“And I’m her cousin. What the hell does that have to do with it? You think that gives you rights in her life choices? I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I knew you were too immature to handle it.”
“Hey, is there a problem here?”
Ender’s towering presence ended it if there was. They all gave solemn shakes of their heads and made as though they were calm and companionable—until he moved back along his perimeter.
“I am not immature,” Kith spat as soon as Ender was out of earshot.
“Mmm. Then leave your sister alone. Your older sister, I might add.”
“I don’t like Chapel,” Kith confided, trying a different tack to get Domino to rally to his cause. “I mean, he’s okay as a soldier, and I trust him to help us, but I think he’s just doing it because of Rave. Maybe he’s just doing this to get at her.”
“Uh, Kith, does he look to you like the kind of guy who has to go through this much crap just to get a woman to spread her legs for him?” Domino laughed with his infamously jaded humor. “And if this keeps up,” he pointed to the superheated clutch that Bronse and Ravenna were sharing, “he’s going to get some really sweet wishes granted before we even get away from the temple. Maybe you should pull Rave aside, share your theory, and tell her to hold off until after we’re safe.”
With that final word and a mockingly jolly laugh, Domino turned his back on the young fool and walked away. Let him chew on that idea for a while, he thought bitterly. The sooner Kith got over his delusions of grandeur, the better off they all would be. If Kith messed up this opportunity, now that change finally seemed imminent—and change for the better at that—Domino would brave Ravenna’s wrath and strangle the brat himself.
Bronse decided to forget where he was for exactly one minute. The choice made, he dragged Ravenna beneath his mouth and kissed her with a burn to rival the heat of hell. Again it was reality versus dreams, and reality ran away with the gold medal. Her lips were soft and sweet, her mouth so full of promise that it could make a stone weep.
Ravenna had learned one thing from the dream, however, that she hadn’t known in reality, and now she applied the winning knowledge. She parted her lips in an achingly precious tremble of need and invitation. Rave felt his hands sinking suddenly into the depths of her hair, even as his tongue slid deep into the fathoms of her wet mouth.
He tasted wonderfully robust to her, replete with masculine flavor.
Bronse realized that this was her first kiss all over again, but he couldn’t measure himself down to the task this time. He needed to devour the luscious, honeyed taste of her, and he swirled his tongue deep into her mouth in order to achieve his goal. She released a pleasured moan, the sound bursting into his mouth beautifully, followed by the thrust of her hungry little tongue. She changed the field of play into his mouth, and he welcomed her with a sigh.
It was that moment, as she rose up into his body, that restrictions began to make themselves known. He became aware in the nick of time that he should curb the impulse he had to slide his hands onto her back. She felt the flesh between her shoulders resist tautly as she tried to circle her arms around his shoulders.
And then she felt the pain.
She cried out, her anguish filling his mouth and piercing his soul.
He broke from her quickly, his hands flying to cup her face apologetically and tenderly.
“I’m sorry!” he said low and fierce, kissing the corners of her mouth soothingly. “I’m sorry. Damn, I’m a selfish bastard! I am so sorry, beauty.” He whipped his head around and narrowed his eyes on the young girl in Lasher’s care. “Are you Ophelia? The healer?”
“My little sister,” Ravenna corrected him gently when his tone came out abrupt and commandeering.
“Can you heal her?” he asked more softly of the small young woman.
“Yes. It is why I am here.”
Ophelia slid away from Lasher and eagerly picked up her sister’s hands. Bronse saw tears form in the younger woman’s eyes, and he was forced to remember that they had been torn away from each other and kept apart for an amount of time he was not privy to. Ravenna wept just as freely, twisting his heart into knots as she hugged the little sister who couldn’t hug her back just yet. He watched, though, as Ophelia laid the most ginger of touches across Ravenna’s horribly disfigured and infected back.
Blue light exploded over them both, setting Bronse and Lasher back on their asses about a foot in opposite directions. This was nothing like the slow, easing healing Masin had seen Ophelia perform on Bronse. The light was all-consuming and blinding. For a moment it looked like the women were locked in a hug of death, like what might happen if someone tried to hug someone who was in the process of being electrocuted.
Then, suddenly, someone turned off the juice.
Lasher and Bronse shot forward, each catching a female as she staggered back. Ophelia fainted dead away in Lasher’s arms. Ravenna shook her head and recovered in Bronse’s arms after a dazed moment. Unable to help himself, Bronse swept up the shirt she wore in the back and reached to pull away a strip of bandage. The skin beneath it was pink and tender.
“That is the damndest thing I’ve ever seen!” he exclaimed, pulling more strips of bandage free to reveal perfectly healed skin. It was as new as a baby’s, but it was perfect. He finished removing her bindings and then ran an eager, flat palm over the entirety of her soft back. “Great Being, Ravenna, I had no idea things like this existed!”
“Bronse, please,” she said, laughing and trying to pull away as his touch turned her cheeks as pink as her back. “Let me tend to Ophelia.”
“Of course,” he said hastily, letting her go after a long moment.
Rave went to kneel beside Lasher, touching her baby sister’s sweating brow.
“What the hell was that? That didn’t happen when she healed Bronse.”
“She was at full strength when she healed him. She was tired when she healed me, and it makes control of the power nearly impossible. She is young yet and it’s hard for her to stress herself. Yet she does it all the time because she does not have the heart to turn away anyone who needs her. It makes her so frail.”
“Then I’d say it’s damn well time that someone make her turn them away,” Lasher growled irritably. “This isn’t right! She’s still a kid!”
“A young woman with a very big heart and a deep conscience. I am her high priestess, and I do restrict her whenever possible, but I wish you luck if you think you can do better at getting her to listen to reason, because gods know I have tried again and again.”
Lasher frowned ominously, his dark scowl like a storm on his normally laid-back features.
“Not to fear,” Rave soothed him with a gentle hand on the arm that cradled her sister’s head so tenderly. “She will sleep now and will awaken refreshed in the morning.”
“Speaking of which, it’s getting on to dusk. We had best make tracks. We’ve been sitting still too long as it is,” Bronse said.
“I’ll carry Ophelia,” Lasher said, his tone dismissing any arguments. He handed his rifle to Bronse as Ender rounded up the others. After brief introductions to Bronse, followed by the commander’s crash course in who exactly was in charge, Bronse took point, pulling Rave behind him as she guided him toward the temple.
Bronse was pacing the chamber he’d been shown to, his impatience radiating into the room in wide, kinetic eddies that seemed to bounce off the walls and vibrate back against his skin, further agitating him. It was a perception, he knew, but he couldn’t escape it.
The temple was a magnificent place. To say it was old would be an understatement. It had clearly been there since close to the dawn of the planet’s earliest civilizations. Situated half in and half out of the side of an earthen steppe, it towered above the tree line.
They had been readily greeted by the other Chosen Ones. There had been a small-boned sassy little thing named Vivienne, whose brilliant flame red hair was so very different from that of the others, and whose c
ool blue eyes danced with easy merriment. Certainly she and the others had been brimming with delight to see Ravenna safely returned to them. There was also a girl of only fourteen years or so named Devan, who, with long black hair that hung in silky coils, and emerald eyes with jade suns radiating from their centers, had the promise of being an amazing beauty as a woman. Her peculiar eye color was almost unnerving and Bronse supposed it was a genetic anomaly, perhaps one that was attached to whatever gene it was that made her psionic like the rest of the Chosen Ones. It struck him that there seemed to be a hand-in-hand sort of connection between their abilities and their looks. Or perhaps being Chosen had not been a matter of mere ability.
There were also servants in the temple. This had upset Bronse greatly because he knew that if there was one untrustworthy aspect to any dwelling, it was to be found in the servants. He had infiltrated enough places to know that using servants as spies was a classic, effective method that would never go out of style. The crew’s presence there would, no doubt, be as good as reported by now, even though Justice had done her best to contain the household. But in a structure as old and as large as this, there were usually as many hidden chambers and passages as there were visible ones. Plenty of ways to escape in and out without being noticed. He had known it the minute he had seen the twisting, turning labyrinth of stone embedded half in the forest, half in the bedrock of the earth. The natural world had been incorporated into the complex design. Only those who lived in the temple for their entire lives would ever know all of its secrets. Considering how young all the Chosen Ones appeared to be, with none over the age of twenty-six, it seemed unlikely that they would know even a third of what a longtime servant might know.
It had not escaped Bronse’s notice that there were no elderly Chosen Ones. Not even middle-aged Chosen Ones. He had thought, mistakenly, that age and virginity might have had something to do with that, some temples finding only the young and pure to be holy, but Bronse had discovered during dinner that the priests and priestesses were not required to be chaste. That explained why Ravenna hadn’t had any qualms when she’d asked him so enthusiastically for his kiss. At supper, Vivienne had made cracks about how hard it had been to get laid since she’d become a Chosen One. He’d even seen Kith eyeing a serving girl, no doubt with more than wine on his mind after being imprisoned for so long.
The clincher had been Domino. The outspoken man had run Bronse down in the corridor earlier and pulled him to a stop. After a moment of debate that went on behind his cool, silvery eyes, the eldest Chosen One had decided to impart his brand of wisdom. “I guess you’ve figured out we all have special talents,” he supplied. “I think you have also figured out that Kith’s special talent is being a bit of an ass. He means well, though. Looking out for his big and little sis being at the heart of it.”
“I sense a point,” Bronse had encouraged.
“The point is that I know Kith. He’s feeling threatened by you. Especially after you laid that scorcher of a kiss on his big sis earlier. He near popped a vessel. Some jealousy I imagine, more likely some fear—the usual motivators in these things.”
“I know them well,” Bronse had agreed.
“I think I may have inadvertently handed Kith a way of trying to mess up you and Ravenna, and I don’t like the idea of my abilities being twisted around like that—at least not unless I’m doing the twisting.” Domino gave Bronse a capricious little grin, then shifted his weight and met Bronse’s eyes without hesitation. “I’m what’s known as a psychosexual empath. It’s a long name that means I’m highly attuned to all things sexual—past, present, and future. Believe me, it’s not as much fun as it sounds,” Domino joked when Bronse arched a curious brow. “Sure, it’s nice being able to rewind and replay the hot bit of loving that went on up against that wall over there earlier today,” he indicated the spot with a casual flip of a hand, “between a chambermaid and a cook’s apprentice, but try blocking out or filtering through all the bits of loving that ever happened in all the existing years of this hall being in place. Considering that humanoids are a right randy bunch, it gets a bit noisy, a lot uncomfortable, and damn overwhelming.
“But about my point,” he had hurried on when Bronse seemed to patiently grasp his explanation of his ability. “Don’t put it past Kith to lie to you about Rave’s motivation toward you. And don’t put it past him to lie to Rave about yours. She’s sensitive, but not always when she’s too close to a matter to see straight. I don’t think I need to tell you she’s innocent in her way, for all her power and her ability to lead us little Chosen lambs. The lessons she’s learned about men and sex have come only recently, and only from two quarters. You and that bastard at the prison. For her, that’s a lot of unexpected information to sort through all at once. I can tell right off that you’re honorable enough, but Kith could twist pure snow until it looked like piss.”
“Kith’s games won’t bother me or Ravenna,” Bronse had told him surely, surprised at just how confident he was speaking for a woman who, for all intents and purposes, he’d just met. “He’s a little man who’s grown up in a sheltered world. I, however, am not. But thank you for the heads-up. I appreciate it.”
The sentiment was genuine.
“Just so long as your appreciation includes a cubbyhole on that ship of yours. As long as you can take us out of here, my favors get stacked outside your door, my new friend.”
At least Domino had been balls-out up front about his mercenary motivations. Bronse had a powerful appreciation for the honesty, and it made him more inclined to trust what Domino was telling him.
But now, in the present, Bronse had a headache. He rubbed at the knotted muscles in the back of his neck as he paced some more.
Damn. He hated sitting still in hostile territory, but there was little he could do in the dark with these untrained children suddenly attached to his hip holsters. Departure had to wait until tomorrow at dawn, when Justice could be led to a clearing that would allow her to remote-land the flyer.
Luckily Bronse had picked something bigger and faster for her to fly for this mission. It looked like he would be taking on about seven refugees, and he would need the space. Not to mention the speed if he was going to pull off a passenger dump and manage to keep IM ignorant of it in official logs on both the ship and whatever station or port they hesitated at in order to drop them off.
Great Being, he was tired. Worried. Aggravated. Stressed. In danger.
Horny as hell.
Damn, damn, damn.
Now that he’d confessed the true crux of the problem to himself, he couldn’t pawn it off on anything else. Every cell in his body, right down to the tired, stressed and endangered ones, beat with a very singular need that only a very singular woman could ease.
Bronse plucked absently at the superfine silk material of the tunic he had been given to replace his torn shirt. It was a bit snug, these people clearly not used to seeing men of his stature and physical development, which made him chuckle and wonder what they made of Ender, who was much bigger than he was. The close-fitting material seemed to chafe at Bronse, for all its infinitely pristine softness. He felt he couldn’t breathe.
In truth, he could not understand.
What would bar the woman from coming to his quarters?
Tricky question. With thousands of answers. She had been warm, friendly, and as open as ever at the banquet-style meal they had been served, even seating him beside her and flirtatiously feeding him an occasional taste of her culture’s cuisine from her own plate. He hadn’t even allowed the presence of his crew and the fact that they were still very much on-mission to interfere with the desire to give and receive affection. He’d already crossed that line earlier when he’d kissed her right out of her drug-induced stupor in front of all the spirits in heaven.
When they’d finished eating, she had slowly walked him through the temple gardens, and he had immediately smelled the overwhelming sweep of Ayalya spice. He realized then that the mixture of a garden in blo
om and Ayalya spice would probably get him rock solid hard for the rest of his natural life.
Then she’d been called away on a temple matter and, despite his resistance, she had asked him to go to his chambers. She had said she would speak to him later.
Well, it was later. Much later.
Had Kith butted in and scared her off? Was she frightened of him enough on her own without anyone else’s help? Hell, he knew what he looked like; so big and imposing and reeking of military command. He had already botched things up with her dozens of times, that thoughtless kiss this afternoon being a good example.
For that matter, she had been away from here for at least a month, having been held captive in the village, then having slipped into the Banda’s clutches. There must be hundreds of things a high priestess would be in demand for this first night back. But it wasn’t as though all of that mattered anymore. She would be leaving here for good anyway.
He knew he was being selfish and self-centered along with everything else. Not a good thing in general, but definitely a huge mistake in a building where the residents can just about sense your every thought, mood, and intention. Actually, Kith was the only true empath. Domino was only sexually empathic, but that definitely applied to Bronse’s situation of the moment. Fallon, it turned out, was the one and only actual telepath, although he was quite voluble about the fact that he hated reading minds. He viewed it like a dental rerouting procedure.
Vivienne. Now, to Bronse, Vivienne was a fascinating mystery. She had a fierce power—one that Bronse suspected was strongly aggressive by the way she was deferred to, but he had yet to obtain a single telling clue as to what it was. The commander had learned that potential determined rank among the Chosen Ones, and Vivienne was second to his Ravenna. That left Devan and Ophelia. Ophelia healed, he knew, but little Devan—she was so quiet. He had no idea she was even there half the time, so it hardly seemed to matter what her abilities were.
That was neither here nor there, he thought impatiently. He was not a sit-and-wait kind of guy. He was a go-and-get-her kind of guy. Well, okay, maybe he was both. The ETF had taught him patience and aggression. It had taught him how to apply both and how to determine when each was called for. So why was waiting for her now so damn difficult? Bronse growled out a sound of frustration between his gritted teeth.
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