Purity (Pure and Tainted) (25 page)

She hadn’t known what food was either,
until he cooked for her and fed her, he reminded himself. K might have been
born in an artificial womb and raised as a Purist but if there was one thing
she had proven, it was that she could learn and grow. So maybe she could grow
to love Boone, the way he was beginning to love her. Maybe he could teach her
that as well.

In the back of his mind though, a small
doubt still prodded him with a sharp stick. What about her Erian blood? What
about Loki’s claim that she would need to find a touch-partner among her own
kind?

Boone sighed and cleaned himself up.
They would have to sort through that mess when they got to it. In the mean
time, he wanted to go back to bed and hold K while she slept. Wanted to feel
her sweet body resting
against his own
and know that
she was safe in his arms.
Safe and loved.

He left the fresher and settled in the
sleeping platform beside her. She was obviously asleep but she gave a soft sigh
and rolled over toward him. Pressing her face to his chest, she curled up
against him like a sleepy kitten.

Boone stroked her long black hair and
felt his heart swell. Yes, he could definitely teach her to love. He was sure
of it.

Chapter Eighteen

K woke up with a delicious sensation of warmth from her fingertips
all the way down to her toes. When she opened her eyes, she realized why—her
body was pressed full length against Boone’s. They were touching from chest to
thigh, completely entangled with each other.

One short solar month ago, waking up in such a situation would
have horrified her. Now she felt comforted and content—well rested for the
first time in days.

She snuggled closer to the sleeping Boone and took a blissfully
deep breath, breathing in his warm, masculine scent. It wasn’t quite time to
get up yet. Maybe they could sleep a little while longer cocooned in each
other’s warmth. Her eyes were just about to slip closed when they fell on her
skinsuit lying discarded on the floor.

Purity!
She sat up, untangling herself hurriedly.
The suit didn’t even twitch—it had no ability to move on its own—but it still
seemed to stare at her accusingly. It couldn’t speak either but K knew what it
would say if it could.

What’s the matter with you, lying
on the sleeping platform with the enemy, reveling in filth?
Actually
enjoying
contamination.
Are
the years of teaching and training you went through to become a fourth level Paladin
so easily lost and forgotten? Didn’t you swear to kill him the moment you
could?
To kill him and purge yourself?

Yes. Yes, she
had
promised all that. Hardly knowing what she was doing, K got out of the sleeping
platform and went to crouch naked over the discarded suit. Hesitantly, she
picked it up off the floor. It seemed to writhe in her hand and she almost dropped
it again but something made her hold on.

The suit wasn’t just a shed skin—it represented her entire past.
Years of training and hard work which she was throwing away and for
what?
The pleasure of Boone’s touch?
Was she
really so far gone that she would do anything, give up everything, just to be
close to him? An Impure male she hadn’t even known a month ago—a male who had
killed her entire purge crew?

And what would happen once they recovered Boone’s sister? Would he
decide he had no more use for her and leave her? Maybe he would tell her again
to go join the Tainted—those Paladins who had left Purity but refused to purge
themselves. And what would K be left with?
Nothing but
bittersweet memories and regret.

The skinsuit had mostly external weapons—like the plasma gauntlets
that she’d worn to kill Sweetie. But it did have a few other emergency
armaments that weren’t visible to the naked eye. K suddenly found one of these
in her hands now—a short, sharp curving blade made of tempered
Pembla
steel. It was kept in the sleeve
of the suit, a safeguard in case the Paladin wearing it had to purge him or
herself suddenly and without warning. One swift slice of the super sharp blade
could sever the jugular, insuring almost instant death.

K held the blade up, studying it by the dim glow coming from the
ceiling. There was no morning or night in space but the lights had been
configured to a standard twenty-four hour day and so they brightened gradually
in the morning and dimmed just as gradually at night. The growing light caught
the curved blade and reflected a beam of radiance into her eyes, blinding K for
a moment.

“K?” Boone’s deep voice made her look up. “K?” he asked again.
“Are you all right?”

K looked up and realized what she must look like to him. She was
crouched naked on the floor, holding her skinsuit in one hand and a lethal
weapon in another. The look on Boone’s face was uncertain and worried.

“I’m fine.” She made herself put the blade back in the suit and
then folded it neatly and put it on a nearby chair.
“Just…thinking.”

“About what?”
He patted the spot beside him on
the sleeping platform. “Come back to bed and tell me.”

K came back and sat beside him, being careful to keep some space
between them. She pulled the sheet around herself, creating a barrier, making
sure he couldn’t touch her.

Clearly her actions weren’t lost on Boone.

“Come on, darlin’—don’t be like that,” he murmured, sitting up
beside her. “Look at me.” When she wouldn’t, he tried to cup her chin.

K jerked away from his touch. “Don’t.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked softly. “Are you regretting last night?
Letting me touch you? Letting me make you come?”

“Yes…no…” K shook her head. “I don’t know. I just feel like…”

“Like what?” he prodded gently when she didn’t go on.

“Like it shouldn’t be so easy,” K burst out.
“To
give up years of hard work and training.
To abandon
all my beliefs.
All because it feels good when you
touch me.”

“I’ve been touching you for weeks now, K,” he pointed out in a low
voice.

“Yes, but not like this. Not like…” K shook her head. “I know I
asked you to and I
wanted
you to. But
I shouldn’t have wanted it.
Shouldn’t have taken…so much
pleasure from it.”

“You had to have pleasure,” Boone said. “It was the only thing
that could stop your pain. Are you telling me you’d rather still be in agony?”

“I
should
prefer pain to
pleasure.
Nothingness to emotion.”
K looked down at
her hands. “But…you’ve changed me, Boone. Being with you, touching you…I have
all these
feelings
inside and they’re
all about
you.”

“I have feelings for you too, K,” he said and his deep voice was
warm and gentle.
“Deep feelings.
I’m sorry I had to
touch you last night. Your cycle…I think it pushed us into doing something we
should have waited on.
Would
have waited on if we could have.
But just because you
needed
to be touched and I
had
to touch you
doesn’t
mean I didn’t want to do it.”

“You did?” She gave him a quick glance from the corner of her eye.

“Of course I did. Holding you in my arms, touching you, making you
come…it was perfect. Didn’t it feel good to you too?”

“
Too
good,” K muttered.
“I can’t remember ever feeling so relaxed, so…”

“Go on,” he urged.

“So safe,” K whispered.
“So protected.”

“So loved,” Boone murmured. He tilted her chin up again and this
time K let him. When his lips brushed lightly over hers, she kissed him
back—kissed him despite the accusing black stare of the skinsuit lying folded
on the chair to her left. Purity, she knew she shouldn’t give in to emotion but
it felt so good—
too
good to stop.

“Boone,” she murmured between kisses. “I don’t know about
that…about love.”

“It’s okay, darlin’. I’ll teach you.”

K was beginning to feel the urges growing in her again, possibly
brought on by the intimate contact. It reminded her of what was happening
today—they were finally going to get to Eros and then her cycle would be in
full swing. What was going to happen to her?
Would she really
be attracted to some other male—someone who wasn’t Boone?
The thought
still gave her a crawling sensation all over her body.

No, it can’t be,
she told herself uneasily.
Boone is the only one I want—the only one I
can stand to have
touch
me. Nothing can change that. I
won’t let it.

Her eyes fluttered
open,
she looked up at
him and realized that the lights in their room were fully on. The artificial
dawn of the ship was over—it was day and time to get up.

“Boone,” she whispered.

“Mmm-hmm?”
His eyes were still closed but he
opened them to look at her. “K, I—” He frowned and his eyes widened.

“What is it?” K asked, suddenly worried at his expression. Purity
but she hated having so many emotions all the time!

“Your eyes…” He cupped her chin and studied her carefully.

K sighed, a dull resignation overcoming her.

“Have I lost the last blackness of Purity? Is it all gone?”

“It’s gone all right.” Boone was still staring at her intently. “But
your eyes…”

“What? What’s wrong with them?” K demanded.

“There’s nothing wrong—they’re beautiful. I always wondered what
color they’d be but this…I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Let me see. I have to see.” K jumped off the sleeping platform and
went to examine herself in the viewer hanging over the sink in the fresher.
Leaning forward, she looked at her reflection in disbelief.

The woman reflected in the viewer was so different than what she
would have seen one standard month ago when she first came aboard Boone’s ship
that K almost didn’t recognize herself. Gone were the flat, sexless planes of
her body, replaced by full breasts and curving hips. Her long black hair was
free of its normal braid to hang in wild waves down her bare back and her face
looked softer somehow—more vulnerable. Less stern and hard…more open and free.

But it was her eyes that had changed the most.

K stared at them in the viewer—they had gone from the almost solid
black on black of Purity to the light on white of the Impure. Not so light,
actually—her irises were now a brilliant violet. But instead of being one solid
color like Boone’s or Mom’s, she had a golden ring around her outer iris like
Loki’s. Not just one ring though, she saw, leaning forward. There was another golden
ring in the center of her iris and a third circling the black dot of her pupil.

“Purity,” she whispered. “I look…”

“Beautiful,” Boone finished for her, coming into the fresher to
stand behind her. “Exotic.
Amazing.
Your new eyes…they
take my breath away, K. Who knew you were hiding such gorgeous peepers under
all that black?”

“But are they normal?” K stepped back from the viewer and turned
to face Boone. “Or is there something wrong with me? Some genetic defect
whoever mixed my genes—
”

“Don’t start that,” he said firmly. Putting both hands on her
shoulders, he steered her out of the fresher. “You’re perfect, K. I’m sure it’s
just a small variation in the Erian DNA. After all, Loki’s got that same gold
ring around his eyes.”

“Yes, but I have three of them. Three rings,” K protested. “Surely
that can’t be normal. I—”

Just then the door burst open to reveal Loki slouching against the
doorway.

“Damn it, Loki!” Boone hurried to get a sheet from the sleeping
platform and draped it around K. “Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”

“No time for knocking—we’re in orbit around Eros and
I
am going to go find myself a
man.
Maybe several men.”
Loki preened. “And don’t bother covering up Princess Paladin because you know I
don’t have any interest in…in…”

“Yes, we know—you’re not interested in female anatomy,” Boone
growled. “But there is such a thing as modesty and…Loki, what’s wrong?”

Loki was still standing just in the doorway but his lazy slouch
had turned tense and he was staring at K, his gold ringed eyes wide.

“What is it?” she demanded in irritation. “Are you going to
lecture me again about how I killed your partner? Save your time and go find
another one instead.”

Loki’s mouth worked as he stared at her—he seemed to be having
trouble speaking.

“Princess,” he managed to get out at last.

“Stop calling me that,” K snapped. “I’m tired of your sarcasm. I’m
not a—”

“Princess!”
Loki suddenly fell prostrate at
her feet and pressed his forehead to the floor. “Forgive me! Forgive me,
Princess. I didn’t know. I didn’t
know.”