I wanted to say I was willing to risk it because I cared for him so much, but I didn’t exactly know if he felt the same. After all, we haven’t known each other a full solar week yet—how could I ask him for a lifetime commitment? Even if it feels as though I have been waiting for him my entire life, I still cannot demand that kind of pledge from him.
“I understand,” I said softly. “I…I wish it could be you who breeds me, Sark. But if that cannot be, then I don’t want anyone at all. I will go with you to the Kindred Mother Ship and see if they can stop my glow.”
“Good.” He nodded and looked at the chronometer on his wrist, right below the black leather band the Fenushians had given us to wear. “It’s not safe to go out yet, but in another standard hour or so, everyone should be asleep and we can sneak out to my ship.”
“You know the way back in the dark?” I asked uneasily.
“Sure, sweetheart. Did you forget my Kindred night vision?” He grinned at me and tapped the side of his temple, indicating his eyes. I remembered how they had glowed in the dark tunnel and nodded.
“Oh, of course. It’s just that last time I tried to get away from Baslik he caught me and beat me.” I looked down at my crooked wrist. “He broke some of my bones too. And…and he said he’d do worse if he caught me sneaking off again.”
A deep rumbling growl rose in Sark’s chest and when I looked up at him, I saw with alarm, something that looked like pale flames dancing in his blue-gray eyes.
“He’s never going to hurt you like that again,” he swore, pulling me even closer. “I swear by the Goddess, the Mother of All Life, that if he even lays a finger on you, I’ll kill him!”
At that moment, I felt a rippling wave in the air currents around us, as though a vast pair of shadowy wings had opened and were spreading to encompass us both. But when I looked around, there was nothing there, so I must have been imagining it.
“I believe you,” I said in a low, shaky voice. “But I don’t want it to come to that. Let us just creep away in the dead of night. When Baslik wakes up in the morning, he won’t know where we’ve gone and I’ll never have to see him again.”
“Never, baby,” he promised and laid a gentle kiss on the top of my head. “Now come on, let’s try to get a little shut-eye before we go. I’ll set an alarm on my chronometer to get us up at the right time and we’ll be out of here before you know it.”
“I am afraid I need a shower first.” I nodded down at myself—I was still sticky from all the nectar and honey, though the orgasm had worked and I was no longer dripping from anywhere.
“All right—take a shower and then come back,” Sark told me. “I want to hold you a while before we go.”
Tilting my head up, I captured his mouth in a sweet kiss.
“I would like nothing better,” I told him, when I broke the kiss at last.
And so I came in here and had a shower in the waterfall and have been writing this account ever since. It has taken me some time but I wanted to write it while it was fresh in my mind, so that I did not lose a single detail of my time with Sark.
I know he feels he cannot breed me, but maybe we can still be together once the doctors at the Kindred Mother Ship have helped me not to glow. I certainly hope so. With Nana gone, I have no one to go back to on Telmar Two and I would be happy to live the rest of my life with him.
However, that is a discussion for later. I will be certain to record how it goes in these pages. For now, though, I want to rest in my lover’s arms before we sneak away under the cover of darkness to start a new life together.
Isla shut her diary firmly and hid it under her pile of clothes. She didn’t bother to put on any kind of nightdress—she and Sark were familiar with each other’s bodies now and she liked the idea of sleeping skin-to-skin with the giant Kindred.
She wondered what news she might have to record the next time she opened her diary.
She had no idea that it would a long, long time before she could write anything in it again.
TWENTY-FOUR
When Isla came out of the little hut’s bathing room door, she found Sark sitting up in bed with a blank expression on his face.