Release (12 page)

“You don’t mean that you’ve never...”

If it weren’t dark, maybe she’d see that he was glaring at her. She might be pretty, but that never stopped her from being annoying, did it? “Is this your business?”

She flopped back off the cushions onto her side of the bed. “Really? I thought all men started lying with women when they were seventeen or something.”

Keirth didn’t say anything. For some reason, this discussion was not helping him stop being hard. If anything, it was making it worse.

“Why not? It can’t be because you’re ugly or something, because you’re quite nice looking. I mean, for a criminal.”

“Let’s go to sleep,” said Keirth. She couldn’t stop from insulting him, could she?

“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “You’re not a criminal. Well, maybe you are, but you’re in it for the right reasons, so that’s just as good as not being a criminal. I mean, if I killed Risciter, then technically I’m a criminal. A real criminal.”

Her voice started to shake on that last part. Keirth didn’t want her to have to think about Risciter, so he changed the subject back, even if it did make him uncomfortable. “Maybe all the noblemen can run around having whatever woman they want,” he said. “You might find that in other classes, it’s far less easy to take advantage of people.”

“So, you just never found anybody to lie with?” she asked in a small voice.

Keirth groaned. He didn’t want to talk about this. “Not exactly. There have been times when...” Things weakened him occasionally. They pushed at his resolve. “I choose not to.” At least his head chose not to. From the way his cock was pulsing at him at the moment, it chose completely differently. But he wasn’t that kind of man. If he were to take advantage of Ariana right now—and he could, cushions be damned—he’d be no better than Risciter.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said to her. He wanted to distract himself with something to make his raging hard on go away, and he wanted to go to sleep. Now.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

It was quiet. Good. Keirth filled his head with images of ships. Tomorrow, he’d find the chief, and they’d bargain. He wanted something fast but stealthy. A small ship would do just fine. He seemed to remember that the chief had a few of the T-6000 class in his junkyard somewhere.

“It’s only,” said Ariana, “that I don’t understand. I thought that men had...needs. My Aunt Tildy always said that women had to hold themselves to a higher standard, because men couldn’t help themselves and—”

“We aren’t all animals,” Keirth growled. “I’m not a beast. I don’t—” This was hard to explain. It was hard to think about. Images swirled back at him, from his youth. He remembered the way men leered at his mother. He remembered how much he’d wanted to protect her. “I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t be that kind of man. That’s all there is to it.”

Ariana was quiet.

But for some reason, Keirth found himself plowing on. “Do you think someone like Risciter gets a pass? He obviously has needs. Twisted needs. He and half the noblemen in the sector do whatever they like to women, and it doesn’t matter how she feels or if he hurts her. She doesn’t matter at all. My mother didn’t matter. She didn’t matter to any of them.”

“Is that why?” Ariana whispered. “You said you saw Risciter kill your mother. Did you see...? Did he...?”

“Rape her?” Keirth laughed bitterly. “I don’t know what you’d call it. That was her job. My mother was a prostitute.”

“He said that to me,” Ariana said from the other side of the cushions. “He said he usually did what he did to prostitutes and beggars, but he was excited because I was a ‘real woman.’ But you know, I don’t think that. I don’t think some people are more ‘real’ than others. And it doesn’t matter what your mother did, she didn’t deserve Risciter.”

“I wanted her to stop,” Keirth told the darkness. “I did everything I could to make her stop, but I couldn’t ever make enough money. It was awful. It was always awful. And the way they treated her...”

“I guess seeing it all from that angle must have made it not seem very... I can see why you wouldn’t lie with anyone.”

“But you see,” said Keirth, “that’s just it. Even if it’s not a business transaction, it’s the same. Maybe it’s worse. If I seduced some woman on my travels, shared her bed for a night, and then disappeared the next day, I’d be showing her the same contempt those men showed my mother. And I wouldn’t even be compensating her for it.”

“But if people get married, it’s not like that.”

“I guess not,” said Keirth. “But that’s not something I’m going to be doing. I live my life for revenge. And once that’s done, I’ll be arrested and hung, undoubtedly.”

Neither of them said anything for quite some time. After a while, listening to the even sound of Ariana’s breath, he was certain she’d fallen asleep. Maybe he’d shocked her. Or frightened her. This wasn’t an appropriate conversation to have with a woman like her. She’d pushed him, kept asking questions, but that didn’t mean he should have answered.

But then she spoke. “You really are a good man, Keirth,” she murmured. “A much better man than the ones who live inside the law. The ones I’ve known my whole life. I’ve never known anyone like you.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond. “You’re pretty unique yourself, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He snickered.

She propped herself up on the cushions again, so that she was looking down at him. His eyes had further adjusted to the darkness, and he could see her features clearly. “What if Risciter’s dead, Keirth? What then?”

He didn’t really want that to be true. He wanted to kill Risciter himself. It was his reason for living. But if Risciter were really gone, then... “I guess I’d still be in trouble for kidnapping you wouldn’t I?”

“If you weren’t in trouble with the law,” she said. “Would you want to be with a woman then?”

He laughed. “Not in trouble with the law? That’s never going to happen.”

* * *

Ariana lay in the darkness, listening to Keirth’s even breaths beside her. He was asleep now. And she was probably going insane.

Back in the sector, Ariana had spent time amongst circles of women. Sometimes, she’d listened to her maids giggling as they dressed her and her sister for an event. Sometimes, she and the other women at a dinner party spoke of things in giggling whispers while the men had rejoined to the study for brandy and cigars. So she knew things about falling in love or lusting after a man. And throughout her courtship with Risciter, she’d sometimes recalled those conversations and wondered if something was wrong.

While she admired Risciter and found him very pleasant to look at (everyone in the sector thought he was gorgeous for that matter), she’d never experienced the sort of draw the women had spoken about, whether they were maids or noblewomen. She’d never felt as if she wanted to spend every second in his company or as if she were interested in every facet of his being. She’d liked him. Sometimes, before seeing him she got a nervous feeling in her stomach. And yes, occasionally, the sight of Risciter made her heart patter.

But she’d sometimes wondered if she was missing something.

She’d told herself not to worry about it back then. Now she realized that there was something very wrong with Risciter, and perhaps she’d noticed an emptiness about him that she’d dismissed. Back then, however, she thought that Risciter was a good match and that marrying him was wise. Since he was so very pretty, she thought that was a bonus. For a man to be good looking, of high social standing, and quite polite was really extraordinary. She was grateful to have found him, even if there was no undercurrent pulling her to him.

But now she’d felt it. The thing that the women were always talking about. The draw.

To Keirth Transman.

Which was insane. He’d kidnapped her. He’d dragged her across the galaxy. He was rude to her constantly. What was more, he didn’t even like being around her. He wanted to take her back home and wash his hands of her.

She should hate him. She should want to be free of him. But something about him made that impossible, and she wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was only that he was so noble. He had high standards that he held himself to. Maybe it was because her heart broke for him when he spoke about his mother. Or maybe she simply shared his anger against the monster Risciter for every horrible thing he’d done.

But there was no denying the signs. There couldn’t be any mistake that she must have had ulterior motives when she decided to style herself as Keirth’s wife. And now she was lying next to him in a bed. He was so close, she could reach out and touch him.

She couldn’t be developing feelings for this man. It was madness. It was utterly inappropriate.

She shook her head against the pillow. No. Perhaps this was more trauma thinking. After everything she’d been through in the past few days, certainly she couldn’t be feeling normal emotions. She and Keirth had been in two near-death situations—one with Risciter and one with the gellococcus. Maybe some kind of adrenaline had surged through her and made her lose her head. Maybe if she waited, the strange feelings would pass.

Or maybe, said a darker part of her brain, she was developing these feelings because she saw Keirth as an escape. Now that she was socially ruined, her prospects for marriage gone, with nowhere to go except back to her life as a spinster, the idea of being with Keirth Transman seemed appealing. Wouldn’t it solve all her problems if he would fall in love with her and whisk her about through space having adventures? Wouldn’t that make everything easier?

She wasn’t a woman falling for a man, but a calculating mercenary, trying to worm her way into his life.

And hadn’t he made it clear he had no interest in forming bonds with a woman?

She corrected herself. He hadn’t said he wasn’t interested. But he’d said he wouldn’t do it.

Still...

Oh. No. She couldn’t keep thinking about this. It was ludicrous and offensive. She was Miss Ariana Gilit. She was not some common woman who could throw away everything to travel around the galaxy.

Why not?
whispered a voice in her head. Why couldn’t she leave behind the rules and strictures of the sector? Why couldn’t she be free? Because, with the exception of being nearly raped and killed by Risciter, these had been the best days of her life. She felt like life actually meant something, suddenly, having come so close to losing it. She didn’t want to waste it away at balls and dinner parties. She wanted to live, really live. Like this. Going from one breathless encounter to the next.

And Keirth...

She sighed. Maybe he only intrigued her, with his relentless search for revenge and the pain in his voice when he talked about his dead mother. Maybe he was nothing more than a distraction, something new and different.

Or maybe she was losing her mind.

Slowly, careful not to disturb him, she propped herself up on the cushions again so that she could look down at his sleeping face. His long lashes were closed against his cheeks. Sleeping, he looked peaceful. He looked...

Beautiful?

How could this be happening to her? And what was she going to do?

Chapter Nine

Freetha had a needle in her hand, her head bent over a tapestry she was embroidering. “He’s certainly something,” she said.

Ariana nodded. She had nothing to do except watch Freetha sew. It was mid afternoon, and Keirth had been off with the chief bargaining over a new ship all day. She’d thought they’d be leaving Trioth soon, but apparently bargaining took time. “Keirth isn’t like other men.”

Freetha laughed. “I’ve been angry at him for a year, but there was a reason I wanted to marry him when I saw him before. I have to admit I’m a little disappointed that he’s taken. You’re lucky.”

She wasn’t lucky at all. The whole thing was a ruse. And she found herself wishing it weren’t. Which she hated. “I’ve never met anyone like him,” she said. “He’s so honorable, you know.”

Freetha mused over her needlework. “He is. When I came to him in his chamber last year, he could have taken me anyway, you know. I offered myself to him as his wife. He could have had me and then run away in his spaceship the next day. But he didn’t. And I believed that he felt awful about it. That it had all been a misunderstanding. Of course, that made me sort of want him more.” She laughed a little. “Overall, I’m glad to be released from my betrothal. Those black robes were really getting to me.”

“That seems like Keirth,” said Ariana. “He wouldn’t have wanted to hurt you or destroy your honor. He would have done the noble thing.”

“And he wouldn’t have been unfaithful to you, I don’t suppose,” said Freetha. “A woman like you... A man wouldn’t stray from that.”

“I’m nothing special,” said Ariana.

“That’s not what Father says,” said Freetha. “He almost seemed suspicious of it. Said a man like Keirth could never marry someone like you. I didn’t agree, of course. Father can’t see Keirth’s virtues.” She set the tapestry down in her lap. “Once I saw the two of you dancing together, gazing into each other’s eyes like that, I knew it was real. I told Father myself.”

Ariana blushed. She had enjoyed dancing with Keirth, clumsy as he might have been. There was something about the way he’d held her. There was strength in his arms, and when they’d been whirling around on the floor, so close, she’d felt like she belonged in his arms, like he was claiming her. But that had all been in her head, of course. And the whole thing was stupid. Certainly, all Freetha had seen was the way she’d been looking at Keirth, her adoration. Something she needed to squelch. Keirth absolutely did not feel the same way. “He has beautiful eyes, you know? I feel like I could get lost in them.”

Freetha giggled. “You’re so in love. It’s really adorable.”

No. It was really tragic. But Ariana only smiled at Freetha, trying to play along.

* * *

They had dinner with the chief again that night. Not another elaborate feast, but still a substantial meal. Keirth told her that he was having a little bit of trouble getting the chief to agree to a trade. He was haggling him to death, Keirth said. The chief apparently wanted a night to sleep on it, so Keirth and Ariana would be on Trioth one more night. Keirth was confident that they’d be able to leave in the morning, however. He said that he’d found a ship that would work just fine.