Pairing with the Protector: A Kindred Tales Novel (Brides of the Kindred)

by Evangeline Anderson

  And then she was gone, as suddenly as she had appeared. The image of Whitney took a little longer to fade but when it did, Rafe blinked his eyes.

  He shook himself, feeling like a male waking from a trance. What had just happened? What was he doing standing here when the woman he loved was missing him? Especially when the Goddess had said she was leaving tonight if he didn’t make things right between them?

  Quickly, he straightened his red uniform shirt and made certain it was tucked into his black flight leathers. He ran his fingers through his wild black hair and decided it would have to do—he needed to go see the woman he loved.

  He needed to get to Whitney before it was too late and she left the Mother Ship forever.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  He had forgotten it was the Earth holiday of…Weeny-Howls? Ballow-steen? Anyway, he had forgotten all about it, Rafe thought ruefully as he dodged around children dressed in outlandish costumes as they went up and down the halls of the Mother Ship banging on doors and demanding sweet treats. Who had made up such a strange tradition?

  Then he remembered that Whitney was, herself, supposed to be going to a party given by her friend Kat that very night. Luckily he knew where Kat’s suite was because he was friends with her mates, but ducking and dodging down even more crowded corridors was irritating in the extreme.

  He finally got to the right suite but as he waited to enter the busy party, he couldn’t help noticing that everyone who went in had on a costume. Would he be turned away for not wearing one?

  “It’s time to go to bed now, Kendrick—you know it is. Just because it’s Halloween doesn’t mean you don’t have school tomorrow,” a woman was saying to her young son just in front of him.

  “Aww, Mom!” The little boy was wearing a red cape and an oversized black mask which outlined his eyes and kept slipping down over his nose. “All the other kids got to do the other side of the ship too—some of them even got to go to the Sacred Grove! I heard the priestesses give out the best candy on the whole ship. And it’s blessed by the Goddess,” he added virtuously.

  The corners of his mother’s mouth twitched.

  “Nice try, buddy,” she remarked. “Maybe next year when you’re older. For now, I happen to know someone who has a test on his nine times tables tomorrow and needs his sleep.”

  “I do not!” Kendrick protested and yawned hugely, giving the lie to his statement.

  “Come on, champ—time for bed.” His mother started to pull him down the corridor but Rafe stopped them.

  “Excuse me,” he said awkwardly. “But if you have no more use for your mask, could I use it?”

  “You wanna wear my mask?” The boy called Kendrick looked up at him uncertainly.

  Rafe nodded. “I must go to a party—there is a female there I have to speak to. But everyone else has a costume and you see, I do not.”

  He nodded at the door to Kat’s suite where people in costumes continued to pour in while he himself had none.

  “Well…” Kendrick looked undecided for a moment. Then he shrugged and slipped off the black mask, which only covered the eyes. “Have fun, mister,” he said, handing it to Rafe.

  “Thank you!” Rafe took it and put it on. “Thank you very much!”

  “’s’all right.” The boy grinned at him. “Happy Halloween!”

  “Happy Weeny-howls to you as well,” Rafe said sincerely, which made the boy laugh and his mother smile.

  They went on up the long metal corridor and left Rafe to put on the mask and join the party.

  He just hoped he was in time.

  * * * * *

  “I can’t do it—-my heart’s not in it,” Whitney protested, trying to give the microphone back to Kat.

  “Oh come on, Whitney—you can’t leave without letting us hear you sing one more time,” Liv protested. She was dressed as an angel with fluffy white wings and a halo and her husband Baird was wearing a red devil tail and horns.

  “Yeah, Whitney—just one song,” Sophie begged. She had on a t-shirt with a large black P painted on it and had used makeup to give herself a black eye. “I’m a black-eyed P, get it?” she’d said when Whitney asked. “Please,” she said again. “Please—just one song?”

  “Well…” Whitney sighed. She was used to being asked to sing at parties and she usually didn’t mind. But tonight she just wasn’t feeling it. Still, she hated to disappoint her friends. “All right,” she relented, taking the microphone back at last. “One song.”

  “Goody! And I get to pick it! I’m coming up with you—but not to sing,” Kat said hastily. “I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

  “Works for me.” Whitney was glad to have some support. “Come on.”

  The two of them went up on the small karaoke stage and Kat began flipping through the selections.

  Whitney sighed and looked down at the assembled crowd…and that was when she saw him.

  Golden eyes looked up at hers through the holes in a black mask and she felt a surge of emotion coming through their bond. Her heart throbbed and she forced herself to look away as she grabbed Kat’s arm.

  “Change of plans,” she whispered, barely able to get the words out. “I’m picking the song.”

  * * * * *

  Rafe knew she had seen him. He had felt the surge of recognition through their bond. He wanted to go to her at once and tell her how sorry he was, but she was up on the small stage with Kat and he couldn’t interrupt her. All around him people were having fun, laughing and joking—all dressed in outlandish outfits, most of which meant nothing to him. But he only had eyes for Whitney as she raised the microphone and began to sing.

  “If I…should stay…I would only be in your way. So I’ll go…but I know I’ll think of you, every step of the way…”

  Rafe’s heart clenched. Gods, she was singing to him. Singing a farewell that made him ache inside.

  “Bittersweet memories…that is all I’m taking with me. So goodbye…please don’t cry. We both know I’m not what you need…

  But I will always love you! Oh, I will always love you!”

  The words made his eyes hot and his heart burn in his chest. Gods, he didn’t deserve her! But unworthy as he was, he couldn’t help himself.

  “Whitney,” he said hoarsely, coming up to take her hand as she finally descended the stage. “Can we talk?”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “All right—here we are. What do you want to talk about?” Whitney was on her guard—afraid to hope for too much as they finally entered her suite. Had Rafe somehow learned that she was pregnant and now he had come to talk about the babies? But surely not—only Kat and Liv and Sophie and Commander Sylvan knew and they had all been sworn to the strictest secrecy. So then why had he come?

  “I wanted to tell you…to try…to try and explain,” he began. “About how…why I acted the way I did.”

  Whitney pulled her hand away at once.

  “Save it,” she said flatly. “I already heard your ‘it’s not you it’s me’ speech— once was enough for me.”

  “No, damn it!” Rafe burst out. “I came to tell you that I love you!” He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his wild black hair. “I love you…even though I know I don’t deserve you,” he ended, almost in a whisper.

  “You…you do?” Whitney tried not to get her hopes up. After all, she had already known that he loved her—but she also knew he didn’t want to love her either.

  “I didn’t want to love you because I was afraid,” Rafe admitted in a low, harsh voice. “I was afraid of losing you…of losing the woman I loved for the second time.”

  Whitney shook her head. “I’m sorry, Rafe—I don’t understand.”

  “Which is why I must explain.”

  “Please do.” Whitney sat on the couch and watched as the big Kindred started pacing in front of the fireplace, running his long fingers through his hair and looking down at her carpet as he spoke.

  “Over ten years ago now, I was bonded to anoth
er,” he said, his voice still low and filled with pain. “Her name was Tenda and I loved her more than my own life. We lived on Rageron, the home planet of my people, just on the edge of the Deep Blue.”

  “The huge jungle you told me about,” Whitney said.

  He nodded. “The same. The Deep Blue is full of predators but I had cleared the field around the back of our home and I did not think any would dare to come within our boundaries.” He took a deep breath. “In that, I was wrong.”

  “Oh,” Whitney murmured, but was afraid to say more. Clearly it was hard for Rafe to tell her this—he had a look on his face like a man choking up nails—but just as clearly he was determined to get through it.

  “One day when Tenda was heavy with our first born son, she strayed to the edge of our boundaries, gathering jinja blossoms. A xenox saw her—they are big feral felines with deep blue fur and fangs as long as my finger.”

  He demonstrated by hooking two fingers in the air and Whitney shuddered.

  “It carried her away,” Rafe said. “Before she could even scream—though I heard her screams well enough as I followed her.” He bowed his head, his broad shoulders hunched with the unbearable pain of loss. “I chased the beast and fought it—those are where the scars on my chest and abdomen came from. It nearly disemboweled me.”

  Whitney put a hand to her mouth.

  “Oh Rafe no—I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged, obviously trying to rein in his emotions, though she still felt them loud and clear through their bond.

  “I lived. Tenda did not. She and our unborn child died in the attack.” His hands clenched into fists. “The attack I was too slow to prevent. I couldn’t save them, Whitney. And I vowed to myself never to love a female again.”

  “I understand,” she whispered and she did. His feelings of love and longing for her, mixed up with feelings of regret were clear now. “You were afraid to love me because you didn’t want to lose me the way you lost her,” she murmured.

  Rafe nodded. “As I said, I was a coward not to tell you before. But somehow the words…would not come.”

  “I can understand why. Some things are too awful to talk about,” Whitney told him gently. “And if you don’t want to be together because that memory is too painful, well, I understand that too.”

  “No!” he said fiercely, looking up at her. “No, I want you, Whitney. And I love you. I just don’t deserve you.”

  “Yes, you do.” Whitney got up and went to him. Reaching up, she put her arms around his neck and pulled him down. “You protected me, Rafe—that whole time we were on that awful planet. You were willing to be killed if it would save my life—you stood by me the whole time. You do deserve me and both of us deserve happiness. So we deserve each other.”

  “Truly?” His golden eyes were hopeful. “Do you really feel that way, mon’dalla?”

  His use of the tender nickname which he hadn’t called her in so long seemed to melt Whitney’s heart…and heat up her blood at the same time.

  “Come over here on the couch with me and I’ll show you how I feel,” she murmured through their link.

  Rafe’s golden eyes grew half-lidded and he allowed her to lead him over to the broad, black leather couch which was warm from the heat of the fire burning in the grate. But when she would have sat beside him, he shook his head and drew her down into his lap, straddling him.

  “No, sit here with me, mon’dalla,” he murmured, reaching up to cup her cheek and bring her down for a kiss. “Let me show you how grateful I am that you have forgiven me.”

  Whitney could feel the hard bulge of his shaft through the tight black leather trousers he wore and she wiggled against it eagerly. Her hormones were surging and she suddenly felt almost as needy as she had after eating the special food or sniffing the tweedle weed.

  “Mmm…you have too many clothes on,” she accused him breathlessly as he kissed her and ran his big, warm hands up and down her sides.

  “I could say the same for you, you know,” he murmured. “What if we disrobe together?”

  Whitney nodded, grinning a little.

  “You know, after spending days in that cage butt-naked, I swore I would never be nude again. But I think I could make an exception right now.”

  “Good.” Rafe got up and stripped off his trousers and shirt and boots until he was as bare as he had been their whole time on the giant planet.

  Whitney was about to get undressed too but then she remembered her baby bump and felt suddenly shy.

  “What is it, Whitney? I feel your uncertainty through our bond.” Rafe settled on the couch again and patted his lap. “Come sit with me again and tell me what is wrong.”

  Whitney straddled him again—very aware of the long, hard shaft poking up between his thighs—and looked into his golden eyes, trying to think how to explain.

  “It might be better if I show you rather than telling you,” she said at last. “It’s…hard for me to say out loud.”

  He nodded. “All right—show me then.”

  Taking a deep breath, Whitney untied the top of the loose Cleopatra gown and let it slip from her shoulders and pool around her hips. Her full breasts—which had gotten considerably bigger and more tender—were exposed, but so was her gently rounded abdomen with its baby bump.

  “Gods, mon’dalla—so beautiful,” Rafe groaned, taking her in. “But…” he stopped, his eyes lingering on the way her abdomen was rounded outward. “Goddess,” he murmured. “Are you…?”

  “Pregnant,” Whitney finished for him. Lifting her chin, she added, “It must have happened at the Tweedle Beautiful show, when we bonded. Liv thinks the special food Mama Tusker gave me accelerated the growth—that’s why I’m showing so much already.”

  “Gods,” he murmured again and placed his big, warm hands carefully on her belly. “I had no idea.” He looked up at her suddenly. “This is what you were hiding! This is why you wanted so desperately to come home.”

  “I wanted to get a test done and find out for sure if what I suspected was true,” Whitney admitted.

  “But…why not tell me?” He shook his head in apparent confusion. “Why hide it from me?”

  “I didn’t want you to feel obligated to stay with me just because I was carrying your baby. Well, actually babies,” she corrected herself.

  “Babies? Plural?” His golden eyes grew wide. “You’re having twins?”

  Whitney shook her head.

  “Triplets—all three boys,” she confessed. “Again, probably because of the special food. But they’re all perfectly healthy,” she added.

  “Gods—sons! Three sons.” Rafe’s face was filled with wonder. “This is amazing, Whitney! I don’t know how you concealed it from me.”

  “Well, I won’t be able to conceal it from anyone for very much longer,” Whitney told him. “Because of the special food accelerating the pregnancy, I’m due to give birth in six months.”

  “Only six months!” Rafe exclaimed. “But we have so much to do! We must get a nursery ready, think of names, call all of your kin and invite them to the birth celebration, and so much more!”

  Whitney bit her lip.

  “Then…you’re not upset? Because I’m not going to lie, most guys who found out they were on the hook for three babies after only one night of sex would not be happy.”

  “I am not ‘most guys’,” Rafe growled indignantly. “I am your mate. And I will be your husband too, if you want to have a Joining Ceremony before our boys are born. We are going to raise these children together, Whitney, as a family the way the Goddess intended.”

  “Oh, Rafe!” Tears of joy filled her eyes and she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. Her last fear—the worry that he wouldn’t want the babies—finally evaporated and now she felt completely happy and comfortable with him.

  Rafe put his arms around her and pulled her close, the tender tips of her breasts pressing against the hard wall of his chest as he ran his big, warm hands up and down her back. His gentl
e touch sent shivers down her spine and Whitney moaned and pressed against him.

  “Mmm, that feels so good!” she murmured, lowering herself more into his lap to feel the broad head of his shaft brushing between her legs. “I love being close to you.”

  “I love being close to you too, mon’dalla,” Rafe murmured in her ear. “But I suppose this is as close as we can get for a little while—at least until the babies are born.”

  “What? Why?” Whitney pulled back to look at him, laughing. His face was completely serious. “You’re afraid you’ll hurt the babies if we make love?” she guessed.

  “Well…won’t we?” Rafe asked, frowning. “I mean, they are still so small and vulnerable…” He put a hand on her stomach again, caressingly.

  “They’ll be fine,” Whitney told him firmly. “Liv said as much the last time she examined me. Though of course at that time I didn’t think there was any way I’d be having sex while I was pregnant.”

  “How can it be safe?” Rafe argued. “They are tiny and I am…not small, though I do not like to brag.” He nodded down between his legs, where his shaft rose long and thick between them.

  “You certainly are not small, but you still won’t hurt them,” Whitney premised him. “Look, what if we did it very gently and very slowly and I stayed on top of you like this the whole time, just to make sure? Would that make you feel better?”

  Rafe still looked uncertain but when Whitney threatened to call Liv on the Think-me and ask her to repeat that everything would be okay, he finally consented.

  “All right,” he said at last. “But very slowly and very gently. You can take me into you but I won’t move unless you tell me to.”

  Whitney thought privately that he had more self-control than any man she’d ever been with—and certainly more control than she had herself. Her hormones were surging and now that they were finally back together, she wanted to feel her man inside her, bonding the two of them together all over again.