“Yes,” Lissa whispered again, aloud this time, and then Saber pressed her to her side and cuddled behind her on the bed, holding her tight, letting her know everything would be all right. That no matter what anyone back home thought, they belonged together, and they would never be apart.
The time after love had always been sweet for them, but this time, Saber reluctantly cut it short.
“Mmm…” Lissa moaned in protest when he got out of bed. “Where are you going? It’s the middle of the night.”
“I know it is, but I really need to talk to Reddix.” Saber sighed. “I need to tell him I’ll take back the burden I put on him—tell him the two of us are going back to Tarsia to rule, if they’ll have us.”
Lissa sat up. “They won’t.”
“Probably not. But we at least have to try.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “We’ll try.”
“And that’s what I have to tell Reddix. Maybe…maybe it will lift some of the burden off his shoulders, let him rest a little easier.”
Lissa gave him a sad little smile.
“You truly love him, don’t you?”
“He’s like a brother to me,” Saber said seriously. “And the way he was earlier—you should have seen him, Lissa—he was almost wild. He told me he’d done things…”
“What things?” She frowned.
Saber shook his head. “Never mind. Hopefully, he’ll be able to undo them once he knows he’s not alone in all this. I’m just going to go talk to him, and then I’ll come right back.”
“You promise?” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Because I was kind of hoping for a little more love.”
Saber gave her an appreciative growl.
“You’ll have as much as you can handle, I promise you, amalla.” Bending down, he took her mouth in a sweet, hot kiss. “Just let me speak to Reddix, and I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t take too long.” She lay back on the bed and curled up on her side. “It’s lonely in this big bed without you.”
For a moment, Saber wavered. Reddix was staying in the guest quarters—all the way on the other side of the massive Kindred Mother Ship. And Lissa looked so warm and inviting curled in the bed that way. Saber almost put off talking to his friend until the next day, just to stay with her. Then he remembered the wild look on Reddix’s face and the witch’s mark on his wrist.
No, he told himself. This can’t wait. I have to go to him now. Have to give him peace so he can rest and heal.
Kissing Lissa once more, he went out to find his friend and put his mind at ease.
Chapter Six
He was flying—flying over the surface of an alien world he’d never seen before. There was a blue ocean, topped with frothing caps of foam, but he didn’t seem to be headed there. Instead, he saw a land mass growing in his field of vision—a long, thick strip of terrain thrust out into the water like an accusing finger. A peninsula.
“Florida,” he thought to himself, and the name sounded right, although he didn’t know where it had come from.
But he didn’t have time to worry about his sudden inexplicable knowledge for long. He was coming in faster now, flying over the land at alarming speed like a projectile shot from a weapon. Trees and beaches, alien beasts and buildings were all passing by in the blink of an eye. Clearly, he was aiming for something, but what?
“So how are you this week? You seem a little tense.”
Before he could wonder where the voice was coming from, Reddix’s disembodied self was slicing neatly and silently through the roof of a strange building. He caught a glimpse of different rooms as he passed through them. There was a waiting area filled with people sitting on chairs and a pretty girl behind a long rounded counter. Behind that was a series of smaller rooms, each with a padded table in the center. On some of the tables, humans were lying, spread out like dead fish and covered in white sheets. Each of them had an attendant—another human—leaning over them and doing…what were they doing, exactly?
It took Reddix a moment to figure it out, but when he did, he felt a strange mixture of revulsion and hunger. The attendants were touching the ones on the table. Touching them all over, rubbing, caressing, massaging…everywhere he saw bare hands on naked flesh. There was nothing sexual about it—nothing he could see, anyway, but still, the sight was almost more than he could bear. He spent so much time avoiding being touched himself that the idea of someone voluntarily taking off their clothing and letting someone else rub and massage their bare skin made him tremble. And yet…to have that kind of control. To be able to endure someone else’s hands on his body without feeling their emotions, without triggering his RTS to the point of pain and self-loathing…
That’s what I want, he thought, filled with sudden, unwilling longing. Just to be touched without feeling pain. Just to talk to another person and have a normal conversation without having to feel their emotions crawl all over me.
But how stupid was it to wish such a thing? It was impossible…impractical. And it was never going to happen.
“So tight right here. I think I need to hit some trigger points.”
There was that voice again—for some reason it sounded familiar. Suddenly, Reddix found himself hovering over a tiny room near the back of the alien building. He watched what was going on in the room with interest.
Lying on his stomach on the padded table was a large, flabby man with thinning brownish hair.
“Yeah, I’m a little tense, darlin’” he was saying. “Business, you know. We did several multi-million deals this week, and of course, I had to be involved in them all. Had to keep it all running smoothly.”
“Of course,” said the girl bending over him. “That sounds stressful.”
“Well, it is but when you’re the firm’s top earner…”
The flabby man went on in a boastful voice, but Reddix had already tuned him out. He only had eyes for the girl, because now that he saw her, he realized he had seen her before—many, many times.
I’ve been dreaming of her for months, he thought, shocked. Why couldn’t I remember until now?
Looking at her, he couldn’t answer the question. Couldn’t see how in the Seven Hells he could ever forget a face and body like that.
The girl was tall for a female, though she would still be at least a head and a half shorter than him. She was leaning over her client, working intently on his back and neck. Her slender shoulders were hunched, and her head was tucked down so that Reddix couldn’t see her features.
His eyes traveled down her body instead.
She had long black hair with reddish highlights that fell to her curvy waist. Despite her loose uniform smock, he could see she had full hips and a generous heart-shaped ass. Her skin was a warm shade of coppery-brown, which spoke of either hours in the sun or an exotic heritage.
Well, of course she had an exotic heritage—she was an alien, at least to Reddix. Probably, she looked perfectly normal for Earth. He wondered what her face looked like—for some reason, though he knew the girl, he couldn’t quite remember it. If he’d had a proper Touch sense like every other male of his clan, he could have sent a whisper-tendril to trail along the back of her neck and make her move so he could see her. Instead, he had to content himself with willing her to look up.
Finally, she stood up straight, and Reddix caught his breath—or would have if he had been breathing.
She had lovely features—strong for a woman but no less beautiful for all that. Her high cheekbones gave her a striking look, but it was her eyes that really caught his attention. Deep, pure blue with golden flecks, they looked like twin pools filled with sunlight.
Reddix had never seen eyes like hers before, and he found he couldn’t stop looking at them. They stood out in her face, a vivid contrast to her warm, copper skin. They turned her from merely pretty to strikingly beautiful.
And they were filled with anger.
“Please don’t ask me that again, Mr. Witherspoon,” she said tightly, taking a step away f
rom the table. “All the massages we do here at Massage Envy are strictly therapeutic.”
“But come on, Nina, darlin’—what could be more therapeutic than a happy ending?”
A happy ending—what the hell is he talking about? Reddix wondered.
The man turned over on his back suddenly, showing a tent under the white sheet and giving Reddix his answer. He felt a growl rising in his throat—or would have if he’d been there in person. How dare this filthy son of a bitch go near her? How dare he try to touch her like that? Despite his determination to keep himself aloof and distant from the girl, Reddix felt an instant surge of protectiveness. Floating above, watching the scene as a silent, invisible observer, he had never felt more helpless. He could do nothing but watch as the scene unfolded…and it wasn’t nearly over yet.
“I’m sorry but no,” the girl called Nina said firmly. “And if you say anything else about it, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Just a little…” The man reached for her hand. “Come on, sweetie—just a little rub. Just touch it. Just once.”
“No!” Nina yanked her hand away, a disgusted look on her face. “I told you, this isn’t that kind of a place! We’re a national chain, for God’s sake—what’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong is that I need your sweet hands on me.”
“Mr. Witherspoon, this is the last time I’m warning you…”
“All right then.” The man flipped back over onto his stomach with poor grace. “Just finish up.”
From the look on Nina’s lovely face, she would rather have touched a cesspool full of slime. But she simply nodded and went back to work on the man.
“So how is your wife?” she said pointedly. “I met her that time I saw you in the grocery store, remember? She’s really pretty.”
“Not as pretty as you, darlin’.”
“Mr. Witherspoon…”
The man sighed. “You can’t blame me for trying, you know. You’re so gorgeous and sweet and talented. Ah, that’s the spot.” He sighed as she rubbed his lower back. “I always feel better after you work me over. You have the healing touch—you know that, right?”
The scene was beginning to fade, but as he heard the words, Reddix felt a shock that ran all the way through his invisible, incorporeal self.
The healing touch. Can it be? Is she the one? She must be, or I wouldn’t be dreaming of her.
As the dream broke apart and he rushed upward toward consciousness, he knew there was only one way to find out…
But getting off the Mother Ship and down to Earth wasn’t nearly as easy as Reddix had hoped it would be. The docking bay was on the other end of the ship from his guest suite. By the time he finally got there, having to go through a hellish stew of emotions in order to do so—it was nearly forty-five minutes since he’d awoken from his dream.
No dream, he told himself grimly as he strode down the long, echoing corridor of ships to the place where he had parked his own. It was a vision. It was real—the girl is real, and she’s the one who can help me. The only one—I have to get to her!
As if to prove his point, the dream hadn’t faded away like most dreams do, melting away to nothing ten or fifteen minutes after one wakes up. Instead, Nina was as fresh and as clear in his mind as if she was standing right in front of him. Reddix though he could close his eyes and recall her so vividly he’d be able to count the flecks of gold in her deep blue eyes.
He still couldn’t understand why he hadn’t remembered his previous dreams of her. For some reason, though, this one seemed to stick and the others were coming back too. He remembered watching her work in a place filled with brightly colored alien artifacts as well as talking to an ancient little old woman he thought she called “Mejoo” or “Meloo”—something like that. And the more he remembered, the more urgently he wanted to see her live, in the flesh.
But when he got to his ship and put his fingers on the handle, the hatch wouldn’t open.
“What in the Seven Hells?” Reddix muttered, trying again. The hatch was keyed to his prints and should have opened at his lightest touch. He yanked at the unyielding handle and a small beeping noise went off. Looking down, Reddix saw a small message written in glowing green light letters scrolling across the side of his ship beside the handle.
Access denied. You have not been cleared for flight by Commander Sylvan. Access denied.
Reddix cursed furiously and shook the door handle until it rattled, but it did no good. His own ship had been locked against him, and there was no way to override it without Sylvan’s permission—permission he would no doubt refuse to grant when he knew what Reddix wanted to do.
He could just see how his confrontation with the physician would go now—“So you want to go down to a strange planet filled with alien people spewing alien emotions when your RTS is already overloading your system almost to the point of death so you can kidnap an innocent girl and sacrifice her to a witch to cure your affliction? Why certainly, go right ahead.” Reddix snorted. I don’t think so.
But all this sarcasm wasn’t getting him anywhere. More and more he had a feeling of urgency—a tension in his gut that told him Nina was the one he was seeking—the girl with healing hands and a pure heart. He needed to get down to Earth—but how?
Well, if I can’t go in my ship, I’ll take another. Of course, stealing a ship and violating his doctor’s orders probably wasn’t the best way to ingratiate himself with his hosts, but at this point, Reddix didn’t care.
Looking around, he saw a row of patrol shuttles, usually used for transporting prisoners or enemy warriors to and from the Mother Ship. They were general use and so ought to respond to any Kindred warrior’s handprint. Of course, once his print was in the system, it would be clear he’d taken a ship. But only if someone was looking for him. And since Sylvan had ordered him to go to his suite and see no one for a good long time, Reddix estimated he might get a pretty good head start.
Trying to control his impatience, he strolled nonchalantly down to the end of the row, selecting the last ship. It looked dusty from disuse, probably because it was an older model than the others. So much the better—no one would miss it.
Reddix pressed his palm to the silver metal side, and the front hatch slid open soundlessly. He stepped inside and took a quick look around. There were food cubes and a rehydrator, which was good, as well as adequate sleeping arrangements. Clearly the shuttle was meant for long range missions and was equipped accordingly.
But the most useful piece of equipment he found was in a cabinet marked “Restraints” in glowing red letters near the back of the cockpit. Inside were a gleaming pair of copper-colored wrist cuffs with a tiny copper release mechanism, which Reddix pocketed. The cuffs had obviously been made for a Kindred male, but they were adjustable—they should fit Nina nicely. There were gags too, but he hesitated to use one. A hard gag could be dangerous, and he didn’t want to hurt her.
Of course you don’t, whispered a sarcastic little voice in his head. You just want to kidnap her and take her to the swamp witch so she can drain her blood for your own selfish reasons.
Reddix frowned. Can’t think like that. If he didn’t get cured of his RTS, at least enough to father a child on Tilla, his entire damn society was going to crumble into a bloody civil war. He had to push his guilt to the side, push away the awe he’d felt at seeing her beauty, and remember that Nina was nothing to him—nothing but a means to an end.
Settling himself in the pilot’s chair, he strapped in and began the lift-off sequence. Time to get things done.
Chapter Seven
“You have a walk-in client, Nina. I hope that’s okay.” Cherri the front desk receptionist looked up at her appealingly. “I know it’s closing time, but he begged so hard, and besides, he’s really good looking. Seriously, like movie star looks.”
Nina tried to hold back a sigh. Her arms and hands were aching from all the massages she’d given that night. And then that run in she’d had with Mr. With
erspoon…she shivered in disgust at the memory. God, she had to get him banned from Massage Envy or at least make sure he was only allowed to have male masseuses in the future. He’d hinted around about wanting a “happy ending” before, but he’d never been quite so blatant about his desires. Just thinking of what he wanted made Nina feel like she needed a hot shower to wash the slime off.
It’s not forever, she reminded herself. Just until you get into the PA program and get through it. After that, she could use her “healing touch”, as Mr. Witherspoon called it, for actually healing people instead of just rubbing them down.
Not that her massages didn’t do people good, though. She had many clients who came to see her over and over, claiming that she was the only one who could help them. Many of them had chronic pain that no medicine seemed to touch. But after Nina worked on them, they felt better for weeks at a time. So maybe Mehoo-Jimmy was right about her…at least in a way. But it’s silly to think I could take away someone’s pain just by touching them, it’s just that I have good technique…
“Are you mad at me?” Cherri asked in a small voice. “I’m really sorry…”
Nina realized she still hadn’t answered the girl.
“No.” She sighed. “It’s just been a really long day. Let me know before you add one next time, okay?”
“Okay.” Cherri brightened. “But seriously, just wait ‘til you see him. He is so hot. You’re gonna thank me for adding him—you’ll see.”
“I’m sure.” Nina tried to smile. At this point, she was so tired she wouldn’t have cared if it was Ryan Gosling or Brad Pitt naked on her table—she just wanted to go home. But whatever. Just get it done, she told herself. Then you can go take a nice hot bubble bath and eat a big bowl of Special K with strawberries for dinner. She knew she shouldn’t eat carbs at night, but damn it, it had been a rough day. Just this once, she was making an exception.
“I already put him back in your room,” Cherri said, grinning. “And told him to get naked for you.”