She was looking at him intently, probing around the edges of his thoughts. “You didn’t know? You—you didn’t know.” She took a step back, and tried to hide a smile. The relief that poured from her was almost overwhelming. He had no idea what she was pleased about. Then the pleasure she tried not to feel turned to wary curiosity. “Where have you been that you don’t know what a Trin looks like?”
“On the Rose border,” he told her, though he knew he should give her no more information about who he was. But then—she’d already been in his soul—and left a part of herself behind. Like a splinter.
She looked at him very steadily for a long time, then reached up and brushed away the long hair that concealed his ears. Ears that came to a delicate, sensitive point. He knew she had not seen anything like them before. Her fingers brushed across the tip of an ear and down the side of his throat. Her touch sent a shock of heat through him, but he stayed still. She had broken Kith’s neck not so long ago, but he didn’t move when she rested her palm against his pulse, even though he knew she felt it quicken.
“Beyond the Rose, I think,” she murmured, and smiled, though it had melancholy in it. “My sister wrote a song called ‘Beyond the Rose.’ It’s about what’s hidden behind it. The nebula. She doesn’t really know.”
“I do.”
She nodded. “I thought you might.”
They were whispering now, and standing closer together than before. That he still held a weapon in each hand was the only thing that kept him from touching her. “It’s a very pretty nebula. That isn’t what we call it, but I’ve seen a rose, and the comparison is apt.”
He’d seen how she’d bewitched Kith and knew there was a chance she was trying something similar here. That’s what he wanted to believe. Pyr closed his eyes, thinking that might break the spell, but it only made him more aware of her presence, close and inviting, as vulnerable and wary of it as he was. He slipped the stunner in his belt, so that he could cup her cheek.
As he did, the door to the interrogation room across the corridor slid open. He opened his eyes to meet Mik’s outraged gaze. The look shocked Pyr back to sanity, reminded him of duty, and warned him that this was not the place or time—
For what?
His response to Roxanne’s thought was to whirl her around and push her into the torture chamber. It was crowded in the small space with the three of them and the monitor that surrounded the padded table in the center of the room.
Roxanne saw the table and froze, staring at it with appalled disgust. “That’s a Pirate League toy. You need a high level telepath to work that thing.” She swallowed. “Which you have no shortage of, actually.” She glanced at Mik. “One of your jobs is to torture people? A nice man like you?” Mik actually blushed at her indignant question. Pyr felt no fear from her, but knew it would come later.
He made himself feel nothing. “Is it ready?” he asked the engineer.
Mik gave a disdainful look at the apparatus he was such an expert at using. He nodded.
“Thank you, Mih-ahr.” He gestured toward the door. “Dismissed.”
Mik’s shoulders tensed, and his gaze flicked between Pyr, Roxanne, and the interrogation table. Pyr saw the worried suspicion in his friend’s dark eyes when Mik’s gaze met his once more. Pyr might have laughed if what Mik was thinking hadn’t been so hurtful to his pride and honor. Nothing, he reminded himself. Feel nothing. I promise you that I won’t enjoy it, he thought as he saw the concerned look his friend turned back on the woman.
Neither will I, Roxanne added, sliding her thoughts with too much ease into the mindlink Pyr shared with one of his own people. “Not that I’m going to put up with being tortured this afternoon. Thank you, but I’ve had my brain washed recently,” she said, taking a step back, only to be blocked by Pyr.
He stood in front of her like a living wall as Mik left and the door closed behind him. Once Mik was gone, Pyr said, backing her toward the table. “This will happen. It is necessary.” He pushed her to sit on the table, where she looked up at him with huge, angry eyes. There was no need for explanations, he needed simply to act. He said, “You pose a danger to my ship.”
“Then I will leave your ship.” She started to rise to her feet. He put a hand on her shoulder, though he let her stand.
He moved very close to her. She might be a bit taller, but he was larger and stronger, a big, broad-shouldered man. He used his size to intimidate. He kept his voice very low as he told her, “You will be controlled. I already told you that you will do as I tell you.”
Roxanne gestured behind them. “You’re being paranoid.” There was still no fear in her. “You’re the one who is afraid,” she told him. “And it’s made you irrational. I’m koltiri, I do not make a habit of killing people.”
“I have to protect my people. No one outside the Rose is to be trusted. That is my Special Order.”
“I saved your life.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that! Be reasonable, Dhakynn.” She slapped a hand down on the padded surface of the table. “I don’t like pain, but there’s no way you can break me with this thing. There is no reason for this. This is not going to work. And I’d really like to spare us both the headache.”
She accused him of being irrational? She participated in genocide. The People must be protected. There would be no Special Orders concerning his world. No contact with outsiders, and no trust that could be betrayed. It was his vowed duty to keep the People safe and secret.
He had learned some of her secrets while she had been inside his mind. “It will work,” he told her as he thrust the knife into her abdomen. “When you are weak enough.”
———
Roxy looked at the knife hilt sticking out of her flesh, and refused to bleed. She then looked at the man who had fallen to his knees in front of her. She wasn’t sure which one of them had just screamed. “That is the second time this week someone has stabbed me,” she told Pyr. “And it’s really starting to piss me off.” His hands were clutching the table on either side of her, and his head came to rest on her knees. She had the most ridiculous urge to stroke his hair comfortingly.
She was saved from this impulse when he raised his head to look at her. “Someone else stabbed you?” The question came in a croak that was painful to hear.
“Yeah. But it wasn’t like we were going steady or anything.”
This was no time for even a vague—stab—at humor. Pyr’s breathing was ragged, the look in his eyes wounded. “I cannot go through with this. I cannot hurt you.”
She couldn’t stop herself from cupping his face in her hands. “I know.”
“I should. For the sake of all the People hold sacred, I should hurt you until you cannot resist, then make you mine.”
“The conditioning would just wear off in a few days,” she told him, and it sounded as if she was trying to reassure him after some perceived failure. “Then you’d have it to do all over again. Besides, I thought you adopted me or something. Right?”
He only felt guiltier after this reminder. “I—claimed you.”
He changed his grip on the table and levered himself slowly to his feet. When Roxanne patted the spot beside her, he sat down with a heavy sigh. His exhaustion was soul deep. His guilt hurt Roxy more than the sharp metal inside her. Pyr ran his hands over his face, then tossed back his long red hair. “I overreacted to your killing Kith, didn’t I?” He stared at the door rather than look at her.
“I’d say so, yes.” Roxy put her hand around the knife hilt, not quite ready to face the ordeal of drawing the thing out.
His gesture took in the torture chamber. “This is no way to repay the woman who saved my life.”
“I know.”
“One who I have named Kaddani.”
“I know.”
“Shut up.” He looked at her, and for some reason she found herself smiling at him. “Perhaps I should have asked for your oath not to kill me or my men.”
“You already have that
oath. I am koltiri and Physician. I don’t kill people.”
He put his hand over hers on the knife hilt. His gaze stayed steadily on hers. “Not even people who stab you?”
“I won’t kill you.” She could not stop the wide, evil grin she gave him. “I might make your life hell, but I won’t kill you. But Martin has dibs on Stev Persey. Persey murdered one of our best friends.”
“Stev—Persey.” Curiosity blazed in him, mixed with deep anger. “Persey tried to kill you?” She nodded. Pyr laughed. “By the demons, woman, we have something else in common. He tried to have me killed a week or so ago.”
“Is he the one who poisoned you?”
“No.” He eased her hand off the knife hilt. “Let me help you with this.”
“I wish you wouldn’t—Ahh!” She gasped as he pulled out the knife. “Shit! Hell! I don’t want to bleed on this outfit, it’s the only clothes I’ve got.”
“You’ll have more clothes.”
“But will they be pretty?”
He helped her to lie down on the table. “Must you joke to hide discomfort?”
“Yes.” She eyed him with suspicion for a second, ready to move in case he tried to fasten the restraints. He stroked her hair instead and pushed up her red silk tunic to watch the wound fade. She closed her eyes rather than watch the intense concentration on his face. She was utterly surprised when he bent forward and brushed his lips across where the knife wound had been. It sent an ache through her that was far more dangerous than a knife wound. She did not let herself gasp. Her voice was far too breathless when she asked, “Will that make it all better?”
“You are not a child to need such reassurance.”
Then what did he have in mind? And how did he know about telling kids that kissing a cut would make it all—
7 have raised two children. His thumbs made swirling patterns on her bared skin. His thoughts swirled around her as well, with the same slow sensuousness that was intimate, delicious, and impossible.
Two children. Raised. She held onto those facts when what she wanted to do was soar and swirl away with him on waves of sensation and thought. She supposed that meant he was married.
Not anymore, he told her, and she knew he didn’t want to talk about it.
It was one of many things they did not want to talk about, but she knew they would. “I’m married,” she told him. She would not trust herself to share thoughts. She wished she could open her eyes, instead of just lying here and feeling too much, about too much. The room was warm. He was warm, and so very big and male. She liked the way he smelled, and the way he felt. The table—the torture table, for goddess’s sake!—was ridiculously comfortable. She wanted to stretch out, to reach up and draw him down on top of her. Madness.
Reminder of life after fighting death. Isn’t that how it should be, koltiri?
Yes. He knew too well what she needed to make her truly sane and strong and whole, and so rarely received.
His hands continued to move over her as she made one last effort at safer conversation. “Why did Stev Persey try to kill you?”
It doesn’t matter.
She knew he wasn’t talking about Stev Persey. There were so many things between them that should have been important. He didn’t let any of them stop him from kissing her, and neither did she.
Chapter Nineteen
She’d never been kissed by a telepath before. To say that it was more than a pleasurable joining of lips was a colossal understatement. When they touched, a circuit of pure energy connected between them, light and heat and yearning that deeply meshed soul and body and mind. No thoughts were shared, but they didn’t need to be. On the physical level, his weight came down on her, solid and hard and enclosing. The only threat was that the glory would end. The danger was real, and it was all about pleasure and belonging and addicting need. Her arms went around him, holding on for dear life. Their lips touched and they drank in each other. It went on for a long time, and changed her—
And it was only a kiss.
Odd, how she had always found kissing to be overrated.
At some point Roxy became aware that, despite the sensation of fireworks and champagne bubbles seething through her blood, she was lying on a torture table with a man she should call her enemy, both fully clothed, with their souls naked. She didn’t want it to ever stop.
Wanting had everything to do with what was going on here, and nothing. Wanting couldn’t matter. There were too many layers of obligation on both sides of this exchange of fire. Her regret was shared with Pyr in a sigh, mouth to mouth.
He made a noise, some cross between animal desperation and pure male frustration, and moved away from her. Pyr pushed off the table with a violently angry jerk, while deep, lonely cold settled through them the moment he was absent.
He was across the small room before he spun around and ran his fingers through his hair. “Damn it, woman! I was trying to get laid here!” His shout was absorbed by the room’s heavy sound-proofing, but she absorbed it in her bones.
Getting laid wasn’t his style, she knew that. In fact, these words spoken in Standard sounded utterly foreign on his tongue. But the words protected the aching rawness in him, and made her smile.
That eased the ache in her, a little. She rolled slowly onto her side, propped her head up on her hand, and tried to look critically at the man. He was the alien enemy, after all. Unfortunately, a good hard look didn’t help. The alien enemy was too damn good looking, with his broad shoulders, strong, handsome features, and thick, burgundy red hair. In fact, he had about the straightest nose she’d ever seen, and a gloriously sensual mouth. The dark blue eyes under strong, arched brows didn’t help, either. They were too full of life and intelligence. And he was so stubborn—she didn’t know why that was attractive, but the man’s mental toughness drew her to him.
She was trying to make it easier on them both when she reminded him, “You’re a xenophobe, aren’t you? You gave the impression that no outsider is good enough to meet, let alone mate, with one of your People.”
He ducked his head and shrugged, then looked at her through a veil of thick lashes. It was a pose that was way too self-effacing and charming, and she hoped he knew it and was trying for self-parody. He could almost disguise the wildness he was fighting down in himself. “My men and I have lived on the border for a long time. Our standards have become somewhat lax.”
“Meaning I’m not the sort of girl you’d take home to your mother.”
“Normally. I have claimed you.” She didn’t want to go into that, and, obviously, neither did he. He shrugged again, and looked her over critically. “You were ugly a few hours ago. You should have stayed that way.”
This was no time to point out that it was energy he shared with her that had restored her so quickly. This knowledge might just be the incentive they needed to follow instincts that would cause the sharing to deepen. There was already too much evidence that they were heading that way. “Telepaths,” she grumbled under her breath, and sat up. She found that she was a little weak in the knees when she made herself stand. Better to face him on her feet, adversary to adversary on the same level, both doing their best to hide every possible sign of weakness. She sneered, and slashed her hand at the table, a hard, dismissive gesture. “I suppose that was an attempt to use sex to control me.” It was an out she gave them both.
He took it eagerly. “Would it have worked?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Too late, she bit down hard on her tongue. But the truth had escaped into the space between them—space that was growing more fragile with every moment they shared. “Shit!” she snarled, and then his hands were on her again, and she had to look into his angry eyes. Anger that wasn’t at her, damn it. Why the hell couldn’t the man be angry at her rather than for her? She didn’t give him time to demand an explanation from her, to make any declarations.
“I have a husband,” she told him. “A brave man who needed me, but doesn’t like me very much. I don’t like him
, either.” There. She’d admitted it, as her family and friends had wanted her to do for a long time. Only she’d admitted it to the wrong person. This wasn’t even a good time to acknowledge it to herself. “Sex was all we had—keeping me sane after healings in the middle of a war. We’re still married,” she told Pyr as she pushed his hands away from her shoulders. “The marriage may be over, but it isn’t ended. I keep my vows.”
Pyr wanted to remind her that he already had ample evidence in Kith’s death that she broke vows, but it was easier to accept her claim. He accepted what she said about her husband, and fought down his sense of outrage. He tried to find some sense of irony in wanting to rush to her defense after having stabbed her quite recently. Her blood was quite literally still on his hands, while the memory of her taste was still burning through him. “Telepaths,” he muttered.
“This linking will pass,” she told him. “It has to.”
He nodded, and hated that the gesture of agreement came so hard. He hated her desperate hope that separation was possible. And he hated that he shared that hope. He shook his head. “We don’t need personal complications.”
“No, we don’t. Not with the galaxy doing its best to die around us.”
They didn’t have time for what was happening between them, which they both knew and accepted. “We are not a pair of selfish children.”
“We have our separate loyalties.”
Why were they standing so close together again? Pyr took several steps back. When he reached the door, he almost fled. But Roxanne would still be with him if he walked away, standing just inside a doorway into his soul. Standing in a place where another belonged.
“My wife died,” he told her, giving his own best excuse. “But I will not let the bond that was between us be completely lost.” Even though Siiyel took the first steps in severing that bond long before her death nearly broke him in two. “It would dishonor her memory if I—”
You think I like being surrounded by another woman’s ashes?
The thought came hard and harsh, surprising them both. Roxanne, utterly stunned by her own jealousy, dropped back onto the table. She rubbed her temples, and looked up at him apologetically.
Gates of Hell Page 21
