Deep Indigo (3 page)

“Hmm.” He carefully parted the thick, short waves over her ear. “I see. Any headaches?”

“No, no.”

The whole thing had been more of an embarrassment than anything else. She’d tripped on the steps outside the university library and awakened to find herself in a bed at a local clinic. She’d taken analgesics for a few days and then stopped.

She couldn’t believe the physician was worried about an injury that had been treated when someone was going mad—and transmitting the results into her mind!

A deep, cold voice cut through the murmuring voices around her.

“Let me through”

It was Navos. Relief flooding her, Nelah reached out to him. He gripped her arms with painful force. As she gazed up into his eyes, the others in the room receded.

He was angry again, she saw with faint surprise. But not at her this time.

“You’ll do exactly as I tell you,” he ordered, his dark gaze boring into her own. “Exactly, do you understand?”

She nodded. She could withstand anything now, as long as he was with her.

“Everyone stay back,” he ordered. “Guards—be ready to move.”

“You believe there really is someone in distress, sir?” asked one of the guards.

“Oh, yes,” said Navos grimly. “There is someone.”

“But…why didn’t you hear them, sir?”

“I did. I was about to summon help, but I felt her distress as well. I had to get to her. Two Indigons together are much more powerful than one. Now quiet, all of you.”

He looked down into Nelah’s eyes, his own fathomless pools of indigo.

“Take my hand.” His voice was deep and quiet as the rush of an Indigon waterfall. The soothing ripples spread outward in her mind, lapping at the jagged rawness left by the screams. His hand closed around hers, engulfing hers in elegant strength.

This time the scream echoed with desperation. It seared across Nelah’s mind. But a powerful force surged out to meet it, like a great searchlight across her senses. It was Navos. He leaned over her, his hand tightening, his eyes looking into hers.

Nelah gripped his hand as if it held her back from the edge of a cliff, her other fisted in the sleek fabric of his flight suit. She bit back the cry that battled up her throat and concentrated all her being on maintaining control.

Navos’s free hand cupped the side of her head, his long fingers pressing into her skull.

“No, don’t fight it. You must let go,” he commanded. “Nelah—let me in.”

Fear, this time her own, choked a cry from her lips. She searched his eyes frantically. She knew she could trust him—he was honorable. But all her natural instincts urged her to fight.

“Nelah.” He leaned closer so she saw only him. “Let go. Give yourself over to me. You know I’ll keep you safe. Together we’ll prevail.”

She hung on the edge of the abyss, her breath coming in quick gasps. He was so powerful—but could even he save her from falling? Or would he send her flying over the edge, weighted by the madness of the other?

“Yes, I’m very strong,” he murmured soothingly. “But you are strong enough to hold me, Nelah Cobalt. I won’t harm you.”

With a broken sigh, she surrendered to him.

His face tightened with satisfaction, as if he were a seer scrying a savage spell in a crystal orb. She gasped, her body twisting in sync with her mind as he poured psychic power into her, through her. She’d never had any other Indigon try to meld empathic forces with her this way—had heard of it being done, but…

It was frightening, like being the vessel of a powerful force, wild as an Indigon wind rushing down from the high peaks. Except his energy was warm, instead of cold. It was also, she was vaguely astonished to find, extremely pleasurable. Instead of falling, she felt as if the two of them had soared out and up, riding the winds. She wanted him to stay, to go on pouring his power through her until—

Another cry from the mad soul, this one of savage intention, as if it accompanied a mighty physical effort. Nelah arched in Navos’s grasp. He held her easily and she felt his triumph as if it were her own as, melding with her power, he locked on to the man. Together they followed the avalanche of his torment and found him in the ship.

“We have him,” he said aloud. “He’s outside the core reactor.”

“The reactor!” The guards rapped orders, information, into their com-links.

“Don’t worry,” Navos said. “He won’t get in.”

He looked deep into Nelah’s eyes, sending a powerful message. One she heard so clearly, it was as if he was speaking inside her head.
“Help me. Work with me.”

A cold niggle of fear wormed through the growing heat of their empathic bond. She scarcely had time to be surprised at having him speak in her head.

“Wh-what will we do to him?”
she asked him.

He scowled, his eyes so intense they burned into hers.
“Did you…just speak to me? Silently?”

“Yes,”
she replied. She saw her shock reflected in his face.

He shook his head slightly.
“We will deal with that later. No time now. We cannot save him, Nelah. He’s completely mad.”

Nelah shuddered, but his implacability convinced her. If he said it, then so it must be.

This time she added her own power to his—raggedly at first, but with gathering confidence. She felt their currents curl around and within each other, surging with more and more force, until Navos sent them crashing outward and the tormented mind snapped like a broken twig and was gone, winked out.

Navos took a deep, shaken breath and relaxed, leaning his forehead on their clasped hands. She felt his grief and anger as if it were her own. Then he slipped away.

Nelah watched him dazedly through heavy eyes. Alone in her mind again, without his heat and power, she felt as fragile and shaky as a newly opened blossom.

“Did we…?” she whispered.

Without opening his eyes, he nodded.

Her eyes filled with quick, hot tears. She knew it’d been necessary—the horror of that poor, twisted mind. But if she knew anything, it was that if he could have been saved, Navos would have done so, even at a terrible cost to himself.

Then he opened his eyes and looked down into hers again. And, with a jolt of shock, she realized something more. He’d swept into her mind, but left the rest of her untouched. And somehow now her body yearned desperately to be taken as well.

With one searing look, he acknowledged her galaxy-shifting self-awareness and let her see that, even more devastatingly, he felt the same powerful desire.

Then, leaving her plucked and waiting, he straightened, turning to the others.

“You’ll find him outside the core reactor.”

“Is he armed, Commander?”

“No. But in any case, he’s dead.”

“Dead?” asked the doctor. He sounded disappointed.

“Yes,” Navos said coldly. “I was forced to execute him. He’d…gone insane.”

“There’s been an attack?” asked a deep voice, ringing with authority.

Nelah sat up shakily and swung her legs to the floor, peering around Navos. A man stood in the doorway, with epaulets on the shoulders of his silver-grey flight suit and a fierce scowl on his handsome face.

“Damn it, Daron, not another saboteur. There’s no chance you’re wrong?”

“I fear not, Captain.”

Without looking down at Nelah, Navos placed one hand on her thigh, holding her there.

“Captain, Izard and Commander Halix are with the body,” said one of the guards. “They’re waiting for you.”

“Outside the core reactor?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damn it to the seven hells!” the captain swore, scrubbing one hand over his short, silver-blond hair. “We’re not rid of these quarking terrorists yet, are we?”

“I’ll accompany you,” Navos said.

The captain shot one look from Navos’s face to hers and shook his head. “The two of you need rest—anyone can see that. We’ll handle it from here.”

The guards followed him from the room.

“Yes, rest,” said the old doctor, waving his eye stalks gently. “Unless either of you needs any help from me?”

“No, thank you, Doctor,” Navos said. He looked down at Nelah and held out his hand. She put her own in it and rose. She was so aware of him that the doctor and the medical techs gathered around seemed unsubstantial.

Clinging to Navos, she followed him out of the infirmary and into an elevator. As the door shut behind them with a quiet swoosh, they stood in silence, her hand still enclosed in his. She held very still, afraid if she moved he would let go. And she wanted desperately to go on touching him, even in such a platonic way.

“We—we killed him.” Saying the words aloud sent a deep shudder through her. This wasn’t what she’d envisioned, working with him. She’d imagined them perhaps divining a passenger had a weapon and sending him off the ship, the crew cheering. Or even forcing a wrong-doer to his knees, helpless against the strength of the two Indigons, guardians of right.

She looked up into his face. In his fathomless gaze she saw the terrible truth—that this was not the first time he’d been forced to take a life to save others. She closed her eyes, clinging tightly to his hand. She didn’t know if she could do it. She didn’t know if she could ever make such a choice again, knowing someone could die by the power of her mind.

“Situations such as this are very rare,” he said. She nodded, but she did not open her eyes, not yet.

Finally he spoke again, in a voice so controlled it was nearly cold. “You may choose a different path.”

She knew what he meant. Even through this harrowing conversation, another had been going on. The intense communion of minds they’d just experienced had super-charged their bodies with desire for another kind of melding—a sexual one. A kind of bewildered guilt besieged her, but it was not strong enough to douse the flames licking at her. She must choose whether to continue on her original path—and if she did, she should certainly not desire him.

But it was really no choice at all. Since the beginning of the voyage, the
Orion
had been hurtling through space, and she toward this moment. The elevator stopped, and the door slid open. He stood waiting.

Nelah looked up into his deep blue eyes, surrendering herself to this enigmatic, fascinating man.

“I choose…to be with you.”

Chapter Four

Navos led her into his stateroom, only his years of training controlling the desire flaming inside him. He knew that after a battle, soldiers often found themselves in the grip of lust, the less honorable among them committing rape.

He and Nelah had just won a deadly battle, although fought with empathic power. And now this slender, naïve young woman had him ready to shove her up against the nearest wall and take her there.

He’d nearly done so in the elevator—he had the access codes to shut it down and blank all surveillance. And knowing she wouldn’t stop him inflamed him. However, he was damned if he’d behave as a mere human male.

He’d a thousand years of Indigon evolution in at least half of him and he meant to make sure that half remained uppermost, even in what promised to be a heady liaison. He might be throwing his rules about sex with passengers out the escape hatch, but he was still Indigon.

As the hatch slid shut behind them, he led her across the few steps to the large bed waiting in the shadows and turned her toward him. He wanted nothing more than to unwrap her like a gift and enjoy her tender body with slow care, but he had little time.

They both needed sleep. She would have it. He must go and aid in the investigation now beginning. Whoever the dead man was, whoever had been controlling him, he’d been acting as a terrorist. The
Orion
was obviously not rid of her tormentors.

But before Navos did the work at which he was so skilled, divining the patterns and motivations in a crisis situation, he desperately needed an outlet for the sexual flames fanned by their mind meld.

He sent his power twining about her, silently urging her close to him. She shivered visibly, her plum-like breasts rising and falling quickly as she fought for breath. Her eyes rose as far as his mouth, then her own lips parted on a shuddering sigh of surrender and she swayed toward him like a lovely, slender reed.

Triumph surged through him. She was so attuned to him. He spoke to her silently once more. Would she hear him, or had their earlier communication been a fluke, forged in the fire of urgency?

“Touch me.”

Her hands settled like birds’ wings on his chest, slipping up over the sleek fabric of his flight suit. She found the fastening at his throat, baring a long vee of flesh.

His hands curved around her tiny waist, urging, guiding. She swayed closer, first her moist breath and then her soft lips brushing against the column of his throat.

Every cell in his body thrilled.

“
More!”
He had to feel that torturously delicate exploration move up his throat, then down, across the smooth hardness of his chest, her eager hands pushing his flight suit back until her fingertips found his nipples. A hard shudder arrowed through him as she traced them.

She was trembling in his hands, a fact that filled him with savage delight. He wanted her shaking, wanted her desperate for him.

He pushed his loins against hers, rocking his erection into the juncture of her thighs as she tasted his skin with the tip of her silky little tongue. He hung on the feathered edge of orgasm. His nostrils flared, jaw clenched, as he fought the urge to let go just from the graze of her mons on his straining phallus.

But no, he wanted every bit of her, wanted to be deep inside her before he put them both out of this delicious agony.

He traced just the fingertips of one hand, so large against her delicate frame, up the sleek front of her flight suit, over one pebble-hard nipple thrusting underneath, up under her chin, tipping her face toward his. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, dazed. Good.

He nipped at her lower lip—hard. “Open your suit to me.”

She fumbled with the fastening under her chin, her eyes drowning in his. It parted under his waiting fingertips. He slid his fingers down with hers, so under his tutelage she unfastened the garment clear to her belly. Her skin was unbelievably silken, shivering at his touch.