Wild Embrace (6 page)

“I'm here.” He stirred in the shadows to the left.

Placing the dirty items next to her, she said, “I need some clean clothes.”

A whisper of movement and then he was handing them to her. “They're a little damp still, but nothing that your body heat won't dry.”

She took the small bundle and shifted back inside far enough that the shadows gave her cover. After quickly shimmying into the clothing—while trying not to think about the fact that Stefan had handled it all, including her panties and bra—she walked out, towel and dirty clothes in hand. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome. Thank you for rinsing out the clothing; I believe the minerals in the spring did a good job of cleaning them.”

Still embarrassed at their inadvertent intimacy, she kept her head down as they collected up the other clothing. It didn't take long, and soon enough, she was standing next to Stefan again, ready to be 'ported back to the village. “Wait,” she said, urging him to turn toward her. “Let me see that bruise.”

“It's too dark,” Stefan murmured, but stepped close enough that she could push up his T-shirt and check the damage.

With so little distance between them, she could see him clearly, even in the dim early evening light. “It doesn't look as raw and swollen at least.” Lowering the T-shirt lest she give in to the urge
to touch him, feel his heart beating safe and strong under her palm, she said, “Okay, let's go. The villagers feel better just knowing you're nearby, especially with the aftershocks.”

“I think they feel the same about you.”

He 'ported before she could reply.

The next day
passed as the others had done—in hours of hard work. Sometime just after dark, Tazia blew out a breath and glanced at the villager who'd been her assistant throughout the continuing repair operation of the village's small power plant. The teenager had just begun an electronics course but was the most qualified person after the station manager—who was currently in an emergency medical tent with two broken arms and a bruised skull.

“Here we go,” she said to her teen assistant and flicked a switch.

Nothing sparked, a low hum filled the air . . . and lights flickered on all around them. Cries of joy from outside told her the effect wasn't localized. High-fiving the boy when he raised his hand, she used the light to give the entire plant a thorough going-over.

Of course Stefan was still working when she finished; the lights had given him a longer work window. Shaking her head, she was walking toward him with the intention of giving him the nutrition bar in her pocket when the aftershock hit. It was violent, throwing her to the ground and making the already weakened structures around them collapse. She saw Stefan turn, yell out her name, and—

She was in the desert just outside the village, away from all the buildings, Stefan beside her. “Wait! Stefan!” Except it was too late. He was already gone.

He returned a second later with a small child, then another and another.

The shaking finally stopped.

Hugging the crying, distressed children, she calmed them down enough that they could walk back into the village. It was a mess. Leaving the children in the care of two previously injured women who were nonetheless stable and strong enough to take charge, she ran to what appeared to be the worst-affected part of the village.

Stefan was already lifting debris. Shoving up her sleeves, she joined in.

Hours passed.

Taking him water, she put her hand on his arm when he swayed. “You're about to flame out.” He'd mentioned that term to her one night in their tent, told her it was worse than taking a rest. If he flamed out, his body and mind would just shut down, possibly for an entire twenty-four hours.

“I can feel a life, Tazia.” His eyes were turbulent when he looked at her. “A small, flickering life beneath all the rubble.”

“Oh, God.” She looked at the sheer amount of debris that had to be shifted. “Okay, okay.” Turning, she ran as hard as she could toward their tent. She grabbed a spare water bottle, filled it with fresh water and dumped in two vitamin packets, then shook it as she dug out several nutrition bars.

Stefan was shifting more of the wreckage when she returned. “Stop.” She stood in front of him, touched her hand to his face when he didn't seem to see her.

“I can't.”

“You'll be useless if you fall down. Drink.” Ripping the wrappers off the nutrition bars one by one, she made him eat all of them.

His eyes didn't move off the rubble the entire time, the villagers
focusing their efforts on the area he'd indicated. Looking at them, Tazia had an idea. “Look, you can't shift all that. It's too much.”

“There's someone—”

She touched his face again, well aware she was breaking all kinds of taboos. His and her own. “Be smart, Stefan. I'm an engineer—I can see a way through that rubble. Shift only what's necessary to create a stable tunnel to the victim.”

That got his attention. “How?”

“Step by step.”

They worked together for the next two hours to create that tunnel, Tazia making judicious and careful use of Stefan's depleted abilities as well as the hands of the villagers. When the little girl who'd been trapped actually scrambled out of the tunnel on her own power, Tazia wanted to collapse to her knees in tears. Instead, she looked at Stefan and said, “Enough.”

This time, he listened, going back to the tent to fall into an exhausted sleep so deep, she knew it'd be longer than six hours. That didn't matter. The important work had been done this night.

•   •   •

Stefan
woke to the scent of some kind of liniment. Glancing down, he realized immediately that someone had put it on his chest as well as on the shoulder he'd injured.

Tazia.

Regardless of his exhaustion, he'd have woken at any other touch. He didn't trust anyone else that much, wasn't physically comfortable so close to anyone but her; their time together here had erased any barriers he might've had. And when it came to Tazia, those barriers had always been thin at best.

Rising on that thought, he glanced at his timepiece and saw he'd
been out for ten hours. Better than he'd expected, especially since he'd come to within a hairbreadth of a true flameout. When he stepped out into the sunshine, he saw nothing to say that there'd been a second aftershock.

Ten minutes later, he returned to work—after first consuming the fortified water and nutrition bars Tazia had left out for him. It was strange to know that someone who gained no current benefit from his abilities cared if he lived or died. He thought his mother must've truly cared because Stefan was her child, but after that, people had only cared because he was a Tk.

As the people on Alaris cared—if something happened to him, there went their emergency escape hatch.

However, out here, Tazia had no reason to care for him. He was doing nothing for her, and it wasn't as if she was trapped. Emergency transports were going in and out now on a relatively regular basis, so she didn't even need him to get her out of here. Her ticket back to the Alaris offices was also prepaid and in her possession.

There was no reason for her to care for him enough to find the liniment and smooth it on his chest; no reason to care enough to make sure he ate. It was as if she cared . . . for him. For Stefan, the man aside from his gift. He hadn't known that was possible.

“Sir.” One of the villagers came to stand near him.

“Yes?” he said, having stopped telling them to use his name. They were in awe of his ability and refused to treat him any other way.

“Thank you.” The man's eyes burned with wetness before he blinked the tears away, his throat moving as he swallowed. “My daughter,” he said in what was clearly an unfamiliar language. “You save.” He waved at the rubble where the tunnel had been. “Thank you.”

Stefan went to say it had been a group effort, then recalled Tazia's words about being gracious. “Is she well?”

“Yes.” The man beamed. “Happy.”

Stefan nodded, and that seemed to be enough.

Later that night, as they lay in their tent, he told Tazia what had happened.

She said, “They see you as a god. If you moved here, you could have your own fiefdom, complete with the requisite nubile virgins to attend to your every need.”

Having witnessed such interaction between other members of the Alaris crew, including between Tazia and her friend Andres, he thought perhaps he was being teased. It was . . . welcome. No longer was he standing outside looking into Tazia's complex, multihued world; she had invited him in.

“I wouldn't wish to rule,” he said seriously. “There is no privacy for those who rule.”

“And you like yours.” Rustling sounds, as if she was shifting in her sleeping bag to face him. “How's your chest, your shoulder?”

“Fine.”

A sigh before she got up and flicked on a flashlight. “Let me see.”

A week ago, he wouldn't have cooperated, but tonight, he made no protest as she pointed the light at his bare skin. He'd peeled off his T-shirt before lying down on his sleeping bag to rest; he'd first asked Tazia if it was all right. She'd blushed under the warm dark honey of her skin but nodded. Now, however, there was no blush, just clear-eyed concern as she touched him gently after glancing at him to check if he objected.

He didn't.

He watched her as she examined him, and his hand rose as if of its own volition to tuck a tendril of her hair behind her ear. Fingers stilling, she glanced at him for an endless heartbeat, then continued her examination. “It looks all right, but let me put on some more of the liniment. It helped earlier, didn't it?”

“Yes.” He could've easily put the liniment on himself, but he
didn't offer to do so. And as she ministered to him, he bore the psychic stabs of pain generated by his mind, without flinching.

The dissonance was nothing, less painful than when the debris had fallen on him. It
should've
been much sharper and brighter—had been a year ago, when he'd first seen Tazia's eyes light up as she smiled, and felt something strange happen inside him. He'd thought his inexorable compulsion toward the station engineer would fade once he knew her, but it had grown with each word they'd spoken to one another, each time he'd seen her or heard her laugh or even read a report she'd turned in.

At this rate, his already erratic dissonance would degrade into nothing soon. If he wanted to keep his mind free of psychic coercion and not attract any unwanted Psy-Med attention, he'd have to be very, very careful not to give any indication of the disintegration in public.

In private, however . . .

He lay quietly as Tazia spread the liniment gently over his bruises, her delicate touch rippling sensation over every inch of his skin. “There,” she murmured, not mentioning the fact that one of his hands was brushing her knee. “Sleep now.”

Stefan didn't want her to move away, but he remembered what she'd said about her cultural mores and kept his silence. He would not do anything to cause her distress. Listening to her settling in, he waited for the rhythm of sleep, and when he heard only wakefulness, said, “Our next trip upside, would you like to see the northern lights?”

“What?”

“The timing will be right. I can 'port us to a suitable location without problems.” Pausing, he said, “No visas, no airfares required.”

Her laughter was startled and bright. “I've always wanted to see them.”

“You'll find them beautiful.” Her spirit would see more than
color and sky and movement. She'd see something deeper, and she'd teach him to see it, too. As she'd taught him how to interact with the people here. “Good night, Tazia.”

“Tazi,” she whispered softly. “You can call me Tazi.”

•   •   •

It
was just over a week later that they left. Additional rescue forces had arrived in bulk, bringing with them machinery capable of shifting the remaining rubble. With the aftershocks having died down, the village was now in good shape.

“Our assistance is no longer required here,” Stefan said that morning. “I suggest we decamp and start getting back in shape. They'll never let us back on Alaris like this.”

“Agreed.” When she reached out to touch the jut of his collarbone, he didn't flinch. Somehow, they'd become accustomed to each other after so many days sleeping next to one another. For her, a girl who'd been brought up to share her intimate space with only her husband, it had been as much a discovery as for him. “You've lost considerable weight.” His telekinesis burned massive amounts of energy.

“So have you.” He didn't touch her, but his eyes, those
eyes
, they ran over her from head to foot.

The two of them left quietly minutes later, though she knew full well Stefan would've been feted like a hero should he have given anyone the slightest indication that he was leaving. But that wasn't who he was. 'Porting them to the closest large city for which he had a visual location lock, he checked them into a two-bedroom suite in a small, family-run hotel that had once been the residence of a famous artist.

She didn't object to the intimacy, no matter if it was breaking another taboo to cohabit with him in such private quarters. Being with Stefan made her happier than she'd been for a long time.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, after they'd dropped their bags in their rooms.

“Shower properly, eat, then sleep.”

“You can have the bathroom first.” He sat down to take off his dusty boots. “I'll research where we can find a good meal.”

Laughing, she said, “There are market stalls everywhere. We'll get some street food.”

“Is that wise? Our bodies aren't used to the bacteria in this region.”

“We've both had our inoculations.” It was ridiculous how many things they had to get inoculated against in order to work on Alaris.

“We also have to be healthy to get back on board.”

“Hmph.” Giving in, she went and showered, scrubbing and scrubbing until she finally felt clean.

Afterward, she dressed in the local clothes she'd bought from the hotel boutique downstairs. She'd wanted something new and fresh, but she wasn't prepared for how the long, colorful skirt and pretty white blouse would remind her of home, the memories knives stabbing into her soul.

“Are you all right?” Stefan asked when she emerged.

“I will be.” Her heart's ache would never disappear, but at times she could forget. “Go, shower.”

He looked at her for long moments before disappearing into the bathroom. In the meantime, she separated out their dirty clothes from the duffels, no longer shy about going through his things after the many times she'd grabbed nutrition bars for him. Gathering it all, she sent it down to the hotel laundry.

Stefan, too, had bought new clothes and emerged wearing plain black pants in a material suitable for the desert climate, along with a long-sleeved white tunic that had white embroidery along the bottom edges and the neckline.

She smiled. “You look like one of the men from my village.” Her fingers itched. “And your hair doesn't curl.” She wanted to touch the silken strands, to run her fingers through them. “It has a wave.” If he let it grow out, it'd be beautiful.

“I'll need to get it cut soon.”