TICEES (19 page)

Chelan hesitated, knowing that if he was absent, her heart would simply fail. Her stomach knotted with indecision and fear. Then she stepped into the inky blackness and held her breath as she raised her unfeeling fingers to her blue lips.

Korba awoke suddenly at the sound of her shaking breath, and he hit a switch, raising the room lights. “Chelan,” he gasped. He was riveted to the bed, his eyes wide and unbelieving as he looked at the snow-white apparition trembling before him.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Instantly, he was on his feet, and he grabbed her to him. “Oh, my Lady,” he moaned. But her deathly cold flesh sent panic coursing through his body. He swept her off her feet and laid her on the bed, heaping the blankets over her. He looked down at her, her wide eyes appealing to him for his comfort and his warmth. Tearing his uniform from his body, he moved in beside her and drew her into him.

Her shivering was uncontrollable, and she hugged his massive frame tightly. “I love you,” she repeated again.

Korba squeezed her. “I love you, too, Chelan, more than life itself. I always have, and I always will.”

Slowly, Chelan began to thaw from the warmth emanating from his masculine comfort. “I’m sorry about my behavior,” she whispered.

“There are no apologies warranted, Chelan. Your behavior at the Koll was exemplary. Your handling of Marri was exquisite, nothing short of a masterful delivery of well-deserved and well-controlled words. And as far as the rest of the ordeal, your reactions were more than justified. I will not forgive you, my Lady, for there is nothing to forgive.”

Chelan looked up at him, her lower lip beginning to tremble.

Korba’s face blanched. “What is it?”

“I wanted so badly to make you proud,” she whimpered. “The gown … the Koll …” She took a deep and wavering breath. “But most of all, I wanted the night to be so special for us … and instead …” She looked down, squeezing her eyes tight. “It was a disaster.”

Korba rolled her onto her back and raised himself on top of her. Her eyes opened wide to his. He lowered more of his weight down gently on her, his fingers stroking her soft cheeks. “You made me proud, my Lady. You touched my heart and my soul in so many ways. You were calm, you were poised, and you were regal. I will have you in my company any time without any hesitation. And the gown …” He stopped, looking deep into her fawn-like eyes. “I know and appreciate the tremendous amount of time and work that went into it, and I know it was for me. I know it was you who created it, for I could see your femininity, your beauty, and your creativity displayed in every aspect of its design. And its fascinating color was the color of your happiness.”

He watched her breathing ease. Then he smiled as her arms finally encircled him, her fingers tracing over the thick muscles of his back. “And as for the evening, though I would have preferred our unhindered union, it was inevitable. I knew that Dar would not let my announcement go unchallenged, and I knew that Fremma’s fears of your loss had to be quelled. It is only I who must take responsibility for the confrontational format, which I should have had better controlled. But I was not myself, and I apologize to you, my love. I had no right to challenge them in your presence. You don’t deserve to be confronted with our hard-handed tactics. It was unthinking and cruel.” He paused, looking down at her beauty, her cheeks finally beginning to pink. But then he felt her tense unexpectedly, and he saw the apprehension in her eyes.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she blurted. “I’m sorry I slept with Fremma. It was wrong, and I was unfaithful to you.”

“No,” he voiced firmly, bearing down on her and holding her face tightly in his hands. “No, Chelan, it was not wrong. It was I who overreacted. Don’t you ever feel guilty for sharing yourself with Fremma. I have had time to think and to control my foreign feelings of irrational possessiveness. I raise my restrictions on your access to Fremma, for they should never have been applied to begin with. I will never challenge your intimacy with him, and you may take him any time. I grant this from my heart and from my love for you. I grant it because Fremma is an honorable man and a close friend, and he is my protector as he is yours. And most of all, I welcome it because of your undeniable love for one another. That is how our society is meant to work.” He kissed her lips lovingly.

Then he withdrew and watched her carefully as the fear melted from her eyes. He felt her take several large breaths, and he smiled at her. He leaned forward and traced her lips tenderly with his tongue. “Please accept my apologies, Chelan. I need your unconditional acceptance of my weaknesses as well as my strengths. I am but a man.”

A smile of relief finally crept across Chelan’s lips, and Korba took them heatedly. Her acceptance of him came swiftly and easily. Her hands traced down the hard planes of his sides to his hips and over his densely muscled buttocks. She drew her legs up, offering him her penetrable softness. He moaned as he allowed his erection to expand, their long-awaited union finally beginning.

*****

The next week was a bonding period beyond imagination, as Korba relinquished his command to be continually by her side. Their love grew in leaps and bounds, strengthened by long hours of conversation and love play as they explored every intimate detail of each other’s minds and bodies.

Korba found himself inexplicably drawn closer and closer to Chelan, fascinated by her ways of thinking and intrigued by her perceptions of both his world and her own. Despite the vast differences in their cultures, her feelings and opinions pertaining to many values and social issues mirrored his own. In an odd way, they were light-years apart, the antithesis of one another, yet they were the same on so many levels, that he found it striking.

On a physical plane, Korba was also captivated by her enticingly strange and alien ways. Chelan had no idea how Iceanean women acted during sexual encounters. But her innate Earthly love play constantly drew out sides of Korba the Warlord never even knew existed.

During an encounter with Dar long ago, Chelan had inadvertently stumbled on a way to send Iceanean men into a near-frenzied response. By coyly resisting them and their advances once they were fully aroused, she could push them into a near corybantic state. The men of Iceanea never had to work for sexual release, and their women were competent and aggressive lovers. Advances not desired were spurned early and verbally, and so there was never any need for physical rejection.

But on Chelan’s home world, the game-playing and teasing that were commonplace and came naturally to many women frightened her. She was so accustomed to men not taking
no
for an answer that she had become extremely adept at fighting off physical advances, forcefully at times. But here, with these men and where she was safe, she had tried it with Korba. The reaction she received from him, however, was far from subtle, just as it had been with Dar.

Chelan discovered that this act played directly to Korba’s ingrained predator–prey instinct. The genetically manipulated trait, the ability to single out and run down the weak and those in flight, was a desirable characteristic in the Empire’s warriors, and it was intensely attuned in the great Warlord. She knew that Korba never lost track of her intentions or lost ultimate control over himself, but her futile attempts to struggle against him drove him to a nearly uncontrollable need to take her aggressively. The first time it had happened, he’d told her, he had been shocked at the untamed carnal thoughts that had pervaded his senses, and he had been equally stunned by the fact that Chelan was not.

She had known he had entered foreign territory by the glazed look that overtook his normally alert eyes. Chelan was enthralled by the basal, animalistic characteristics that surfaced from the Warlord who was normally in superb control, and they talked about it at length. Korba knew her acts were out of love play and that the response she expected was to be taken by him forcefully. But at times he had to suppress a dangerous desire to hurt the small, resisting being beneath him. Still, no matter how aggressive their coupling became, his higher thought processes always intervened.

Korba warned her not to repeat her acts with others, especially within a group of unfamiliar men. He emphatically told her that saying
no
early to an advance was their way, and obviously the most effective way.

Korba had been genuinely disturbed by his feelings at first, and was almost panic-stricken at the thought of the harm that could inadvertently befall her at the hands of those with less control than he. He knew that the sensuality and provocativeness that she exuded was innocent, a by-product of her timorous personality and her ingrained shyness. Therefore, he feared that an aggressive advance at a vulnerable time would cause her to hesitate just long enough for serious trouble to erupt.

His warnings to her had been presented almost harshly. But having experienced his brute strength and coarse treatment of her as he took her effortlessly, Chelan needed no further warnings. She knew all too well the ruthless acts that could be waged upon her by those who had otherwise been trained so well in the art of loving.

Chelan then focused on Dar, and she wondered about any differences between him and Korba. She pondered if the blonde Warlord was actually more primal and less controlled than Korba. Now that she thought about it, she had seen the wildfire sparked in Dar’s eyes many times, and she knew that the catalyst for it was much more subtle than it was for Korba. Dar had always reacted strongly to her physical cues and much more readily. She shivered. She realized that each time she shrank from Dar for whatever reason, his response was to pursue immediately and at times aggressively. His interactions with her had always been more volatile.

Suddenly, another revelation struck her. The time when he had grabbed her roughly, telling her that she tempted fate and that he would take her if she continued … Dar had been far more dangerous than she had ever dreamed. Now she wondered about her total physical withdrawal from him. Was he going to leave her exclusively to Korba, despite what he had said?

Chelan wiped the thoughts from her mind and simply acknowledged the fact that initially, she had unintentionally raised the same predatory instinct in all three men. She decided it was prudent to heed all of Korba’s stern warnings.

*****

Chelan loved having Korba’s undivided attention, and he, in turn, hers. As the week progressed, she pushed her pain over the loss of Dar from her mind, and Fremma’s absence diminished her thoughts of him. She devoted all her time and herself to her Warlord, and their mutual happiness soared.

They had begun working out together, and Chelan had taken Korba by surprise yet again, her hidden strengths and tenacity impressing him further. But he had never dreamed how impressed he would be as one afternoon when she had sent one of her throwing blades sizzling past him, burying it deep within a small target beside him. He was further stunned as she planted the second blade with equal competency right next to the first. Korba had remained mute as she retrieved the blades and sidled up to him, then asking innocently if he thought her performance had been
okay.

Korba could only stare at her as he punished himself for his own lack of perception. He remembered his first day back on RIBUS 7 as he watched Fremma stalk her, and the ease with which she deftly disarmed him of one of his blades, and the familiarity with which she assuredly handled the knife as she placed it effectively against the warrior’s doomed body.

So once again Korba had found yet another erotic stimulus: his sleek lady’s hidden lethality. He had not answered her question but had removed the blades from her hands and pushed her to the floor. Her eyes had grown wide with surprise as he stripped her of her uniform with one indulgent motion, instantly penetrating her with an ease and a swiftness that took her breath away. And so the week continued, each other’s subtle motions inflaming the other in mutual ardent desire.

But one disturbing fact was rising to the surface as their time together increased. Korba soon began to notice that his motivation to resume his command was faltering for the first time in his life. And inevitably, his thoughts turned to the Emperor and their approach to Iceanea. He had only to glance at Chelan to want his two years of leave immediately, his passion to impregnate her becoming his all-consuming goal. Where once war had been his one true and enduring love, now the beautiful woman before him captured all of his desires. It was then that he knew that the day when she drew his seed deep within her womb she would take with it his war-hardened heart forever.

But Chelan was content with the situation as it was. She was happy floating through space in the security of RIBUS 7 and in the arms of her Lord. She had no wish to meet the Emperor, and she wanted nothing to do with the whole damn planet for that matter. But the inevitability was drawing near, and though she had lost track of time, a nagging sense of despair told her that her impending fate was just around the corner.

Korba knew that she was suppressing her anxiety, and he took her with him everywhere he went for the remainder of the trip, despite the inherent security problems. The time spent with him in his travels and his duties kept her thoughts off their arrival to Iceanea.

On this early morning, however, Korba slipped out of bed, leaving his lady to sleep. He needed to train with his warriors, and with a little planning he would be back long before she awoke. Dressing soundlessly in his uniform, he lit out of the Command Center like a fleeting shadow and was gone.

Chelan awoke to a deserted bed shortly thereafter, moved to an early wakefulness by the emptiness next to her. So attached had the two of them been since the Koll that his absence did not go unnoticed for long.

But Chelan was far from stressed. Their time together had been pure heaven, and she knew in her heart he was not far. She brushed out her long tresses and then slipped into her white gown. She stopped at the entrance to the Command Center and listened for any telltale sounds from the workout area, but there were none. Straightening herself, she decided it was time to assert her position and try out her new independence.