The Bonding Page 8

  “So you want to flaunt me around like a waving banner?” she asked. Not a bad idea, really.

  He nodded. “What do you say we attract some attention? We are famous.” He continued, mimicking Childers’s voice, “The mysterious Trianni female and her mate.”

  “Okay.” She drew the word out into a long question.

  “Tomorrow. I want you to do an interview with Childers.”

  “You know him?”

  He flashed a wide, cocky grin. “Like I said, we’re famous now. I want you to remind every male on this ship why they want a Trianni mate of their own.”

  “How?” For all the coarse language, gruff manners and hulking muscles, Tam had proved to be far more politically savvy than either of them had imagined. This was a major power play. It might be their last move. It needed to count.

  His lips curved. “Just be you.” He sidled in close, pressing his hips against her stomach, drawing a big, hard finger down her cheek. “Ask for their help. Childers will broadcast it. It’s past time we get some more serious support.”

  “You trust him?”

  Tam shook his head. “I don’t know him. But he’s a ratings whore. He’ll broadcast it. Every Tribe member on every ship and every planet we inhabit will see it. Hopefully Argentus will get involved.”

  Nissa inhaled deeply. Finally, something she could do to help her people. “I’ll go get dressed.”

  So out they went that night—to eat in public, kiss in public and roam the halls of the public areas hand in hand, heads pressed close as if in deep conversation, careful not to laugh or smile.

  She’d seen enough on-screen to know she needed to look sad and terrified for her people, alone in cryo-pods in space.

  Everywhere they went, Tribesmen stared, their gaze lingering on her skin long after they’d returned home.

  It had been a little cruel maybe. But necessary. They’d been followed by media as well. They were all over the news by the time they returned to their chambers.

  SHE DRESSED WITH CARE the following morning, braiding her hair in the formal style of the Trianni royalty so it hung in long, thick coils down her back.

  Her palms sweated as she and Tam walked to the reporter’s studio, but Childers put her at ease quickly. Somehow, he looked even friendlier in person than he did on the screen.

  Nissa studied him from the little stool to which he’d guided her. His face had a somber gravity that lurked in the lines that flanked his mouth and his bright eyes drooped at the edges, making him seem unaccountably kind, making her want to spill her deepest darkest secrets.

  A little curve lurked in the corner of Childers’s lips, as though he might break out in laughter at any given moment. Nissa had never seen hair like his. It was spiky and gray-white. Only the old had gray hair on Triannon.

  “Has your hair always been that color?” she couldn’t resist asking, moments after they had clasped forearms in the Tribe’s formal greeting gesture. She had perfected the art of the gesture in her time on ship. Pressure along the forearm, gentle but firm. She’d learned that the males often squeezed too hard. They’d never intentionally hurt her, but a few of them had made her wince. She kept her grip soft now, to remind them not to squeeze too tightly.

  He laughed, all even white teeth, and dimples. “Yes. Personally, I prefer to think of it as silver rather than gray.”

  There was something about him she couldn’t quite define. He regarded her differently than the other Argenti she’d encountered. Tam looked at her as if he wanted to eat her, constantly. The look in the eyes of the other Argenti ran the gamut— predatory, lustful, covetous, suspicious.

  Childers, on the other hand, seemed merely curious. He flashed another grin as one of his assistants pinned a microphone to the neck of her dress. Beside her, Tam growled a low warning. Heat flooded between her thighs at the deep rumble. The assistant cast a wary glance and backed away.

  “Oh, calm down, warrior,” said Childers with an arch smile and a playful roll of his eyes. “He’s not touching her. Just making sure the adoring public can hear her.” His fingers danced through the air in a quelling gesture.

  Tam scowled.

  Childers ignored him and sat down in the chair opposite her. Another assistant fluffed at Nissa’s hair and rubbed something into her cheeks.

  They were seated in Childers’s studio in a part of the base she’d never visited before. A window with a view of Sellimar stretched behind them. Nissa’s stomach tightened. Her knees wobbled every time she looked at open space. “Do you have any questions for me before we get started?”

  She’d been considering what she wanted to say. “What will you ask me?”

  He gave an impish coo, clapping gleeful hands. “It would spoil the surprise if I warned you. Now, wouldn’t it? I want the real you. Only bigger. And bolder.” He gave a wrinkle-nosed smile. “And better.”

  She met Tam’s eye. They’d expected him to be cagey. There was risk inherent to this endeavor but they’d committed. Tam’s shoulder lifted in a bare proximity of a shrug.

  “Oh, stop,” said Childers. “I want the Trianni Rescue more than anyone. It makes for good news.”

  Tam quirked his head.

  An assistant dabbed something on her lips.

  Childers grinned. “Lovely.” He looked back at Tam. “She really is gorgeous, you know.”

  Tam didn’t respond.

  “Of course you do.” Childers tsked in his direction. “Relax. I can smell you all over her.” He turned back to Nissa. “Now, are you ready?” He raised his pale eyebrows, brushing his hands along the lapels of his shirt. Unlike Tam, he didn’t wear the flight- suit or weaponry of a Tribe warrior. He wore a bright-green collared shirt. Non-warrior Tribe members wore pants and shirts of all sorts of colors. Civis, Tam called them.

  “What do you mean ‘be me, but better’?” she asked.

  He cast her a sideways glance. “Do you have media like this on Triannon?”

  Nissa shook her head. “My father had a man on staff who wrote messages. They were read in the public squares across the city.” How different would Trian have been if there had been reporters like Childers? Digi-screens in every home?

  “A town crier? How delightfully primitive.”

  She didn’t allow that to sting. She’d probably think the same thing if she were a reporter from Argentus. “Our ancestors made a deliberate decision to turn away from technology. To embrace a simpler life.”

  He nodded shrewdly. “Okay. But you’ve been watching the digi-screens since you came on base, right? I’m a little different in real life, no?”

  She nodded. “More animated, more vivacious. The camera flattens everything. So grin bigger, gesture wider, speak higher, maintain eye contact longer.”

  Her eyes moved to Tam. Childers nudged her foot, a gentle tap on the simple flats Tam had acquired for her.

  “The camera is there. See that blue light? That’s the public eye. Look at me or the blue light,” he said, waggling his finger. “Don’t look at Tam. Don’t look at my assistants. Don’t look at the camera operator.”

  “Okay.”

  He plastered his signature smile on his face. The operatives shifted around and a man with dark hair sliced his hands through the air.

  “And here we go,” Childers whispered to her.

  He turned to face the camera. “This is Childers Reyno, reporting live from Base Fleet Sierra-Six in Sellulax system, with a special interview with the alien on everyone’s mind. Nissa of the Trianni, the mysterious lady in red...”

  He went on for a while, punching out certain words. It took a serious force of will not to look at Tam. She felt him, a strong, reassuring presence to the right. She breathed in deeply, keeping her face neutral, composed, a little sad and her eyes always on the blue light.

  Childers nudged her with his foot, cueing her in. “Nissa, can you tell us what it was like to wake after five hundred years in cryo freeze?”

  That was easy. She smiled, grateful for the l
ead. Remembering Childers’s words, she brightened her smile, but not too much. “I woke terrified. Cold. But Tam was there. He was warm.” She bit her lip flirtatiously, hating herself a little. I am doing this for the ninety-seven Trianni females and the two Trianni males, drifting, cold, alone in the infinite. For them.

  Tam’s approval spread across the bond. “He made me feel safe.” She felt a blush rising along her cheeks and for once she was pleased with her body’s natural reaction. She gave a shy smile. “We bonded. It was...” She broke off and gave a deliberately coy glance downward. “It was...pleasant.”

  Childers laughed. “I don’t doubt that. I’ve heard that the Bonding can be...quite pleasant.”

  She blushed even more furiously. She could feel Tam’s resolute gaze. Encouraging. Supportive. “I was afraid, too,” she interjected with wide, earnest eyes before Childers could commandeer the conversation. “I was afraid for my people.”

  Childers nodded. “Tell us more about that. About your people. What happened on your planet, Triannon?”

  She licked her lips. “Off-worlders came. With pale skin and black hair. They tortured us, killed us. We had pods left over from a time in our past when we pursued spaceflight. The pods were too small to fit many men. It was mostly young women without families who were chosen. There was a lottery.”

  “So it’s only young females in the pods?” Childers asked, glancing archly at the blue light. Any Argenti who watched this would be furious. A hundred females, just waiting to be mated. She suppressed the surge of guilt. Better to be alive and mated to a warrior like Tam than dead in space.

  Nissa nodded. “Mostly.”

  “But weren’t you dooming your people to extinction?”

  “We thought we’d be found within a matter of months, years maybe. Not centuries. We thought we’d bring back help.”

  Childers nodded sympathetically. “So what is it that you’d like to see happen here at Sierra-Six?”

  Nissa faced the camera, chewing her lip, letting her eyes go big and imploring. It was the way she looked at Tam when her mouth was stuffed full of his cock. It never failed to make him explode. “I want the pods recovered. My people are in them, ninety- nine of them, floating in space. It’s been nearly five hundred years. The gel could only sustain life for that long. The pods could deteriorate at any moment and all those women would die. There isn’t enough time to delay. We need to save them.”

  “But when you woke up, you were ill, no?”

  “Yes, I... I had the blue-tinge. Not for long though. Tam healed me.” She glanced down at her lap then up at Childers, eyes wide, and earnest. She nibbled her lip. “With his serum.”

  The camera operator inhaled sharply. Childers almost laughed. She could see the amusement in his eyes and that curve lingering at the corner of his lips wobbled as he struggled for control. A dimple peeked out of his cheek. She could feel Tam, steady, calm.

  She’d just said about the most erotic thing you could say in the Tribe. She might as well have drawn the entire Argenti universe a picture of her with Tam’s cock between her lips.

  All right, Slinnyar. Cards on the table. Block the retrieval of the pods now.

  10

  I would turn my back

  On the universe itself.

  For you.

  RED. Everything was red. A color that had once stood for life and flowers, peace and happiness, red was now blood and death. Hate and fear. Dark and ugly.

  The sky above was red with thick swirling clouds. The light and the shadows on the forest floor were red. Even her skin gleamed red when she glimpsed her arms or feet as she ran. Her breath came in fast desperate gusts, fogging pink in front of her as if the air were cold.

  It was cold, she realized. Icy cold. Freezing stones littered the ground, cutting into the soft skin of her soles. She risked a glance over her shoulder. Her hair splayed in a roiling mass behind her, as if she were suspended in liquid. Why was she moving so slowly?

  She couldn’t see anyone behind her. But she heard them, heard deep, guttural laughs. She knew they were there. She saw them in her mind’s eye, saw them moving as fast as if they could fly and as smoothly as if they swam.

  They weren’t red. They were as colorless and pale as death. Ghost-white with black hair and eyes like empty wells.

  She pumped her arms, trying to run faster. Her feet hit stones, harder and colder under her feet than the forest floor. A paved piazza spread before her. The stones used to be white but now they were red. And wet. She slipped in blood, falling to her hands and knees.

  The blood was so deep it swelled around her, up to her knees. A body floated toward her, intestines spread out from the torso like wings. Dead, sightless eyes stared at her beseechingly. She gagged and tried to get away but it pulled at her, fingers closing around her ankles, dragging her under liquid, thick and viscous and so dark it was nearly black. It pooled around her, above her waist now.

  Her dress was too heavy, the blood too thick, the dead too strong. It smelled of copper. It tasted of acid and salt as it filled her mouth. Thick and hot, it poured down her throat, metallic against her teeth.

  “Nissa,” Tam’s voice called to her, a velvet caress, an urgent summons. “Nissa.”

  ___________

  “TAM?” She broke through the bloody crimson surface and sat up, through layers of blood that fell away like sheets.

  A cool hand cupped her face. “Sssh,” he said and stroked her hair back from her face. “You had a bad dream. That’s all. It was just a bad dream.”

  Her breath came as hard as if she really had been running through the forest.

  “What do you dream about?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it.” She reached for a glass of water that sat on the bedside table. She drank deeply, wanting to erase the feel and taste of hot blood in her throat. It wasn’t her first bad dream—she had nightmares constantly—but it was the most vivid.

  She turned to Tam. When he tried to offer comfort, she slapped his hands away, pressing him back down into the mattress.

  “Don’t talk,” she said and climbed on top of him, lowering her mouth to his. He tried anyway but she wouldn’t let him. “Just shut up, Tam.” She covered his mouth with hers. He tasted of life and hope and sweetness. She stroked her hands up and down his body, batting away his hands every time he reached for her.

  “Wh—”

  “Don’t,” she hissed.

  Moving lower down his body, she took his hot-skinned length in her hands, pleased to find him thick and turgid. Tam was always ready for her. He’d never denied her. Never turned her away. Every single time she’d ever reached for him, he’d been thick and hard, the girth of his cock swollen. Just for her. Moving fast, she sucked him deep into her mouth, running her tongue along the tip, luxuriating in the heady taste of him.

  She wanted more. She always wanted more. She raked her nails down his chest and pulled him into her throat until he bottomed out. Still, she tried to take more, until she gagged, and her mouth salivated. Her lips spread wide. He was too big. She’d never get enough of him. His smell and taste were drugs working on her system. The heat of his body, the comfort of his solidity, a balm to an existence that had become fraught and rocky and confusing.

  Tam stood at the center of her universe, solid and strong. Constant. True.

  “Come for me, Tam,” she demanded, muffled, anxious for the flavor of his release. He groaned when she palmed his sac, squeezing gently. “Give me your cum. I need to taste you.”

  He thrust against her throat, his hips working, pushing deeper. He offered up vague, confused grunts of complaint, trying to slow her down. She sucked harder until he stopped resisting.

  “I need you.” She tried to say it, but it came out muffled. He didn’t care and neither did she.

  His fingers dug into her scalp as he pulled her face tighter against his groin and speech was impossible, so she just hummed around him.

  When he came in her mouth, it coated her
tongue, thick and heavy and sweet. She moaned as the serum’s aphrodisiac worked through her body, setting nerves tingling. She swallowed him down, sucking until he had nothing left to give but he stayed as hard as ever.

  Frantically, she climbed on top of him to guide the brutal length of him between her thighs where he made her feel whole.

  She took a cue from him. Fuck. His favorite word. She let it beat through her mind in a driving chant.

  Fuck the Trianni. She rose up her hips and slammed back down, riding him with everything she had.

  Fuck the Vestige. His hands closed over her breasts, fingers strumming her nipples. She groaned.

  Fuck the Tribe. He groaned out a wordless answer deep in his throat and her stomach coiled tight at the rasping sound.

  They all want something from me. Fuck them all.

  He grabbed her with a rough hand to the neck, pulled her face down. She sucked at his tongue, swallowing his groans and tasting blood. He growled louder.

  I want Tam. She bit his lip and bucked her hips. All I want is him. Nothing but Tam. She reared up, gasping, reveling in that thickness slamming deep inside her with every thrust of her hips. He looked wild, the thick muscles of his abdomen and chest rippling, his hair curling dark around his ears. She’d never seen a more beautiful man. Her man. Her thighs burned. She didn’t care. None of it mattered.

  Fuck the addiction. She dug her fingers into his chest and he groaned again. Who cares why I want him? She leaned back, resting her hands on his corded, muscled thighs so she could get a better angle. His eyes burned into her, dark and probing, still a little confused but hard and hot, as if he saw into her soul. Every time he looked at her she felt the same thing, that he knew her, every nasty, selfish, terrible thing she’d ever done, and it was okay. He liked her for the worst parts of herself as much as the best.

  Tam’s eternal adoration wasn’t contingent upon her accordance with certain rules and he didn’t expect anything from her. Nothing but her. He wanted her always. No exceptions.