End of the Line (4 page)

“
Did you go after
them?”

“
I tried, but without
evidence, I cannot make war on another of my kind. Being
dishonorable myself will not negate their dishonorable behavior.
No, this despicable act—whether accidental or on purpose—has well
and truly ended a noble House.”

“
But surely you can marry
and have children of your own to carry on the line?”

“
Because I failed to
protect my House adequately, no women of quality or honor would be
willing to submit to the
nij’ta
. If my true mate is out
there, she will not allow me to find her.”

“
Wait a minute.” Lisbet
was confused. “What is a
nij’ta
?”

He looked surprised by her question as
he moved the plates around, making room for a second set of dishes
by taking away the first, which were mostly empty at this point. He
paused as he was lifting the dome off some sort of gel
dish.

“
The
nij’ta
is the ritual kiss. It is how
we identify our perfect mate. Don’t you have something
similar?”

“
You can find your life
mate through a kiss?” Lisbet couldn’t quite believe what he was
saying, yet he seemed sincere.

“
Of course. How do your
males go about finding their perfect mate?”

“
A lot of trial and
error,” she admitted with a sigh. “We date.” At his puzzled look,
she went on. “We see each other socially and the relationship
progresses to more intimate levels if both parties are agreeable.
After a time, the male can ask the female to marry him, legalizing
the relationship—joining them in the eyes of the law, and any
religion either or both might follow.”

“
And then they stay
together forever.” He stated it as fact rather than as a question,
surprising her again.

“
Not always. That would be
the ideal, but a lot of times, people grow apart, which is why they
invented divorce.”

“
Divorce?” He looked even
more puzzled and pronounced the word carefully, as if it were
totally unfamiliar to him.

“
When two people who are
married, are legally divided and no longer married,” she
explained.

“
No longer mated?” He
sounded scandalized. “There is no divorce among my kind. We mate
for life.”

“
Really? No divorce?
Ever?” It didn’t seem possible to her.

“
The
nij’ta
does not lie. A man must kiss
a lot of women before he finds the one that makes his blood sing. I
will never have that opportunity now and it is one of my deepest
regrets. Since giving up my vocation to the Zenai priesthood, I
would have liked to have a wife and children.”

“
I really don’t understand
why you can’t just ask a woman to marry you. Maybe she won’t be of
noble birth, but judging by this ship, you’re loaded. There are a
lot of women who would marry you for your money, at the very least.
And you’re not bad looking.” She added the last bit out of sheer
deviltry. The man was handsome as sin. If he weren’t her enemy,
she’d seriously think about jumping his bones just to see if his
lovemaking lived up to the advertising of his sexy body and almost
beautiful face.

“
That is not how things
are done among my people. By my prior negligence I have proven to
be careless with those I am responsible for. No woman of reasonable
station will have me now. I could father children on a mistress who
might come to me out of pity—or for the things I could buy her—but
such children could not legally carry on my line. And mating cannot
happen without the positive results of the
nij’ta
. I am in an unwinnable
situation, which is why I commissioned this ship and set out on the
warrior’s path.”

“
So who’s running things
at home while you’re here? I assume your family still has interests
that pay for all of this.” She gestured to the luxurious suite,
being nosey in the extreme, but she was learning a lot about the
aliens in general, and this devastatingly handsome man in
particular.

“
The dowager. My mother.
She heads the family. I am merely the Liege now that my brothers
are gone. It’s funny. I thought I’d be a warrior priest. I’d given
up the idea of a wife and children of my own, but now I want them
more than anything in the world, and they are denied me as well.
All I have left is my mission and your presence has brought that
into question as well. The Lady of Chaos has touched my life
repeatedly and altered my path in ways I could never
anticipate.”

“
I won’t pretend to
understand how your society works, but I do feel for you, Captain.
Losing your family is not an easy thing.” She made a move to cover
his hand with hers on the table, but checked it. Maybe he didn’t
want her reaching out to him. They were enemies, after
all.

But he saw her slight motion and
tilted his head, reaching out to take her hand in his.

“
We have both suffered a
loss that nobody should ever have to suffer. It changed the course
of our lives and turned us toward paths we would otherwise not have
chosen. I am amazed to find I have so much in common with someone I
thought of as the enemy until now.”

She liked the rich tone of his voice
as it dipped to compassionate, almost intimate levels.

“
Me too, Captain,” she
agreed softly.

“
You might as well call me
Val,” he replied in that same intimate tone.

“
I’m Lisbet, but my
friends call me Liz.”

He reached out with his spoon, not
letting go of her with his other hand, and scooped up a small bite
of the gel substance in the dish before her. He held the spoon up
to her lips and smiled encouragingly. His dark gaze smoldered as
she opened her mouth and allowed him to feed her the small dollop
of sweet gel.

Flavor burst around her tongue in a
display of bright notes that made her lips tingle. She swallowed,
enjoying the cool sensation of the sweet confection as it slid down
her throat.

“
That’s delicious,” she
admitted with a grin.

“
I thought you’d like it.”
His answering smile lit a fire in her belly that had nothing to do
with dessert—or at least not the edible kind. She’d like to make
dessert of him. She’d lick him like an ice cream cone if he was
agreeable.

The look in his eyes seemed very
agreeable. Before she knew what she was doing, Lisbet leaned toward
him. Was he leaning too?

His eyes grew closer until the dark
gold of his gaze was all she could see. Then his lips touched hers
and time stood still.

Breathing became optional as his mouth
covered hers, his arms wrapped around her shoulders and dragged her
out of her chair and into his lap. Then, by slow degrees, he
deepened the kiss.

His tongue bathed her mouth in his
taste, his mastery. Her body squirmed against his, not trying to
get away, but wanting to be closer. Her clothes were in the way. As
were his.

She wanted nothing more than to feel
his skin on hers, his hard muscled body against her softer skin,
his hardness mastering her responses.

But it was not meant to be.

An urgent noise from the com panel
broke them apart. Her senses were fuzzy with desire and for a
moment, she didn’t know exactly where she was. In those stolen
moments, Val had ceased to be the captain or the enemy. He was
simply a man.

An entirely too attractive—some might
say devastating—man.

Val stood, straightening his jacket as
if he were uncomfortable and went to the door. He left swiftly, as
if all the hounds of hell were on his heels.

Chapter Five

The captain disappeared and did not
return that night. Nor did she see him all the next day. Her meals
were served in silence and taken away just as quietly by a warrior
who looked at her with curiosity but made no overtures toward her
whatsoever. Neither friendly nor hostile, he merely brought the
trays and took them away at regular intervals.

The food continued to be of gourmet
quality, which surprised her. She’d understood being served the
good stuff when she ate with the captain, but on her own, she
expected rations. Instead, she continued to be treated as some kind
of weird mix between prisoner and honored guest. She was locked
into her quarters, but she had some limited access to the comp for
entertainment and learning. No communications to speak of, but she
was able to occupy her time learning more about jit’suku
culture.

Of particular interest was
the concept of the
nij’ta
. It seemed so foreign to her,
but the jit’suku actually mated based on a single kiss. Some of the
romantic fiction she’d been able to access from the comp was built
up around the idea of a mating based on a single kiss that was
totally inappropriate socially, but had to be accepted by the
respective families because true mates could not legally be kept
apart. Sort of a jit version of Romeo and Juliette with a much
happier ending because nobody could deny true mates in jit’suku
society.

It was kind of amazing. Humans really
had no clue about these strange, noble people.

Nor, did it seem, the jit’suku really
had any real understanding at all about humanity.

So many misconceptions on both sides.
It saddened her to think that so many had died based on incomplete
or misunderstood information. One thing was clear though—the
jit’suku were a race of conquerors who had expanded to the farthest
reaches of their own galaxy and beyond. Even had they fully
understood humanity, chances were the war would still be waged
because they needed more room for their growing population and the
Milky Way was the next logical place for them to go. Humans didn’t
like being invaded and jits didn’t respect those who operated on
diplomacy alone.

It was an inevitable conflict. She
didn’t have to like it, but there it was.

Her thoughts kept turning back to the
sexy captain and that devastating kiss. Had he been as affected as
she? Was he thinking of her while he ran the ship and did
who-knew-what? She’d known him less than a few hours, but she
missed him.

She almost… pined for him. Such an odd
concept for a woman who’d thought she would live the rest of her
life alone. She wanted to be with him and she didn’t care that he
was an alien or part of the enemy army. Lust—or could it actually
be love, so quickly?—didn’t care about such things.

All she knew was that she missed him
and wanted to be with him. After only a single kiss it was like
she’d become addicted to his presence, his touch, his
taste.

On the third day of her confinement,
the captain sent a message with her silent server, along with some
clothing for her. She’d been able to freshen her flight suit using
the sanitary chamber’s cleansing unit, but she was getting a little
tired of only having one set of clothing.

The outfit he sent her was confusing
at first, until she realized it was female attire in the jit’suku
style she’d seen in images on the comp. She wondered where it had
come from. Had some warrior on this ship been tasked with making
women’s clothes in her size? One thing was certain—she would never
have fit in any spare uniform parts from jit’suku stores. The men
she’d seen on board were all at least a half a foot taller than
her, if not more. And they were all broad shouldered and built on
the huge side.

She would be swimming in uniform
shirts or pants meant for them. All in all, she was glad of the new
clothes that didn’t make her look like a child playing dress up,
even if the style was different from what she was used to. There
were wide legged pants in very soft fabric that were covered by a
tunic of sorts. A jacket that tied at each hip, layered over the
pants, with a wide sash completed the outfit. There weren’t any
shoes to go with it, so she continued to wear her boots. It looked
a bit strange, but she couldn’t very well go barefoot, and the long
legs of the pants covered tops of her boots so only the tips of her
feet showed.

Not too bad, she thought, twirling in
front of the mirror in the bed chamber. She looked better than she
had in a long time. The soft fabric emphasized her figure and the
curves her flight uniform had hidden. She didn’t look like an
androgynous pilot anymore. No, now she was definitely revealed as a
woman, with all the usual curves and bumps.

She looked forward to seeing what the
captain thought of her new style. She knew she shouldn’t, but she
couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t been so impressed with a man
since her first boyfriend back in high school. She felt as giddy as
the teenager she had once been, though she knew she
shouldn’t.

The man was an alien. An enemy. She’d
been shot out of her fighter on his orders.

He’d been appalled after the fact,
which counted in his favor. But he was still the captain of an
enemy craft engaged in conquest of the Milky Way. She was sworn to
prevent him from doing that. The conflict made her heart
hurt.

Somehow, this strange man had wormed
his way into her thoughts at every opportunity, though he hadn’t
made any overt attempt to do so. One kiss and she was hooked.
Addicted to him. She knew she was doing this to herself. Her
fascination with the man was not normal. She’d tried repeatedly to
stop thinking about him, but it was no use. Her heart seemed to be
fixated on the captain and she had to follow along to see where it
would lead her.