constantly under threat of death, never having peace…
What the hell is wrong with me? I should be thinking about getting home!
Had she given in so easily? Had she given up?
She slowly turned her gaze back toward Tenthil. Was it wrong to want him, too? Why couldn’t she go home and have Tenthil?
Would he want to go with her?
He lifted one of the blasters off the table and slid a fresh power cell into the breech. When he closed the compartment, the weapon made a soft click. He met her gaze as he placed the blaster on the table again and tilted his head. “You okay?”
“Huh?” she asked, mentally shaking herself. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
He dipped his chin, glancing at the hand she held over her stomach.
She looked down and yanked her hand away as though it’d been burned. “It’s nothing.” She nodded toward the weapons. “Are we…expecting company?”
Shit! Bad choice of words, Abella.
His gaze lingered on her middle for a moment longer. “Always.”
“They’ll never stop, will they?”
“When we are dead,” he replied, his frown at odds with his upturned scars, “or when he is.”
“Do…you intend to go after him?”
Tenthil’s silver eyes shifted to the weapons on the table. She’d seen him use them, had seen him take down larger, potentially stronger beings with only a knife, and didn’t doubt he was just as deadly with his bare hands when necessary.
Several seconds passed without an answer from him.
“Are you afraid, Tenthil?” she asked as gently as she could.
Tenthil sighed and averted his eyes. “I wasn’t, before. Even when I was young, I understood that my relationship with the Master would end with one of us dead by the other’s hand. Death never frightened me. But he knows who you are, Abella, and that…that is terrifying.”
Abella’s heart clenched, and something in her belly coiled tight. How could she remain unaffected when he said such things?
Setting aside the remainder of her food, she rose and walked toward him. He tilted his head back as she neared, and when she stood immediately before him, she cupped his cheeks between her hands and ran her thumbs over his scars.
“He can’t have me,” she said.
Tenthil wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “Never.”
Abella slid her hands up, combing her fingers through his hair as he rested his head against her stomach. “What are we going to do?”
“Supposed to be a forger in Undercity who can fool Consortium ID systems. We’re going to find him and get identification
chips made.” He drew back and looked up into her eyes. “Then we will be able to clear the checkpoints and get off this planet.”
“Why don’t we just go to a checkpoint? Wouldn’t they help us?” she asked, though in the back of her mind she couldn’t shake the memory of the borian peacekeeper who’d refused to aid her.
Lifting his arms, he took her hands in both of his, squeezing them gently. “You may make it. Your people have an embassy here, and you’ve only acted in self-defense. But me…”
He has no one.
“If you don’t have a chip, how could they know who you were? What you’ve done?” she asked.
“They wouldn’t. Not immediately. But they would detain me and start looking. I am careful, Abella, but I have worked for the Order for many years.”
“So they’d eventually find something, and it wouldn’t be good. And the Master is searching for you, too.”
“His web is wide and tangled,” Tenthil said, his voice hoarser with each word. “He has many contacts and connections in the Eternal Guard. He’d ensure I was dead before I revealed any of his secrets.”
Abella opened her mouth, meaning to ask if he’d take her home, if he’d go with her, but she stopped herself. She’d wait until they were closer to having a means of escape, until she knew if what they shared was more than lust or a passing infatuation.
She was already almost certain it was more. Far more.
“Why didn’t we get IDs when we came here?” she asked instead.
“We were brought here illegally. When someone comes here legally for the first time, they go through a Consortium checkpoint and are given three things—a universal translator implant, a mutative compound that allows their biology to adapt to conditions their race would not normally survive, and an identification chip that registers them within the Consortium systems.
“The organizations that traffic alien beings onto the planet usually administer the first two because they are necessary…but if people like us get an ID chip, it gives us a tool to get help. To escape. Property doesn’t have an identity. Pets aren’t people.” By the last few words, his voice was so raw that it was little more than a raspy release of air.
Silent Lucidity Page 19
