Beyond the Shadows (8 page)

He had almost kissed her.

She wanted it
.

Ona be blind, she wanted him to kiss her so bad she could feel the ache of it deep in her belly. Weak and shaking, she reclined on the bed and tried to steady her breath.

She watched his expression change, subtle shifts in his shadowed eyes. His thick fringe of dark lashes only made his eyes seem deeper and more mysterious, and the smear of blood across his cheekbone woke something primitive and wild in her.

The man was glorious, and she was attracted to him on a visceral level. Damn it. She stared at his lower lip, the slightly rough contour of his chin and jaw. What would that jaw feel like brushing against the tender skin of her cheek? How would his lips taste?

She dropped her gaze to her lap, but he still hadn’t stood. The pressure of his weight on the bed tipped her thigh against his lean hip.

Her body felt like it was on fire as she took her thoughts further. He would never be submissive in bed. Even if she managed to tie him down, somehow he’d dominate her. It was his nature. He wouldn’t surrender. That much was clear. He had soaked his ship, his
home
in blood, and never once backed down or gave in to fear.

A wave of dizziness forced her to close her eyes as a rush of adrenaline made her limbs tingle.

She had to get off of his ship.

“Yara, are you okay?” he asked.

“No,” she answered, letting him interpret that however he wanted.

He finally stood, pulling his heat with him as he lifted the overturned locker and cleared a path to the bed behind the pilot seat with several stiff sweeps of his foot. “Take off your shirt, clean off the blood in the cleanser, and then you need to rest.”

Yara pulled her aching body upright. The echoes of pain throbbed in her shoulder and ribs as she tenderly peeled her blood-soaked sleeve off her wounded arm. She struggled to get it over her head, but finally managed to get the ruined shirt off, leaving her in nothing but her support.

Cyrus’s eyes fixed on her cleavage. She scowled at him and covered it with her hand. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” His wit lacked its usual warmth and he turned away from her to clear off the other bed. She could see the frustration bunching in his shoulders.

Yara felt it, too. She stumbled into the small cleanser and fell to a seat. Resting her head in her hands, she enjoyed the feel of the warm air swirling around her. When the last of the sticky grime had lifted off her skin, she forced herself to stand and enter the living quarters again.

Cyrus sat on the edge of the bed nearest the pilot’s chair, the covers neatly turned down. “Come here,” he instructed, his voice clipped and cold. She was too exhausted to argue. It wouldn’t be much longer and she’d pass out to heal.

She eased onto the bed as he offered her a soft black shirt. “Thanks,” she murmured as she tried to pull it over her head, but she couldn’t lift her arm. Cyrus slid the warm material over her back and gently helped her ease her wounded arm into it. The cool reserve in his demeanor didn’t translate to his touch.

She fell back onto the soft pillows, while he tenderly pulled her boots off and tucked her legs under the covers.

With the rush of adrenaline gone and the pain still lingering, she felt empty and cold all of a sudden. Her thoughts felt scattered and sluggish, and a thick depression fell over her mind and body.

Cyrus pulled the blanket up. It didn’t smell like the other one had. It smelled warm and slightly musty, like salt and heat.

He smoothed the blanket near her hip.

“This is your bed, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged as if the answer didn’t mean anything to him, but the way he stroked the blanket said otherwise.

Yara relaxed her neck and let her heavy head sink deeper into the clean pillow. “It’s nice,” she offered.

“Thank you.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time, and he didn’t seem in a hurry to move either. The stillness of the ship and his presence were comforting as her mind tried to sort through the horror she’d just witnessed.

“Am I going to scar?” She tried to keep her eyes open but couldn’t. Her shoulder still throbbed, but the pain had lessened to a dull ache. The heat in her body felt like it was radiating out in waves. She couldn’t get the images of dying men out of her head. Their faces haunted her.

“Probably.” His voice sounded melodic in the peaceful quiet of the ship. She could hear the low hum of the systems, punctuated by a pip or chirp from Bug. Somehow she knew he wasn’t talking about her shoulder, but something much deeper.

“How many have you killed, Cyrus?” she asked.

He rose from the bed and retreated to the control center.

“Do you know?” she asked. Staring overhead, she tried to determine how many she had killed in the battle. Her memories were like a jumble of noise, visions of faces and blood.

“I know.” He answered with clear and simple conviction, and a note of melancholy that matched her dark mood. “Get some sleep, Yara.”

 

 

YARA WOKE TO THE GROWL OF HER STOMACH, FEELING HUNGRIER THAN SHE ever had in her life. She ran a sleepy hand through the front of her hair and looked around the room with bleary eyes.

It looked as it always had—immaculate. She sat and questioned reality for a moment, trying to determine if the Spider attack had all been a crazy lag-induced dream.

A loud purr vibrated her feet. She looked down at Tuz, blissfully licking his claws. She’d never seen him so calm or content.

She reached out to pet him, when the sharp pain in her shoulder brought everything snapping back into crystal clarity. She sent a quick prayer of thanks to the Matriarchs. It was a miracle they were still alive.

She wrapped her stiff arms over her chest and inhaled the scent of Cyrus’s shirt. Where was he?

Swinging her feet over the side of the bed, she let her head hang over her knees to regain her composure before trying to stand. The ship’s lights had come back on, but the air was still cold enough to chill her skin.

She grabbed her com off the top of one of the angrav cases, and eased into the copilot seat. They were in a shipping corridor and had to be near Gansai. If they were close enough to an array, she’d be able to receive any messages from Azra. She linked her com to the ship’s system and waited for it to connect. A small square of the viewscreen turned bright white, and then a message appeared.

“
Shakt
,” she whispered.

She didn’t have much time left before the coup broke out. Staying on the ship was impossible. There was no time for any more delays or repairs. She needed to be home or her peaceful ascension would be ruined. Tapping her fingers in rapid patterns on the screen, she relayed a simple reply saying she’d be back within days, and urging her supporters to do what it took to keep control of her rival.

Her situation was becoming dangerous—for her, and those that supported her.

Then there was Cyrus, yet another reason she had to get off the ship immediately.

“There’s hot soup in the galley,” Cyrus called from the bay. A soft swishing noise emanated from the back compartment. What was he doing in there?

Her stomach turned at the thought.

With cautious steps she crossed the quarters to the bay and peeked inside. Cyrus hummed to himself as he ran a glowing san-mop over the cargo floor. Several piles of scorpion parts lay sorted along the sidewall near the ramp, but other than the presence of the dismantled bots and some scorch marks on the sidewalls and the bulkhead, there was no evidence of a fight at all.

Cyrus folded his hands on top of the san-handle. “You’d better eat. Kiltii water works better on a full stomach.”

“Noted.” She leaned up against the doorframe. “How much longer until we reach port?”

“A couple of hours, tops.” He resumed his mopping.

“And the status of the ship?”

Cyn didn’t pause his cleaning to consider her question. He didn’t like how anxious she sounded. In the course of one day, things had gone terribly wrong, and he had to figure out a way to regain control of the situation.

He still had a job to do. He had to keep her from Azra at all costs.

“The ship is functional.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

Cyn threw one of his most charming smiles at her. “Worried about me?”

“No,” she quickly denied, but her pale cheeks flushed cool pink.

“Your soup’s getting cold.” He didn’t like the chill that ran down his back. Something was up with her.

And he was exposed. She’d seen the stash of weapons. She’d seen him in battle. There was no way he could continue to play Mr. Innocent.

He didn’t know if he could continue to play the seducer anymore either. She’d responded to him.

He knew when a woman wanted sex, and she was oozing it.

Normally that wasn’t a problem, but this game was turning dangerous.

As much as he wanted his attraction to her to be entirely physical, it wasn’t.

That bothered him.

What could possibly come of this? Was he supposed to ask her out on a date after he destroyed all order on their planet? Yeah, that would go over well. He had to hand her over to the revolution, and then what? He didn’t want to think about that. He shuddered. She wasn’t supposed to be like this, like a real person. She was supposed to be a brainwashed Elite machine.

Could he hand her over to the revolution? It would be a death sentence, unless there was some way—damn it. He couldn’t think too far past the start of the war, or he’d get sick. There was no other way. Azra had to change. His people were dying.

Cyn let the handle fall against the sidewall, needing the loud clang to rattle his thoughts out of his head. Why did the Yar family resemblance have to be so strong? Yara looked like her cousin. Yarlia had lived and died, and Yara didn’t even know her kin had ever existed. That’s how far apart their worlds really were, and he couldn’t forget it. He picked up a piece of scorpion leg and tossed it onto the far pile with another loud clatter.

He
liked
her. That was the problem. Yara was interesting and not what he was expecting. His affection for the unexpected was one of his weaknesses, one he had to be aware of, or she could ruin everything. She was Elite. When it came to the war, she would give her life to protect the status quo.

If only there was another way.

She watched him from the bulkhead door.

“Eat the damn soup, Yara.”

“Who are the weapons for?”

He was half tempted to tell her. “That’s none of your business.”

“I can’t believe you’re smuggling projectiles.” She crossed her arms, closing herself off.

“I can’t believe you’re bringing this up,” he snapped back at her. “What’s your problem?”

“I want . . .” She nearly shouted the words before she choked on them. When she regained her composure, she leveled him with a hard stare. “I want the people I deal with to be honest.”

Cyn held back his chuckle of disbelief. That wasn’t what she intended to say, but he’d go with it. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“Ha,” she huffed. “It doesn’t bother you that innocent people will probably die?” She rubbed the tattoos on her wrist as if the white falcons of the bloodline of Yarini the Just were clawing at her.

He resisted the urge to rub the snakes that marked him as a son of the Rebel. They were biting at him, too. “Innocent people are dying now. Someone has to stop it.”

“So you’re fine with stoking a war?”

“Sometimes it’s needed,
Commander
.”

Yara felt the heat of her temper rising in her veins. She just wanted to make it home so she could avoid the bloodshed of a messy transition of power. Why did the lure of the throne mean more to her rival, Palar, than peace? Cyrus wasn’t helping things. Their little argument was an effective reminder of why she should never be attracted to a man.

She spun around and grabbed the pot of soup out of the galley then settled into the copilot’s seat to eat it.

She wanted it to taste terrible and bitter. Of course it didn’t. The bastard seemed to be good at everything.

If she’d tried to make soup, it would have congealed into a sticky gray mass and charred on the bottom.

The thick cream tasted rich, warm and comforting with just the right amount of exotic spice. It filled her with heat and pleasure.

“Damn it,” she whispered.

Bug rose up off the console, inspecting the information on the viewscreen with his single beadlike eye.

“
Twip, errrrr, werp buzz EEeeeee
.” His aura turned bright green and swelled as threads of pink light wove in and out.

“We’re almost there?” She reached out and switched modes for the viewscreen. In the distance a tiny blue planet glowed in the vastness of space.

Yara looked at the bot. After spending the endless quiet hours of transwave travel with Bug buzzing around “talking” to Cyrus, it scared her that she was beginning to understand him.

“Cyrus?” she called.

He entered the control center and claimed the captain’s seat. With quick efficiency, he pulled the top of his hair back and tied it at his crown, leaving the rest to curl against his neck and ears.

Yara focused back on the viewscreen. She shouldn’t be looking at him.

Tuz jumped in her lap and sniffed the pot of soup, then placed his front paws on the console so he could stare out at the stars. She stroked her hand down his gray and black coat. This nightmare was almost over.

“I can find passage on another ship once we reach Gansai,” she stated.

“That’s not a good idea,” Cyrus countered with a hard edge in his voice.

“I don’t have time to wait for your repairs.” This trip had taken far too long already. She’d had enough.