Chapter Twelve
“So…this is where we live? Most of the time, I mean?” Kate looked around The Finder curiously.
“We do,” Rone said shortly. He watched for her reaction from the corner of his eye as he sealed the airlock. They had docked the shuttle and entered at the center of the ship. The short metal hallway they were currently in led to the piloting and navcon equipment on the right and the living quarters on the left.
“But I thought the other ship we were in was it.”
“The shuttle? No, that’s just for when we need to go planetside. The Finder is our home.”
“You know, I always wanted to live in a house boat when I was a kid,” she mused, turning to the left and making her way to the small but well-appointed food prep area. “But I never imagined I might end up someplace like this.”
“Don’t blame me if you don’t like the way it’s decorated,” Rone said, following her but making sure to keep some space between them. “I had it before I knew you but you said it needed a ‘woman’s touch’ and completely overhauled it once we were joined.”
“I did? Oh look—my grandmother’s knives!” Kate went to the magnetic knife plate mounted on one wall over the fold out cutting board.
“We have more efficient ways of cutting—the laser slicer I mean,” Rone said. “But you always say that food doesn’t taste as good if it’s not prepared by hand so you can taste the ‘love’ in it.” He sighed. “We’ve made so many meals here together. You taught me how to make shrimp and grits and I taught you charnoth stew.”
“Wow, that’s…interesting.” Kate threw him an oblique look and he couldn’t tell if she was tired of hearing about the past or genuinely interested.
She passed out of the living area and into the entertainment room—really just a tiny space with a large viewscreen and a worn but comfortable loveseat positioned in front of it.
“This is cozy,” she remarked. “And, oh look—my old loveseat!”
“You said it was the most comfortable way to watch movie marathons,” Rone said. “I made a special trip just to bring it up here.”
“I guess we would have plenty of time to watch movies if we’re traveling from place to place in space. How do we manage that, anyway?” Kate asked.
Rone was encouraged that she had said “we.” He smiled at her.
“Well, we aren’t able to fold space like the Kindred Mother ship will be doing for us shortly, but the Finder does have an ultra-lite hydrogen scoop engine which makes interstellar travel possible. We mainly use stable wormholes to get from place to place in the universe—try to find ones that dump out a few parsecs from our destination—and then use the scoop to get there.”
“Okay. That makes sense, I guess.” Kate nodded and continued through the entertainment room and into the sleeping area. “Oh…” She stopped abruptly at the foot of the large sleeping platform. “This must be…our bed.”
“It is,” Rone acknowledged quietly. “You sleep on the right side and I take the left,” he added.
“And what’s this?” Kate moved away from the bed and went to the specially modified chair in one corner of the room. It was large enough to seat someone Rone’s size comfortably with a padded back and seat but it had no arms. “A rocking chair?” Kate asked, setting it in motion. “Oh—it glides! Kind of like the kind you see in nurseries for soothing babies. But why doesn’t it have arms?”
Rone cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“It’s not exactly a rocking chair,” he said in a low voice.
“It’s not? Do your people call it something else?” She looked up at him.
“It’s…” He sighed. She probably wasn’t going to like this. “It’s a breeding chair.
“A what?” Kate shook her head. “What did you say? I think I misunderstood you.”
“A breeding chair,” he repeated, a little louder. “We…we were trying to make a baby.”
“We were?” Kate looked at him as though he was crazy. “Okay, all right…” She took a deep breath and seemed to get hold of her emotions. “We were married, bonded…whatever so I guess that makes sense. But why do you need a special chair for it?”
“For a female to get pregnant with a Wulven’s child, their breeding needs to be long and drawn out. Almost what you humans call ‘Tantric’,” Rone explained. “The breeding chair makes that easier. It’s built for comfort and for long, slow, leisurely love-making sessions.”
“Um…okay.” Her cheeks were definitely pink now but she wasn’t asking him to stop talking, which was encouraging. “So the guy—the Wulven—sits on the chair and the girl—his mate, I mean…”
“Straddles him and sits on his lap, facing him with her legs spread to either side. The chair has adjustable footrests for her comfort—see?” He stepped forward and folded out one of the rests in question from the back of the chair.
“Wow…” Kate murmured. So we—I mean they—just sit there and, uh rock like that with him, um, inside her?”
“Yes,” Rone said simply. He tried not to remember all the times he’d held Kate in his arms in that very chair, her petite, naked body pressed against his chest, her thighs spread wide to accommodate his shaft within her. Gods, it was beautiful to hold her that way, feeling so intimately connected as they swayed slowly to their own rhythm, his cock thrusting deep inside her warm, welcoming pussy. How he missed that sweet intimacy! The feeling of being so completely connected to her in every way.
He cast a glance at her, wondering what Kate was thinking now. How she felt about what he had told her. Once he would have been able to read her thoughts through their shared mental link but no more—now he had to guess, just as he had when they were first dating.
“So this lasts for a long time?” she managed at last, her voice coming out a little strangled.
“Hours sometimes,” Rone told her.
“Isn’t there…” She cleared her throat. “Isn’t there chafing after a while?”
He shook his head. “There’s a compound in my—in a Wulven’s precum which stimulates his mate’s body to keep lubricating. It’s actually the same compound that helps her open enough to take him in the first place. We tend to be…uh, quite large.”
“I bet,” Kate muttered, her eyes flickering down to the crotch of his flight trousers. “Sorry, I’m sure this is all normal to you but it just seems…strange to me. I mean…this whole, uh, breeding chair thing.”
“Making love in the breeding chair can be very gentle and slow and intimate,” Rone assured her. “Even relaxing.”
“Intimate I can see but relaxing?” Kate let out a short laugh.
“Compared with other breeding methods, yes,” Rone said shortly. “There are other ways for a Wulven and his mate to conceive but I refused to use them—to use you in that way.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Kate bit her lip. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind.” Rone shook his head. Better not to get into that now—clearly she was already apprehensive. He didn’t want to make her fear him even more. “I need to go up front and set the course,” he said. “The Mother Ship will be folding space for us shortly.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kate said, surprising him. “I want to see how the ship works. Do I…I mean, did I know how to fly it?”
Rone shook his head as he led the way to the front of the ship where the controls and navcom were. “No, but I was teaching you. Mainly, you were my navigator.”
“I was?” Kate looked surprised and pleased. “I always have had a good sense of direction.”
“That you do,” Rone acknowledged. He settled into the pilot’s seat and indicated the co-pilot’s seat next to it. “There’s your chair. The navcom is located in the control panel right in front of it.”
Kate sat down and strapped herself in eagerly. As with the shuttle, Rone had modified the chair and the safety harness to fit her diminutive size so she had no trouble. But when she looked at the complicated array of controls on the panel in front of her, her face fell.
“Oh…I better not touch any of this. I don’t remember any of it.”
“That’s all right,” Rone said. “It will come back to you…in time.” He just hoped Kate would be willing to give him that time to reconnect with her. At least she hadn’t shied away from him at all since they’d come aboard The Finder. Then again, he was making damn sure to give her plenty of space to avoid triggering her panic response. Still, she seemed to be getting more comfortable in his presence. He told himself that was a start.
The viewscreen crackled and then a Blood Kindred’s face appeared on it.
“Finder, be advised that the rift is open. Please proceed at your convenience.”
“Thank you. On our way,” Rone said.
“The rift?” Kate raised an eyebrow at him.
“The fold in the space-time continuum. Look—there it is.” He pressed a button and the Blood Kindred disappeared to be replaced by a view of space outside their ship. There, looking like a long, bloody gash in the blackness of space, was the rift—often also known as the “fold.”
“Oh…” Kate breathed. “Are we going into that?”
Rone reminded himself that even though she’d folded space with him many, many times, she didn’t remember any of them.
“It’s all right—it’s completely safe,” he reassured her—then he thought of something. “Uh, with the exception of expectant mothers. They should not fold space.” He looked at Kate. “Is there any chance that you might be…”
“Pregnant?” she finished for him, bluntly. “No. Even though I didn’t have any idea I had a husband, I haven’t been feeling ready to jump back into the dating scene these last six months. It kind of puts a damper on your first date when you admit you lost three years of your memory and woke up naked in a park in Sarasota.”
“All right. That’s fine.” Rone kept his tone light and impersonal but inside he felt a stone lift off his heart. He was certain he would have smelled another male on her if she’d been with one and he hadn’t—but it was nice to have it confirmed by Kate herself.
“What about you?” she threw at him, frowning. “Any other women these past six months?”
“Kate,” he said quietly, looking her in the eyes. “I would never. From the moment I saw you, there’s never been any other female for me. Besides…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been too busy desperately searching the universe for any trace of you to think of anything else. Finding you has literally consumed me, body and soul, these past six solar months.”
“Of course.” She looked chastened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“It’s all right,” Rone muttered, working the controls. “I started it—I asked first.”
“But I shouldn’t have—”
“Prepare yourself,” he interrupted. “We’re about to fold space.”
* * * * *
Flying into the red gash in space was one of the more frightening things Kate had ever been through. But she gritted her teeth and reminded herself that she had done it before—lots of times. True, she couldn’t remember them but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was still here in one piece, so it must be safe.
She felt bad about her remarks to Rone—asking if he’d been with another woman when he’d clearly been going crazy trying to find her. But she felt so put on the defensive when she was around him!
And it wasn’t just Rone—there were other things that bothered her too. It was strange to walk around the ship she apparently called home and see all the little touches she knew must be her own and only remember a few of them. There were probably clothes in the closet she would adore—but she wouldn’t remember picking any of them out.
Kate sighed to herself. It wasn’t all bad. By the same token, there were probably movies she’d want to watch—books she would want to read—strange foods Rone had introduced her to she would love to eat…
Chairs you’d want to sit on, whispered a little voice in the back of her head but Kate pushed it away quickly. What was the deal with that weird breeding chair anyway? She couldn’t imagine sitting there, impaled on his no-doubt sizable shaft for hours and hours just rocking and fucking…it was too weird. Yet the mental image of being spread out on the big Kindred’s lap while he held her and slowly thrust up into her wouldn’t quite leave her head. It gave her a shiver that ran up and down her spine, making her feel hot and cold at the same time.
“All right, we’re through the fold and only a few parsecs from Flame and Frost.”
Rone’s deep voice pulled her out of her forbidden thoughts and made her jump.
“Oh, um…okay. How long until we get there, then?”
“Not too long.” He was doing something with the controls. “We’ll be within hailing distance soon. I’ll send out a signal.”
“Tell me about us,” Kate said, surprising both herself, and Rone, from the look he shot us.
“Um…” He cleared his throat. “What exactly do you want to know?”
“You know…” She made a motion with one hand. “How we are together. What’s the, uh, dynamic of our relationship?”
“Hmm…” Rone appeared to be thinking about it deeply. At last he looked at her. “We have a lot of fun together. We’re playful…adventurous. I was much more serious before I met you—you taught me to see the lighter side of things.”
“I did?” Kate raised an eyebrow at him.
He nodded. “You did.”
“Well, but…” Though his statement was well worth considering, it wasn’t exactly the information she was looking for.
“But what, Lalli?” There it was again—that little pet nickname—at least, Kate assumed it was a nickname—slipping out. She reminded herself to find out about it at some point, but not now.
“Well…you said we’re playful,” Kate said. “So what do we play?”
“There is one game that’s your favorite,” he started. “It…” Then he shook his head. “No, never mind.”
“What? Tell me!” Kate demanded. “I want to know!”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Rone murmured. “Not after seeing your reaction to the breeding chair—I don’t think you want to know at all.”
“I do,” she insisted. “I get it—we were married and we had…had sex.” Her heart beat faster as she said it but she made herself keep talking anyway. “We’re both adults here—come on and tell me, Rone—how bad could it be?”
“It wasn’t bad at all.” He sighed. “All right—it was actually a game you came up with. You called it ‘Hide and Suck.’”
“What?” Kate frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean. Do you mean hide and seek?”
The big Kindred shook his head. “No. Look, are you sure you want me to tell you this?”
“Of course I am,” Kate said, although she was beginning to wonder. What kind of perverted games had they played together to while away the time on the ship she now found herself on?
“Very well.” Rone sighed again and ran a hand through his hair. “It started when you were asking me how sensitive my sense of smell is.”
“Oh? How sensitive is it?” Kate asked, interested despite herself.
“About a thousand times more sensitive than the Earth animal you call a bloodhound,” Rone said matter of factly. “And I was telling you that I could pick out any particular scent—and that I was especially attuned to your scent.”
“You mean like the smell of my perfume or what shampoo I use or something?” Kate asked. But he shook his head.
“Not that scent. The scent of your sex. Your pussy.” He nodded at the juncture between her thighs and Kate felt her cheeks getting hot.
“I…I don’t smell,” she protested angrily. “I take regular showers and baths and—”
“It’s a good smell—my favorite scent in the universe. So warm and sweet and fresh…so you, Kate.” Rone closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
Kate wondered if he was smelling her now and quickly crossed her legs.
“Anyway,” Rone continued, ignoring her protective gesture. “I was telling you that I could find you by your scent—especially the scent of your desire.”
“You…you can?” Kate squeezed her thighs together even tighter.
He nodded, his piercing blue eyes half-lidded when he looked at her. “When your pussy gets especially hot and wet it calls to me—your scent calls to me, anyway. I was telling you that, telling you I could find you anywhere, especially when you were aroused, and you challenged me to a contest.”
“What kind of contest?” Kate wasn’t sure she wanted to know but she’d come too far and insisted she wanted the information too vehemently to back down now.
“You would go and hide yourself someplace on the ship—and believe me, there are more hiding places than you’d imagine because The Finder was originally a smuggler’s ship—and then…”
“And then what?” Kate asked, almost in a whisper.
“And then you’d start to touch yourself.” He cast her a sidelong glance. “To pet and stroke your pussy. And I would try to find you, by scent alone.”
“And if you did? What did you do?” Kate’s breath was coming short for some reason and her heart was pounding but she told herself it didn’t mean anything. That his story wasn’t affecting her at all.
Rone cast her another burning look.
“If I wasn’t able to find you before you made yourself come, you would, ah, give me oral gratification.”
“A blow job,” Kate said bluntly. “Okay, that sounds like something a married couple with a lot of time on their hands might do, I guess.” Kind of a kinky couple, making a naughty little game of it, but still, she guessed she could see it. “But what if…” She cleared her throat. “What if you found me before I could, uh, get off?”
“Then I was allowed to finish you off with my tongue,” Rone said in a low voice.
Kate felt as though a bucket of cold water had suddenly been dumped over her head. She sat up straight in her chair and the warm feeling that had been slowly building in the pit of her stomach abruptly dissipated.
“I don’t believe that,” she said, her voice sounding strangled in her own ears. “I don’t…don’t do that.”
“You didn’t used to,” Rone said carefully. “In fact, it was one of the reasons we almost didn’t get bonded—you were so against it. And I—”
“You what? You wanted it anyway?” Kate demanded.
“I needed it,” he murmured, looking at her directly. “It’s a Kindred thing to want to please your mate with your tongue—to lick between her thighs and taste her honey right from the well of her sweet, wet pussy. But with Wulvens…” He shook his head. “With us, it’s a whole different thing—it’s a biological drive. An imperative. We don’t just want to taste our mates—we fucking have to.”
“And you told me we couldn’t be together unless I let you do that? And I bought it?” Kate demanded. “How stupid could I be?”
“Not stupid at all,” he said softly. “I know why it bothers you—or why it did back then, anyway. I know that you had a bad experience back in school and you decided you never wanted to try it again.”
“You do?” Kate felt violated all over again. “I’ve never told anyone about that.”
“You never told me the details, if that makes you feel any better. You just said you didn’t like it because of a bad experience.” Rone sounded tired and miserable.
Kate couldn’t help thinking “bad experience” was the worst understatement she’d ever heard. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the look of disgust on Greg Compton’s face, could still hear the note of revulsion in his drunken voice when he said—But no. Kate pushed the awful memory away.
“I still don’t believe I’d do that with you. Um, let you do it to me, I mean,” she said shortly.
“I didn’t think you would either,” Rone said quietly. “But when I explained about the Wulven drive to taste their mates, you agreed to let me try it—to see if you could let go of the past and if I could make it good for you.”
“And…and could you? Did you?” Kate’s mouth felt so dry she could barely get the words out.
“I was very slow and gentle. I spent a long, long time just kissing and licking your thighs…rubbing my cheek against your mound.” There was a faraway look in the big Kindred’s eyes, as though he was remembering one of the best things that had ever happened to him. “You were shy at first—didn’t want to let me take off your panties.”
“What…what did you do?” Kate’s heart was beating hard again but she didn’t know why.
Rone gave her a lazy smile. “I kissed you with them on. Petted and stroked and rubbed you until your hot little pussy was so wet I could see right through them because your cunt honey made them transparent.”
“You…I…” Kate didn’t know what to say. “Did you ever…did I let you…you know, take them off?”
“After a long, long time, you finally trusted me enough.” His eyes were half-lidded with lust as he looked at her. “Then I was able to really lick you—to spread your sweet little pussy wide open and lap and suck and taste your honey right from the source. Gods, I love the feel of you trembling all around me, moaning and calling my name…the taste of your honey…the warm, sweet scent of your pussy…”
“Okay, that’s enough” Kate protested uneasily. “I take it you were successful in ‘making it good for me.’”
“To judge by your reaction, yes. You came all over my face,” Rone told her, his voice deepening to a soft growl. “Came so hard for me, baby. After that, I knew we’d be able to be together. And we worked out a kind of schedule.”
“A schedule? We had a schedule for this?” Kate absolutely couldn’t believe it. But Rone was nodding.
“I was allowed to kiss you awake in the morning and kiss you to sleep at night. And then sometimes in the middle of the day if we weren’t working on a case, we’d go to the tasting swing.”
“The what now?” Kate could barely believe they were having this conversation. “Is there some kind of a sex swing in the bedroom I didn’t see? Right beside the breeding chair, maybe?”
“It’s a specially made swing you can lie in which supports your weight evenly all over,” Rone explained. “It hangs from a hook in the ceiling of our bedchamber. It’s…folded away right now. I couldn’t bear to have it out, to have it remind me of you when you were gone. When you were lost…”
The sorrow and loss in his voice made Kate ache for some reason.
“I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to…to sound so skeptical. It’s just…I find all this kind of hard to believe. Feeling the way I do about…some of the things you’ve been describing.”
“I know how you feel,” he said quietly. “You feel the same way you did before you met me—before I earned your trust and you let me in.”
“Yes, I guess that’s probably true,” Kate said, feeling self-conscious all over again. “Um…but this need to…to taste your mate. Does it have anything to do with the hunger I keep hearing about?”
His eyes flashed. “Where did you hear that?”
“Well, Emily said something about it, but she didn’t really know what it meant. And…” Kate took a deep breath. “And I heard you discussing it with the priestess you went to visit last night.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You followed me to the Sacred Grove?”
Kate flushed. “I know I shouldn’t have eavesdropped but I wanted to know what was going on. But I still don’t. So what is the hunger?”
“The hunger is nothing you need to be worried about,” Rone said in a low voice. “I have it under control. It doesn’t concern you.”
“Except I think it does. If I’m really supposed to be your wife, that is.”
“You’re not supposed to be—you are.” His eyes flashed. “And you followed me because you do not trust me.”
“I don’t know you,” she pointed out. “And I still can’t even touch you without having a panic attack. So I need to know—”
“Greetings, pilgrims,” said a sweet voice.
Kate’s eyes jerked up to the viewscreen where a woman with pure white hair and angelic features had suddenly appeared. She was plump and smiling with long white eyelashes and white brows to go with her hair. Her eyes were a pure, pale purple unlike anything Kate had ever seen before.
In fact, the more she looked at her, the more Kate thought she looked completely unearthly—somehow angelic. She halfway expected to see a pair of fluffy white wings sprouting out of the woman’s back or a harp appear in her hands.
“Greetings,” said the angel-lady again. “Am I correct in assuming that you two are the couple being sent from the Kindred Mother Ship? Rone and Kate—isn’t it?”
“It is.” Rone cleared his throat. “And you would be…”
“Mistress Light.” The angel-lady smiled benevolently. “I will be one of your instructresses while you stay with us here at Flame and Frost.”
“We’re very glad to meet you but we’re not really here for traditional counseling,” Kate said, speaking up. “I just need a dip in your bio-chelation pool to uh, rid myself of a bunch of toxins.”
“We shall see about that, Kate my dear.” The angel-lady smiled sweetly. “But in the meantime, please feel free to dock on our landing pad. We look forward to working with you both.”
“Thank you, Mistress Light,” Rone said and then the viewscreen went blank. After a moment, it showed the curvature of a small moon which seemed to be completely covered in some kind of colorful growth.
A large complex of interconnecting buildings took up much of the surface. At least, Kate thought they were buildings. Actually, they looked more like giant bubbles growing out of the surface of the rainbow-colored ground than anything else. Weird.
“That’s it?” she asked. “That’s Flame and Frost?”
“Part of it, anyway,” Rone muttered. “I understand that half the complex is located underground though I don’t know why. The surface of the moon is habitable and has a breathable atmosphere.”
“Not to mention it’s covered in rainbow colored flowers,” Kate remarked. “It’s really pretty in a kindergartener-doing-a-painting kind of way.”
Rone did something else to the controls and cast a sidelong look at Kate. “Beginning our landing sequence. Here we go.”
“Yes, I guess so.” Kate nodded. But for some reason, even though the viewscreen was taken up with the vivid vegetation and the bubble complex, her mind’s eye kept lingering on Mistress Light, the angel-lady who had spoken to them.
There’s more to her than meets the eye. Depend on it, the Knowing whispered in her head. Kate tried to shrug off the bad feeling that was growing in the pit of her stomach but she couldn’t help herself. Her sixth sense was sending her a warning and she didn’t know how to interpret it.
What’s going to happen to us down there? Will we be all right?
She didn’t have any answers but she did know she couldn’t refuse to go. This was her only chance to regain her memory…and lose the pervading fear she felt anytime Rone got too close and touched her. Kate didn’t know how she felt about all the things he’d been telling her regarding their life together, but she did know she was tired of freaking out around the big Kindred.
This is the only way, she told herself. Just keep alert—a warning doesn’t always mean trouble ahead. Which was true—sometimes the warnings the Knowing sent allowed her to avoid trouble. This was going to be one of those times, Kate decided. She would simply keep her eyes and ears open and be very, very careful while she and Rone were here at Flame and Frost. And as soon as she took a swim in their pool and got all the damn fear toxins sucked out of her, they would be out of here and on their way to a normal life.
She hoped.