Gates of Hell (27 page)

“Stev—Persey.” Curiosity blazed in him, mixed with deep anger. “Persey tried to kill you?” She nodded. Pyr laughed. “By the demons, woman, we have something else in common. He tried to have me killed a week or so ago.”

“Is he the one who poisoned you?”

“No.” He eased her hand off the knife hilt. “Let me help you with this.”

“I wish you wouldn’t—Ahh!” She gasped as he pulled out the knife. “Shit! Hell! I don’t want to bleed on this outfit, it’s the only clothes I’ve got.”

“You’ll have more clothes.”

“But will they be pretty?”

He helped her to lie down on the table. “Must you joke to hide discomfort?”

“Yes.” She eyed him with suspicion for a second, ready to move in case he tried to fasten the restraints. He stroked her hair instead and pushed up her red silk tunic to watch the wound fade. She closed her eyes rather than watch the intense concentration on his face. She was utterly surprised when he bent forward and brushed his lips across where the knife wound had been. It sent an ache through her that was far more dangerous than a knife wound. She did not let herself gasp. Her voice was far too breathless when she asked, “Will that make it all better?”

“You are not a child to need such reassurance.”

Then what did he have in mind? And how did he know about telling kids that kissing a cut would make it all—

7
have raised two children
. His thumbs made swirling patterns on her bared skin. His thoughts swirled around her as well, with the same slow sensuousness that was intimate, delicious, and impossible.

Two children. Raised. She held onto those facts when what she wanted to do was soar and swirl away with him on waves of sensation and thought. She supposed that meant he was married.

Not anymore
, he told her, and she knew he didn’t want to talk about it.

It was one of many things they did not want to talk about, but she knew they would. “I’m married,” she told him. She would not trust herself to share thoughts. She wished she could open her eyes, instead of just lying here and feeling too much, about too much. The room was warm. He was warm, and so very big and male. She liked the way he smelled, and the way he felt. The table—the torture table, for goddess’s sake!—was ridiculously comfortable. She wanted to stretch out, to reach up and draw him down on top of her. Madness.

Reminder of life after fighting death. Isn’t that how it should be, koltiri?

Yes
. He knew too well what she needed to make her truly sane and strong and whole, and so rarely received.

His hands continued to move over her as she made one last effort at safer conversation. “Why did Stev Persey try to kill you?”

It doesn’t matter.

She knew he wasn’t talking about Stev Persey. There were so many things between them that should have been important. He didn’t let any of them stop him from kissing her, and neither did she.

She’d never been kissed by a telepath before. To say that it was more than a pleasurable joining of lips was a colossal understatement. When they touched, a circuit of pure energy connected between them, light and heat and yearning that deeply meshed soul and body and mind. No thoughts were shared, but they didn’t need to be. On the physical level, his weight came down on her, solid and hard and enclosing. The only threat was that the glory would end. The danger was real, and it was all about pleasure and belonging and addicting need. Her arms went around him, holding on for dear life. Their lips touched and they drank in each other. It went on for a long time, and changed her—

And it was only a kiss.

Odd, how she had always found kissing to be overrated.

At some point Roxy became aware that, despite the sensation of fireworks and champagne bubbles seething through her blood, she was lying on a torture table with a man she should call her enemy, both fully clothed, with their souls naked. She didn’t want it to ever stop.

Wanting had everything to do with what was going on here, and nothing. Wanting couldn’t matter. There were too many layers of obligation on both sides of this exchange of fire. Her regret was shared with Pyr in a sigh, mouth to mouth.

He made a noise, some cross between animal desperation and pure male frustration, and moved away from her. Pyr pushed off the table with a violently angry jerk, while deep, lonely cold settled through them the moment he was absent.

He was across the small room before he spun around and ran his fingers through his hair. “Damn it, woman! I was trying to get laid here!” His shout was absorbed by the room’s heavy sound-proofing, but she absorbed it in her bones.

Getting laid wasn’t his style, she knew that. In fact, these words spoken in Standard sounded utterly foreign on his tongue. But the words protected the aching rawness in him, and made her smile.

That eased the ache in her, a little. She rolled slowly onto her side, propped her head up on her hand, and tried to look critically at the man. He was the alien enemy, after all. Unfortunately, a good hard look didn’t help. The alien enemy was too damn good looking, with his broad shoulders, strong, handsome features, and thick, burgundy red hair. In fact, he had about the straightest nose she’d ever seen, and a gloriously sensual mouth. The dark blue eyes under strong, arched brows didn’t help, either. They were too full of life and intelligence. And he was so stubborn—she didn’t know why that was attractive, but the man’s mental toughness drew her to him.

She was trying to make it easier on them both when she reminded him, “You’re a xenophobe, aren’t you? You gave the impression that no outsider is good enough to meet, let alone mate, with one of your
People
.”

He ducked his head and shrugged, then looked at her through a veil of thick lashes. It was a pose that was way too self-effacing and charming, and she hoped he knew it and was trying for self-parody. He could almost disguise the wildness he was fighting down in himself. “My men and I have lived on the border for a long time. Our standards have become somewhat lax.”

“Meaning I’m not the sort of girl you’d take home to your mother.”

“Normally. I have claimed you.” She didn’t want to go into that, and, obviously, neither did he. He shrugged again, and looked her over critically. “You were ugly a few hours ago. You should have stayed that way.”

This was no time to point out that it was energy he shared with her that had restored her so quickly. This knowledge might just be the incentive they needed to follow instincts that would cause the sharing to deepen. There was already too much evidence that they were heading that way. “Telepaths,” she grumbled under her breath, and sat up. She found that she was a little weak in the knees when she made herself stand. Better to face him on her feet, adversary to adversary on the same level, both doing their best to hide every possible sign of weakness. She sneered, and slashed her hand at the table, a hard, dismissive gesture. “I suppose that was an attempt to use sex to control me.” It was an out she gave them both.

He took it eagerly. “Would it have worked?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Too late, she bit down hard on her tongue. But the truth had escaped into the space between them—space that was growing more fragile with every moment they shared. “Shit!” she snarled, and then his hands were on her again, and she
had
to look into his angry eyes. Anger that wasn’t at her, damn it. Why the hell couldn’t the man be angry
at
her rather than
for
her? She didn’t give him time to demand an explanation from her, to make any declarations.

“I have a husband,” she told him. “A brave man who needed me, but doesn’t like me very much. I don’t like him, either.” There. She’d admitted it, as her family and friends had wanted her to do for a long time. Only she’d admitted it to the wrong person. This wasn’t even a good time to acknowledge it to herself. “Sex was all we had—keeping me sane after healings in the middle of a war. We’re still married,” she told Pyr as she pushed his hands away from her shoulders. “The marriage may be over, but it isn’t ended. I keep my vows.”

Pyr wanted to remind her that he already had ample evidence in Kith’s death that she broke vows, but it was easier to accept her claim. He accepted what she said about her husband, and fought down his sense of outrage. He tried to find some sense of irony in wanting to rush to her defense after having stabbed her quite recently. Her blood was quite literally still on his hands, while the memory of her taste was still burning through him. “Telepaths,” he muttered.

“This linking will pass,” she told him. “It has to.”

He nodded, and hated that the gesture of agreement came so hard. He hated her desperate hope that separation was possible. And he hated that he shared that hope. He shook his head. “We don’t need personal complications.”

“No, we don’t. Not with the galaxy doing its best to die around us.”

They didn’t have time for what was happening between them, which they both knew and accepted. “We are not a pair of selfish children.”

“We have our separate loyalties.”

Why were they standing so close together again? Pyr took several steps back. When he reached the door, he almost fled. But Roxanne would still be with him if he walked away, standing just inside a doorway into his soul. Standing in a place where another belonged.

“My wife died,” he told her, giving his own best excuse. “But I will not let the bond that was between us be completely lost.” Even though Siiyel took the first steps in severing that bond long before her death nearly broke him in two. “It would dishonor her memory if I—”

You think I like being surrounded by another woman’s ashes?

The thought came hard and harsh, surprising them both. Roxanne, utterly stunned by her own jealousy, dropped back onto the table. She rubbed her temples, and looked up at him apologetically.

“I have no idea where that came from. I think it’s time you and I got back to reality for a while.” She stood up slowly and looked around. “It’s a little claustrophobic in here, don’t you think?”

He crossed his arms. “It’s supposed to be, Roxanne.”

“This is a place for extracting information from your enemies. If you want information, I suggest you take me out for a cup of coffee first.”

“You’re suggesting we behave like civilized beings?”

“You have to admit our first couple of dates have been a bit traumatic.”

“We could go back to my place,” he suggested, and failed in the effort to smirk when he said it. Linch would have been proud.

“The whole ship is your place.”

“The Pirate League might disagree with that.”

She took this scrap of information with a calm nod. After her reaction to Kith, he’d expected a certain amount of outrage. “I’ve got Leaguers in my family,” she told him. “I can live with the disgrace if you can. But I would like to know why you’re in league with the League.”

“The explanation is simple enough.”

“But is it innocent or evil? For or against the Systems? It’s a little claustrophobic in here too.” She tapped a finger on her forehead as she spoke. “I’ve spent a lot of time at war. It’s gotten me into this mindset of thinking that anyone who isn’t on my side is automatically an enemy.”

He nodded reluctantly. “It is the same with me since the Bucon Empire started falling apart. My mission on the border was fending off Bucon trade incursions and Systems spies, until the plague came along. I’ve been trying to keep the plague away from the People, and the People from starting conflicts we cannot win. But I have never been at war with your people.”

“We don’t know anything about each other, Pyr—other than the fact that our telepathic selves have the hots for each other.”

“Which is my fault,” he added before she could. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee, Roxanne?”

He did not hold his hand out to her, and she carefully clasped her hands behind her back as she came toward the door. They left the room side by side anyway.

———

Pyr didn’t understand coffee any more than the other Terran food Kristi cooked. He always ate the food, even liked some of it, but he often suggested that there were many other cuisines he found acceptable. She continued to make Terran food, and Pilsane encouraged her because he had a fondness for sweets made from Terran chocolate. Pilsane told him that Kristi made excellent coffee. From the way Roxanne cradled the mug of steaming brown liquid after he brought it to her from the galley, Pyr assumed Pilsie must be right. It pleased him that the koltiri was pleased in this small thing. She took a sip, smiled up at him, and the lights in the common room brightened for him.

“Good?” he asked, taking a chair opposite Roxanne.

“Oh, yeah.” She sighed, and took a long pull on the mug.

It was disconcerting to realize that sitting on the other side of a table rather than beside her had to be a conscious decision. He watched her carefully look away from him after their gazes had been locked for a few moments.

“Martin’s here,” she said. “Making friends as usual, I see. Who’s the woman with him?”

“That’s Tinna.”

“Great legs,” she said, and her gaze moved from table to table. “And your friend, Linch, in the opposite corner, is watching Martin. What’s that he’s playing?”

Pyr was so used to the background sound of the stringed instrument he didn’t always notice it. “Ligret.”

“He’s good.”

“He should be on the bridge,” Pyr answered with a frown.

Do you have any idea how many hours have passed since you left me with the con, Dha-lrm?

“Excuse me.” Pyr got up and crossed to where his second in command was sitting. “Report.”

“Mik has the con. He was very worried about you, until the sexual temperature of the ship warmed up and we figured you had a better idea than torture in mind.” Pyr refrained from commenting, or even being embarrassed, so Linch went on, “Pilsane and I have been going over everything we have on Halfor’s home base, but I’m on a break. We spaced Kith’s remains. I killed one of his people and the others have decided that they won’t miss him after all. The Terran boy is watching us for weaknesses, and I am watching him. Currently the
Raptor
is cloaked and pretending to be one more asteroid in a belt in the Canyer system. If we don’t move the ship, we shouldn’t be noticed.”