Beloved Stranger: Gaian Series, Book 5 (3 page)

“You don’t care about my past?”

“Whatever it is doesn’t change what I’m feeling for you. I want this to work between us. Gaian marriage is based on what we’re feeling right now.”

Her voice sounded uncertain. “What you’re feeling is desire, because you attached to me. You don’t know what I feel.”

“You’re right, I don’t. You’ll have to tell me. Do you like me—at least a little?”

“A little?” She laughed. “Yes, I like you at least that much.”

“Then that’s a start. I know I like you a lot.”

“You want me,” she said flatly.

“That too.” He kissed the back of her hands. “But I also like you.”

“You don’t know much about me. Far too little to offer marriage.”

“For a non-Gaian, I guess that would be true. But I know more than you think.”

“Oh?” She sounded apprehensive. “Tell me what you know about me.”

“Can I touch you?”

“Oh.” There was a surprise in her voice as if she hadn’t expected to be asked. “The way I touched you? Of course.”

He let her guide his hands to her face and he touched it gingerly, using the back of his hand to caress her cheek. Her features were delicate, her nose a small blip in the middle, and he thought her eyes must be large to take so much space in her face. The rest of her seemed so small. He thought he could cover her entire face with one hand. Using his fingers, he traced the length of her mouth, which was wide and her lips soft. He wanted to kiss her so badly it made his mouth water.

Finally he moved to the lower edge of her face, and here he found something he didn’t expect. Her chin was pronounced and sharp. Roan cleared his throat. “You are lovely, I expect. Your skin is soft and smooth, and your features even. I think you probably have beautiful eyes. But this…” He tapped her chin. “This tells me that you are probably not a woman to take lightly.”

She tensed. “What do you mean by that?”

“You have a strong jaw. I think you probably have a stubborn streak a kilometer wide.”

She burst into laughter, and the tension eased out of her. “I’m afraid you’re probably right about that. So what else can you tell about me?”

With her tacit permission, he moved his hands down to her shoulders, which were broader than he would have expected given her height. Long hair fell past them and straight down her back. It was soft as pseudosilk in his hands.

“You have beautiful hair,” he said, stroking it gently. He could have played with it longer, but she tensed as if she was uncomfortable so he moved on. Feeling her arms, he found more muscle there as well as in her shoulders, and he knew she must have worked hard to put it there. When she’d moved before, there had been a lithe strength to her.

“You are strong for your size,” he said. “I bet you dance well.”

“I’ve been known to dance,” she admitted. “What else can you find?”

He ran his hands along her body, carefully avoiding her breasts. “You are slender.” His hands rested at her waist, the narrowness surprising after the width of her shoulders. “Very slender.”

“You missed a spot,” she said, sounding amused. “A couple of them in fact,” she added as if to drive the point home.

Well, if she was going to be that way about it. Roan moved his hands up to cover her breasts. Small like the rest of her, but soft and easy to hold under the loose gown she wore. As he touched them, the nipples pebbled under his hands as if begging for him to caress them.

“Wow,” was all he could say.

“You like?”

“I like very much. Will you marry me?”

She erupted into laughter. “That’s it? You feel my breasts and promptly ask to marry me?”

“I’ve wanted to marry you since the moment I attached to you. This just seemed like a good moment to ask.” He wasn’t sure if he should be offended or not. “How should I ask?”

“Well, not with your hands on my breasts. And I think you should at least kiss me first.”

For a moment Roan wondered which of them was conducting this courtship. At the moment it didn’t seem to be him. However, who was he to ignore another blatant invitation? Gently but firmly, he pulled her into his arms and tight against his body. Her curves seemed to dissolve into him. Those few parts of her that were soft became a blessing against his hardness. She made a small gasp of surprise, which was lost when he lowered his lips to find hers.

And then he was the one lost as their lips met and mingled. She was experienced at kissing, but he didn’t mind as she let him take control. She let him use his tongue to open her mouth and taste the inside. She tasted sweet and clean, her teeth smooth and her tongue more than talented as it wrestled with his. It was the first time he’d kissed a woman this way, but she made it easy for him.

She opened to him and melted in his arms, her body clinging to him as he pushed her onto her back. The padded cushion of the platform gave as her body flattened and then he was on top of her, pressing her farther into the yielding surface. The breasts he’d felt were soft against his chest, and as he covered her, his hardened shaft fell into the cradle of her thighs, pressing against her sex. He let her feel the length of him and slid forward just a little, rubbing them together and making her gasp. She moaned, and he knew she felt desire just as strongly as he did.

Supporting himself on his elbows, he felt her warm breath on his cheek. He kissed her again, putting all the frustration of ten years of waiting into it. This was the woman he’d waited for, the woman to be his wife and take her place at his side. She was the one he wanted.

When he pulled his mouth from hers, she wasn’t laughing. Every part of her seemed tense and wanting, wanting everything he could give her as a man. Where his chest met hers, he felt her heartbeat racing, matching the pounding he felt in his. They were matched. It was inevitable.

Maybe even now she saw it. “Will you marry me?”

She didn’t laugh this time. “Yes…” She drew the word out. “Yes, I think I will.”

He let out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding. Pushing up on his arms he rose off her, moving to a sitting position. He pulled her up to sit as well. From the pocket of his pants he pulled the marriage band he’d made earlier in the day and fastened it around her wrist.

He pulled her hand to touch his own naked wrist. “You have a band for me?”

“A band?” She sounded dazed. “Oh, yes.” She fumbled about and then he felt her wrap something around his wrist. The cool feel of the metal band was a comfort he’d sometimes wondered if he would ever know. With a sudden surge of joy he realized that he’d done it. He was a married man.

He tugged her into his arms again and kissed her, this time in celebration. “Come on.” Roan practically leapt off the platform and onto his feet, pulling her with him.

“Come where?” She sounded even more confused than before. “Aren’t we going to…”

She thought he was going to make love to her in a dark room? Sometimes he knew couples did that, too overcome by desire to wait, but he’d always known that wasn’t his style. He grabbed her robe from where he’d left it on the hook and wrapped it around her, pulling the hood and mask over her face.

“I’ve waited a long time for this. When I make love to my wife for the first time it will be on a bed, after a good dinner and a warm bath so neither of us smells like blood. I also want light so I can see your face.” He grabbed his robe and pulled it on, replacing the hood and mask.

When she spoke again she’d apparently regained some of her earlier composure. “You’ve got it all planned out, I see.” Again she sounded amused.

“You have no idea.” He opened the door and ushered her through.

He directed her over to the desk at the room’s exit. The marriage meet complex was built as part of the spaceport on the outskirts of the mine. It was one of the few places outsiders were allowed.

From here they’d take a shuttle to his residential bubble and his apartment. He’d order a good dinner for them, they’d take a bath, and then there was his bed…

But first there were some details. He showed the mining official his banded wrist. “Roan Duman. Prisoner alpha-delta-four-seven-eight-two-zero. We’re married.”

The man looked up at him with clear amusement. “Congratulations. But don’t you think you should introduce yourself to your wife first?”

Roan thought he heard a distinct chuckle from the white-clad woman standing next to him.

Feeling like an idiot, Roan pulled off his hood and mask and faced his bride. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. My name is Roan Duman.”

She stood for a moment, and he thought through the mask she must be staring at him, taking in what he looked like. Roan had no delusions that he was the handsomest man around, but he hoped she wasn’t too disappointed. For a brief moment he wondered if she’d turn and run back the way she’d come in.

Reaching up she pulled up the mask and hood in one gesture, uncovering her face. The long hair he’d touched in the dark room spilled down her back in a flow of light gold and she looked up at him with wide eyes as blue as the sky over Gaia, a sky he hadn’t seen in ten years. Her face was absolutely lovely, and it took his breath away.

“My name is Sonja. Sonja Deems.” She smiled at him, and he was forever lost in her loveliness.

Chapter Three

Sonja thought wryly that her new husband looked like someone had whapped him in the stomach. She’d known he’d probably be pleased at her appearance, but Roan seemed more than that. He looked positively stunned.

Well, they didn’t get many women here, she reasoned. And she wasn’t a woman without looks.

He wasn’t so bad himself, she reflected, with his dark brown hair and eyes. He’d been right about the scar on his arm not being his first. A thin one bisected his left eyebrow, but rather than marring his looks, the scar, along with the slight bump of his broken nose, gave his otherwise handsome face a touch of rakishness she rather liked. Under normal circumstances, Roan would have been a man she might have really gone for.

Unfortunately those weren’t the circumstances they were in, not that he knew that. Roan thought she really intended to be his wife. Too bad that wasn’t possible.

“Perhaps we should go?” she said when it looked like they’d be standing there all night with him staring at her.

He shook his head. “Yes, of course.” Turning to the man at the desk, he began reciting his name and number again, but the official held up his hand.

“I got it the first time.” He held up a scanner to Roan’s arm. “Roan Duman.”

Then he held it up to hers and after a moment frowned. “No tracking tag. You’ll have to take care of that later.”

Sonja said nothing, but swore to herself that wasn’t going to happen.

He entered their names on his p-tab. “Roan Duman, Sonja Deems. Married. Marriage fee, thirty-one thousand credits.”

Sonja couldn’t help her gasp. “Thirty-one thousand? That’s a fortune!”

The official seemed amused. “Costs a lot to bring women here. Not many are willing to come to a prison planet to be married.”

And didn’t she know that already. Most women didn’t come here willingly at all. Years earlier she and her sisters had been stolen from their Outer Colony farm to furnish women for the Gaian miners’ marriage meets, and recently she’d been involved in an unofficial effort to end the practice of slaving in the Outer Colonies.

She’d known there was money in it for the slavers who took the women, but she’d no idea how much. And they expected this prisoner to fork over a fortune like that just so he could have a wife? It was preposterous!

She turned to Roan but he didn’t protest or even look surprised. He waved a small wand over the machine. “You can deduct it from this account.”

He smiled at her shock. “Don’t worry, Sonja. If I couldn’t afford a wife I wouldn’t be here.”

The man waved them through the heavy door that led into the mining complex. Sonja stepped through and inwardly rejoiced. She’d gotten what she’d come for.

They were inside what looked like a locker room, with brown robes and a few white ones piled up as if people had left in a hurry. In a hurry to enjoy their wedding nights alone, Sonja decided.

Roan reached for her robe. “You can take that off now.”

And happy she’d be to take it off and never put it back on again. Sonja stripped off the robe and handed it to him. She hated the robes they made you wear. She hated wearing the stupid white dress as well, dressing herself as if she were to be offered up like some virgin—hah on that—sacrifice for the greater good.

In this case though, the greater good was the solution to finding her sisters, and much as she’d hated it, she’d put the dress on willingly. She had a plan to rescue them, but it involved getting inside the mining complex, a place outsiders were strictly forbidden to go.

She’d found the only way to do it was by getting one of the men to take her inside, hence her garments, the marriage meet and allowing one of their men to attach to and marry her.

Which this unsuspecting man had done—costing him a small fortune in the process. Sonja cringed at that. She’d had no idea they charged the prisoners for their wives.

Perhaps Roan thought the price was a bargain to get a wife, but what he didn’t know was that she had no intention of settling into housekeeping with him. Her plan was to find out who had married her sisters, locate them and get them off this rock as quickly as possible. They’d already been here six years too long.