Chapter 7
SEVEN
Virak did not summon Jessa to the evening meal.
In fact, he turned away his advisors and generals and diplomats—all the people from his “court”—to sit in the expansive dining hall and eat alone.
The silence was a balm. The solitude, a relief.
He tipped his cup of taga to his lips and drank it all in one swallow.
There were concerns about unidentified activity going on in the tunnels leading to the city.
When the doors were unsealed and scouts sent in to investigate, nothing but darkness and scuff marks on the floor were found.
It put his military on edge. It put him on edge.
He had issued a city-wide alert to all citizens to be armed at all times.
It had been a hard message to deliver to a people who were no longer trained to fight, but had adapted to various trades vital to the running of an underground society.
And then there was Jessa.
His thoughts twisted to chaos when she came to mind. His hand, wrapped around his cup, still tingled where she touched it earlier in the day. If one inadvertent touch during a game caused so much discomfort, sex would be excruciating.
Still, need pulsed through his body. It was as though a starving beast sat coiled within him, desperate to be unleashed, but the chains binding it were thick, and the lock, impenetrable.
His attendant, Raan, entered. “The training room is prepared for you, sir.”
“Thank you.” He set the cup on the table and stood.
It was time for his daily training session.
Despite the fact that he had never seen, and likely would never see, actual combat, he kept his body in fighting form.
It was the way of his forebears. Few of them had ever battled anything outside of the training room, except, perhaps, their own personal demons.
In his chambers, he changed into simple black pants that sat low on the hip and went to mid-thigh.
He strode through the corridors to the training room, which was a large open space.
The gray floor was made of a substance that could be programmed to simulate different surfaces from soft, rubbery, or hard.
Today, he had made it feel like slick rock.
He chose his preferred weapons—twin black blades that were as long as his forearms and curved to a deadly point. If he were really in battle, the tips would be dipped in poison. When fighting machines, however, it was the strike that mattered.
Virak set three of the combat robots to random mode, so he wouldn’t know what attack style or weapons they would use, and readied himself, as he’d been taught.
His tail swished as he circled the first combat bot.
He had six assigned to him for the evening, but was starting with half that amount, knowing that his current distraction would put him at a disadvantage.
The combat bot fought with two plasma guns, which would kill in actual combat, but only delivered a strong shock in training. Despite being a simulated fight, true injuries could result.
The bot shot both weapons and Virak dropped into a roll, dodging them. He drew fire to his right, then threw one blade. It sank into the bot’s hip joint, causing it to drop to a knee.
Virak took the advantage and leapt up to avoid a shot, deflected another with his remaining blade, and then got to the back of the bot and cleanly severed its head from its mechanical body.
“Next,” he rasped out. His body vibrated with exertion. Sweat poured off him. Another combat robot trod onto the floor.
He sank into position and saw the black-clad figure from the corner of his eye. Jessa stood silently against the wall.
“Suspend,” he snapped before the bot began its attack sequence. The robot stilled and so did Virak. He stared at her, breath held, heart still pounding, unable to move.
She walked toward him, slowly, deliberately, and the world narrowed to only her. He admired her long, liquid strides, the proud way she held her tall, strong body.
Jessa stopped before him. Her hair was long and loose—a cascade of shiny black rippling past her shoulders. Those dark eyes met his directly, unapologetically. She was so beautiful he could barely endure it.
“I know,” she said.
“What is that?”
“Your secret.”
He crossed his arms, but a frisson of worry wove through him. “I have so many. You’ll have to be more specific.”
Her eyes softened, but not with pity. She let out a sigh. “I know you can’t tolerate touch.”
The words slammed through him like a direct hit in the face from the training robot.
He couldn’t find the words to rebut, deny, deflect.
A hole gaped where thoughts should be. All he could do was stand there, tail flicking, waiting for her to say whatever else she had to say, then walk away from him.
To his immense surprise, she stepped closer. “What happened to you, Virak?”
“It hardly matters anymore,” he ground out.
“Tell me.”
He could detect no judgment in her voice, but when the last female could not entice him to her bed, her sentiments had quickly turned to scorn.
He had felt nothing when that female had departed, but it would not be the same with Jessa.
He didn’t know how to explain this to her.
“It was not one thing that caused it.” It was everything.
She smiled, gentle and full. “Tell me,” she said again. “I’m not leaving.”
A strange sensation swept through him. It felt a lot like relief. An immense weight dropped away. Maybe she was lying. Maybe she would leave, but she already knew the worst of it, didn’t she? Now she wanted the why of it—something he wasn’t entirely sure of himself.
“I spent an immense amount of time in this room as a child,” he began. “I was trained by a Virilian general named Turil. In retrospect, I suppose he was a sadist, but I didn’t know better at the time. My parents had died, so I had no one to stop him.”
Perhaps it was on this floor that Virak’s body had learned to reject touch.
He experienced a good deal of pain here, being beaten with the meaty fists of a much larger and much more skilled male.
“He was relentless and brutal. I imagine that if this surface could reveal the blood spilled here, mine would be spattered and pooled all over it.”
“Your attendants allowed this to happen?” she asked.
“There was no set protocol for raising an orphaned heir to the throne, let alone during a crisis, like was going on at the time. It was the beginning of the spread of the virus that killed most Virilian females. My mother had become stricken and my father had heard of some shaman who lived in the cold region of the planet and had cures for every illness. He was desperate, I suppose, and packed my sick mother into a transport to find this elusive hermit. They both died in the desert when their transport was attacked by one of the hungry creatures living there.” His lips pulled into a grimace.
“And so, you had a city wracked with grief and death and pain, and here was an orphan prince to raise. My attendants were constantly changing as the health crisis sent the city—and the palace—into chaos. There was no consistency, but they did the best they could. They saw to my needs. I was never…held.” He closed his eyes.
“I don’t even remember what my mother’s touch felt like.
I’m not telling you this for you to feel sorry for me. ”
“I don’t feel sorry for you.”
When he opened his eyes, she was still looking at him with that gentle expression. Understanding shone there, and something deeper. Connection.
“And yet, here you come,” she said quietly. “To a place where you experienced pain.”
“Yes. Every day.” He pulled in a long, shaky breath. “Turil has long since been put in the grave, but perhaps his ghost still lives on, bellowing that I should show nothing, feel nothing. He used to tell me that emotion was the enemy of true leadership.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
It was ironic that Virak looked forward to his daily training sessions.
There was something satisfying about slicing open combat bots, which were constantly revolving in and out of repair.
When he left at the end of each session, aching with the pain of landed blows and muscle fatigue, he knew it was here that he exercised all the things that he was not supposed to feel, according to his brutal tutor.
“I don’t know.” He knew his eyes were sharp with hunger and deep, aching need.
“But if it is, then I have failed. I do feel.”
She stepped closer to him. “What do you feel?”
Too much. He drew in a sharp breath through flared nostrils. “I cannot give you what you want, Jessa.”
“I grew up without parents, too,” she said, ignoring his statement.
“I was moved around to different homes often, especially as I got older. Most of my foster parents were tired, jaded, and stretched too thin with too many damaged kids living under their roofs to spend time or emotional energy on me. But a few were genuinely kind. A few showed affection and caring while I lived with them. Meeting you makes me so very grateful for them.”
Virak gazed into her soft eyes, rocked by the revelation of her upbringing.
This explained the independence, the defiant glint to her eye.
Knowing that they had this thing in common should make him wary, but instead he felt himself pulling toward her even more.
He had splayed himself open, for reasons he could not begin to fathom.
He could hear the tremor in her voice, but he didn’t understand the meaning behind her words.
“What I’m saying is, I understand you.” She spoke quietly, yet her words echoed through his skull. “Had it not been for those few kind people in my life, I would be as closed off as you are. And I wouldn’t be able to help you.”
Virak winced at the sharp twist below his ribs. “You can’t help me, Jessa.”
“Shut up, Virak.” With a deep breath, she raised her hand.
Panic flashed through him, in addition to the surprise of being told to shut up. No one had ever said something like that to him. She shifted her hand closer.
Every muscle tensed and bunched, but he could not move away. He was frozen in place, watching in horrified fascination as her hand neared his chest.
“Hold still.” Her voice was a raw, sexy rasp that made him shiver. “I promise this won’t hurt.”