Heart Journey

by Robin Owens

  Del stood beside him, clapping, then she reached into the pocket of her trous and took out some folded bills with golden edges. Shunuk set his teeth carefully around them, hopped from his chair to weave through the crowd and drop the gilt into a stone urn on the stage.

  A ripple of laughter and applause followed Shunuk, but the musicians nodded to him and squinted out from the brightly lit stage into the dimness of the club. Impossible to make out people from that vantage point, but the whole quartet bowed.

  Shunuk barked and headed for the door. Though the crowd settled, Del remained standing. She smiled at him, then sighed.

  He’d have liked to think the sigh was for him but figured it was for the delight at the music. Her body seemed looser. “I must go now,” she said with regret in her tones. “I have an early-morning appointment.”

  “Can I take you home? My glider is behind the theater. I wish more of your company.”

  After a pause, she replied, “I’d like that. Thank you.”

  When she preceded him, he set his fingertips on the small of her back, enjoyed the surge of desire when they touched.

  On the way out, Raz stopped to hand additional coins to the doorman for the service and the musicians. It was obvious that Del was a member of the club and ran a tab.

  People yet danced in the park as they passed. Once again Raz had taken Del’s hand. Walking hand in hand with her was a simple pleasure he couldn’t forego. If he was with Del, he’d be touching her, linked with her through more than just the emotional bond forming between them.

  When they reached the street across from the theater rectangle, Raz was within spell-calling distance of Cherry. She’d been returned in perfect condition.

  He stopped Del by slipping his arm around her waist, pulling her close. She didn’t object and Raz’s blood pulsed at the thought of a good night kiss. She wouldn’t invite him inside her home, but at least they’d savor another hungry kiss.

  Cherry zoomed up and Del exclaimed. Even the tough wilderness woman wasn’t immune to a bright and gleaming red sports glider. He lifted the door for her, and the scent of new furrabeast leather wafted out.

  She sniffed and slid into the single passenger seat. He walked around the glider with a grin. He was impressing the woman, and he liked that. Once inside, he gave Del’s address and Cherry slid into the night. He touched a button and the speed slowed.

  “Very pretty car,” Del said.

  “Thank you, a gift from my parents. Cherry, please play jazz.”

  More jazz floated on the air.

  Del chuckled. “Your glider has a name.”

  “Wouldn’t you name yours?” He leaned closer, wishing for the first time the vehicle had a bench seat.

  “My stridebeasts have names, of course . . . but a glider? I don’t know.” She shook her head.

  He took her hands, brought one, then the other to his lips. Had he felt a throb of desire from her through their bond? He hoped so. Turning one of her hands over, he kissed her wrist, swore he could feel the rapid beat of her heart. He let the tip of his tongue touch her, taste her. Sweet saltiness, herbs, Del.

  She flinched, and he knew it couldn’t be from fear. Overwhelming desire? Good, because his body was heating enough to simmer the thoughts from his brain. He kissed her other wrist and her pulse picked up, or maybe that was his own. “We have a mutual attraction.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you avoided me?”

  She withdrew her hands. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  He wasn’t stupid enough to say “sex.”

  “I don’t want to be a few-week fling easily forgotten by a sophisticated man,” she said. “You play by different rules here in Druida. I’m not accustomed to playing at all. When I want sex and a man is available, I have sex. Then we go our separate ways . . .” Her voice turned harsher. “I don’t want you using me . . . for any reason.”

  Raz sat up straight, met her gaze. “I wouldn’t. Only use you as you used me. Equally. Passionately. To discover the pleasure we will have together.” He ran his forefinger along her jaw. “We have a bond, don’t we? An attraction and a bond.” An image of his HeartMate dreams flickered through his mind, vanished. Imagination. This was reality.

  “I want to have sex with you,” she said.

  He shuddered. “Yes. But I want more. I want to spend time with you. You are different from anyone I’ve known.”

  She turned so she was looking forward, not angled toward him. “I’ve spent much of my time on the road, in the wilderness. Alone. I don’t play games.”

  “Oh, Del, don’t you understand that I know that?” He took one of her hands from her lap, linked his fingers with hers. “We have an attraction, a desire, a bond. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Is it too much for you, Raz? Too intense?”

  He let a breath out on a laugh. “You see? You know. We know that it’s intense, not simple and not unimportant between us. Already.”

  Again he reached for her other hand, took it, twined his fingers with hers. Flair, feelings, cycled between them.

  He could sense the liquid heat in the core of her body. How she liked looking at him. His aspect and form pleased her. That triggered his arousal and he knew she’d sense the thickening of his shaft, his yearning for her. “Only you,” he said.

  She laugh-coughed. “Never enough sexual encounters in the wild. Either no sex, or lots for a few nights. Still, I like to know who I’m rolling around with.”

  He wasn’t too pleased that she’d reduced his romanticism to a basic urge. He pressed their palms together, and they fit. As closely as their bodies would fit. “I know that you love jazz and have watched my holos and attended my show. You said you admired my work. I admire you. I’m certain that when I see your work, I will admire it, too.” He straightened their hands until he could nibble her fingertips. “I want to learn you, Del.” He left it at that, let the link reinforce the fact that his body ached for sex with her, that his emotions were as confused about her as ever but his predominant feeling was sheer fascination.

  He felt her need, deeper than he’d anticipated, as if it were a great whirlpool that could drag him down. If she let it. Which she wouldn’t. She was a woman in control.

  But it would be interesting to be involved in an intense relationship, one that was emotionally dangerous.

  Or that could be a rationalization.

  He was already hooked.

  “The D’Elecampane gates are ahead,” said Cherry, beginning to slow. They reached tall cobblestone stacked pillars and Del lowered her window and murmured a lilting spell. The gates opened. A few minutes later—too soon—they were in front of her house. It was three stories of red brick, a pleasant but uninspiring home, though he didn’t think Del felt about the place the way a person should feel about their home.

  “Did you make a landscape globe for yourself?” Raz asked. Now that he knew that was her talent, he noticed more of the orbs around.

  Del opened her door and hopped from the glider. “No.”

  He wasn’t about to let her go into the house without a kiss. “Too bad,” he said, using a long stride to catch up with her before she set her hand on the door latch.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He slipped one arm around her waist, his other hand curved around the back of her head, his fingers weaving through her silky curls. He brought his body to hers, bent his head, and took her mouth.

  Del had known he would kiss her, of course. Had let Raz make the moves. If she went after him the way she wanted, she’d scare him away.

  Then her length was against his and he was taller and wider and the passion coming from him engulfed her, torched her as if she were a twist of paper in flames. Even as she stroked the length of his back, snugged her lower body into his, feeling the thick length of his shaft, she fought for control. She could not touch him, woo him, respond to him the way she did in their erotic dreams. If she did, he’d withdraw and she might as well ride out of
town.

  So she gave herself up to fine sensation and rubbed against him, teasing them both, knowing that she wouldn’t allow herself to touch him in person or in dreams tonight. She sucked at his tongue until he groaned, felt the connection between them double and redouble. Knew she was an instant away from lifting her legs and wrapping them around his waist, teleporting them both to her bedroom.

  She nipped his lip, and when he hauled her even closer instead of releasing her, she pushed against him, wrenched from his clasp. Jumped away from the heated desire that raked them both with needy claws. Now was not the time. Too soon, too soon.

  She gasped and panted for breath, aware only of his taste, dark sweet man, and leaned against the door. “Had a good time with you,” she said, grabbed the latch of the door, yanked it open, then teleported immediately to her waterfall and ordered it cold.

  As she stood dripping in her clothing, she felt his anger—at his own lack of finesse. When she checked the connection between them, it was stronger than before. She ignored the fact that it yet showed red with arousal . . . for them both.

  Thirteen

  The next morning Antenn and Doolee arrived to be shown the Elecampane HouseHeart. To Del’s surprise—and she thought Antenn’s, too—Doolee recalled the HouseHeart door was hidden behind a false no-time panel in the pantry. The child knew the pattern to open both the door to the slide to the corridor below, and the knocking rhythm for the HouseHeart door. Though she wasn’t old enough to say the Words correctly to enter the obsidian bubble itself.

  Antenn was fascinated by the spherical room, particularly the hot spring in the bottom that was covered with vented thick glass that Doolee crawled along, patting as if she wanted it open. Though Del didn’t reveal the spell to slide away the glass, she didn’t discount the children’s cleverness and made Antenn promise to get antidrown spells on both himself and Doolee—and have them learn to swim.

  A tapping came, then Raz’s voice. He was up early. “This is Raz Cherry, requesting permission for the gates to the estate to be opened. Del . . .” His voice rolled the word like a caress that had been lingering on his tongue. “How about an outing with me? Brunch?”

  Del felt her skin heat under Antenn’s gaze. She walked stiffly over to a scrybowl set on a tall pillar. With a touch on the rim, she connected to the scrystone at the front gate.

  Raz’s visage rippled in the water, more handsome than ever. He was smiling cheerfully, a weathershield nimbus around him. The rain pattered behind him, soft but steady.

  Del blocked any sight of the HouseHeart or Antenn. “I’m sorry, Raz, I’m busy at the moment.” She hesitated. “There’s a gazebo in the gardens if you want to wait. It’s down a raked gravel path and shielded from the rain. I won’t be too much longer.” She waved a hand over the bowl and the gates opened.

  “Is he your HeartMate?” Antenn was frowning, hands on hips.

  “Not all of my business is your business, too.”

  The boy’s mouth tightened but he said nothing more. Del had no doubt that he’d spill everything about Raz to his parents. She just hoped they all kept their mouths shut.

  Antenn picked up Doolee, who struggled and whined as he walked to the door. “Glassheart,” he said the opening Word. Nothing happened.

  “The exit phrase is ‘through a glass darkly,’ ” Del said.

  The door slid open and they walked to the steep upward tunnel. His mouth opened, closed. “How do we get up?”

  Doolee had already wriggled from his grasp, turned around, and set her bottom near the slide.

  “Ooo, ooo, ooo!” ordered Doolee. She put her arms around Shunuk, who’d sat down near her.

  Del moved toward Doolee. Antenn stepped aside. Del sat down, put her legs around Doolee and Shunuk, and held on, grinning at Antenn. “Up, up, up!”

  They were whooshed up backward, Doolee chortling, to the floor of the pantry.

  Dizzy, Shunuk said and staggered away—faster than Del thought he should, then out of the kitchen Fam door toward the gardens.

  Entertain Raz, she sent to him mentally. He yipped assent.

  Del stood with the child—Doolee wanted to slide back down—and moved into the kitchen until she heard Antenn’s shout and he was in the pantry. She let Doolee down as soon as he’d locked the door, then she removed a beverage from a no-time and handed it to him. “This drink holds the best silence spell made.”

  His grin faded and he matched her serious expression.

  “On your honor, as a nobleman, do you promise not to divulge any Elecampane secrets you know now or learn in the future to anyone else unless I am dead and you are in peril of your life or dying?”

  He paled, set his lips, nodded, and repeated the conditions, then drank the mixture down. Surprise came to his eyes as he licked foam from his lips. “It was good.”

  Del smiled. “I tried.” She jerked her head toward the kitchen entrance. “I’ll show you the journals—”

  But Doolee was screaming, tugging on Antenn’s full-legged trous, reaching up for the cup.

  “No, baby, you can’t have any,” he said.

  She stuck her bottom lip out, narrowed her eyes, and said, “No, no, no!”

  Del scooped her up and got images from the little girl’s mind: Elfwort playing with her in the kitchen. Her mother and father and Doolee sliding down into the HouseHeart, and Inula.

  “Shhh, shhh.” Del turned the child into her shoulder and hurried through the door onto the terrace where the rain added a comforting swish. Del glanced over her shoulder to see Antenn following them.

  “She’s overtired,” he said.

  “Yes, and thinking of her lost Family.” As Del was. Useless regrets; she wouldn’t have changed her life unless she’d been told of the future tragedy. She loved her life. Too bad she hadn’t realized she’d loved the people in her Family a lot, too. “We’ll look at the journals later.” They returned to the house through the sitting room doors and went to a teleportation pad. Doolee fussed, tears trickling down her cheeks, sobbing.

  Antenn took her and she buried her face in his thin shoulder, not looking at Del. Hiding from the past?

  Del couldn’t blame her. She pulled a landscape globe from her pocket, shook it and handed it to Doolee. “Here’s my gift to Cordif that you can give him.” Dooley peeped out at her and took the globe.

  “D’Elecampane?” Antenn said, his brows down.

  “Yes?”

  “In the HouseHeart . . . I couldn’t sense the HeartStones.”

  Del smiled. “I could. They responded to both Doolee’s and your energies. They’ll be fine.”

  His breath expelled with a little spit. “Raz Cherry is your HeartMate.” He grinned. “That’s not an Elecampane secret I’m forbidden to tell.”

  Boys. How long had it been since she’d been around boys? Since she’d been a girl. “I’m sure that your parents will teach you the discretion that a FirstFamily son needs,” she said. “Merry meet,” she began the traditional good-bye.

  He stood straighter, rubbed his hand down Doolee’s back. “And merry part.”

  “And merry meet again.”

  He was gone before the sound of her voice was absorbed by the silence of the empty house.

  The image of Antenn and Doolee lingered. Children of the next generation. Both orphans given a good home and now sister and brother. But Doolee would vaguely recall her Family, even as she grew to look more like a female version of Elfwort.

  The past was sad, the present had to be lived and guided well for the future to prosper.

  And Raz waited for Del in the gazebo. She hoped he would be part of her future, soon.

  Del glanced down at her clothing and shrugged. She’d dressed in good leathers for her time with Antenn and Doolee. What she was most comfortable in, what reminded her who she had become once she’d left this place and her parents.

  Raz hadn’t seen her in her usual garb. May as well find out how he would react. She hid only that she was his HeartMate,
conforming to the laws of their society.

  She walked into the light rain, let it dampen her hair that would curl tightly, dew on her face . . . though the city air felt different than that of the wild. The city had more crafted Flair, more psi power from people. A benefit of city life for a change.

  Her leathers were treated both physically and magically to repel wet, so she wasn’t uncomfortable as she strode through the gardens. They’d been excruciatingly formal when her parents had been in charge, then Inula had shaped them to be more practical and useful, augmenting those of her own household. Some of the cuzes had loved to garden. She’d have to hire a trustworthy landscaping company when she left.

  Was she sure she would leave?

  Yes.

  When she reached the pretty octagonal gazebo, Raz was staring out into the distance at the starship, Nuada’s Sword, his back to her. Even that view gave her a jolt . . . to her sexuality and to her heart. Lean and proud of his body, that was Raz. Next to him, on the wide sill, was Shunuk.

  Raz turned and his smile melted her further, even though she knew he was using it for just that effect. His eyebrows winged up and he scanned her up and down. She was suddenly aware that though these were her better leathers, they had white scars where the butterscotch color had been ripped away by a branch, a slide down a rocky hill.

  “Did you take another job? Will you be leaving?” He frowned.

  She stopped on the lowest stair of the gazebo, sheltered from the rain, hooked her thumbs in her belt. “Do you care if I’m leaving soon?”

  “Yes.”

  He walked to her and boards creaked. He lifted both her hands, kissed them. “I want you, Helena, in my life and my bed.”

  “Nice leading-man line.”

  His expression darkened and his grip tightened on her hands. “It’s the truth. I’m not acting.”

  “But you could, Raz, and we both know it. I want honesty from you. You actors hide under masks so easily.”

  “I am and will be honest.” He gestured to the fancy greeniron table. A dark blue tablecloth draped it and pretty china and silver was set for two. He held out a chair.