Purity (Pure and Tainted) (4 page)

“Almost none, which is as it should be.”

Boone narrowed his eyes and looked at her.
“No
emotions, huh?
I would think that has a lot to do with the dampers your
suit has been pumping into you.”

K’s mouth was tight. “For the last time, my suit has nothing to do
with my lack of emotion. It is my devotion to Purity that helps me purge
unwanted feelings, nothing more.”

“Uh-huh.” He took another sip of hot chocolate. “We’ll let you go
a week or two without the suit and
then
see if you’re still feeling so frosty, darlin’.”

“A week?”
Though it was clear she was
struggling to keep her expression calm, her voice rose uncertainly. “I thought
you said you would give me back my suit if I agreed to cooperate.”

“Oh, so you’re feeling cooperative now?” Boone eyed her. “Well, it
doesn’t matter if you are or not. The damn thing is too damaged to do you any
good right now. It’ll be weeks before it’s regenerated enough to wear again.
Maybe months.”

“
Months?”
This time he could hear the panic from her voice. “But I need it. It shields
me—protects me.”

“It drugs you,” Boone said firmly. “And considering all the shit
it’s been pumping into you, I’d sign you into rehab for a whole damn year if
you were one of my regular patients.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I am
not
your patient.”

“No, you’re my
prisoner
.”
Boone leaned closer to her and she inched back, just a little. The reaction
made him even angrier somehow. He didn’t bite, Goddamnit, even if she
did
deserve it. “I’m pretty damn sure
we’re treating you a hell of a lot better than you would treat us if the
situation was reversed.” He growled. “The Purists don’t usually give their
captives hot chocolate before
purging
them, do they?”

“I don’t want your filthy
Impure
drink.”
Her voice had gone back to a monotone and she stared straight ahead. “I only
want my suit. If you will not give it to me, I might as well purge myself. It
is my duty to die now that I have become contaminated anyway.”

Boone could scarcely believe what he was hearing. “You’re serious?
You
really
want to die just because I
touched you?”

“Isn’t that the effect you usually have on women?” Loki’s
sarcastic tenor broke Boone’s concentration on the girl. He looked up in
irritation to see the effete Erian leaning against one of the mess hall
counters, wearing a self satisfied smirk.

“I swear, Loki, if you weren’t such a talented pilot I’d kick your
ass three ways to Sunday.”

“I love you too, Boone.” Loki blew him a kiss. “Now kids, if
you’re about done playing footsie under the table we need to talk about our
course.”

Boone frowned. “What’s there to talk about? Engage the hyperdrive
and we’ll go straight to Midas.”

“Impossible.” Loki shook his head. “Sorry Boone but that last
blast to get us away from the Purist vessel and into deep orbit fried the
transconducer so the hyperdrive is barely limping along at half power. And
since Princess Purist and her band of merry Paladins shot Krill, we have no
engineer to fix it.” He gave K an unfriendly look which she returned with a
blank stare.

“What?” Boone ran a hand through his hair in agitation. “But I
thought—”

“I told you this thing was a pile of junk when you bought it.”
Loki thumped the curving wall behind him, making a hollow boom. “Now if we were
aboard the
Dream Spinner
right now
we’d already be halfway to Midas. Not that it would do you any good.”

“What are you talking about?” Boone growled. “Of course it would.”

“Not if you’re depending on
her
to help.” Loki nodded at K. “Go on, sweetheart, tell Boone here what you’ll do
the minute we get to the mines,” he urged.

K sat up straighter, her chin lifted proudly. “If you take me to
the pshalite mines I’ll announce that I have been contaminated and that I must
be purged at once.”

“See?” Loki said. “She’s still in full Paladin mode. You touched
her and she’s contaminated—therefore she wants to die. She’s no help to you
like she is now, Boone.”

“She’ll be plenty of help if she wants to get her suit back.” Boone
clenched his jaw in frustration. “We’ve already waited so long—”

“And we’ll have to wait a little longer. Look, Boone…” Loki put an
empty mug in the food simulator and pushed a few buttons. “At least you know
the Purists don’t do rape. So other than a little hard labor, she should be
fine.”

“Easy for you to say.”
Boone got up and started pacing.
“It’s been almost six solar months already. Who knows what goes on in those
mines?”

“
She
probably does.”
Loki nodded at K again. “Tell him what happens to prisoners in the pshalite
mines, Paladin. What’s the life expectancy?”

K frowned. “I don’t have exact statistics but I believe barring
accidents and injuries—”

“See?
Accidents and injuries.
It’s a
fucking
mine,
Loki.
Dark, dirty, underground.
There are probably cave-ins and
gas explosions and—”

“Boone, honey, please…” Mom was suddenly beside him, taking his
arm. Their height different was such that the top of her head barely reached
his elbow but it didn’t matter. He felt a current of calm flowing between them
at her touch. “Relax,” she murmured. “Getting upset won’t help. Release your
fears to the Goddess.”

“I’m sorry.” He sank down beside K again who was looking at him as
though he was an escaped lunatic.
I probably
just displayed more emotion in the last five seconds than she’s felt in the
last five years,
Boone thought sourly.

“It’s okay, honey. We know why you’re upset,” Mom said soothingly.

“I just get so crazy when I think of it,” Boone muttered. “She’s
my little sister and she’s out there alone, unprotected…”

“Shayla can take care of herself better than you think.” Loki took
the now full mug out of the simulator and sipped something that smelled like a
cross between beer and chicken soup. “She’s a tough girl. She’ll make it a
little while longer.”

“How much longer?”
Boone demanded.

“It’s going to take us at least two solar weeks to get back to
Minotaur and then we have to pray they have the part we need.” Loki blew on his
beer soup and took another sip.

Boone looked up wearily. “And if they don’t?”

Loki shrugged. “Then I hope you like saurian meat. The outpost on
Minny isn’t very big and from what I hear that’s mostly what’s on the menu. We
could be eating it for quite some time if we have to wait for a part from Eros
or Colossus.”

“Let’s cut the worst case scenario shit and say they have the part
on hand,” Boone said evenly. “
Then
can we fly directly to Midas?”

Loki frowned. “I’d like to tell you absolutely yes, Boone, but I
just don’t think it’s wise. We need to go to Eros first, ditch this piece of
junk and get the
Dream Spinner
out of
drydock.”

Boone sighed. “Look, Loki, I know you don’t like this ship but—”

“It’s not a matter of me liking it or not. It’s too obviously
Erian. You saw how
her
crew reacted
to it.” He nodded at K. “Do you really want to take it into Purist air space? I
think that’s a bad idea unless you want to be helping dear little sis dig big nasty
chunks of pshalite out of the ground instead of rescuing her.”

“You know I don’t.”

“I didn’t think so. Good, so we agree that a short layover at Eros
is necessary.
And not just to change ships.”

“What?” Boone frowned. “What else do we need to do? Take on
supplies? That shouldn’t take too long.”

“No, it shouldn’t but we need more than supplies or at least
I
do. I have to find a new
touch-partner. Or have you forgotten that one of little Miss Purity’s crew
killed Chall?” There was genuine pain in his voice—and real hatred in his eyes
when he looked at K.

Boone ran both hands through his hair.
Great, this just gets better and better!
“Christ, Loki,” he said,
trying to choose his words carefully. “I know I got you into this mess in the
first place and I’m sorry Chall is gone. But we don’t have three or four solar
months for you to play the matchmaking game and find a new boyfriend.”

Loki’s gold ringed eyes flashed. “It’s not like I’m looking for a
life-bond here, Boone. It’s my Goddess-damned
sex
cycle.
If I hit my
peak while we’re out in space somewhere without a touch-partner I probably
won’t survive. I love your sister—you know I do—but I’m not willing to die for
her.”

“All right.
All right.”
Boone scrubbed a hand over his face and noticed absently that he needed a
shave. “Fine, I get
it,
you need a new touch-partner.”

“Unless
you
want to fuck me, big boy.”
Loki batted his long eyelashes at Boone but the look in his eyes was
still angry.

“You know, I think I’m going to take a pass on that.” Boone took
another sip of his now cold hot chocolate. “So how long—”

“Watch out, she’s falling!” Mom’s startled shout made him jump and
he turned, half expecting to see that their Paladin prisoner had found another
weapon and was trying to kill
herself
again. That
wasn’t the case, however, although K
did
appear to be doing a good job of dying without any help at all. Her strange
black-on-black eyes had rolled up in her head and she was twitching like a
broken doll as she fell backwards off the bench.

Boone caught her just before she could hit the floor—he was big
but he was fast—and cradled her, still wrapped in the white thermal blanket.
Quickly he put a hand to her cheek and noticed with alarm how cold it was. But
though his touch had helped her before, K continued to writhe and seize
uncontrollably. He looked up at Loki helplessly. “You’re the expert on this
touch deprivation shit—now what?”

Loki arched an eyebrow and took another sip from his mug,
apparently completely unperturbed. “Now the fun begins.”

Chapter Four

“I have to what?”

“You heard me, undress. The more skin-to-skin contact the better.”

“But—”

“Look, Boone, petting her cheek like she’s a sick puppy isn’t
helping. She needs more from you. Unless you want her to die, that is.”

“Of course I don’t want her to die. I just don’t understand…”

The voices above her roared in and out like waves on a beach. Not
that K had ever been to a real beach—all of Athena was industrialized and had
been for years. But she had seen a vid of one once and the image had never left
her—the gray-green waters breaking across the sandy shore, advancing and
retreating over and over and over again. She felt like that now, felt like her
body was adrift and floating somehow, her consciousness being dragged back and
forth as the voices above her head argued about her fate.

“I don’t like this, Loki. You’re sure it’s really necessary?”
Boone’s deep voice was grumbling as K felt herself being picked up and held again.

“No, I’m not,”
came
the waspish reply.
“I’m not sure about anything. After all, she’s a Purist not an Erian although
she doesn’t
look
much like the other
Purists I saw back during the Pan wars. All I know is the way she’s acting is
classic touch deprivation.”

“The way she’s acting could be any number of things. Chemical
withdrawal from losing her suit or—”

“It’s not just the way she looks, Boone—it’s the way she
feels.
Much as I hate to admit it, every
sense I have screams ‘home’ when I look at her. Her height, the shape of her
features, the way she smells—”

“You can tell by her scent? But you haven’t been close enough to
touch her—you left that honor to
me,
”
Boone protested.

“Because she imprinted on
you.
Besides, if I touched her right now
it would be to choke the life out of her,” Loki snapped. “Inhabitants of Eros
have a very specialized sense of smell that allows us to find anyone else with
even a drop of Erian blood in their veins.”

“Why would…oh, so you can find potential touch-partners in a pinch.
I get it.”

“Exactly.
We don’t
have
to have another Erian as a partner but
it’s
better physiologically if we do. So I could be wrong about this but I don’t
think so. And while
I
don’t give a
good Goddessdamn whether she lives or not, I know
you
think she’s the best chance you have of getting Shayla out of
those mines alive. So you’d better trust my instincts.”

“But how could a Purist born and bred on Athena have a disease
that’s exclusive to the inhabitants of Eros?”

“Like I said,
I don’t know.
It’s possible she’s got some Erian DNA. The Purists spent hundreds of cycles
stamping out sexual desire and normal procreation among their people so they
had to get new recruits somewhere. That’s why they started cloning.”

“But you can only get twenty or thirty viable clones out of one
DNA sample,” Boone protested.

“Exactly.
So they had to branch out. You
think the Pan Wars were just about Athena taking over a farm planet because
they’d ruined their own world with over-industrialization? Think again, they
needed fresh blood,
literally
.”

“But they hate Erians. Why would they use their DNA?”

“Damned if I know but I
do
know
they didn’t invite yours truly down to their genetics lab just for a spot of
tea. They took samples regularly.
All kinds
of samples.”
Loki sounded like he might be
shivering. K wanted to open her eyes and see but then she washed out with the
tide again and everything went black.

When she opened her eyes again it was dark and she was being held
against something firm and warm. There was a scent she halfway recognized,
something dark and spicy and somehow male but she couldn’t quite place it. She
wasn’t sick and shaky anymore as she remembered being while sitting at the
table listening to Boone and Loki argue, but the feeling of being in the ocean
was still there.

The rhythmic sensation of advancing and retreating was somehow
soothing and K thought she could almost hear the quiet rush of the water as it
pushed itself up to the shore and pulled back again. Almost without realizing
she was doing it, she matched her breathing to the soft rhythm and felt somehow
entirely at peace.

Then something stirred behind her.
No, not
something
…someone.

K sat bolt upright in the darkness, her mind screaming,
contaminated.
She tried to get away but
strong hands reached for her and dragged her back down.

“Settle down.” Boone sounded irritated and sleepy. “It’s the
middle of the night, go back to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep like this,” she protested. “You’re
touching
me!”

“Yeah, well get used to it.”

“No!” Twisting in his arms like a fish she rammed the top of her
head upwards, hoping to connect with something sensitive. From Boone’s pained
grunt, she succeeded. Thanking Purity that her hands were free, she scrambled away
from him in the dark, fingers outstretched, searching for anything she could
use as a weapon.

“Lights,” Boone said.

The sudden flash of brilliance stabbed at her eyes and K was
momentarily blinded. When she looked up she saw Boone sitting on a raised sleep
pallet and holding his bleeding nose. He was so big he looked like a mountain
of hard tanned flesh in the middle of the blue thermal blankets. The expression
on his face was anything but friendly.

“Stay back.” K realized she was still naked but that hardly
mattered. She would always be naked without her suit.
I fear nothing, I feel nothing. I fear nothing, I feel nothing.
If
only it were true. Her heart was racing and her breath came in ragged, panicky
gasps. She crouched in a defensive posture, ready to brain him the minute he
came for her.

Except he just sat there.

“Do I look like I’m coming after you, darlin’?” His voice was
muffled as he pressed a clean white paper cloth to his nose. “I’m staying right
here. You might as well relax.”

“I’ll relax when I have my suit back and you’re dead.” K didn’t
ease her posture a bit.

“
Christ, that
hurt. If you’d hit me just
a little harder you would have broken it.” Boone sniffed and wiped the last of
the blood from his face. “You can forget about your suit for now. There’s not a
single weapon in this room and the door is voice-locked to my command only. So
maybe you should simmer down because you’re not getting out of here anytime
soon.”

K was silent, measuring him with her eyes. Though she hated to
admit it, he was probably too large to take down in hand to hand combat, at least
not when he was on his guard. If only she’d realized what was happening before!
If she’d been able to make some kind of a plan instead of just lying there
letting him
touch
her…

Boone sniffed again before balling up the red spotted paper cloth
and pitching it into a waste receptacle beside the sleeping pallet. “Are you
going to stay there all night? Don’t suppose I can convince you to come back to
bed.”

“With you?
Not likely.” K glared at him. “Why
were you touching me again, anyway?”

“Why do you think? It wasn’t because I
wanted
to, that’s for damn sure,” he growled. “It’s apparently the
only way to keep you healthy.”

“I’ve never touched or been touched by anyone in my life until you
contaminated me,” K said evenly. “What makes you think I want or need it now?”

“Only the fact that you go into
Goddamn seizures when I leave you alone for too long.”

“I was fine until you took off my suit,” K pointed out.

“Because it was pumping you full of drugs that circumvented your
body’s needs,” he countered. “And before you got the suit, the Purists were
probably drugging your food. But now the drugs are gone and you’ve got some
Erian in your genetic makeup somewhere which means—”

“That’s a lie,” K interrupted him. She vaguely remembered hearing
him saying the same thing—or had it been Loki?—earlier when she was fading in
and out of consciousness. But to hear the filthy untruth spoken aloud and right
to her face was too much. “Erians are disgusting. They’re depraved. They want
to touch…” she trailed off, realizing what she was saying.

“Touch each other all the time?” Boone finished for her. “Yeah,
they do, darlin’ but it isn’t because Eros is the planetary version of Sodom and Gomorrah
like you seem to think. There’s a chemical in the atmosphere that’s leached
into their DNA—it makes them touch-sensitive. They need physical contact the
same way the rest of us need to eat and drink. And sleep,” he added with a
yawn. “So will you please come back to bed?”

“I will not. Why should I believe you?” K demanded.

“Aside from the two seizures you’ve already had which were only
stopped by skin-to-skin contact with me?”

“You gave me medicine the first time,” K pointed out stubbornly.
“I felt the needle pierce my flesh.”

“The first time but not the second
time.
It wasn’t
the medicine that helped you, K, it was this.” He pointed at his broad chest. “
Me
. And while I’ve never had a big
enough ego to think I’m God’s gift to women, you apparently
Imprinted
on me because I was the first person to touch you after your damn suit came
off. So, lucky for you,
I
am your
personal wonder drug. Now come here before you start shaking and seizing
again.”

“That isn’t going to happen.” Except she could already feel her
muscles quivering as the shivering pain started again. K ignored it and
continued to glare at her captor. “If you think you can make me want to help
you by using some kind of filthy erotic Erian trick on me, you’re wrong.”

Boone scrubbed one hand down his face. It made a whispery sound that
seemed loud in the dim room as his palm passed over the dark stubble on his
jaw. “Let’s get something straight right now, darlin’. I am not now and never
will be interested in molesting you. I know how it looks with you naked and me
in just my shorts but I swear to you I haven’t been taking advantage of you.”

K frowned, confused. “Taking advantage?”

“Touching you someplace I shouldn’t,” he clarified and then
frowned. “You
know,
your breasts? Your—”

“Oh!” K’s hand flew to her mouth and to her shame and
horror,
she felt her cheeks getting hot with embarrassment.
“You’re talking about…about procreating sexually?
With
me
?”

“Right, exactly.” He looked uncomfortable. “The point is
,
I
haven’t
been
doing anything like that. And you have my word as a gentleman I never will.”

“I can’t believe…it never even crossed my mind.” She had only a
vague idea of what was involved in sexual procreation—some kind of penetration
she was sure.
But just the idea of him doing
that
to her made her skin hot and cold
all over and she felt suddenly even more naked.
Dropping her defensive posture
she wrapped her arms around her bare chest and drew her knees up to her chin.

Boone was staring at her worriedly. “Great, now I’ve freaked her
out even more,” K heard him mutter to himself. “Look, darlin’, if it makes you
feel any better, this isn’t forever. According to Loki you need to be touched a
lot right now because you’re in the infant stage. Once you reach the next
level—which should be fairly soon since you’re already technically grown—you
won’t need to be held as often.”

“So I can look forward to you contaminating me ten times a day
instead of twelve? I don’t
think
so.”
She glared up at him fiercely. “Don’t come near me again. If you do, I’ll kill
you. I don’t need your hands on me and I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

He frowned. “We’ll see how you feel in another half hour or so
when your body starts craving a touch fix.”

“You’re lying again. Every time you open your mouth you lie.” K held
herself more tightly, trying to stop the shivering. “I don’t even believe you
really have a sister in the pshalite mines.”

Boone snorted. “Oh right. I made it all up to have an excuse to
capture my very own pet Paladin.
Because I
love
going to bed with a prickly bitch
who doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“I don’t know what your reasons are and I don’t care. Just
stay away from me.
”

“Fine.
Have it your way.” Boone settled
back against the headboard of the sleep pallet and crossed his arms over his
chest. “We’ll wait it out. But the minute you start seizing I’m coming to get
you.”

“And then I’ll kill you.” But it was an empty threat and K knew
it. Already she could feel her body shaking and her vision was blurring. Her
stomach clenched like a slick fist and the big muscles of her thighs were
knotting up painfully.