by Cara Bristol
“No, he’s right. It’s my fault,” I gently corrected her. It was my responsibility and honor to care for her, but I’d jumped to conclusions and abandoned her, although temporarily. It would never happen again.
Torg acted as if he intended to say more, but Starr quelled his rebuke by covering his hand with hers. He did not need to chide me; I was aware of the cost of my negligence. The rest of the meal passed with genial conversation, but as it wore on, Sunny fidgeted, preoccupied with the insects, her gaze drifting to them often. Torg and Starr didn’t seem to notice her distractedness, but I did.
As soon as we finished the meal, I made our excuses by saying my mate needed to rest.
Sunny pushed back from the table. “Thank you for the dinner.”
I bent to pick her up, but she declined. “I can walk.”
“Groman advised you to stay off your foot as much as possible,” I argued.
“As much as possible,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t hobble from the dinner table to the bed.”
“Why should you hobble when I can carry you?”
Rather than reply, she limped toward our chamber.
I glanced at my brother. “Terran women are stubborn.”
He looked at Starr. “You don’t need to tell me.”
I bid them a good sleep and trotted after my mate. She allowed me to take her arm, and I suspected walking pained her more than she’d admitted. “Are you all right?” I whispered. “Is your foot hurting? You seem agitated.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “We…need to talk some more. You shared your secret with me, I need to share mine with you.”
“You can tell me anything,” I said. “It won’t change the way I feel.”
“I hope it won’t,” she said, smoothing her palms down her sides.
Her nervousness made me nervous. What could she have to tell me?
The three insects had followed us into the passage. “You’ll want to hear what I have to say, too,” she spoke to them.
They seemed to have recovered from their affliction. One flew backward in front of us. Its silvery body gleamed, and its single eye glowed red. It reminded me more of a Terran spaceship than a living creature, but what did I know? I’d never been off Dakon. Terra probably harbored many strange life forms.
In our chamber, Sunny sank onto our bed of kels with obvious relief.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Your robe?” She wore a special outfit to sleep in. Every night since we’d been together, she’d undressed and re-dressed under the top kel.
“No, I won’t need it tonight,” she said.
That sounded promising. My heart, horns, and loins gladdened. I stripped off my clothing and climbed into bed.
But after tugging off the single boot she wore, she wiggled under the kels to remove her garments. Terran modesty baffled me. “I’ve seen you unclothed,” I reminded her.
She jutted her chin at the flying creatures. “They haven’t. I don’t do nude scenes.”
“You don’t want to disrobe in front of an insect?”
“That’s what we need to talk about,” she said.
One of them swooped over the bed, its wings beating furiously.
Sunny tugged the kel up to her chin. “They’re not insects. They’re cameras sent to follow me, follow us, and record what we say and do.”
I didn’t know this camera word, nor did I comprehend who or why or how someone could send an insect to follow us, but I nearly fell over in shock when one of the cameras spoke.
Chapter Seventeen
Sunny
“Stop right now. This is a breach of contract,” my producer’s voice boomed.
“It can speak?” Torg stared at the cambot, his eyes as wide as flying saucers. Insects didn’t talk. Not on his world, not on mine, not on any world, I’d bet.
Unable to tolerate extreme cold, the cambots had hung out in the lodge, warming up their electronics while I wandered in the blizzard. I hadn’t intended to confess with cameras rolling, but what the hell. I had to tell Apogee I’d unilaterally cancelled their hit show, and now was as good a time as any.
However, the appropriate words to explain all this to Darq eluded me. Before I could confess, I had to bring him up to speed on technology. Conscience wouldn’t permit me to technically tell the truth while leaving him in ignorance. I hoped he knew how much I cared for him, that everything had changed for me since I’d arrived. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I can’t imagine a life without you in it. I’m falling in love with you,” I said, twisting my hands.
“I feel the same way,” he said. “I love you already. You’re my heart.” He pressed a hand to his chest.
My stomach fluttered with euphoria, but under the kels, my knees knocked together. What if he couldn’t forgive me? Since he loved me, he might be even more hurt by my actions. I wet my lips. “Remember we talked about how I was on a show called Sunny Weathers’ Excellent Adventures? I was in ’net vids?”
“Stop right now,” my producer ordered.
I looked straight into the camera lens, and said, “By you speaking at all, Darq knows you’re not an insect. You may as well use the translator so he can understand. I won’t answer to Terran English,” I said in Dakonian. Apogee would play by my rules. Before much longer, the climate would finish off the cambots, and I would be done with them, done with the show. Done.
“You’re not in a position to tell us what to do,” the producer replied in English.
As the star of their hit show, I was in a perfect position, but I wouldn’t waste my breath arguing with them. Darq was my focus.
“That’s your language, isn’t it?” he asked. “What is it saying?”
“It’s trying to stop me from talking to you.” I tossed my head. “You know how Enoki can see and talk to people through the computer at the meeting place?”
He nodded.
“On Terra, people watch other people on screens for entertainment. Sometimes the people being watched are actors in a drama pretending; other times they’re ordinary people engaged in ordinary activities. We watch people mining minerals, trekking through the wilderness, shopping, going to work, cooking, playing games, dating.”
“Your people must have a lot of free time on their hands,” he commented.
“You’ll have to give the money back. All of it,” the producer snapped in Dakonian.
Darq widened his eyes.
I shrugged. “The money has been spent. It’s gone.”
“We’ll sue you and garnish future wages.”
“Good luck with that. I’m here on Dakon, and I’m not coming back.”
I looked at Darq. “All those jobs I said I did—working on a pig farm, wrestling an alligator, fishing—I got paid, not for doing them, but for letting people watch me do them. It was for my show, Sunny Weathers’ Excellent Adventures.”
I took a deep breath and nudged my chin at the camera. “I came to Dakon for the show. The voice you hear is my producer—he’s like a tribe leader—speaking to me from Terra. The insects aren’t living creatures. They’re visual and sound recording devices. People have been watching us eat, sleep, ride the skimmer, and kiss.” Thankfully, no one had seen us in the bath cave.
Nor had I been videoed falling in the latrine. Oh, no. Because then the producers might have been able to do something productive like alert somebody to come rescue me. But cambot electronics couldn’t handle the cold.
He scratched his horns. “Really?”
“Really.” I paused and shored up my courage. “Coming here was a stunt. I was supposed to stay for a while and then return home.”
His face fell. “You’re leaving me?” He jerked. “So what you told your nephew was true. You’re going back to Terra?”
I grabbed his arm. “No! I’m staying. I promise I’m staying. Please.”
“Was all this talk about falling in love with me just for the camera, for your
show?”
“No. I swear.” My throat thickened. What if I couldn’t get him to believe me? To trust me. “It’s the truth. That’s why I’m staying. For you. Because I love you.” I hung onto his arm with one hand and motioned to the camera with the other. “They’re mad because I’m quitting the show.”
For a long moment, he was silent. Then he released his breath in an exhale. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “Partly because I have to, because it is too painful not to, but mostly because I have gotten to know the kind of person you are. Because we have mated, and I understand your heart.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “We both had secrets, didn’t we? You were so accepting of what I’d done, how could I not afford you the same?”
We kissed, gently then more passionately. I was so, so thankful and filled with emotion, I almost forgot about the camera, until the producer’s voice boomed into the chamber. “She only came to Dakon to pay for her nephew’s operation.”
My jaw dropped at the maliciousness. They were trying to break us up! Pissed that their trained monkey refused to perform anymore—or maybe to generate more drama for the show—they attempted to drive a wedge between us.
Darq looked at the cambot, and said, “I don’t care what got her here, what’s important is she is here.”
He was calm, but I was incensed. No, enraged. After all the injustices I’d suffered, all the shit adventures Apogee had subjected me to—torrential rains, intense heat, bugs, alligators, snakes, an ice age—they were trying to destroy the one positive to come out of it all.
“Get out!” I shrieked. Naked, I leaped up, grabbed a kel boot, and struck the camera so hard it slammed into the wall. Smack! It fell and hit the ground. Its left metal wing bent at a twisted angle. It couldn’t fly, and it scraped a circle on the floor, trying to get away.
I hobbled on my good leg and beat the camera until it stopped moving.
Then I went for the others.
They saw me coming and tore out of the chamber like bats out of hell.
“Remind me never to anger you,” Darq said.
Chapter Eighteen
Darq
“We should get up.” I stroked my mate’s arm. We lay spent and snuggling after morning relations. “We don’t want to be late.”
She tilted her head to peer at me. “You’re not nervous, are you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “More…excited.”
A week had passed since the trek to the meeting place, and we would go again today. Andrea would be on the computer, and Sunny intended to introduce me to her family. They had watched me on the ’net, but I’d never seen them.
“Good.” She hugged me. “They’ll love meeting you.”
I still didn’t fully understand what a ’net show was, but she had promised to show me some episodes of Sunny Weathers’ Excellent Adventures. I was particularly interested in the one where she worked on a pig farm.
“I’m hoping Stormy will have news of whether she was accepted into the exchange program. I’m a little nervous,” she said.
“Why?”
“Since she has a relative in the program—me—her application was supposed to be expedited; however, I wouldn’t put it past Apogee to blacklist her, out of revenge.”
“They could prevent her from coming here?”
“Maybe. It’s a government program, so Apogee isn’t in control. However, they might have consultants inside the government who would do them a favor—or accept a bribe.” She twisted her mouth. “Then again, maybe I’m cynical. Or paranoid. Or both.” She rolled out of my arms and flung back the kel. “You’re right. We could get an early start. Let’s go.”
I didn’t recall saying we should get an early start, but I enjoyed watching her as she strode to the box where she kept her possessions. Her buttocks jiggled, reminding me how her ass overflowed my palms when I cupped it. She had generous, healthy buttocks, an attribute as nice as her breasts.
Those were lush, round handfuls, too.
Well…now I wasn’t sure. Which was better? Her buttocks or her breasts? A visual appreciation wasn’t going to be enough. I needed hands-on information. My horns tingled, and my loins awakened. I patted the still-warm place she had vacated. “Why don’t you come back to bed?” I flashed a beckoning smile.
“Again? Darq…” She planted her hands on her hips and an expression of exasperation on her face, but desire sparked in her eyes.
“We have plenty of time.”
“You’re impossible. Insatiable,” she protested, but slipped into bed.
I tossed the top kel over both of us and kissed her. I cupped her breast, stroking the nipple to hardness then slipped my hand down to her ass and squeezed. Tough choice. I liked them both.
She nibbled on my earlobe while stroking my horns. Pleasure coursed through my body.
“Darq! I need to speak to you, now!” Torg shouted from the main chamber.
Sunny stiffened, and I bit off a groan, an annoyed one, not a rapturous one. “Shh! Ignore him. I’ll see what he wants later,” I whispered and nuzzled her neck.
“He sounded upset.”
“Now, Darq!” Torg interjected in his tribe-leader voice.
I wasn’t sure of the time, but it was still early in the morning. No one had eaten yet. What could he want?
“I’ll be right back.” I slipped out of bed and pulled on my leggings. “I’m coming,” I yelled to forestall Torg from delivering another command in person. I shoved my feet into boots.
Sunny dressed. “I’ll come, too.”
My plan for another romp in the kels disintegrated. Damn that Torg.
In the main chamber, Torg paced, Starr hugged herself looking very concerned, and beyond them stood Romando, his tribe leader Polonio, and Enoki.
It was going to be a very bad day.
As soon as he saw me, Romando leaped forward and jabbed his finger at Sunny. “This female is mine. She belongs to me!”
“Whoa, buddy. I don’t know who you are think you are, but I don’t belong to you,” she shot back.
“Women don’t belong to anybody,” Starr agreed with her.
“Any female acquired with my chit belongs to me.” Romando’s face had reddened, and his horns had swelled with ire. “I have the right to take her.”
Try it. Sunny is mine! I’d fight for my mate! I may have stolen the chit, but I’d recorded our pairing in the official tome.
The same one Enoki had tucked under his arm. With a heavy sigh, he placed it on the table.
“Sunny is my mate. It says so in the records tome.” I gestured to the volume.
“That’s what it says,” Enoki agreed, “but we have reason to believe, it is not correct.” He swept out his arm. “We are short of the females needed to save our species. To steal a mate is a grievous offense, but so is tampering with official records. After the asteroid hit, when our ancestors had to fight for survival, they believed our past important enough to preserve by recording their memories. To falsify records dishonors them and taints history for future generations.”
Sunny and Starr huddled together. “Spoken like a true bureaucrat,” Sunny murmured.
“When everyone but Romando claimed a female, we knew somebody had his chit. We just didn’t know who until now.” Enoki looked at me.
Torg crossed his arms. “Why do you suspect my brother? What evidence do you have?”
“A messenger from Terra appeared and related that Darq had found the chit and wrongfully claimed a female,” Polonio said.
“A messenger? Like what? You encountered a burning bush?” Sunny snorted. “Or maybe a winged creature with a halo descended from the sky?”
Polonio and Romando nodded. “It was a winged creature,” Polonio said.
“You son of a bitch!” My mate swore at the cameras hovering behind the men.
“The winged one spoke to us in Dakonian and bade us to bring Enoki to the mee
ting place. We watched on the Terran screen as Darq confessed how he found the chit and altered the records.”
Torg looked at me. “Is this true?”
Everyone stared. Sunny imperceptibly shook her head, encouraging a lie. Enoki and Polonio glared their accusation, and Romando smirked with triumph.
Until I’d found the chit, I was not a man who lied.
In doing so, I had besmirched my honor, my brother’s, and my clan’s. Sunny had pledged herself to me. I would tell any untruth to keep her—and her beseeching look urged me to continue the falsehood, but I did not want to be, in her eyes, a man who lied. For if I lied to them, how long before she would wonder if I lied to her? Would a time come when she would question my word? Doubt my love?
“I found Romando’s chit,” I admitted.
Stunned silence followed my confession. They all had expected denial.
Romando thrust out his jaw. “I demand the female be turned over to me.”
I pushed Sunny behind me and readied to fight. “Never.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said.
“It is only fair,” Polonio said. “You must hand her over to my tribesman.”
“Nobody is going anywhere,” Torg said. “You don’t know Terran females very well if you assume you can pass them around like a kel coat. Sunny is a member of my tribe, and she will remain in my tribe—if she wants.” He looked at her.
“I want to stay here,” she said. “With Darq.”
Romando’s face reddened, and he clenched his fists. Polonio stayed him with a hand on his arm. “I will elevate this matter to the council.”
Enoki nodded. “I will bring it on your behalf. There must be recompense for the loss of the female.”
Torg glanced at me. I could see the anger and disappointment in his eyes. I had shamed him, dishonored our tribe. “There will be recompense,” he agreed.
“What?” Romando spit out.
“I haven’t decided, but I assure you it will be significant. I can’t replace the loss of a female—”
“Yes, you can! You can give her to me. She’s right there,” he said.
