Lina laughed.
Lon bounced sharply on the bed to stop her. “Vraiment. I'm going to do everything to you that you like, and you'll enjoy it. And you're not going to do a single thing to me in return.”
“Oh come on, Lon.”
“No. Not a thing. You'll be severely punished if you do one pleasurable thing to me. You are going to take this and enjoy it, do you hear? The guilt will come if you don't.”
“But there's so much pleasure in giving, too.”
“That's the one pleasure you won't get tonight. Just think of me as your love slave, d'accord?”
“If I can be yours some other night,” she giggled.
“Wrong answer. You are never going to reciprocate! You are not going to do anything to me in return for this.”
“Honeybear, this is too silly.”
“It is not. You've spent the last four days doing everything I wanted and needed, and now I want to do this for you. You will lie there and enjoy this!”
She giggled again, entirely embarrassed and knowing that Londo must hear her heart pounding so hard and fast. He was such a Leo! “Okay, where do we begin? Or rather, where do you begin, slave?” She waved an imperial hand at him to commence.
“Eh bien, let's see.” He quickly began to unfasten his wrap and noticed that she was watching him very attentively, so he slowed it down, added a little action to it and a few measures of growled “bow chicka wow wow” striptease music. She grinned at him, blushing. She had such a pink blush.
“Very nice,” she said. “Let me get a few dollar bills.” She gave him an appraising glance. “Maybe some tens.”
“No compliments, mistress! No tips, either.”
“The love slave will desist from his comments,” she ordered grandly. She was a deep rose down to the neckline of her robe. “And he will refer to me as, as…empress. I've always wanted to be an empress. Catherine the Great, Czarina of all the Russias!”
“Back to earzh, empress. You'll be yourself during this. You. Lina.” He moved in to slowly remove her robe, making sure that his hands caressed her soft skin as they moved the cloth. Her breathing changed; her skin warmed. He eased up behind her, bringing his hands around to cup her shoulders as he nuzzled her neck, so careful of the bandages.
“You stand above all empresses in my heart. Forever, kitten. Now tell me what pleases you,” he whispered next to her trembling cheek.
“Ooo, that does. I love the sound of your voice. It sends shivers up my spine sometimes.”
He whispered his love to her and then moved his mouth to kiss down her neck. She quivered under his attention. He deepened the feedback loop to search out more pleasures for her.
Women and their heightened sense of touch. She was sensuousness itself as he moved over her.
He would ask and after a while she began to admit to him what pleased her the most. He fell to his task gently but thoroughly.
She shied away from a selfish core of lust that she kept so tightly bound inside, but he played with it, urging it to unfurl and demand for herself. He wanted it to be selfish. He nibbled at its edges, coaxing, coaxing…
“C'mon, baby,” he whispered to her. “You can do it.”
She thought about squirming away but the things he was doing—! She was breathless; she couldn't talk, but he found just where she wanted him to touch her, he knew just how she wanted to be touched.
She cried out her resistance to him. He responded by repeating his vows of love and faithfulness. “You are my empress, my goddess of love,” he told her. “I bow down before your power.” He worshipped her in body and mind. “Command me. Command me!”
Lina knew she couldn't stay trapped in this dead end she had created for herself. At some point she either had to give up—and that would mean giving up Londo, too—or she had to fight for him.
Even if that meant fighting herself.
Despite all his promises, Londo might someday leave, and she knew that would destroy her. But where could anyone get a guarantee in life? Why did she expect God to reach down and deliver a written lifetime warranty into her hand?
Sometimes you had to take a chance, close your eyes and jump. Sometimes you had to break the repeating pattern of your life and change, for good or bad, just to get to a different place. Surely in these past few days circumstances and Londo had forced her to jump more than she ever had. Could she do it again?
A year ago, a week ago—where had she been? Cowering from life. Now she had touched another human being. She'd made love to Londo. He loved her. She'd helped him and then saved his very life when no one anywhere else could have.
Did that mean that she was truly Lina Muttbutt, lowest of the low?
Londo called her beautiful. He told her she was brave. He said she was sexy and smart.
Was there a chance that he was right, even a little?
“Je t'aime plus que tout. I adore you,” he whispered in her ear. Londo said that, Londo who was the most wonderful man in the universe, who was Valiant, who had proposed a lifetime of marriage to her.
She had faith in Londo.
She had faith in herself.
Lina took him then. She wanted him. She wrapped her body around him and she reached inside his mind to cherish him, to lust for him. To have him every way she could, his mind naked and open to her touch so she could know him like no one else had ever known him before. To have him in body and soul.
He was hers! She could ask anything of him, she could want anything of him. She could receive anything from him that he offered!
She was good enough. She deserved this.
She kissed him again and again afterward, memorizing his face by touch and then tangling her fingers in his soft hair as she kissed his chest and arms. She brushed her hands over his body to pleasure the both of them. Lon sighed with delight and wonder at her reactions.
She purred, “There has never been another man in the entire universe as wonderful as you. I love you, I love you so much.”
“And can you feel how much I love you?”
Lina opened her eyes to meet his. “Darling, I'd have to be dead not to feel this. You made me live again. It's incredible. You're incredible.”
“My love for you is infinite. There's no way for you to match it, so don't try. Accept it. Take it; it's yours.”
“I love you, Londo. Forever and ever.”
He could feel it in her. The dam had broken; the flow could reach her. She truly knew his love now.
And with the flow was a return current, a warmth that he'd never known before. She gave her entire heart with no hesitation. She was his and she knew that.
Her eyes were bright with adoration and softly she began a song that seemed written just for her to sing to him. She had a most beautiful voice, clear and bright and filled with love.
There was love all around, but I never heard it singing.
No, I never heard it at all,
'Til there was you.
She sniffed and hugged him tightly. Londo held her in awe, held the universe in humble amazement. All at once life seemed to steady and the future stretched clear and wonderful and perfect. God was in His heaven; all was right with the world.
“Us together,” Londo murmured as he stroked her hair. “Forever. You beside me.”
She nodded against his chest. “For the rest of our lives,” she said as she ran her hand down his arm, “and even beyond.”
She was made of love, tender and deep, reflecting and strengthening his own.
The love itself seemed to echo through the room like a physical thing, making it misty. No, making it clearer, Londo realized, yet with a mysterious, golden glow. Something was happening to the room but it didn't upset him.
Rainbows encircled them; a golden-white light shone down. They were showered clean from their lovemaking with love itself. Presences lived in the light, great and powerful and benign with loving thoughts.
A voice: “Two of the three have accepted each other. Receive the blessings of the
Three Worlds. Take these as gifts for your union.”
The two of them were now dressed—in what, Londo couldn't tell. The light was too bright for even him to see through, but it wasn't uncomfortable in any way. He looked at Lina in his arms, and she, at him. “It's not me,” she said, and then caught her breath—
They hung beyond time itself. The two of them, their higher selves: their true and perfect selves, forever a part of each other, forever joined, yin and yang. Lon caught the words, “twin souls” but it hadn't come from Lina. She moved toward him to kiss him against the curtain of eternity. He clasped her in his arms to seal her promise. They were one.
And then they were floating above a floor, surrounded by that mighty light as it faded. Lon supported Lina in mid-air, trying to hold on to the moment.
“Wiley, all your recording equipment had better have caught that!” Jae's voice exclaimed as he and the doctor scrambled out of their makeshift beds and ran toward the two.
Unwillingly Londo touched lightly down. “Twin souls,” he said in wonder, stroking her cheek as Lina gazed into his eyes. “What does it mean?”
“Twin souls are…soulmates. Real ones, not the cliché. Some people say that when human souls were created they were androgynous, and at some point they split in two, male and female, yang and yin. Twin souls would be the two parts that make up one original soul.”
“So that's…us?
“It certainly feels like it,” Lina said, ignoring Wiley and Jae. There was only Londo.
A slow smile came to Lon's face. “Carolina O'Kelly, would you do me the great honor of marrying me?”
She gave him a dazzling smile of her own. “Oh yes, Londo Rand. Even unto eternity.” And they kissed while Wiley and Jae looked at each other.
Chapter 24
“Hold it! Break it up!” Wilder yelled, but they were oblivious to the others for quite some time. Finally Londo turned to blink at their surroundings: Wiley's lab.
“How did we get back here?”
Lina dreamily said, “Wasn't me.” Londo! Londo!
“Aussi bien.” It was unimportant next to other things. “Gentlemen, I'd like you to meet my fiancée, Ms. Carolina Angelina O'Kelly, of the North Carolina O'Kellys.”
Lina giggled and he wagged his eyebrows at her.
“I thought I told you no sex,” Wilder grumped. “Did you even wait five minutes?”
“The prescription was 'for a while,' unquote, and I feel much more than fine.”
Lon grinned at them all as Wiley demanded to know what had just happened here. Some of his sensors had caught vague lights and murmurs but others hadn't registered anything they could quantify beyond going off-scale across the spectrum.
Lon merely said, “It was a miracle,” and let it go as if miracles happened every day.
Lina beamed at Londo, beamed at Wiley and Jae and the universe and said, “Wasn't that nice? Wasn't that wonderful?” She didn't let Londo go. She'd never let him go.
Jae finally elbowed Wiley. “Give them a little while on this,” he said as he came out of his own amazement. “They're obviously in shock.”
To which Wiley muttered darkly and snapped, “Report, Legionnaire!” to Londo, who tried to make it clear to the scientist that they really had no idea.
As Wiley tried to coax some sense out of his foolishly-smiling teammate, Lina noticed the cream-colored floor-length dress she wore and smoothed out the material. It was lace over a satin underdress, the lace a surprisingly bold yet delicately wrought pattern of three symbols—no, a fourth one peeked out from behind—over and over. The same held true for Lon's satin coat: four symbols, but his were embroidered into a subtle brocade.
“What is this?” Lina asked, interrupting Londo. She craned her neck to check her back. The strapless underdress belled out because it was hooped, and the off-the-shoulders lace overdress trailed behind her in a long train. There were tiny gold dome buttons for accents and a simple gold chain at her throat. She could feel a wreath of blossoms in her hair, smell the soft fragrance of the flowers there. Her hair was up and securely pinned under the flowers. Her ears held what felt to be button earrings.
“It's a wedding dress,” Lon answered. “A beautiful faerie gown for my beautiful princess bride.”
Lina caught her breath. “Does this have something to do with that special effects hoodingus from your TV interview?” **Are we still naked underneath the illusion?**
“It's no illusion, chérie. Wiley?”
Wiley already had two tricorders going, giving the puter orders for more focused scans even as he kept replaying the previous event. “No illusion as far as I can detect,” he said.
He ran his instruments over Lon's outfit: also with the same cream as Lina's accents, but overall much darker, a caffè latte tan and rich mocha. Instead of Old South, Lon styled a Napoleonic gentleman. His vest reversed the colors and tight pants were tucked into knee boots. A row of gold buttons ran down either side of the high-collared tailcoat. Pink-blooming ivy peeked out of a buttonhole.
“Bon. Jaeson, m'man.” Lon clapped the blond Legionnaire on the shoulder with such ease that no one noticed the care he took to do it. Even so, Jae stumbled slightly from the friendly blow. “You're still ordained? You haven't resigned from the priesthood since this afternoon?”
Jae's face had gone tight and masklike. “Of course I am.”
“Marry us. Right now.”
Lina clutched at Londo. “What? Oh Londo, you can't— We don't even know what's—”
“Hush, wife-to-be. We have made a decision, and I think we should follow through before you change your mind.”
“Londo! You're the craziest, most wonderful man I've ever met. But this is impossible!”
“You saw it; it's all impossible. C'mon, twin soul, let's get married. The universe or at least three worlds, whatever they are, agree to this match. We seem to be dressed and ready. Jae, can you do it? I mean, would you do us the indescribable honor of officiating as we take our vows?”
Jae stood there with his mouth open, his mask cracked in shock. “She's right, Londo, you're crazy. You can't have discussed things. She doesn't know what she's getting into.”
“We can talk later. Time to do this now,” Lon insisted. “C'mon, Jae.”
“I am not going to play a part in this!” Jae exploded. “It's craziness! It's...it's dangerous for her. Lina, he didn't tell you, but he's got people after him all the time. Now they're going to have a new target. You.”
“I'll keep her safe,” Lon said quickly. “There's a—”
Jae interrupted him, gesturing in the air in a quick motion. “Priority call. Commander Magnos!” he called.
From the air, a familiar voice grumbled, “Umm…” There came a snort, then, “Jae? What time is it? Has something happened?”
“Yes, something has happened. Londo is getting married,” Jae announced, folding his arms in front of his chest and giving Lon a hard look. “And he's doing it now.”
“Come, Jae,” Londo said amiably, “we don't have to get Stoan—”
“What?” A screen scrolled down from the ceiling. There was the commander rising up from under his bedsheets, unmindful of the disarray of his cropped hair. He wore something close-fitting, so black the style wasn't apparent even when the screen disappeared to display him as if he were standing there with them. “Londo, explain!”
Lon held out splayed arms. “What's to explain? Stoan, go back to bed. Or watch if you want. I'd like that. I just want to marry Lina, and I want to do it before she has a chance to change her mind. Happens every da—”
“Like kick it does.” Stoan glared at Lina. “No. I forbid this.”
“What?” Lina blurted.
“Stoan, you can't—”
“I certainly can, Legionnaire. You know the rules as well as I. 'No social interaction of a nature contrary to proper appearances shall—'“
“Hell, Stoan, I've been sleeping with her outside of wedlock with no birth control. On a lot of worlds
that's a felony. So we're making this official, legal.”
“A Terran!” Stoan snarled.
Lina opened her mouth to retort, but Lon put a restraining hand on her arm.
“So am I. Hush, Lina, let me handle this. Commander, if you try to block this I'll file an official protest.”
“Do it. Have the forms in my office first thing in the morning. We'll have them processed by the end of the week.”
“Saint-ciboire de tabarnac!” Londo slammed his fist against a table and then winced as it shattered to dust beneath the blow. “Aw, marde. Sorry, Wiley; I'll replace it. But Stoan, we're getting married now. The Legion might not officially recognize it, but that's tough.”
What was all this? Lina clapped her hands over her mouth. How could this man try to stand in their way? **Lon, will it be legal?**
“Hell yes, it'll be legal, chérie. The Legion's a powerful organization, but it's not that powerful.”
“Just test us,” Stoan warned. “You want me to wake some lawyers now or in the morning?” His eyes sharpened on Lon. “Are you afraid you'll have second thoughts if you wait?”
“I have given full consideration to this.”
“Have you? Really?” Stoan walked to a desk that only partially appeared in the room and then pulled some screens of his own around himself, ticking off items they couldn't see. “If it's real, it can wait a few days. We need to check O'Kelly's background. We don't want to damage the reputations of either the Mega-Legion or you.”
“They're not going to be damaged, skurnit!”
Stoan kept checking different areas on his screens. He certainly seemed the calm businessman now. “You've worked hard all your life to get where you are today,” he soothed. “What you don't need is a catastrophic mistake to blot your record. What you don't need is to be…swayed in the wrong direction by someone you truly don't know.”
“Do you only have one telepath on this world?” Lina exclaimed. “Can't you get someone in here to clear me? I am not a mind controller!”
Stoan regarded her with clear distaste. “Perhaps you even think so,” he finally said. The screens in his room rolled back up into nothingness. “Perhaps Terrans don't realize the danger, or don't place a value on people having independence of thought.”
Touch of Danger (Three Worlds) Page 52
