Justin (18 page)

The words came out more wistfully than he intended them to.

“Of course,” Deanna said. “I’m a patroller. I have the authority to make them let you see her if the situation is dire enough.”

Justin looked into her eyes and found her looking back at him with openness and determination. She wanted to do this for him. For
him
.

For a Shareem who’d fucked up her life.

I love you, Justin.

She was tearing him apart.

*** *** ***

Deanna watched Justin all the way out to the mountains the next morning, where the meditation center for the Way of the Sun lay, and wondered what was wrong with him.

They rode in a private car on a hovertrain, courtesy of Talan d’Urvey. The car was the ultimate in luxury and privacy, with a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and small kitchen in which servants could prepare the traveler any meal she wanted.

The car was also crowded, because it was meant for one very privileged woman, not four women and their Shareem.

Elisa, Talan d’Urvey, and Brianne d’Aroth accompanied Justin, and they each were followed by a possessive and watchful Shareem—in Brianne’s case, two of them.

Deanna had met only Justin, though she’d seen—and carded—Shareem during her patrols. Braden, black-haired and easy to laughter, was with Elisa. Brianne was with Aiden, who immediately took possession of the sofa, and Ky, who kept quiet and made it clear he didn’t trust patrollers. Deanna remembered seeing Aiden and Ky in the open door of the bar the day Justin had given her the veil and taken her to his apartment.

The Shareem who unnerved her the most was Rees, a Shareem she’d never heard of, let alone seen. He was a little taller than the others and stayed near Talan, the small redhead. Though he talked readily with everyone in the car, Deanna sensed that he kept himself a little distanced from all except Talan, who was never far from the circle of his arm.

Deanna studied the women as she sat on a loveseat slap against Justin—Elisa tapping her handheld with Braden’s arm firmly across her shoulders, Talan basking in Rees’s attention, and Brianne seemingly comfortable on Ky’s lap with Aiden reaching out to lay his big hand on her thigh.

These ladies were highborn, and each had given up big houses, cushy jobs, and social standing to be with their Shareem. They were still rich, still with some power because of who their families were, but they were no longer accepted in the circles of higher society.

And looking at them, they had no regrets.

“You know,” Aiden said from the couch, where he lay supine. “One train car, five Shareem, four pretty ladies . . . anyone else thinking orgy?”

Braden chuckled. “How do you put up with him, Bree?”

“She has sex with me,” Aiden answered. “Calms me down, every time.”

“One of the ladies here is a patroller,” Ky growled.

The rest of them went quiet, no noise but the rush of the train as they rocketed across glaring desert.

When Justin and Deanna had arrived at the station, Justin had openly held her hand, daring with his gaze for the others to say anything. Elisa had welcomed Deanna without hesitation, and the other ladies had followed Elisa’s lead.

“She’s
my
patroller,” Justin said, putting his arm protectively around Deanna. “I’m the only one she gets to cuff. And don’t think she hasn’t.”

His bantering tone made Braden laugh and Aiden smile, but Ky didn’t soften. “Yeah, when she arrested you. Was it that exciting?”

“Actually, it was,” Justin said. He covered her hand with his free one, squeezing it a little, reassuring her. “She had me down on the ground, with her hot ankles right in front of my face, making me want to lick all the way up her legs. Good times, friends.”

“Level twos,” Braden said, shaking his head. “They think bondage is one big joke. They make crappy Doms.”

“Bet me,” Justin said. “We just know how to play. We’ll take
any
situation and make it better.”

“Like a patroller arresting you for minding your own business,” Ky said. He was angry, radiated it.

“She arrested me for going where I wasn’t supposed to,” Justin said. “She was doing her job.”

“And for that, you want to go down on her?”

“Sounds good to me,” Aiden said.

“Shut up, Aiden,” Ky growled.

“Deanna’s with me,” Justin said, cutting through their words. “We’re together, we’re having sex like I’ve never had before, and she looks hot in nothing but my handcuffs. And if she wants
me
in the cuffs once in a while, I don’t have a problem.”

Deanna’s face went hot, and Elisa sent her a sympathetic smile. “You get used to it. It’s their way of explaining to each other that they like us.”

Justin pulled Deanna close. “And our way of saying
don’t touch her, or I’ll beat the crap out of you
.”

Deanna noted that Justin didn’t look at Ky while he said this last—he looked at Rees, who hadn’t joined the argument at all.

Rees and Justin shared a long look, and Rees gave a nod. “She’s with him,” he said.

The other Shareem went quiet a moment, then shrugged and went back to paying attention to their ladies. As though Rees’s word was final, the discussion ceased.

Deanna longed to ask why Rees’s declaration silenced them all. And who Rees
was
. She’d never seen him in the databases, not that she’d looked specifically, but she’d have remembered coming across a Shareem like him.

But there was no privacy here, nowhere she could whisper questions to Justin without Rees overhearing. Rees gave Justin a nod, then he gathered Talan to him and kissed her hair.

Justin had won something, but Deanna wasn’t sure what.

*** *** ***

The priestess in charge of the Way of the Sun’s meditation house was elderly but smooth-faced, and quiet, but in the way a mountain was quiet. A mountain didn’t move much or make much noise, but just try to shift it.

The priestess came through the gate in the large wall surrounding the Way’s property and talked only to Elisa, ignoring Deanna and Justin standing with her. Sister Orianna, once known as Lillian Passan, was in deepest seclusion, the priestess said, and for her to have visitors was beyond thought.

“However,” the elder said, never looking at Justin. “Sister Orianna has expressed a wish to speak briefly with this person from her past. I have granted her this wish, on condition that the male does not enter the grounds belonging to the Way. I have arranged a meeting in the retreat center in the town. You will wait for her there. If Sister Orianna changes her mind, you are to leave and not seek her again.”

Deanna wanted to argue, but Elisa crossed her hands over her chest and bowed to the priestess. “Yes, elder. I have gratitude for your kindness.”

The priestess nodded as though taking her due, then she turned around and walked back through the gate. The gate, a solid wooden door, slammed behind her, shutting them out.

“That’s it?” Deanna asked hotly. “Go back to that wide spot in the desert they call a town and wait for her to
maybe
come out to see Justin?”

“The Ways are famous for being antisocial,” Elisa said. “I should know. They teach unbinding the mind from emotions and living for pure intellect.” She shrugged. “It works for some. I’m sorry Justin.”

“That’s all right.” Justin sounded more irritated than angry. “We’ll wait. We’ve come this far.”

“The fact that the elder spoke to us at all is a good sign,” Elisa said.

She sounded hopeful, but Deanna couldn’t conjure much optimism. As a patroller, she’d dealt with members of the Ways—some of them came to the city on business for their orders.

The Ways held themselves above all laws and social rules, and patrollers hated dealing with them. Patrollers were charged to protect their members specially, but the women of the orders thought they could stroll around anywhere they liked, including the most dangerous of the off-world docks, without worry, plus they assumed all traffic would stop for them and that all market vendors would give them their wares for free.

Maybe in ancient times, the world had bent over backwards to serve the women of the Ways, but times had changed. If not for patrollers, whose services were never acknowledged, the ladies would never live to see their meditation gardens again.

Justin was strangely silent as they entered the town’s retreat center and settled in to wait in a small, shielded garden. He held Deanna’s hand as they sat on a wooden bench under a golden-flowered tree, rubbing his thumb over her palm and fingers, not letting go as they waited.

Deanna squeezed his hand in return.
I’m here for you,
she wanted to say.

She was in love with a Shareem. How did her life become this insane?

“Elisa n’Arell?”

The light voice sounded across the garden room, and Justin jumped to his feet. He didn’t drop Deanna’s hand, though, and she scrambled up beside him.

“Sister Orianna?” Elisa asked.

The woman didn’t answer. She was swathed from head to foot in robes, her face concealed by light-colored veils. The way the robes fit her, the way the fabric whispered, Deanna guessed that the robes had been tailored for her from the most luxurious silks known. Strange that these ladies wrapped themselves in opulence but their beliefs forbade them to enjoy it.

Justin said, “Lillian?”

The woman drew a breath. “I used to be called Lillian.” She hesitated a moment longer, then she lifted the veils from her face.

The lady inside was no longer the pretty working-class girl from the holopics, her face now lined by years of hard work. Her brown eyes were soft, however, as she fixed her gaze on Justin.

“Justin,” she said, her voice barely a breath. “I couldn’t believe it when they told me you wanted to see me. After all these years.” She walked down the flagstone path to them, her robes rippling, until she stopped a foot from Justin. She looked up into his face but didn’t try to reach for him. “It really is you. My dear, dear friend.”

*** *** ***

Justin looked into light brown eyes that he’d first seen regarding him in trepidation when he’d walked into the experiment lab at DNAmo. DNAmo hadn’t always been clear about what the high-paying jobs for working-class girls actually were, until the worker was thrown in with her first Shareem.

He had reassured Lillian that first day, and they’d quickly become friends, and then more than friends. They’d had a daughter together. And now?

Now Lillian was hidden behind layers and layers of silk and a new name, while Deanna Surrell, a patroller in a drab coverall, had become Justin’s lady-love. And Justin knew that the right things had happened.

He felt Deanna try to draw back, to give him privacy, but Justin gripped her hand, keeping her at his side.

“What happened to you?” Justin asked Lillian.

Lillian smiled the warm, deep smile he remembered. “Why did I become a celibate in a secluded Way? Don’t worry, Justin. I’m not here because of anything that happened with you or because I gave my body for experiments at DNAmo. One thing I learned fast about Shareem—they have inflated egos.”

Both Elisa and Deanna nodded, then all three women laughed.

Justin didn’t smile. “Why are you here, then?”

“The world got too much for me, to tell the truth. Watching my father and mother die, when they could have been saved if we’d had more money, and having to give up my child to protect her . . . It all took the heart out of me.” Lillian shook her head. “I suppose I could have left the planet, but I didn’t want to be that far away from them. I can’t see any of them, but at least I can know they’re across the desert in Pas City, even if my father and mother are only remembered by a marker.”

“It sure was damn hard to find you,” Justin said.

Lillian raised her chin, the defiant look he remembered. “I didn’t know you were looking, did I? You’d gotten free of Bor Narga. Why did you come back? Are you insane?”

Yes
. “I came to tell you I found Sybellie. Our daughter.”

Lillian stilled. “You’ve seen her?”

Justin reached for her hand. Screw the rules. They both needed this. “Yes,” he said. “She’s beautiful.”

Lillian wrapped her work-hardened fingers around his. “She must be all grown up now.”

“She’s twenty-four. Goes to graduate school at the university.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Tears spilled down Lillian’s cheeks, and Justin’s vision blurred. He was acutely aware of Deanna warm at his side, her presence giving him strength.

“It broke me to give her up, Justin,” Lillian was saying. “I never wanted to.”

Justin squeezed her hand. “I know why you did. You’d worked at DNAmo; you were a sex-worker. If anyone put together that a Shareem was the father . . .”

Lillian shot a nervous glance at Deanna, but Justin shook his head.

“Deanna knows. She’ll keep the secret, and so will Elisa. They both were instrumental in helping me find you.”

“And why
did
you find me? To tell me our daughter is beautiful and break my heart all over again?”

“I want to set up a meeting with her,” Justin said. “You have the right to do that as her biological mother, now that she’s of age, without revealing your identity if you don’t want to. And if I can be there, without anyone knowing but her—Lillian, I can finally meet her, tell her . . .”

He stopped as Lillian began shaking her head. “I don’t want to see her.”

“Why not? I sure as hell do.”

“Because giving her up was the hardest thing I ever did in my life,” Lillian said in a hard voice. “I put it all behind me. I don’t want to be reminded of what I was ever again.”

“None of what you did was your fault. You gave up Sybellie to protect her.”

Again, Lillian shook her head. “I took the job at DNAmo for the money. I helped people do experiments on you, for the gods’ sakes. They told me you couldn’t form an emotional connection with anyone, but when I found out you were developing feelings for me, I let myself believe it was all because of me. I’d broken through to you. I was arrogant, and I didn’t bother to hide the fact that I was proud a Shareem wanted a real relationship with me.” She drew a breath. “Then the wrong people found out, and you paid the price. So did Sybellie. Another reason I’m here is that my ignorance and arrogance have ruined three people’s lives. Better that I’m in seclusion so I can’t do that again.”