Ravyn winced.
Ouch!
She could handle one completely pissed off male, she’d done it before, but beneath the anger was hurt. Hurt she’d caused. Her heart ached with remorse.
Sprawling back in the chair, she propped her bare feet on the table in front of her. The large sitting room off the bedchamber allowed him to put a lot of space between them and she didn’t like it. She watched him with longing as he methodically worked on the weapon. His hair had grown out enough to look shaggy and very unmilitary-like, making it easier for her to forget he had a dangerous career.
As if feeling the weight of her stare, he looked up, green eyes pinning her. “You have something you want to say?”
“No,” Ravyn said, shaking her head.
“I didn’t think so.”
She shifted her gaze away from him. He’d slept beside her without touching her, not even wrapping his arms around her in the night. He’d remained nearby during the day, but couldn’t have been more distant if he’d been on Earth.
Ravyn traced the aqua squiggles on her purple pants with her index finger. The pants fit like a second skin, as did the matching aqua top which ended at the waist of the pants. Each time she lifted her arms, it bared her midriff. It was the sexiest outfit she’d been able to find. The plan had been to entice Damon into making love, sure once they did, all would be forgiven. Only he hadn’t shown any interest.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the best method of conflict resolution she could have come up with. Especially since it seemed to have made him angrier. Ravyn flexed her toes against the table surface and swallowed a sigh. She wanted things back the way they’d been before.
“So what are we going to do today?” she asked, forcing her voice to sound cheerful.
For a moment she didn’t think Damon planned to answer. He generally didn’t start ignoring her until he’d had enough of her compulsively perky chatter, and she hadn’t said much yet this morning. On the other hand, he had been doing a good job of pretending she didn’t exist.
Finally, not bothering to look at her, he said, “We’re going to the edge of the city and deploying the short-range beacon.”
“We are? The rescue ship would be here already?” Oh God, Ravyn thought, scrunching her eyes shut. She had almost no time left with him. As much as she wanted to leave this planet, she feared there would be no way to fix things with Damon once they were surrounded by others. Pressing her fists to her face, she tried to beat back the panic. She refused to lose him. Taking a deep breath, she lowered her hands and let her eyes devour him. The idea of never again feeling his touch on her body, of never again seeing him smile just for her, scared her to her soul.
“I doubt it,” he said, without inflection. “This is the first day help might be here, but it’s unlikely. I’d say two or three more days.” Seemingly oblivious to her, he put aside one gun and started the cleaning process on the other.
Ravyn let her head fall to the back of the sofa. What kind of coward hurt the man she loved, and let him go on hurting, because she was afraid? She made herself sick. The silence lengthened and she couldn’t bear to think of her cowardice any longer. She’d toyed with an idea since she’d first fixed the short-range beacon and maybe now would be a good time to try it. Quietly, she retrieved the beacon and set it on the table across from Damon. “Can I have your knife?” she asked, her voice small.
Without a word, he dug it out and slid it across the smooth surface. He didn’t ask what she had in mind even when she started taking apart the housing of the beacon. Ravyn wasn’t sure if that was a measure of trust or indifference and she wasn’t going to ask. While she worked, she forgot the antipathy he felt for her. She tested the changes she made and frowned. Not quite right, she determined and went back to her task. The fifth time she tested it, Ravyn grinned. Perfect. She closed the housing once more, happy with her accomplishment.
“I set up the beacon,” she said, “so it transmits our location. Without satellites to triangulate by, the rescue team might have a hard time finding our position. With this basic code telling them where to find us, it should be easy for them.”
“Fine.”
“It isn’t as simple as it sounds,” she prattled on. “The beacon isn’t set up to do that, but with a few little tweaks here and there...” She broke off at Damon’s glare.
“Why don’t you cut the bullshit, Ravyn? For two days you’ve been trying to pretend nothing’s wrong. I’m not playing that game so leave off.” With a last, hard look to underline his words, he went back to the gun.
*** *** ***
Ravyn had to hurry to keep up with Damon, but she didn’t think he was moving as fast as he wanted. Even as angry as he was, he wouldn’t forget his responsibility to keep her safe. Or maybe he was just worried if she fell, she’d hurt his baby. It depressed her to think that was his chief concern. She hadn’t said a word since he’d told her to be quiet. What could she say? She’d hurt him badly and deserved his contempt. If she wanted to fix things, she was going to have to work up her courage and drop her defenses. The problem was, she didn’t have a clue how.
Damon stopped when he neared the wall of the Old City and swung the pack off his shoulder. He set the beacon on a nearby ledge and deployed it as she caught up with him. Ravyn stood close, just wanting to be near him, but he moved away from her. After a few minutes, he stopped the signal. “Why aren’t we leaving it on until help arrives?” she asked.
Before he could answer, Ravyn felt a presence. Cold and ugly, it made her shiver. “I think something’s out there,” she said quietly. When she got no response she looked away from the wall and gasped. The blankness in Damon’s eyes, the lack of animation in his body made her heart leap into her throat.
“Damon!” she barked at him. Not so much as a blink of his lashes. When he’d been hit in the head, she remembered, he’d responded to her sweetness, not her sharpness. “Honey,” she said coaxingly, “come back to me.”
Still no response. Ravyn swallowed hard and reached for him. The muscles in his forearm were rigid. She ran her hand up and down, stroking him, murmuring his name, pleading with him. All to no avail. Before she could come up with another idea, Damon started walking. The movement was jerky, so unlike his usual grace, that Ravyn could only stare for a moment. It was as if he were a marionette. Her eyes widened as realization dawned.
“Damon!” She ran and planted herself in front of him, trying to stop him. He walked around her and she darted in front of him again, grabbing his biceps. This time he picked her up and put her aside before he continued on. Terror rose up so strong that she wanted to curl up and cry, but she couldn’t. She had to do something. Somehow the killer had reached in and was controlling Damon’s mind. She was sure of it. Now he was being steered inexorably toward one of the gates. She didn’t need to be precognitive to know what would happen when he got there.
Putting herself in front of him a third time, she wrapped her arms around him and jumped up, hooking her legs around his waist. She knew Damon wouldn’t hurt her even if he had become a zombie and he didn’t, just peeled her off and put her aside. He’d nearly reached the gate and time was running out.
Two linked minds.
The killer could overcome an individual, but not the pair of them if they joined. She didn’t have time to debate the idea or worry over it. Damon’s life was in danger; protecting herself counted for nothing. Her decision didn’t take even a split second of thought.
Ravyn put herself between the gate and her love, took a deep breath and opened a portion of her wall, reaching out to grasp Damon and pull him through the gap. In the flash of vulnerability, she could feel the malevolence, the wrongness of the killer outside the Old City. Then her barrier was sealed off again, and she had Damon safe within.
She’d expected him to recover instantly. He didn’t He’d stopped moving, but his body remained rigid. His eyes stayed empty. Oh, God, what if she’d left it too late?
*** *** ***
“Damon!” Ravyn sounded alarmed.
He shook his head, taking in his dual surroundings with a frown. Physically, he stood near a gate to the Old City without a clue how he’d arrived there. But in his head, he was inside the impenetrable walls of a fortress. “What happened?” he asked.
“He had you. One minute you were here; the next you were like a puppet. I couldn’t stop you from walking to this gate or snap you out of it.” Ravyn’s voice shook.
Damon frowned as memory, of a sort, returned.
Ravyn reached out took his hand, both in the city and in the fortress. At her touch, it finally dawned on him what had happened. She’d put her bulwark around him too. She’d let him inside. Interested, he looked around again. Her protection was strong and even more impressive than he’d imagined.
He no sooner had the thought then the walls started to waver. The bastard was trying to get in. Without hesitating, he joined with her and reinforced their shield. In the physical world, the silence hung eerily, but within the fortress he could hear the roar of outrage from the killer. “Can we hold this fortification in place,” he asked, “and get away from this wall?”
“Yes, but it’ll take both of us to keep him from breaching it. He nearly broke through before you added your support.”
“I’ll manage. If you feel it slipping, we’ll strengthen it before we continue.” Damon didn’t wait for a response, but went to the ledge where the beacon sat. It seemed odd to be walking in one dimension and stationary in another, but he didn’t let it distract him. If she hadn’t wrapped this protection around him, he would have opened the gate, walked out of the city and been killed. He had no doubt of that. And Ravyn would have followed him in death. She hadn’t been exaggerating the precariousness of her wall. It had been seconds from crumbling. Shit.
He put the beacon in the pack, grabbed Ravyn’s hand and hustled them away from the edge of the Old City. Damon didn’t stop moving even after they were out of range. He had felt the killer’s mind pounding at the gates of their protection until they were nearly a quarter of the way to the heart of the town.
When they arrived at the fountain near the city center, he put the pack down and pulled her against him. “Thanks,” he said. She didn’t reply, just held on to him tightly. Almost afraid to hope, Damon reached for Ravyn with his senses.
This time no barrier kept them apart and his hurt ebbed away. She did love him, he realized, slowly smiling.
“Why did you shut me out?” he asked.
Ravyn shrugged her left shoulder. “I was scared, what else? And I didn’t want you reading my mind.”
“Why would you think I’d be able to?”
“The message from Kale and Meriwa was telepathic.”
“So you assumed we’d be communicating that way too.”
“More than communicate. I thought we’d be in each other’s minds at will. I wasn’t comfortable with that,” Ravyn said.
“I wouldn’t be either, but you never bothered finding out the link is empathic, not telepathic.” He ran his fingers along her jaw to the underside of her chin and tipped her face up to his. “You’re not comfortable with that either. Why?”
She didn’t want to meet his gaze, but he shifted until their eyes met, unwilling to let her evade a conversation they should have had two days ago. At last she stopped trying to avoid him and said, “I told you I was a coward.”
“So I know how you feel about me. You know how I feel too. What’s scary about this?”
“I’m afraid you’ll find out who I really am and won’t want me anymore.” She held up a hand to keep him quiet. “I’m afraid even if we get back to Earth okay, that something will happen to you because of your job. Just thinking of you being injured or killed terrifies me. I know it doesn’t make sense. Keeping you out wouldn’t prevent it from hurting if anything happened, but fear isn’t always logical.”
Damon swallowed hard. He could actually feel how scared she was at the thought of anything happening to him. No one had ever cared for him this deeply. He couldn’t lie to her even if he wanted to. She knew too much about Spec Ops to be fobbed off with half-truths. Her lips trembled and he shifted his hand so he could run his thumb across them. She pressed a kiss to the pad of his thumb as it reached the center of her lips and smiled at him tremulously. He replaced his fingers with his mouth.
“I need to hear you say it,” he said, lifting his head.
She swallowed hard, nearly a gulp. “I haven’t said that to anyone since I was six, maybe seven.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I guess because it made my family uncomfortable. After I’d tell them how I felt, they would all mumble something along the lines of ‘me too’ and run off.”
Considering how closed down the colonel was, Damon wasn’t surprised. What did astonish him was why he hadn’t guessed Ravyn would be carrying around some of the same baggage. The man had raised her from the age of fourteen and no one would ever accuse Colonel Sullivan of being open with his emotions.
“I promise I won’t mumble and run off. Say it, Ravyn,” he encouraged. He did need to hear the words. After the last couple of days, sensing it wasn’t enough.
She opened her mouth, but only a kind of squeak emerged.
“You want me to go first? I love you, sweet pea.” And now he had an idea why she was scared. He felt vulnerable.
“Damon,” she said, her voice thick and shaky. When she continued, she spoke fast, as if trying to spit it out before her courage deserted her. “I love you too.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
If Alex could have gotten out and pushed the ship to make it go faster, he would have. His gut churned. Ravyn needed him and she needed him
now
. From the time she’d been a little girl, he’d always sensed when his sister was in trouble. It had never been this strong before, however, and never at such a great distance. He didn’t believe in psychic links, but he believed in his connection to Ravyn.
The sound of running feet had him turning. Stacey slid by the entry, not able to stop in time. Her arm shot out, wrapping around the jamb and halting her forward progress. She scrambled into the equipment bay with more haste than grace. “Ravyn’s in trouble,” she said, panting. “We have to do something!”