WarriorsandLovers (10 page)

But not Eora. She had to be five inches under Nieko’s six-foot-two
or -three, with the slim, athletic build of a long-distance runner or a dancer,
but she strode up to him until she was nose to throat and poked him in the
belly. “Nieko? We’re calling a truce, okay?”

And damn if the mountain of pure, hard meanness didn’t get a
dopey smile on his face as he watched the woman try to push him around. “If
that’s the way you want it, Eora. A truce.” His brows drew together, carving a
deep V between them. “But if he does anything to break it…”

“He won’t, will you?” she asked, spinning back to look at
Elijah.

Oh hell, what did it matter? He couldn’t do anything caged
up in a single room with no weapons, the two of them to watch over him and no
chance of survival if he tried to get away. For now, until the effects of the
storm subsided, he might as well accept the offer. He didn’t have to trust them
or like them, just tolerate them and disguise his animosity toward Nieko in
particular.

“Yeah, all right,” he said grudgingly.

“You want something to eat?” Eora asked.

“Maybe,” Elijah replied. He was hungry but he would rather
starve than eat some strange mold or rocks or whatever Dvalinn ate. “What have
you got?”

“The stuff stored in the safe room is only field rations, so
they’re nourishing but not particularly tasty. I brought some fresh food with
me. We’ll have to eat it before it goes off.

“Yeah, but what is it?” Elijah demanded. “Slugs? Slime?
Leeches?”

Eora’s nose screwed up in a look of disgust. “Ew! Is that
what humans eat?”

“No wonder their temperament is so nasty,” Nieko put in.
“Slugs, slime, leeches. You are what you eat.”

“We don’t eat that sort of stuff!” Elijah snapped. “I
thought you would, being underground and all.”

“We have artificial light sources. We can grow anything,”
Eora assured him. “Including a wide range of vegetables and nuts. We have bees
for honey.”

“What about meat?” Surely they couldn’t be vegetarians, not
with all that muscle rippling and bulging on Nieko every time he moved.

“We’d eat it if we could, I guess, but it’s not practical to
farm large animals,” she replied. “We tried breeding smaller ones, like rabbits
and birds, but it broke our hearts to see them caged up and shut away from the
light and the sky, so the experiment was abandoned. It’s bad enough that we’re forced
to endure our exile from the sun. We have no right to condemn innocent
creatures to the same pain.”

Her answer surprised Lije. He hadn’t thought the Dvalinn
would be capable of compassion. Perhaps they reserved their hatred for humans.
If, as Eora claimed, humans had forced them to give up the surface and live
underground, there might even be some justification for their feelings. But
those feelings didn’t give them the right to destroy human society so they
could retake the upper world. Two races in conflict for the same territory
guaranteed enmity.

Eora handed him a ziplock bag. Elijah looked at the
disconcertingly familiar device with suspicion. “What am I supposed to do with
this?”

“You open it, tear off the seal to start the exothermic
reaction. Once it’s hot enough, you eat it.” Her voice took on the slow rhythm
of someone explaining something to a child or a fool.

“How do I know you aren’t trying to poison me or knock me
out?” Elijah asked suspiciously.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Nieko said. “We agreed to a truce. If
we’d meant to kill you, we’d have done it while you were unconscious.” He
rolled his eyes upward. “Are all humans this stupid or is it only you?”

“If this food is so harmless, where’s yours?”

“We already ate,” Nieko said. “I don’t like you enough to
want to be sociable and share a meal with you. Eat or don’t. I don’t give a
fuck.”

“He’s right,” Eora said, “We
have
already eaten. We
don’t know how long we’ll have to make the rations last. We can’t waste them by
eating when we’re not hungry.”

She held out her hand. “Give it to me. I’ll taste it for
you, then you’ll know it’s safe.”

“What will that prove? Maybe you have a different metabolism
to me. I could still get sick.”

Elijah’s intransigence finally pushed even the pacific Eora
over the edge. Elijah discovered that beneath her cool exterior was a woman
with a fiery temper.

“Fine, then,” she shouted. “Go ahead and starve.” With her
hands held out in front of her, she ticked points off on her fingers. “I
rescued you from certain death. I’ve tried to be nice to you. I’ve stood up for
you against Nieko. I’ve taken what you’ve said as the truth. But if you want to
think I’m a manipulative bitch who is trying to hurt you, then you can sit
there and figure out some other way to get the nourishment you need.”

She stalked to the far wall and sat on the floor, knees
drawn up, arms draped over them, glaring at him as if daring him to speak.

He stared her down for a moment, then turned his attention
to the bag. Logically, he supposed he was safe. If they’d wanted to kill him
they could have found a much simpler way than through poisoning him with food
from a sealed bag. Although he had no way of knowing for sure his digestion
system could process the rations, their shared disgust meant he’d probably be all
right.

Slowly, hesitantly, he followed Eora’s instructions,
breaking the seal. Within seconds the aroma of something spicy and delicious
rose to his nostrils. If the Dvalinn emergency rations tasted as good as they
smelled, they had their surface equivalent beaten hollow.

Still, when he dug the provided fork into the bag his hands
trembled. He raised the first forkful to his mouth, screwed up his nose and
gingerly tipped it in.

Lips pursed, he shut his mouth, chewed once, found the
texture soft and mushy, and swallowed.

He gulped once, then twice, his heart racing as he waited
for an adverse reaction. It didn’t happen. The food stayed in his stomach,
which grumbled, demanding more, making Elijah aware of how hungry he was. With
more enthusiasm, he continued eating until the bag was empty.

“Is there anything to drink?” he asked.

“Water,” Eora replied, and handed him a metal bottle. “We
have plenty of water—it’s pumped from a reservoir protected from the heat.

The water was cool with a slightly mineral, not unpleasant
taste. Elijah drank deeply.

When he’d finished, Eora lowered herself onto the bed next
to him, close enough that her scent, sweet and alluring, drifted over him. Her
skin was smooth and flawless. Like her male companion, she was exquisitely
beautiful. Elijah knew she was the enemy, an alien species, but with her hand
resting on his thigh, her gaze fixed on his face and her black-clothed breasts
brushing against his chest, he was having difficulty remembering it.

As much as he hated it, Nieko couldn’t take his eyes off the
human. Unlike Eora, he’d never had any interest in knowing more about the
species they shared the planet with—not that
shared
was the right word
for the miserable underground existence away from the sun and the surface the
Dvalinn were forced to lead.

It galled him that this man wasn’t what he’d expected. The
violence and evil of humans should have shaped them into a stunted, bent and
ugly form. But Elijah Denton was tall and beautiful, with a muscular body
encased in healthy, sun-blessed skin. His face was symmetrical with a strong
bone structure. Where were the tight, twisted lips, the harsh lines of cruelty?
How could nature create such a lie?

Eora was fascinated by him. Every action, every word since
she had dragged the human into the safe room had been focused on him.

She’d always had a romanticized view of the surface-dwellers.
It galled Nieko to discover she’d been right. Right as far as appearance went,
anyway. Whether he was honest had yet to be discovered.

Who knew what they would discover about each other, locked
for days in the closed environment of the safe room. They would have to talk
sooner or later. There wasn’t much else to do. Empathic communication with Eora
wasn’t going to happen. Although Dvalinn were capable of telepathy, from
infancy the rules of telepathic etiquette were drilled into them. Don’t intrude
into others’ minds unless invited. To ensure it didn’t happen, every Dvalinn
child was taught how to shield their thoughts. Nieko had taken to those lessons
well. He’d needed to. The feelings and emotions he experienced were
unacceptable in his culture.

He’d been so successful at blocking his thoughts that the
person closest to him, the person who believed she knew him better than anyone
else in the world, was convinced he’d been born without the ability to
communicate telepathically. Out of deference to his perceived disability, she
never used telepathy when they were together.

Eora pitied him. That hurt, but not as much as it would if
she ever found out what he tried so desperately to hide from her.

For now, he needn’t have worried. Someone else was taking
all her attention. She was perched on the bed, side by side with the human,
only an arm’s length separating them, bombarding him with questions. Questions
about the surface, the colors, the sky, sunshine. All things they had been
taught about in school but had never experienced in real life. Never would
experience.

Elijah was answering patiently, describing the chiaroscuro
of light and shadow and the sky—tall trees and the riotous color of gardens.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “But you must know. The pictures on the walls are
pretty accurate. A bit idealized, that’s all.”

Nieko’s teeth snapped together so hard they hurt. His fists
clenched. “How the fuck do
you
know?”

Elijah paled and he swallowed, his throat working visibly.
“Maybe my memory is coming back.”

“And maybe it never left you,” Nieko snarled. “There’s only
one place you could have seen those paintings. Ogof. What were you doing in the
city?”

Elijah’s eyelids dropped like shutters and his face went
blank. “I don’t know.” Then he opened his eyes wide and looked directly at
Nieko. “I don’t remember.”

“You lying bastard.” Nieko launched himself at Elijah but
before he could land the punch he aimed at him, Eora flew off the bed. She
pushed back against Nieko’s chest and he skidded to a halt, his fist pulled up
and away from her.

“You don’t know he’s lying. Maybe his memory is coming back
in bits and pieces. Maybe it
is
going to come back completely.” She
pushed her hand against Nieko’s chest, and as he always did, he obeyed her
command. “If it does, then he can explain.”

Getting his temper under control, Nieko took a step back.
“He can explain to the council.”

“I’m not appearing before your council,” Elijah said.

“Yeah—you are,” Nieko said. “Unless I get sick of waiting
and kill you first.”

“Think you could?” Elijah retorted, getting to his feet and
squaring his shoulders.

“This is supposed to be a truce,” Eora yelled. “You might think
you’re being tough, but from where I’m standing you’re behaving like children.”
Her voice softened. “Enough, okay?” She strode up to Nieko and faced him square
on. “No more, Nieko. This is going to be hard enough as it is.”

Then she turned to Elijah. Nieko felt his jaw tighten as she
put her hand on his arm and looked up into his face. “I don’t think you’re
lying. I trust you.”

Even through the blockade Elijah had built in his mind,
Nieko felt the guilt radiating from him as he turned his head away, refusing to
meet Eora’s open gaze.

It took a second for the realization to hit. When it did,
Nieko had to bite down on his tongue to keep from shouting out.

The human had telepathic powers, knew it, and had
deliberately constructed shields to mask his thoughts! He either wasn’t aware
that shields themselves gave out a characteristic signal, or he was one of
those unfortunates who lacked the skill to disguise them.

Shit. What a sick joke. Here they were, all three of them
telepathically able to communicate and all of them blocked for reasons of their
own. If it weren’t so pathetic and dangerous, he’d laugh.

The human’s shields were sound, yet guilt seeped out through
them. Guilt that strong meant danger. Cautiously, hoping Eora wouldn’t notice,
Nieko lowered his shields enough to increase his receptivity to incoming
sensation without allowing any stray feelings of his own to slip out.

From Eora he got a quick flurry of curiosity and excitement.
Nothing unusual there. Curiosity and excitement had been the defining
characteristics of Eora’s personality for as long as he’d known her.

From the human he got the guilt he’d already detected. A
taint of self-loathing surprised him. The whisper of reluctant attraction to
Eora.

What if Eora picked up a hint of that attraction? Eora
claimed her few experiences at sex hadn’t been good. She hadn’t given him a
critique of
their
truncated experience, but she’d seemed to enjoy
it…right up until the moment she’d fallen asleep!

Who was he kidding? No matter how boring and uninspiring
she’d found sex so far, there was no way she’d pass up a chance to indulge her
curiosity with the human.

Jealousy was another of those annoying emotions Dvalinn
weren’t supposed to feel, but Nieko was lacerated by it. He couldn’t let
himself have her but he hated it when anyone else did. Nieko had already
committed the folly of loving Eora—he was powerless to resist the other
emotions that went with it.

He sat with his back against the wall, as far from Elijah
and Eora as he could get. He could have sat on a chair but some perverse part
of him welcomed the physical discomfort. It distracted him from the pain of
watching Eora flirt with the human. He drew his knees up and rested his arms
across them, letting his hands dangle.

She was going to have sex with the human. Soon, before the
storm let up, before they took the human to the council for judgment, Eora
would push Elijah back onto the bed and slide her lithe body onto his and they
would fuck. Nieko would watch. It would cut him into a thousand pieces but he
knew he wouldn’t be able to turn away.

Eora’s persistence combined with the attraction Nieko had
already picked up on would ensure her success. Even the idea that Nieko was watching
wouldn’t be a sufficient deterrent once she got Elijah sufficiently worked up.
And she would. Nieko could read the tingle of sexual arousal emanating from the
human. He was already halfway there.

Eora seemed intent on speeding up the time scale. She sat
next to the human, her attention focused on him, touching him lightly, making
constant contact, her body language mirroring his, asking him questions about
the upper world, listening to him as if every word he spoke was golden.

Except that her attention wasn’t entirely focused on the
human after all. Every time she put her hand on him, every time he spoke to her
or leaned closer, Eora sneaked a quick glance at Nieko. Her eyes flashed with
something Nieko couldn’t read. Challenge? Anger? Hurt?

He couldn’t risk lowering his shields any further. In his
current state of growing fury, he wouldn’t be able to maintain control. If he
gave in to the way he was feeling now, the human would be scorched into
oblivion.

He didn’t
need
telepathy to detect the man’s growing
interest. Pheromones scented the air. Tension vibrated like guitar strings.
Eora was playing him like an instrument.

He watched as the human’s eyelids drooped and his cheeks
flushed red with the heat of desire, heard his breathing quicken, saw the bulge
in his pants thicken and grow, saw him abandon his resistance, saw him sit up
and take control.

One hand slid up behind Eora’s head, spread wide and pulled
her in so his lips could take a long, sliding journey across her cheeks to her
mouth. Nieko couldn’t tell whether Elijah pushed or Eora pulled, but they
tumbled backward onto the bed. Elijah covered her. His hands, fingers
intertwined, held hers above her head. His hips pinned her to the bed, his legs
pushing hers apart, his cock grinding against her mound in a position of male
dominance.

And Eora let him. Eora, who never let a stranger tell her
what to do. Eora, who controlled every situation in her life. Elijah said, “Lie
still. Don’t move until I tell you to.” Eora obeyed.

Elijah released her hands and slid down until his mouth
fastened over Eora’s breast, and he suckled it through the black cloth of her
singlet. She never wore a bra. Nieko knew her nipple would be tight and sweet.
Something warm and salty trickled onto his tongue and he realized he’d bitten
his lip. He swallowed the metallic tang of blood.

Elijah moved downward again, leaving a wet patch on Eora’s
shirt. His hand fumbled for a moment at her waist, then disappeared into the
gap left by the open fastening. Eora’s hips arched up off the bed and Elijah
looked up briefly. “I told you, don’t move.”

Eora released a shaky breath and she flattened herself
against the mattress.

The hand slid in and out. Nieko knew from Eora’s gasps what
Elijah was doing. The strangled groan emerged before he was aware it had
escaped from his lips.

Elijah’s head snapped around and his eyes met Nieko’s. For a
long moment the two men stared at each other, then Elijah turned back to Eora
and asked, “How do you turn these lights out?”

“No!” Both Eora and Nieko gasped it at the same time. How
could the human suggest something so horrifying? To corrupt the heat of sexual
excitement with the abomination of darkness.

“We never…” Eora gasped. “You don’t understand. Without
light the darkness here is absolute. Unbearable. We always have light. Always.”

“Okay, then,” Elijah murmured. “We leave the lights on.” He
gestured toward Nieko with his head. “Is he going to sit there and watch?”

“Oh, don’t worry about Nieko,” Eora said. “I don’t think
he’s really interested in sex. He’ll probably go to sleep.”

Her words hurt. Nieko couldn’t tell if she really thought
that or if she was punishing him for failing to complete the act with her
earlier, but there was no mistaking the dismissal in her tone. She didn’t care whether
Nieko watched or not.

Again Elijah turned to look at him, his gaze hard and
assessing. “I don’t think he’s going to sleep.”

“Scared you can’t perform, human?” Nieko said through
gritted teeth. “Or are you shy?”

“Maybe you get off on watching,” Elijah retorted. “Have it
your way.”

He slowly turned back to Eora. “Lift your hips.”

Without argument, Eora did as she was told. Elijah stripped
her of her pants, pulling them down her thighs and tossing them aside with one
swift, ruthless movement.

He pushed her singlet up, bunching it around her neck. He
covered her breasts with his hands, squeezing and rolling the nipples until
they peaked into hard, rosy knots. Then he leaned back on his heels, exposing
her more fully to Nieko’s gaze.

At first Nieko thought it was accidental, but when Elijah
pulled her legs open wider and again moved aside, Nieko realized he was meant
to see. The human was playing some strange game with him. Was he gloating over
the ease with which he took Eora, or was it to celebrate victory over a rival?

In the Dvalinn world it shouldn’t matter. Sex was physical,
not emotional. Jealousy didn’t exist. Nieko was the one Dvalinn male it
did
matter to, the one Dvalinn male who saw what Elijah was doing and wanted to
kill him. Slowly. Rip him apart piece by piece with his bare hands.

But as much as he hated it, he was aroused, his cock
hardening and swelling, readying itself for the longed-for hot, wet slide into
Eora’s body. His fists clenched as he fought against the pleasure denied to him
by his weakness—his love.

The human shucked off his pants, his cock thick and ready.
To fuck Eora. The salt taste of blood trickled into Nieko’s mouth from where
his teeth clenched his cheek. He bit harder but the small pain didn’t wipe out
the agony of watching Elijah turn to the woman Nieko loved.

Eora made a low sound of approval and Nieko knew he’d been
forgotten. Elijah dropped off the end of the bed, put his hands under Eora’s
buttocks, dragged her to the edge, then lifted her like a goblet to his mouth.
She ground her feet into the mattress and arched her back, offering him more.
Elijah’s head bobbed. With each movement Eora’s hips jerked and the hiss of air
escaping her lungs echoed in the silence of the room.

Her hands clenched in Elijah’s hair, the knuckles white. The
sounds of her breathing grew louder and more frantic until her hips thrust hard
and high in the air and a shuddering sigh escaped her.