Enemy Within (18 page)

SEAGHDH
moved stiffly, walking like a man trying not to let on that he hurt. When he started opening and closing his left fist as if he’d lost feeling in the hand, fear flashed through Ari and she hurried to where Augie waited.

“Ari!” Augie waved them toward a rocky outcrop. “I apologize—”

“I’m sorry, Augie,” she interrupted. “Welcome will have to wait.”

“Good,” he replied with a wry smile. “I was apologizing for having nothing to conduct the ceremony with.”

“Please tell me you have Deaccolo tree antivenin.”

“Not much more than that,” he answered, eyeing the three of them.

“I need a medi-kit, the antivenin, and a place to treat this one.” She jerked a thumb at Seaghdh, who awarded her a sour look. “Oh. Cullin Seaghdh, Kirthin Turrel, Augustus Ortechyn.”

Seaghdh and Turrel nodded.

“Welcome, brothers,” Augie said. “Alexandria is family among us. So will you be. Come. If you will permit me, Kirthin Turrel, I will take you to your friend. Our resources are limited, yet, but I can offer you food, drink, and a basic first-aid kit. When your man is well, Alexandria, we need to talk.”

She nodded. “Agreed.”

Turrel followed Augie into the labyrinth of caves.

Ari hesitated.

Seaghdh glanced at her, discomfort in the lines around his mouth. “Claustrophobic since your release?”

Ari squared her shoulders and looked away. He needed treatment. She didn’t have time to indulge her legion of fears. “Let’s go,” she said.

When she caught up with Augie, he glanced back and a much older, much graver man than the boyish redhead she remembered met her gaze. “Treat your Chosen. Here. This room has been prepared for you.”

The first-aid kit already sat on the pallet that served as a bed. She raised her eyebrows.

“Your Chosen took injury when you remembered too much,” Augie said. “I anticipated the need.”

Guilt closed its teeth on her rib cage. She broke other people’s bones during flashbacks. Seaghdh had to be a skilled hand-to-hand fighter as well as resistant to protein-based poisons if he was just now symptomatic. How lucky was she that he hadn’t broken one or two of her bones? It meant something that Seaghdh handled her far more carefully, more thoughtfully, than duty dictated.

Whatever it meant, she couldn’t face it. Not yet. Augie left, pulling a thick hide curtain over the doorway as he exited. She turned to Seaghdh. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to look him in the eye and not flinch at what she’d started to believe she saw there.

Uncertainty made her terse. “Lose it.” She nodded at Seaghdh’s jacket and shirt.

“No need.”

“I’ve seen everything there is to see, Seaghdh, and enjoyed it,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re wasting my time with macho cravuul dung.”

“Did you?” he drawled, grinning, the desire flaring higher in his gaze. He drew a breath and flinched.

She crossed her arms, daring him to deny that he hurt.

He took off the jacket and shirt.

“Spawn of a . . .” She broke off and sighed at the sight of the ugly bruises on his torso. She laid a light finger against a lurid purple spot on his left flank. “Damn it, Seaghdh, I could have broken that rib. Why didn’t you say something?”

“Wasn’t your fault. Entirely,” he replied, his voice pleasantly rough. “Unplanned arboreal introduction.”

“Did this tree have thorns?” she asked.

“Definitely.”

She’d hit him, thinking he was a Chekydran. Ari remembered his subsequent yelp of pain and swallowed a curse. Just her luck. She’d sucker punched him right into a venomous tree. She touched the skin below the bruise again, intrigued by the thrill that warmed her from the inside out.

An ache woke in the pit of her abdomen. She yanked her hand away. “Any numbness or tingling other than your left hand?”

He turned to her, a sly smile on his face. “Numbness? Left hand and arm. Tingling? Yes. It has nothing to do with that tree.” He ran a fingertip across her cheek.

Her body tightened with need, and she knew exactly what he meant. She looked into his face, intending to call him to task by explaining the paralytic toxin exuded by the tree.

His gaze focused on her mouth, eyes glittering.

Sudden want flooded her body and every last rational thought drained from her head. Too close. Too unprotected. Too uncontrolled. She stepped back, her breath shallow and her heart thundering.

“Don’t,” he coaxed. “Don’t pull away. I want to know the taste and feel of you, but I can wait.”

She shuddered and wondered, despite the fear wracking her at being so vulnerable, whether she could wait. Clearing her tight throat, she gestured at the first-aid kit, desperate for distraction.

“Your arm and hand,” she fumbled. “The thorns are poisoned. Let me . . .”

“Poisoned?” he echoed, frowning. “You aren’t just trying to throw me off point, are you? Of all the unbelievable luck.”

She knelt to draw a dose of antivenin and to examine the tools available in Augie’s primitive first-aid kit. “I can’t do much for the cuts and bruises, but I’d better dig that thorn out of your side before the paralytic reaches something vital. Make yourself comfortable.”

The idiot grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows. “In your bed? I’ll always be comfortable there, my Chosen.”

A pang of—was it regret?—went through her. Why couldn’t he have picked any other endearment than “Chosen”? The title could rightfully have been hers if she’d only made a different choice.

He knelt on the bed across from her. His hand closed over her wrist. “Ari, I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She looked at him. Ari couldn’t identify what she saw in his face. She only knew her pulse quickened and when his fingers slid from her arm and he lay down on his side, they were both smiling.

She injected the antivenin swiftly before going to work on his side.

“Damn it, Seaghdh,” she said, examining the purple weal. “You might have told me about this before you dragged Tommy to the graveyard. The thorn burrowed deep.”

“Then it’s good the spot is mostly numb, isn’t it?” he rumbled.

Mostly. Great. She swabbed his skin with antiseptic and cut into the straining, puckered flesh. Where was Raj when she needed him? She snorted. Of course. He was on the ship she’d programmed to abandon her on this world. And to this man.

She worked fast, searching for the broken tail of the thorn. Seaghdh’s “mostly numb” would wear off when the antivenin kicked in. “Gotcha, you bastard,” she murmured as she eased the thick splinter from Seaghdh’s flesh.

His respiration sped up and turned shallow. The toxin had reached his diaphragm.

“Damn. Easy, Seaghdh. Nice, deep, even breaths. It’ll get better in a minute.”

She gave him another dose of antivenin and carefully cleaned the toxin from the gaping wound in his side. She knew the exact moment the antivenin conquered the poison.

Seaghdh groaned. Once his breathing normalized, she taped a tissue regeneration unit above the site and set it to seal and repair. At least with the unit working, his pain should diminish. He’d shut his eyes somewhere in the process, but she knew from the occasional tremor wracking him that he was awake.

“Can you roll to your back?” she asked. “Let me check the rest of your injuries.”

He obeyed, turning gingerly. His right hand came to rest on her thigh.

Swearing at the rush of blood to her lower belly, she raised an eyebrow but wasted the gesture. He still had his eyes closed. The smile on his face, however, gave her to believe he thought he was getting away with something. Maybe two could play that game.

Admiring the lines of muscle delineating his chest and torso, she had to remind herself to assess his injuries. When she laid her hand beside a spongy-looking bruise on his stomach, the muscle twitched. She glanced at him. Eyes shut.

“That looks suspiciously like the right size for my elbow.”

“It did get my attention,” he mumbled in reply, sounding relaxed and half asleep.

Damn it. Why did he have to carbonate her blood? Just the sound of his voice dumped an intoxicating blend of hormones and adrenaline into her system. She felt things she had no business feeling. It was eroding her defenses.

She forced herself to switch on her handheld and look for internal bleeding. Shifting, she leaned closer. Seaghdh’s hand moved to her hip. Fierce yearning sizzled down her spine.

No internal injuries, just one hell of a bruise. He’d risked death to find her and serious injury so that she wouldn’t be alone in the midst of memory.

She squeezed her eyes shut and realized how badly she wanted to gamble on trusting Cullin Seaghdh. Opening her eyes, she smoothed a palm over the bruise. He shivered at her touch.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This could have been bad.”

“I knew what I . . .”

Gently, she pressed her lips against the black-and-blue mark.

Seaghdh’s hand curled into a trembling fist, and his breath hissed in between his teeth. It didn’t sound at all like pain.

She drew back as her handheld beeped and reported an increase in heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. In both of them. She turned it off and tucked it away.

Seaghdh’s fist uncurled. He opened his eyes. “Unusual medical technique. I approve.”

She rested both hands against his collarbones. No pain response. She ran her palms from shoulder to waist, pressing lightly, testing for soreness and cracked ribs. She found none. The texture of the fine, brown hair on his chest intrigued her. She allowed herself a moment to enjoy the sensation.

His eyes drifted shut again as if encouraging her.

Under different circumstances and with a door that locked, she’d be tempted to accept the invitation. Surprise rocked her at the thought. Armada captains didn’t indulge in affairs and certainly not with the enemy. Sure, she owed him, but hadn’t he made certain that she would?

Unsettled both by her train of thought and by the magnetic force Cullin Seaghdh exerted on her, she glanced around the tiny cave. It was nearly the same size as a Chekydran cell. What if she wasn’t free? What if everything, her release, her “recovery,” her father, Seaghdh, all of it, what if it was an elaborate hallucination incited by Chekydran mind-control drugs? What if she’d created the damnably attractive, compelling Cullin Seaghdh out of her own fantasies? Out of her wish for rescue from the Chekydran? If that was true, then she’d become her own worst nightmare.

She heard him shift.

“Ari?” Seaghdh. He’d obviously recovered enough to rise. He laid a finger along the line of her jaw.

Abruptly, she saw him instead of a Chekydran cell and realized her breath came in shallow, rapid gusts. She sucked in a deep breath and held it.

“Sit,” he urged. “You’re bleeding. Let me clean that cut. Sit still.” His voice enfolded her. He dabbed her cheek.

Antiseptic entered the cut. She let her breath out in a rush. Her eyes watered, but her head cleared. She sighed and touched his face. “You had better be real.”

He started and stared at her, horror in his expression as his imagination took her statement and ran with it. Struggling for something to say, he turned his head to plant a kiss in the palm of her hand. “I am going to murder every single one of those bastards,” he said, his tone unaccountably pleasant.

“Get in line,” she replied.

He crouched before her. He’d put his shirt on but hadn’t buttoned it. Had he done it on purpose, knowing what effect the exquisite lines of his body had on her? The want consuming her flared.

Point to him.

“Close your eyes?” she asked, hating how her voice shook.

Looking mystified, he obeyed.

She needed to feel something other than fear, other than self-loathing. She kissed him. He leaned in, nearly fell. Wrapping an arm around her, he pulled her closer and deepened the kiss. Liquid fire surged through her blood, settling low in a rush. Something ignited between them. Passion. Far more than she’d bargained for. She pulled away, gasping.

For the first time in six months, she felt alive. Something fragile and trembling swelled inside her. It tasted like hope.

Seaghdh let go but brushed hair from her face. Sensation followed the path of his caress.

“I hate that I’m afraid of everything,” she grumbled, looking away. “I hate being weak.”

“Weak?” He grasped her chin and brought her back to face his disbelief. “Alexandria Rose Idylle, if you were weak, you’d be dead. Weak women don’t survive three months of Chekydran questioning. Three Hells, no one survives it.”

Before she could answer, someone cleared his throat in the hallway.

“Sister Alex?”

Augie.

“May I enter?” he asked.

“A moment,” she called before looking at Seaghdh. “How’s that arm? Any residual numbness?”

He grinned and stood, closing his shirt. “No. Just tingling.”

Ari choked on a laugh, rose, and held the curtain aside. “Come on in, Augie. If I haven’t mentioned it yet, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you alive.”

He cast an apologetic glance at Seaghdh and embraced her. “We thought you were dead, Alexandria.”

“Me, too,” she answered. “I know I wanted to be.”

He released her and backed away, tucking his hands behind him. “Mr. Seaghdh, you are feeling better, I trust?”

“Captain,” she corrected.

Augie’s pleasant expression faltered as he looked between them. He nodded. “Of course. Someone who understands your first love.”

She flinched.

Seaghdh crossed his arms, frowning.

“Forgive me, Alex, and Captain Seaghdh.” Augie smiled, his eyes sad. “Perhaps Alexandria explained that I’d asked her to marry me. I could not entice her to leave the bridge of her ship. If I thought I could convince you both to stay, I’d offer again.”