Unbound Read online

  “Yes?” He looked up from his half-eaten stew.

  “I…do you remember how I told you about the Hive and…and the bad dreams I had of what…what was done to me there?”

  “Uh…yes I guess so,” he muttered. “What of it?”

  “Well, I…I mean…” Her cheeks got extremely pink all of a sudden and her scent began to heat up as well.

  Bereth frowned. Why would nightmares make her hot?

  “Yes?” he asked, beginning to get irritated. “What is it, Brynnalla?”

  “I…you…” She shook her head and looked away. “Nothing. It was nothing.”

  For a moment he seemed to see a glimpse of her, completely bare for him, sitting astride him and pressing the head of his shaft to the heated slit between her legs.

  But no…He shook himself mentally. Brynnalla was much too prim to ever do such a thing. He pushed the strange mental image aside impatiently and, almost before he rejected it, it was gone.

  Bereth frowned. Every once in a while he got a flash like this one—of the past she talked about—often so brief he wondered if he was imagining it. A glimpse of the short, stone hallway her room in the palace had been on, for instance. Or a picture of her in a low-cut ball gown that showed her pale flesh to perfection.

  But the moment he tried to grab for any of these pictures, they immediately faded away, making him feel more empty than before.

  I should tell her it’s over, he thought, watching as Brynn got up to clear the stew plates. Living like this isn’t fair to her—to either of us.

  But somehow, as he got up to help her with the dishes, he couldn’t say the words that would set them both free of each other and their past. Something stopped him, though he didn’t understand what.

  One more night, he told himself. I’ll give it one more night before I tell her.

  * * * * *

  “Well…good night.” Brynn stood in the doorway of her sleeping chamber and looked wistfully at the big Kindred. Varin was dressed in the manner of the other Kindred aboard the Mother Ship—with black leather flight pants, tall black boots, and a dark green uniform shirt which brought out his bronze eyes vividly. The shirt covered his broad chest, hiding the place where her name was written over his heart.

  Brynn wished she could see it—wished she could hear him say he wore it with pride just one more time. But he seemed hardly to give it a thought—it was like a mark from another life—a scar he didn’t remember getting but now had to live with.

  “Sleep well, Brynnalla.” Bereth nodded at her genially enough. But there was no affection in his voice. No longing as she’d heard in his deep tones so many times before. It felt like forever since he’d called her “Princess” or “little one.” She couldn’t help wondering if he would ever call her those sweet nicknames again. She would even welcome him calling her “Mistress” if only it meant that he remembered some small part of the life they’d shared before his memory was wiped.

  But he only nodded again and closed the door to his own sleep chamber with finality, leaving Brynn to do the same.

  She sighed and walked over to her bed and sat down on the corner of the soft mattress across from the 3-D viewer. Goddess above, what was she going to do?

  She’d said many brave words about getting Varin—no, Bereth, she reminded herself—to fall in love with her all over again. She’d tried reminding him of the past by telling him the things they had done, the topics they had talked about…had tried describing the palace and the Arena where he had fought…had even cooked a meal as close to Galen cuisine as she could get, thinking that maybe she could jar his memory through taste and smell… but nothing seemed to be working.

  Well, you haven’t tried everything yet, whispered a little voice in her head. You haven’t tried what Olivia said worked on Baird.

  Brynn bit her lip and looked down at her hands, then up at the uncertain girl in the 3-D viewer. Wide, frightened-looking gray eyes stared back at her. For so long she’d been avoiding the idea of taking anything inside her—ever since her deflowering she had feared it. And yet…the awful dreams she had every night made her long for it too. Maybe it was time to take her courage in both hands and give in to the longing.

  If Varin could remember her, she thought, she would have given in to it long ago. The empty aching inside her was growing too great to ignore. Something would have to be done about it.

  But was this what she should do? Should she ask a male who didn’t remember her to fill her? To make love to her? To bond with her? What if the bonding took place and he still didn’t remember her? Would they be bound together forever as strangers? How much would Varin—no, he wanted to be called Bereth—resent that? Resent her?

  Brynn had no answers—only questions—but she didn’t know what else to do. Resolutely, she lifted her chin. She had to try.

  I tried tonight though, she thought. Tried to tell him about the dreams and the way he’d helped me in the past but I didn’t get anywhere.

  Maybe she hadn’t been sufficiently prepared, though. Maybe what she needed to do was “psych herself up” as she’d heard Olivia said when she was facing a difficult challenge.

  Tomorrow night, she promised herself. I’ll go get some of those revealing clothes the Earth girls wear to tempt their males here. And then I’ll…

  What? Seduce him? Beg him to take her? Brynn wasn’t quite sure. But maybe if she looked alluring enough, she wouldn’t have to ask. Maybe he would just take her on his own.

  She thought of his wide, thick shaft…of how long he was and how hard he got when he was aroused. She thought of that massive length sliding into her, breaching not just her entrance but thrusting deep to fill her completely.

  The thought made her shiver with fear…but also with need. The nightmares were getting bad again. So bad she could barely sleep some nights.

  Please, she thought as she got into her night clothes—a long silky white gown that hung to her mid thighs. Please, no bad dreams tonight. Let me dream instead of how to win back Varin—of how to bring him back to me.

  She settled into the too-big, too-empty bed feeling small and cold and sad. Closing her eyes, she tried to think of how she would seduce the big Kindred, how she would bring him back to her once and for all…

  * * * * *

  “It is time. Is all in readiness?” Sovereign X'izith hissed at his specially designated worker.

  “Indeed, my Sovereign. You can see for yourself.”

  The worker swept four chitinous arms outward, indicating the long, low tunnel that had been dug in the cold, dry, gray dirt of the Earth’s moon. It was protected by an atmosphere bubble which had been camouflaged with more of the gray dirt until it resembled nothing more than a tiny hump in the bottom of the dark crater where his personal ship had settled.

  X'izith clicked his mandibles in satisfaction when he considered how easily he had slipped past the Kindred security and set up a temporary base right under their very noses. The Kindred Mother Ship orbited the Earth’s moon, but stayed mostly on the bright side of the natural satellite. X'izith, his ship in stealth mode, had created a controlled and stable worm hole—just big enough to get past the barricade the Kindred had at the Blind. Then he had landed in one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon’s south pole—a spot which never saw the light of the Earth’s sun.

  The temperatures in his temporary base were some of the coldest in the little solar system—many hundreds of degrees below the freezing point. But X'izith didn’t mind that. His exoskeleton made him largely impervious to both heat and cold and his workers were the same. They could stand almost any extremity of temperature, so erecting a small atmosphere dome and building the tunnel had posed no difficulty.

  Of course, the flesher female was much more delicate and so he’d had to import some heat-givers—workers that generated heat from their abdomens via the thermo-dynamic workings of their guts. They hung along the walls of the tunnel at intervals, their bloated lower bodies glowing faintly as they ra