Purity (Pure and Tainted) (5 page)

Despite her physical symptoms she didn’t want to believe it.
Surely he couldn’t be right! Surely she couldn’t
need
him to touch her. K bit the inside of her cheek, trying to
breathe past the pain, to control it.
I
fear nothing, I feel nothing. I fear nothing, I feel nothing.

The minutes passed, feeling like hours. Boone watched her struggle
silently, not going to her though his blue-green eyes were troubled. K clenched
her hands into fists and matched his stare with her own. She would triumph over
this pain and if she did not, well, at least she could die fighting it. Would
Purity still accept her, as contaminated as she was? K didn’t know but as the
agony grew even greater, she thought she was about to find out…

“That’s it. I can’t watch this anymore.” Boone was suddenly off
the sleep pallet and towering over her. K tried to scramble away from him but
she couldn’t move—her muscles were all locked into horribly painful knots.
“C’mon, darlin’.”
He scooped her up as though she was a
child and took her back to the pallet where he cradled her in his lap and
pressed her against his chest. At once her muscles unlocked and she went limp.

“
No
.” K didn’t like the
way her voice sounded. It was more of a weary moan than a fierce battle cry.

“Be quiet.” He sounded both irritated and concerned. “Lights out,”
he said and the room was plunged into darkness. “Just be quiet and breathe,” he
told K sternly.

K had no choice in the matter. She
lay
against his broad chest and felt completely surrounded by him. His heartbeat
and the low rumble of his voice filled her ears and his scent filled her nose.
His arms, wrapped around her like warm, flexible steel.
No escape. He’s everywhere—there’s no way I can get away from him…

“Why are you doing this to me?” she heard herself whisper. “Why
can’t you just give me back my suit or let me die?”

“Because I took an oath to preserve
life.”

“And because you think I’ll help you.”

“I know you will—you want your damn suit back too much not to. But
I hope in time you’ll see that there are other options besides suicide even if
you have been ‘contaminated.’”

“Death is the only honorable choice.” K didn’t like the slight
hesitation she heard in her own voice. What she was saying was true. She was
Impure now—she should die. But somehow it was harder to resign
herself
to death now than it had been earlier. Why was that?
K didn’t have an answer.

Boone shifted in the darkness. “I don’t think you’ll be quite so
ready to kick the bucket once some of those damn emo-dampers have been flushed
out of your system. It’s easy to face your own death if you’re numb. We’ll see
how you do once you can feel again.”

“I don’t
want
to feel,”
K protested but what she wanted didn’t seem to matter. Even now there was a
lump in her throat for some reason. She swallowed it down with difficulty.

“Of course not.
Feeling
hurts
. And while you’re pretty used to physical pain, I bet you’ve
never dealt with the emotional kind, am I right?”

“I don’t have too. I have surrendered my emotions to Purity.” But
her voice wavered as she spoke. What if he was right? What if it wasn’t the
holy nothingness of Purity filling her that had muted her emotions for so many
years? What if her suit
had
been
giving her medicine to rid her of her feelings?

Her thoughts raced as she lay silently in his arms. What if she
really did have Erian DNA? Did it make her weak like the natives of Eros? Would
she begin to crave Boone’s touch, to act like a depraved, disgusting Erian? How
had her life gotten so off track so quickly?
I am a trained warrior. A fourth level Paladin. I fear nothing. I feel
nothing.
Then why did she feel so helpless right now? What good was her
strength or her training doing her?
None.

“You’re awfully quiet, K. Are you plotting another way to kill
yourself?” He sounded half serious, half amused.

“No. I… Do you
like
having emotions?” she blurted.

“Not always. Like I said, feeling can hurt. Sometimes I think it
would be nice to be numb.”

“Do you…have emotions toward me?” She didn’t know why she asked.
Somehow it seemed easier to talk to him in the darkness when she couldn’t see
him.

Boone sighed. “I ought to. I ought to hate you. You’re a cold
hearted Purist and your ‘purge squad’ killed two of my crew.”

“I was following orders and I would do so again,” K said sharply,
twisting in his arms. “And as I have no emotions myself, I do not care that you
hate me.”

“Be still.”
His grip on her tightened until she
stopped struggling.
“I didn’t say I
hate you, I said I
ought
to.” He
shifted behind her again, positioning them both so they were lying on their
sides on the sleeping pallet, just as they had been when K had first woken up.
“But somehow I can’t. I feel too damn sorry for you.”

“
You
feel sorry for
me?”
K was incredulous. “I am a fourth
level Paladin while you are simply—”

“I know
,
I’m just one of the great
unwashed masses, a poor, ignorant soul who hasn’t been touched by the shining
light of Purity.”

“Well…yes. Are you making fun of me?” K asked suspiciously.

“Not at all,” Boone said dryly.
“Just trying to
see things from your perspective.
And to point out that if you took a
minute to look at things from
my
point
of view you might think differently.”

“Why would I want any viewpoint other than my own?”

“Because maybe if you had one you’d see that not everything you’ve
been taught is perfectly right. What’s so great about Purity anyway? Why take
the idea of simple human contact and pervert it—make it a sin and a crime?”

“To touch is to contaminate,” K said, reciting the words she’d
been taught since birth. “Contamination is against the precepts of Purity.”

“But
why?
Why is it wrong? What’s so bad about it?
About
this
?”
He stroked one large, warm
hand down her bare arm from shoulder to elbow.

K shivered, her skin tingling from the illicit touch. “It’s just
wrong
.
Touching leads
to…to other things.”

“To what?
To love?
To sex?”
Boone’s breath was hot against the back of her
neck.

K could feel her cheeks getting warm again but she struggled to
control her embarrassment and speak calmly. “Sexual reproduction is the worst
kind of contamination—one cannot sink lower than to allow oneself to engage in
physical congress with another.”

“They feed you that line and you just
accept
it? Don’t you ever wonder what you’re missing?”

“I have no sexual urges if that is what you are asking,” K said
stiffly. “When Purity fills you there is no room for anything else. The
unnatural desire to procreate sexually is completely eradicated.”

“I gotta tell you, darlin’, you’re not exactly making me want to
convert. From what you’re telling me Purity doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“Fun?”

“Enjoyable.
Entertaining.
Pleasurable.”

“And you find it pleasurable to debase yourself sexually?” K demanded,
squirming in his unbreakable grip.

“With the right person, yes, very pleasurable,” Boone said mildly.
“But I understand if you don’t get it.”

“Of course I don’t. I have never gone against the precepts of
Purity.”

“Until now.”

“Yes, until now. And that was not of my own choosing.”

“Well I’m sorry I had to make the choice for you. But I think
you’ll find in time that touching and being touched isn’t the horrible thing
you’ve been led to believe. I mean, take this…” He pulled her closer for a
moment, his arms tightening gently around her.
“Lying here
with me, warm and comfortable in the dark together.
Is it
really
so bad?”

“Of course it’s bad,” she said automatically. “It’s…I’m
contaminated. We both are.”

“But does it
feel
bad?
Do you hate it?”

“Yes.” K stiffened in his arms, determined not to forget her
training. “It’s…what you’re doing, what you’ve done to me is the worst thing
that could possibly happen to one of my kind.”

Boone sighed, his breath moving the tiny wisps of hair that had
escaped from her braid, tickling her neck. “If you really believe that then
you’ve got a lot to learn. I’m sorry you find me holding you so distasteful and
that you’re upset—”

“I don’t get ‘upset,’” K said coldly. “I fear nothing—”

“I feel nothing,” Boone finished for her. “Yeah, right, I know.”
He yawned deeply. “Anyway, I’m sorry but until you get over the worst of your
touch-craving we’re gonna have to be joined at the hip for awhile.”

“But…how long will that be?” K whispered, trying to swallow the
panic that threatened to eat her.

Behind her she could feel Boone shrug. “Don’t know. No more than a
week hopefully.
Maybe two.
We really don’t have any
idea. As far as I know, no adult with Erian DNA raised by the Purists has ever
gotten away from them before.”

“I didn’t
get
away, you
took
me,” K said sharply. “Are you
saying I have to go through a week of this? Sleeping like this every night and
getting sick every day if you don’t…don’t contaminate me?”

“You make it sound so romantic,” Boone said dryly. “We’ll just
have to take it one day at a time. But right now it’s time to get back to
sleep, okay? You think you can keep your suicidal tendencies under wraps for a
few hours or do I need to put the plasti-seal back on your wrists?”

“I will be still,” K said reluctantly. She didn’t want her hands
bound again—it made her feel helpless and afraid, even more helpless and afraid
than she already was. And though she tried to release the turbulent emotions to
Purity, somehow they wouldn’t leave her alone.

“Your word of honor as a Paladin?”
Boone prompted.

“I swear to Purity that I will be still while we sleep,” K said
through tight lips.

Boone yawned again.
“All right.
Loki
would say I was crazy for trusting you but I’m gonna take you at your word,
darlin’. Settle down and let’s get some sleep, we’ve got kitchen duty
tomorrow.”

K didn’t know what kitchen duty was but it didn’t really matter,
did it? No matter what she did, she was still stuck.
Trapped
here in an enemy vessel without her squad or her suit, being continuously
contaminated and unable to do anything about it.

Briefly she thought of all the prisoners she and her squad had
captured over the years they’d been flying together. Was this how they had
felt, knowing they were slated for either termination or the pshalite mines?
Hopeless, helpless, completely out of control?
It was a
sobering thought and one she didn’t like to dwell on.
This must be what Boone means by taking another point of view.

K
found she didn’t like
it—not a bit. She had never felt much of anything while doing her job and leading
her squad. Once in awhile there was a faint thrill of victory when the fighting
was especially arduous but she had worked to eradicate even that positive
emotion from her Purity seeking soul.

Purity
help
me,
K prayed
silently in the darkness
. Fill me with
the cold, the dark, the nothingness. Fill me with yourself.
Still the
disturbing emotions remained, refusing to be purged.

But worse than the bad feelings
were the good ones.

As she lay secure in Boone’s arms, his deep, slow breathing
lulling her to sleep, K couldn’t help thinking of what he’d said.
“
Lying here with me, warm and
comfortable in the dark together.
Is it really so bad?”

No,
K
thought before she could stop herself.
It’s not so bad.
It wasn’t horrible or painful or disgusting as she
had been led to believe it would be. Contamination was actually
quite…comfortable. Boone was warm and comforting behind her, cradling her in a
way her suit had never been able to. Her head was pillowed on one of his massive
arms and her body seemed to fit perfectly into the curve of his big frame. It
gave K a strange feeling—the feeling of being one person in two bodies. Of
being somehow joined even though they were still separate entities. Why was
that?

She didn’t have any idea but she did know one thing—the feeling of
contentment and security she felt in Boone’s arms was not to be trusted. He was
still the enemy and the moment she got a chance she was going to kill first him
and then herself.

Wasn’t she?

Of course I am, K
told herself firmly.
But right now she needed to get some rest
if she was going to have any chance of escape tomorrow. Sighing she settled
herself more comfortably against her hated captor and surrendered herself to
sleep.