Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams (16 page)

So maybe he was a little personally involved in his need to help rescue the appealing woman, and maybe she and the boy were added dangers that the crew could have done without, but far be it from Ender or any of his companions to shy away from diminishing odds. The only one who seemed unhappy with the choice was Justice, but Rush knew that was because she just wanted to get her flight stick between her knees. They all had their security blankets when they were in danger. For Justice, it was yanking and banking. For himself, it was a gear vest full of ordnance. For Lasher? He turned to Bronse for steadying on the rare occasion of feeling insecure.

Ender hadn‟t ever figured out what Bronse‟s crutch was. He had once thought that leaders didn‟t have crutches. He knew better now. Perhaps one day he would figure it out, although after four years under Bronse Chapel‟s command, he highly doubted that he was going to be enlightened if he hadn‟t been already.

Bronse didn‟t call for a break in their increasingly difficult hike over rough terrain until sometime later, when Ravenna made a soft, almost imperceptible sound of pain.

“Halt!”

The crew did so instantly, and Kith rushed to his sister as she was set on a large boulder with a rough but flat surface. All of the surrounding rock, shale, and soil were black, but the vegetation was becoming greener, denser, and taller the deeper into the wilderness they went.

Justice and Ender automatically began to circle and secure a perimeter as Lasher slung up his rifle and trekked back to his patient. He had the most field medical training of the quartet, so they always deferred to his judgment. Bronse was just thankful Masin had had the forethought to expand the standard first-aid kit. It was another anomaly that he would have to examine at a better time, he thought. They were all trained to avoid carrying even the smallest amount of undue extraneous weight. It simply didn‟t make sense that Masin had suddenly made an exception.

Lasher pushed Kith out of his way, sending the kid back a few steps and unwittingly pissing off the little hothead, though his only intention had been efficiency. Lasher was used to dealing with soldiers who scattered on command and without question. Kith was a vision of outrage, although Masin‟s attention was all for Ravenna.

“Pain?” he asked gently, looking into her eyes and seeing his answer even without her nod and the telltale gnawing of her bottom lip. Brave little thing, he thought with admiration. She had been bearing it longer than she had allowed them to think. He gently bent her head forward and checked the flashing node he‟d attached to the back of her neck. It was glowing yellow, indicating that the neural medication was almost depleted.

He didn‟t have a replacement. It wasn‟t meant to last for such a long hike. He glanced up at Bronse, sending a clear message to his commander though he didn‟t speak aloud.

“How far?” Bronse asked Kith, taking brief note of the kid‟s tense lips and clenched fists.

“Fifteen miles at least.”

Bronse didn‟t have to swear out loud for his crew to hear it in their heads when his lavender eyes flashed angrily. But he kept silent, unwilling to broadcast his upset to the woman trying so valiantly to be stoic.

“Then we better make them fast ones,” Bronse said with firm determination. “Give her some topical. It should help. We‟ll take it as far as we can. Then, if we have to, we‟ll narc her.”

“No!” she protested quickly, forcing her body to straighten, as if to convince them of the impossible. “I‟m fine. I‟m fine. Let‟s just go.”

Lasher ignored her and obeyed his commander, gently sweeping her hair into his hands and dropping it over her shoulder out of his way. He didn‟t notice the fine tensing of Bronse‟s body as his eyes fell covetously on Lasher‟s hands in the soft mass of Ravenna‟s dark hair.

Masin inspected the back of the shirt she wore, and it took only an instant to see that the material gleamed with wetness. Very gently he peeled away the cloth from Rave‟s back and off her arms.

His teeth made a small gritting sound as they clenched. Laying the shirt aside, he glanced up at Bronse, and the commander instantly read the silent message and came around to look at Ravenna‟s back.

Their movement had torn open every last lash. The welts were bleeding freely.

“Bandages?” he asked, the muscle ticking in his jaw the only giveaway as to his feelings on seeing the woman‟s ravaged skin.

“Unwise. What goes on must come off.”

Kith watched the commander with surprise as the violence of Chapel‟s emotion struck him like a relentless riptide. Why would this stranger feel so strongly about his sister‟s pain, he wondered. Kith had been puzzled by it from the outset, but it came stronger and stronger, it seemed, with every passing mile. Why would this strange warrior care so much for a woman he no doubt considered little better than a savage? All of the men, in fact, displayed a great level of concern for her well-being. Men in Kith‟s world gave very little consideration to females. It was different in the temple, of course, because the women tended to be more powerful than the men; but in the village, women were meant for breeding, sex, and household management. One woman was as good as another, and emotions were rarely a factor. Living in a wilderness village was a hard existence, and there was little time for soft emotions. It made Kith wonder what kind of world these men came from. What kind of world used women as soldiers? What was truly startling was that the woman soldier seemed the least inclined of them all to care for the pain of another. It confused Kith because all the women he knew were extraordinarily compelled to be nurturing. This anomaly mystified him.

“Ravenna,” Bronse whispered as he leaned over her shoulder from behind to speak softly to her. It was an instant intimacy, one that flew in the faces of the onlookers around them, narrowing the world to just the two of them. Her pain, his concern. Her gratitude, his empathy.

“The choice is yours,” he said quietly, his fingertips tenderly sliding over her silky hair, wishing it could soothe her somehow. “You are bleeding. We can bandage you to stop the bleeding, but it will mean a great deal of pain later on when the bandages have to come off. I cannot guarantee that our medic will be able to use any more pain medication by the time we get to him. Even as advanced as our medicaments are, too much can cause harm.”

“And if we don‟t bandage them?”

“Blood loss. The shirt will stick to your skin. Dirt and debris might further the infection.”

“Bandages then. Ophelia will take care of the rest. We just need to get there.”

Bronse didn‟t waste her energy or fortitude with arguments. He accepted her choice and nodded to Lasher to proceed. But even as he began to unfurl reams of sterile cloth and hold it over her back, Lasher hesitated.

“Bronse, I need … I won‟t get the pressure I need to staunch the bleeding unless I wrap her full around.”

“Ender, Justice, Kith … take a walk,” Bronse ordered instantly without looking up at them. “Kith, help them find fresh water and edible plants. We could use something to eat, and I‟d rather save rations if there are natural resources close by.”

“Hey, she‟s my sister,” Kith argued, not liking the idea of leaving her alone with them.

“And I‟m sure she‟d rather not be stripped in front of her younger brother,” Bronse retorted.

“Oh, and strangers are okay?” Kith snapped.

“Kith.” Ravenna spoke up gently before Bronse could escalate the argument. “Please do as he asks. I‟ll be fine. Stop arguing. Learn to trust what you feel.”

Kith flushed, lowering his face as his ears turned pink. She was right. His empathy would tell him if they meant her harm, and it was obvious that they didn‟t. Bronse had anticipated Ravenna‟s feelings about being stripped in front of him, and it bothered Kith that, after so short an acquaintance, this stranger could know her better than he did.

Everything about these soldiers, especially their leader, disoriented Kith. He knew they honestly wished to help them survive, but he felt an elemental fear every time he looked at or into Bronse. Something about this man alarmed him. Kith was bewildered not just by the strangeness of Chapel‟s feelings toward Ravenna, but her equally strange impulses toward him.

Being an empath all of his life had taught Kith a great deal about listening to the feelings from within. Within himself and within others. Emotions shifted fast and often, and for an empath, the targets emitting them shifted just as fast. Kith had learned that he was inherently able to sift through all of that and focus on what was important. It was a skill that he had consciously refined as he had grown and mastered himself. Kith believed that it was safe to say he‟d fallen into a very comfortable state of being, where things ebbed and flowed around him in a specific way that he was used to.

Until now.

When Bronse and Ravenna came close to each other, it was as though the miasma of emotions that always swam around Kith was swept back by a torrential rain of feelings that were demanding someone‟s—anyone‟s—attention. It left Kith raw with intensity and confusion, and he could not understand why, or why he should feel so desperately worried about leaving this hard warrior alone with his sister. She was everything opposite to what he was. Too gentle and too naïve in certain respects to be trusted in the hands of a man who bit off orders and decisions about people‟s lives based on some logical formula that he seemed to have stored in his head.

But Kith had never countermanded Rave‟s wishes, and he would not start now. She was the eldest in the family and by far the wisest. With his tense hands closed into fists, he turned and led the other two soldiers toward the sound of water.

Bronse slowly walked around the boulder that Rave was seated on and unhurriedly crouched down in front of her until they were eye to eye.

“Hey,” he greeted with a smile that was enigmatic but warmed his periwinkle eyes.

“You keep saying that,” she told him, her smile far more tremulous. She blinked and tried to turn her face away when the gleam of tears filled her topaz eyes.

“Hey, hey now,” he soothed sympathetically, reaching to cup her cheek and turn her face back to look at him. “It will be okay. I promise you. I will keep you safe.”

“I know,” she said with absolute faith in her gentle voice. “Please. Let‟s just hurry.”

He nodded. He reached forward to touch her shoulders, which were swelled and red from the secondary infection, and caught what remained of the small sleeves of her gown in his fingers. Gingerly, keeping his eyes on hers, he inched the tattered material down her arms. She slid her wrists and forearms free when the material fell to her waist. Shyly, she raised awkward arms to cover her bared breasts. Her cheeks flushed, and she couldn‟t keep his gaze.

“Ravenna, I need you to hold your hair and raise your arms,” Lasher instructed, “if you can. Bronse, if you take the roll when I pass it forward, it will keep me from having to reach around her and bumping into her raw skin.”

“Okay,” Bronse said with far more efficient neutrality than he actually felt. It infuriated him that she was so injured and so in need of him, and yet all he could do was think about how damn attractive she was, how smooth and soft her skin looked. She seemed fragile, and he saw her trembling. Why did he want so badly to sweep her into his arms and kiss her into comfort, gently and with care? He would serve her better helping Lasher bind her, not smearing her with … with useless physical affections.

Ravenna wrapped the tousled sheaf of her hair twice around her wrist before grasping it in her fingers. The rising sun shimmered through the mussed mass, giving it golden lights as well as deeper amber ones. Again a surging need to touch it washed through Bronse.
To touch it, to
touch her, any kind of contact
, his mind and body cried desperately. Why? Damn it all, why was he so plagued by this need? Disgusted with himself for his mental fancies, Bronse strove for competence as Ravenna raised her arms and the secured hair over her head and Lasher began to pass the sterile fabric to him. Bronse made it through three revolutions of winding fabric before he actually allowed himself to look at her breasts as he laid the fabric over the swells of feminine flesh.

The vicious curse exploded out of him before he even knew it was forming.

His eyes widened with outrage and unspeakable fury when he saw the mean fingerprints bruised onto her precious skin. Both breasts were marred with these bruises, as well as angry scratches flared with inflammation because the nails on the ends of the offending fingers had been sharp and dirty. She had been callously manhandled, and the evidence of it was stamped into her skin for him to see.

“By all that is cursed and holy,” he swore vehemently, reaching out to brush his knuckles over the blue and black marks near her areola. “Is there much pain?” he asked hoarsely.

He wanted to ask who had done it. Oh, he knew it was the guards, but he would elicit a description if he could and go back to hunt the specific bastards for himself, and damn the danger. Still, he knew he could not. He would have to satisfy himself knowing he had gotten her away from them, that she‟d be safe with him from now on.

When she didn‟t answer, he looked up at her. Her face was flushed a furious rose color, and she wasn‟t looking at him. He searched for tears, but her averted eyes were clear and dry, only her rapid breath giving him any hint of her emotion.

“Lasher, she has some angry bruising,” he said softly, running his thumb ever so gently across the marks. “Do you have a reabsorption patch? Tight bandages will hurt if we—”

“Absolutely. Just a sec,” Lasher said, turning to rummage in his kit.

But Bronse was not paying him any attention. He had suddenly become aware of the soft, breathless gasp that Ravenna uttered, and the immediate reaction to follow. The nipple close to his caressing thumb tightened and formed itself into a thrusting point, and a ripple of goose-flesh prickled beneath his fingertips and palm where they rested artlessly against her. Bronse watched the reaction with the same fascination as one would watch the inevitable rush of an approaching avalanche. Awe at the sheer magnificence of how natural and beautiful it was sent a thrill of body-rocking excitement completely through him. Then came the realization that if he didn‟t move, and move fast, all hell would break loose and sheer survival would become an issue.