"As you wish, Nydia," Roma said. "I must admit, you do have a great deal of your … father in you at times."
"Yes." Nydia smiled. "And I cannot tell you how proud that makes me."
I'll break you. Roma stared hard at the young woman. She shifted her gaze to Sam. And I'll break you as well. And when you are both mine, I'll breed you and have a grandchild that will make the Master proud. And if I can't do that, young people, then I'll give Nydia to Falcon to do with as he pleases. And I assure you, daughter, that will be an experience you will not savor.
"We'll see you at dinner, Roma," Sam said, taking Nydia's hand. The gesture did not go unnoticed by the mother.
Roma nodded her head only slightly, her eyes unreadable. "Yes," she said. She turned and walked away.
"She is very angry," Nydia said.
"Not nearly as angry as she'll be when she sees that cross around your neck."
"Or the burn on your chest."
"Probably be best if we don't swim after this."
"That was to be my next suggestion." She squeezed his hand as they walked down the hall to their rooms. "Sam? I'm not afraid any longer."
"I don't know whether that's good or bad. But neither am I."
"Wonder why?"
"I don't know. And I'll tell you something else: I cannot think of you as my half sister."
'Then don't."
"How come," Sam said, his grin identical to his father's mischievous grin, "if I'm supposed to be so holy all of a sudden, my thoughts are so sexy?"
"I don't know about that." Her hips brushed his, the touch charged with wanton longing. "But mine aren't exactly pristine."
"Are we both awful?" Sam's question was spoken in all seriousness.
"No." The young woman's reply held the same weighty tone. "I think we're just being honest."
"What … do we do about it?"
They walked slowly through the great house.
"Give it some time," she said. They were at her door. She lifted her eyes to his. "I'll keep the door between our rooms unlocked."
"It's to be my decision alone?"
She said, "My mind is already made up." She opened the door and stepped into her room. The door closed softly behind her.
Sam showered quickly and dried off, stepping into underwear shorts. He padded barefoot into his bedroom to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror. The dark, thick mat of hair on his chest looked strange with the burned-on scar of the cross directly in the center. He wondered if the hair would ever grow back.
He gazed into his mirrored reflection. "I have a mission." He repeated his father's words, speaking in a whisper. "And it may destroy me. I will be tempted, and fall to some of those temptations."
He wondered if his father had been writing of Nydia or Roma, or both? Then he decided his father had been referring to Roma.
He stepped away from the mirror and carefully hid the containers of holy water. He opened the manila envelope and sat on the edge of the bed, studying the 8 x 10 of his father. He was still gazing at the 8 x 10 when the knock sounded on the hall door.
Slipping into a robe, Sam opened the door. Adam Benning stood in the hall, smiling at him.
"Sam." Adam stuck out his hand. "Bet you're surprised to see me?" It was spoken in a greasy manner.
The two young men did not get along well. Although the same age, Adam was a senior while Sam was a freshman. And Adam was a sly, sneaky type . . . the type Sam didn't like.
Sam shook the offered hand. It was clammy and soft. Sam resisted the urge to wipe his hand on his robe. "Yes, I am. Black didn't tell us he had invited others."
Adam grinned lewdly. "Thought you'd have Nydia all to yourself, huh?"
Sam stared at him just long enough for Adam to begin to feel uncomfortable under the unblinking gaze. "I think I'll lie down for a time, Adam. So if you'll excuse me … ?"
Adam flushed hotly, clenching his hands into fists at his side. "Well, there's always one, I guess; always one person that has to screw up a good thing."
"Meaning me, Adam?"
"You might learn a thing or two up here, Sam. It should be interesting."
"Maybe more than you realize," Sam replied.
Adam's smile was ugly. He stalked away without shutting the door. Sam turned at a slight noise behind, tensing, then relaxing as the connecting door to Nydia's room opened. She stepped into the room and Sam closed the hall door, locking it.
"I've got an idea, Sam," she said, moving closer to him. He could smell the clean scent of bath soap, and the ends of her raven hair were slightly damp from the shower. A pulse beat strongly in her throat.
It was not a holy union, his father's words returned to him.
Sam could see she was wearing nothing under her robe, from the waist up. He could but guess about from the waist down.
If anything, it was blessed by the Dark One.
Sam pushed his father's words from his mind. "I'll be glad to hear your ideas, Nydia." His voice was husky. "I sure don't have any." Boy, what a lie!
"Your dad may not like this," she warned, taking another step closer to him.
"My dad dumped this … mission in my lap." Sam's tone was a bit sarcastic. "And if you're listening, Dad, I'm sorry. But I don't know what to do."
"Let's play along for a time," she suggested. "I mean … can we leave? I don't think so. I found out my mother can't read me as before, and I suspect your dad had something to do with that. But the strangest thing has happened, Sam …"
He arched an eyebrow at her pause, very much aware that that was not the only part of him that was beginning to arch upward. He resisted an impulse to fold his hands over his crotch.
"I can pick up on your thoughts, now," she said, smiling. "And yes, Sam, I am wearing panties."
And she deliberately chose not to wear a bra. The thought popped into Sam's mind.
"You see?" she said. "It's not exactly reading a mind as much as just guessing accurately what the other has done or is about to do."
She wants me to kiss her. Sam sensed that mental push very strongly.
"So do it, Sam. Before I change my mind."
He stepped off the short distance between them with as much mixed emotion as when he first hurled himself out the open door of a plane, back in jump school. The one main difference being, he recalled, he did not have a hard-on back then.
"How crude," Nydia whispered. She was slightly tense as his hands cupped her face.
"We're going to have to do something about this new power of ours."
"First things first," she said, her lips trembling as her hands found his lean waist and pulled him to her.
Sam kissed her mouth, her throat, her neck, as their hips met in a frontal assault, as frenzied an attack as storming a beachhead.
And then, as they both would later recall, events began happening as if they were really above it all, watching two distinctly different beings in the room.
Her gown dropped to the carpet in a silken rustle of fabric, and his eyes became as greedy as his searching mouth. She pulled the waistcord to his robe and it parted. One touch from her hand and a shrug of his shoulders and robe made contact with gown on the floor.
Her pantie was no more than a thin strip of almost diaphanous silk, the lushness of womanhood vividly outlined, a perfumed jungle resting at the completion of gently curving belly.
"I am not perfection," she told him, thoughts mingling and meeting invisibly.
"You are to me," he replied.
She wore nothing except the gold cross, nestling between her breasts.
His shorts joined her panties on the floor and they were content to stand naked in the center of the room, their lips touching gently, minds speaking volumes of silent words.
"I can't believe it's wrong," she said.
"Nor I."
She ran her hand down his flat, ridged belly to grasp his maleness, fingers encircling the thickness. "Will it hurt me?" she asked, her voice throaty with passion and trembly from anticipation.