Primary Inversion (42 page)

      
“I’m sorry,” I said. “All I’ve done is delay the inevitable.”

      
He touched the Jumbler. “At least this way I don’t have to die slowly.”

      
“I’m not going to
shoot
you.”

      
“Even if our only other choice is recapture? We can’t escape. Your brother will execute us.”

      
I stared at the gun. Then I dropped it on the floor. We had come so close
.
Just a little more time and we would have made it off-planet. But
close
wasn’t good enough.

      
I stretched out on my stomach next to Jaibriol. Lying on his back, he trailed his finger along my cheek. “When I saw you in my cell, I thought it was another of my dreams.”

      
“Dreams?” I asked.

      
“After we met on Delos—whenever I was lonely, I dreamed you came to me.”

      
So I wasn’t the only one who had struggled with the memory of that night. It helped, knowing that. I turned on my side and propped my head up on my elbow as I gazed at his face. I had forgotten how handsome he was, even by Highton standards. It wouldn’t surprise me if Ur Qox had ordered doctors to fine-tune his appearance when Jaibriol was a boy. Anything to further enhance his son’s image as a hero of the Traders. Anything to draw attention away from Jaibriol’s inability to function as a true Highton.

      
Dark circles rimmed his eyes, though. His hair was rumpled. Shimmering black Highton hair. It was so odd to see it on someone so unlike a Highton. I touched his lips, running my finger over the top one, then the bottom. They felt chapped. Dry and cracked. Also warm. So warm. Rhon lips, full and inviting. I lowered my head, bringing my lips to his—

      
Jaibriol pushed me away.

      
I flushed. What was wrong with me, trying to seduce a man who had just spent days subjected to a brutal interrogation supervised by my own brother? “I’m sorry.”

      
He just stared up at me. Across the room, the old spire-clock ticked softly, tick-tick, marking off seconds. Then Jaibriol slid his arm around my neck and pulled my head down. I could smell him, a musky scent, heady and masculine. I closed my eyes, letting my lips linger on his mouth. It felt as good as it looked, warm and inviting. He lay tense under me, though, more like a plank of wood than a man with a woman he desired.

      
I lifted my head. “What’s wrong?”

      
He pushed up on his elbows, bringing his eyes level with mine. “It’s not you. It’s anyone.”

      
“Any lover?”

      
“Yes. No. No lovers.”

      
“You mean you’ve never had one?”

      
“That’s right.”

      
“I’d have thought every eligible woman among the Hightons would be throwing herself at you.”

      
“I didn’t want a Highton lover.” He grimaced. “Would you?”

      
“No.” With his barriers dropping to me, I recognized that same aloneness in him that I had felt the night on the docks, in the cover of the sea-lapping Delos night. He was lonely—achingly, bruisingly
lonely.
The wound had become even deeper, scarred around the edges, raw in the center.

      
“Couldn’t you take a provider?” I asked.

      
“I didn’t want one.” He pressed his palm against my chest, between my breasts, as if he were keeping me at bay. “Let someone that close and you become vulnerable.”

      
“How could a provider hurt you?”

      
“By recognizing me.” Softly he said, “By recognizing herself in me.”

      
I exhaled, understanding. “You had no friends at all?”

      
His face twisted. “I had Lord Quaelen, my ‘beloved’ mentor and guide. He didn’t like my showing attention to anyone.” Hatred sparked in his voice. “If I did, he found a reason to punish me.”

      
“Couldn’t you get rid of him?”

      
“He’s a master at Highton intrigue, even better than my father.” Jaibriol’s voice cracked. “Quaelen is empty, like a hole waiting to swallow me up. They’re all that way—my father, my so-called mother the Empress, all of them.”

      
“I’m sorry.” Gods, that sounded trite.

      
He watched me, concentrating, as if he could absorb me into himself. Then, with no warning, he pulled me down and rolled me onto my back, bringing his mouth down on mine. My lips parted and his tongue came into my mouth, first questing, then probing with more urgency. But it felt wrong. Not him, but
me.
I wanted to jerk away. What was the matter with me?

      
He made a soft, aroused sound as he moved his lips to my ear. “Sweet Sauscony.” His voice murmured in a familiar cadence, a soft rhythm I recognized…

      
And the memory came to me, what I had so often heard it in my mind during combat, thoughts like acid that poured over me:
Die, sweet Jagernaut. Die.

      
Ah, hell. I sat up so fast, my fingernails scraped the scabs on his arms. He sat more slowly, emotions washing across his face: surprise, embarrassment, desire. “What’s wrong?”

      
I took a shaky breath. Of course he acted Highton. He
was
Highton.

      
“It’s only cultural,” he murmured.

      
“I’m all right.” Across the room, the spire-clock ticked loudly.

      
“Try this.” Jaibriol nudged me onto my stomach. I lay warily, tensed and stiff as he straddled my hips so he was sitting on my bottom with his knees on either side of my waist. Then he started to rub my back.

      
“Oh.” I closed my eyes. “Oh, yes.” It felt heavenly.

      
In a few moments, though, he quit. I looked over my shoulder. “Why did you stop?”

      
His lips quirked upward. “I’m looking.”

      
“At my backside?” I snorted. “What’s so interesting about that?”

      
Jaibriol smiled, a full one this time. “Maybe it’s not to you.” He rubbed my behind, his motions more like caresses than a massage. “That’s because you can see it any time you want.”

      
Such a beautiful smile. I had forgotten the way it lit up his face. In that moment, he wasn’t the embittered heir to an Empire. Instead, he looked like what he should have been if his heritage hadn’t ruined his life, a healthy young man enjoying his first experience with a woman. I sighed and laid my head on the pillows.

      
Jaibriol kept massaging, his hands moving in firm, sensual circles. My muscles relaxed, and I basked in the sensations, soaking in his musky scent, that tantalizing scent that made me want him to rub more private places. He lay on top of me and took hold of my thighs, one hand on each leg, his erection pushing the cloth of his trousers against my behind—

      
Like Tarque.

      
Combat mode on,
my spinal node thought.

      
For flaming sake. “Jaibriol, stop!” That would certainly be romantic if I hefted him onto the floor.
Combat mode off,
I thought.

      
He lifted his body, holding himself above me. “What’s wrong?”

      
I rolled onto my back. “It’s all right.” To the hell with Tarque. I wasn’t going to let that damn Aristo ruin my life ten years after he had died. Jaibriol and I only had a few hours left, hours far too precious to waste.

      
I cupped my hands around his face and pulled him into a kiss. His smell wafted around us, even stronger than before. Even though I knew the Rhon produced different pheromones than other humans, I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of it. His scent evoked reactions from my body far stronger than I had ever before experienced.

      
Jaibriol turned his head to kiss my palm. Then he sat up on his knees, straddling me, and put his finger between my breasts, poking it inside the magnetic seam that closed my jumpsuit. As he slid his hand down my front, the jumpsuit fell open, leaving my skin bare. He rubbed his palms over my breasts, and my nipples hardened, sticking up like an invitation.

      
We undressed each other slowly, exploring. He dropped my boots off the bed, and the heels clanged on my Jumbler. We slipped under the covers, between the silken sheets, bare skin against bare skin. I reached down, guiding him—there. As he moved inside of me, I closed my eyes, murmuring in his ear, meaningless noises. And finally we merged into a full Rhon meld, our minds blended, a joining even stronger than the one on Delos. It built as we built, stronger, higher, closer—until I surged into my peak, the release coming with gratifying intensity.

      
It didn’t stop there. Jaibriol was still going, his mind part of mine. I kept building with him even after my own body had spent itself in orgasm. His excitement pulled us higher until I couldn’t bear it any longer. But I
couldn’t
stop. Then his climax burst over us both, wringing our bodies with spasms that felt so good, I quit thinking altogether.

      
Sometime later, I became aware again. Jaibriol was lying on top of me, his cheek against mine. Sweat trickled off his chest and down my breasts. When I stirred, he lifted his head and kissed my closed eyelids.

      
“That was worth waiting for,” he said softly.

      
“Yes. It was.” What a monumental understatement.

      
“How long do you think before…?”

      
I opened my eyes. “Before Kurj finds us?”

      
“Yes.”

      
“Maybe tonight. Probably a few hours.” I wasn’t sure what Kurj would do when he realized just how thoroughly I had betrayed him. It wouldn’t be pretty, and I doubted it would be over quickly.

      
“Sauscony.” Jaibriol looked down at me. “I don’t want them to do to you what they’ve been doing to me.” He leaned over the side of the bed—and came with my Jumbler. He laid it between my breasts and lowered himself onto me so the gun formed a cold lump between our bodies. Taking my finger, he set it against the firing stud.

      
I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. “No.”

      
“We’ll die anyway. You know that.” His voice cracked. “We both know what it’s like to be tortured until you wonder how you can endure anymore. I don’t want to die like that. At least this way it will be in love instead of pain.”

      
I clenched the gun. He was right, but my instinct for self preservation was too strong. I couldn’t do it.

      
He spoke against my ear. “I can’t fire it. Only you can.”

      
I nudged off the safety and set my finger on the firing stud. Just one push—

      
A knock sounded at the door.

      
I jerked out from under Jaibriol and off the bed so fast that the covers flew into the air. I moved by reflex, grabbing Jaibriol’s shirt and yanking it over my head,  I didn’t want to face our captors in the vulnerability of my nakedness. I raised the Jumbler, aimed at the door—

      
And when it opened, I almost shot my own father.

XVI

Heart Of The Web

He stood there, blinking behind his spectacles. He wore glasses because he didn’t trust Skolian doctors enough to let them work on his eyes. He kept his hair long, in the style of his people, the silver-streaked locks framing his face and brushing his shoulders. He was a well built man of average height with heart-stopping good looks that the public loved and that Kurj found useful for counteracting his own harsh image.

      
He looked at me standing there with my gun, dressed in only a gray prison shirt. Then he looked at Jaibriol, who was sitting naked on the bed. Finally he spoke to me in his native tongue, my first language. “Are you going to kill me, Sauscony?”

      
The thought that I might have hurt him was so upsetting I could hardly speak. I lowered the gun and clicked on the safety. “No. Never. You know that.”

      
He walked over to me. “That was you I felt in Kyle space last night, wasn’t it?”

      
“Yes. I hid from you.”

      
“I received a message from Kurj earlier. He told me to stay at the palace, where it’s safe. He believes Trader commandos have infiltrated the area.” He glanced at Jaibriol, who was pulling on his pants. Then he turned to me. “Is that true?”

      
“No. But Kurj thinks it is.”

      
“I see.” It was obvious, from his expression, that he didn’t see at all.

      
Fortunately Jaibriol stayed on the bed; my father had enough to handle right now without the added intimidation of the Highton Heir towering over him. Outwardly my father didn’t show much reaction. He just stood looking at us. But I felt him grappling with the situation like a wrestler fighting an opponent who far outweighed him.

      
After a moment, he spoke in Iotic, an obsolete language used only by scholars and the Skolian nobility. And my family. He had learned it because it was my mother’s native language. He was probably using it for Jaibriol’s sake; just as I had studied Highton, Jaibriol would have learned Iotic.

      
“Sauscony.” He adjusted his spectacles. “The man on your bed looks like Jaibriol Qox.”

      
“Yes, I know.” I shifted my weight. “That’s because he is Jaibriol Qox.”

      
My father cleared his throat. “The Highton Heir. That Jaibriol Qox.”