Icarus Unbound (10 page)

He raced to his end, clutching Lara's shuddering body to him like a possession. She cried out, a mixture of pleasure and pain as her sweet sheath began to convulse around him.

The pressure of her inner muscles on his cock heightened his need as well as his demand for satisfaction. Without thought, he increased his rhythm and his depth until his own orgasm erupted. Every muscle hardened and his seed shot in hot, insistent spurts.

Lara moaned, and her body curled around his. She trembled in his arms, her own sex still pulsing in time with the intermittent pulse of his cock.

He panted in her ear as he slid out of her. "Our ancestors will remember this night." He resisted the urge to chuckle at the nonsensical Icarian saying. To hell with their ancestors.

Jaran knew this night would live in his memory forever.

He finally possessed Laramee, and he knew he would never let her go.

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87

Icarus Unbound

by Bernadette Gardner

A cool breeze wafting through the open windows of the bedchamber woke Lara hours later. She lay still and silent for a moment, contemplating the exquisite softness of the alor bedding, the warmth of the muscular male body sprawled next to her and the buzz of contentment in her well-used body.

She shifted slightly to get a better look at Jaran. By moonlight his strong features appeared chiseled in silvery granite. Like a blanket, his golden-feathered wings covered his upper body except for the arm he had flung across her stomach. The weight of it began to feel more constricting by the minute.

The symbion sex hormones had worn off, leaving her once again able to think clearly. Now, in the middle of the night, she remembered that Jaran was the man who considered her an outsider, the boy who had called her a freak because her parents had been born on another world.

She could choose to forget those things and accept him as the skilled lover he'd become, or she could continue to carry the hurt around as a burden on her soul. The choice should have been an easy one to make, but it wasn't.

He must have sensed her watching him because he began to stir. Lara decided she would pretend to be asleep, but Jaran's eyes popped open before she could close hers. He met her gaze in the pearlescent light and smiled. "How long have you been awake?"

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"Not long." She worked at keeping her voice low, though it seemed odd to whisper intimately with someone she was more used to yelling at or ignoring completely.

"Are you cold?" He stretched a wing to cover her since the white sheet from the previous night was gone.

She should have protested but instead snuggled deeper beneath the protection of his wing. Part of her wanted to be flying home to the research station, but the rest of her was far too comfortable to move.

"Laramee, I don't want you to worry about Odan's warning."

"I don't understand why you chose me, Jaran. I'm the last person to make a good match for you."

The corner of his upper lip tilted up, and he reached out to brush a strand of hair from her face. "Judging by the way we spent this evening, I would argue we are a perfect match. We fit together as though we were made for each other."

Lara failed in her attempt not to laugh. "Aren't all men and women supposed to fit together?"

Jaran scowled, but this time she didn't see the face of her childhood tormentor. She saw a man whose ego had been slightly bruised by her dismissal. "Are you saying that what occurred between us was average? That any two people could have—"

"No." She answered quickly, suddenly loathe to hurt his feelings. "No. This was ... better than anything I've had before."

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His smile returned, this time devoid of the arrogance it usually held. "I agree. And I think, in time, we can improve upon it even more."

Beneath the warm covering of his outstretched wing, his hand found her hip and slid seductively along the curve of her waist. Lara did her best to ignore the stirring of her symbion hormones. In a moment she'd be moaning for release if she let this go on. "That's the point, isn't it, Jaran? We may not have time. Aren't we only making things worse for ourselves if, in the end, the committee dissolves our union? All this time spent preparing for the mating cycle to begin will be wasted if we must ultimately go to other mates."

Jaran growled, and the warmth of his hand disappeared from the curve of her hip. He pulled his wing back and folded it behind him, exposing Lara's naked body to the slight chill of the midnight air. "I told you we will not be separated. Don't you trust me?"

Lara sat up. Reluctant to drag herself out of the comforting embrace of the alor fibers, she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. "I..." The truth was no, she didn't trust Jaran because she still didn't understand his motives.

He sat up as well. "I see."

"What do you expect of me, Jaran? We've spent over twenty years at odds with each other. How can you expect my trust when you taught me to detest our every conversation? You hated me for nothing more than my human blood. To ask me to—"

Jaran vaulted off the bed, his wings fanning out behind him. "I
never
hated you, Laramee."

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She raised a brow. "Right. You told the other children I ate symbion eggs." That grievous rumor had cost her several friends. On Icarus the thought of eating an unborn symbion was tantamount to cannibalism. "You tried to convince me that my symbion would rip itself off my back and fly away in the middle of the night to escape my human taint."

Jaran bowed his head. "I was a child."

"You were not a child when you told me I should leave Icarus with my parents because I didn't belong here. If you felt that way,
why
would you choose me as your mate?"

He didn't respond. He'd turned his back to her and had planted his hands on his hips as if contemplating a believable answer.

"Why, Jaran?"

"Because I wanted to erase all of that. The boy I was—my mother taught me to despise the human influence on Icarus."

Lara blinked. She knew very little of Arilani, except for the vague references to a rivalry for the attentions of her father.

Her parents had glossed over the details of the Icarian healer's attempt to kill Zara, and they'd never held her crime against Jaran. "I only heard that your mother worked diligently with Dr. Danson to start the breeding program. She wanted to allow artificial insemination when Jidar was still against it, and she was to have been mated with my father."

The last words stuck like glue in her throat. It almost made her nauseated to say them.

Jaran turned back toward her. "She hated him for choosing your mother and causing a delay in the program. His choice 91

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left her without a mate for what would be her last fertile cycle."

Lara nodded. "So she dropped my mother out of an aerie.

If she hadn't managed to climb into a symbion feeding net and one of the nesting females hadn't joined with her, she would have died." Lara hated to think of the torment her mother had suffered, lying injured for days in a broken alor net at the foot of one of the long-deserted aerie islands. Wild symbions had fed her and guarded her, but her condition had deteriorated until she was near death. Then, finally, one of the birds had bonded with her and saved her life.

As punishment for her crime, Arilani had been exiled prior to the start of the mating cycle, yet she'd managed to become pregnant by one of the Icarian males assigned to bring her food and supplies on the isolated island that was to be her prison for ten years. Upon her death after only five years in exile, Jaran had been taken to the royal aerie and given to Jidar and Namara to raise.

"The story she told me was different," he said, "and made your mother out to be the villain who planned to sabotage the breeding program. I denied the truth when I learned it because I loved my mother and couldn't believe she would do something so terrible."

Sympathy softened Lara's resolve. She'd never considered that Jaran had been told lies by his mother, but it made sense. Discovering that every other Icarian knew the real story of her treachery had to have been devastating for the young orphan.

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"She never told you which male was your father, did she?"

Half a dozen guards had been assigned to care for her on the distant, isolated aerie to which she'd been taken on Jidar's command, with her symbion wings damaged to prevent her escape. All of them had denied mating with her, and though Jidar knew one of them had to be lying, he'd refused to punish them all.

"She did. And she made me promise never to reveal his name."

Lara's eyes widened. This was another burden heaped on Jaran when he was too young to fully understand the implications. All these years he'd known who his real father was and had never let on. "Surely it doesn't matter now. Jidar can't punish him. Is he still alive?"

Jaran flicked a wing at her. "You're right. It doesn't matter.

I was raised by Jidar. He will always be my father."

Lara settled back onto the bed. "Do you trust me, Jaran?"

He pinned her with a steely glance. "I would like to."

"Then tell me who your father is. I would never tell anyone."

He hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. "As I said, it no longer matters."

To punctuate the finality of his statement, Jaran spread his wings and swept out of the room.

She wanted his trust, but refused to give hers in return.

Jaran wanted to blame Lara for their argument this morning, but deep down he knew his own reluctance to share his secrets with her lay at the root of their problems. The logical side of his brain told him the only way to break down 93

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all the barriers between them was to lay himself open to her and tell her all of his true feelings. His irrational side, the side that had foolishly kept his mother's secret for all these years, wasn't yet ready to evolve.

After avoiding his mate for several hours, he'd found her in the east garden, examining a tree that seemed to be losing its foliage. She'd dressed, and again he marveled at how her half-covered body could be so alluring.

When she noticed him watching her, she greeted him as though none of their earlier conflict had occurred.

"Daralei asked me to look at this apple tree. I think it's developed a root disease. We may have to remove it before the blight spreads to other parts of the garden."

Jaran nodded absently. "If you think that's best. These are your gardens now. Your decisions will be law regarding what is done with the plants here."

For a moment she looked like she might protest, and Jaran feared they'd end up rehashing the same argument that had driven him from his quarters in the middle of the night. He tensed, prepared to defend his actions, but her expression softened.

"I'll try to save it. It's a beautiful tree. I have some treatments I can try, but I need to go back to the research station for supplies."

"Of course, but perhaps you could wait until tomorrow? I'd like you to do something with me today."

She raised a brow, and her lips quirked. Jaran smiled, wishing he was talking about what she clearly had in mind.

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Icarus Unbound

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"Not that. I mean, I still have dozens of mate pairings to perform and as co-leader you can ... you
should
be present."

Her fingers trailed off the leafless branch she'd been caressing, and she scrutinized him as if trying to find an ulterior motive for his request. "I don't think I'd be any good at it."

"You may be better than you think." He held out his hand.

"Come on. Spend the day in my world."

With a glance at the ailing tree, she stepped along the tiled path and took his hand. "But tomorrow I have to—"

"Yes. Tomorrow you'll save the tree. Today you'll help me build the next generation of Icarians."

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95

Icarus Unbound

by Bernadette Gardner

To Lara's surprise, she enjoyed spending the day with Jaran, performing their duties as co-leaders of the Icarian tribe. She'd never been present at a mate pairing other than her own before, and she hadn't expected to become caught up in the joy of each couple as Jaran pronounced them united. Everyone had seemed thrilled with the choices he'd made for them, no doubt largely because his decisions were based on what he knew to be their own preferences.

Everyone who came into the audience chamber that day left smiling and eager to begin their lives together.

"I had no idea you were so perceptive, Jaran," she said when the last couple had left to join the mating celebration in the gardens. "You made a lot of people very happy today."

He raised a brow. "I will confess my secret, if you will confess one of yours."

"What kind of secrets do you think I keep?"

"Tell me why you chose to stay on Icarus when your parents went to Daedalus. Kiala told Odan that you'd longed to see another planet, but you passed up the opportunity to work at the botanical station there."

Lara's first instinct was to question why her personal dilemma, shared only with Kiala, had made its way to both Odan and Jaran. Instead, she considered her answer and decided at this point there was no shame in telling Jaran the truth, or part of it at least.

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"I didn't want to miss the mating cycle. If I'd left, I might have found a human mate on Daedalus, but if I didn't, I could not have come back here to be joined. I miss my parents, and I would have loved to see the colony on Daedalus, but I couldn't give up being Icarian."