The Bargaining

by Christine Warren

  Kili shook her head and fixed her gaze on the road beneath her. She had no wish to tell him, especially not where Eve and Taggart might hear. No need to share her shame with strangers.

  “Taking in strays, Deac?”

  She recognized the drawl as Taggart’s, but she didn’t look up.

  Deacon laid a hand on her shoulder, beneath the veil of her hair, and squeezed in reassurance. “Not today,” he said. “Kili here is how I managed to get out of my cell and off the palace grounds.”

  She felt Taggart’s gaze on her again, his appraisal even more thorough than last time.

  “Funny,” she heard the rebel leader say. “She doesn’t look like much of a tour guide.”

  A low grunt made Kili look up just in time to see Eve’s elbow land hard against Taggart’s ribcage.

  “Come on,” the other woman said. “The family reunion can wait. Somehow I doubt these five schmucks are the only ones who were sent after an escaped rebel prisoner. It’s time to blow this Popsicle stand.”

  Taggart mumbled something under his breath but turned back in the direction of the shuttle. Kili glanced up at Deacon before she made a move and he nodded to her, urging her forward. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice once again the soft, quiet one he used with her. “We’re almost gone, baby. Just a few more minutes.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  If only it had been that easy.

  The minute Deacon got the words out of his mouth, he wanted to kick himself. He knew enough not to tempt fate before the ship was docked back in its home port, but he’d gone and done it anyway. He wondered if there were some place on this shithole planet he could find a black cat to walk in front of him, too. Just to be thorough about it.

  Still haranguing himself, he guided Kili forward as they followed Eve and Taggart back to the shuttle. This leg of the trip was more relaxed than the first one, but he still moved them along at a brisk clip. No one was safe until the shuttle was up and parked in the hull of Tag’s ship, which would be docked at the rebel base before Deacon allowed himself a sigh of relief.

  Well, another one. He’d been pretty damned relieved to see Tag and Eve come hurtling out of the woods, weapons blazing, as he struggled with the concentrated attack of all five of the guards pursuing him and Kili. His goal since this fiasco started had been to get off this damned rock before Tag sent anyone riding to the rescue. It looked like he’d fucked that up royally, but he didn’t intend to allow anything else to go wrong. Nothing.

  Which meant that the persistent tingling in the back of his neck was really pissing him off. He kept his gaze scanning around them, looking for the slightest sign of movement, but he saw nothing. Shit, this bad feeling thing was getting really old.

  “Fabulous!”

  He looked up ahead to see Taggart pushing deeper into the trees and stepping out into a small clearing just big enough to conceal a three-man emergency shuttle.

  “Ladies, our ride is waiting,” Tag said, sweeping his arm toward the ship. “What do you say we take a little pleasure jaunt?”

  “I say two trips to this damned planet was too many,” Eve said as she lowered her force rifle and strode quickly to the shuttle. “The only way to get me back here a third time would be to kill me and send me to a taxidermist. Let’s go!”

  Taggart chuckled. “As my lady commands.” He turned to the others. “You guys want a lift?”

  Kili looked up at Deacon as if asking permission to board. He had the sudden and overwhelming urge to make sure she never asked anyone for permission ever again. Growling, he grabbed her arm and started forward. “Hell, yes. And step on it.”

  Eve had already lowered the hatch and climbed on board the small vessel. Taggart followed quickly and slipped into the pilot’s seat while Deacon ushered Kili in ahead of him and secured the door closed behind them. He saw Taggart going through a quick flight check and handed Kili over to Eve.

  “Strap her in,” he ordered Eve, ignoring the other woman’s look of confusion. “She’s not gonna be used to lift-off, not to mention warp. I don’t want her hurt.”

  Eve raised an eyebrow at that, but she didn’t say anything. She just put a light hand on Kili’s shoulder and guided her out of the way to a folding jump seat at the side of the vessel.

  “Right here,” Deacon heard her say. “I’ll strap you in and then the two of us will stay out of the way of the inevitable explosion of testosterone we’re about to witness. Trust me, it’s a sight to see.”

  Ignoring the jibe, he took two long steps toward the cockpit and settled into the seat next to Taggart. Neither of them said a word as they hurried through the flight preparations and got the engines online. They both knew what they were doing, and they both wanted to be hell and far gone from this place as soon as humanly possible.

  Soon, as in right now.

  “Thirty seconds,” Deacon barked over his shoulder, one hand on the instrument panel, the other fastening his safety straps over his broad chest. “Get braced!”

  He spared a quick glance back at Kili, who sat still and quiet on the jump seat with Eve seated on the floor beside her, jury-rigging a harness for herself. Kili looked pale to him, and it was hard to tell in the dim shuttle, but she looked like she might be trembling. He didn’t have time to check on her, though. He had to trust she would get through whatever was going on now the same way she had through everything else they’d come up against so far, and he knew Eve would deal with an emergency if anything happened.

  Forcing his attention back to the task at hand, he turned on his vid screen and glanced over the coordinates Tag had programmed in. “Looks good,” he rumbled. “Now floor it.”

  Taggart nodded, his eyes narrowing as he engaged the shuttle’s thrusters and began to lift them clear of the trees around them.

  And that’s when the shit hit the fan all over again.

  A red light lit on his vid screen, followed by the sound of a warning bleep and a shadow falling across their laps from the open cover over their windshield. Deacon and Taggart looked up in unison and swore exactly the same way.

  “Fucking shit!”

  Deacon’s fingers flew over the controls even as Taggart threw their small ship into evasive maneuvers. “I assume that’s not your ship coming down to get us?”

  Taggart growled and pulled the shuttle just above the treetops, immediately banking hard left. “It’s a frickin’ Protectorate war-class speed cruiser!”

  “Where’s the Red Flag?” Deacon knew Tag wouldn’t have left his own ship far away, but would it be close enough to reach before the Protectorate flunkies blew them out of the sky?

  “There’s an open beach a ten-minute hop from here. I told them we’d rendezvous there five minutes ago!”

  “Well get on the frickin’ horn and tell them we need them now!”

  “Deacon!” The urgency in Eve’s voice scared him in a way even the sight of the Protectorate ship descending above them hadn’t. “Something’s wrong with Kili!”

  The words made his blood ice over. For the first time in his life, he abandoned his post on a ship; he left the fight for someone else and he raced toward something more important. He raced to Kili.

  The world faded away as he dropped to his knees beside her. He could see what had Eve so freaked out. Kili’s skin had faded from creamy gold to milk white, tinged with blue. Her eyes had rolled back into her skull and her head fell limply forward. He reached out and took her hand. To his surprise, her skin felt not icy but flamingly hot. Touching her nearly burned him. He looked up, his eyes meeting Eve’s over Kili’s limp body. Her confusion mirrored his own.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Eve shook her head. “I don’t know. We need a medibay, and this shuttle is too small to have one. It’ll have to wait until we get on board the Flag.”

  “That might take some doing,” Tag shouted from the cockpit. “These fucking bastards are all over our ass! I don’t know if I can shake ’em!”

  “Fuck what you know! E
ither you shake them or I will!”

  The red haze over his vision prevented him from seeing the look of alarm on Eve’s face. All he could see was Kili, unconscious and trembling as if in the midst of a seizure. Not thinking of anything but her, holding her, protecting her, keeping her safe, he flicked open her restraint belt and pulled her off the chair, settling her across his lap like something precious. Because, he realized, she was.

  Struggling to breathe, Deacon pressed his cheek against the dark silk of Kili’s hair and rocked her gently back and forth over his lap. “Please, baby,” he begged, his deep voice cracking with strain. “You gotta stay with me. C’mon, little bit. You can do it. You can do anything. I know you can. I’ve seen it.”

  In those brief moments, Deacon’s entire world had narrowed to only what he held in his arms. It went no further than that. His universe had contracted. Now it began and ended with Kili, the strongest, the bravest, the most astounding woman he had ever met. He refused, flat out, to let her go.

  The battled raged on around him, but Deacon neither knew nor cared. He fought his own battle, right there on the shuttle floor, willing the slight, shaking form in his arms to return to him. He heard everything else from a great distance -- Taggart’s curses, Eve’s shouted instructions, the monotonous wail of the computer’s warning systems. He felt the sharp twists and turns of the shuttle as Taggart danced with the Protectorate ship, struggling futilely to stay out of firing range and locking range all at once. He remained aware of all that, but in reality, it meant nothing to him. For the first time in his life, something meant more to him than adrenaline or glory or winning or saving the day.

  Kili meant more.

  His arms tightened around her and he cradled her closer, holding her against his chest as if he could will her back to awareness.

  “Come on, little bit,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “Come back. You have to come back. You have to see when we get away.”

  He continued to hold her, to rock her, paying attention to nothing else. He shook off the hand Eve put on his shoulder, and he didn’t even bother to look up when the shuttle banked hard to the right and Taggart gave an exultant roar.

  “About fucking time!”

  The words barely penetrated through Deacon’s fog, even though Taggart shouted them at the top of his lungs. He never bothered to look up when Eve jumped to her feet or when she and Taggart embraced with gleeful relief. He didn’t notice the roar of a large Protectorate ship breaking apart under rebel fire or the smooth ride into the Red Flag’s shuttle dock. He didn’t lift his cheek from Kili’s head until the shuttle hatch opened and three medics surrounded him, forcibly removing the woman from his arms and taking her straight to the infirmary.

  And then he snapped. Raging like a wild animal, Deacon threw aside friends and strangers in his desperation to get her back. It took three soldiers and a medic with a very long needle before the rebel fell into as deep a sleep as the woman he hadn’t been able to release.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “... long the toxin was in her system ...”

  “... in withdrawal?”

  “... build-up. We have no way of knowing ...”

  “... be okay?”

  “--ually. But she’ll need rest. And treatment to work the rest of the poison out ...”

  Kili drifted in a sea of warm comfort, only now and then catching brief snippets of information from the world outside her cocoon. Honestly, it didn’t bother her. She felt warm and comfortable and safe for almost the first time she could remember. She was in no hurry to go back to the world she’d come from.

  Just the idea drew her face into a frown. Murmuring in her sleep, Kili let herself drift deeper into unconsciousness, turning her head just a little to nestle her cheek more securely into the large, warm hand that cradled it so tenderly.

  * * * * *

  When she drifted toward the surface again, there were no voices. She could hear the faint underlying drone of machinery in the distant background, but no one spoke. The space around her seemed less bright, too. Last time, it had been as if she lay under a multitude of bright, white lights. This time, she felt a coolness she associated with a dimmer room, and she murmured in appreciation.

  She vaguely remembered that last time she had woken to the feel of a comforting hand on her face. It was gone. She couldn’t feel the welcome touch and that bothered her. Struggling against the restraint of sleep, Kili shifted and sought out the hand with her own blindly reaching fingers. They brushed across cool linens and she whimpered. The sound seemed to trigger something, because in a moment, the hand was back. It carefully smoothed the hair from her face and moved down to cup her cheek. This time, the hand came complete with an arm and a shoulder. Giving a happy sigh, Kili turned into the arm, laid her head on the shoulder, and let sleep take her again.

  * * * * *

  The third time Kili woke, her first thoughts weren’t peaceful. She felt restless, even though she still couldn’t seem to make her mind focus. Her skin seemed hot and too tight for her frame. Even a slight stirring of air raised gooseflesh and her body seemed to move without direction, shifting back and forth between cool, crisp sheets.

  She heard a quiet whimper and wondered briefly if it came from her. She tried to open her eyes, but the lids felt weighted down, heavy, and she couldn’t seem to make them obey her orders. Confused, she whimpered again, this time knowing she made the sound, and her hand reached out, searching for something to grab on to that would tell her where she was and how she could get herself free.

  Her hand encountered something firm and smooth and hard, and Kili froze. All at once, her other senses seemed to come rushing back to her and she could hear the rustle of skin against fabric and the dip of an accommodating mattress as someone shifted in the bed beside her. For a moment, panic threatened. Old nightmares came rushing back and Kili imagined herself in an unwelcome bed, held against her will, forced to service a man who repulsed her. She began to shift away, preparing to struggle free, when she inhaled and her sense of smell made her pause.

  The dark, spicy, musky perfume filling her nostrils brought back no unwelcome memories. In fact, it triggered a novel warmth in the pit of her stomach and made her thighs press reflexively together. All at once, she became aware of a sweet pulsing between her legs and a growing warmth that, while not unfamiliar, seemed new and exciting. She shifted again and felt a stirring of excitement when a large, callused hand settled on her belly, just below her navel. It was so large that even as the thumb brushed back and forth over her navel, the smallest finger stretched and stroked until it teased the very top of the damp slit between her thighs.

  Kili heard a slow rush of breath and felt the air stirring against her temple. She shivered, but unlike the tremors she almost remembered from earlier, this felt hot and exciting and delicious and she wanted to do it again. Her eyes remained closed, but a small smile curved her lips and she eased her legs slightly apart, allowing that smallest finger to slide just a little deeper. She moaned.

  Another stream of air rushed against her skin and the hand shifted, stroking over the smooth skin of her belly, down over her bare mons and the silky smooth skin of her thigh.

  “Are you sure, little bit?”

  The voice that rumbled against her ear was warm and dark and rough as new sand, but sweet as wild honey. It sent another shiver through her and prompted her legs to slide a little further apart. Kili felt a sense of anticipation building, a restlessness. In the back of her mind, she almost remembered another feeling, one that was harsh and unwelcome, an urgency she hadn’t wanted and had wished to be rid of. This, though, felt different. This was warmth and comfort, like a deep, heated bathing pool and hour upon hour of freedom to soak in blissful peace.

  Kili stretched almost as if she could feel the water lapping against her skin. The hand moved again, stroking gently, exploring with great delicacy. She shifted into it, enjoying the attention.

  “Baby,” the rough-smooth voice said.
“Are you sure?”

  She wasn’t certain what the voice was asking her. What was there to be sure of? She was clearly in paradise. How could there be any doubts? About anything.

  Still, he seemed to be waiting for something, so Kili released a hum of contentment and forced her uncooperative muscles into a slow-motion nod. She wanted nothing more than for the hand to keep touching her. It would kill her if he stopped.

  A ragged moan seemed to shake the bed she lay on, and it sounded so full of frustration and relief and longing and conflict that Kili heard herself giggle.

  “So you think this is funny, do you?” The voice sounded more amused than upset, so Kili giggled again. “I’ll show you funny, little bit.”

  She stopped laughing when two long fingers slid down between her thighs, parting her soft folds and entering her in a slow, slick glide. Her head fell back on a moan and she felt her lips rising to meet the stroke. “Ohhhhhh ...”

  “Mm-hmm,” the voice said, humor and satisfaction in the sound. “Not so amused now, are you? How about when I do this?”

  The fingers twisted and curled, pressing up against the front of her passage and stroking with devilish purpose. “Ahhh!”

  Behind her closed eyelids, bright flashes of color began to bloom, unfurling like flower petals in super-fast motion. She felt as if she were looking into a kaleidoscope, only more exotic and breathtaking than any she had ever seen.

  “That’s it, baby.” She felt his breath against her throat as his dark voice rumbled out words of praise and encouragement. “Tell me what you like. That’s right. Powers, you feel so good.”

  Kili tried to speak, to tell him she liked everything, liked every touch, every word, every shared breath, but she couldn’t speak. Even if she had tried, the words would have been robbed from her lips when she felt his warm, loving mouth close around her erect nipple, drawing the firm button of flesh deep inside. “Ah! Ooooooh ...”