Prince of Passion (10 page)

The malac maw split wide and the suction pulled him in. The feeler tentacles were everywhere around him, slick and strong, cool against his volcanic skin as the essence seemed to be stripping him to raw, quivering nerve endings.

A glaring light blazed in the shining interior, bouncing off the smooth lining of the shell and refracting off the particles of liqueur, dazzling him. A dozen slender dark shapes like swords or teeth—no, staves—slashed through the brightness.

A larger blackness—Luac—floated an arm’s length away. Icere grabbed for him with one numb hand. He tried to fill his lungs but couldn’t seem to breathe deeply. He just gasped and tugged the Ni-Saya toward him then ripped off his scrubber and put it over Luac’s face.

Holding his breath, he heard every pound of his heart echoing in his ears. He wondered if the malac felt and appreciated the tempo.

Then more hands were reaching into the malac, taking hold of Luac, pulling the Ni-Saya out toward the light.

Icere floated a moment alone.

Always alone.

One last hand, coming for him, slipped a scrubber over his face. His body throbbed with excruciating tenderness at the touch.

He blinked hard at the flash of indigo on the spread-fingered hand. The translucent webbing fanned a swirl of the liqueur across his chest and he shuddered.

He focused past the hand to Rynn’s face.

Her bare face, her lips slightly parted as she steadied him. A bubble trickled from her mouth.

He jackknifed, trying to pull the scrubber off. “No, Saya,” he said, seeing the comm link in her ear. “Take the air.”

She clamped her hand over his and shook her head.

The touch of her against his sensitized skin almost made him cry out again, but he couldn’t pull away. He seemed as bound to her as a barnacle.

“Rynn,” he whispered. “Take it.” But the words echoing in his head were
Take me
.

She did not let go of his hand. Instead, she raised one arm to grab the liqueur sachet still half lodged in the malac’s mantle where Luac had managed to cut it partly loose. As she tugged the spherical mass free, Icere fixed his gaze on the upper arches of her ribs under her arm. The flesh seemed strangely prominent there. The skin rippled, revealing feathered violet flesh underneath.

He jerked hard against her hold and broke free. She gave him a repressive frown and tucked the sachet under her arm. Right next to her gills.

Her loose chemise floated around her, but seemed no impediment as she spun in the water and swam up behind him.

She wrapped her other arm around his chest and up over his shoulder, holding him as closely as she held the liqueur sachet, while his legs dangled back between hers. She pushed them out from the malac, nudging aside the limply floating feelers. She’d given the malac a dose of her neurotoxin, he realized. He wondered if it would wake up with the same lightheadedness he’d experienced. Served it right for poisoning him.

The liqueur surged through his veins, and he gasped at the answering rush of the qva’avaq. He hadn’t believed the liqueur was powerful.

In the moment before his eyes rolled back in his head, he realized he’d been wrong.

***

He revived at the touch of cool dampness across his forehead and opened his eyes. Rynn hovered over him with a cloth in her hand. A faint nimbus of light surrounded her though the rest of the room was dark.

“Where…?” His voice cracked with the musky sweetness of the malac liqueur on the back of his tongue.

“Shh.” Rynn brought a shell cup to his mouth and he gulped at the pure water. When he finished, she took the empty cup and leaned away to put it aside.

And he realized she was lying flush against him.

And he was naked.

He recoiled and tried to push himself upright, but the instant he lost contact with her, the crystal in him roused at the abandonment. What should have been a silvery glimmer—a gentle farewell—flared bright in protest, firing across his nerve endings. Too much. He gasped as his vision whited out like an exploding sun.

Rynn pulled him close, fitting her shoulder under his, her arm across his bare chest. “Liqueur overdose. I hoped the worst of it would pass while you were unconscious. You seemed to rest easier when I was close.”

“The qva’avaq doesn’t like to be alone.” He panted against the shock; not quite pain, but a warning. “What happened?”

“You freed Luac. You remember that?”

He nodded. “Is he…?”

“Recovering nicely. It seems he inherited the dive reflex from my genetic alterations.” Her hand flattened across his chest, the webbing between her fingers cool on his hot skin. “If my great-grandfather was still alive, I’d have to thank him.” She tilted her head back onto his elbow to stare up at him. “I guess I’ll have to thank you.”

The intimate position made his breath hitch, but he struggled to focus. “It wasn’t an accident. Someone tampered with the staves.”

“Kylara showed me. The two injured divers are trusted friends of Luac’s. The third is in custody, awaiting questioning.”

“Then we should go question them.”

“
We
can’t.” She trailed her hand down his arm to tangle her fingers with his. She lifted their joined hands up. The ragged, restless pulse of the qva’avaq made his skin glow with the bold unmistakable l’auraly patterns. “You can’t be seen like this, especially if the raiders are responsible for what happened.” Her grip tightened. “Although you certainly gave everyone in the observatory an eyeful.”

Another hot flush—embarrassment this time—washed through him in a burst of crystalline light. “I didn’t trust I could swim in the constricting clothes.”

“And you don’t usually wear anything else underneath?” Amusement lightened her tone.

“The tunic has always been enough to keep sensation at bay.”

“Is that why you wear such ugly clothes? To keep sensation—to keep everyone—at bay?”

He closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of their joined hands, but that only made him more aware of the press of her against his side, the softness of her breasts, the bump of her hipbone, as if her thin chemise didn’t exist at all. “I am a l’auralyo unkeyed, and doomed to remain that way. I see no reason to torture myself with what cannot be.”

“Torture?”

“The qva’avaq wants to be touched. It wants to flow with another’s pulse, and shine under another’s breath. It chimes when it hears its lover’s voice, one call, perfectly keyed, unique in all the universe.” The scent of salt water was thick as tears. “Without that, I am…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No.”

“Then just a man.”

“And that is nothing to you?” She levered herself up, her forearms braced on his chest so that he had to breathe around the insistent weight of her. “Being just a man, you rescued my son and kept a potential weapon from our enemy’s hands. And I suppose you still intend to save the universe. Not bad for just a man.”

He opened his eyes, the better to glower at her. “Anyone could do that.”

“And only you did.” She leaned closer, her nose only inches from his. “That is not nothing to me.”

He wanted to push her off, but he didn’t delude himself that she would let him go so easily. Not to mention the need of the qva’avaq, exacerbated by the liqueur, wouldn’t let him either.

Also not to mention, he thought he might be lying to himself about wanting to push her off at all.

So he settled for the glower and a taunting challenge. “And this is how you will thank me?”

She half closed her eyes, her dark lashes an arc as fluted and dangerous as malac shell. “I could leave you here alone on this deserted atoll to scream out the aphrodisiac at the stars. That is what you were doing before you came to Saya-Terce, wasn’t it?”

The threat made him shudder.

She touched his cheek. “Never mind. That was cruel. I wouldn’t leave. Not until you are in control again.”

“You should go.” His voice cracked again, as if the qva’avaq seething in his flesh was already working its way out. “Find the raiders. Contact my sister and her sheership captain. They will help.”

She shook her head. “I’d go if I thought it would matter, but there’s nothing more we can do tonight. This storm system came in early and strong. No ships—sheerships or the water-bourn kinds—will be moving out there. The barge is locked down for the night, and the interference in the atmosphere will keep everyone in the dark. You can be back in the fight tomorrow.”

He laughed harshly. “Fight? I don’t think I can even stand without you holding me up.”

“That’s the liqueur in your system, making you want to lie down.” She gave him a sly smile. “Come with me. I know what will help.”

She pushed upright and his breath caught at the anticipation of pain from separating, but she kept her arm looped through his, tugging him along with her, and the contact was enough to soothe the qva’avaq.

He swayed a moment on his feet, his head whirling as he glanced around the small, spare room. The plasteel shelter was little more than a hut, with shutters pulled tight against the storm that drummed all around. “Where are we?”

“My island.”

He remembered Luac’s angry jibe about the atoll with no boats. “You swam us here?”

She shrugged. “No boat with sails would survive the surface, and the mating malac are quick to attack anything with unnatural propulsion under the waves. We were able to sneak by.”

“But the Ni-Saya…”

“Under his sister’s watch. Kylara will take excellent care of him since she has no wish to become Ni-Saya herself. She has an attraction to offworld things.” Rynn slanted a glance at him.

“Saya…”

“Are you ready? Hold your breath.”

She opened the door, and the wind yanked the panel wide. Instantly, they were drenched, and if his mouth had been any farther open, he might have drowned. A crack of thunder greeted them, but the clouds were too thick to see the lightning that had spawned the heavy rumble.

As she tugged him through the downpour, he caught only a confused glimpse of a storm-wracked beach, the foliage bent low under the wind and the rain hissed in the leaves. The bioluminescence of the foaming waves lit the beach in a strange violet light that dimmed as Rynn dragged him into the forest. The dark trees closed around them, wide leaves blocking some of the wind but channeling the rain into streams almost thick enough to be waterfalls.

Icere remembered the waterfall simulation and almost laughed. But he remembered not to open his mouth.

Despite the darkness, Rynn moved with assurance, still close against his side. The deluge was merciless and yet warm and slick between their bodies. He gritted his teeth against the renewed surge of the aphrodisiac in his bloodstream.

If only he could let the water wash him empty.

A darker shape loomed, and they faced a wall of rock. Rain streamed down the stone, bouncing up in a silvery spray, so that he almost missed the fissure. Rynn pushed him through the spray, through the rock, into the sudden quiet beyond.

He blinked the water out of his eyes. “A cave.”

“Come on.” She tugged him deeper.

“I can’t see.” Except that wasn’t true. A faint indigo light surrounded them.

He stared down at the smaller woman at his side. “You’re glowing.”

“You’re not the only one with inner sparkles.” She spread one hand in front of them and the rings on the webbing between her fingers glimmered. “Just a little farther.”

Another bend of rock brought them to a chamber too large for her bioluminescence to illuminate, but the echo of falling water told him it was big. A breath of warm, moist air moved across him.

“It’s been awhile since I came here,” Rynn muttered as she tugged him onward. “Where did I… Ah.”

She kept one arm hooked through his, but a flare of light dazzled him, and then several more. “Candles?”

“Primitive, I know, but it suits the place.”

He glanced around. The rock walls absorbed the glow except for a few splinters of light caught in flecks of quartz-like stone, but the candles gleamed on the dark pool that spread to their feet. Nearest them, the water was utterly still, but farther out, ripples caught the light and danced, fed by the incoming source.

Rynn pulled on his arm.

He balked, remembering his awkward attempts at swimming. “Wasn’t there enough water outside?”

“This is special. It will help draw the liqueur from your tissues.” She gazed up at him. “It’s not deep.”

He frowned and moved forward, drawing her behind. The water was warm, almost hot. “Volcanic?”

She nodded. “Fresh water but heavy in minerals. Purifying, or so the stories tell.”

They waded until the water was at their knees, their toes buried in the bed of tiny pebbles underfoot. “Stories?”

“My great-grandfather brought me here, told me how this was my place.”

He grunted. “He told a little girl she belonged in a cave?”

She tilted her head. “Strange, but true. The water helped leach the tetrodotoxin from my skin when I couldn’t control it and soothed my gills when I’d spent too much time in council sessions hoping to stop his wars.”

He shook his head. “Gills. You really could just swim away from all this, leave us behind.”

“And where would I go? Saya-Terce is not that large a planet, and as you mentioned, our laws are painfully aware that it is all connected. Just as the sheerways thread the universe. I stay because I have to.”

He turned to her, as much as he was able when he feared to leave her side. “Is that why you brought me here? Because you had to?”

She scowled up at him. “Don’t be a malac weevil.”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“You do a good impression of one. Imagine a boring irritant.”

He tugged his arm out of her reach. “I think I’m feeling better already.”

The instant his flesh left contact with hers, the qva’avaq blazed a protest. He cried out at the burn, hazily surprised the water didn’t turn to steam.

Rynn caught him as he collapsed, keeping his head above water.

The wave of his fall sluiced up over his chest, extinguishing the fire in his skin. No, it wasn’t the water, it was her hands on him, soothing the restless hurt of the crystal that called with no echo.