Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Jarran ordered fruit. She watched him bite into a dark red fruit, almost like a pear, and his eyes closed and his expression shifted into something so unguarded it made her chest ache.
His meals had likely been basic, but he’d been allowed to eat some of the produce he grew.
This looked exactly like one of the fruits she’d seen him harvest once.
“Good?” she asked.
“Very good.” He held it toward her. “Try.”
She leaned forward and bit where he’d bitten. The juice was sweet and sharp, almost citrus, and it ran down her chin. He watched her mouth while she chewed. She wiped her chin with the back of her hand and pretended she hadn’t noticed.
She thought about working on memory exercises, to pass the time, but decided against it.
It was probably best that he didn’t bring up too much of his past here, where there were no safeguards if Pella Rin rose to the surface and took over.
That was one person she wasn’t eager to see more of.
Also, she reminded herself for the thousandth time: she wasn’t his doctor anymore.
The lights dimmed on a cycle, simulating nightfall. There was no way to tell what time it actually was, or even what system they were in. There were no windows or time-keeping devices to mark the passage of time and she’d stopped trying to track it.
“Well, I’m getting tired,” she announced with a pronounced yawn.
His expression turned stoic as they got into the bed from opposite sides.
The sheets were soft and cool and the mattress was absurdly comfortable.
She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling and listened to Jarran breathing beside her.
He was on his back too, one arm behind his head, taking up significantly more of the bed than she did.
His tail twitched like a restless cat’s. He wasn’t relaxed either.
“Evie.”
“Yeah?”
“What is Earth like?”
She rolled to her side, facing him. He was still looking at the ceiling, his profile hard in the dim light. “Why do you want to know?”
“I want to know more about you.” His voice was rough.
She thought about it. “Rain. We have rain. Water falls from the sky. A lot, where I grew up. It hits the ground and everything smells clean. Green.” She paused. “You can stand outside in it and just get wet for no reason. It feels incredible.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Water from the sky.”
“There’s also snow, which is water when it’s frozen and fluffy.” She thought about that to keep from thinking about how good he smelled. “And sometimes there’s ice that falls. That’s not as fun to stand outside in.”
“I would like to feel rain.” His voice was low and soft and stripped down. “And snow sounds interesting.”
“Maybe someday,” she said. She didn’t know why she said it. There was no someday. There was a locked door and a Sifter warlord and an uncertain number of engineered soldiers between them and any version of someday that involved standing in the rain.
“Tell me another thing,” he said.
“Oceans. Huge bodies of water, so big you can’t see the other side. They move. Waves come in and pull back out, and the sound of it is…” She trailed off, unable to adequately describe it. “It’s the best sound.”
“Better than rain?”
“Different.”
He turned his head and looked at her in the dim light. “Now tell me something about you,” he said.
“Like what?” Her pulse picked up the pace.
“Do you have a family? A mate?” His brows rose. “Offspring?”
“Yes to a family, I guess.” That was complicated to explain, as her relationship with her parents and brothers had never been easy or simple. “No to the rest.”
He blinked. “Why not? You’re beautiful, smart, kind. How has a male not chosen you and made you his?”
She smiled. “There have been a few candidates,” she said. “But none that have stuck.”
“Your choice, of course.” He said it like he couldn’t imagine anyone voluntarily leaving her.
“I left some, and some left me.” She sighed. “I’m not universally appealing, Jarran.”
“You are unbearably appealing, Evie.” He sounded pained as he said it. “Any male who doesn’t think so is defective.”
She laughed, but her eyes were heavy. The bed was warm and the sheets were soft and his voice was close and low and she was so tired. She’d barely slept in the cell. The floor had been cold metal and every noise had jolted her awake.
“Tell me something about Virilia,” she murmured. “Something you remember.”
He was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then: “Heat. We lived underground because it was too hot on the surface. I remember wishing I could live under the sky, instead of a roof of rock.”
“Big open spaces. That’s your thing?”
“It would be, if I were ever free.” She could hear a touch of sadness in his voice. “But I understand why I can never be free. Also, two suns. So the shadows go in different directions.”
“Two shadows. That’s disorienting.”
“You get used to it.” A pause. “I think I did, anyway.”
She smiled into the pillow. Her eyelids were closing on their own. The last thing she registered before sleep pulled her under was the sound of his breathing, steady and close, and the space between them shrinking as they drifted closer together.
She woke when the lights brightened.
His arm was around her. Her head was against his chest, tucked into the curve of his shoulder, and her hand was resting on his stomach.
His heartbeat was slow and even under her ear.
His chest rose and fell in a deep, steady rhythm.
His other arm was draped across his body, his hand resting near hers, fingers loose.
The heat of him was extraordinary, radiating through the thin fabric of his shirt.
She didn’t move. She lay there and breathed and let herself have this. Just for a minute. Just for one selfish, reckless minute before the reality of their situation crashed back in and she had to be sensible again.
He looked young when he slept. The tension in his jaw and his brow dissolved, and what was left was a face that could have been twenty-five rather than the Virilian equivalent of forty.
Smooth dark hair fell across his forehead.
Long lashes fanned against his high cheekbones.
The hard line of his mouth softened. She couldn’t imagine this face commanding raiders to destroy a village.
She couldn’t imagine this face ordering the creation of hybrid women, or shooting a Virilian male in the chest, or any of the things his file claimed he’d done.
He stirred. His arm tightened around her, pulling her closer before his eyes opened. When they did, the dark green was hazy with sleep and warm and unguarded, and he looked at her like she was his whole world. No one had ever looked at her like that.
He kissed her, slow and unhurried. His mouth found hers with his eyes still half-closed.
A good morning kiss that felt so natural, she could imagine they did this every day, that this was their life, waking up tangled together in soft sheets.
She kissed him back because she wanted to.
It was as simple and complicated as that.
He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead against hers. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“What do you want to eat?”
She laughed. The sound surprised her. He smiled at the sound of it, pulled back and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and crossed to the replication unit. Typical male, waking up with breakfast on his mind.
She watched him from the bed. Her lips were still warm from his mouth.
Fuck. She was in so much trouble.
The second day was worse. First, because after scouring every corner and cranny of their sumptuous suite, they determined it was in fact as sealed up and escape proof as Evie expected.
Second, because she was so aware of him that every accidental brush of skin registered like a current.
His hand against hers when he passed her a cup made her pulse race.
His thigh pressing against hers when they sat together on the small couch made her mouth dry.
The back of his fingers grazing her arm as he reached past her sent liquid heat pooling between her legs.
And she knew she had a similar effect on him. He looked hungry all the time.
And he watched her. She’d noticed him watching before, on the Korath-7, but he didn’t look away anymore.
He watched her move through the room and when she met his gaze, he held it.
Something had shifted between Korath-7 and this room.
The pretense was gone. Whatever this was, they were both trying to figure it out, and wondering if they’d survive it.
Of course, she watched him, too. It was impossible not to admire the way he moved, fluid and contained, all that size and strength controlled and schooled.
She liked the way he ate, with eyes half-closed and bliss on his face.
She liked the way his dark hair fell into his eyes and how he pushed it back with an absent gesture that he’d probably used since he was a child.
They were circling each other. Waiting. Like they were caught in a gravity well and slowly losing altitude.
She knew where this was going. She’d known since the moment they’d been locked into this suite together. There were no guards watching here. Just a locked door and a bed and the steady, relentless pull of proximity.
That evening, just when the lights dimmed, the memories hit him hard.
One moment he was talking, his voice low and halting, trying to describe something that was surfacing. The next, his body locked rigid. His hands fisted on his knees. His breathing turned shallow and fast and his eyes went somewhere she couldn’t follow.
“The sisters,” he said. His voice broke on the word. “I can see their faces.”
She deduced that he was referring to the engineered females. The ones Pella Rin had created. He was remembering them, and from the look on his face, what he was remembering was ugly and specific and involved faces he would never again be able to forget.
“Jarran.”