Mandate Read online

  Beryl was wearing the W’lyn version of yoga gear. She was sweating lightly but calm. Wren was going to try and keep her that way. It would give her something to do while trying not to think about what would have happened next in Drovin’s arms.

  “Beryl, I have to ask, was Toyo a little moody around the others before you two formalized things?”

  Beryl chuckled. “You could say that. He guarded me like an angry hen with a chick. Of course, that ended after the bonding began, for the most part.”

  “How did you two bond?”

  Her charge blushed, her pearly skin tinted pink. “Uh, he nipped my inner thigh at a delicate moment and gave me some of his blood at the same time. It started the ball rolling, so to speak, and it changed my body chemistry.”

  “Right. But he wasn’t jealous at any point after that?”

  “Well, there were a few moments. I am guessing that until they lock you in, they are uncertain and it makes them dangerous.” Beryl grinned. “Having trouble with Drovin already?”

  “He pinned Rand to the ceiling.”

  Beryl winced and headed into the kitchen. “Well, I hope, for your sake, that courtship progresses quickly or you will be putting out little fires like that all over the place.”

  Wren narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that since you two have made direct contact, he and you will be pulled together and anyone who interrupts that process will feel your upset. Can I eat this?”

  Wren moved between Beryl and her target and sliced the bars with a quick thought. “You can have one now and one in an hour.”

  Beryl beamed and snagged one of the bars while Wren packaged the rest of them up and put them away.

  “So, are you content to wear the bodysuits or do you want some more W’lyn clothing?”

  “I am not up to shopping. I don’t have any funds yet.”

  Beryl waved that away. “I am not concerned with money. You will be drawing a stipend from the Guardian Project, but for now, I have a lot of clothing that doesn’t match my colouring and I am never going to wear. We are currently the same size, more or less, and I think you could help me thin out my wardrobe to make room for maternity stuff.”

  “Are you serious?” Wren frowned.

  “Of course. The clothes shouldn’t go to waste because I am suggestible in the marketplace. This will give you something to wear when we go to concerts in the cities.”

  Beryl was trailing down the hallway toward the new addition that had been installed for the new couple’s privacy.

  “Why do you think that the talents of the Guardians come with the bonding?” Wren asked the other woman.

  “I don’t know. Either it is a way of making things physically equal, or the men are only attracted to women with complementary genetics. I don’t know which, but I am sure that there are bunches of folks looking into it.” Beryl grinned. “I cannot imagine life with Rand. I think I would have fought it with everything in me. Can you think of life with Loesh?”

  Wren shuddered. “No, nor with Rand or Toyo, though neither was an option. Just the thought of anyone other than Drovin makes me cringe.”

  Beryl opened the door to her quarters. “And if one of them were to press the issue?”

  “Then Rand would have company on the ceiling.” There was no doubt. There was no other man on W’lyn for her and she had no idea why.

  Chapter Six

  The teenagers and the stampede of large animals had been solved with a minimal amount of injuries to the idiot youngsters who thought that riding the ten-foot-high, horned beasts as their ancestors did would be a fun afternoon’s entertainment.

  The Guardians were tired, grubby and two had been trampled, though Rand was taking it well and Toyo just wore the hoof marks without side effect.

  “Snacks are in the cooler. Dinner in an hour. Rand, Drovin, come with me to the medical office.”

  She turned and felt the two confused emotional signatures follow her. She entered the medical office, cleared the bed and told Rand to take a seat with the flick of her gaze.

  “Why am I here?” Drovin scowled.

  “If you want to be irritated when they are near me, then you will be here when I have to strip them down and treat them. Rand, expose all trampled areas. I will know if you are concealing any.”

  While Rand was bemused and disrobing, Wren went over to Drovin and pulled his head to hers for a violent kiss that shook his control to the point where his teeth extended. She nipped his lip and stepped back. Their breathing was rapid, but she turned and took the medical equipment to Rand, using a tissue accelerator on him as he lay on his back with his suit edging to the top of his hips.

  Drovin sat, and he watched with attention but no anger as she touched Rand.

  Wren sighed inwardly. She had made her point and it had taken. He knew he had nothing to worry about. He had her full attention no matter whom she had to strip down for caretaking. If she had to have him in here for every cut, scrape and cracked rib, she would.

  Rand was hiding a groin strike, and she merely looked at him with her brows raised while he hid a grimace. With a low grunt, he shoved his suit down to mid-thigh, and she casually placed the accelerator over his bruised groin.

  “How large were the animals?”

  “Each weighed around a thousand kilos.”

  She winced. “I am amazed it didn’t turn your nuts to peanut butter. Hold still and quit squirming.”

  The smoke grey skin was surrounded by a light nest of hair the same metallic gold as his head.

  “This would be sexy if you didn’t smell like Drovin.” He grinned.

  She felt the pain receding and waited until it concluded. “That makes one of us.”

  “Ouch.”

  “You will feel more than an ouch if you don’t pull your suit up, Rand.” Drovin growled, his mood darkening rapidly.

  Rand sighed and yanked his suit into place. “Thank you, Wren. Your touch is far lighter than any of ours.”

  She snorted. “Right, now sit up and let me get that gouge in your back. I can feel it burning you.”

  Drovin growled. “What do you mean you can feel it?”

  “It is why I would have been accepted as a Volunteer with or without you, Drovin. Empathy is a learned skill, and I learned all I could after my mind was ratcheted into high gear.” She looked at the shallow slice and got the sterilizer out, working down the skin to flush the debris out of the wound.

  “I had no idea you were cut.”

  Rand winced. “An antler caught me, and while my suit repaired itself, I didn’t. I was going to have Loesh look at it later.”

  She got the sealant out of the kit and sprayed synthetic skin over the cleaned wound. The regenerator was calibrated for W’lyn skin, and it worked its wonder to bring his body’s efforts to their peak to heal the injury.

  “I want to check it tomorrow. Don’t exercise too vigorously, and if it tears open, come and get me.”

  Rand flexed his shoulders carefully. “That feels remarkably better. Thank you.”

  She grinned and went to wash the blood and grim off her hands. “Go have a sonic shower and change clothing. You reek like wild animal.”

  Rand nodded and hopped to his feet, leaving medical without a look back.

  Drovin walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her, placing his hands around hers as she scrubbed. The flower was still in her hair, but he moved his head from her temple, down to her neck, tugging at the fabric of her suit with his teeth.

  Lust rippled through him and trickled into her. She sighed and leaned her head back against his shoulder. “I am going to have to work on that left arm of yours.”

  He jerked in surprise. “How do you know about that?”

  “I feel the pain when you move. It is under your regular emotional scale but still there. Take the upper portion of your suit off and get on the table.”

  She ran the sterilizer beam ov
er the table and waited. When he sat down, she stroked her hands over his skin in a way she hadn’t done to Rand.

  “It was a break, wasn’t it?” She picked up the accelerator and placed it in the most sensitive of the areas under his muscles. “A very bad break. You used your talent to set it, but it never healed completely.”

  He winced as she worked. “I didn’t have time to see to it properly, and mentioning it as a chronic injury might get me off the roster for a week. That could cost lives.”

  She sighed and worked the accelerator around to the trouble spot. “I think that two or three more treatments will complete the healing to the point where you don’t have to hold it anymore.”

  He placed his fingers under her chin and lifted her head. “You can feel all that?”

  She blinked at the burning silver of his eyes. “I can. There is a thread of tension that is your talent and it hums constantly.”

  He leaned forward, “What else do you feel?”

  His lips were an inch from hers again.

  “Very nervous.”

  He smiled and brushed his lips across hers. “You or me?”

  She laughed. “Both. We are both jumping with tension but that isn’t a bad thing. You need to shower before dinner and your first healing here is done. I want to see you tomorrow morning for another treatment.”

  Wren pulled her hands away with the greatest reluctance. There were scars over his torso, but the only pain was hidden within. She quickly turned when she realised that they had more in common than the attraction.

  She swallowed. “Go on. You need to be presentable for dinner.”

  “Will you walk with me this evening?”

  Wren nodded and looked at him over her shoulder. “I will, now go.”

  He left the room, but she felt a low stroking on her neck that trailed between her breasts before disappearing.

  Wren pressed her hand to the soul stone containing Emily. “Wow, you are going to have a lot to talk about when you find someone to coax you out of there.”

  A warmth came out of the stone and touched her hand. Emily was enjoying what she was seeing, that much was certain.

  Dinner was a huge stew, biscuits with W’lyn grains and a dessert that everyone could enjoy. The Guardians were all neat and tidy and Beryl was calm. Wren felt that she was where she was supposed to be.

  Loesh looked at her during dinner. “Rand mentioned that you have a soft touch as a healer. I have to say that I am relieved. We all have emergency training, but it is better to have one who is dedicated to it for daily care.”

  Toyo nodded. “I agree. It takes a lot of effort to pierce my hide, but when it does happen, I don’t want Loesh jamming his finger into the wound asking, does this hurt?”

  Beryl chuckled. “She also has had more obstetrics training than any of the doctors I have seen so far. I feel very secure with Wren here.”

  Toyo lifted her hand to his lips and he kissed it gently. “Then I am delighted she has joined us.”

  Drovin smiled. “As am I.”

  They all chuckled at him, but his silver gaze was molten and fixed on Wren. She felt pinned to her seat.

  The dessert was a W’lyn version of a trifle with berries and nuts. When Loesh was licking the huge bowl clean, the bots shooed them all away from the table and Drovin held out his hand. “I believe we are scheduled for a walk.”

  “I believe we are.” She slipped her hand along his, and he closed his fingers over hers.

  They left the others without a word, and Wren ignored the amusement in their thoughts.

  Once outside, he led her to a pathway that trailed through the green spaces on the island.

  “I know that things are moving swiftly for you, Wren. I do not wish to increase your stress load with my needs and wants.”

  His words hung between them.

  “My previous employer once told me that with the wrong man, a minute was an eternity and with the right man, eternity was not long enough. It doesn’t matter how much time passes. What matters is what you do with the time you have now.”

  She smiled softly at him as something strange and deep bloomed inside his soul. He didn’t turn toward her. He kept walking with her, and soon, they left the path.

  A barrier of energy was in their way and he led her through it.

  Once they were inside, she looked around and her heart skipped a beat. “Night-blooming roses.”

  The flowers glowed in reds, pinks, whites, lavenders, all the soft colours she was used to, but they were luminescent. The barrier was protecting this treasure of beauty.

  “What is this place?”

  “This was my life before the Guardians. I wanted to be a florist with my own greenhouse nursery of blooms. This is as close as I can get. This is where I run, this is where I let myself be myself and I wanted to show it to you.”

  He released her hand and let her explore.

  The scents were marvelous, and she spotted the currently closed urhing, waiting for its moment to open.

  The roses were thicker, fuller, with heads so heavy, they should not have been able to remain pointed skyward, but they did. She traced the silky flower petals with her fingertips and smiled.

  “You do have a very light touch.” Drovin’s voice slid through the air.

  He was sitting at the base of a tree in the glade and watching her as she explored the garden.

  She blushed and stood up. “Practice from dealing with surgical patients.”

  He beckoned for her to join him.

  She stopped next to him and he held out his hand. When she took it, he eased her down and across his thighs. He curled her carefully against him.

  “Since I have asked you to surrender so much by bringing you here, I am giving you this garden to enjoy as your mood suits you. I will maintain it for you and you can tell me what you want and where.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Thank you, but that is too much. I am happy to be here.”

  “Are you?”

  She looked up at him in surprise. “Of course I am. Despite what you wanted, I was given the option to come here, and I chose it. I grabbed that moment with everything I had.”

  “I believe it is time that I follow your example.”

  The kiss wasn’t a surprise, but the feel of her suit parting and easing off her shoulders was. The caress of cool night air on her neck caused her to tense, but he wrapped a hand around her back and the warmth from his skin compensated nicely.

  The kiss remained gentle as he peeled her black and white suit away from her skin. She covered her scars as best as she could when his mind stripped her bare, with the gentlest of motions.

  He stroked her cheek with one hand, slowly trailing his fingers over her. “Were you always silver?”

  She licked her lips and shook her head. “No. I was a standard colouration of Terra.”

  “This colour suits you. You are living moonlight.” He nibbled at her shoulder, and his hand pushed hers away from the scars that decorated her abdomen.

  The web work of skin was traced by his fingers, carefully measured and learned by the rough pads of his digits. His invisible touch lifted her against him, and his lips soon traced the scars that had haunted her life.

  Drovin’s fingers trailed around her upper thighs to the marks left behind by pins and scalpels. “It is amazing you survived.”

  “It was a near thing.” She left it there as he adjusted her again, and suddenly, her thighs were parted and he was between them.

  The surreal feeling of being held by invisible hands under alien moons in a luminous garden rocked through her. When his tongue lapped carefully at her, she covered her mouth as a shriek escaped.

  Between his rising arousal and hers moving to match it, she had no idea what was happening. Her sole concern from the ribs down was to avoid pain. Pleasure was a foreign concept.

  Fire started to flare along her nerves and panic raced through her mind until she rea
lised she didn’t feel the agony that normally came with the heat. Confusion kept her from stopping him and passion overrode her impulses to pull away.

  The sensation of a finger being pressed into her made her squeak again. It twisted and turned as his tongue licked at her clit. When her body’s liquid response had him moving easily, a second finger moved into her, stretching her.

  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and she blinked to find that she was the one in motion. The softest of surfaces was under her, and Drovin lifted his head and withdrew his fingers with slow, deliberate focus.

  His trousers were removed as she reclined in the glowing flower petals. Her body hummed with eagerness and she waited for him. In that moment, she knew she had always been waiting for him.

  She should have been petrified. He was huge with his fangs extended and a determined gleam in his eyes. Instead of fear, a warm welcome gushed out of her as he fitted himself to her and slowly edged into her.

  She met his molten gaze with her own and breathed in short pants as he worked into her. Her own teeth were long and sharp. She looked at his neck and shoulder and she lost control. With a quick lunge upward, she bit him and held on, his hips snapped forward in response to the surge of pleasure.

  When she had pressed her mind into his, she wasn’t precisely sure, but her pleasure was now leading his, and as he moved inside her, the loop built rapidly until her body surrendered completely and her mind snapped into bright shards of moonlight.

  He thrust into her as her grip on his shoulder faded and she released him. Her hands stroked his skin, chest, shoulder, neck, wherever she could reach as he sought his own pleasure.

  She felt his hunger grow, and when he bit her shoulder carefully, she felt the shocks of pleasure run from his groin, through her thoughts and back to him once again.

  Pulses of pleasure rippled through them both, and they clung together in the moonlight until the circle ceased its spiralling whirl.

  She was lying on a carpet of the rose petals, and her skin tingled where it touched his. Her teeth were still sharp and she nuzzled at his neck, nipping gently. “I thought it would hurt.”