Prince of Time. Rebecca York

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he stirred restlessly in his sleep, his mouth drawn as if in pain.

      Instantly she was contrite. He wasn’t responsible for what had happened to her. In fact, he’d seemed as confounded by the situation as she. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” Kneeling beside him, she smoothed back the straight black hair that had fallen across his forehead. Not a military haircut, she noted absently as she fingered the strands. They were surprisingly silky.

      She should stop touching him. Yet she craved the contact. It was because they were trapped here together, she told herself. Because he was the only other person in this alien place and they needed each other to survive. Yet she knew that didn’t fully explain the tightness in her throat. The worry. The fear of loss. She felt those things for this man called Thorn, whether she admitted it or not.

      Her gaze took in more details. His lashes were even darker than his hair. His features spoke of maturity, yet his skin was almost unlined, except around his eyes. Awake, he’d been forceful, antagonistic, even harsh. Sleeping, he looked peaceful. And defenseless. She couldn’t stop herself from gently touching his lips. They moved against her fingers, responding to the intimate contact, and the movement sent a little shiver up her arm.

      Cassie pulled her hand away, yet she didn’t want to sever the human contact. Flattening her fingers against his chest, she felt his heartbeat once more. The rhythm was sure and steady. His breathing was normal. Abandoning medical observations, she slipped inside the front closing of his coat and stroked her fingers through the thick hair of his chest.

      “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” she whispered. “We’re both in trouble. Are you going to tell me about it?”

      Cassie hardly expected an answer. She certainly didn’t expect Thorn’s hand to cover hers. But it did. Her gaze shot to his face. His blue eyes were open, and he was staring at her with a look of mingled wonder and wariness.

      * * *

      THORN REMEMBERED every detail of the few minutes he’d spent with this woman—starting with the moment he’d stepped out of the delta capsule.

      Things had happened quickly. Too quickly. Ending with long, agonizing seconds when he’d known he was going to die, and he’d called out to the two people who mattered most to him. His heart squeezed painfully, and he pushed their images away. If he started thinking about what might have happened to Reah and Januk, he’d go insane.

      So he focused every particle of his attention on the woman who crouched over him. She’d saved his life by getting the ribenazine into him.

      Why? Had she been acting under Lodar’s instructions to make the captive drop his defenses by saving his life? Perhaps he was being too cynical.

      Whatever her goal, he sensed the tension radiating from her in almost palpable waves. Of course, she had good reason to be afraid. Of him. Of this place. Either she was playing a very dangerous game or she’d stumbled into a situation completely beyond her ken.

      He sat up and leaned against the supply cabinet, wincing at the stab of pain that felt like a nail being driven into his forehead. When he tried to get to his feet, the woman put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

      “No.”

      It wasn’t difficult to guess the meaning of the short syllable she uttered. It was more than a polite suggestion—it was an order.

      With an inward sigh, he conceded the point. Relaxing as best he could, he looked at her inquiringly. She met his gaze steadily, a bold move for a native woman. If that’s what she was.

      He studied her face. She was very beautiful, with gently wavy hair the color of warm light cast by an oil lamp. It went well with the alabaster skin that bloomed with a hint of pink over her high cheekbones in response to his scrutiny. His gaze was drawn to her clear emerald eyes that at first glance seemed a little too large. They were just the opposite of her nose. It was small and delicate and entirely feminine. As feminine as the gentle curve of her mouth. He’d never seen anyone like her before. Anywhere.

      He took the hand from his shoulder and looked at the back. Her fingers were long, tapered, smooth—and strong, he added, remembering her grip on his jaw when she’d been trying to get the medicine into him. Her nails were rounded and buffed. No, he amended as he smoothed his thumb across their surface. They were coated with a shiny, transparent substance he’d never seen before.

      She shivered under his touch, but didn’t draw away or lower her eyes.

      “Ah, you are very bold, Cassie,” he said in his own tongue, wishing she could grasp his meaning, wishing he could gauge her reaction.

      She responded to her name with a tiny twitch of her lips. He pushed her a little further, shifting his grip to find her pulse. The beats accelerated.

      She remained very still, trying wordlessly to convey the impression that she wasn’t afraid of him. He knew from her shallow breathing and her pounding heart that it was a lie. Yet he kept coming back to the central truth of their short acquaintance. She’d saved his life when she could have left him convulsing on the floor.

      He’d give a lot to know her real motives. Since he could hardly conduct an interrogation, he cataloged other observations. He could tell a lot from her hand, for example. And from the way she took care of her hair and face. She looked no more than twenty. Yet she was wise beyond those years. She was from the ruling class. Perhaps even royalty, because she’d never done manual labor. She was from a land far away from the one where he’d been assigned, since she hadn’t been raised to defer to his people. In fact, she seemed to have no idea of his status.

      He turned her hand over and saw a red circle on her index finger that looked like a recent burn.

      When he gave it the barest touch, she winced.

      “What happened?” he asked in his own language, accompanying the question with a raised eyebrow that he hoped would help convey his meaning.

      She caught on immediately. Scrambling up, she crossed the room and pointed to one of the data analyzer terminals, waving her arms and spouting a long string of words that meant nothing. When he looked perplexed, she strode into the grooming alcove and emerged with one of the drinking goblets.

      Was she going to pour water on the delicate equipment? That was all he needed.

      “No,” he ordered, using one of the few words he’d learned of her language.

      Ignoring him, she tossed the vessel at the machine and jumped back. When the missile hit, an electrical discharge sizzled like a bolt of lightning.

      “Klat!” The curse was wrung from him in anger—and surprise. “That is how you got burned?” he asked in his own tongue, frustrated that he couldn’t get an answer. What he wouldn’t give for a language decoder.

      She responded with a sigh and a question of her own, part words, part pantomime. She pointed to him, pretended to touch the equipment and made a sound like an explosion, “Boom!”

      It was accompanied by appropriate hand gestures, the performance very telling. She was asking if the same thing would happen to him.

      He shrugged. “Ask Lodar.” Even as he made the suggestion, he felt a mixture of anger and apprehension stir inside him. Teeth clamped together, he pushed himself off the floor and discovered his muscles felt like pudding. СКАЧАТЬ