Diyar interjected, “Perhaps planning can be done on a day-by-day basis, Enari.” The pregnant woman huffed. “Fine. Don’t entertain me.”
“I have been entertaining today, have I not?” Jade put her arm around Enari’s shoulders.
Enari sighed. “Fine. You have. I will take one day of entertainment against three weeks of the ladies’ societies coming in for visits. They are lovely, but I have to be on my best behaviour. That is exceptionally tiring at the best of times.” Jade chuckled. “I am sorry for your strain, but I am sure that they mean well. All the women here have been taken from their home worlds. They crave comfort as much as you do, as you well know. I read the histories, including your arrival from Fennar.”
They walked back through the streets and were almost to the stairs leading up to the landing area when the screech of a malfunctioning engine reached their ears.
Jade looked up and took in the flight path a moment before she stretched out her hands in a defensive gesture. Shadow spilled out of her skin and blocked the descent of the vehicle, gently lowering it to the ground in a cradle of dark energy.
Diyar had Enari in his arms and safely around the corner when Jade cut the field and the skimmer thudded to the ground.
Two young Asku males tumbled out of the skimmer with their hands shaking and skins pale.
Diyar stepped between Jade and the oncoming males who were apologizing and grovelling with suitable sincerity.
Jade moved toward Enari and helped stabilize her as she walked up the stairs. When they reached the top and approached their transport, her pregnant friend asked, “Jade, how did you do that?”
Jade shrugged. “I have no idea, but there is so much power, so much energy here. It is no wonder that all this exposure to light is having some effect. I feel like it wants to come spilling out of me at every moment in the light. Apparently, I am filtering it somehow.”
Enari laughed. “You are making that up, aren’t you?”
Jade snickered. “You bet. I have no idea what is going on, but I can try and bluff a good game.” Diyar arrived in time to help boost his sister-in-law into the transport while Jade helped the pilot stow the parcels.
In minutes, they were on their way back to the palace with their collection of impulse purchases.
Enari was yawning, and as they arrived, Jade took over supporting her as they made their way back through the halls to the women’s quarters.
Riveh met them in the hall and helped them get Enari into her rooms, loosen her clothing and get her shoes off. Between one breath and the next, Enari slipped into sleep.
Smiling, Jade tiptoed out of Enari’s rooms and walked with Riveh toward her own.
As soon as they would not wake the sleeping woman, Riveh asked, “There are requests to speak to you as soon as you are able. The researchers are eager to investigate the means by which you appeared here.”
Jade smiled. “I can go now. I have had a trip and some exercise. I am ready to talk.” Riveh inclined her shiny head. “Good. Take a shower and change your clothing. I will tell them you will speak to them after dinner. You are looking rather pale.”
Knowing a good idea when she heard it, Jadoree explored the lav and worked out how to use the shower. The cascade of hot water was welcome, and it drove off the fatigue that she had been feeling after she caught the skimmer in whatever it was that was coming out of her.
She scrubbed and lathered herself over and over until her hands puckered. She shut off the water, biting her lip as she shut the hot off first, leaving a blast of cold to strike her skin. Shivering, she slammed off the last tap and wrapped herself in the drying cloth that was situated on a heated rack.
The warmth was welcome as she towelled her hair dry and wrapped another towel around her.
She walked into the wardrobe, flicking through the selections until she saw something that approximated the choli and skirt she wore every day back home.
It was a little more revealing than she was used to, but the deep violet was a becoming colour.
With a few looks in the mirror, she returned to the wardrobe and removed a long, wide, silky scarf in dark smoke with gold threads woven through it.
Jadoree wrapped it over one shoulder and tucked both sides over her left hip, leaving only one shoulder free.
Her image in the mirror was suitably decorous, and she looked around before she swished the skirt around her ankles. The sandals in the wardrobe would suffice until the purchases of the day were unloaded.
If she were at home, she would have painted her face with a dioramic mask to hide her features from the group of strangers. It just didn’t seem appropriate to do it here.
Riveh arrived and carried a tray that held the most enticing scents. “Your dinner, Jadoree. Would you care to listen to some music while you eat?”
That perked her up, and she nodded as she moved to intercept the food. She took over the tray while Riveh set the learning station for a selection of music.
Jadoree sat at the tiny table for one and took nibbles from all the offerings on the plate. Some of the music was stirring, some sent her pulse racing and others grated along her nerves, but she enjoyed them all in a perverse way. Her mind was trying to figure out what the instruments looked like that made those noises.
It was something about her new environment that she could easily research. Jadoree finished her meal, and Riveh said, “May I take you to the meeting hall now? Diyar is meeting us there.”
“Sure, before I fall asleep from the food and mild exertions of the day.” She chuckled and followed the bot out the door and down the hall.
In the obscured confines of the building, the light did not accumulate on her skin. She was able to relax. “So, my room faces the rising sun?”
“Yes, if that is too bright for you, we can transfer you to the other side of the hall.” Riveh inclined her head.
“No, no. It is fine. I like it. The light is very… stimulating.”
There were probably other words to describe it but that was the only one that sprang to mind when she thought of those first moments with the light on her skin.
Chapter Six
Riveh exited the women’s quarters with her and took Jadoree into the main palace with easy strides.
“Riveh, who built your body?”
“My people built it, centuries ago. I believe my body is still alive in stasis somewhere, but I don’t know. There is no way to contact my world, I don’t even know if my people survived the Asku. I was already transferred into my metal housing, and they took me as the ideal means to educate women without the interference of flesh.”
“Who were your people?”
Riveh paused and looked at her through unblinking mechanical eyes. “No one asks that anymore. The Delians. We were inventive, creative and an easy target for those who hired the Asku to fight their war. The battle lasted less than a day, and as I said, I don’t know if any of my kind survived.”
Knowing it was stupid, Jadoree put her hand on the bot’s arm. A jolt went through the armour, and Riveh’s features softened into something more resembling a female of surpassing beauty.
“Wow. You are lovely.”
Riveh blinked her metallic lids. “What just happened?”
“I have no idea, but I am giving off all kinds of peculiar energy today. This might be a simple side effect. Should I reverse it? I might be able to.”
“If you can, please. I have grown used to this appearance when I pass reflective surfaces. To see my own face again might be too much.” Jadoree put her hand back on Riveh’s arm and tried to recall the change.
Riveh’s metal body fought it but eventually warped back into the shape that Jadoree had first been introduced to.
Shaking and flexing her hand, they resumed their walk to the meeting room where a table of six stellar researchers and Diyar were waiting for them. Diyar sat next to her and poured her a glass of water and a cup of tea with cream and sweetener added. She grinned in delight as she realized that
he had learned how she took her tea.
“Lady Jadoree, we would like to ask you a few questions as to your origins and the mechanism by which you arrived here.” The man asking the questions had black tattoos down either arm, across his cheeks and at least one was visible on his chest. His hair wore grey streaks and lines of age fought against the scars on his face.
“Certainly. I am here to help in any way I can. I do not know that much about the conveyance that brought me here. The pod was built by the same woman who came here all those centuries ago, Dr. Hynadeer Follen.”
The men looked to each other and the one speaking said, “Battle Commander Diyar, I thought her name was Velu.”
Jadoree snickered.
Diyar said, “That is the name our family took. Why we are named that has always been a guess. Our ancestors did not keep detailed diaries.”
“Lady, why did you laugh?”
“Velu is the name of our sun. Haxos is the name of our world. If I were someone who placed bets, I would guess that her first son was named Haxos Velu, and it went on from there.”
“What kind of records did Dr. Follen leave?”
“Only mentions of a calling and a doorway through the stars. Her research spurred a government impetus to create a scanning probe that would peep through the hole in space, but no one guessed she was building a pod to travel in herself. Well, two pods actually.” They looked surprised. “You travelled in a two-thousand-year-old piece of technology?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t put too much thought into it. I felt a compulsion to get into the pod, and after that, it took over. It strapped me down, blew a hole through the ceiling of the museum, and the next thing I know, I was headed toward Velu, hoping that the pod wasn’t designed for a spectacular suicide.”
That made everyone in the room laugh.
Jadoree eased her breathing a little and sipped a cup of tea.
The ancestress of their commanders was left alone, and the panel asked her questions about the location of the stars at the exact moment of alignment. They provided her with a tablet and a stylus, so she drew the location of Velu and the five other stars in the alignment, watching as the dark spots were projected in the space between the tables, high in the air.
The one who was speaking gestured to the others and a matching map of stars was overlaid on her sketch. Light stars and dark stars were a perfect match.
Diyar looked at the pathway and smiled. “Well, that answers one question.”
Jadoree nodded. “It does indeed. Damn. If only there were a way of showing the folk at home this alignment, but I am guessing that I won’t live another two thousand years to pass along that message.”
The questions turned to the pod, and she answered what she could. Finally, she said, “It was not a pod of my design, and Dr. Follen didn’t leave any schematics behind. I have told you about what I know of the interior of the pod and the controls. They seemed to absorb energy through the skin of the pod to power the final jump.”
She closed her hand into a fist as she realized that it was precisely what she had been doing, absorbing light and letting it go in a rush of power.
Diyar put his hand over hers, and she let a trickle of energy flow into him while the panel continued their questions.
Finally, their speaker said, “Thank you for your time. May we compile more questions and ask you another day?”
She shrugged. “Of course. It isn’t like I am going anywhere.”
The laughter rang through the room again, and Jadoree got stiffly to her feet.
Diyar kept hold of her hand and led her out of the meeting room. “Come with me.” They walked quickly through the halls and into a wing of the palace that had the feel of family. He pulled her through a doorway and into a suite of rooms that looked out over the mountains.
While she stared at the lights in the sky appearing one by one, he moved beside her and removed his shirt. “How did you do this, Jade?” She turned, and his smooth, bare chest was exposed to her, a large, ugly scar running across both pecs and down his abdomen, disappearing into the top of his trousers, was slowly healing.
“I didn’t. Well, I don’t think I did. Whatever is happening to me is happening when I touch stuff, including you.” She reached out and stroked the scar. The crackle of energy followed the trail her fingers took.
The healing sped up, and he dragged in a shuddering breath. He placed his hand over hers.
“Don’t stop. Please.”
In her mind, she could feel the cracks in his bone, the tears in his flesh. He had been very near death before he was given medical attention. Her energy meshed seamlessly with his body, and it knit the flesh and dissolved the scars.
She continued to caress him slowly and tilted her head up to ask how it was feeling when he pressed a kiss to her lips that told her without words what was going through his mind.
Chapter Seven
Jade continued to stroke her hands over his scars as he slanted his mouth across hers, deepening the kiss with his tongue. She moaned, shivered and went up on her toes while she continued to stroke his chest.
Kissing wasn’t new to her, but having her soul light up when he pressed his hands to her waist was. When the trail of her fingers led her to the waistband of his trousers, she eased the barricade away, unfastening the tight fabric with shaking fingers.
The scar tapered into a thatch of dark hair, and she flattened her palm against him, letting her stored energy do what it wanted to do. She let her body do what it wanted as well and pressed her breasts against his chest as he cupped her chin with his rough palm.
Jadoree withdrew her hand from the opening of his trousers before she was tempted to delve deeper. She ran her palms up his chest and enjoyed the touch of the solid male beneath her.
He tugged at her wrap and stroked his palms along her exposed skin. Her small top fell away under his deliberate touches. She shivered when he palmed her breasts, stroking her nipples with his thumbs while cradling the rest in warm hands.
Jadoree gasped as he lifted her, walking swiftly into another room with a large bed central to the arrangement. He placed her in the centre of the bed, slipped off her sandals then went to work on her skirt. She was naked in seconds and a little embarrassed until he crawled over her and started a row of kisses that began at her neck and ended at her ankle with several startling moments in between.
When his lips caressed her inner thigh, she jumped and gasped. He seemed to take her reaction as encouragement, because he pressed kisses to the other thigh, working his way to the heated core of her.
Every gasp and moan urged him on, and as he draped her thighs over his shoulders and parted her sex with his fingers, she held her breath. The wet stroke of his tongue against her inner flesh sent a ripple of fire through her. The slide across her clit stole her breath again.
He licked again and set up a pattern of lapping at her that caused a coil of tension to draw tighter and tighter inside her. When he used his teeth carefully on her clit, the coil snapped.
Broken cries ripped the air, and starlight witnessed her first release.
Diyar backed away for a moment, and when he returned, his boots and trousers were gone, leaving him bathed in the same starlight that danced across her skin.
She noted his erection and winced at how close the original scar had come to unmanning him. All thoughts of his damage flew out of her mind as he moved over her, fitting himself to her sex and pressing into her with slow motions of his hips.
He rocked into her, and she felt the slight pop as her hymen gave way. She wrapped her legs around him and held tight as his thrusts grew faster and more intense.
They rocked together until sweat coated them both, and she cried out again a moment before he thrust to the hilt and let out a guttural, strangled cry.
He dropped onto her, his weight crushing her into the bedding.
She stroked his hair and found another round of scars hidden under his dark locks. “What happened to you, Diyar?�
�� She pressed a kiss to his temple.
“I was on the wrong side of a projectile weapon the size of a skimmer. Large amounts of metal found themselves embedded in my chest, and I was taken to a medical facility and stabilized before they shipped me home. I have been recovering here, but the doctors were not optimistic as to my ability to return to the field.”
“I am guessing that you are going to run to the physicians in the morning and get them to re-examine you.” She stroked her fingers through his hair as the starlight gave her what she needed to help him.
He withdrew from her and pulled her tight to him, keeping one of her thighs over his hip. “I may wait a few days. Enari will need to work on your wardrobe before we get back onto a warship.”
“We?” She looked into his dark eyes, so familiar to her. She stroked his cheek.
“Yes, we. Tomorrow, I will get your name tattooed on me, and we will be mated in the Asku way.”
“Is that what the chest marks are?” He grinned and kissed her forehead, nose and lips. “Yes, that is what the chest marks are. Your name will go over my heart, any children we have will march down the other side.” She chuckled. “I am planning on a wave of little girls.”
He was serious. “I will try, I really, really will, but I can’t promise you daughters.”
She reached down between them and cupped his testicles, sending her will through the darkness and into his body.
As she withdrew her hand, she realized that she should have asked him first, but he was so busy rolling her to her back once again that the recrimination slipped her mind.
This time, he stroked her until she begged him to end it, and when he slid into her, her body bucked upward into his, a deep shiver beginning in her channel and proceeding out in waves stole her senses and resulted in her leaving deep claw marks on Diyar’s back.
She felt the jerk of his cock inside her as he shuddered in his own release. She laughed softly and held him tightly as her first true wave of sleep in this new universe washed over her.
* * * *
Diyar looked down at his bride and shook his head. She had done more to turn his world upside down in one day than any woman of any race had done with weeks at their disposal.
Forbidden Summons Page 3
