by Mills, Shae
Korba stood and stretched. The morning was still young, and he grabbed his shroud and headed out toward his chambers. He immediately went to Chelan’s bedside and looked down at her, her exquisiteness crying out to him as she lay in the gown undoubtedly made and adorned by her for him. But her embattled spirits still slept uneasily.
Korba crouched soundlessly by the side of the bed and laid his head next to her. He was motionless for a long time, listening to her shallow breaths and inhaling her sweet scent. He dared to softly call her name. But she remained unmoving, her vanquished body forsaking him as she continued to struggle with her conscience and her emotions. Korba rose sluggishly, his body feeling leaden as he left to resume his duties.
*****
The day was long, and as evening approached, Korba was becoming increasingly alarmed at the fact that Chelan had not stirred. He knew that she had eaten little at the Koll, and now she had gone all day without nourishment. When he could stand the situation no more, Korba turned his command over to Tarn and told him to seek relief from those eligible for third-in-command, coming to him only in an emergency.
Korba returned to his chambers and found Chelan unmoved from her morning position, her breathing sporadic. Korba sat on the bed and stroked her sequined hair, but still she did not respond. He ran a glass of water and placed it near the bed, knowing that she would have to drink soon. Then, accepting the inevitable, Korba again left for the comfort of his private room. There, he would rest until morning, and if Chelan had still not stirred, he would call Stose.
*****
Chelan awoke again, this time late at night, her eyes straining against the dark. The past day’s events played over and over in her mind, the impact on her heart and soul diminishing with each run-through.
She took a deep, wavering breath. Everything seemed so unreal. She wanted to go home. She wanted the familiarity and relative calm of her little blue planet. Then she berated herself, fully aware that what she really longed for was a tiny piece of her little stable world, for most of her planet was immersed in unrelenting upheaval. When all was said and done, she had just replaced one brutal reality with another. The only difference was that this one involved her directly.
Then her thoughts turned to Dar. How could he do that to her, or was her wish to have him just more of her selfishness? She had never wanted him to give up all for her, but she had always assumed that his love for her was so great that he would always be there for her if she needed him, both as a friend and as a lover. Had she been so wrong all along? Had she simply been another woman with whom to lie? Or was that the problem despite his words? Was the fact that she had made love to Korba and now Fremma and not him the true reason for his departure? After all, he had intimated as much at the Koll.
Chelan closed her eyes tight as his parting words burned into her head. Then she pictured him returning to RIBUS 8 after the Koll, burying himself in the flesh of multiple willing women. She groaned and clutched at her head, trying to force the images away. But they assaulted her relentlessly: Iceanean hands coursing over the body she knew so well, kissing him, sucking him, fucking him hard and endlessly, and she flipped onto her side and coiled up into a tight ball of anguish.
Her fists dug into her temples as she panted for air and tried to regain control. Images surged unbidden into her tortured psyche. She saw him plunging into woman after woman as they writhed with the pleasure he afforded him, his body gleaming with the moisture born of lust. Then at last, mercifully, her heart solidified to stone, and she forced him to wither and die within her. To her tattered soul, he was gone, dead, only to be resurrected in the arms of passionate prostitutes who would further defile him. Chelan knew that deep down her venomous stance was that of self-preservation. But nonetheless, it made her heart immune to him, if only for a little bit.
She rolled to her back and braced herself for the next round. Fremma was another matter. He was not lost to her, but the sanctions Korba had placed on her in regard to him stabbed at her own self-perception. She felt as though she had been adulterous, the guilt and pain of her infidelity trickling acridly through her veins. How could she ever be with him again and not feel that she was cheating on Korba? Iceanean standards be damned. The men she had ensnared seemed as confused about their morality as she. How could she ever adjust to one world or the next if the rules of engagement were constantly in flux? She had reached the point where she just wanted to be alone with Korba forever, never having to lay sight on either Fremma or Dar again.
Then her mind turned to the Koll. The look on Korba’s face when she walked through the doors came back to her, and the sludge in her veins finally began to dissolve. She needed a constant in her life, and that constant had to be him.
Pushing her stiff body up, she turned and let her slender legs hang off the edge of the bed. Gradually, she stood, and then she noticed the water. Suddenly, she was aware of her intense thirst, and she drank quickly. Then she looked to the bed and realized that Korba had indeed not stayed with her, adhering to her wishes.
She looked down at herself and slipped out of her beautiful gown, wondering if he had actually noticed it at all, or whether he had assumed that someone had given it to her. She shook herself free of such nebulous and unproductive thoughts and tried to focus on the present. She shivered in the cool air as she placed the gown carefully over the back of a chair. Then, slowly, she removed the sequins from her tousled hair and let them drop to the floor.
Shuffling toward the stairs, she entered the Command Center, its lights dim, the room empty. Unconcerned about her nakedness, she moved toward the workout area to have a shower. She assumed Korba was on the Bridge, and with that assumption her heart sank at the thought of her solitude. Dar was forever gone, and she doubted she could ever go to Fremma again. While Korba worked, she was simply on her own.
She stepped into the shower and cringed at the frigid water, its assault causing her to shiver violently. But this time she did not care, nor did she adjust the temperature. Her body was once again numb, her mind still not fully rooted in reality. She remained in the shower stubbornly, allowing the icy fingers of spray to torment her weakened soul, her flesh beginning to lose its feeling and becoming one with her heart. She deserved this for all that she had done to the men she loved. It would serve her right if she stayed here and froze to death. No wonder she was alone.
Suddenly, Chelan shook herself free from the dungeons of her mind. She needed to get a grip. Nothing good was going to come of anything if she didn’t pull herself together. Then her heart skipped as she thought of the little blue room, and she prayed with all her might that Korba was there. Without drying herself, she hustled to the room, and the doors parted silently.
Chelan hesitated, knowing that if he was absent, her heart would simply fail. Her stomach knotted with indecision and fear. Then she stepped into the inky blackness and held her breath as she raised her unfeeling fingers to her blue lips.
Korba awoke suddenly at the sound of her shaking breath, and he hit a switch, raising the room lights. “Chelan,” he gasped. He was riveted to the bed, his eyes wide and unbelieving as he looked at the snow-white apparition trembling before him.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Instantly, he was on his feet, and he grabbed her to him. “Oh, my Lady,” he moaned. But her deathly cold flesh sent panic coursing through his body. He swept her off her feet and laid her on the bed, heaping the blankets over her. He looked down at her, her wide eyes appealing to him for his comfort and his warmth. Tearing his uniform from his body, he moved in beside her and drew her into him.
Her shivering was uncontrollable, and she hugged his massive frame tightly. “I love you,” she repeated again.
Korba squeezed her. “I love you, too, Chelan, more than life itself. I always have, and I always will.”
Slowly, Chelan began to thaw from the warmth emanating from his masculine comfort. “I’m sorry about my behavior,” she whispered.
“There are
no apologies warranted, Chelan. Your behavior at the Koll was exemplary. Your handling of Marri was exquisite, nothing short of a masterful delivery of well-deserved and well-controlled words. And as far as the rest of the ordeal, your reactions were more than justified. I will not forgive you, my Lady, for there is nothing to forgive.”
Chelan looked up at him, her lower lip beginning to tremble.
Korba’s face blanched. “What is it?”
“I wanted so badly to make you proud,” she whimpered. “The gown … the Koll …” She took a deep and wavering breath. “But most of all, I wanted the night to be so special for us … and instead …” She looked down, squeezing her eyes tight. “It was a disaster.”
Korba rolled her onto her back and raised himself on top of her. Her eyes opened wide to his. He lowered more of his weight down gently on her, his fingers stroking her soft cheeks. “You made me proud, my Lady. You touched my heart and my soul in so many ways. You were calm, you were poised, and you were regal. I will have you in my company any time without any hesitation. And the gown …” He stopped, looking deep into her fawn-like eyes. “I know and appreciate the tremendous amount of time and work that went into it, and I know it was for me. I know it was you who created it, for I could see your femininity, your beauty, and your creativity displayed in every aspect of its design. And its fascinating color was the color of your happiness.”
He watched her breathing ease. Then he smiled as her arms finally encircled him, her fingers tracing over the thick muscles of his back. “And as for the evening, though I would have preferred our unhindered union, it was inevitable. I knew that Dar would not let my announcement go unchallenged, and I knew that Fremma’s fears of your loss had to be quelled. It is only I who must take responsibility for the confrontational format, which I should have had better controlled. But I was not myself, and I apologize to you, my love. I had no right to challenge them in your presence. You don’t deserve to be confronted with our hard-handed tactics. It was unthinking and cruel.” He paused, looking down at her beauty, her cheeks finally beginning to pink. But then he felt her tense unexpectedly, and he saw the apprehension in her eyes.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she blurted. “I’m sorry I slept with Fremma. It was wrong, and I was unfaithful to you.”
“No,” he voiced firmly, bearing down on her and holding her face tightly in his hands. “No, Chelan, it was not wrong. It was I who overreacted. Don’t you ever feel guilty for sharing yourself with Fremma. I have had time to think and to control my foreign feelings of irrational possessiveness. I raise my restrictions on your access to Fremma, for they should never have been applied to begin with. I will never challenge your intimacy with him, and you may take him any time. I grant this from my heart and from my love for you. I grant it because Fremma is an honorable man and a close friend, and he is my protector as he is yours. And most of all, I welcome it because of your undeniable love for one another. That is how our society is meant to work.” He kissed her lips lovingly.
Then he withdrew and watched her carefully as the fear melted from her eyes. He felt her take several large breaths, and he smiled at her. He leaned forward and traced her lips tenderly with his tongue. “Please accept my apologies, Chelan. I need your unconditional acceptance of my weaknesses as well as my strengths. I am but a man.”
A smile of relief finally crept across Chelan’s lips, and Korba took them heatedly. Her acceptance of him came swiftly and easily. Her hands traced down the hard planes of his sides to his hips and over his densely muscled buttocks. She drew her legs up, offering him her penetrable softness. He moaned as he allowed his erection to expand, their long-awaited union finally beginning.
*****
The next week was a bonding period beyond imagination, as Korba relinquished his command to be continually by her side. Their love grew in leaps and bounds, strengthened by long hours of conversation and love play as they explored every intimate detail of each other’s minds and bodies.
Korba found himself inexplicably drawn closer and closer to Chelan, fascinated by her ways of thinking and intrigued by her perceptions of both his world and her own. Despite the vast differences in their cultures, her feelings and opinions pertaining to many values and social issues mirrored his own. In an odd way, they were light-years apart, the antithesis of one another, yet they were the same on so many levels, that he found it striking.
On a physical plane, Korba was also captivated by her enticingly strange and alien ways. Chelan had no idea how Iceanean women acted during sexual encounters. But her innate Earthly love play constantly drew out sides of Korba the Warlord never even knew existed.
During an encounter with Dar long ago, Chelan had inadvertently stumbled on a way to send Iceanean men into a near-frenzied response. By coyly resisting them and their advances once they were fully aroused, she could push them into a near corybantic state. The men of Iceanea never had to work for sexual release, and their women were competent and aggressive lovers. Advances not desired were spurned early and verbally, and so there was never any need for physical rejection.
But on Chelan’s home world, the game-playing and teasing that were commonplace and came naturally to many women frightened her. She was so accustomed to men not taking no for an answer that she had become extremely adept at fighting off physical advances, forcefully at times. But here, with these men and where she was safe, she had tried it with Korba. The reaction she received from him, however, was far from subtle, just as it had been with Dar.
Chelan discovered that this act played directly to Korba’s ingrained predator–prey instinct. The genetically manipulated trait, the ability to single out and run down the weak and those in flight, was a desirable characteristic in the Empire’s warriors, and it was intensely attuned in the great Warlord. She knew that Korba never lost track of her intentions or lost ultimate control over himself, but her futile attempts to struggle against him drove him to a nearly uncontrollable need to take her aggressively. The first time it had happened, he’d told her, he had been shocked at the untamed carnal thoughts that had pervaded his senses, and he had been equally stunned by the fact that Chelan was not.
She had known he had entered foreign territory by the glazed look that overtook his normally alert eyes. Chelan was enthralled by the basal, animalistic characteristics that surfaced from the Warlord who was normally in superb control, and they talked about it at length. Korba knew her acts were out of love play and that the response she expected was to be taken by him forcefully. But at times he had to suppress a dangerous desire to hurt the small, resisting being beneath him. Still, no matter how aggressive their coupling became, his higher thought processes always intervened.
Korba warned her not to repeat her acts with others, especially within a group of unfamiliar men. He emphatically told her that saying no early to an advance was their way, and obviously the most effective way.
Korba had been genuinely disturbed by his feelings at first, and was almost panic-stricken at the thought of the harm that could inadvertently befall her at the hands of those with less control than he. He knew that the sensuality and provocativeness that she exuded was innocent, a by-product of her timorous personality and her ingrained shyness. Therefore, he feared that an aggressive advance at a vulnerable time would cause her to hesitate just long enough for serious trouble to erupt.
His warnings to her had been presented almost harshly. But having experienced his brute strength and coarse treatment of her as he took her effortlessly, Chelan needed no further warnings. She knew all too well the ruthless acts that could be waged upon her by those who had otherwise been trained so well in the art of loving.
Chelan then focused on Dar, and she wondered about any differences between him and Korba. She pondered if the blonde Warlord was actually more primal and less controlled than Korba. Now that she thought about it, she had seen the wildfire sparked in Dar’s eyes many times, and she knew that the catalyst for it was much more subtle than it was for K
orba. Dar had always reacted strongly to her physical cues and much more readily. She shivered. She realized that each time she shrank from Dar for whatever reason, his response was to pursue immediately and at times aggressively. His interactions with her had always been more volatile.
Suddenly, another revelation struck her. The time when he had grabbed her roughly, telling her that she tempted fate and that he would take her if she continued … Dar had been far more dangerous than she had ever dreamed. Now she wondered about her total physical withdrawal from him. Was he going to leave her exclusively to Korba, despite what he had said?
Chelan wiped the thoughts from her mind and simply acknowledged the fact that initially, she had unintentionally raised the same predatory instinct in all three men. She decided it was prudent to heed all of Korba’s stern warnings.
*****
Chelan loved having Korba’s undivided attention, and he, in turn, hers. As the week progressed, she pushed her pain over the loss of Dar from her mind, and Fremma’s absence diminished her thoughts of him. She devoted all her time and herself to her Warlord, and their mutual happiness soared.
They had begun working out together, and Chelan had taken Korba by surprise yet again, her hidden strengths and tenacity impressing him further. But he had never dreamed how impressed he would be as one afternoon when she had sent one of her throwing blades sizzling past him, burying it deep within a small target beside him. He was further stunned as she planted the second blade with equal competency right next to the first. Korba had remained mute as she retrieved the blades and sidled up to him, then asking innocently if he thought her performance had been okay.
Korba could only stare at her as he punished himself for his own lack of perception. He remembered his first day back on RIBUS 7 as he watched Fremma stalk her, and the ease with which she deftly disarmed him of one of his blades, and the familiarity with which she assuredly handled the knife as she placed it effectively against the warrior’s doomed body.
