Light of Kaska (36 page)

"Hell of a shiner, little sister," Harle teased and Keza batted at him with a feigned growl, eyes flicking to Stryker and away.

Rogue oozed guilt until Keza laughed at him and started listing all the things he could do to make it up to her. "You can bring me flowers every day, and room service, and clean my toilet for a month, be at my beck and call for a week, promise you won’t tease for at least a day—I don’t think you could go longer than that—and perform the rite of contrition—"

Rogue made a strangled sound and wheezed, "Celibacy?" Then he did a very fine imitation of a heart attack and fell onto her bed while his family laughed. Rolling over, he stretched out a hand to Stryker and gasped, "Mercy! Just beat me bloody and get it over with."

Stryker felt his lips twitch. "Hell, no. I like her idea of torture better."

Rogue moaned and clapped a hand over his eyes. "I’ll never survive."

"All right, your sister needs peace and quiet, not dramatics," Myelle said with a roll of her eyes. Leaning down, she kissed Keza on the forehead. "We’re so happy to have you home safe, baby. Get some rest now."

"Thanks, Mom," Keza said with a smile like sunshine.

Myelle straightened and shooed Harle and Keza’s siblings toward the door. As she passed Stryker, she gave him a light pat on his shoulder and startled him into tearing his gaze from Keza. "Take care of her for us," Keza’s mother said too low for her daughter to hear, a smile flickering across her face before she marched out.

"Huh. I think she’s starting to like you," Keza said with a note of surprise in her voice.

Stryker turned back to look at her. "I think that scares me," he confessed, just to see if she would smile again.

She did, a quick flash of humor that dissipated too soon. She studied his face for a moment, amber eyes intent, before dropping her gaze to where her fingers plucked at the bedcover. "So…thanks for rescuing me."

He drew in a deep breath, let it out carefully. "No more candidates, Sukeza bet Marish."

She made a sound in her throat and nodded without looking up at him. "No problem." Then she lifted hesitant fingers to her bruised cheekbone. "Am I hideous?"

"No," he answered, hands fisting involuntarily against his thighs. "Colorful, not hideous."

She flashed him a quick look. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Than why are you way over there instead of in bed next to me?" she whispered.

He was next to her in a heartbeat, putting careful arms around her. "How do you feel?"

"Much better now," she said with a sigh, pressing against him with hands splaying on his back.

Stryker gritted his teeth against his body’s inevitable response to her softness, her sunshine smell and irresistible touch. Trying to distract himself, he muttered, "Med scan was clean, but you didn’t wake up."

"Being kidnapped takes a toll on a body," she murmured, rubbing her face against him. He felt her eyelashes brush the hollow of his throat and closed his eyes, swallowing hard. "So my little passenger is okay?"

He tightened his arms, startled by the term. It struck a strange cord in him, thinking of a little creature growing inside her, hitching a ride. "Uh, yeah, all that’s fine."

She tensed a little. "No…no toxins or weird chemicals built up in my body?"

"What?"

"Clavis said there was something in the air or water on his home world that caused them to go crazy. I was there for five years."

"Doc said you checked out, but we can get another med workup on you." He started to lift her in his arms, but she resisted with an exasperated snort.

"Not
now,
Chase. Besides, the guy was nuts. He thought I owed him a child for living there so long. He probably has no idea what he’s talking about."

His arms tightened again possessively and he forced his muscles to relax, to hold her with care.

"What’s the matter, Chase?"

He looked down at her and she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. Her amber eyes gleamed with tears. He froze with a combination of fear and pain. "Why are you crying?" he husked.

"Because you’re holding me very kindly. Holding yourself back. You haven’t kissed me and you’re touching me like you would my niece. Chase…"

"You’ve been through enough."

She pulled out of his arms with a frown. "What’s that supposed to mean? Did you change your mind? Are you leaving?"

"No, damn it," he growled, reaching for her. When she twitched away, he got annoyed and hauled her onto his lap, holding her firmly with her head on his shoulder. "Quit asking me that. I told you I can’t leave. I need to be where you are."

"For how long?" she whispered, stunning him.

He thought about it, which led him to what she’d said in the cave, the words that baffled him and gnawed at him and unnerved him for so many different reasons. "Did you mean what you said in the cave?"

"Um…I don’t remember much. When I told you not to kill Clavis, you mean?"

"No, the other things."

She was quiet for a moment while his heart beat a slow, dreadful rhythm in his chest. "What else did I say?" she asked in a near whisper.

"That you deserved me. That you wouldn’t stand for me leaving again. That you…loved me." He said the words deliberately as if they were an explosive he needed to handle with caution.

"Oh," she said in a tiny voice. She tucked herself smaller against him and cleared her throat. "Well, yes. I meant it. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I’d force you to stay, though. If you felt you had to—"

He shook her gently and growled, "Keza! Shut up about that. I’m staying. But you deserve better than me and love—love is…"

She tipped up her chin, head resting against his shoulder while she watched him struggle. "Chase, there is no one better," she murmured, fingers lifting to trace his features. "You are beautiful inside and out. Strong, fearless, fierce and wild. You make me feel safe. You make me want to be everything I’m not. You touch me and I melt. You laugh and it’s like the stars winked on for the first time. I do love you, and I see that it disturbs you, but I can’t help it. I don’t want to take your freedom, but I so desperately want you to stay with me," she ended in a husky whisper, eyes filling again with tears. Blinking rapidly, she cleared her throat and gave him a shaky smile. "It’s also kind of nice that the Goddess and the selkies approve of you, too. Not to mention my family—"

"Your family’s crazy," he rasped, feeling that internal fall again, the long drop with solid ground so very far away. "So are you. After all the things I’ve seen and done—" He shook his head sharply, fingers digging into her flesh, trying to get through to her. "You don’t want that around. You can’t want it, you can’t love me. Love’s not even—not even real."

She sat up on his lap, hands braced on his shoulders, scooting back a little to study his face with solemn amber eyes. "You’ve never seen it, have you? That’s why you don’t think it’s real. It breaks my heart that you weren’t loved as a boy, hurts to know your life’s been so hard you can’t even believe in love, that you think it’s a myth. But like our Goddess, it’s no myth, Chase. It exists and it’s here," she whispered, putting a hand to her chest. "It’s here waiting, if you want it."

His hands tightened on her, trying like hell to stop falling. His chest was tight—it was hard to breathe. He sucked air, but there was no oxygen in the room. "If it’s real, than that’s what you deserve. Not me."

Her forehead puckered in a frown and her eyes drifted away from his to watch her fingers play with the collar of his shirt. "So you want me to go find someone else who will love me?"

The idea scalded him from head to toe, possessive fury lighting him on fire. He dumped her on the bed and stretched out on top of her, catching both wrists and pressing her into the cushion as if to keep her from getting away. To keep her from finding anyone else. "No," he said in a guttural snarl, feeling the dangerous menace etched on his face but unable to soften it.

His little farm girl, his Keza, showed not a hint of fear despite his aggression. But she also didn’t look happy. "I don’t understand. You keep saying you can’t leave, but I don’t want to trap you. How could I be holding you here? I’m not anything special."

"Yeah, you are. You’re the only woman I ever met who tastes like sunshine." He bent his head and sucked gently on her bottom lip, her unique flavor blooming across his tongue and sinking deep inside him. "You’ve got it all over your skin, everywhere inside. I want it," he growled, licking ravenously at the seam of her lips. "I need it. I’m hooked. Even when I can’t touch you, I need to be close, see you, hear you. I’ll be damned if I understand it but I can’t walk away. I don’t want to. Ever. You want me gone, you’ll have to kick me out."

She smiled.

He lifted his head, dragged in a ragged breath. It was
that
smile, the one that was a step beyond sunshine, the smile that fogged his mind and twisted his insides with indescribable longing. "This," he muttered, touching a desperate finger to the curve of her lips. "I need this. What is it?"

"Love," she whispered, smile deepening impossibly further and frying his mind. "This is love."

He lowered his head and ended his fall in her kiss.

Chapter 20

Keza stared at the med scan, blinked. The results didn’t change. She curved a wondering hand over the small bump in her belly and tried to wrap her mind around yet another miracle. After watching her favorite show all unsuspecting for three months, she’d seen something that made her think her little passenger had been fooling them this whole time. They’d all assumed the fetus was female. This full med scan just confirmed her suspicions—she was carrying a boy.

She wandered out of the clinic, dazed. She’d been given so many blessings by the Goddess that she hadn’t looked for this one. Hadn’t thought to do an early sexing DNA scan, hadn’t even considered the possibility that she could be carrying a boy. Sure, the Marish family had more than its share of male children, but the first born was always female.

She meandered the path leading to the courtyard, considering what this would mean for her family. She was First
Materi,
which meant she would someday be the Marish Mater. Then her first born would be First
Materi…
and if that child was a boy, he would someday be the first Pater to rule a Kaskan House in nearly a millennium. Her mind boggled at it, unable to braid the idea into her current reality, the sweet and contented life she’d lived these past few months.

She paused at the edge of the courtyard, leaning against a column in the shadows to watch the sunlit scene beyond, a moment that she had seen many times lately but that never failed to move her. Chase Stryker, relaxed and laughing, bathed in sunlight, sitting at the heart of her family. Today, he sat in a chair at the end of one table, tipped and rocking lightly on the back two legs. Sprawled across his chest was his newest appendage, Shaneese, who called him Unca-Chay and tried to follow him everywhere. She had pursued him relentlessly with fearless determination, claiming him with the same kind of proprietary assurance as the selkies displayed toward him. At first he’d treated the child with endearing awkward wariness, but now he sat in apparent ease, an absent hand bracing her bottom while she played with the collar of his cream shirt and gazed up at him in contented adoration.

Keza could understand her niece’s fascination—she had a bad habit of following him around and mooning after him, too. He laughed, a deep, careless sound, while Harle mock-scowled at him from his sprawled position on a table bench and Rogue grinned at their security chief with lazy malice and threw a punch at the big man’s shoulder from his perch atop the table. Keza felt a foolish grin stretch her face, Chase’s laughter causing its usual reaction deep in her chest, a bloom of gooey warmth that never seemed to abate. She wondered if she’d ever get used to seeing him happy, or if the sight and sound of his contentment would forever warm and delight her. She hoped never to take this kind of moment for granted, even though it turned her into a mushy fool.

Her hand curved over her lower belly again and she had a sudden, brilliant vision of a boy, a small version of Chase, running through the center of her life with joyful abandon. Never lonely, full of light and laughter, and loved so well that shadows could not touch him. This beautiful child would be a chance for her to right a terrible wrong, to take the piece of Chase that had been out of her reach, the child he had been, and give him all the love he’d never seen.

Keza wiped absently at the tears sliding down her face.
Thank you, Goddess,
she thought with a humble gratitude that had yet to dim, though she’d given this same thanks daily for months. Under her hand she felt a flutter that was not gas but her little growing passenger,
her son,
and laughed softly. "I know, sweetie. Mama’s a basketcase," she whispered.

Then she went still, staring at the sun-drenched courtyard with blind eyes. "Oh," she murmured as her life seemed to fall into place with a soundless, soul-deep click. All this time, she’d thought of herself as the flawed member of the family, the oddball who hadn’t the strength to stay. She’d known her return to Kaska was right, but she’d still felt that oddness, that peculiar sense of shame in not being what the family expected her to be. Suddenly she realized why. She’d been following the wrong path.

"Well, hell," she muttered with a half-hysterical giggle. But her self-discovery was interrupted by the appearance of Fyle Serru, their new marine biologist, heading for Chase with nervous determination. With a wince, Keza straightened and hurried into the courtyard.

Chase saw the biologist coming and though he didn’t visibly tense, his face lost its easy humor and sharpened with predatory menace. Keza watched the woman’s stride falter and winced again with a combination of amusement and chagrin. The man had become even more protective of the selkies than Keza herself, keeping the scientific team headed by Dr. Serru on a tight leash enforced by a healthy dose of fear.

Keza approached just as the biologist squared her shoulders and said, "The observatory is closed again, Mr. Stryker."