“What he does not say,” Aelliana said in her clear, fine voice, “is that I was quite rude. I don't know how I shall ever show Anne my face again. However, I am prepared to be rude again, for I will not leave here until you and I have spoken on my topic.”
That was plainly said, Daav allowed; and plainer still was the determination that informed her stance, her shoulders, and the angle of her chin.
“There is no need to deplete your entire store of rudeness in one evening,” he said, not quite as mildly as he had intended. He glanced to Er Thom. “Pray, await Pilot Caylon in the library.”
Er Thom bowed—Honor-to-the-Delm, damn him—and departed, closing the door quietly behind him.
It was scarcely latched when she launched her first strike.
“Why did you send me away?”
He sighed, and flung out his hands, speaking the plain truth, as copilot and as lifemate.
“Because it is dangerous for you to remain here. I cannot allow you to reside in peril.”
“So you sent me away without even discussing it? Have I no choice in how much peril I will accept?”
“Aelliana, last night I overruled you—utterly. Surely you don't wish to wager your will.”
“It is my will and my wager,” she snapped, stepping forward into the pool of light cast by the desk lamp. Her eyes were was green as glass, and as sharp. “What right have you to take them from me?”
He raised his hands—and let them fall.
“No right,” he said quietly. “My reason is that I love you and—”
“You do not love me!” she interrupted. “It is the woman I was two days gone that you love—craven, shaking, and in need of protection!”
Shock chilled him, followed hard by anger.
“I beg your pardon, but you will not tell me whom I love—or why!”
Aelliana's eyes widened, but she did not step back—and that, he thought distantly, was well. It was ill-done to run from a Dragon.
“You may not defame my lady, nor call her craven. Frightened she may have been, but craven she never was! She pressed on and did what was needful, with courage and generosity. Her care of her comrades, her joy in flight, her gallantry—how could I not love her? And if she was frail, she grew stronger with every new sun, and I never doubted it, that she would do what she had set herself—learn Terran, master her ship, and shake the dust of Liad from her wings!” He took a breath, deliberately cooling his anger.
“I know my heart, Aelliana.”
“And now I know mine.” She stepped forward, and extended a hand. “I loved you two days ago, if I dared not name it. I love you all the more now that I allow myself to know what it is that I feel. If we are, in fact, lifemates, then what is left us is to consider how best to run this board between us. Separating us solves nothing, and only wounds both.”
“Dare I risk my will overtaking yours, even once more?” He blinked the tears away. “Aelliana, the peril here is all yours!”
“Then the choice to wager—how much and how far—is also mine.”
“No,” he said, quietly. “It is mine. I hold the power.”
He took a breath. “It is plain that the link between us has been damaged. My brother describes a free flow of emotion and thought between his lady and himself. What we see between us is that I—whom the Healers have already declared overloud—broadcast to you, wiping your signal out. I—” He paused, lifting a hand as the idea broke upon him.
“Daav?”
“How if I ask the Healers to block me? Then you would be in no danger.”
“But I would lose the joy of . . . hearing your signal,” she said slowly. “And it is a joy, new as it is to me. I propose a method of slow study.” She stepped forward, one hand reaching for his.
He sidestepped, slipping away from her grasp like smoke.
“Be wary! Here is good reason for fear.”
“I am not afraid of you!” she cried, her anger sparking truth from him, like flame from a firestone.
“Aelliana, sometimes I am afraid of me!”
She paused, and he thought that sense had at last won through. Then she shook her head, Terran-wise, and smiled.
“That's as may be, van'chela. I beg, however, that you will do me the honor of allowing me to love you, fearsome as you are. Please, let us at least try my method. If you see that I am overruled and lost, then you must disengage, as you did last evening. I depend upon you for this, for you will be able to see when I cannot. Is that a bargain?”
He licked his lips, scarcely able to look at her. His love, his lifemate. His pilot.
“What do you propose?” he whispered.
“Sit,” she said, pointing to his reading chair, over near the window. “My neck is quite cricked from staring up at you.”
“Very well.” He did as he was bid and looked up at her, with eyebrow raised.
“Good,” Aelliana said. “Now, what I propose is very simple. I will touch you, and take time to listen to your signal, so that I may learn to differentiate. Once I am able to know your signal as distinct from my own, then I believe the level of risk for both of us decreases by a factor of six.”
It was the sort of calculation that Aelliana might very well do, he thought. More than that, she might have a point. Certainly last evening they had taken no leisurely course to pleasure, but had tumbled helter-skelter into passion, each half-blinded with need. Well they might try this more modest approach, and he would do what he might to make the course less dangerous yet.
He took a breath, preparatory to activating the Rainbow.
“You will please not use any of the skills you have to calm or distance yourself from me,” Aelliana said.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”
“It will dull the signal,” she said reasonably, and raised her hand.
* * *
Daav's cheek was soft beneath her fingers, the flutter of his pleasure as apparent to her as the scowl on his face. Aelliana paused, concentrating on these new perceptions the Healers had given her.
Regarded in calmness, Daav's input was nothing at all like the emotions she felt for herself; she could differentiate quite easily. She ran her fingers lightly down the side of his face, across his lips, noting the growing warmth—his and hers, distinct. It was rather like simultaneously listening to chatter off the wideband and instructions from the Tower. At first, it seemed nothing other than a dreadful mixup of sound, but the ear very quickly learned to sort and make sense of each stream.
“Aelliana . . . ” His lips moved beneath her fingertips; she felt herself warm agreeably, even as she received a flutter of trepidation from him.
“Hush,” she murmured, and reached to stroke those strong eyebrows before placing both hands, gently, on his shoulders.
He was in tumult now: fear, longing, and a tangled skein of emotion she was too inexperienced to name. What a complex creature he was! Complex and utterly fascinating. Her blood was beginning to heat, slow and inescapable, echoing Daav's longing, yet distinct and very different.
It was therefore her own choice that she moved forward, put her knees on the chair at either side of him, and sat astride his lap.
“Kiss me,” she said, raising her face to his.
“Aelliana, I don't—”
She snatched his long tail of dark hair and pulled it, hard.
“Kiss me!”
He shivered and she felt his fear strongly, almost as if it were her own.
Then she felt his resolve, his concurrence, his desire, and his lips, warm and knowing on hers.
* * *
She was pliant against him, her mouth not so cunning as yestereve, but taking her lessons to heart. Daav went carefully, fear at first mixing with desire, slowly dissolving into passion.
Somewhere in the world beyond she and he, there was a sound.