by Autumn Dawn
An involuntary tremor raced through her, and her breathing quickened as she shook her head. “Never enough,” she whispered, and it was true. Still, her body stiffened with uncertainty. With all that had come between them, could it still be good? Had Keilor really forgiven her?
Sensing her hesitation, Keilor rolled over on his back, bringing her over him. He kissed her lightly, but with enough hunger to wring a moan from her and settled back with his hands laced behind his head. With a wicked grin, he told her, “I’m all yours, Dragonfly. Do your worst.”
Eyes dark with feminine power drifted down his body, and her eyebrow quirked. “My worst, huh? Are you certain you can take it?”
His grin widened. “Oh, I can take it, love, but can you?” His hips heaved once, bringing his arousal against her feminine core, and she cried out at the sudden rush of flame. He subsided with a naughty smile.
Challenged, Jasmine sat up and slowly unfastened the gold clasps holding her sleeveless white gown at the shoulders, letting the gown fall to reveal the flaming red overnji, minus a bandeau, underneath. Keilor’s eyes widened, and he started to reach for her. She grabbed his wrists and forced them back behind his head, leaning just out of reach.
“I have been weeks without you,” he growled in warning, staring at her stiff pink nipples. This could not be part of their game. He had not envisioned such a wicked cheat when he’d proposed the match. How was he to keep his hands off her?
“You started it,” she taunted, holding his wrists and slithering down his body to reach one sensitive ear. Her hot tongue darted out to trace the edges and then darted into the center, wringing a groan from him. He tried to turn his head to capture her mouth, but instead she forced his face aside with the side of her head and took his lobe in her mouth, deliberately making sexy little moans.
Fiery kisses trailed down his throat, and she sucked on the sensitive skin and released his wrists to slowly unlace his vest. He could have done it in a quarter of the time, but nothing that he could have done would have matched the fever she created as she lightly dragged her nails down his chest and across his ribs and down his ridged abdomen to separate and score his thighs.
It was outside of enough. Quicker than thought, Keilor rolled her under him and began to devour her. Lips, breasts and belly fell willing victims to his voracious hunger, and when he finally rid them of unnecessary clothing, his wife was as hungry as he, and just as demanding. All differences were forgotten in the hot rush of pleasure given and taken by the joining of their bodies, and Jasmine’s reserve couldn’t stand before the tidal wave of pleasure her husband called forth. What barrier was fear to the power of lightning?
In many ways, their marriage really began that night. They talked about the past, their future....
“I’ve never asked...what kind of schooling do kids get here?” Jasmine inquired, snuggling against her bare husband.
“Mathematics, science, history, horticulture,” Keilor answered, his hand tracing distracting patterns on her arm. “Some art, animal science, domestic skills...” His lips dusted kisses under her collarbone, above the blanket. “...two years of military service for the males and then trade school.”
Jasmine scowled and pushed him back. “Are you saying that women aren’t taught trades?” she asked, indignant.
Sighing, he propped his head on his arm and answered, “Women may learn whatever they choose and are encouraged to do so. It is only that many marry and begin families of their own, and it’s difficult to care for children and work at a trade, too.”
“Hmm.” She pursed her lips in thought, and Keilor leaned over to take advantage of her momentary quiet, but she beat him to the punch. “If the baby’s a boy, I suppose you’ll want to stick a sword in his hand and throw him up on a stag as soon as he can walk, huh?”
Slightly exasperated, he tugged her to him, levering himself over her body. “Not for the first five years,” he answered, tossing his dark hair over his shoulder and out of the way. Then he slid home, cutting off all further questions for the next half hour.
It wasn’t until the next morning that they returned to questions of children and domestic life, and this time it was Keilor who brought it up.
“Today would be a good day to choose new rooms,” he said over breakfast. He waited to see her reaction.
Jasmine paused in the act of drenching her hot cereal with cream. Slowly she resumed, spooning a good quantity of brown date sugar over the cream. “Won’t that be kind of expensive?”
His brows shot up. “I am entitled to any rooms I choose to make my own, lady wife, as are you.” His lips twitched. “Free of rent.” A soft sound of derision escaped her, but she looked uneasy. “Jasmine,” he said, reaching for her hand. “What is it? I can assure you we don’t live on charity.” He searched her eyes. “Would it ease your mind if I told you that I own the patent to the energy blades, passed down to me from my grandfather, or that half the stags in the citadel’s stables are mine?” Her lips parted in surprise. Enjoying her naiveté because it marked her disinterest in his financial affairs until they directly concerned her, unlike so many others, he continued, “I intend to provide you with a regular quarterly allowance, as well as any additional money you may require.”
He named an amount that made her goggle. “That’s...I couldn’t spend that much in a year, Keilor,” she rasped.
“Not if you don’t get out and start shopping,” he teased, choosing to ignore her reaction. He had confidence that, being a woman, she’d not only learn to spend her allowance, but quickly wheedle him into giving her more. Not that he would begrudge it. “As soon as we’re done eating, I’ll take you for a walk through the marketplace. Would you like that?”
Her eyes lit up, but in spite of her excitement, she didn’t eat much of her cereal.
Frowning at the half full bowl, he asked, “Shouldn’t you be eating more than that?”
“I’m a little queasy.”
Concerned, he looked away for a moment, not wanting her to recognize his sudden fear. “We’ll stop by the clinic first. I want to make certain that you’re...that everything will be all right.”
She smiled at him in reassurance. “I wouldn’t worry about it. After all, what could go wrong?”
“I don’t want her worried,” Keilor informed the medic outside the examining room door. “If the baby makes it here in good health, fine. But I can’t see how tormenting her with dire predictions would do anything but harm.”
The medic didn’t even blink. “As you wish. At the moment there is no sign of rejection—the symbiont is taking care of that. There are no guarantees that the child won’t have problems after its birth, however. Once contact between its mother and her symbiont is severed—”
Keilor nodded sharply. He understood too well.
There had been a few rare children conceived between Haunt and human in the days when they still shared a world, but none had ever survived the forth month. The genetic differences were just too great, the mother’s body too alien to support the mysterious changes that the infant underwent at that time. It was a fear he hadn’t shared with Jasmine, believing that the other—very valid—reasons he’d given her would suffice. Her life was too precious to him to needlessly put in jeopardy.
Now matters had been taken out of his hands. But he could spare his wife from grief that might only hasten the inevitable.
With a forced smile, Keilor entered the examining room with the medic and put an arm around his wife while the medic told her that all was well. It was true.
For now.
“Great!” Jasmine hopped off the table. “Then let’s go shopping!”
Jasmine couldn’t believe that she’d spent so much time at the citadel and was only now getting to see the most impressive marketplace she’d ever seen. Some of the shops were indoors, but many were set up in booths outside. The wide street where they were was busy, but not crowded, and the shoppers courteous.
Delicious smells teased her nose, and spla
shes of red braided chilies caught her eye. Making her way across the flagstones to the first booth, she admired the long, beautiful braids of orange, yellow, green, black and scarlet dried peppers, garlic and onions, and savored the scent of wreaths and bundles of sage, lavender and bay leaf, as well as herbs she didn’t recognize.
Smiling with delight, she picked up a bottle of vinegar packed with artfully arranged slices of clove pierced lemons, and another of herbs, garlic and chilies, admiring the pretty tones of the liquid. Then a two foot high bottle of kumquat vinegar caught her eye, and she knew right then that she had to have it. “That would make the most beautiful living room decoration,” she told her husband with excitement. “Can we get it?”
Keilor eyed the jar askance and shook his head, smiling at the hopeful merchant. “Whatever she wants,” he said.
They left with half the booth on its way to their room.
A wide smile on her face, Jasmine explored the vegetable and fruit stands, exclaiming over the many different kinds of produce for sale, and purchasing quite a few. The jewelers received a quick glance, but it was the display of sparkling crystals at the next stall that captured her attention. She chose a snowflake prism from that collection.
By the time they’d watched a weaver working on a blue and gold tapestry, seen a glassblower create a rose and green swirled goblet, and witnessed a potter at her wheel, Keilor was looking rather peaked, even thought he never said a word. Taking pity on him, Jasmine suggested, “Why don’t we take a break? I’m starving.”
Visibly relieved, Keilor took her hand and led her through the crowd and into a restaurant with wide windows and a pleasant odor of sweetness and steaming seafood. Mouth watering, she surveyed the buffet. Mounds of snowy shellfish meat, swimming with vegetables, orange crustaceans arranged on leaves of kale, and seafood salads in bright red and white radicchio bowls tempted her as breakfast hadn’t. Avoiding the tentacled dish and what looked suspiciously like jellyfish, Jasmine loaded a plate with moist baked fish smothered in lemon sauce, enough stir fry and crustacean to sink a fishing boat and retired to a table to await Keilor.
“Hungry, are you?” Keilor asked with amusement when Jasmine began wolfing down her second large plate of food.
She stopped in mid-bite to glare at him. “Watch it, buster. I’m just making up for breakfast.”
In the interests of continued domestic bliss, he changed the subject. “Would you like to choose new rooms after this? We’ll need somewhere to put all these acquisitions.”
Eyes wide with worry, she stopped eating. “Am I getting too much? I know we didn’t really need that rug, but—”
“I like the rug,” he assured her, “And I wouldn’t mind if you bought a hundred of them, but...” He smiled ruefully, “I’m afraid I lack your stamina for shopping.” The smile crept into a grin. “I’m sure that Isfael and Raziel will love it, though.”
Jasmine snorted. “Somehow, I doubt it, but never mind. I can always come back with Rihlia.” She scowled just a little. “I presume we’re on speaking terms again.”
“I wouldn’t worry over it. After all, pregnant women do odd things,” Keilor answered, looking at her over his mug of steaming sage tea.
Chagrined, Jasmine finished her meal in silence.
They were almost to Jayems’ and Rihlia’s suite when Keilor abruptly froze, dragging Jasmine to a halt with him. Before anything could come out of her open mouth, he hit a red button on the small black box all the guards carried and moved in front of her, drawing his gun and firing an arc of blue light all in one seamless motion. The Haunt at Jayems’ door crumpled before they knew what hit them. “Draw your gun, Jasmine,” he ordered her, and she did as he said, her heart thumping. “Stay behind me in the doorway if there’s firing until the others get here, and do not get in my way.” He spared one grim glance at the fallen soldiers, and then he took on the Haunt.
A icy finger of fear slid down her spine at Keilor’s seamless transition from husband to warrior beast. Even witnessing Isfael, Raziel and Mathin transforming had not prepared her for this final proof of what he was and of the kind of child she carried.
There was no time to dwell on it. Keilor positioned her a little to the side and burst through the heavy doors as if they were balsa wood, firing rapidly.
Taken completely by surprise, the Haunt assassin dropped Rihlia before delivering the death strike he’d been poised to deliver, the remnants of his head splattering Rihlia’s face with gore. His partner went down with a hole the size of a man’s fist where his heart used to be.
Rihlia herself was badly hurt. She lay where she had fallen, curled into a fetal ball as a bright red stain spread on her skirt.
“No!” Jasmine moaned, running to her, trailing Haunt guardsmen in her wake. While Keilor and the others searched for more assassins, Jasmine dropped to her knees beside her friend, wiping gore from her eyes with a shaky hand. Her symbiont stirred, touched Rihlia’s face, but didn’t leave Jasmine.
Wild hope sprung up in Jasmine even as the blood spread on Rihlia’s skirt. “Heal her,” she told the symbiont. “Fix her like you did me.” Sluggish movement and a vague sense of apathy were the only responses. The symbiont was sated, and more than content right were it was. It had no interest in a Haunt, anyway.
“Heal her!” Jasmine hissed, frightened by Rihlia’s growing pallor and lack of response. The symbiont stirred again, responding to her desperation. Almost with repugnance, it extended, gingerly touched Rihlia and retreated with a symbiont shudder. “It’s not going to kill you, just do it!” Jasmine snarled at it. Something like a put upon sigh brushed through her emotions, a primal communication of squeamishness and then the symbiont extended, leaving a loop of liquid metal securely wrapped around its host’s wrist as it touched the dreaded Haunt.
Through the sudden echo of nausea in her gut, Jasmine felt the symbiont slowly and with great difficulty stop the hemorrhaging in Rihlia’s womb, saving the tiny child clinging to life within. The entire process took only seconds.
Satisfied that it had complied with the spirit of its host’s directive, it withdrew, retracting slowly back around Jasmine’s wrist. There it slumped, turning a sickly green color.
Jasmine hadn’t reckoned on the slow dump of noxious, almost indigestible Haunt material that oozed into her bloodstream from the nearly helpless symbiont. Vertigo assailed her, and her eyes glazed over as she slumped over Rihlia’s legs, shivering as her temperature dropped nearly into hypothermia. Cold sweat broke out on her clammy skin, and the blood slowly drained out of her head.
That was how Keilor and the medics found them. Jasmine breathing shallowly, and Rihlia an unmoving ball of quiet misery.
At first Keilor didn’t understand what had happened to his wife. He thought she’d fainted, or was suffering from some kind of shock. It was Mathin who figured it out.
Mathin had come running along with the rest of the Haunt on duty when the alarm had sounded, and he hissed at his first glimpse of Jasmine, limp in her husband’s arms. “Look at the symbiont,” he said, pointing to the sagging strands of greenish metal. “She tried to heal Rihlia, never knowing how difficult it is for symbionts to digest our wastes. She poisoned them both.”
“How do you know?” Keilor demanded, even though he believed Mathin. Thundering rains, all he had to do was look at the symbiont for proof, now that he knew.
Mathin avoided his eyes. “I’ve spent a great deal of time in the swamps, picked up some useful information.” He focused on Jasmine’s chalky face, looking worried. “What she needs is another symbiont to help bleed off the poison.”
“Do I look as if I have one?” Keilor snarled, taking his rage and distress out on Mathin as he cradled his wife to his chest and strode out of the room, heading for the medics. “The People Who Came Before won’t even be here for nearly two weeks yet, and unless you can fly—” he shut up. Mathin did not deserve this. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take his temper out on his shivering wife, either. Not only was
it worse than useless to yell at a semi-conscious woman, she hadn’t known the consequences of her reckless gamble. Not that it would have mattered, he acknowledged with a stab of dread.
Keilor sat in the chair next to his wife’s bed with his hands steepled against his chin, his eyes closed. After long minutes he opened them to the dimmed clinic room, watching the slow rise and fall of Jasmine’s chest. There wasn’t anything the Haunt medics could do. The symbiont flowed like water through the fingers and instruments that tried to remove it from Jasmine’s arms, and Jasmine herself thrashed in delirious panic whenever it had been attempted. Finally Keilor had ordered them to stop trying.
Rihlia was not much better. Although Jasmine had managed to save her baby, possibly at the risk of her own, she had been badly beaten, and even the natural resilience and speedy healing of her Haunt body could only do so much against loosened teeth, cracked bones and bleeding organs. Jayems stood grim vigil over her this night, no doubt wracked with a guilt and self-loathing that Keilor knew too well.
Tonight he was not feeling guilty, though. Only sad, and a little proud of his Dragonfly’s selflessness. He did not have to ask her to know that she wouldn’t have counted the cost too high had she known what her attempt at healing would demand.
Swallowing hard, he dropped his head onto his clasped hands and shut his eyes, trying not to think of what tomorrow might bring.
The Symbiont delegation arrived in style.
The morning after the assassination attempt, just after dawn, a silver ship with fifteen passengers glided into Haunt waters and docked. As soon as its passengers had disembarked, the ship broke apart, coalescing into fifteen silver hover cycles. Before the astonished eyes of the Haunt escort Mathin had arranged to meet them, the cycles sent silver tendrils around their rider’s legs to the knee, anchoring them in place.
