by Nalini Singh
And it struck Bo out of nowhere that he might never see home again. That he'd go into oblivion without ever experiencing the glory of another Venetian sunset, or the quiet sound of water lapping at the building where he had an apartment. No more mornings listening to a busker outside his favorite bakery. No more runs through Venice's narrow cobbled streets dodging wide-eyed tourists clustered about with their cameras.
Bowen Knight might end forever in the black that was full of wonder and beauty and danger . . . but that wasn't his home.
The knot in his throat thick, he nonetheless forced himself to continue moving forward. He could not freeze. To do that would be to give up.
Scott's grandmother was already seated at a small table beside the seaward wall and beckoned him with an imperious wave of her hand. Bowen's heart hurt too fucking badly to want to make conversation, but the ruthlessly pragmatic part of his nature saw in the older woman a possible source of information on Kaia. "Name's Bowen," he said after putting his plate and mug on the table.
"Carlotta," she replied as he took the chair across from her. "Scott's grandmother and best friend to Kaia's grandmother on her father's side." She forked up a bite of quiche before continuing. "So, you're the experimental subject Atalina's brought down from the surface."
"That's me." Bowen ate a bite of peanut butter toast, his mind filling once more with images of Kaia provoking him, then giving him cookies. It eased the knot, softened the piercing sense of loss that speared through him. If this was to be the last place he saw before he ended, at least it had her in it.
"You should be proud," Carlotta said. "Atalina wouldn't accept just any subject."
The skin on the back of his neck prickled, the tiny hairs there rising. Even as he turned, he knew what he'd see: Kaia walking toward them.
His mechanical heart kicked. Hard.
She wore a sleeveless dress that flirted around her ankles and hugged her curves each time the fabric settled against her before moving again. The color was stoplight red and the top part a halter cinched below her breasts by a wide band of fabric and tied at the back of her neck.
Her hair, she'd brushed into a sheet of gleaming dark filled with myriad shades from black to brown to strands of copper. It went all the way to the flaring curve of her rear.
A wolf whistle pierced the air.
Bo didn't realize he was the one who'd done it until Kaia gave him a narrow-eyed look that could strip paint off a wall. Around him, a number of others whooped and clapped. Carlotta, however, was staring at him with a distinctly assessing expression on her face. "She's the best cook across five oceans." It was a mild rebuke. "I hope you enjoy gruel."
Sauntering over, Kaia leaned down to kiss the older woman on the cheek. "Good morning, Carlotta." The bloom tucked over her right ear was a creamy white and wafted an intoxicating wave of scent. "Would you like a piece of blackberry pie? I made it this morning."
"Blackberry pie?" Homesickness crashed over him again in a breaking wave. "My mom makes blackberry pie every summer." He tried to get back to his parents' farm at least once each summer, often ended up with scratched arms and juice-stained lips from his hunt for the lush, juicy berries that grew wild around their home.
* * *
*
KAIA was caught by the haunting poignancy of Bowen's voice, the sense of loss in the air so heavy that it made her want to rub the heel of her palm over her heart. "Don't expect to get a piece," she said, but it came out husky.
His lips curved at the edges, the hard-eyed security chief returning with a vengeance. "What if I say 'please'?"
Snorting, she fought the violent urge to go to him, touch him, give him the comfort of clan.
He's not clan, he's the enemy, cried the echo of Hugo's voice.
"You know I'd never turn down a piece of your pie." Carlotta's voice entered the moment without breaking it, as if Kaia and Bowen existed out of time.
Turning on her heel before she could surrender to the urge to touch him, Kaia sauntered into the kitchen as if she had not a care in the world. As if she hadn't spent the night tossing and turning, tormented alternately by dreams of tender caresses and kisses full of primal need, and the chilling screams of their vanished.
She still didn't have an answer to the question of whether Bowen Knight was the enemy, but what she did know was that there was more to him than the ruthless leader of the Alliance. "Thank you for holding the fort," she said to Naz, who often took a shift so she could have time off.
Today, her clanmate--an experienced cook who now made his living as a mystery novelist but who continued to love food and the kitchen--had taken the midmorning-to-midafternoon shift.
"Any problems?"
"Aside from Scott's bottomless pit of a stomach? No, we're humming. Shoo, enjoy your break."
"I'm just grabbing some pie." She sliced out Carlotta's piece. After placing it on the plate, she picked up a bottle of raspberry syrup and did a bit of decoration on a second plate before heading back out.
"Here you go." She put a huge slice in front of Carlotta, then put Bowen's empty plate in front of him.
He took one look at the message she'd written on the plate and threw back his head, laughing so hard that several clanmates rushed over to see what was happening. They snickered at reading: Wolf whistle the cook = no pie for you.
And somehow in the melee, Kaia ended up beside him with her hand on the back of his chair. Her fingers brushed through the silken thickness of his hair to touch his skin. He went motionless . . . then leaned deeper into the contact.
Chapter 23
We cannot forget joy. No matter how deep our rage and pain.
--Miane Leveque to BlackSea
"WHAT IF I beg?" Bowen looked up at her, the piercing sadness she'd felt erased by a youthful playfulness that spoke to the heart of her nature.
His whistle had done the same--wolf-whistling might not be the acceptable thing in human culture, but Kaia didn't only have a human side; her other self loved whistles and loved that Bowen was good at them.
Playmate, it thought again.
"Your fate is in Carlotta's hands," she said, never stopping her covert touch. "If she wants to share, that's up to her."
"Hmm." Carlotta's censorious tone had them both looking at her. "I don't hold with wolf-whistling."
"Coma-brain," Bowen said. "I should get to use that as a free pass at least once a day."
"Not even my grandchildren have managed to come up with that particular excuse, so I suppose you deserve some pie for the outlandishness of it alone." Carlotta picked up a knife she hadn't used for her lunch and neatly cut the large slice in two.
As the other woman put one slice on Bowen's plate, Kaia made herself break skin contact before she fell into a sensory coma of her own. Because while she'd stroked him in an effort to ease his hurts, give him the comfort of clan in a place where he was far from his own clan, the touch threatened to turn her into an addict.
The sudden disconnection caused a stutter inside her, and she saw Bowen's shoulders tighten, but he said nothing, just forked up a bite of his pie. Instead of walking away as she'd intended, Kaia hesitated long enough that she saw his eyes close as a deep groan formed in his chest.
Her toes curled.
* * *
*
BO opened his eyes to see Kaia walking away, a luscious woman in scarlet who could cook like a goddess. "No more wolf-whistling," he said firmly. "This pie . . ." He forked up another bite even as he continued to watch Kaia.
"She has a flair." Carlotta ate a bite of her own pie. "And you can't take your eyes off her."
Bo didn't look away from the gifted, frustrating, tender mystery of Kaia. She'd stopped at another table and was chatting with a clanmate. "Do you blame me?"
Carlotta's smile was thin. "No, but has anyone told you about Hugo?"
Instincts sharpening, Bowen snapped his attention to the older woman. "I know he's her friend."
"They've been two peas in a pod sinc
e babyhood. It's generally believed they'll end up mates."
Bowen leaned back deliberately in his chair, his shoulders relaxed. "I don't think Kaia's the kind of woman who'll do the expected."
Taking a sip of her coffee, Carlotta continued to watch him. "No, and it's interesting you know that."
"You don't sound particularly concerned about Hugo," Bowen said just as Kaia began to move again, heading out of the atrium.
Carlotta went eerily immobile. "I mourn for all our lost," she said in a tone that held the darkness of the ocean.
In the distance, Kaia's red dress disappeared into a large opening that he guessed led to a connecting bridge to another habitat.
"You got balls, coma-guy." A dark-skinned man with long dreads punched him lightly on the shoulder as he passed their table. "No one messes with Kaia."
"I heard she threatened to fillet, then fry the gonads of the last guy who tried to court her!" another voice called out from a table behind Bo.
"Or that might've been because you tried to court her with dead clams, you numbnut," came a third contribution.
"Hey! They could've had pearls inside!" the numbnut protested. "It was romantic. I asked Aunt Rita in Wild Woman magazine about courtship. She said be unique but romantic. So I thought, why give jewelry when I could give mysterious clams?"
"And that is why you shall die a single, forty-year-old virgin!"
Laughter rippled through the atrium before people began to disperse. Across from him, Carlotta's expression grew softer. "It's good to hear my clan laugh."
Bo's own smile faded. "It must be hard to stay positive with the vanishings."
"Yes, but our children can't grow up in a people drenched in sorrow. It'd ruin an entire generation." She put down her fork. "Our First has made it clear we must not permit our anguish to shatter the childhood of our young."
"I get it." Bowen caught a glimpse of the mustachioed walrus-seeming man out of the corner of his eye. "Human families still have to raise their children with love and affection and joy despite the shadow of psychic violation." He'd seen the struggle firsthand on the faces of countless parents--but they kept on trying because their children deserved to know happiness and hope.
Carlotta's nod was slow. "Yes. We all have battles to fight." Picking up her fork again, she ate a little more of her meal while Bowen continued to keep an eye on the aggressive blond male Kaia had referred to as Alden.
The big man was staying on the far side of the atrium, but he'd shot at least three simmering glances in Bowen's direction in the last minute alone.
Picking up her coffee again, Carlotta took a long drink. "As for Hugo and Kaia," she murmured after placing her cup back on the table, "if there's one thing I've learned in my hundred years on this planet, it's that plans have a way of being derailed by this thing called life."
Her words rippled a shiver across Bowen's skin just as a large whale swept by on the other side of the seaward wall. Face crinkling into a smile, Carlotta waved. "There's my darling Filipe. He always grumps that he's spent half his life waiting for me to get myself ready." A laugh, another wave as the whale swam by again. "I'm coming, dear."
Bowen's mouth fell open. "I know I'm not supposed to ask . . ."
Carlotta gave an exasperated shake of her head. "Yes, I am a whale. Satisfied now?"
"No." Bowen was never going to be satisfied on this point. "Leopards and wolves, I can almost make sense of that matter differential, but how can you possibly have enough mass to become a whale?" He chugged down his coffee, put the mug on the table with exaggerated care. "No. Nope. Never."
Carlotta laughed and it was big and husky and gorgeous. When she finally stopped laughing and stood, apparently finished with her meal, she leaned down to kiss him on the cheek. "Dear boy, I do think I like you."
She left the atrium moments later.
That was when the mustachioed possible-walrus rose from his table and charged through the nearly empty atrium toward Bowen.
Well, fuck.
Chapter 24
Always move with purpose.
--Yamato Sensei to Bowen (17)
KAIA BREATHED A silent sigh of relief when she saw Carlotta step onto the bridge to habitat two. She'd been stuck in the spot ever since she left the atrium--courtesy of a clanmate who was one of the sweetest people on Ryujin, but oh how she could talk. And talk. And talk.
"What an astonishing story," Kaia interrupted when Lori paused for a breath in between rapid-fire sentences. "But I've--"
"Oh, but I haven't told you the best part!" Lori put her hand on Kaia's forearm, her bright blue eyes twinkling. "That was when--"
"Kaia?" Carlotta's stern voice. "What are you still doing here? I had the impression you were off to meet your friends for your weekly lunch." She frowned at Lori. "And you, Loribeth, aren't you supposed to be teaching a swarm of young ones?"
Glancing at the large watch face she wore on a chain hanging from her neck, Lori squealed. "Oh, my God!" She began to run down the bridge. "I'll tell you the rest of the story later!"
"Mahalo, Carlotta." Kaia's ears were still ringing with the sound of Loribeth's squeaky voice. It was cute but extremely difficult to halt.
Shaking her head, the older woman said, "You have to cut her off before she gets going, Kaia. You know how guppies are--budgies of the sea, I call them."
"I know. But she's so sweet and--" Kaia froze at a surge of shouts from the direction of the atrium, so loud it threatened to overwhelm her sensitive hearing.
It was difficult to separate out the words until she heard Dex's voice roar, "Alden!"
Kaia kicked off her slippers and ran, arriving just in time to see the enraged walrus close the final inches to Bowen--who was on his feet. She wasn't going to get to the two in time and Alden's arm was rising, his huge hammer of a fist heading straight for Bowen's face. One blow and he could crumple bone, thrusting shards into Bowen's brain and ending his life.
Still running, she went to scream at the others to stop him, but Alden had mowed down clanmates like bowling pins. Dex was getting up, his craggy face a creation of harsh lines and solid bone, but he wasn't going to make it, either. No one was going to make it.
Kaia's breath rasped painfully in her lungs, her blood a roar in her ears. Then came an almighty crash. Horror shrieked through her system. She'd flinched and closed her eyes instinctively at the moment of impact, but when she flicked them open immediately afterward, she came to a halt, unable to comprehend quite what she was seeing.
Alden was on his back on the floor with an upside-down table flat on his face. Splatters of blackberry filling and coffee and what might've been scrambled eggs turned his body into a bad expressionist painting. He was attempting to push the table off, but as he lay there like a stunned beetle, Bowen calmly picked up a chair and slammed it down so the point of one leg came within a hairsbreadth of Alden's privates.
Alden froze.
Lungs burning, Kaia finally looked at Bowen's face. "No." She closed the distance between them in a heartbeat and grabbed his jaw. "He hit you."
"Just a split lip." Bowen scowled. "I'm slower than I'm used to being, miscalculated a fraction. He got in a glancing blow."
Kaia scanned his face, searching for any other signs of injury. But his eyes were clear, his nose unbroken. Scarlet liquid welled in only the soft curve of his lower lip. "I--" she began when Dex reached them. His face was white under the tan of his skin, blood vessels sticking out on his temples.
"Atalina's on her way to meet me for lunch." He stomped a foot onto Alden's chest when the walrus finally succeeded in thrusting off the table. "I swear, Alden, if you so much as fucking twitch, I will tear your stupid fucking head off your stupid fucking body."
Alden went motionless. Hard-faced and formerly hard-living Dex was the station commander because he remained calm even when the world went to hell--but he was also a great white shark capable of doing exactly what he'd threatened.
Wide and soulfully dark eyes stared at
Kaia, Alden pleading for help. But she had exactly zero sympathy for him right now. "How far away is she?"
"She messaged two minutes ago." Dex looked at the time on his phone screen, a kind of painful desperation to him. "She'll be here in another two."
Kaia grabbed Bowen's hand. "Come on!" Avoiding Alden's sprawled form, she tugged Bowen out of the mess of fallen furniture that Dex was roaring at nearby clanmates to straighten up now.
Atalina wouldn't be surprised at the mess, not with Alden around. But Kaia's cousin couldn't be permitted to see Bowen's face. Going as fast as she thought Bowen could handle, she managed to make it to her quarters without running into Attie. She put her hand on the scanpad and pushed Bowen through as the door slid back.
And Atalina appeared around the corner. "Kaia." A beaming smile. "I thought you were planning to have lunch with Tansy and Seraphina?"
"I forgot something." She pressed a hand to the rapid tattoo of her heart and hoped Bowen would have the good sense to stay inside. "Just ran back to get it."
"Did you see Dex in the atrium?"
"He was making people straighten up the furniture." Kaia rolled her eyes. "Alden."
"When will that boy-man grow up?" Brow furrowing, Atalina waved good-bye and continued on her way.
* * *
*
BO could hear the two women outside the door, but though his lip throbbed, he was far more interested in Kaia's personal space. The room was open-plan, with the facilities tucked to the back left, a large and comfortable-looking bed in the middle, and a delicate chair set in front of a writing desk against the wall nearest the door.
The back wall was a transparent window into the black.
The bed was bracketed by tall and narrow white shelves that held physical books as well as small treasures. On the right shelf sat a ragged doll wearing a chef's hat that must've come from Kaia's childhood. Also there was a badly made mug painted with her name, and two computronic frames. One appeared to be glitching, the image on it heavily pixelated and unmoving, but the other displayed photographs of two people: a tall and lanky man with a playfulness in his smile that reminded Bowen of Kaia, and a dark-eyed and dark-haired woman of extraordinary beauty.
