Heaven's Queen (21 page)

I glanced up at Rupert only to find him still watching me over his shoulder, his blue eyes wary. He must have known I was making some kind of decision, because he’d gone very still, holding his breath as he waited to see what I’d do. And as I watched him watching me like my decision was the most important thing in his world, my choice became obvious.

Slowly, reverently, I lowered my head to Rupert’s back, pressing my mouth against the fall of his long hair just below his neck. The soft strands were cool against my lips, still slightly damp from the snow, but the skin beneath was hot and flushed as he took a sharp breath.

Hearing how much my touch affected him only cemented my decision further, but then, everything about him did. His warmth, the wintry smell of his hair, the way his muscles rippled under my hands where I’d rested them on his shoulders, the sound of his breath, every little sensation added to my certainty that this was the right choice. I was utterly lost for him, had been for a long time now, and life suddenly seemed too short to be stubborn. The weakness he’d opened in me was here to stay no matter what, so why not enjoy the fall? Sliding my fingers over Rupert’s shoulders to his chest, I had to admit I couldn’t imagine a more enjoyable defeat.

I was about to start kissing my way down his back when Rupert suddenly moved away. I looked up in confusion to see he’d turned around to face me, the wariness in his eyes replaced by that same ravenous longing I’d seen back in the rain on Seni Major. “Devi,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I—”

I cut him off with a kiss, rising up on my knees to press my lips to his like it was the most natural thing in the world. And it was, because unlike every other kiss we’d shared up to this point, it wasn’t a surrender or a bad decision made in the heat of the moment. It wasn’t clouded by lies, wasn’t angry or desperate or pleading. It was just a kiss, the inevitable end that came when two people as attracted as Rupert and I had always been finally found their common ground.

Rupert froze when our lips met, his body going rigid. Then, slowly, he leaned into me, his hands settling on my hips softly as new fallen snow. His touches were gentle, like he was scared he’d spook me if he moved too fast. Given my record for running, I couldn’t blame him, but things were different now.
I
was different, because even though I’d loved him almost since the beginning, I hadn’t trusted him. Now I did, and it felt like coming home.

The kiss was long and chaste, but when we broke at last, we were both panting. Rupert got control of his breathing first, leaning in to rest his forehead against mine. “Does this mean we’re back on kissing terms?” he whispered, his accent thick.

I don’t normally appreciate having my words turned around on me, but this one time, I didn’t mind so much. “Yeah,” I said, laughing. “Yeah, I guess it—”

Rupert swooped in before I could finish, crushing me to his chest as his lips found mine.

It was just like our first time in the
Fool
’s hallway. Now as then, Rupert was kissing me like he’d never stop, only this time, he didn’t. Instead, he slid one hand up to cradle my head while he locked the other around my waist, pulling me so tight against him you couldn’t have slipped a knife between us.

I was just as bad, digging my fingers into his shoulders until I was practically crawling up his body in my fight to get as close as possible. When Rupert finally let go of my waist to tear the blanket off my shoulders, I lurched forward, using my weight to send us both toppling back on the bed.

We landed with a bounce on the pile of towels and blankets with me on top, and I pressed my advantage immediately, sliding my hands down his hard chest toward the fly of his pants. But when I hooked my fingers under the button to pull it free, Rupert grabbed my wrists.

“Stop,” he panted, breaking our kiss. “We can’t do this.”

It took about five seconds before my lust-addled brain could process that. “What?” I cried, sitting up. “Why the hell not?”

Rupert lowered his arms to his sides, fisting his hands like he was desperately trying to keep them off me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t expect—” He broke off with a frustrated sound. “I promised myself we wouldn’t do this again without protection.”

I frowned, uncomprehending. I mean, I knew Rupert was old-fashioned and I certainly had a history, but with the mandatory adaptive vaccinations you had to get to enter Terran space, sexual diseases hadn’t been a problem in fifty years. Maybe he was worried about the plasmex virus? But I’d been infected the first time we had sex, and he hadn’t gotten it then. Anyway, I was pretty sure I was only contagious when the black stuff was showing, which was definitely not the case now. I was going to just ask him what the problem was, but Rupert was looking spectacularly flustered by this point, a very endearing thing for a man who never lost his cool, so I decided to wait and see where this was going.

“The symbiont changed my body a lot,” Rupert said at last, his face determined despite the flush that had spread over his cheeks. “But I’m still capable of getting you pregnant.”

That was definitely
not
what I’d expected. “You can’t be serious,” I said, half laughing, but his look told me he was.

I sat back on his stomach and stared at him in disbelief. It was clear as day that he wanted me feverishly, and yet he wasn’t going to do it, wasn’t going to take what I freely offered and he desperately wanted, if he couldn’t do it right. That thought filled me with tenderness, and I leaned down to press a kiss against his nose. “You are too damn responsible for your own good.”

Rupert broke away, grabbing my shoulders to push me up again. “I’m serious, Devi. I was unforgivably reckless before, but I won’t take a risk like that with you ever again. So let me up and—”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. It was horribly inappropriate, but I couldn’t stop. He just looked so damn earnest. “You can’t get me pregnant,” I said when I finally got a hold of myself. “I’m Paradoxian, remember?”

The look on Rupert’s face at that moment was absolutely priceless. “What does that have to do with it?”

“I never got out from under the ban,” I said, wiping my eyes. “Honestly, Rupert, what kind of girl did you think I was?”

If Rupert had looked bewildered before, he looked absolutely dumbfounded now. “Ban?”

My smile faded. “The king’s fertility ban.” When that got nothing, I spelled it out for him. “All Paradoxians are sterilized at twelve. Breeding rights aren’t returned until you’ve finished your military service.”

Rupert’s bewildered expression had turned horrified by the time I finished, and I put my hands on my hips. “How do you not know this? The ban’s been in place for over a century. It was all over the Terran propaganda during the Border Wars.”

“Exactly,” Rupert said. “I always thought it was just propaganda.” He pushed up on his elbows, looking me straight in the face. “You’re seriously saying your government forcibly sterilized you?”

“Not
forcibly
,” I said. “My mom took me in to get it done on my birthday. The whole thing was over in ten minutes. And it’s not like it’s forever. I’ve been eligible to have it reversed for years. I just never saw the point. I mean, do I look like the sort of person who wants to worry about babies?”

I finished with a grin at the ridiculousness of that idea, but Rupert was still staring at me like I’d grown a second head. “I’m sorry,” he said, falling back on the bed as he reached up to rub his temples. “It’s just, it sounds a bit barbaric.”

“How so?” I asked, lifting my chin. “All Paradoxian children are wards of the king. You can’t let just anyone have them. We’re not animals, having babies all over the place. Barbaric, indeed. If you ask me, we’re the civilized ones. You Terrans let anybody be a parent no matter how young or unprepared or undeserving they are.”

As I said this, I was again reminded how blessed I was to have been born under the Sacred King’s prudence. I couldn’t imagine growing up in the Republic with no living saint to watch over you. But while I was feeling rightly superior, Rupert had started to chuckle.

“What?” I snapped, glaring at him.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, his face breaking into a grin. “It’s just … you’re
very
Paradoxian.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I huffed. “If you’ve got a problem—”

Rupert sat up at once, causing me to slide down his body until I was sitting in his lap. “No, never,” he said, wrapping his arms tight around me. “I love you exactly the way you are. You just caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

The earnestness in his voice washed away my anger, but I wasn’t ready to let him off the hook just yet. “So do you still want to stop?” I asked, arching up to brush my lips against his. “Because if you’re going to keep being a Terran prude…”

Rupert’s answer to that was to drag me back down to the bed.

After that, we didn’t waste any more time talking. I was on top, and I used my superior position to strip him completely naked before shedding the last of my clothes. Even though we both knew Rupert was strong enough to do whatever he wanted, he let me take control, and I did so ruthlessly, teasing him and kissing him until he was shaking in my arms.

Brenton had once accused Rupert of being an iceberg, a cold, calculating man without feelings or heart. I almost wished the old windbag could have seen Rupert now, because there’d be no going back to the cold after this. He was like a live wire beneath me, his blue eyes wide and dazed and beautifully dark as I finally started to ride him. And when he threw his head back in compete abandon, grabbing my hips hard but not nearly as hard as I knew he could, I couldn’t help leaning down to kiss him like I’d never let go.

As always, his intensity lit me on fire. The man did nothing halfway. Every kiss was a gallows kiss, his fingers digging into me like I was the only thing holding him down, but best of all was his voice. When he wasn’t kissing me, he was whispering, repeating words into my hair and neck. Usually, Rupert never said anything without thinking it over first. Now he was babbling frantically, whispering through clenched teeth that he loved me, that I was beautiful, that he’d thought he’d lost me forever, and that he was never letting me go.

Or, at least, I think that’s what he said. Halfway through, he switched from Universal to a beautiful language I didn’t know, which was a bit of an ego boost for me. I’d never screwed a man into his native tongue before.

But just as I was enjoying the sight of Rupert in a true frenzy, he flipped the tables, rolling us over and trapping me beneath him. At this point we were so tangled I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began, but it didn’t matter. Once Rupert started moving, any illusion of control I had left vanished completely. In the space of a few seconds, I was as gone as he was. I writhed against his hold, panting and clinging to his body as everything I’d fought to hold back for so long came crashing down at last, taking us both with it.

When it was over, we collapsed into the blanket-strewn bunk, panting together in a breathless, tangled heap. All around us, the deep stillness of hyperspace pressed in like a fog, and the utter isolation was soothing in a way I couldn’t describe. Lying here in the tiny, warm cabin of the Caravaner with Rupert’s naked body pressed full against mine, the universe and all its dangers felt far away. All my anxiety and fear and turmoil had vanished like smoke, leaving only a deep sense of contentment and satisfaction. I was still savoring the wonder of it when I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye.

I stiffened, then relaxed. It was just the phantoms. There were four this time, floating in the air above the tiny door to the bathroom like little glowing puffballs. Just like the phantoms I’d seen on Anthony’s ship, they’d arranged themselves in a line and were waving their hair-thin antennae at me like they were trying to get my attention.

If that was their intent, it worked. Once was strange enough, but seeing this phenomenon twice was definitely creepy. I was wracking my brain to try and figure out what it could mean when Rupert broke the silence.

“You’re looking at a phantom, aren’t you?”

I glanced up at see him staring down at me. It felt incredibly odd to talk to someone else about the things I’d thought of as hallucinations for so long, but Rupert had already seen me at my worst and he was still here, so I shrugged and told the truth. “Four of them, actually.”

“Where are they?”

I pointed at the line of phantoms, and Rupert bent over, looking down my arm like he was taking aim. When he had it, he reached out, flicking his hand at the phantom in a shooing motion. “Go away,” he said sternly. “She’s mine.”

This didn’t do a damn thing, of course. The phantoms just kept waving like nothing had happened. But the effort made me smile, and I stretched up to kiss Rupert’s cheek. “My hero.”

He grinned and wrapped his arms around me, lying back with a purely masculine sound of contentment. Closing my eyes against the phantoms, I relaxed into his grip, taking shelter in his warmth, the peace of the quiet ship, and the luxury of not having to worry about universe-sized problems for at least eight more hours. I was debating whether or not to fall asleep when Rupert rolled over and began kissing a line down my body.

I laughed at his affections, but my laughter died when he settled on top of me.

“What?” I asked, slightly shocked. “Again? So soon?”

Rupert kissed his way back up to my ear. “Being a symbiont does have a few advantages,” he whispered. “And I’ve wanted you for a very long time.”

After that, I didn’t waste any more time with stupid questions.

The next few hours were some of the most delightful of my life. If Rupert’s injury slowed him down at all, I couldn’t tell. I was actually the one who had to cry uncle first, much to my chagrin. Unlike Rupert, though, I was only human, so it was forgivable.

When he let me go, I flopped back onto the blanket-scattered bunk, sore, exhausted, and utterly content. Rupert stretched out on his side next to me, a wide smile on his face. “Happy with yourself?” I asked.

Rupert leaned down, kissing me soft and slow and so sweetly my mind went blank for a moment. “I’m happy with you,” he said when he finally pulled back.