Val clung to my skin, sleek and pure, connected smoothly to me, with none of that prickling, aching sensation that felt like we were about to splinter into a million pieces. For once, I felt whole, united, complete. I ran my hands over my chest, over the silver of her shape where it protectively curved over Ysa’s handmade armor. “Do you feel that?” I murmured under my breath so softly that Frederique could not hear, but Val could. As if the words drew her attention to our bond, she twitched along my flesh, and then it felt like we fell out of sync again: a prickle through my flesh, a burr under my skin, two pieces of a puzzle that just wouldn’t fit.
“Sin, are you all right? Let me see that.” Frederique’s voice jarred me from the horrible sense of failure that followed the breaking down of Val’s bond to me. Why did that keep happening? What was wrong with me? Val felt as sad and broken about it as I did, more ways in which our jagged pieces did not quite fit.
Frederique was the one who changed the moment from a total, mad-making loss to something else. Her hand on my forearm was warm even through Val and the armor. Perhaps it just seemed that way because no one ever voluntarily touched me. Not unless we were fighting, and then only Asmoded was regularly willing to be my sparring partner. But she? She stepped up to my side, still tasting intensely of fear after that battle, and pressed her fingers to my arm like it was nothing.
She tugged, and before I could stop myself, I was leaning in, and she’d raised her other hand to my cheek. The shock of her skin pressed to mine was too much, it lanced through my flesh and arrowed straight down to my groin. Heat pooled there, and my cock rapidly grew painfully hard. She was only stroking her fingers along my cheekbone and murmuring about a small littlecut, not inviting me to take her to the ground and mount her. She might as well have. That’s how it felt.
“It’s nothing,” I said through clenched teeth, my jaw so tight it made them ache in protest. To show how little that tiny cut mattered, Val slid over it and then away, revealing only smooth, unblemished skin. Yet she clung to Frederique’s fingers in a caress, holding on before sliding down to pool around her wrist, thickening the strands already gathered there.
“Okay, you heal fast, I knew that. That’s what Sons of Ragnar do, right? You’re practically immortal.” She was breathless as she spoke, her fingers clenching against my arm. Her fear was gone, and I didn’t know if that was because Val had sucked it up, or if it had vanished on its own. I did know that she smelled of heat, of welcoming female; attraction. It was painful, the thought that she would not be opposed to having me take her to the floor right here, right now. Like a beast. Maybe I would.
“Maybe I am,” I agreed, far more amicably now that she smelled so richly welcoming. My hand found her throat, circled it, and I enjoyed the spike of fear that rose then fell. My thumb was on her pulse point, and it thudded rapidly in her throat. “I warned you,” I said, reminding her of our words earlier in that other dark hallway, which was so much like this one. Only this one was covered in the spray of black blood from that creature, and that one had been coated in stale dust.
“Okay,” she sighed, and I pushed because I always did like pushing people. That part might make me a bastard, and it was all mine. She stumbled back a step in my grip, and Val coiled around her, held her up until her back hit a wall that was at least somewhat clean. Val cradled her, but it was as much to restrainas to protect. Our eyes were locked together, hers wide and so very green they made no sense. Her breathing was on my face, warm and soft. Her scent wrapped around my head, clouding my thoughts until there was only her and the victory after the fight again, not the failure of my bond with Val. She was so much temptation wrapped into a small package.
“Kiss me then,” she dared, as if it were her choice, not mine. I growled—a warning not to push me—and then I did as she’d dared me to, anyway. My mouth on hers, our breath mixing, tongues tangling. She did not surrender; she did not go quietly at all, fighting me for every stroke and caress and taste. She was maddening. She was passion and fire and all kinds of rebellious, inciting me to force her to submit, daring me to try.
“I will,” I warned her, even if she could not possibly know where my thoughts had headed. “I will,” I vowed. Her teeth were blunt but sharp enough to send a dart of pain through my flesh when she nipped my lip in response. That bold female had bitten hard enough that, on a human, she might have drawn blood. It was a warning, to let me know that she was not going to go quietly, but I already knew that. I’d have her anyway, and on my terms.
When she raised her hands to curl them against my neck, it was more touch than I could handle. Ten points of contact where her fingertips touched, and a direct line of sensation ran down my spine. I jerked back, but I told myself that wasn’t a retreat—this was a tactic to leave her on edge, wanting more. I’d make her beg for it before I kissed her again.
Turning my back to her was the only way I could keep my damned distance, but that was not something I was willing to admit, not to myself, and certainly not out loud. The sight ofher kiss-bruised mouth was forever engraved on my brain: pink cheeks, red and wet mouth, and the tangle of her silky hair partially in her face. Even the way her chest rose and fell rapidly was enticing, as if she were offering her breasts to me with each deep inhale.
“We need to get out of here before that thing comes back,” I barked to the wall. The blood splatter was black like ink and had sprayed this wall in a sinuous arc. Each drying drop gleamed like oil, with a rainbow of colors that reminded me of the path markers inside theVarakartoom. I heard her move behind me, shuffling as she straightened her clothing. I ignored my aching cock, as that sound reminded me of the sexy way she’d looked. Iwasthe sineater, couldn’t blame myself for being ravenous for one particular sin: lust.
“Right, whatwasthat thing? I thought I saw a face… Oh, Sin, I think I might know who it is!” She had already shortened Sineater to Sin, how human of her. I wanted to twist to her, to mock her for that custom, anything to create distance after we’d tangled so closely. Then her horror washed over me, and Val rose, sliding back into her Gracka form and eagerly feeding on the feeling. Her horror was so intense that I did turn to look, and felt a spark of sympathy somewhere in the hollow, empty space behind my ribs.
She stared at me with huge eyes, and though her hair was still tangled from my fingers, there was no trace of true passion. The horror was accompanied by a hint of fear and a delicious dose of guilt. Val was always particularly satisfied with that last one, but she did not seem to enjoy feeding on Frederique’s guilt the way she did on that of others. It felt as though Val were the one feeling guilty for doing so, for needing it to be strong.
“I think that was Davidson. My navigator. But how? What happened?” she said, as the silence stretched and I hadn’t asked her to explain anything. I shrugged, because I knew as much as she did. Whatever dark things lived in the ocean of this planet had never been studied, never been seen by anyone able to tell about it afterward. It was interesting to consider that it was another kind of symbiont, and that it had claimed the person from the one empty stasis pod, apparently.
“Do you think… Do you think Davidson is still in there? Or has he been completely corrupted?” she asked, finally stepping away from the wall and once again boldly moving to stand right next to me. Why? Why did she have to get this damned close every time? She had no respect for personal space, and I expected my personal space to be at least ten feet at all times. A nice little bubble of distance theVarakartoom’s crew knew to respect, but not her, damn it.
“No,” I snapped, frustrated because now her sweet, floral scent was swirling into my nose, teasing me, tempting me. “He’s been like that for almost as long as this ship has been down here. Didn’t you see the dust that had collected in his pod?” Her expression shuttered, but her horror was fading, numbing, spiraling out of her, as Val gobbled it up. It was never clear to me if it helped the people Val fed from or just made it harder for them to deal with their feelings. It certainly hadn’t mademeany less of a pessimistic bastard. She seemed steady, though, calm, ready to go toe to toe with me again.Thatwas the biggest temptation of all. It would be so simple to clasp the back of her neck and hold her in place so I could lay claim to her soft, pink mouth again.
“Oooh, that’s not good,” she said. “Where are we? Talacan territory? Don’t tell me we crashed on Talac itself. Wouldn’t they have found us if we had?” She peered around me, down the hall, then sidled up to the splatter on the wall to study it closely. She was not stupid enough to reach out and touch it, but her hands twitched as if she wanted to. Given the data I’d read about her on the ship’s computer, she probably wanted to take samples to study under a microscope.
“Oh no,” I drawled, taking her elbow and guiding her away from the wall. “You made it out of the Alpha Quadrant, barely. And then you crashed on the most dangerous planet in existence. Now, where are the life pods? You’ll need one to get off this leaky bucket.” She blinked at me, her steps stumbling and slow as I dragged her away from her fascination with the creature’s blood. I could not explain why exactly, but it made me extremely uneasy to let her get close to it.
She halted, digging in her heels and tilting her head to lookup at the ceiling, as if she could see straight through the metal hull. “We’re underwater?” she demanded, leaping to the correct conclusion with startling intuition. I nodded, seeing no point in lying, and she bit her lip, frowning as if that made a huge difference to her. Then she sighed and lifted a graceful hand to point in the other direction. “The closest ones are that way.”
Chapter 8
Frederique
My cheeks still felt like they were on fire as I led the way into theLancing Light, toward where I knew the escape pods were—at least a few of them. Some ships only relied on their short-range shuttle for emergencies, but theLancing Lighthad been kitted out with more serious options. After all, we were undertaking a two-year journey; the risk of running into danger had been more than average. Clearly, the extra safety feature hadn’t helped one bit. I tried not to feel sore about that.
It was much easier to focus on positive things, on the warm, excited feeling that kiss had brought alive inside my chest. This Talacan guy was such a mystery, starting with how he’d gotten here and who he was. There was no doubt in my mind he had a very long and very convoluted story to tell. It started with his supposed name. Sineater? Come on, nobody was called that at birth. Even terrible parents gave their kids better names.
If I considered the chance of him finding me—alive and well—aboard a somehow intact ship at the bottom of the ocean on a dangerous planet… his words, not mine. What were the odds? Astronomical. So why was he here? I doubted it was because he was looking for a lost diplomatic mission barely anyone knew about, from more than seven hundred years in the past.
And then there was all that simmering heat that crackled between us. He acted cold, even mean, and seemed to want to keep his distance, but I had stopped buying that act a while ago. He had the sweetest symbiont companion, and everysubconscious gesture seemed primed to protect me. From a hand on my shoulder to keep me from falling over, to the way he’d thrown himself between me and that horrible creature attacking, twice now. Once with pretty severe injuries as a result. And you couldn’t tell me that didn’t hurt, even if he healed fast.
“The pods are in this hall. It’s closest to the hull. There’s an identical bay like this directly on the opposite side of the ship,” I said, keeping my tone neutral, as if I were lecturing a classroom of university students, not talking to a real, flesh-and-blood Son of Ragnar—one who had stuck his tongue down my throat not long ago and nearly caused me to combust on the spot. I had a feeling that giving him any idea of how strongly he affected my libido would be a terrible idea. He was too bossy, and I needed to figure out whether that was a good thing or a bad thing for me.
He kept his distance as he looked at the row of hatches, and I could not get a read on his expression. It was not my nature to prattle to fill a silence, but I did enjoy being armed with knowledge so I could make tactful and informed decisions. That I needed to get off the ship and off this planet was a given, and that this man called the Sineater was my best bet to do so was also obvious. How much had the universe changed while I slept? That was the big question. What if there weren’t even any humans left alive? What if this Talac was now part of the UAR and here to drag me home in chains? He hadn’t said anything about why he was here, and I had to stop thinking that it was just because he hated talking.
The hatches were small, and the pods seated two humans—if you didn’t mind getting up close and personal. Squeezing into one with the Talacan would be an extremely tight fit, and I had a feeling he was beginning to realize that. On the other hand,each taking a separate pod was a recipe for disaster. We’d lose each other. That wouldn’t be inmybest interest right now, but perhaps it was in his?
