razorsedge (12 page)

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Third meal over, Kaid decided to retire early. The day at Shanagi had gone better than he'd thought it would, he realized as he shut the door to his suite behind him. A large part of that was due to the personal damper he was now wearing. It gave him a measure of self-confidence and peace of mind. It stopped the headaches and the intrusive snatches of mental noise he kept hearing— and might even help limit the involuntary visions he kept having.
Switching off the tiny device on his wrist, he activated the main room unit. With it on, he couldn't sense her at the edges of his mind— couldn't affect her or her cub with his confused mental state. At least since his fever there had been no more of the whispering voices that had haunted him.
Sighing, he walked through to his bedroom, pausing to pick up the contract folder from the top of the drawer unit. As he did, the room lights glinted off something lying beneath the unit. Bending down, he picked it up. The Triad pendant from Lijou and Kha'Qwa. Turning it over in his hand, he went to his bed and sat down.
He wouldn't forget that night in a hurry. He was still half-convinced it had been a fever dream. His fingers traced the intricate spirals, coming naturally to rest on the crystal in the center.
Remember this meeting.
The echo of His voice filled Kaid's mind. With a shiver, he hastily set the pendant on his night table. Was he never to be left in peace? His life seemed to belong to everyone but him. Suddenly he longed for the uncomplicated days of his youth, before he'd met Khemu, before what he was had mattered. He pushed the thought aside. It did no good to dwell on issues he couldn't change.
Pulling the pillows from under the cover, he propped himself against the head of the bed and picked up the folder. Surprisingly, the contract had needed only a small amount of negotiation before both he and Kusac had been satisfied with it. Opening the folder, he began to read through it once more.
The room seemed to lurch and he was looking at the newborn cub in Noni's arms, unsure what to do or say.
"She's yours, Tallinu," the familiar old voice said. "Your daughter. Take her from me, for Vartra's sake! Let her know you accept your child!"
He reached down to take the child from her, holding the little one awkwardly in his arms.
She gave a soft mewl, mind and hands reaching out for him. He offered her a finger, and she took it, holding onto him firmly as she began to purr. He was totally unprepared for the flood of emotions that rushed through him as he stroked the tiny brown-furred hand. Gathering her closer, he laid his face against her tiny head, taking in her scent, bonding to her. Suddenly, this cub he'd tried so hard to avoid conceiving because of his love for her mother, was even more precious.
"A daughter," he said, looking over to where she lay, exhausted from the birth. "We share a daughter."
Light, streaming in from the small window in Noni's main room, blinded him.
"I know," she said, her voice tired but holding a purr beneath the words.
Still dazzled, he moved his head in an effort to see her clearly. As he blinked, his vision cleared and he realized that he was back in his room at the villa— and he wasn't alone.
Someone was holding him firmly by the shoulders and shaking him. Instinctively he reached up for his assailant's throat, but even as he did, he recognized the scent. T'Chebbi. His hands settled on hers instead.
Her grip slackened, and she would have released him if he hadn't been holding her.
"Slipping, Kaid. Not long ago, couldn't get this close."
His ears flicked back in annoyance, staying there. "I know." His tone was sharp and bitter. He grasped her hands within his, pulling them down. "How'd you get in?"
She shrugged. "Standard surveillance procedure."
"I change the code daily. No one should be able to enter."
Her mouth opened in a grin. "Didn't say it was easy. I know you, others don't."
He growled deep in his throat, hackles round his neck rising as he tightened his grip on her hands.
She winced. "Orders from my Liegena, Kaid."
That superseded his privacy. With a sigh, he released her. "Is that why you're here?" he demanded, pushing her away.
T'Chebbi settled herself on the edge of the bed, massaging her hands. "Partly. Knew you were in. When no answer, I was concerned."
His eyes flicked across her, taking in the off-duty clothing she wore, noticing the subtle difference in her scent: perfume? His eye ridges creased as he looked more closely at her appearance.
"Meeting someone?"
She shrugged, looking away from him. "Why not?"
Her voice was quiet, so quiet he had to sit up to hear her.
"Don't let me delay you, then. I'm fine."
She looked back. "I've time yet. What was it, Tallinu? A dream? A vision?"
"Vision," he said briefly, not wanting to discuss it.
"You weren't meditating."
"I know. I don't need to these days. Leave it, T'Chebbi." Belatedly. "Please." His mind was drifting off into irrelevancies and he couldn't stop it. What
was
that scent she was wearing? Not one of the common ones, that was for sure, because it was enhancing her personal scent, not changing it. He gave his head a small shake and leaned back against his pillows.
"What have you been doing these past years? I never did ask," he said. His head was clearing a little now that he was farther away from her.
"Worked for Ghezu mainly, some military contracts. Priest things aren't for me." Again the slight grin as she rearranged herself more comfortably.
"What about your personal life. Any Companions?" Why the hell was he asking her that? This was no more like him than her appearance was usual for her.
"None. Never met the male I reckoned could cope with me."
He heard the underlying irony in her tone. She still hadn't healed from her time with the packs, then.
The question was out before he had a chance to stop it. "So who're you meeting?"
"Friend."
He swung his legs over the opposite side of the bed from her and got to his feet. Her presence was unsettling him, but he couldn't be inhospitable. "Have you time for a drink?"
"A little. Vassa, please."
As he headed over to the dispenser, he wondered what the hell was wrong with him. He didn't want T'Chebbi to leave yet. He'd never seen her in off-duty clothes; he'd never known her to have any kind of social life. The Brotherhood had become her sanctuary after her time in the Fleet Pack.
From the cupboard beside the dispenser, he got out the bottle of spirits and poured them each a measure. A faint sound made him turn around. T'Chebbi was coming toward him, and he could only stand and stare.
The dark cerise paneled tunic reaching to her calves was certainly flattering against her silver-brown pelt. What made it out of the ordinary was the silver chain round her waist, the ends of which hung down provocatively over her exposed thighs. As he looked lower, he saw a similar chain round her left ankle.
He held out the glass to her, trying to ignore the freshly heightened awareness of her scent that her passage across the room had caused. Irrelevancies caught his attention, and he noticed that across her shoulder, her hair hung in a single long braid, unbound at the end.
"This friend must be special," he said. In the twenty years they'd been colleagues this was the first time he'd seen her wearing something feminine since he'd snatched her from the heart of the Fleet den. But it was no bedraggled and beaten qwene who stood before him now. This was a sophisticated, self-assured female.
"Very." She took a sip of the drink.
He sidestepped her, moving toward the door into his lounge. "Perhaps we'd be more comfortable next door," he said, suddenly feeling awkward being with her in his bedroom.
"If you wish." She walked past him, tail gently swaying, and waited at the door.
He found himself resenting this friend of hers, worried that not knowing her past he'd take advantage of her. He tried to review who was in the house at present, but he could think of no one beyond Kusac and Dzaka. Her perfumed scent was too potent a distraction.
Reaching past her, he put his hand on the door plate. She turned and looked up at him, fingers reaching out to touch his face.
"You're the friend," she said quietly. "I came to you."
"Me?" He stood frozen in surprise. This was the last thing he'd have expected.
She moved her hand, taking the drink from his slack grasp, holding it up to his lips. "Drink. You need it."
He did as she said, too surprised to do anything else, watching while she drank hers. She dropped the empty glasses to the floor, then reached up to put her hands on his shoulders.
Ice-gray eyes regarded him calmly, but what he was sensing from her was anything but calm: It was like a hunger.
Looking away, hesitantly he touched her hair, his hand sliding down it, teasing the unbound braid free until he could run his hand through its length.
"Your hair's longer now," he murmured, knowing it sounded inane but unable to think of anything else.
"You said long was nice."
He felt a jolt of surprise. "You remembered that after all this time?" Though true, it had been the only compliment he could think of at a time when she'd needed that kind of reassurance.
"You came back. Never spoke before. Should have. Realized when you went missing." She stopped, watching his face. "Now you're a Triad, I can ask. Couldn't before." Seeing no negative signs, she continued. "Were my superior at Stronghold. Not now. Now only you— and me."
Tentatively she laid her palm against his neck. "You remembered a promise made to one like me." Her voice was low as she laid her head against the fold of his robe and began to nuzzle it open.
He remained still, forcing himself to answer her. "Like what, T'Chebbi? You were a victim, a prisoner of theirs. How could I leave you?" He sucked in a breath as unexpectedly her teeth closed on his flesh and she nipped him. His hand slipped round her waist, feeling the hardness of the silver chain beneath his fingers.
"Everyone else did," she said, lifting her head briefly to push his robe open wider.
As her mouth closed on him again, his hand tightened convulsively in her hair. Her scent was warm, inviting, and sending all thoughts of anything but her from his mind. The heat of desire flicked through his limbs, spread through his body till with a suddenness that surprised him, he was erect and ready for her.
"Wanted you then, Tallinu, even with all my fears." She took a step back from him and pulled his head down on a level with hers, beginning to nip and lick her way along his jawline to his ear. "Couldn't. You'd see me wrong."
"No, I wouldn't have," he protested, hands closing on her maddeningly provocative thighs. As he caressed them, he realized they were every bit as muscular and firm as they looked.
"We nearly lost you, Tallinu!"
He felt her fear as if it was his own, and the courage it had taken to be this open with him. She clutched him tighter as her mouth closed on his. Before he realized, he was responding in kind, her kiss so like Carrie's it shocked him.
"Human kisses," he murmured, pushing her against the door, holding her there while his free hand roamed across her hips and lower back.
"Was taught it long before the Humans were found," she said, reaching for his tie belt and releasing it. "Thirty years and more. Only you know my past."
"I knew you were a qwene," he began.
"Not that," she said, her tail twining round his leg and gently tugging him closer. "More. That's why the Fleet took me."
As her tail snaked higher, its feathery tip flicking against the more sensitive parts of his anatomy, he moaned with pleasure. Burying his head against her neck, he pushed her tunic skirt aside. "Tell me later," he mumbled. Her perfume enveloped him now, robbing him of any purpose other than pairing with her immediately.
Suddenly her hands tightened like vises on his forearms, claws penetrating enough to hurt as she pushed him back.
"
Not
Pack way." Her ears were lying aslant.
Letting her go, he growled deep in his throat, angry with himself. She deserved better. "You're right." Stepping back, he took a deep breath and indicated the waiting bed. "Will you share it with me?"
Her ears righted themselves as she stepped away from the door.
Curbing his impatience, he waited till she'd curled up in the central depression of the bed before joining her, discarding his robe on the way.
"Are you sure this is what you want?" he asked, touching her ear gently.
She leaned closer, hair falling forward about her shoulders. Once more her scent rose to meet his nostrils. "Yes."
As she laid the flat of her palms against his chest, he felt his nipples instantly harden at her light touch. Then her hands moved, one to lose itself in the hair on his neck, the other to play games with claw tips up and down his spine, making him shiver in delight.
Tipping her down onto the bed, he reached for the seals on her tunic, pulling it free till all she wore was the silver chain. As his hands ran through her fur, he was momentarily surprised at the flatness of her chest and belly. He leaned closer, burying his nose in her pelt, breathing the perfume in deeply. He didn't want to remember Carrie at this moment. His tongue searched for her nipples and teased each of them in turn while his uninjured hand reached below her belly for the soft inner surface of her thighs.
Gentle, unexpectedly female mewls of pleasure escaped her as her hands began to knead his flesh. When he lifted his head, she sought his mouth, her tongue flicking between his teeth in a kiss as deep as any of Carrie's had been. Then her hand closed round the base of his tail.
Instantly he reared back, hands held facing her at shoulder level. "I cannot submit." His voice was hoarse, but it was the only response he could make when two warriors such as they met to pair.
The light had cast her face into a pool of shadow from which her eyes glittered up at him. She blinked slowly. "I will." Her voice was barely audible.
This he hadn't expected. He reached down, flipping her over onto her stomach, waiting for her to fold her legs up under her belly. As she rose to meet him, with one arm he encircled her hips while the other reached for the scruff of her neck. Pulling her firmly back against him, they joined. The relief was instant as her inner warmth closed tightly around him. He withdrew slowly, beginning to move rhythmically within her. Unable to move, T'Chebbi gave a sudden whimper of distress.
Automatically his mind reached for hers, and what he sensed was enough to make him release his grasp on her neck. Whatever she'd said, it had been too soon for her to submit to him. She'd had no lovers till now— her period of celibacy had been almost as long as his. They needed to pair as equals since they were not lovers.