Forgotten (18 page)

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.