Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Approaching footsteps snapped Ziamee awake.
She lay still, listening, a chill rippling across her exposed forearms. The tread was heavy, unlike Seba’s six-pawed patter.
A solid weight pressed in on her. She peeked with one eye, then squealed, throwing her arms around her father.
His broad shoulders, that smell—a mixture of male and sweat she’d grown to associate with him—engulfed her with pure joy.
He chuckled, giving her shoulder a pat. “I’m so sorry, ohara.”
“So you said.” She buried her nose in the curve of his neck. “Just glad you’re well.”
“You’ve been busy,” he said, leaning back to brush a braid away from her temple. “How did you find a rescuer?”
“Illan?” She frowned. “He found me. Landed his shuttle on the sandpits.”
“He did?” Padya grinned. “I’m surprised he survived.”
Memories rose to the fore, and she glanced away, hoping her expression wouldn’t reveal anything to her father.
“I heard you yelling for me.” His smile held sorrow. “I suppose you know?” He watched her as if her reaction mattered.
She narrowed her eyes as she sifted through the recent events.
“That the beacon stopped—”
“Yes,” she said, clasping her hands in her lap. “Illan told me. You should have.”
He bowed his head. “It was a few days before…Seba.”
A vague memory rose of Padya and Mudya arguing. She’d thought nothing of it when they often debated how best to catalog specimens. The tension had been a little different—thicker, darker—and the strained silence had dampened the evening.
The next morning, her mother was gone.
“Do…you think Mudya is alive?” She studied his beloved face, dreading his answer while desperate to hear it.
“Yes, your mother’s a survivor…”
Now was the time to reveal to her that mind-fusion existed. But he didn’t.
“Don’t you miss her?” That was as close as she was prepared to risk the line of questioning.
Padya stood. “Of course.” But his stiff body belied his words. The tone he used rang of false sincerity.
“You can’t still be angry with her,” she snapped.
“I’m not,” he gritted out, heading for the door.
After searching for him for so long, the urge to trail him gripped her. But his unwillingness to open up about the mind-fusion and Mudya’s motives behind her abandonment kept Ziamee seated.
No.
She leaped to her feet. “Aren’t you mind-fused?”
He stilled, halfway through the doorway. “Who told you—” He clenched his jaw. “We didn’t want you to feel…isolated. A mind- and life-fusion only occurs when you meet your dhutya, and the odds of that happening for you on an uninhabited planet—”
“You know she’s alive.” She curled her fingers into fists, restraining the need to punch something. “For twelve years, you let me believe she’d died.” Her body trembled as anger and adrenaline pumped through her, demanding she fight. “I mourned.”
He flinched and didn’t meet her gaze. “It’s in the past.”
She blinked at his disappearing back, having never known her father to act like this.
Had he missed Mudya? Maybe.
Forgiven her? No.
It must’ve taken something huge to drive her mother away…without taking Ziamee with her. Had she also left her father, she wouldn’t have been wounded, and Seba wouldn’t have lost his mother.
Sadness coated Ziamee’s heart with ice. She’d never have known Seba. Consequences were far-reaching, but either way, her life would’ve been different.
She crept through the door, checking Illan’s to make sure it was closed.
Time alone with Seba was what she wanted, away from complications like her father’s secrets and Illan’s intensity.
Seba snored in the common, his belly distended.
Padya wasn’t in her line of sight. Neither was Coll in medical.
She strolled to the head and peeked through the open door.
Ulta manned the console. Since he was alone, she ventured in.
“Lady Ziamee, how may I assist?” he asked without glancing at her.
“I want to go…home.”
“Certainly. Does Illan know?” He met her gaze.
She bristled. “Do I need his permission?”
Ulta offered a kind smile. “Of course not. I merely ask in case he plans to travel with you.” He ran his fingers over the multi-colored buttons. “Would you like an O.D.I.?”
“Why?” She wasn’t a fool. They’d use it as a tracker more than a communicator.
“So you can stay in contact with me,” he said.
“I do not need to,” she snapped. “I was fine without any of you.” She ignored the whispers that her father would’ve died had Illan and his Etterians not come along.
Guilt lashed at her conscience, but she stiffened her spine. Her pallet. Her lake. Her ceaza. She wasn’t the least bit hungry, but in the chaos that had become her life, she craved familiarity around her.
“Come,” Illan said from where he leaned against the door frame.
She jumped, having not heard him approach. Her heart did that flutter thing when a ceaza escaped the bucket and landed on the sand. Which was silly when she considered that her heart was trying to escape its destined fate.
“Where to?” she managed to ask, but her voice cracked.
“To get an O.D.I.”
“I don’t want one,” she gritted out.
“Then I must go with you to Vora.”
She scowled. “Forcing me to do this is dishonorable.”
“Protecting you is what matters,” he countered.
She crossed to him and shoved her face in his. “I can protect myself.”
For the longest time, his gaze traveled her face. “Yes,” he said, “but not with a Maloidian dagger.”
He wanted it back? Pain cinched her chest. Biting her lip to stifle any sound she might make, she dipped to retrieve it from her boot.
He caught her shoulder. “Ziamee,” he said. “Why do you want to go planetside?”
She cast a glance at Ulta, not wanting him to eavesdrop.
“Let me show you something.” Illan swiveled on a heel, and in the passage opposite the door to the head, he activated a panel. It swished aside, revealing a ladder going up. “We will have privacy here.” He climbed, then peered through the hatch at her. “Are you coming?”
She followed but only far enough to poke her head into the space. A room opened to a wall of space. A molded bench ran along one bulkhead to best enjoy the view.
She gasped, clambering up and out to gaze at the stars with Vora to the bottom left.
He sealed the hatch and joined her.
The view was spectacular, the silence almost deafening. She drew in a slow inhale, then released it bit by bit. Yes, this…was what she needed: time with her thoughts.
He came up behind her, his bare feet making no sound on the smooth floor. When he cupped her, his warm touch made her skin prickle. What dawned on her was that she wasn’t alone but with Illan’s steady presence. His quiet strength cracked her shell.
“Padya…” Her throat closed on unshed tears. “He’s been lying to me for twelve years. He knows Mudya’s alive, Illan. He let me cry myself to sleep for weeks.” She flicked a tear aside like it was a pesky insect. “He said he lied to me to protect me.”
Illan stiffened. “To undermine your capabilities was not my intention. To arm you to best fight your battles is.”
“It tracks, doesn’t it?” She faced him and stilled. He was far too close. But with him gripping her arms, she couldn’t pull away.
“Only when we must. It also means you can call for aid.” He stroked a braid off her temple, then trailed it past her ear. “Your choice. I would like to insert an actual tracker in Seba, to monitor his meanderings.”
The urge to nuzzle his palm as he caressed her cheek was so compelling that she struggled to hold onto her thoughts. “Will it be painful for him?”
“No,” Illan growled. “I have never hurt you or anything dear to you. Nor will I ever.”
His conviction resonated like someone promising to remain by her side for an eternity.
“All right,” she whispered.
His sweet smile was heart-stopping. Her capitulation mattered to him. He did care. It meant enduring whatever medical procedure, learning a new device, and getting Seba to lie still, for what? Illan’s smile?
She was insane to give in. To hand over control of her life.
Her breath hitched. Her heart thundered in her ears. A strange fuzziness circled her vision.
Panic set in.
“Ziamee.” Illan’s voice came from afar. “Breathe.”
She sucked air in.
“I have you, ohara. Stay with me.”
She blinked, his blurriness clearing. “I’m sorry. Too many changes… Too fast.”
He cupped her face, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“All things come with change. Your mother is alive when you thought her lost to you forever. Your father has been rescued against all odds when he should have died down there. You have been healed, fed, clothed, and armed. No one is asking you to hunt, to start a fire, to clean a ceaza. You have been surviving for so long that it is second nature.” He feathered the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip, summoning a frisson of heat.
“You are allowed to want a quiet moment to reflect on the past events and revelations. I want you to have whatever you desire.” He dusted his lips across hers, so fleetingly, she was sure she’d imagined it. “But I also need you to be safe.”
“You worry.” She slumped, resting her temple on his collarbone. “Yes, I’ll get an O.D.I. if it means you’re at peace.” She jerked back. “But I can go home…with Seba?”
“Yes. Alone.” He drew her into his arms, splaying his fingers across her back. “For how long?”
“A morning? At most, a day.”
“Very well.”
A part of her screamed that she didn’t need his permission. The rest of her reeled at how incredible it was to be…valued. Padya loved her. She had to assume he was forced to by nature, so his affections didn’t truly count.
She frowned. How did Durns have children? There was so much she didn’t know because of her parents’ stupid idea of protection. Had Oz been instructed not to cover the fundamentals of Durn physiology? She hadn’t even known mind-fusion was possible.
Illan’s heat lining the front of her body drew her from her thoughts. How long had they been standing there, locked in an embrace? It didn’t matter. Him holding her, somehow, allowed her to breathe as if her chest had seized and only now was she granted full access to her lungs.
In the time she’d known him, he’d behaved honorably and with sincerity. He made it easy for her to rely on him. Too much wasn’t a good thing, but a little wouldn’t harm her. After all, he’d be leaving Vora soon… Like he’d mentioned.
Without rethinking it, she slipped her arms around his waist and sank into him. His smell was finer than the scent of rain on soil or sunshine on a drying garment.
“Ziamee,” he rasped, tipping her gaze up with two fingers under her chin. He feathered his lips down her cheek.
Her breath hitched. Anticipation climbed as she waited for his hot mouth to claim hers. When he did, a ripple of pleasure swept over her. As new as that sensation was, it had fast become an addiction.
Her heartbeat stopped, then sped up, fluttering in her chest. Her limbs softened, forcing her to tighten her arms. His tongue touching hers exploded heat outward.
She moaned despite her best efforts not to react. His arms crushed her, pinning her to the length of him.
Why does he taste so good?
She leaned into the kiss, ravenous. Leaving the ship became inconsequential. What he would spark in her next was all she could focus on. If he stopped this glorious torment, she might kick him.
A shudder took him. He clasped her face and deepened the kiss. She succumbed, kneading the muscles in his back when he teased her tongue.
One moment, his hands were warming her cheeks; the next, he ran a caress from her shoulders to her fingertips.
When their fingers interlaced and their palms locked together, images assaulted her mind—so vivid, and she marveled at the tone and texture of his skin beneath her.
His lips were on her breast. His hair cascaded and pooled on her as he dusted kisses between her cleavage to her belly.
The coolness against her flushed skin was visceral.
Tingling began between her thighs, aching, throbbing, and drawing a gasp from her. The pleasure was intense…and intimate. Her garments irritated like wasay cloth. Her boots were heavier than normal. Unable to contain the rush of sheer joy, a whimper slipped past her defenses.
“Let go, ohara,” he whispered, his words vibrating through her in a delicious hum.
She cried out. Something inside her snapped.
A tsunami of pleasure, torment, and sweet warmth slammed into and barreled through her walls, crumbling them.
Her insides shattered in a syzygy of stars.
Everything within her stilled. She dug her nails into his hands, needing him to ground her, to stop her from floating off.
Tiny kisses across her lips drew her back to reality.
She stood fully clothed before him, their palms locked, and yet a stickiness lingered at the juncture of her thighs.
“Illan?” she rasped, then cleared her throat. “What was that?”
He smiled. “Durns call it synthesis. Etterians say fulfillment, and humans use orgasm.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Like organism?”
“Sounds similar, but the meaning is not.”
She snorted. “I far prefer the Etterian word for it.”
He gathered her into his arms and rested his chin on her head. “Still want to head home?”
“Please,” she said. She had every intention of having a long talk with Oz and the subjects he hadn’t touched on.
The hatch swished open.
Padya stuck his head through. “Here you are,” he said, his expression grim. “We must leave now. Faerar’s in danger.”