by dark wind
“I forgot to ask-” Cree poked his head around the door. When he saw what was happening, he pushed the door all the way open. “What are you doing?”
Bridget’s lips peeled back from her teeth. “Taking...my...anger... out...on...this...gods-be-damned...bag, Reaper!” she snarled.
He blinked then watched as she dropped the pieces of torn plastic on the floor and stomped on them.
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. “Pretending that’s me, are you?” he inquired with a trace of humor.
“Aye, Reaper, I am!” She kicked the plastic.
His gaze followed the flying plastic shreds as they sailed about the floor then smiled at his wife’s fury as she jerked another bag out of the box and started stretching it. With a snort, he uncrossed his arms, went to her and took the bag away from her.
“No,” he denied as she tried to snatch it back. “You’ve killed enough garbage bags for one evening, Bridget.” He held the bag behind him, grunting as she tried to reach around him to retrieve it.
“Gimme the bag!”
“No,” he said on a long breath. “But I’ll give you something else.” She stilled, looked up into his hot eyes and watched the desire forming there. Her own eyes widened.
“Oh, no, you won’t!” Before Bridget could move, he had her against him, his arms enfolding her. She squirmed, trying to break free, but his hold tightened.
“Be still,” he whispered, his lips against her ear.
“Bastard,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in the insult for the hardness of him was pressed intimately against her belly.
“Bitch,” he whispered in return and ran his tongue inside her ear.
Bridget shivered, melting against him. “Is this all you know how to do?”
“No,” he replied. “I know how to do this, too.” He moved one hand between her legs.
“Oh hell..” Bridget sighed. The heat of his palm was at the juncture of her thighs and pressing against her own heat.
“How about tearing into something other than a garbage bag, Dr. Dunne?”
“Like?” she asked as she slowly lifted her gaze to his.
He grinned and lifted her onto the counter. He pushed her skirt up her thighs then wedged between her legs. “Oh, I don’t know,” he muttered. He hooked his fingers in her panties and ripped them away. “Like a bag of cotton candy maybe?”
She shrieked with exasperation then wrapped her long legs around his waist to anchor him to her. “You are a hateful man, Captain Cree!”
“I am a horny man, Doctor Dunne.”
“A condition you seem to perpetuate of late.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I can have Troi engineer a fembot to-”
“The hell you will!” She reached out to take his face in her hands. She pulled his head toward her then slanted her mouth hungrily across his. As she drove her tongue between his teeth, she heard his answering growl of passion and felt him fumbling with the zipper of his jeans.
“Wicked woman,” he said against her mouth as he freed himself.
“Your wicked woman.”
“Aye,” he agreed as he drove into her. “Cree’s very wicked woman.” The sun wassetting when they woke. After the mindless sex on the kitchen counter, he had taken her again when he’d carried her to their bed. Their lovemaking had been slow and sure and infinitely sweet the second time. With his lady firmly placed against his sweaty side, he had fallen asleep, listening to her gentle breaths.
Their son’s angry wails as he woke from his afternoon nap had driven them from sleep.
“He’s hungry,” Bridget said, swinging her legs from the bed.
“Give him cotton candy.” Cree chuckled.
She tossed him a look he had come to think of as one of her ‘you’re pushing it’ looks.
He heard her talking quietly, cooing to Jaelin and recognized the very moment she picked the baby up for there was a grunt in her voice. As she carried the child to the bed, he moved over so she could sit down.
“He needs changing,” Bridget told him.
“I’ll bet he does,” Cree acknowledged, but made no move to help.
A small portion of the happiness that had put a glow in her cheeks faded from Bridget’s face. She pursed her lips and reached for a disposable diaper from the box she’d brought in with her.
“You know,” she said, “it wouldn’t hurt you to take care of him once and awhile.”
“Don’t,” he asked and when she looked up at him, he was frowning.
The rest of her happiness evaporated and Bridget changed their son in silence.
“I like watching you with our son,” Cree said quietly. His heart felt huge in his chest and a lump that always formed when he watched his lady and his son together made his voice husky.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and go fix his bath,” Bridget snapped. She was smoothing the thick dark curls on her son’s head and did not see the pain that flashed through the Reaper’s golden eyes as she spoke.
Cree closed his eyes for a moment then swung his long legs from the bed. He stepped into his jeans, leaving them unzipped, and padded barefoot from the room without speaking.
Bridget heard the water go on in the bathtub. She lowered her head and kissed her son’s forehead. He looked so much like his father...the same coloring, the same thick dark hair...but his eyes were a very vivid shade of green, deeper than her own color. For a reason he would not explain, her lover had told her he was particularly pleased that his son’s eyes were green.
Looking down into the verdant gaze looking up at her, Bridget smiled.
“He’ll come around, Jaelin,” she told her son. “Your daddy will come around.” But a part of Bridget Dunne did not believe her own words.
Especially when she heard the front door open and close behind Cree.
“Did I tellyou about the conversation I had with the Rysalian?” Lares asked his wife as she prepared his breakfast the next morning.
“Which conversation was that?”
The darkman and his lady had been discussing Cree and Bridget. Folding his newspaper, the Necroman laid it beside Beryla’s plate. “He is concerned he will harm the child.” Beryla turned from the pancake she had flipped and gave her husband a surprised look. “He told you that?” At her husband’s nod, she asked, “When was this?”
“On the ship,” Lares replied. “Soon after the bantling was birthed.” A frown drew across Beryla’s face. “And you’re just now getting around to telling me?”
“He asked me to say nothing and on my honor I have not. But in light of the problems the Reaper and his woman are having, I thought now would be a good time to reveal what I know,” Lares defended.
Beryla turned off the stove and moved the griddle with the half-cooked pancake to a back burner.
“What did he tell you?”
Lares looked at the stack of pancakes that he knew would grow cold before his wife had finished interrogating him and shrugged. “He believes the Dearg Duls within him will harm the child. That is the reason no Reaper was ever allowed to see his offspring.” The darkman looked longing at the pancakes.
“He aches to hold the child but dares not for fear the bloodbeast within him will strive to kill its rival.”
“Aurora thought that might be the reason he won’t hold Jaelin,” Beryla said. Taking pity on her husband, she brought the stack of pancakes to him.
“You called her?” Lares asked, rubbing his hands together before delving into the ten pancakes.
“I had to call to see if she’d take Dorrie off Bridie’s hands” She frowned. “She doesn’t want her, either, so I’m afraid Burkhart will be down in Albany awhile longer. At least until I find someplace else to send her.”
“How is Ro-Ro?”
“Fine, but she did voice a few concerns that I must admit are troubling me, as well.”
“Such as?” Lares asked as he slathered butter atop each pancake.
“She believes the sugge
stionaries we gave Bridget are beginning to wear off.”
“Good,” Lares proclaimed. “A woman should love her man because she wishes to, not because a scientist has made it so.”
“It proposes a problem for us, though.”
“How so?”
“Bridie loves Cree,” Beryla answered. “There’s no denying that. Given time and no interference from the Resistance, I believe she would have fallen in love with him despite the assistance of the drugs and subliminal messages in the Celtic music CDs we gave her. The two of them were destined to be together.”
Lares poured syrup over his cooling pancakes. “What problem does the lessening of the suggestionaries cause then?”
“As much as she loves Cree, she loves her son even more. A mother’s love is stronger than any other. If it comes down to choosing between the two of them, she’ll chose her child.”
“As it should be,” Lares agreed.
“Aye, but where does that leave our Reaper? If the suggestionaries were strongly in place still, there wouldn’t be a problem. From listening to Bridie’s complaints about her husband, I can tell the hold is slipping. She’s liable to do or say something she wouldn’t if the subliminals were still working.” Beryla asked. “We both know anger is always the Reaper’s first reaction to every new situation that adversely affects what he wants.”
The darkman considered his wife’s comment. His broad forehead puckered with concern. “That would not be good,” he said quietly.
“No, it would not.”
“I believe you should tell her why Cree will not interact with the boy,” Lares told her.
“I have no choice but to do so,” Beryla agreed. “I’ll call her later today.” Chapter Fifteen
The theater wasdraining of its inhabitants as Cree sat there reading the roll of credits. He was focused on the screen, counting the names. When the screen went dark and the house lights bled the shadows from the room, he glanced down at the wristwatch Bridget had given him when they first arrived on Terra and saw it was close to the time his lady was to leave work. She would expect him to be there when she opened the door and would be angry to find he was not. In his mind’s eye, he could see her storming to the neighbor’s to retrieve their child, her face set and hard.
At the thought of his bloodson, Kamerone Cree hung his head, closed his eyes, and began the rune of protection he had spun around the infant from the moment he’d first laid eyes on Jaelin.
Although he resented the fact that Bridget had allowed herself to conceive a child during their lovemaking, he had accustomed himself to the notion while she was pregnant. He had feared for her safety, but what concerned him most was his fear of what the infant would look like. Having heard the particulars of his own birth-and the tragic end of his dam at that time-he was terrified the baby would be a miniature replica of himself while in full Transition. He envisioned the horror he would see on the faces of the women gathered around Bridget’s birthing bed and the screams of shock and disgust from his lady.
But there had been no screams-not even of pain-and the birthing had gone easily for both mother and child.
“Your lady is designed to bear many children,” Lares had pronounced upon learning Bridget was with child. “She will have no problems giving birth.”
That there would be no other children born of their love, Cree fully intended to make certain. There were ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies and he would make sure Bridget did not conceive again.
One mistake was unavoidable. Two would be unthinkable.
As relieved as he was that his lady had survived the birthing and that she had experienced no undue amount of agony in the doing of it, he was still as nervous as a green youth after the birthing. He found himself backing away from Tina Portas as she walked toward him carrying the infant.
“Would you like to see your son, Kamerone?”
For a moment, he thought of refusing, but his curiosity got the better of him and he shuffled forward, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. When Tina eased aside the blanket covering his son’s face, Kamerone Cree lost his heart to the tiny wonder.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Tina had asked.
Beautiful? No, the child was not beautiful. He was wrinkled and red and his little face was screwed up in a mighty frown of whatever sensation the infant was experiencing at that moment. His tiny hands were peeling and his thick brown hair was in spikes around his round head. But when the miniscule little lashes lifted and the bright green of his gaze appeared to go unerringly to his father, Kamerone Cree felt his knees buckle and his heart begin to pound fiercely.
“He has my lady’s eyes,” he said, his throat closing. Bridget’s gaze had followed him during his nightmarish torture in the lab of the Be-Mod Nine unit and those beautiful eyes had been his only respite from the agonies visited upon him in that hellish place. To him, Bridget’s eyes were the only saving grace in his dark-stained world at that time.
“What will you name him?” Dorrie had asked.
He and Bridget had not discussed a name for their son. Both knew what the sex of the child would be since his parasite would not have allowed a female fetus to exist within Bridget’s womb.
“Name him?” he repeated and shrugged. “Bridget will want to name him.” Beryla Dean smiled. “She said she preferred you to give your child his name.” Pride made Cree’s captive heart swell and his slight smile was not lost on the women gathered around him, each waiting anxiously to see how the Reaper would respond to his son.
“Name him, Cree,” Lares had demanded from the doorway.
Cree looked to Lares and to Raine McGregor, to Tealson Hesar and Tylan Kahn, to Alexi Noll and Paegan Thorne, André Arbra and Hern Belvoir: the men who had risked life and limb to make the journey to Terra so his lady and he could be re-united. He nodded then turned his attention to the women who had fled the domination of the Rysalian Empire: Beryla and Dorrie, Tina Portas and Aurora Burds, Amala Dayle and Ivonne O’Malley.
There was one word in his language he wished for them all so he spoke it as he named his son: “J’Nai, Jaelin”. In Rysalian High Speech, it meant: peace, to the child of us all.
“J’Nai, Jaelin,” the others repeated for each of them knew the meaning behind the name the Reaper chose.
“Would you like to hold your son?” Beryla had asked quietly.
He had shaken his head so hard in denial of the request, he had developed a bitch of a headache and had backed away, fearful of hurting the infant. Afraid his parasite would do harm to a male destined to replace Kamerone Cree in the order of nature, he put distance between them. Such was the way of the Dearg Duls and the beastly thing that lived inside them.
But no one there understood why he did not want to touch his son and each had silently condemned Cree in his or her own way: as a coward or as selfish or as uncaring. None knew that he dared not touch the boy or that the heart inside him was aching with the need to do so.
“There’s time,” Beryla had said, but her own eyes were unforgiving of Cree’s inability to take his child into his arms and bond with it.
So he had walked away, feeling their condemning eyes following him every step of the way.
When Lares had found him sobbing uncontrollably on the floor of the restroom, he had so shocked the dark man, Lares had been unable to express himself for a moment or two. At last, Lares had demanded Cree stop crying.
“You are bawling like a Diabolusian jackass, you Ry-Chalean dog! Cease at once or I shall be forced to squash you like the bug you are!” When Cree continued to weep, Lares had shoved him rudely.
“Reapers do not cry, Iceman!”
“This one does!” Cree snapped as he turned his face to the Necromanian.
“For what purpose?” Lares asked, stunned by the misery he saw in Cree’s amber eyes.
And so the Reaper had explained why he could not touch Jaelin. He unburdened his heart and soul to his friend. Told him why it was no Reaper was ever allowed to see his child
ren and why no Reaper was ever allowed to know a child of his loins.
“The Dearg Duls within me would strive to kill the rival male. Do you not understand that, Taborn?” The Necromanian understood. “You must tell your lady,” Lares insisted.
“I cannot!”
“Why can you not?” The Necromanian’s deep bass voice was like thunder from the heavens.
“If I tell her there is a chance I might harm our child, she will run as far away from me as she can get.” Cree’s eyes were filled with misery.
“So you will let her think you have no love for your own child and that the mere contact between you is loathsome,” Lares stated, shaking his head. “That is not acceptable, Cree.”
“I have to protect him,” the Reaper replied. “The only way I know how!” And so he had done the only thing he could do: pray for his child and make sure he did not touch the boy.
Even though his heart ached to know the feel of the little body in his arms and his soul cried with the need to place his lips against his son’s.
A hitch of emotion shuddered through Kamerone Cree and he began to mouth once more the rune of protection for the child.
“Like, you have to leave now, dude.”
Cree opened his eyes and turned to look at the pimply-faced boy standing in the aisle. “What?”
“You can’t like stay and watch the movie again,” said the gangly teenager. “It’s my job to roust loiterers.”
“Job,” Cree repeated as though the word had no meaning for him.
“Yeah, like I’ve got a job,” the teenager smirked. “Don’t you?”
“Go away.”
“Look, dude,” the kid sneered, “like, don’t give me any shit. You understand? I’ll call the cops on your ass. Now, scram.” He flicked on his flashlight and made the mistake of aiming it directly into Cree’s eyes.
