Maybe she had needed to go into her career’s next phase with that particular change behind her, and not ahead. And he had waited so long and so patiently for her to be ready; they had both known, almost from the day she came back aboard after leaving George Fralick’s home on Kesra once she had borne and weaned Maddy, that Linc would be her husband now. But she had come back to him after that battle with George broken and hurting, her soul raw from the deaths of her sons—from their father’s verbal brutality in blaming her for those deaths—and from having been made to choose either a continued life with a man who’d managed to kill her love for him, or separation from her baby daughter.
Staying and turning into the bitter, crippled thing that she knew such a life would make her, could never have benefited Maddy. So Katy had made the decision, the most painful one of her entire life, to let George raise their last child without her when what passed for a family court on Kesra would not consent to letting her take the baby to live even part of the time with her family on Narsai.
And then after one last outrage, she had reported for her final tour of duty aboard the Firestorm knowing that she had no business to be in command of anything just then.. Not even of a lifeboat, because she had been functioning only by reflex. Like a ship no longer under power but moving steadily through space until something interfered with its progress, she had let the momentum of years spent in training and of far more years spent practicing her profession carry her along. Linc had stood between her and the tasks for which those automatic responses would not have been enough; for weeks after she came “home” he had gone on commanding the ship in fact, although not in name.
His love had given her the priceless gift of the time she needed to grieve and to heal; and when she was herself again (an altered self, of course, but that fact did not surprise her—and fortunately it did not seem to disappoint him), the mental and emotional intimacy of that grieving-time remained between them. And he needed her now, as man needing woman; and she needed him, in exactly the same way.
And so they came to that night, when they no longer had to maintain the professionalism of captain and executive officer but had not yet launched their new on-duty relationship. They had held each other many times before, sharing comfort as friends and comrades; but they had never kissed, had never touched in any other way but as friends.
He was shy and gentle, and she was astonished at just how much that gentleness aroused her. Not that George had handled her roughly, because except on one occasion he certainly had not; but something profoundly moved her about seeing this big man, whose courage she knew better than anyone else in the universe could have known it after two decades as his commanding officer and even more years than that of serving beside him as his comrade, so eager and needing—and so uncertain.
The connection between their minds had been that night’s salvation, she still believed that was true with all her soul. He hadn’t had to wonder how she felt about his first clumsy kiss, he had known for certain that the taste of him intoxicated her in a way no one else’s touch ever had. And he had known, from the thoughts that kiss called up within her mind, how to alter the alignment of his mouth against hers; just where she needed the gentle probing of his tongue, just when she wanted him to stop for a moment and give her time to make her own explorations.
She had taken his hands and had put them on her body, and had guided him while she let him feel the pleasure those touches gave her. Many times since that night she had been the one to caress him, but that first time she had known without having to be told in words that what he needed most of all was to prove to himself that he could please her—and so she had lain back in the bed, had squirmed and whimpered under his touch, and when the right moment came had spread her thighs and lifted her hips and guided him tenderly into her warmth.
After that he needed no more guidance, he was thoroughly male and his body knew what to do. And the newness of the experience for him made it new for her as well. She had known two previous lovers and had given birth to four children, but she had never before been touched exactly like this—on every level where it was possible for two sentient beings to communicate, until there was no sense of being separate left.
Those few brief moments of time had changed her, had made her part of him forever in a way she never could have become part of Johnnie Romanov or of George Fralick. Neither her girlhood lover nor her husband of more than twenty years was able to make love to her as Linc could, forging a union in which sheer physical pleasure was overwhelmed by an ecstatic oneness of spirit that might subside after release came and they were obliged to separate—but that never again would be entirely absent.
Wherever he was now, and whatever had been done to him to make their connection useless on a conscious level, that bond still existed. Katy could still feel it, and while right now it was giving her more discomfort than pleasure it nevertheless consoled her just because it was still there.
Because he was still there, still living even though he could not speak to her nor she to him.
“Katy?” Johnnie spoke just a trifle more loudly, but still tried not to raise his voice enough to wake the little girl behind them.
Katy opened her eyes at last, and then had to reach up and wipe tears from her cheeks. She said softly, “It’s like it was a couple of times when Linc and I had to be separated by so much physical distance that we couldn’t find each other. I know he’s out there someplace, I know he isn’t dead; but I can’t touch him. And I’m so used to touching him, Johnnie!”
“I won’t say ‘I know,’” her cousin answered, his voice still very gentle. “But I am sorry, Katy-love. We’re almost in, I just talked to the officer who’s in charge of the Archangel’s landing party and—they haven’t found them. Not Reen or Dan or the Kane woman, anyhow; the rest they did find, in what was left of the ship.”
“Oh, Johnnie, I’m the one who should be sorry!” Katy sat up, and ran a swift hand through her hair by way of making herself presentable. “Here I am fussing and crying because my husband’s in the brig up there, and you’re wondering whether your wife is alive or dead.”
“I’m betting she’s alive. But I don’t want those bastards from the Service to know it, not right now anyway.” Romanov flashed his cousin a taut grin. “There are things you never learned about the Farmstead, Katy, because you never did actually marry me.”
“I won’t ask you what that means,” Katy decided after a moment of looking at him carefully and thinking that maybe she did not know him that well after all. Never once in staid, straitlaced, calm Johnnie had she seen an echo of their space-exploring ancestors’ wild blood—but she was seeing it now.
Yes, George, I said straitlaced. We may believe in starting our unions early here on Narsai, but you’d be amazed at just how exclusive those unions are and at just how we despise people who break their marriage vows once they’ve taken them. But I’ve never talked with you, have I, about how my parents ignored me after I left you? As far as they’re concerned I’m still your wife, and every time Linc touches me I’m committing adultery.
She put those thoughts aside, and glanced over her shoulder to see how George’s daughter was doing. Maddy was cuddled up on the passenger seat, her eyes closed, breathing with the light regular breaths of a sleeping child.