by Celeste Raye
That saddened her. She could not forget the crowd of faces staring up at the ship's windows, tears running down their faces and entreaties coming from their mouths. If they had known so many would die they could’ve packed more, and she was sure of it, despite everything that Marik or the others said to the contrary.
As they had traveled back toward home, they had heard nothing but more stories of war breaking out in more rebellions against the Federation. Things would be hard for all of them.
Talon had declared that the ships of the space-pirates who had agreed to haul the humans to the planet in exchange for a vast number of credits would have to be docked on the planet to unload the passengers but that they could only stay docked for a short time.
It was stupid to trust a pirate, he said, and Marik had said Talon should know, as should they all.
He also said, not even jokingly, that at least the war would occupy the space pirates and present a much bigger prize to them so they would not bother the planet much, if it all.
Jenny got off the ship. Others were waiting to welcome the refugees. The new arrivals were being greeted, and there were new huts that had been built, but more would be needed. As she stepped off the ship, she saw the fish hunters coming to shore, their catch towed along behind them. It looked like they had had good luck and she was glad. They had a lot of people to feed now.
She was too weary and heart sore to do much more. She trudged up the hill, waving but not speaking as she headed to her home.
She stepped inside to see that everything was just as she had left it. The shelves still held her little collection of things, and the glass jar that Marik had given her caught a stray beam of sunlight and refracted it back. Her breath caught.
Marik.
Did he care for her?
She did more than care for him. She loved him. She loved him so much, but that anger that had bloomed into being when the walls around the implant had broken stood between them. She had been so angry at him, and he had been so hurt even if he had understood why she has been angry at him.
That anger had kept her from going to him. She did not know what to say to him. She had no idea what to say, or how a simple and mere apology could suffice to heal that wound.
I can heal almost anything, but I can’t heal the breach between us, the breach I caused.
Tears fell down her face. She let them. The horror and the shock over what she had witnessed and lived through down there on the surface of Old Earth had not yet left her, and she crumpled to the bed, crying for the lives lost and for the ones who would still die down there.
Talon was right. They could no longer fight that battle. The best way to help that planet and its citizens was to fight the Federation directly. She and Marik might have to fight again. She might have to kill again, even though that thought horrified her to no end.
She was no warrior, but she would fight against those who would kill many more if they had a chance. She had to. She was a healer, and if she could, she would use that gift to save lives and to fight back against the horrors of war and death.
The sound of the door opening made her sit up. She blinked as Marik’s figure filled the doorway. Her hands went to her face, and she scrubbed at it. “What…”
He shifted from foot to foot. “I came to the door and knocked but you didn’t answer, and I heard…” He looked away. “I have better hearing than humans.”
She stood. Her hands clasped at her waist. Her mouth opened, and the words came from her mouth—and her heart. “I am so sorry. I never meant to say such terrible things to you and I…I wish I could take them back. I wish I could stop myself from saying them before I had. I wish I could turn back time and make it not happen but I can’t so all I can say is that I am sorry and that I wish I had not…had not done that.”
Marik crossed the distance between them. His lips moved up in a ghost of a smile. “Oh, I know you didn’t mean it. I…I was wrong for doing what I had done, but I had to. There was only one way to make you understand what you are. I don’t know, even, how a human could be a natural healer. I have never known any who were. Healers, yes, but not one like you.”
She licked her dry lips. “What am I?”
“You’re beautiful.”
The words fell into the space between them. Her heart throbbed and threatened to race so hard that she was afraid she would faint for a moment. She whispered, “So are you.” Her face heated. “I mean…I mean…”
He came closer still. His hand came up and rested on her cheek. He said, “Jenny, I…I know you have a broken heart. That the betrayal your ex…that you love him greatly…but I…I…”
Was that why they had really avoided each other? Because she loved him and because she was afraid she had ruined everything by being angry? Was he avoiding her because he thought she was in love with Ben and he had not wanted to speak up?
Surely he was about to say that he loved her!
She realized that if he were going to, she would have to say something first. She would have to be the one to have all the courage she was always so afraid that she would not have. She had to be brave if she was going to win this being she was so in love with.
“I love you.” The words came around the salty lump in her chest and throat. She did not bother trying to stem the tears. “I love you, and I knew that before I saw Ben again. I think he was able to catch me off guard that day because I was so guilt-stricken, knowing that I loved you and not him.
“I should have known that he had changed, but I didn’t because the truth is I never really knew him in the first place.” Her shoulders slumped. “I…I was always so afraid back there, before, and this time too. I thought he was strong because I didn’t know what it really meant, being strong I mean.
“I know now because I know you.”
Marik’s face twisted. He came closer still and gathered her into his arms. His body held hers up and her head tilted back. His mouth captured hers and the same shattered and yet elated sensation sank in as his mouth stayed on hers. Her hand came up and rested along his shoulder, squeezing down slightly, and she shivered as a new sensation, a long sexual flush, rolled through her.
Everything that they had ever wanted to say was in that kiss. Their mouths met and held, and his tongue found hers, sending a fresh and new sensation streaking through her body. Her bare toes curled into the floor, and she shivered again, her body pressing against his in a desperate thrust that brought to her flesh the feel of his hard muscles and strong body.
He whispered, “I have loved you so very much for so long. I am so sorry that I gave you such a deadly gift. But…”
“But it was already mine in the first place, and one day I may have found it and not known how to use it.”
He nodded. His eyes, large and lustrous, looked into hers. He said, “War is never going to end. There will never be a time when it does not come.”
Her throat thickened, but she got words out past that clenched tightness. “Even here?”
“I do not know. I hope not. The Federation may not bother, we are so far on the outer rims and have nothing of much use other than water, which they can get on any of the water planets.”
She whispered, “If they come, I will be on the front lines fighting with you. Then I will be with you helping to heal our people. Is it possible, you think, to be both a warrior and a healer?”
His smile was soft and sad but real. “Yes, I have been both. I am both.”
“But you do not have the ability to make of yourself a weapon.”
He shook his head. “Not in the same way you do, but I am a weapon. I have killed often, Jenny, and my heart is sore from the deaths that I have caused.”
She leaned closer to him. The feel of their heartbeats matched and met and her eyes closed. “So does mine.”
He said, “Then we will have to heal each other.”
She looked up at him. His mouth came down on hers again, and happiness such as she had never known filled her. This being—he ha
d watched over her even when she had not known that he was there. He had saved her life more than once. He was strong and proud and fierce, and he was compassionate and powerful.
He was everything, everything, and she knew that no matter what happened, if Revant Two managed to escape the terrible war that had just begun to rage across the universe, and even if they didn’t, if they died tomorrow or lived forever—they would do it together.
His hands fisted her hair, and he brought her face closer. Her mouth parted for his and he kissed her deeply. The tang of heartache that had lain over everything was gone now, and only that sweetness between them remained.
His mouth opened and hers did as well. The kiss lengthened and deepened, and his hands moved to her body. His fingers cupped her breasts through the thin dress that she wore, and she shivered as her nipples stuck up in sharp points below that thin and pretty fabric.
His fingers flicked across her nipples, stiffening them even further. Her breath caught as his mouth left hers and his hands went to work on her dress, lifting it over her head before discarding it on the floor.
Her fingers slid over the front of his trousers to find the chubby and plump outline of his cock below the material. He shivered slightly and his dick pulsed, thickening under her searching hand. Her fingers moved to the buttons as his mouth found a nipple and sucked it into his mouth, his teeth grazing the pebble-hard flesh slightly and lifting it higher still.
His staff filled her palm, hot and hard and throbbing. The heavy veins wrapped around the shaft pulsed as she traced them with her fingers, her thumb rubbing the silky skin at the top of his cock, making fluid gather there, and she used that fluid to lubricate his head a little as she went to her knees.
His masculine and slightly starchy scent filled her nose. She opened her mouth and drew him down her throat, her tongue moving against his flesh as she sucked his staff.
Her hand came up, forming a loose fist around the base, and she tightened her grip as she lifted her head and then lowered it again, using her hand to help pleasure him. She put her free hand on the heavy sac of his testes and let her fingers stroke that soft and smooth skin gently as she continued to blow him.
His hands tangled into her hair. His hips arched and bucked and he moved with real force, the pleasure driving him onward.
She groaned when he tugged her hair hard enough to stop her. He helped her to her feet then picked her up, carrying her to the bed where he lay her down gently. The mattress sagged below the pressure of his weight as he joined her on the bed. His fingers took a slow route along her body, tracing every curve and angle. Her hips lifted and her legs spread as his fingers ran through the curls that covered her mound and then dipped lower, his thumb pressed firmly against her clit.
Her breath shuddered once more as he swung his leg over her and then entered her, his heavy member spreading open her inner walls while his thumb kept manipulating her clit and bringing pleasure to her in strong waves that broke and crested with every slow circle his thumb made around her clit.
He withdrew, then entered her again. Her heels banged against his back as she wrapped her legs around him, her fingers raking across his back as pleasure became sheer and undeniable passion that made her cry out and then arch toward him, her body thrusting against his as he drove forward with his hips, his cock filling her to the hilt again and again.
Her body quivered as his thumb pressed down hard on the erect and taut bud of her clit. Her eyes fluttered closed then open again as his mouth captured hers in a hard and demanding kiss that left her breathless and not caring about that at all. His scent filled her nostrils, the feel of his skin met her flesh, and the power of his lovemaking swept away all thought but the thought of pleasure and love and the moment at hand.
His teeth grazed her neck, and his fingers of his free hand wound into hers. She clutched at his hand, at his shoulders and back as his teeth and lips moved lower to tease her nipples again while his hips picked up a faster pace.
Heat and friction mingled, driving her half out of her mind. Her body rocked below his. The orgasm was there, just out of reach but so close now. The sweet and nearly unbearable tension grew with each thrust and each kiss, each nibble at her neck and nipples.
She came, her walls opening and closing as her throat opened a lusty cry escaped her mouth. His ass jerked and shuddered, and she writhed below him, her body flushing with heat and need and completion.
Oils slid from her center, her core releasing more and more of them with each flutter and contraction of her walls. Those fluids splattered and spilled onto his throbbing flesh and she felt that rod pulse, and then he was coming, thick blasts of his seed spurting from his head and splattering into her tight inner walls. Her whimpers met his moans, forming a counterpoint to them.
He collapsed on top of her and held her as the aftershocks came, rippling through her body and taking her right over the edge and back into pleasure all over again. She cried out softly, and he smiled down at her face, his hands stroking her hair, tangled and sweaty now, away from her cheeks.
He whispered, “I’m here, and you’re mine, and I’m yours.”
Yes. They belonged to each other, and they would be together.
Forever.
Book 4: Jeval
By Celeste Raye
Chapter 1
Margie stood in a greenery house, her hands lightly touching the silky stalks and leaves of some plant she had never seen before but which those who knew plants swore would be a great food source for humans.
Her eyes went around the large and echoing space surrounding her. Things grew everywhere. In pots hanging from ceilings and walls. In neat little rows inside the boxes filled with rich soil. In standing pots. Bushes shrubs, flowering things—all of it green and growing and beautiful in its own way.
From a nearby spot, she heard a woman say, “It’s pretty horrid. I mean, it is so primitive. I am half-tempted to demand to be returned to Old Earth. After all, The Federation will have to fix it right? The people who’re here from below have quite forgotten their place and I know it’s just as bad back home, but this…I just don’t know how much of this I can stand.”
Contempt rolled through Margie. In the last months since Talon, Jessica, Marik, and Jenny had returned to Revant Two with ships filled with Old Earth refugees, tensions between those from Above who longed for a return to the old system and those who had never known it or who had, and refused to be a part of such an oppressive situation ever again, had been really high.
The refugees had all fled the war and terrible conditions there that had come not just from the rebellion by the ones who lived Below against those who lived Above, but from the Gorlites invasion—and that invasion had been aided by The Federation in some part—but not all of them were happy with their decision to flee.
Revant Two was an isolated planet in a system made up of exactly two planets and a few stars. It was in the far reaches of the known universe, and the sister planet was occupied by the Revants who’d also lost their home in the Warp Wars between The Federation and any system that had a wormhole that The Federation wanted to use for a trade route. These wormholes collapsed and destroyed planets and systems in the subsequent implosion.
The other planet was held by a religious order that didn’t want refugees because their bloodline was still pure Revant, and they were vicious in their dislike of the other species currently populating Revant Two, which meant that it was the planet they were on or nowhere for those who were dissatisfied with where they had ended up. Another voice, that one male, put in, “Back home, I was an official. I had a vast house and servants from Below. I was allowed special privileges, and I had full use of the parks and green spaces and I could go to them knowing I would only meet people there who were my peers. Now the ones we use are all overrun by those who think us their peers, and they should know they are not our peers at all! You would think the people that run this place would cede to Federation rule and allow us to have some sort of structu
re.”
You asshole, Margie thought. Her body went taut. What the hell did these people know about the real issues that faced those who lived Below on Old Earth?
The woman who’d spoken first said, “My husband was an official as well. His place deserves more than what I have been given as his widow. I have been given a hut! A hut!”
Margie’s temper snapped. She walked out of the row she stood in and faced down the two. The woman had a pinched haughty face, and the man she had been speaking to was tall and thin, his face bearing obvious cosmetic marks that had been meant to make him look younger, and had—back on Old Earth where there were surgeries that could still keep up his youthful appearance.
Her voice was thin with her rage. “You want to go back to Old Earth? I’ll tell the leaders. Give me your names. You can go back there and starve to death, or die from a laser blast. Or be killed by the ones from Below who were left behind while you ran onto a ship to escape the rovers and the bandits and the thugs and the climate changes that are killing so many. I am sure that when you return, the families of those who stayed behind and died so you could go, will be happy to hear you have returned.”
Her jaw was taut with rage. Her whole body shook with it. She hated the ones from Above as a matter of course having been raised Below, but she had found that many of the ones who had fled to the safety of this planet were actually relieved that the old system didn’t exist anymore.
These two ungrateful assholes were not ones who were.
The woman sneered, “Mind your own business.”
“You don’t have the power to order me.” Margie’s words cut through the air. A small crowd began to gather. Muttering started. Those who sided with the two Abovers, who were unhappy, sidled toward them. More of them ranged out behind Margie.
Tension simmered in the air. The things that stood between the two camps had always been a source of tension but the fact that the ones who were from Above and couldn’t stop mourning the loss of the cushy life they had had once lived at the expense of those from Below had tightened that tension to a boiling point.
