Silver Tongued Devils (16 page)

His words lessened the pain in her
heart.

Na’varr kissed her forehead. “Right
now I’m being selfish with you.”

She didn’t call it selfish. Their
relationship was still so new to her.

“I saw your face when you didn’t know
what was going on,” he said quietly.

With her ear against his chest, she
could hear and feel the rumble of his words. She sank into that
comfort. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Brom was right.” He
adjusted her position in his lap so that she could see the
view.

Each star was a beacon for some
adventurer, a way to guide another home.

Endless space spread out in front of
them, a vast universe of life and death, struggle and survival. So
achingly beautiful to see the wash of reds from the Firesky nebula
and the soft greens of the great shipping channel. Her first memory
involved watching the stars with her dad. “You know, when I was a
child, my father told me the gods painted the night skies with
stardust and the dreams of men. I remember him looking so sad. Do
you know why?”

Na’varr hugged her against him and
chuckled. “My father told me that too. I forgot all about it. You
know, he built the Andovian Republic based on the idea that we are
only limited by the depths of our imagination. Our duty was to
travel the stars and learn from other cultures to enrich the lives
of the people back home. He wanted peace.”

She wanted to ask him more, but
decided to leave it at that. They had time to delve into his past
and figure out how to stop his family from hunting them down and
killing them.

Right now, she’d take this moment of
tranquility in the hectic pace of their lives.

“You know, Brom has been right about a
lot of things lately.”

She looked up and humor danced in his
eyes. “Don’t tell him I said that.” He kissed her, a slow lingering
touch of lips. He tucked her back against him and stared back at
the view. “Thank you for reminding me about my father’s
words.”

Raesa didn’t trust herself to speak,
so she just nodded.

“When we return to the Crimson Star,
we won’t be able to lounge on the bridge like this.” Na’varr’s
quiet statement echoed a strange loneliness she never expected from
the normally high-spirited captain.

“No, but you, Brom, and I will be able
to sleep in the same bed, at the same time.” Their shifts had taken
a toll on their love-making. Running a transport ship with three
people was hard work. Constant close proximity, never-ending
stress, no back up plan. And they wondered why everything was
falling apart.

“I do miss our bed, but I don’t
remember a lot of sleeping.” It sounded like Na’varr was smiling,
but she couldn’t be sure. He stroked her hair again and she curled
comfortably against his hard body.

“Brom seems touchy over me asking him
about his age. Is it a hybrid thing or did I mess up some protocol
I don’t understand?”

Na’varr’s caresses stopped for a
moment and he sighed. “He grew up in a world much more brutal than
ours in many ways.”

Since both of them had been born and
raised in the midst of violence, his statement said a lot. She knew
he was a former sex slave.

Raesa captured his words in her heart
and waited for him to explain.

“Slaves don’t have a birth date. They
have a bought date.”

It took a moment to process. Horror
and understanding dawned. Guilt rushed in. “Shit. He was born a
slave.” She’d screwed up in the worst way. No wonder he was so
uncomfortable talking about it, when he’d insisted she saw him as a
man and not an animal. She closed her eyes and cursed herself as an
insensitive idiot.

“His earliest memory was of slavery.
He lives in the now. I don’t know if that’s a hybrid trait, or if
that’s how Brom learned to cope, but we have to give him
time.”

Raesa nodded and ran the pad of her
thumb across her lip. She needed to make this right. But
how?

***

Brom moved without thought, going
through the kata in brutal efficiency, searching for the
tranquility it usually gave him. Tonight was different.

The fight today had been reckless.
Walking into Yates’s den had been stupid. Na’varr was getting
desperate and racing headlong into the fray like an idiot. Of
course he was no better since he kept jumping at shadows and seeing
danger around every corner.

Sweat slid down his neck and he moved
into a series of jumps and flips. Muscles bunched and stretched,
limbering up the way he needed them to.

He searched for inner peace, but all
he saw was a big ass cyborg bearing down Na’varr and the dark
bruises on Raesa’s body from her escape. There was no way to bypass
the danger, but there had to be a way to limit their
risk.

“Do you need a sparring partner or
would you rather fight those demons alone?” Raesa’s voice snapped
him back to himself.

His little hellcat stood inside the
doorway in a full body suit. His vision zeroed in on her hip,
wondering if she hurt from their earlier escapades. The bruise she
sported had to be hurting by now, and he doubted she’d made another
trip to the tube for a pain reliever.

“I’m not good company right
now.”

She watched him with her bright blue
eyes, her gaze never missing a thing. “I’ll leave if you
want.”

A part of him wondered if she meant
forever. “Don’t let me keep you.”

She moved to the mat and Brom
tensed.

“You’re injured, Raesa. We’re not
doing this now.”

“We either fight or you talk to me.
Which will it be?”

He clenched his jaw. She was damned
stubborn. “Fine. We talk. Did Na’varr send you to make nice with
me?”

“No.” She eased her gorgeous ass down
on a bench. “I came to apologize.”

Brom crossed his arms. “For
what?”

“For teasing you about your age.”
Raesa glanced away from him. “Na’varr explained why you might not
know.”

The hybrid prowled closer, furious yet
strangely relieved that he hadn’t had to be the one to tell her.
“Is it so strange to imagine me used as an animal? It’s what I am.
What they made me.”

She whipped her head
around.
“No you’re not. You’re more human
than most men I’ve met in my life.” She raised her chin and he was
shocked to find tears in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt you with
my words. Your birthday holds special meaning to me. You and
Na’varr have no dates for me to celebrate. I feel like I’m missing
out on this chance to share these moments with you. When you love
someone, you want to share everything with them, right?”

Some things he would never
share with her, if he could help it. They were tangled nightmares
he kept deep inside. “Birthdays are for children.”
And I never was one.
He’d
keep that locked in his heart. “You can’t miss what you’ve never
had.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks and he
hated himself more at that moment than ever before. But the poison
wouldn’t stop. She didn’t want something like him. The way she
looked away confirmed it.

He lowered his voice. “Ashamed of me
now, hellcat?”

Her gaze snapped back to his and she
gaped at him. “I’m furious for you, Brom. I love you. What happened
to you is still a part of who you are. That doesn’t change the way
I feel.”

He fought with the hope blooming in
his chest. “Bold words, sweet thing. But the monsters in my closet
eat little girls for breakfast.”

She met his pissed off stare with one
of her own. “Think what you want. I would kill every single person
who ever harmed you, if I could. I want to take on that pain and
ease your heart, but I can’t do that. You can’t take the murder of
my father away from me or give Na’varr back his life. Logic has
nothing to do with wanting to protect those you love.”

Their breaths came hot and heavy, but
her words swept away his anger and left him exhausted.

“I’ve lost track of my purpose here.
Please accept my apology for pushing my way into a part of your
life you’re not ready to share with me yet.” Her voice tightened
with emotion. “Pick a day. Any great day you want to remember, and
we’ll call it your birthday. Okay? I won’t mention it again.” She
wiped away her tears. His little hellcat had come out spitting mad
and ready to fight. That side he knew how to handle, this side
completely undid him.

He closed the distance between them
and she stood her ground. His fierce woman. So strong and innocent
about the world. He put his forehead to hers and cupped her cheeks.
“Look at me.”

She did so with a nervous anticipation
that amused him.

“I will try to do this thing you ask
of me.”

She nodded.

Na’varr’s voice came through the
intercom, “Attention. We will be hitting our next jump in less than
two minutes. So stop your sexin’ and find yourselves a seat. Next
stop, Renegade Falls.”

Raesa’s laugh lightened a bit more of
the dark around his heart. He wanted to keep this moment and
remember it.

“We landed in the middle of the cherry
blossom festival. I thought some time off the ship would do us all
some good.” Na’varr had been in a ridiculously good
mood.

It was starting to worry Brom. He
expected the captain to punch him or at least punish him. Instead,
he was damned amused with himself.

The captain choosing to relax instead
of work? At a port they’ve never been to and one that vaguely
tugged at Brom’s memory. The hybrid waited for the hammer to
fall.

Raesa walked into the room wrapped
only in a towel. Water trailed down her throat and he wanted
nothing more than to lick the drops from her skin. She ripped a
brush through her tangled hair. He grabbed her wrist and stared
down at his little hellcat. Did she do anything gently?

“Come. Sit with me and let me untangle
this mess you’ve made of your hair.”

Her lashes lowered. “I’m not a
child.”

The echo of his own words came back to
haunt him. “There is nothing about you that reminds me of a child.”
Except her innocence. Despite all that they’d been through, her
heart was still soft. The memory of her sweet caresses came to
mind. The tears she shed over his past. Teasing kisses over morning
coffee. Her laughter. She was a mystery he could spend the rest of
his life unraveling. Every moan and whisper belonged to his
soul.

He sat in the captain’s chair and
tugged her down to the floor between his legs. Brom spread her hair
out over his leg and began detangling the mass. The stroke of the
brush through her hair was far more soothing than he imagined. She
sighed and rested her cheek against his thigh.

“You brutalize your beautiful hair,”
he chided, softly.

She murmured something intelligible
that made him smile—something he was doing a lot more of these
days.

“Your hair fascinates me. From the
moment I saw it, I wanted to run it over my skin.” He dug his
fingers into the tresses and inhaled the scent of fruit wash
Na’varr had bought for her.

She moaned and pressed her body
against his legs. How had this woman come to trust and love someone
like him? She made him want to let go of the drive for vengeance
that had powered him for so long.

“I hated my hair for a long time. When
I was young, other kids would yank on it and call me all sorts of
terrible names.” She traced a finger along the seam of his pants.
“I was in school and the teacher told me that my hair was
beautiful. So a girl who sat behind me cut a huge chunk out of
it.”

Rage surged to the surface of his
emotions and Brom stared down at the gorgeous strands covering his
lap. Who could ever do such a thing?”

“She was a nasty piece of
work.”

“Did your teacher do something about
it?” Brom asked.

“The girl got in trouble, but later
her and her friends finished the job. It took a long time to grow
it back out, but by then I’d started hiding my hair under caps or
hoods.”

Brom ran the brush through her hair
once more. “Do you hate your hair now?”

“No. You and Na’varr love it, so I’m
getting used to showing it off a little.”

She sounded so shy about it that he
fought the instinct to hug her tight. Coddling her wouldn’t help,
however. Instead, he was going to make her see her hair the same
way he did: as a work of art. He had the urge to do something he
never thought he’d do again. “Please allow me to braid
it.”

She looked up at him in wary
curiosity. “Braid? You can do that?”

A snort left him. “You have much to
learn, hellcat.” He gently massaged the back of her neck. Leaning
down, he touched his lips to her ear. “Let me do this.
Please.”

He didn’t know if it was the please or
the joy of having her hair tended to, but Raesa nodded without
saying a word.

“Why don’t you bring her in here so
you can show her what it looks like in the full length mirror? I’m
sure she’d love to watch you braid her hair.” Na’varr stood in the
doorway, fully dressed.