Beyond the Next Star

by Melody Johnson

  “No.”

  Oh, his little diva. He eyed the window warily. He wasn’t even sure he’d fit through the narrow panel, but there was no help for it. Grasping the windowpane, he hoisted himself up and jammed his upper half through the opening.

  Delaney’s hand jumped off her face. “What are you doing?”

  “You won’t come to me? I’ll come to you.”

  “Stop. You get stuck.” She eyed the rampart’s edge. “Or pop through. The momentum carry you over the railing.”

  He wedged the breadth of his chest through the window and promptly got stuck.

  “See?” She pushed at his shoulders, but he still strained forward. “Stop! You pop through and fall!”

  He paused his efforts and lifted his hand to her.

  She sighed. “Ofalltheidioticridiculous…”

  She continued muttering insensibly but took his hand. He guided her carefully back to the window. When she was within reach, he wrapped his hands around her waist, pulled her to him, and embraced her shivering body tight to his chest.

  She wasn’t an animal companion, but his heart didn’t understand that. She was still his, somehow—to hold, to protect, to love. The relief and warmth that overtook him nearly made his knees buckle.

  “What am I to do with you?” he murmured against her hair.

  “Tell me the truth from now forward,” she muttered. “Would be a good start.”

  He released a barking burst of laughter. “Considering the lies of omission you’ve dealt me over the past several weeks, how about we call it even?”

  “Agreed.” She pushed her small palms flat against his chest and leaned back to meet his eyes “Torek?”

  “Mmmm?” My Lorien, but her eyes were wide, their gray depths fathomless. His heart flip-flopped.

  He’d need to leave Delaney home one day and discuss these inappropriate feelings with Shemara.

  “Is it my fault?”

  “That I’m irrationally stressed? Yes.”

  She punched his chest lightly. “The zorel attack. You say it hunt for blood. My blood?”

  He tightened his hold on her. “Your accident was just that. An accident. The zorel breach was no one’s fault.”

  “But my blood cause it.” She bit her lip.

  “Genai comes, following Rorak like it comes every kair, with or without your blood. The ice keeps the zorel contained and in hibernation, but once the ice melts, there’s no stopping it from hunting.”

  “Once the ice melts. But it hunt now before it melts.”

  “Technically, but—”

  “It taste my blood, so it hunt early.” Her forehead fell against his chest in defeat. “My fault.”

  Torek rubbed the top of her head with his chin. She was too perceptive for her own good. “Come. Let’s get you warmed up.”

  He nudged her toward the door, and she actually followed his guidance for the first few steps without resisting. But once his hand gripped the door lever, she balked.

  “Where we going? I change into dry clothes here.”

  “You’re chilled to the bone, Delaney. A hot bath will warm you faster and more effectively. Your manual says—”

  “I know what my manual says,” she muttered. “I help write it.”

  He blinked back his shock. Keil’s murder, Daerana’s attack on Onik, Delaney’s manual: it all pieced together. For both their sakes, he needed to discover how and complete the picture if he ever wanted to understand Delaney and the nightmare she’d witnessed. But he could only solve one problem at a time. “Then I shouldn’t have to tell you that in addition to providing warmth, a bath will relax your stressed muscles. Despite original evidence to the contrary, you like taking baths.” He gave her a look. “Or so you wrote in your manual.”

  Her eyes rolled. “Fine.”

  Her put-upon expression would’ve been more convincing had her jaw not been chattering.

  He hustled her through the hallway, into the washroom, and locked the door behind them. When he turned back to face her, she’d already crossed the room to the tub and started the hot water. She leaned over the tub’s edge, hand extended, testing its temperature.

  Torek stared, feeling suddenly like he was intruding. All the times he’d bathed her, cleaned her, touched her, and all without asking permission. Shame burned beneath the fur on his face. Delaney didn’t need him, not for this anyway. More importantly, she probably didn’t want him.

  Torek cleared his throat. “I’ll return soon.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and met his gaze, both her brows raised. “Animal companions not bathe themselves.”

  Torek glanced at the closed door and then back at her. “What would you have me do?”

  “We bathe as we always bathe. Together.”

  “We can’t.” His voice was more guttural than he intended, but bathing her now was unthinkable. Just remembering how they’d always shared a bath, how blithely he’d changed in front of her, changed her—defecated next to her!—it was mortifying. Lorien skewer him, what she must think of him.

  “To them, I am an animal. We must keep up appearances.”

  “You’re not an animal to me.”

  Her cheeks flushed a becoming shade of red. “We bathe together before.”

  “Don’t.” He lifted a hand. “Just…don’t.”

  She threw her hands up in the air. “Then I bathe alone. But stay, and let them think we bathe together.”

  “If we tell everyone the truth, then this charade won’t be necessary,” he argued, but ruined his resolve by giving her his back.

  She made a sick, sad attempt at shuffing. “Yes, no need to share a bath when we both dead.”

  The splash of her testing the water again.

  “And I am not dramatic,” she continued. “You not there. You not see Keil and how he—” Her voice became thick and wet. She cleared her throat. “You not see.”

  The wet plop of her clothes dropping to the tile.

  Torek stared studiously at the door rivets. “It’s possible you’re mistaken in what you think you saw.”

  “No.”

  He tamped down his frustration with her flat, automatic answer, but not before a low growl slipped passed his lips. Rak, she made him lose control with a single word. “You couldn’t identify the lor with the knife who chased you off Graevlai.”

  “Fukyoo,” she snapped.

  “In traumatic situations, sometimes witnesses aren’t certain—”

  “I am certain. I know what I saw. I know what is at risk, and that is that.”

  “That is what?”

  “That ends this topic.”

  “I disagree. I have plenty more to say on this topic.”

  “Then talk. But I not listen.”

  He choked back the urge to whip around and shake her. He breathed. He fisted and flexed his hands. He counted door rivets.

  When the flash of his temper had cooled, he finally spoke. “How is it that with your freedom at stake, I’m the only one willing to fight for it?”

  “Keil already die for me. I not let you die for me too.”

  “Your concern is admirable but misplaced. I won’t die, and I won’t let anything happen to you either.”

  “Things already happen. The knife attack—”

  “You said yourself, he didn’t attack you.”

  “—the ukok poisoning—”

  “Was an accident.” His palms ached from the force of his squeezed fists. “A potentially fatal accident, but an accident all the same.” Mairok didn’t resent him that much, surely.

  “Because the cooks at Grattao not know my allergy? They not make my lunch every week since I arrive?” she scoffed. “Revealing what I am will make the attacks worse.”

  “We’ll speak to Brinon Kore’Onik together. He’ll—”

  “Jeesuskrystnotthatbullshitagen.” A heavy sigh. “Please, Torek, I beg you. Just stop.”

  “And once he realizes that you’re a person,” Torek persisted, “not an animal companio
n, he’ll begin the process of reclassifying you. Then we can—”

  “You say the point of this bath is to relax!”

  He shuffed. “And to warm yourself.”

  “And relax,” she insisted.

  “Fine, but when you’re warmed and relaxed, we—”

  “Ohfuk!” A crack, a splash, and a shallow swell of water bathed his feet.

  “Resh—” He shook his head. Damn it. “Delaney?”

  Silence.

  He peeked over his shoulder. She was under the water. He stared. Three heartbeats passed, and she didn’t emerge.

  He lunged into the bath, gripped her under the arms, and raised her above the water. “Delaney!”

  She burst from the water, sputtering. “Now you want to bathe?”

  “I’m not bathing you. I’m saving you.”

  “I not need your saving,” she denied, coughing.

  “I’ve never known you to bathe without needing my saving.”

  Her glare was fierce and adorable, with the mop of her hair covering half her face.

  He smoothed back her hair and grinned.

  Her eyes narrowed with focus and evil intent, which should have been warning enough, but it never was with her, not when she’d been Reshna and certainly not now that she was Delaney.

  She splashed him in the face, blinding him with soapy water. He released her, but as he reared back, his feet slid out from under him. She tried to steady him, and damn him, he grasped the nearest thing, her reaching hands. But her sharp tug overcorrected his weight on the slick tile, and he fell into the tub fully dressed, flight jacket, trousers, and all.

  Twenty-Two

  The fact that any water was left in the massive minipool of a tub following the tidal splash from Torek’s nosedive was a miracle. As it was, the water hovered just below Delaney’s breasts. They bobbed at the surface even as she slouched as low as possible with Torek hogging the majority of their cramped space. He reemerged with a mighty roar, sluicing more water over the tub’s rim in a second, less impressive wave following the first.

  “Are you certain you saving and not bathing?” she asked, managing to keep a straight face.

  Torek shook the water from his eyes and fixed her with a menacing glare that might have been quite fierce had his long hair not dripped water into his face. A particularly well-aimed sudsy drop assaulted his eyeball, and he winced.

  Delaney covered her mouth, but her laugh still escaped in a smothered snort. “The great Torek Lore’Onik Weidnar Kenzo Lesh’Aerai Renaar, defeat by soapsuds.”

  “Don’t. Just, ack.” He swiped at his hair as another foaming drop stung his eyes.

  She chortled. “You not worry. I keep silent.”

  “Of course you’ll keep silent. You don’t speak to anyone but me. You—” And then he got a good look at her through squinting, bloodshot eyes and realized she was joking. He grunted.

  “If you not laugh at yourself, who you laugh at?”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re laughing at me.”

  “I am laughing with you if you laughing too.”

  He shrugged out of his jacket, peeled the bedsheet-like undershirt from his body, maneuvered out of his pants, and dropped everything on the tile floor in a sopping heap. But it wasn’t until he lifted his boots from the bath and upended the water out of them that Delaney gave up on subtlety and let herself crack up.

  A wall of water smacked her in the face. She choked midlaugh, coughed, and then splashed him back, laughing harder.

  He roared, his menace interrupted by the spurts and hiccups of his own laughter. The force of his return fire left the remaining water level dangerously low.

  “Oh, God,” she groaned, clutching her stomach.

  Torek was recovering from their bout of insanity too, but at her words, he glanced at her inquisitively.

  “Sorry,” she said, realizing she’d spoken in English. “I not laughing like that in a long time.”

  He sobered slightly. “Since leaving Earth?”

  “Yes, but before leaving Earth too.” She pulled herself together on a deep sigh.

  “I don’t laugh often either, but my place and position isn’t prone to laughter. But with you…” He paused, considering. “With you, my place and position fades, so I’m just Torek.”

  Something sparked inside her, so the hot water wasn’t the only source of heat warming her body. She eased herself more fully into the bath and splashed up more suds, suddenly sharply aware of her nakedness.

  “I know your feelings,” she murmured.

  Torek turned on the faucet to refill the tub, then lounged back, relaxing rather than hiding in the water. “Was your position and place on Earth not prone to laughter?”

  “My position and place on Earth very different, but yes, not prone to laughter.”

  “Different in what way?”

  Delaney bit her lip. In every way imaginable, she thought. “You serious because you the Commander of Onik. You must be an example to your guard.”

  “Your career didn’t dictate your seriousness?” he guessed.

  “No. I take food orders in a restaurant. Many other people with my career not serious.”

  “Then what caused your seriousness?”

  “Just me, I guess. My unhappiness. My stress and worries.”

  He raised a doubtful eyebrow. “You have stress and worries here too.”

  “But here I not worry about my next meal or if I can afford the payment for my, my living quarters. I not share living quarters with people who take pleasure in hurting me.” Delaney blinked with sudden clarity. “In many ways, living with you, even as your animal companion, is a better life than my freedom on Earth.” She shook her head. “How sad.”

  Torek’s eyes dropped to the water covering her breasts, and Delaney wondered if he could see through the suds to her body below. That throb pulsed between her legs.

  Did she want him to see her body below?

  They were classified as being in the same mukar, after all, like dogs that could interbreed. She winced on that wayward thought; just because a Chihuahua could technically mate with a Great Dane didn’t mean she should.

  But what if she actually wanted to?

  “You lived with someone who hurt you? Who took pleasure in hurting you?” Torek asked.

  She cleared her throat. What did it say about her that talking about the Todd family was actually sturdier ground than examining her feelings for Torek? “Yes. The family who is unacceptable to host children.”

  Torek stared at her, his expression inscrutable.

  She shrugged. “It happens.”

  When he finally spoke, his voice was impossibly deep, and the words as much as their tone scraped something raw inside her. “It doesn’t happen here on Lorien. I can’t imagine that it should, not even on your Earth.”

  “Yes, well, what should not happen and what happen are often the same thing.”

  Had he asked her about Kane directly, she would have clammed up. She didn’t want to talk about her past any more than she wanted to make snow angels in the courtyard nude—nothing was more pointless and exposing than reopening past wounds—but he didn’t ask. He shifted his leg, unseen beneath the water’s sudsy surface, and gently rubbed his calf alongside hers.

  “The Todd family same as all the other families I live with over the years,” she said before she could bite off her words. “At first.”

  The silence stretched.

  Torek’s calf continued its comforting, grounding strokes.

  “The father is quick to anger. Quick with his fists too, but a good cook,” she continued despite herself. “The mother is beautiful. Long, thick blond hair. Big brown eyes. A killer body. She—”

  “She killed with her body?”

  A laugh startled out of her. “No, just something we say. Her body is so beautiful, someone kill to have it.”

  “Killer body,” Torek said, sounding amused.

  Delaney nodded. “She is an addict to pain relief me
dicine and do anything for more. She steal a, a—” She mimed writing a prescription on her hand. “A thing doctors use to order medicine. I hear her call the drugstore and act like a doctor’s assistant.” She shook her head. “She do anything.”

  “What did she do to you?” Torek asked when she lapsed into a second silence.

  “Nothing,” Delaney whispered. “She do nothing.”

  Torek stroked his leg against hers again, but she hugged her knees and pulled her legs close to her chest, away from Torek’s touch. Nearly eight years, three with therapy, and an alien abduction later, and still, talking about it felt like a cheese grater against the back of her eyes.

  “Their son is my age,” she continued. “We in the same grade, go to the same school, and ride the same bus. He help me settle into my new home, they say. He help me in my new classes and make new friends. We be such good friends, they say.”

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  “The government people who pay the Todd family.”

  “But you didn’t become friends,” Torek said, his voice deep and low, nearly a growl.

  “No. We not become friends.”

  “Did you ever speak to someone about the Todd family?” Torek asked. “Like I speak to Shemara Kore’Onik?”

  Delaney nodded, staring at the bubbles.

  “Do you know why I speak to Shemara?”

  “Because you have PTSD.”

  “I have what?”

  Light glinted off the bath bubbles, creating a miniature rainbow inside each one. Hundreds of mini rainbows trapped in bubbles of their own making. “Your nightmares and night sweats and panic attacks and—”

  “Yes, but why do I have those things?”

  “Because you risk your life for your country for many seasons, and bad memories haunt you.”

  He actually grinned. “No.”

  “Because you love Shemara in secret? She understands you like no one before and no one will.”

  He stared at her, the dual gaze of his warm brown and ice-blue eyes peeling her apart.

  She compressed her lips to forestall a threatening grin, then slowly sobered for the truth of her next guess. “Because your wife die young, and you blame yourself?”