Stretching back into the sofa’s comfortable embrace, Tassa kicked her feet up onto the glass-topped coffee table and lounged in a more relaxed posture. “I’m listening.”
Erik leaned over the back of his vacated chair, amber eyes staring unblinkingly at his guest. “Twenty-four million,” he said bluntly. “In Republic Stones or in a Federated Suns account. I’ll give you the deal that Colonel Blaire wouldn’t—a fully bonded contract for your services on Achernar, to be used for repair or replacement as necessary. And when you leave, you can keep ten… twenty percent of the balance for services rendered.”
Tassa considered it and Erik watched as her eyes blurred for a moment as she seemed to be looking back at something. She gazed down into the red pool swirling about in her glass. “You are very generous,” she finally said, and softly, barely more than a whisper.
Erik began to pace again, circling the room now in long, slow strides. “When it’s something I want, I don’t haggle over the price. I think you’re worth it, and I’m willing to pay.”
Tassa continued to stare into her wine. “Quite the compliment. You know. For a woman like me.”
“I never believed there were women like you, Tassa Kay.” Erik stopped behind her, reached down with one hand to trace the back of one finger along the warm curve of her ear, and across her flawless cheek. He heard her sharp intake of breath, felt the slight hitching tensions. Was she choking back sobs? Erik leaned down behind her. “We could be very good for each other, you and I,” he whispered.
That was when she finally started to laugh.
Not a nervous titter or an appreciative chuckle. No. Tassa threw her head back in a full-bodied, riotous laugh warm with her amusement and complete rejection. “Oh. My. You know, Erik, I thought I could hold a straight face through all of this. I really did. But it was too much.”
She rocked forward, slipping out from under his touch and coming to her feet with the grace of a hunting animal. “You are completely without any sense of honor or shame, except possibly where it impacts your public-relations campaign, and you’re a poor judge of character. You think you can buy me as one of your ‘Yes-my-lord’ people, both on and off the field? You are impetuous, self-centered, and, perhaps worst of all, impatient.
“Good for each other?” she scoffed, coming around the end of the couch at him. “I doubt I could trust you not to dampen your uniform the first time I whispered in your ear.”
Erik had known refusal, even defeat, in the past. But never—ever—had anyone torn into him in such a manner. His ears burned with an embarrassed flush, and his fingers felt numb with a kind of distant cold.
“That was a mistake,” he promised her, voice flat and dark.
Tassa looked ready to dash the rest of her wine into his face, then reconsidered, but not because she feared him. Her sorrowful glance made it clear that she wouldn’t waste good wine on him. She drained off the merlot, then tossed the fragile glass over one shoulder.
“I’ve made others in the past,” she said to the musical accompaniment of shattering crystal, “and I’ll make more in the future, I’m sure. But I’d rather make mistakes than have no idea what I am doing. You don’t, Erik, on or off the field.” She turned for the apartment’s foyer, dismissing him as easily as Erik might a servant in his uncle’s home.
“Quite frankly,” she said, “I have had better offers.” Tassa cast a single, appraising glance back at him. “In all respects.”
Achernar Militia Command Post
Achernar
The hard pounding on his BOQ door roused Raul from his silent contemplation. He had never turned on the lights after Jessica’s departure, feeling more comfortable sitting alone in the dark. His room still smelled of the wasted liquor, smoky and sharp, and his face remembered the stinging slap of his ex-fiancée’s hand.
Another round of knocking. It sounded like someone might be kicking the door on the other side.
He considered not answering it, considered sitting quietly in the dark until the person simply went away, but then a third, more commanding, series of poundings drew him reluctantly off the kitchen chair and around to the door. Whoever it was, they could be made to go away. Just then Raul didn’t care if the Steel Wolves were at the edge of the base, ready to overrun the capital. He wasn’t going out to answer an alert—he’d be of no use to anybody right now if he tried, and McDaniels wasn’t going to haul him over to the O-club either. He wasn’t going out, period.
He yanked open the door, and Tassa Kay stepped up to plant a long kiss over his mouth.
Like their moment on the Sonora Plateau, he didn’t expect it. Unlike then, he didn’t respond, and that threw a momentary hitch into her approach. Tassa stepped back, sized him up and down, and then said, “So you going to invite a girl in?”
Raul almost told her no. Then he inhaled the taste of her off his lips, and felt a spread of warmth along the back of his neck. Did he really want to sit in the dark for the rest of the night? Tassa’s mercurial moods might never bring her back to his door again if he turned away now. And he wasn’t up to forcing another woman to walk away on him. One had been enough.
He didn’t answer her directly. Didn’t need to. Raul simply shoved the door open wide and then backed to one side, allowing Tassa to slip past and into his room.
Then he kicked the door shut behind them both.
19
The Day After
Achernar Militia Command
Achernar
7 March 3133
Memories of the previous night invaded Raul’s morning thoughts, teasing him awake with whispers of flesh and the promise of long, passionate kisses.
He remembered deep green pools of life swimming under his own gaze, acres of tanned skin and a few thin scars he did not remember on Jessica’s body. Not blond hair hanging down into his face. Coltish red hair, long and damp. The scent of lavender soap and honest sweat, and the cool, sharp touch of a steel-bound crystal pressed against his chest.
As long as it takes…
Hearing the husky whisper in his mind and placing it with a face, a body, Raul opened his eyes. He stared at the ceiling of his quarters, still dim in the early morning light. An arm, draped casually across his chest, pressed down with unfamiliar weight. He turned his head far enough to find Tassa Kay, sleeping on her front, head turned toward him. Her eyes remained closed and her breathing deep and even, yet somehow Raul knew that she was awake as well. He suddenly knew a lot more than that.
“You’re Clan,” he said softly, though not quite whispering.
Tassa’s eyelids rolled back like gunports opening. Bright, intelligent eyes stared back at Raul without a trace of guilt. “I did not know you could tell… this way.”
Hearing her confirm it, Raul blinked rapidly as he cleared sleep from his eyes and the haze of time from his memories. “No. I mean, it’s been a lot of little things. Adding up over the days. But you’re Clan. Trueborn?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Raul wasn’t certain why that should make a difference, that Tassa had been born from iron womb technology. Maybe she seemed a touch more alien because of it. He stared back up at the ceiling, trying to sort through his thoughts.
“You don’t speak like a Clanner.” Then, “Not always,” he amended. “You use contractions. And you don’t follow strict bidding practices in combat.”
“A wise warrior once commented that slavish adherence to tradition is the sign of a weak mind. I’d like to think that I’m a bit like her.”