Chapter 6:
Newport shone in the corner of the window, its green and gold surface shimmering gently as they neared it. Tara, her heart heavy and her thoughts disordered and shattered, stood there looking down, trying to reconcile the tryst she had had with Blade with the present moment and the future looming up in the windows.
Blade said, “We will set down on a lower city, one that has little in the way of security. I have arranged to get a hovercraft to take us to Newport City as soon as we land.”
“You should not do that. You know you can’t.” Her heart was heavy. Everything was wrong, and what was most wrong was the undeniable desire to tell him to just pull away from that planet, to take her with him wherever it was that he was going. She swallowed hard. “You could get captured.”
It was true. They had had plenty of time to get to know each other over the journey and he’d had no trouble admitting that he was an outlaw and a wanted man, not that he had needed to admit that fact to her.
“I won’t. I’m far cleverer than they are.”
That reason alone kept her silent. She had fallen for him and hard but how much of that was due simply to his bad-man aura?
He was a bad man.
He was a criminal and a thief, and she suspected that he had killed a lot of beings. So she could add killer to that list of things that made it impossible for her to stay with him.
The largest reason for her not being able to ask him to keep her with him lay below, on Newport.
Jack. The man she had pledged her heart and soul to and who was, right now, probably frantic with worry and fear over what had happened to her.
She sighed out, “Nobody can outsmart the Federation forever. They always win.”
God. How had she let that slide from her lips? Like most people, she was sick of the Federation and its boot-heel on her neck, but that was the bargain that had been made for peace, and she had always known peace on her planet, which made her very lucky, and she knew it.
Blade said, “There may be a day when one may not have to outsmart the Federation.”
Terror seized her. Her body went rigid. Her muscles locked into place and her mouth parted so words could leave them. “Do not say such things! That is treason and treason is punishable by death!”
He strolled closer. Her pulse picked up, and blood ran through her veins, making her core clench and go wet with desire for him. She took a step back, a feeble attempt to ward off the lust that resided within her own body, a lust she could not step away from.
Blade said nothing else to her as they finally hit atmosphere and then settled to earth. The hovercraft was there, and they got in it, still not speaking. Tara’s heart hurt.
She was so torn. Blade was an amazing man, and she wanted him, wanted him badly, but she was duty bound to Jack—and she had to see him again. Had to be with him even if her heart would always wonder what might have been between her and Blade.
Tara stared at the streets of downtown Newport City with dazed eyes. It felt like forever since she had been there and everything looked different and changed. Nothing had changed really. There was her favorite little café with its mock-tea and oxygen whiffs. There was her favorite building, the one she wanted to someday own a loft in, even though that was far beyond her means.
Everything was the same. Except her. She had left there as a woman who had never traveled or seen anything outside the city, and she was coming back as a woman who had committed an act of murder, who had been somehow kidnapped, and who had seen a great deal of space before being deposited back here upon her homeland.
She was also a woman who cheated on her fiancé with her rescuer.
She was an adulteress!
That last thought unsettled her. Her eyes slid over to Blade. She had thought, honestly she had thought, that perhaps Jack was dead. He had not answered the com-cast calls at all, and it had been that oddly vital physical attraction she felt for Blade coupled with her true belief that Jack must be dead that had sent her into his bed.
Only Jack was not dead.
She had managed to reach his employment site, and they had informed her in no uncertain terms that he was indeed alive, although not in the office that day. The person she had spoken to had been quite confused when she had asked had he been at work. She had hung up before they could ask any questions that might force her to admit the embarrassing truth of what had happened on the pleasure planet and during that ill-fated trip that the two of them had taken.
Blade was wrong about Jack. Blade had said that perhaps Jack had sold her. Jack would never have done that! She had honestly believed that the only reason he was not answering his com-calls was because he must be dead. On the other side of that, he had not answered those calls.
Why not?
He had to have known she was missing! Had he not considered that perhaps the com-cast call might be from her or had he been so busy with work and so out of sorts that he had simply not realized that she was calling?
Blade said, “Listen, I’m not going to just leave here until I know that you are safe.”
She stared at him. He was an outlaw, a wanted man. His papers were as false as his smile. That smile that had melted her heart, and her panties. Dammit! Why had she believed that Jack was dead? Why had she gone to bed with Blade even if she had thought Jack was dead? That she could fall into bed so easily with someone else, even, and especially, while thinking that Jack must be dead, confused her.
