GALLANT (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 3) (11 page)

Cherry smiled when the last cube came up blue and he had failed to make his quad. As she scooped up the cubes, she asked, "You lived in Innerworld before?"

"Yes. That's how I know Romulus." He watched her make her first roll and try to decide which color to go for since there were no matches. "What was your life like on the surface?"

Cherry left the purple and retossed the other three, but failed to get another purple. "Damn!"

"You should have thrown them all."

She picked up the same three cubes, rolled them between her palms, blew on them then dropped them on the table. When all three turned up purple, she let out a squeal. "You play your way and I'll play mine."

As she set aside her purple marker, he snatched up the cubes. "You haven't answered my question."

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

She laughed. "You must be more bored than you look. All right, you asked for it. The first eighteen years of my life was spent on a farm in Georgia—that's in the southeastern part of the United States. After that, I hitched my way across the country."

While she told him of that journey, the places she saw, people she met, their game continued. Occasionally he would stop her with a question then encourage her to continue.

Several hours later, they had each won two games and Cherry was getting hoarse from talking. She was fairly sure she had touched on every aspect of life in the United States as well as her personal history.

"We have to play one more game to break the tie," Gallant told her. "I think you're ready for a wager."

"Now
you want to make a bet?"

He grinned at her. "I didn't want to take advantage—"

"Ha! Where have I heard
that
before?"

"Well, we do seem to be evenly matched now."

"Okay. How much?"

"Not credits. I don't take promise payments."

Cherry narrowed her brows at him as she drew her own conclusion about what he was leading up to, but she wanted to hear him say it out loud before she told him off.

Gallant's instincts still told him that sharing confidences was the quickest route to establishing a bond between them. By telling her about his mission, he had already told her more than he should have. Now it was her turn. Unfortunately, she was a very open person. Her childhood had been the only subject she seemed somewhat secretive about, so he honed in on that. "If I win," he said slowly, "you tell me about the first half of your life. I noticed that you carefully avoided talking about those years."

That was far from the forfeit she had expected him to demand. With a shrug she said, "Only because there's nothing interesting to tell." She considered her chances of winning rather than losing. "Okay, and if I win, you explain why you wear that patch over your eye."

He hesitated only a second before nodding his agreement and passing her the cubes. As she made her initial toss, his fingers casually closed over the front edges of his vest and slid downward. A moment later his special set of cubes was in his left palm, ready to be exchanged for the honest ones on the table. She was going to share a confidence with him even if he had to cheat to force it out of her.

Cherry was amazed at how quickly he won the final game. The odds against rolling three quads of different colors on three initial throws had to be astronomical but Gallant hardly blinked over his unusual good luck.

As agreed, Cherry told him the tale of her dismal youth and described the ramshackle farm she had grown up on. "My parents truly believed that it was God's will that they have ten children and spend their lives struggling to exist. If Pa had put as much effort into that farm as he did trying to beat the devil out of us kids, we might have been fairly well off."

Cherry's voice retained its joking quality in spite of the bitterness her words suggested.

"You were beaten by your own father?" Gallant asked with surprise.

Cherry waved her hand at him. "Oh, it was no big deal. Outerworld Earth is a far cry from Norona and Innerworld, you know. Lots of parents treat their kids worse than mine did. Anyway, I turned out okay." Smiling, she winked at him and added, "As long as I always get to be the center of attention."

Gallant tried to return her smile but her light-hearted attitude failed to hide the pain he sensed beneath it. He had known only love and kindness from the Noronian couple who had raised him and experienced only comfort in their home. Cherry's story made him remember how very different his life would have been had someone not tampered with it.

Though it would have been more comfortable to change the subject, his perverse emotions made him ask for more. "Don't you miss your brothers and sisters? Even with so many, there must have been at least one you were close to."

Cherry started to give him another flip answer but something about the way he was looking at her cut it off. She was always the one who cheered up everyone else, quickly shrugging off any offer of sympathy in return. Why she should act any differently at this moment made no sense.

The feelings his question triggered prompted her to rise and walk to the glass. Staring out into the darkness, she wondered why a look from this stranger had been able to evoke a memory buried so deeply she had consciously forgotten it. A heartbeat later she realized the reason. He was not looking at her with sympathy, but understanding... just as Rose had the day Cherry took off for California.

"Rose," Cherry said aloud for the first time in eighteen years, and in her mind's eye she imagined seeing her baby sister's face. "She was ten when I left Georgia, too young to take with me. The day Rose was born, I claimed her as my own. There was a special quality about her that I couldn't resist. Of course, as she grew up, it was obvious what that was—she was just like me—full of energy and curiosity and a need to be free that no amount of punishment could wipe away."

An image of the two of them slipping and sliding in a muddy sty while trying to catch a family of piglets made Cherry smile in spite of the sadness the memory caused.

"What happened to her?"

Cherry could tell Gallant had walked up behind her but she didn't turn around. "I don't know. See, we knew Pa would never let her receive mail from me once I'd left. After all, I was the devil's handmaiden. And it might have even made it worse for her if I had tried to write. So we agreed that I would come back for her on her eighteenth birthday."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I had it all planned to surprise her. Ten years ago, a group of us were going on a fishing trip from Florida and I figured I'd make a detour through Georgia on our way back to California."

Gallant deduced the rest. "And that was when the accident occurred and you ended up in Innerworld."

With a small nod and a sigh, she whispered to the black void before her, "She must have thought I forgot all about her."

Letting his instincts override his common sense, he turned her toward him and wrapped his arms around her.

She stiffened and looked up at him suspiciously but his hold was gentle and nonsexual and she gave in to the comfort he offered. Resting her head against his chest, she listened to his steady heartbeat. "For a tough guy, you do a pretty nice hug."

Gallant stroked Cherry's hair and said quietly, "My mother always said that a hug is worth more than ten medical teams."

"Smart lady." She tipped back her head to look up at him. "You're the only person I ever told about Rose. I don't know why I did that but I'm kind of glad I finally got it out. Thanks. For listening
and
the hug." Placing her hands on his cheeks, she drew his face down to meet hers as she rose on her tiptoes.

She intended the quick peck on his mouth to end the unexpected intimacy that had sprung up between them. Rather than release her, however, he abruptly tightened his hold and a growl rose from deep in his chest. His body hardened against hers so swiftly that she gasped, only to have her breath taken away again as his hot mouth closed over hers.

Too fast. Too hard.

Yet not nearly enough.

His lips, his tongue, his teeth took all she had and demanded more. His hands grasped and kneaded, lifting and urging her to join him in wild abandon. She forgot everything except the reckless hunger he incited. Thinking only of her need to feel every inch of the masculine flesh she had previously been trying to ignore, she yanked his vest off his shoulders.

"Oh my," Dot said as the he-she entered the bridge. As if nothing unusual were going on, they approached their station and began running a check on the instruments. "Really, Captain," Mar declared with mock sternness, "if you needed to leave your post, you should have called us. We would have understood."

Gallant and Cherry were each aware of the interruption but their rampaging need kept them clinging to each other for several seconds. Breathing heavily, and knowing any attempt to make a dignified exit was futile, they stepped away from each other and left the bridge without uttering a word. The sound of Mar-Dot's chuckling accompanied them down the passageway.

Gallant stopped in front of his door and opened it, but rather than enter or step aside, he just stood there, blocking the way with his back to Cherry.

Cherry had been embarrassed to have Mar-Dot catch them doing precisely what she had told Dot they wouldn't, but her pulse was still racing with desire. She touched Gallant's arm and was startled when he jerked away from her.

"Don't,"
he said in a voice that still sounded more like a ferocious animal's growl.
"Mistake."

Before Cherry understood what he meant, he was inside his room and the door had been closed in her face. She blinked at the door several times before she accepted the fact that he had left her hanging there. No man had ever done that to her... on purpose. She wasn't counting those that had simply not been able to satisfy her. At least they had tried.

Not only was Gallant guilty of abduction and lying, now he had insulted and humiliated her as well. Why, he was nothing but a tease! She was half tempted to barge in there and—

Her hand was poised over the opener when she realized what she was about to do. She lowered her hand and laughed at herself. Even with a robotic arm, she couldn't force the man to satisfy her. With a shake of her head, she walked to the facility chamber, hoping that the sanitation stall was equipped with a cold air blower.

* * *

Gallant leaned back against the closed door and slid to the floor. His hands were shaking so badly he tucked them under his arms so he wouldn't have to look at them.

Minutes. He had been minutes away from paradise... or perdition. If only he knew for sure which it would have been. Only once before had he gotten so close to finding out.

He was five years old when his Noronian parents discovered what he really was. Up to that time they had made excuses for his excessive emotional outbursts and occasional acts of violence. Rather than send him away, they carefully schooled him in self-control, constantly reminding him of the consequences should anyone else find out his secret. The eye patch took care of the other deviation.

For the most part, he learned the lesson well enough to have people wonder if he had any emotions at all. But he had not been prepared to battle the hormonal storm that hit him when he reached adolescence. The first time he was alone with a consenting female, his practiced control disintegrated.

He had attended the required classes and read the manuals on sexual behavior but he had no way of knowing that getting aroused would turn him into a savage. Nor had he known that the aggressive manner that felt so normal to him would terrify the poor young woman. Initially, she had seemed as anxious as he, but minutes later she was crying to be let go and calling him an animal.

Gallant had regained his senses quickly enough to calm her down and convince her not to report him to anyone. By that time, he had already become a proficient liar, out of necessity.

It was not long after that first incident that physical need drove him to discover that he could experience a sexual release without letting go of his control. However, he always felt that it wasn't as good as it could be. The act was pleasurable, yet far from satisfying. Having to use part of his attention to keep the wildness reined in prevented him from thoroughly enjoying what was happening to his body.

As the years went by, his encounters with women became less frequent. A physical release without an emotional one simply wasn't worth the effort.

His breathing had returned to normal and his hands had stopped shaking, but his thoughts were still in a panic. Had he really growled at Cherry? Yes, he was certain he had, just as he knew he had bitten her lips and earlobe. Like an uncivilized barbarian, he had mindlessly attacked her and would have used her without a thought to propriety had Mar-Dot not interrupted.

When Cherry had talked of her sister, he had felt somewhat guilty for tricking her into the revelation—guilty enough to try to comfort her, without considering how the proximity of her body would affect him. It was exactly as he had feared. Her vibrant energy struck a chord in his primitive soul, and the result was nothing short of spontaneous combustion.

As his head began to clear, he considered how to repair the damage he had just done. There was no question about his having to be more careful about touching her in the future. The problem was, he might have ruined any chance of getting Cherry to trust him enough to cooperate with his plan to trap Frezlo.