Chapter Fifteen

Sunny

 

I reeked. I avoided speculating what had been in the hole, but smelly beat dead any day, and Darq didn’t seem to mind. He’d pulled me from the pit with a rope, hugged me hard then borrowed Andrea’s machine to take me to the medical clinic, a prefab Terran hut less than a quarter tripta from the meeting place. Andrea and her mate met us there, and Groman ran an illuvian-powered scanner over my ankle. Sprained.

After bathing my lower leg really, really well, the healer bandaged it. They offered us the skimmer, but Darq said the storm had passed, and he would carry me. “I take care of my mate.”

I snuggled against his broad chest as he hiked. I couldn’t put weight on my foot without pain, and, between the swelling and the bandage, the boot wouldn’t fit over my foot. I was no small woman, but he loped through the snow like I was no burden at all.

My hero. “Thank you for saving me,” I said for probably the tenth time. “I was afraid nobody would find me.”

“I will always try to save you.” His expression grim, he added, “But you shouldn’t have gone into the blizzard. You should have remained in the lodge until the storm passed.” He chided me, but I deserved it. I should have known better.

“I was worried about you, what you might have overheard and misunderstood.”

His entire body tensed. A muscled ticked in his jaw. “I heard you tell another man named Handsome you loved him.”

“He’s my nephew, a child of six solar rotations. His name is Devon, but I call him Handsome.”

Darq released his breath in a sigh. “I hoped it was something like that.”

“Then, why did you leave the lodge?”

“Because I didn’t think of it until later. I’m sorry. I should have addressed it with you directly. I tried to come back to the lodge, but it was snowing too hard.” He peered at me. “I also heard you say you and he would meet again soon, and I feared you intended to return to Terra.”

My stomach fluttered, my conscience simultaneously clear and guilty. I had planned to return, but since I’d decided to stay, I could truthfully deny I wasn’t leaving. “I’ll be seeing them here on Dakon—hopefully. My sister Stormy has signed up for the exchange program. She’ll bring Devon.”

“I look forward to meeting them,” he said.

To have a partner, my family, and someday, children, was more than I’d dreamed I could have. I never wished for fame or fortune, only a man who loved me and a houseful of children. I could forgo the house. A caveful of children would work fine.

“If—when—Stormy arrives, her mate will accept Devon, won’t he?”

“Children are a gift,” he said. “It would be any man’s honor to care for Devon.”

“Good. That’s what I told her, but I needed to verify it was true.” All my problems except one were solved. I still had to come clean about why I’d arrived, but that could wait until after we got back to camp—and I had a proper bath. I wrinkled my nose. “What was in that pit?”

“We will stop at the bath caves first. I’ll bring you another kel. One for me, also,” he said.

“That’s a good idea,” I agreed, but noticed he hadn’t answered my question. “What—”

“I need to tell you something.” The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “A secret.”

“What kind of secret?”

“A confession.” He avoided my eyes, and his cheeks, reddened from the cold, darkened with deeper color.

“You didn’t kill anybody, did you?” I joked. He looked guilty, but I couldn’t imagine he’d done anything serious. He wasn’t that kind of man.

He jerked and stared down at me. “You would believe that of me?”

“Of course I don’t!” I hugged his neck. “I was kidding. But see, by comparison, whatever you did can’t be so terrible.”

“It’s still terrible. Andrea didn’t think so, but she’s from your world. Dakonians would feel otherwise.”

“You told Andrea?” He was making deep, darq confessions to another woman? I wasn’t sure I liked that.

“She figured it out and confronted me.”

“So, what is it?”

He hesitated.

“Assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping—” I suggested, making more jokes to hide my growing nervousness. Why was he so apprehensive? It couldn’t be that bad, could it?

“No—”

“Armed robbery, treason, extortion, blackmail, terrorism foreign or domestic, burglary, grand theft—”

“Yes.”

“Impersonating a police officer—wait—yes?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“Grand theft.”

“What did you steal?” I envisioned him hotwiring a skimmer.

“A chit.”

“A wood chip?”

“A lottery chit that allowed me to choose a mate. Romando lost his; I found it and claimed it as mine.”

I remembered Darq had been fiddling with a little chip at the mate selection. “You found it; you didn’t steal it.”

“I didn’t give it back.”

“Finders keepers, losers weepers,” I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

“It doesn’t matter to you?”

“Not unless you’re planning to hand me over to Romando.”

“Never!”

“Well then, we’re good. It doesn’t matter, but I’m glad you told me.” It made it easier for me to confess my “crime.” I hoped he would be as understanding as I was.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he said. “Trust me when I say it would be a very big matter to Dakonians.”

“My lips are sealed, but how did you hide it from everyone else? Didn’t each tribe receive a specific number of draws? How did you explain the extra?”

“I changed the records in the tome. In our written language, the numeral four is very close to a three. It was easily altered.”

“So you falsified official documents. You are a bad boy.” I kissed his neck. “We women like bad boys.” We liked them so much, we’d transformed a planet of men into no-commitment, one-and-done, love-’em-and-leave-’em bad boys. Too late we realized we didn’t want them that bad, only a tad bad.

Like Darq.

“Do you want to be bad with me?” I purred, forgetting what was really bad was the way I smelled. But, either the odor was waning, or I’d gotten used to it.

“The way you say it, bad sounds good,” he said.

“It will be.” I batted my lashes.

“Does it involve mouth-meshing?”

“Lots of mouth-meshing.”

We came around the hairpin curve, the camp appeared, and Darq carried me toward the hot springs. “I’ll leave you at the baths, go and get us some fresh clothing, and then join you.”

Darq had to hunch over to squeeze through the passage, but we emerged into the large steamy cavern heated by three bubbling hot springs. The warmth permeated my clothing, seeping into my skin and into my bones. I couldn’t wait to strip off my stinky kel and immerse myself. I needed to be clean before I could get dirty.

I balanced on my good foot, and he helped me out of my kel. He rolled the coat into a ball. “Your other clothing is still useable, but we’ll replace it, too,” he said.

I hesitated then, realizing I was going to get naked in front of him for the first time. Despite my flirting, now I was nervous. But as I stared into his dark-brown eyes and saw his shyness and expectancy, gentleness and desire, apprehension evaporated.

Darq was my mate, and we were going to take our relationship to the next level. Fortunately, after the one cambot had fallen in the pool, they stopped following me into the bath cave. This was the one place where I could be assured of privacy.

He pulled my tunic over my head and tossed it onto a large dry rock. He supported me as he removed the boot from my good foot and unwrapped the bandage from my sprained ankle. I clutched at his shoulder while he bent to tug off my leggings.

I couldn’t resist stroking his hair and then rubbing my thumb over a brown, leathery horn. I swear it grew. It pulsed, and then Darq growled. You haven’t experienced sexy until an alien with pulsing horns has growled at you.

He stood up, pulled me against his chest, and kissed me. Slow exploration turned intense, and I surrendered to the kiss, filling my senses with his taste, his feel, his rumbles of pleasure.

We’d kissed the night I arrived, but this time was different. Before, curiosity had motivated me—I’d wanted to know what it was like to kiss an alien. Now, I kissed my husband. We hadn’t been legally united in matrimony—not by Terran laws, anyway—but, in my heart, we were married.

We broke off, and I grabbed his biceps for support. Our mouths were only inches away, and his warm breath washed over me. Brown eyes glinted with desire. “Let me help you into the pool.”

His horns pulsed when I discarded my bra and did an awkward one-legged shimmy out of my panties. I stood there naked, letting him look. Heat flooded me from head to toe, and my nipples beaded. My body was nowhere close to perfect, but the appreciation in his eyes made me feel as if it was.

I hobbled to the pool’s edge, and he helped me get settled. Sliding into the heated, bubbling water, I groaned with enjoyment. The only improvement would be to have Darq beside me. I swam a couple of strokes to a ledge where I could sit. I shot him my best come-hither glance. “Hurry back, bad boy.”

His nostrils flared. “You can count on it.” Then he hesitated. “Will you be all right here until I return?”

Just because I’d ventured into a raging blizzard, gotten lost, and fallen into a pit of frozen poop—yeah, I’d figured out what had been in the pit—didn’t mean I couldn’t take care of myself. “I’ve bathed here alone before. I’ll be fine.”

“I won’t be long.” He gathered up my soiled clothes and left.

I ducked my shoulders under the water and waited for my mate.