Authors: Marla Therron
Gulping, she scanned the canopy. “Please, Lyr. If a domé can rewire my brain to speak the native language, if a domé can control local weather enough to billow Vaya’s dust in the direction she wants, I
know
you can understand me. Just show me the way to a portal. They took me from my world! Send me home.”
The curtain of vines surrounding her rose all together as though a play had begun.
At the sight of what lay beyond, Rae crumbled to her knees. There were forty of those cabbages, already flared open with their knives glinting and bent her direction.
“I mean,” Rae said, mouth dry, “the phrase ‘send me home’ might not have gotten across how alive I’d like to be when I get there. S—sorry if I’ve offended you, Miss Lyr, ma’am.”
Except they weren’t pointed quite at her. The cabbages puffed and a glittering wave of sharp steel launched into the air. Rae had time to hit the soft, earthen ground only because they’d been pointed over her head.
The blades sank into a dark shadow high in the forest behind her. Tucked onto her side, Rae stared at the dark patch and wondered what had happened…
…when the shadow moved. It peeled from the background of the forest, snarled, and she wasn’t certain what she was seeing at first. It was as though a patch of forest uprooted itself and glided silently from one crown of branches to another, retreating. It left a trail of indigo-hued blood in its wake.
She’d seen something like it before. The way it had peeled from the forest and escaped made her think of the mimic octopus she’d found while scuba diving in Australia.
Its malleable body could transform into limitless shapes, textures, and colors, so that one moment it would look like a normal part of some coral reef, and the next it would scurry, as though a piece of the reef itself had broken off and slithered away on tentacles.
That arboreal version of the mimic octopus had also pulled itself along on tentacles. The major difference had been size: she couldn’t be certain, but it was at least as big as a Buick.
Terror sank its icy claws into her heart at the realization some predator had nearly ambushed her. It was only Lyr’s amazing cabbages that had saved her. All those pods behind her closed tight and stood straight. Whatever else was going on, Lyr didn’t want her dead.
Glancing at one of the knife-cabbages, Rae whispered, “Okay, I’m still mad at Garr and Vaya. But you and I? We’re cool.” She gave the plant a thumbs up.
The plant shivered once. Rae couldn’t translate that. She hoped it meant, “Got your back, honey,” but she couldn’t help notice that no portals were forthcoming. Instead, the vines draped back down, disguising the knife-cabbages from view.
Vaya and Garr broke through the brush line together, glancing wildly down at her. Vaya’s forearms were scratched and Garr bled freely down his right arm, purple blood dripping from his fingertips.
The prime collapsed in front of her and used his clean hand to feel along her torso for injuries.
Rae wormed from his touch and shouted, “I’m
fine
!”
Garr’s darkening, enraged expression suggested she might not stay that way long.
Chapter Four
Rae kept the treetop octopus to herself, since it also gave away that Lyr had saved her—which in turn might have prompted Garr to tighten his guard. She was holding out hope Lyr would still come through for her.
They scaled the ravine wall, with help from Garr’s otoya coat, which he stripped off and transformed into a liquid, coiling it gradually into a long rope. Anchoring one end into a far-up tree trunk, the line helped Rae make her ascent.
This meant Garr climbed shirtless, though, and Rae could see the two knives buried in him. Apparently no one else had noticed, because the brute paid his wounds no mind.
At one point, she nearly apologized, but couldn’t bring herself to. She hadn’t done a single thing wrong. All this sprang from the fact of her kidnapping.
Why, then, did the sight of Garr’s mangled shoulder fill her with remorse? His stone-cold expression betrayed no hint of what he felt. He’d been upset after finding her, and then shut down entirely.
During their climb, Garr paused to pluck roots, flowers, or in one case a wrinkled fruit that looked like a dried fig. He was probably collecting herbs for a poultice.
Once on the trail, they hiked a quarter mile before stopping at a waterfall that emptied into a pool. It was ringed with tablets where the squama grew fuzzy blue moss.
Vaya slunk away to scout and commune with Lyr, while Garr pried loose a squama plate that was concave on the inside. He used it as a bowl to mix his poultice.
It amazed Rae how thoroughly Lyr provided every component, down to the bowl. Garr never blinked at the good fortune of finding everything he needed along his path.
It occurred to Rae that the Skorvag might provide for her residents more thoroughly than Amazon did for the humans of Earth.
“Do you, uh, need some help?” Rae’s voice was softer than she’d expected.
Garr, his profile to her, methodically ground herbs together with a round stone, the corded power in the muscles of his forearm obvious from the motion.
He put everything into the mortar except that dried fig. Rae was so entranced by the creation of the poultice that Garr’s voice caught her unawares: “You are stubborn.”
“Maybe you should get to know a girl before you kidnap her. Might have saved you some trouble.”
“I could tell you were stubborn right away. A good quality for my taliyar.”
She sighed, blowing a loose strand of her hair from her eye. She was caked in mud, exhausted, and didn’t have the heart to fight him on it while staring at those ghastly knives stuck in his back. “You need help or not, big guy?”
Glancing at her sidelong, the severity in his face finally softened. “Pull them out. This poultice is ready.”
Rae had interned at a veterinary clinic one summer while putting herself through her undergraduate.
She swore she wouldn’t get squeamish now, but the idea of doing this to a non-animal still roiled her stomach. “Just grab and pull?” She wrapped her hands around the unsharpened root of one knife.
“Delicately,” he insisted.
Nodding, she went for a clean yank.
His whole body went rigid. She could tell he was trying not to scream in front of his mate. It was weirdly endearing—she thought briefly of Reese and she was pretty sure if he’d even
seen
Garr’s wound, he’d have broken down into hysterics.
So Garr is a filthy kidnapper. I still rank him a half point above my ex.
The pool beneath the waterfall wasn’t large, but was crystal clear. Beneath, the blue moss ended and instead there were hexagonal squama. Two of the plates started to glow faintly orange and Rae frowned at them.
“What’s going on in there?” She hoped her question distracted him, because she plucked the second knife out once he looked.
The prime winced, but otherwise her trick worked. “Those plates warm the pool.”
“Why?” The fact Lyr would heat a pool of water in the forest was fascinating. Maybe it had to do with fostering some kind of algae bloom.
“Because you’re filthy and unused to cold baths.”
“Whoa. I’m not taking a bath,” she said hastily. “Not in front of you.”
“You’re not taking one alone. Not after running.” He handed the dish with the poultice to her.
“You’re about to be very disappointed.” She had a cat as a girl, and she’d once tried to bathe it.
Once.
Rae intended to give him precisely the fight Tabitha gave her. Size mattered in such struggles, but so did a willingness to bite and spit.
Garr ignored her comment. “Pack each wound.” He indicated his shoulder, which hadn’t even bled much since she’d freed the knives.
The wounds went deep, but from his mobility and the clotting, she realized Ythirians healed much faster than humans. It had been an hour, and she suspected by tomorrow he’d have recovered.
She packed the poultice over each wound and Garr completed the process by using a strip from his otoya as a bandage.
He rotated his shoulder and nodded at her. “Good.”
In spite of everything, she allowed a tight smile. “I interned one summer with—”
Before she could finish, he snapped a hand around her wrist and stepped back into the pool—dragging her with him.
There was no time to bite, hiss, or gouge. She went headlong into the warm pool, submerged with Garr.
Water shot into her mouth and she came up sputtering, batting at him. He caught her one wrist, then the other, and spun her to face away from him. She writhed, but when he collapsed against the edge of the pool, she wound up in his lap.
“You bastard!”
“You can wash or I can strip you naked and do it for you.” His arm was around her waist—snug, like the ride bar on a roller coaster. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Rae made sarcastic bathing motions over either arm, her clothes sopping wet. She’d be that way all day. Her shoes, too! Just when she’d started feeling bad for him, he did
this
. “I hate you with the fire of ten thousand suns.”
“Good,” he murmured, voice a dark rumble in her ear.
God.
That sound set her on edge, made her aware of his warm body pressed into her. The wetted fabric of their clothes clung to their bodies, so that she could sense the sculpted shape of him beneath.
“Hate is passion. I want your passion, and all other parts of you.”
In spite of herself, the words tickled somewhere deep. It caused another reflexive comparison to Reese, who had despised her passion and obsession and even the intellect he’d once claimed had attracted him to her. Everything that made her strong had made Reese feel small. Garr wasn’t put off by any of it.
“You know, take me home and stop dunking me in the water, and maybe I’d let you take me on a few dates,” she lied. “Do this the traditional human way and you wouldn’t be half as bad.” It was a hell of a gambit.
“You already want me.”
Pompous jerk!
She scowled while scrubbing some of the mud from her clothes with her fingers. “I want nothing to do with you.” She kept her voice sharp as she dared.
“Ythirians can smell arousal.”
Oh.
Rae assessed her body, and in fact, the sensation of him pressed into her had her insides knotted tight, her skin flushed. She’d thought it was the warm water at first, but it had been a while since she’d been with a man—and she’d
never
been with one quite so physically sculpted as Garr. “Arousal isn’t the same as liking someone. Let alone loving them.”
He snorted. “You either want me or you don’t. And you do.”
Irritated, she pushed against him in a bid to escape. He opened his arm to let her surge away, and Rae turned to glare back at him.
Garr relaxed into the pool, arms spread wide on its rim. He watched her, amused.
Fisting her hands beneath the water, she said, “Love isn’t a purely genital connection where I’m from.”
He frowned, confused now.
“You know.
Love.
” The word was coming out as English and not Ythirian. Had they no exact equivalent? “Wanting to be with someone for reasons beyond just the physical. For
all
the reasons, all at once.”
“Of course,” he snapped. “The words don’t translate well, but we have it too. I want more than your body.”
She nodded.
Okay. Prediction: in five seconds, he’s going to say something that makes me want to murder him.
Struggling to explain, Garr glanced at the water, then back at her. “I also want your children.”
Yyyup.
“And,” he went on, “for you to manage the homestead.”
Uh huh. Keep it coming, big guy.
He stood so that she was reminded how she had to crane her head to look up at him. Water sleeked from his enormous shoulders. “And I want your spirit. Your intellect. As taliyar, you will help rule domé Kaython.” He squeezed his hand into a fist. “You will strengthen my people and we will crush our enemies.”
“Romantic.” Rae patted his flat, powerful abdomen and—okay—even after all that, she sort of wanted to kiss him there just a little. Shirtless as he was, she could see where those dark markings disappeared into his waterlogged pants, the weight sagging them low enough to reveal the ridges of his hip bones.
Between those ridges was the just-slightly concave cup at the root of his abdomen. Pushing carnal desires aside, Rae looked into his shiny black eyes. “Love isn’t just the sum of different metrics for things I give you. Or even things you can give me.”
“Then explain it to me,” he growled irritably.
She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “For starters, it’s a partnership. It’s both of us making each other the best people we can be—and that won’t happen if you’ve got all the power.
Love doesn’t mean I’m
yours
, so much as that we’re each others. It would mean—and this is totally hypothetical, as it will never happen—it would mean you’re also
mine
.”
He scowled stonily at her. “I am prime.”
“And I’m sure you’re very good at it, sweetie.” Another pat to his abdomen.
Whoo boy. That is fast becoming the “just one more M&M” of physical gestures. It’s a nice feature on him, but I’ve got to stop.
She willed her hand to her side.
Garr frowned at her and it was clear he’d sensed the sarcasm—he just didn’t know what to do with it. “Sit.” He pointed, and when Rae folded her arms, he moved closer.
She danced back, but soon found herself in his lap again, as before. Sighing, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Now what?”
“A prime takes care of his mate,” he answered simply, taking that dried fig. He squeezed it, breaking the rind until a viscous substance filled his waiting palm beneath.
The strong fruity scent and consistency made her realize that somehow the Skorvag had grown soap. On a tree. For people to just pick and use.
She winced from Garr’s hand at first, but he took hold of the tie holding in her braid, loosened it, and was surprisingly gentle in the way he combed the braid out, starting at the bottom and working his way methodically up.
At his gentle touch, she relaxed just a little. Truth told, Rae had always loved having her hair played with. She enjoyed haircuts, and the soothing quality of having it braided or combed out.
“I’m not your mate.” She felt compelled to point it out, maybe because she was simultaneously easing back into his chest while his fingers loosened her locks. The tight braid’s erasure eased a tension in her scalp and the graze of his fingertips slackened her body and mind at once.
He didn’t answer. A wise move: without his stubborn insistence to gall her, Rae could guiltlessly enjoy the way his fingertips massaged her head, working shampoo through her hair.
She tried not to sigh loudly—just a soft exhalation, as though all the pressure in her center leaked from her lungs slowly. Garr took his time, sure to work her hair from the roots to the ends.
His ministrations were firm, knowing, and never too rough, pushing her gradually into a state of languid satisfaction.
“On Ythir, the male cares for his mate,” he purred over her shoulder. “We show it through rituals, and this is one. Is my affection demonstrated, Dr. Rae Ashburn?”
He eased her into the water, tilted her head back, and washed the suds from her hair while being ever-so-careful not to get any in her eyes—his thumbs brushed any stray rivulets that threatened to drip past her eyebrows.
It was a different side to Garr, and truth told, had he not shown her through this ritual, she’d not have believed him capable of it. It would have been like expecting tenderness from a wild lion.
She thought briefly of the mating rituals of birds.
Demonstrating his value to me,
she realized.
Sighing, because the comfort of his hands had to eventually be replaced by the cold, hard fact of his sins, she twisted to face him. On her knees beside him, so as to avoid straddling, she squared him in her gaze.