“Wow, that was like so convincing.”
She glared and then gave him a light shove in the side. “Shut up! And stop deconstructing my life as I know it, putting weird ideas in my head about Lianna and Rian.”
“Hey, I’m just trying to work out what the hell I landed in the middle of.” He shrugged, trying not to grin like a moron, but probably failing.
Seriously, he should not be having a good time right now. He should be trying to decide how he was going to pick up the atomized pieces of his life after Kira finished running her tests. He should be making a plan A through to frecking Z, but all he could do was enjoy the way the sun made her skin glow and how the light breeze tugged at the strands of her hair, like he was living some damned sappy love song. And the small, intimate smile she sent him in return just about made his heart flatline.
He’d been unceremoniously ripped out of his life, threatened repeatedly, and nearly killed a few times. Any sane guy would not have started falling for a woman in the middle of all that, no matter how gorgeous Kira might be. But it was like his senses had gone into hyperdrive in the last few days, his mind receiving and processing information like it was all new.
Obviously the multiple razar hits had scrambled his brain worse than he’d thought. Maybe he really, really just needed to get her naked somewhere and work this out of his system. It was more likely to be a thank-god-still-alive-suckers thing. He’d experienced it before, after nearly getting taken out on a mission a few years back, and had found a sweet little ensign comm officer who’d been more than willing to help him take the edge off. Only this time it was more acute, lighting him up and billowing through his body like steam off hot pavement.
No one said anything else as they made their way back to the aerocar and Tannin put in directions to some bar near the spaceport. It wasn’t the fanciest place, but neither was it a crater dump. Most of the patrons seemed to be travelers, with a few people scattered about who were probably having early after-work drinks. They found a table without too much trouble, and Tannin went to get the first round.
Sitting at a bar, drinking with half the crew of the Imojenna, hadn’t factored into his reality less than forty-eight hours ago. Then, he would have said he’d rather do three straight shifts of babysitting bridge officers duty in the command center of the Swift Brion.
But here he sat. And without Sherron or his gorilla getting in the way—plus Lianna’s bad mood aside—he could almost see the appeal, understand why Kira didn’t seem unhappy with her lot in life.
With his place in the commando unit and the knowledge he had his teammates at his back, he’d felt fulfilled and hadn’t ever thought about needing anything more. But what Kira had with the crew of the Imojenna, it was totally different, more than just people working together.
They didn’t protect one another because they’d been trained to do so, they did it because they cared. Sure, he had a bond with the guys in his unit, but not to the depth Kira treasured the others on the ship. She’d mentioned them being like family, and the more time he spent with them, the more he could see how true the sentiment was. And it had opened up something within him, a chasm he hadn’t realized existed. It had been covered by the insubstantial assurance that he’d never had anybody and been just fine, so clearly he didn’t need anyone to continue living his life.
But had he been living? Or merely existing? The question made him uncomfortable, made him get tight and prickly all over, like there were thorns beneath his skin.
Hell, that goddamn razar must have knocked more than a few frecking screws loose, because introspection was not for him. So, instead of dwelling on it, he took a long swallow of the beer Tannin brought him and washed the inconvenient thoughts away.
The hour went by surprisingly fast, while he tried not to get absorbed in the nuances of expressions that crossed Kira’s face when she spoke, or getting himself distracted and wound up over what they’d been doing in the bathroom onboard the skimmer. A few times, she’d caught him staring, but instead of being embarrassed or trying to hide the fact, he’d simply held her gaze and enjoyed the light of awareness in her gorgeous eyes.
Before he knew it, Tannin suggested they get moving. Kira shot him glances all the way to the exit as if she had something on her mind.
“Something wrong?” he asked as they picked a spot off to the side of the walkway to wait for the others.
“Actually, I was about to ask you the same thing.” She leaned against an exposed-brick column that he supposed was meant to give the bar a kind of rustic or old-world feel.
“You realize asking me that is totally redundant, right?”
“How so?”
“If everything was right in the universe, I’d be onboard the Swift Brion. Given, I apparently would have had to make the decision on whether or not to defect with Captain Admiral Graydon. But things would still be familiar. They’d still be sane. Mostly.” He dragged a hand over his face, the frustration, the wearisome uncertainty of his situation, the questions of those hallucinations, the language, the knowledge that’d started filtering into his mind, all crashing down on him like an asteroid.
“I know I’ve said it already a hundred times, but I’m sorry, Varean. And I promise to make it better.” She took his hand, no hesitation like when she’d woken up on the skimmer and been worried her crewmates would see. It shouldn’t have bothered him when she’d changed her mind about touching him then. But stupidly it had. He’d thought—or more like hoped—whatever this thing was that had developed between them would be stronger than her worry about what the others would think of her.
But logic had won out, and he’d understood her caution. Couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing.
However, when she took his hand now—as if it were the most natural thing to do and she had every right—it soothed some of the wildness in him, the desperation to escape the mess he’d fallen into. Which was a problem, because the mess was his entire life, and there was no escaping that.
“You’re going to make it better by running the tests?” He sent her a casual smile but got the feeling he missed the mark entirely. “Sorry, Kira, but whatever those tests prove, I don’t think it’ll make anything better.”
“Whatever the results are, at least we’ll have answers, and then we can make a plan.”
Her expression wasn’t sympathetic or falsely optimistic, it was simply realistic and practical, which was exactly what he needed. And he liked her use of we way too much, even though there wasn’t actually any kind of we at all. But it was helpful to imagine for a moment that she cared deeply about him, that there was a we, and would be, going forward. Something indefinable he could rely on, no matter what other crazy was happening in his life.
Kira glanced around the faux-brick column, probably to see where the others were—Tannin and Zahli waiting in line to pay, Lianna nowhere to be seen.
Before he could even begin to wonder what was going on in that too-intelligent mind of hers, she grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him toward her, right into the kind of kiss he’d been imagining for hours.
He set a hand on the bricks by her head, bracing himself as he pressed into her from thigh to chest, the other hand on the back of her neck underneath the fall of her shoulder-length dark hair.
Despite the unfortunate public setting, Kira was no-holds-barred as she pulled him closer, her tongue sliding against his in a way that nearly made his knees buckle.
Just when the rest of his body shook the surprise and started catching up with the program, she broke the kiss, pushing him back a step and blowing out an uneven breath.
“What the hell was that?” His voice came out like cheap scotch. No doubt because the way she’d so abruptly stopped kissing him had spun his head almost as much as when she’d started.
“I couldn’t stand seeing that look in your eyes anymore, the one that makes me worried you’re going to run off and get yourself killed the second I’m not watching you like a ha
wk. That seemed like the easiest way to fix it.”
“Well I guess that’s one way of doing it,” he muttered. He sucked in a long pull of air, willing his heart rate to settle and certain appendages to cool it, because there was clearly nothing doing in the middle of a crowded bar, with Tannin, Zahli, and Lianna in their pockets.
And with perfect timing, said pocket-people came over, ending the conversation and any imbecilic thoughts he might have about grabbing a second kiss.
Never mind going crazy over what the tests might reveal, Kira and her sweet, sexy lips were more likely to drive him right out of his head before they got anywhere near the hospital. She was a force to be reckoned with, and on every front he’d been besieged. For the first time in his life, he found himself ready and willing to lay down arms if Kira was the one taking the victory.
Whatever happened, one thing had become blatantly clear. Where his heart was concerned, he was already totally screwed.
Chapter Seventeen
Forbes
Rian sat drinking some kind of red wine straight from the bottle on a sturdy swing situated on the porch of a little out-of-the-way cabin they’d rented after arriving onworld a few hours ago.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d drunk wine, but with a decided lack of beer or goddamned Violaine in the cabin, red wine had been the only other viable choice. Seemed marginally better than drinking white wine, or god forbid, champagne.
The short half hour it had taken to fly from Dunham out to this farming moon had been uneventful, however, he could still feel the tension of the half crew he had with him creeping down the back of his neck like marching ants. So, instead of parking the skimmer at a spaceport to wait for the others to meet up with them or Colt to contact him about his shopping list, he’d splashed out some credits he couldn’t afford on this cabin to give everyone some space and a break from traveling.
They’d been ship-bound for weeks, making only the shortest stops at the most backwater worlds and stations ever since the Reidar had tried to take them out on his home planet of Dalphin. His crew was good, and they’d taken it well. But there came a point where even the most well-adjusted, optimistic person was in danger of becoming a serial killer and stabbing them all in their sleep. Besides, it was pretty clear from his little meltdown earlier that he was the one who needed to get his shite together, or he’d end up adding more beads to the band he wore around his left wrist. The weight of the ones he already had felt as if they dragged him down like a black hole most days, without upping the tally.
So here he sat, on this countrified porch swing, swigging his fancified red wine, listening to the frecking birds sing, getting some damned frecking fresh air, and pretending like he could maybe take some sanity with him when he was done here.
As for the rest of his crew, they seemed to be making the most of things. Jensen and Callan were inside sleeping, while Ella and Nyah had wandered into the nearby, thinly treed woods to pick the berries Colt had told him were in season. They hadn’t gone all that far, and he could still see the two of them standing in the dappled shade eating berries and chatting about god knew what.
Between keeping watch of things and emptying the bottle, his gaze kept wandering back to Ella, catching on the way she moved across the short grass, bending every now and then to drop berries in the container she’d found in the cabin. Lingering on the way she smiled so damned reservedly at whatever Nyah was chattering about. How her smooth, dark golden-toned features never once lost that serene countenance.
After a while, as he drank more wine and sank deeper into the porch swing, he gave up pretending he was paying attention to anything else and gave in to the insidious urge to lose himself in her simple, elegant beauty. So when they finally seemed to have picked themselves enough berries and made their way back toward the cabin, he felt like he’d fallen into some kind of honey-thick trance. As she and Nyah came up the four steps to the porch, he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and his initial judgment of her returned. Not priestess. Enchantress. A siren leading him from the path of sanity to a wild, uncharted course that would be the ruin of what little he had left.
Ella handed the container of berries to Nyah. “Would you mind taking these in? I’ll join you in a moment.”
Nyah shot him a wary look, then made her escape. He sighed and leaned down to set the half-empty bottle of wine on the porch, scrubbing both hands through his hair.
Ella had stopped a few steps in front of him, hands clasped behind her back. He couldn’t see any higher than her damned dainty feet, but didn’t need to see her face to know she’d be regarding him with that detached observation, like she was cataloguing each moment of his decline into wretchedness to use if she ever returned to Aryn, as a warning to others of everything wrong with mankind.
“Something on your mind, princess?” He straightened, shoving his hair off his forehead as he lifted his head to meet her gaze.
“Not at all.” She shifted to stand near the porch railing, bracing both hands on the smooth surface, staring into the surrounds and not offering anything else. No reason as to why she’d stayed out here instead of going in with Nyah or any of the usual unwanted counsel she’d given him in the past.
Like everything else she ever did, it only made the frustration within him wind tighter.
“Is this your new tactic?” He surged to his feet, stooping to pick up the bottle and setting it on the nearby table. “Just stand around silently until I spill my guts, or beg for help, or admit all my sins, or whatever it is you think I need to do?”
She hadn’t shifted from her position and from where he now stood, he could see nothing but the slim line of her back and tousled fall of her dark brown hair, the mid-afternoon sun catching fiery red highlights.
“Despite what you may think, Rian, I do not spend my days trying to come up with ways to trick or lure you into meaningful discourse. My thoughts and actions are my own, with no reference to manipulation.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh, his damned feet taking him a few steps closer to her. “We both know that’s not true. You said yourself that you intended to help me whether I wanted you to or not.”
“So I did.” Her head lowered, as though she’d dropped her gaze from the horizon to her hands on the railing. “Perhaps I was mistaken in my belief that I could avail you of all that has come before, and all that is to come in the future.”
And there was the sucker punch, catching him low in the guts and stealing his breath. Though he’d suspected as much, hearing her say out loud that she’d given up on him was like an arctic torrent swirling up from the depths of him and billowing outward, all sharp ice and cutting wind.
For half a second, he was actually at a loss. He had no words and no direction because astoundingly, there’d been a tiny shred of hope that if Ella thought he could be saved, then maybe everything wasn’t lost.
Except the old familiar rage descended, reminding him that he’d been doing just fine before she’d come along, and just because she’d ended up on his ship it hadn’t changed him or his situation. If anything, it had made things a whole frecking lot more complicated, because now the Reidar weren’t after only him, they were in double the danger because the shape-shifters wanted her as well, maybe even more than the hard-on they had to see his head mounted on a wall.
Which brought him right around to the fact that he spent most of his days on his own damned ship avoiding the woman, including dodging his vow to find out what the aliens wanted with her. And after months living on his boat, he still had no accounting of what exactly she was capable of, what with all those mysterious Arynian abilities of hers.
He stepped forward, clamping a hand on either side of her on the railing, trapping her in place with her back to his chest, though they weren’t quite touching. The top of her head only just reached his chin, and the now-familiar moon jasmine scent of her washed over him, except this time it was underlaid with the wild summer-sweetness of the berries she’d been eating.
“Maybe you don’t want to talk, but we’re long overdue for a conversation about you.”
“Are we?” Her voice came out totally neutral, no hint of concern over his close proximity or his suggestion of topic. “What would you like to discuss?”
“Don’t play dumb.” He lowered his head until his lips were against her ear. “It doesn’t suit you.”
“You expressly forbid me from reading your mind, yet you expect me to know what information you desire?”
He slid his hands in closer, bringing his arms tighter on either side of her, easing the slightest bit nearer, until his chest was only just against her back. “Trying to talk me in circles isn’t going to work this time. I want to know why the Reidar want you so badly.”
She took in a deep breath, and he felt every atom of it as her body shifted imperceptibly against him. “I told you, I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you told me.” He pressed closer, unable to help himself, the feel of her against him consuming every lick of sense and fragment of anger and frustration, melting into something just as hot but totally impossible to define or contain. “But see, I don’t believe you.”
“What would I gain in hiding anything from you?” She stiffened, not enough that anyone looking at her would have noticed, but he was aware of her on a level that defied explanation, like the closer he stood the more he could sense, until the separation of them as two distinct people became blurred. It was the same thing he’d been running from since she’d healed him, the invisible tie that meant he always knew exactly where she was on the ship. But now, he didn’t want to escape it, he wanted to sink deeper, the high sharp and clear like a hit of the purest Violaine.
“Okay, I’ll go along with your claim that you don’t know. But you must have a theory.”
Diffraction (Atrophy) Page 20
