Chapter 8:
Tara stared at him. “Where? You’re a Federation outlaw. You’re on the run. You’re going to be caught and…”
He stepped into her field of being. His arms went around her. His mouth came down on hers, and she shivered as his kiss stole her senses and his arms held her close to every single inch of his body.
His very hard and toned body. That masculine hardness at his crotch bumped against her belly, sending chills and thrills spiking along her central nervous system and making her whimper as his tongue plunged deep into her mouth. That kiss was hot and wet, deep and long and she wanted more. More than she had ever wanted before in her life.
He broke that kiss off, and she gaped at him. “How do I know you won’t sell me too?”
His hands caught at her face. “If I wanted to sell you, I would have. And I told you: I don’t believe in slavery.”
“What do you believe in?” The words were punctuated by another thin scream from below, and her tongue wet her lips as her breath caught and her eyes latched onto his face as she tried to find something in his expression that would answer that question.
Blade said, “I will tell you, but not here. Not here, okay?”
“Okay.” Her word was an answer and an agreement, and she knew it. His hand took hers, and they went out the back, closing doors tightly after shutting the trap door and replacing the rug.
Tara knew then and at that moment that Jack would die before he was found and she knew that she was helping Blade kill Jack. She wanted to feel bad about that fact but she didn’t, and that frightened her more than anything else.
They made their way around the house and to the hovercraft. They got in, and Blade lifted it off the ground, heading back to the airstrip at a sedate speed that would not get them noticed by any officers.
He said, “We’ll talk later.”
She looked out the windows, watching the city fall away behind them. Everything she felt seemed to have been put on hold except for a sense of adventure, so bizarre under the circumstances that she could not even process it.
It felt like she had died and been reborn in some fundamental way and she did not want to think about what she might have been reborn as: not at all.
She sat in a chair on the bridge of the small ship as it careened away from the planets below with her mouth hanging open and her hands up in a silent plea for the words she had just heard to be not true.
She got out, “War on the Federation?”
He said, “I will understand if you want me to turn this ship around and take you back right now.”
Her eyes blinked open and shut. Her mouth worked. Her throat went tight then loose. She muttered, “That is insane. No one can fight the Federation.”
“You did not say there was no reason to.”
She stood, her legs taking her across the short bridge and back again. She gaped at him, and then turned and paced the bridge yet again. She spoke slowly. “No, I did not.”
He said, “It is not too late for you to go back.”
“I don’t want to go back.”
He said, “Are you sure?’
She turned to him. “Would you let me, knowing now what I know and that I could go to the first Fed officer I saw and tell him of your plans?”
“Yes.”
The word surprised her. She studied him. “Why?”
“Because even if you did, it would be too late. It is already in motion, all of it. The ships are gathering and on planets where huge arsenals have been gathered, the war machine is oiled and on the move. The Federation will not fall easily, but they will not fall if we do not fight.”
She sat down and leaned toward him. “Why do you care? You live outside their rules anyway.”
“Only because of what they did to me.” He studied her for long moments. “They took everything from me.”
She wondered what it was that they had taken. She decided to take that statement at face value instead of asking. “I see.”
“You don’t. I’ve been waging war against the Federation for decades because of that, but before that, I was a general’s son. A Federation ensign in training, and I believed in that alliance. But after I saw what they were capable of, I knew I had to go my own way.”
“So you became a criminal and a rebel.”
His grin melted her heart to pieces. “They’re the same thing, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” she said dryly.
He leaned closer still. His hand found hers. His touch aroused her, and her legs pressed together as that arousal hit and stayed, sending heat along her inner walls and making her juices start up and slowly spill.
How he could manage to do that to her? How he could make her body react in such a way was beyond her, but it excited her, a lot.
She said, “I guess I’m a criminal now too. Or will be when Jack dies. He will die in that box.”
Blade didn’t flinch away from the bald statement. “He will.”
“I killed that thing on that planet too. Even if it was in self-defense, I suppose there may be a law or two about that.”
His face lit again. A small grin lifted his lips again. “Maybe not. You killing a Shambler would likely be looked upon as a good deed.”
She asked, “How many have you killed?”
He sat back. The motion made his armor rest against his skin, outlining the powerful flex of it. “Too many, but there will be many more before I am done. And yes, I feel guilt. I have waged my own war against the Federation, as I said, for too long to have clean hands. I have tried to balance that out by—”
She cut him off. “By saving people you think are innocent?’
His shoulder lifted and dropped. “You could say that.”
She had to ask. “How many have you saved?”
His smile faded totally away. “Not nearly enough.”
She took that in and then sighed. “So where are we going?”
“To Revant Two.”
Her brow creased into a heavy frown. “I have never heard of it.”
“Most haven’t. It is a private planet held by four brothers. They are Revants, by the way. You probably think them extinct. Most of the universe thinks that, but there are some left. Too few, that is true, but they are still a race.”
She looked down at her hands. She said, “I have never heard of the race either. I told you I never lived beyond the city. Well, I lived on the outskirts of course because of my family’s station, but until I went to Orbital, I had never seen anything else.”
His voice was loaded with laughter. “So, other than being sold off to a slaver, what did you think of the place?”
Their shared laughter echoed around the bridge. The entire time between her waking in that house of horrors and that moment had been filled with things she had never been able to imagine because she had had no experience with anything like them.
She would never have believed, had he told her just a minute before, that she would ever see the humor in things ever again, but there she was, howling with laughter and unable to stop.
Between guffaws, she said, “Oh, it was nice. I mean, it was beautiful, and the grounds—have you been?”
He nodded and chuckled out, “A time or two. One of the brothers we are going to meet had a gambling and gurley hall there.”
“I see.” Her laughter tapered off. She sat back, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes as she sobered. “I didn’t get to go to one, though I wanted to. Jack—he said we could not afford that and honestly every time we turned around, some machine was chirping and spitting out a new credit demand for something we had done. Once it was for air. He said that…”
Remorse at what she had done, leaving him to die in that box, came up, but it was blotted out by the memory of the Wallen that had nearly caught her and the thing she had killed, and the knowledge of what it had been trying to give her in that cup.
Blade’s knees brushed hers. Her eyes came up and their gazes locked. He said, “I have to fly this ship. I can tell you’re tired.”
“You must be too.”
He said, “We’ll be meeting a larger ship soon enough. Go rest.”
Disappointment hit. She would have much preferred that he joined her in that bed but she was afraid to say so.