“I’m sorry I had to stab your girlfriend,” she murmured, “but she started it.”
“You’ve really lost it,” he said, shaking his head. “And unfortunately, I can’t trust you to maintain while I treat her wounds. I’m going to have to take drastic measures.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Going to lock me up until we get back to Vanfia? For my own good?”
“Not exactly.” His chestnut eyes bored into hers, and for an instant, she regretted the ill will she’d wished on him.But he deserved it, right?
Right?
She was expecting the cold voice to answer, but there was only silence.Strange.
“Mayra, you will take yourself into the bedroom and you will lay yourself on the bed and go to sleep until I wake you up. Do you understand?”
A sudden compulsion to do just as he asked weighed on her.I am tired, so tired. But if she did as he said, she’d be a sitting duck when they got to Vanfia.
“No,” she whispered, even though every ounce of her being was screaming at her to follow his orders.
“Mayra, you will obey me. Go to bed. Go to sleep. Now.”
Before she realized it, she was headed into the bedroom. She turned back to see Nojan working on the woman’s wound. Mayra tried to stop her feet from walking, tried to change direction, but she couldn’t.
The man had some kind of power over her, something she didn’t understand.Maybe he was telling the truth, she thought.Maybe he is an alien with magical healing blood. Maybe this is how he convinced Rantel and his goons to let them go.
But how could that be? Hadn’t she already determined that he’d lied about being from Vartik?
Mayra realized she was on the bed and she didn’t remember lying down. Already, she could feel sleep beginning to descend.How could this be happening?
Could I have been wrong? About everything?
Still, the cold voice was silent. She was on her own again, and that was a strangely comforting thought. Mayra wasn’t sure where the sinister inner voice had come from, nor why she had begun to trust it so implicitly.
She yawned, then wished she hadn’t as it had pulled the skin around her neck, causing the bleeding to intensify.I should really do something about that, she thought but was too tired to actually move.
The room was starting to dim around her, and her thoughts were drifting. She couldn’t help thinking about the last time she’d been in this bed. That time, she’d fallen asleep in a pair of strong arms. Nojan had made her feel incredible, had made her believe that she deserved the pleasure he brought her. Even more, that she brought him pleasure just as exquisite.
Please, gods, don’t let that have been a lie.
She wanted nothing more than for everything he’d told her to be true. She couldn’t understand why she’d been so eager to distrust him. So far, he’d kept his word. Then why had she been ready to turn against him?
That voice, she thought idly.That voice told me he was plotting against me, and I believed it.
Her inner voice had built a plot so convincing that she’d been about to end her own life because of it. Now that was a scary thought.
As sleep began to cover her like a warm blanket, Mayra prayed that the ship was headed to the alien world of Vartik and not back to Vanfia. She hoped with everything in her being that the handsome Nojan was who he said he was and not a liar. She wanted to believe that she could trust someone in this universe.
Please, let it be him. Let him be the one I can depend on, the one I can come to for protection, for comfort.
Maybe even for love.
She wouldn’t go that far, even though she knew in her own heart that she’d already fallen for him. She couldn’t expect him to return her feelings. Instead, she’d settle for his friendship and feel blessed to have it.
Still, as she began to drift, Mayra let herself wonder what life would be like if Nojan could return her feelings. What it would be like to be loved by a powerful warrior, a male who would always protect her, would always try to make her happy? And one who would bring her to the peak of such delightful pleasure. She felt like the woman who captured Nojan’s heart would be the luckiest woman in this, or any other, universe.
As sleep claimed her, a vison unfolded before her. Nojan, attired all in white, standing in a field of yellow flowers. Twin suns shone overhead in a cloudless lavender sky. She had neither seen nor smelled anything as beautiful as that sunny field and its inhabitant.
“Come on,” Nojan said, beckoning. “Come join me. It isn’t every day that a man learns he’s about to become a father.”
Mayra gasped at his words. A father? She peered down, saw familiar hands holding a belly that was only faintly rounded. A child grew inside her. His child.
