Chapter Twelve

He was leaning against the bulkhead at the end of the corridor, arms spread wide. A figure in black outlined against the light gray wall. He could go no further. His back was to me, his head was angled down. I could see the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders. His palms were flat, fingers splayed. He looked like a man trying to push his way through the wall.

Or like a man who awaited crucifixion. Damned by an Empire that labeled mind talents as filthy, cursed. Damned by a woman whose life he'd saved.

I couldn't change the former. Only the latter.

I wrapped my arms around his waist and lay the side of my face against the hard planes of his back. I could feel him trembling, his breath shuddering against me. A frigid chill raced through me, met up against a rushing heat. The heat mushroomed, flowed outward as if through my hands. Then it cascaded back into me, tingling, intense, passionate.

I said nothing, didn't have to. I sent rainbows. And accepted the ones he sent back to me.

It took a few minutes for the trembling to stop, for his arms to relax, for the warmth to settle to a steady glow that had nothing to do with his body's heat, or mine. He straightened away from the wall, then brought his hands down to cover mine.

I threaded my fingers through his and said the one word I thought he might want to hear. "Mine."

He squeezed my hands. Heat surged, spiraled, settled. Then he turned, drawing me into his arms, pulling us both back against the wall. He pressed me tightly against his body, his face in my hair, his fingers stroking, kneading.

Needing.

I ran my hands up the front of his shirt, across his shoulders, responding in kind. The muscles in his biceps were taut, powerful. My hands circled back to his shoulders, stayed there as I clung to him, sending rainbows.

He tucked my face at the hollow of his throat. His breathing had slowed, but it was still ragged. I could feel his heart pounding.

"Sully? I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

"Shhh. Hush, hush." A hoarse request.

His fingers wriggled into my hair, wound through the braid but didn't undo it. Just stroked, caressed. I leaned my head back into his hand. His eyes were closed. Then his lashes lifted slightly.

I ran my fingers over his lips, searching for a hint of that Sully-smile. His lips parted. My fingers met the tip of his tongue, and I heard a soft intake of breath. His lips closed against my fingers, sucked.

Heat fluttered, spiraled through me. I stood on tiptoe, pulled my hands down to his shoulders, and let my lips brush his, softly. Let the tip of my tongue touch his, softly.

He groaned, pulled me into his chest, held my mouth in a long, deep kiss while fireworks arced just beneath my skin. I wrapped my arms around his neck, raked my fingers through his hair. His hands lost their gentleness, traveled boldly, insistently.

I tilted my face away from his, breathless, and ran my thumb across his mouth. Kissed him again. And this time I heard bells, chimes.

Then Ren's voice. "Excuse me, captain. But I think we're about to exit the jumpgate."

Lips still touched lips. "Shit." We said it at the same time. He pushed away from the wall. I turned, almost stumbling over my own feet. So much for the captain in control. He grabbed my elbow, propelled me forward. "Go, Chaz!"

We raced around Ren, hopped over the hatch-tread and tumbled into our chairs just as the last set of triple chimes sounded.

I swung the armrest controls around with one hand and tapped in commands with the other. "Initiating exit sequence." I hooked on my tattered straps and was back in command mode.

"Bringing sublights on line," Sully answered.

I heard Ren's footsteps, the squeak of the chair at the comm station as the rumbling noise started beneath my boots. Nice, friendly sublights, ready to go after a short nap.

I picked up the exit beacon, verified coordinates, locked them in. "Three minutes to hard edge."

"Got it."

We traded more chatter, all of it intense and technical. Personal lives, all the joys and the conflicts, disappear during a jumpgate transit. I ran over the data for mass, velocity and inertia- checked for dump points. Sully monitored weapons. We didn't know what might be waiting out there when we came through. We still squawked an Imperial ID. There wasn't time to alter the Meritorious' codes now.

"Thirty seconds to hard edge."

"Got it. Preparing to disengage hypers."

"On my mark. Twenty seconds." I watched the screens and monitors, felt the first shimmy as the jumpgate's hold on us began to recede.

"Ten seconds. Eight seconds. Four. Mark. Now!"

We dropped out swiftly, the black starfield suddenly glistening through the forward viewports.

My fingers flew over a series of touchpads. "Max sensors, full sweep. Bogey-check, bogey- check."

"Weapons active." Sully was reaching, tabbing, watching monitors just as I was. "Clear, clear."

I let out a short sigh of relief. Either those cruisers following us had no idea which exit we would take out of the jumpgate, or they believed our cold entry had been fatal. Or we were just plain lucky.

I didn't know how long our luck would hold out.

"I need to delete all the Imperial codes. Take the helm for me, get us on course." I yanked off my safety straps, pushed out of my chair. I glanced over my shoulder just as Sully turned in his seat. And damned the heat rising to my face as his gaze followed me. Then realized that the color on my checks was probably nothing compared to what else I radiated. Which only made my cheeks heat up more.

"Need my help?" he asked.

"Take the helm," I repeated. "I won't be long." We had unfinished business, lots of it. Lots of questions, explanations. But if I didn't get those codes changed, those explanations might not matter.

He seemed to catch that. "I'll be waiting for you." He added a slow grin to his words.

"Just don't get us lost."

Ren's smile was wide as I tripped over the hatch-tread. I sent him my oh, shut up rainbow and didn't look back. I strode toward the captain's cabin. This, at least, was familiar territory.

Lew Kingswell had kept his command code file exactly where Fleet regs said we should. I'd never kept mine there. I'd kept a partial, just in case during a surprise inspection someone wanted to see if Chasidah Bergren knew the rules.

I did. I also knew that most of civilized space did as well.

I'd kept the full command codes in a buried file, surrounded by trip-alarms. It took me about fifteen minutes to create another. Then I reset all commands and passwords. But not the Meritorious's ID. I had to be on the bridge to do that.

I made copies of everything on a small datapad I found in a shelf next to the desk. This was slow work. The ship was under full power, with the hypers the only cold system. I couldn't shut down the sublights, couldn't shut down enviro, recode and bring them up again. So I inserted patches that would hamper any attempt by intruders to take the ship. I'd make the permanent changes when we met up with Sully's ship on the border.

A noise from the open doorway made me raise my head. Sully cleared his throat and leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded over his chest. Unshaven, dark hair tousled, clothed all in black, he exuded an undeniable sensuality.

He arched an eyebrow. "Ten minutes I've stood here, and you've yet to notice. Demoralizing to be so quickly forgotten."

My brain seized, fogged and overheated. It was rare for me not to have a rejoinder for one of Sully's quips yet I couldn't think of one. A slight twinge of apprehension mixed in with the sensations from the past two days. The heat of his body, his kisses, his hands caressing my skin all flooded through my memory. At the same time, I remembered another heat, surging, spiraling through me when we touched. I knew empaths read emotions, some could even transmit them. But I didn't understand it. That made me nervous.

And there had been that unsettling coldness in him when he'd agreed to handle Kingswell. As if even he weren't comfortable with what he could do. Why? Part of me longed for answers, for the facts.

But part of me didn't know if I feared the answers more than the questions. Maybe that's why the routine of changing ship's codes had seemed so preferable once we'd cleared the jumpgate.

I gestured toward the desk screen on my right, stuck to that safe topic. "It takes longer to do this when we're underway."

He stepped inside. "We've time. Two and a half weeks yet."

"The Aldan-Baris border's at least three and a half-"

"I take risks." He pushed the datapad to the center of the desk and sat, angled on the edge. "The Boru Karn will meet us in Calth."

"Not at the A-B?" The Aldan-Baris border contained a number of asteroid belts and abandoned miners' rafts. They provided excellent places to hide, especially for a ship the size of the Boru Karn. It was one of the few places Sully had ever managed to lose me when I was on his trail. Calth was more open, more heavily trafficked by Imperial ships. "Is that wise?"

He responded with the quiet, gentle stare I suddenly tagged as Sully's way of reading me, like Ren's barely perceptible head tilt.

"Wisdom's only proven in hindsight, my angel. Without application, it's but theory. Lofty, unstained." He spread one hand in an almost elegant gesture. "True wisdom is theory that's been tested through risk."

We'd just kidnapped two Imperials officers, highjacked a patrolship, had been almost incinerated by plasma torpedoes, and could've killed ourselves in a cold jump. And I was listening to a lofty-sounding monologue on wisdom better suited to the halls of a university than the quarters of a patrolship captain. Who'd just found out the man before her was an empath. Maybe I wasn't the only one not quite ready to face the questions and answers.

"Sully-"

"Hush, Chasidah-angel." He put his finger against my mouth. "Gabriel has a question."

It took me a second to comprehend. He used his first name so rarely. The only other time I remembered hearing it was in Ren's quarters, at the Temple. And I was the one who'd used it first.

'Gabriel's damned,' he'd told me. As if he weren't Gabriel.

His fingers moved under my chin. "Truth, now. I want to know if you still think it wise to come down the corridor after me."

He withdrew his hand and waited.

I thought of his lecture on wisdom. And other times I'd heard this tone in his voice, when he'd played the poet, the pedant. They'd almost always been times of intense emotion. Like Port Chalo. I'd written off his words that night because of the beer. But he was sober now, though no less intense.

I wasn't sure I understood him. I needed, however, for him to understand me. There was too much at risk here, in too many ways.

"Were my actions wise? I'm a Fleet officer, trained to assess situations, act on the facts. I don't think 'impetuous' has ever been noted in my service record. Obviously, there's a lot I don't know about you. But there's a lot I do know, after six years. Especially after the past few days.

"But I'm also not a fool," I added softly. "I have fears."

"Because of risks you don't understand."

"Oh, some I understand very well." I breathed a small, harsh, laugh. "I have had my heart trashed. That's not in my service record, either."

His slight frown was encouraging. By all I held holy, I did have some secrets left, even from an empath.

"That's not at risk, here."

"I've heard that before, too."

"Chasidah-"

I touched my finger to his lips, mimicking his gesture of moments ago. "Hush."

He gave me a small smile, wistful yet oddly warm.

I took my hand away. "So was my coming after you wise? I owed you an apology. It wasn't my intention to say hurtful words. I said them because I was, I am hurting. And confused. I told you the other night. There are a number of things in my life that I'm not handling well, that confuse me. You're one of them."

"Because of what happened with Kingswell?"

"And because of what happened, or didn't happen, in Port Chalo."

"I never regretted my choice of career until I met you," he said, his wistful smile fading. "I had certain commitments to fulfill. Once they were, I had what I thought was a plan. A reinvention of Gabriel Ross Sullivan, if you will. Into someone Chasidah Bergren would meet in an Officers's Club. Not in one of the disreputable bars in Port Chalo."

"I would've preferred Port Chalo to Moabar."

"I would've preferred it as well. Then Kingswell, and what I had to do, wouldn't be an issue of confusion. One that, if I could clarify, I would. But with that issue, my answers are long, complicated. I can't guarantee clarification is a solution. It hasn't been, for me."

Growing up an empath in a society that condemned mind talents hardly provided any avenues for clarification. I could see why his friendship with Ren was important. I could also see why my acceptance of Ren was equally as important to him.

His gaze flicked down to the desktop, then back to my face. "Gabriel has another question."

I nodded.

"Did you come looking for me, freely, or because of Ren?"

"Ren didn't ask me, or tell me, to apologize to you. But he did give me facts I didn't have before. They reinforced my feelings."

"For me?"

I thought my subsequent actions in the corridor were self-explanatory. I was sure I broadcasted everything in the appropriate colors. But then, even Ren had questioned the source of my sadness that morning. Identifying an emotional resonance didn't evidently include the source, or motivation behind it, even for an empath. Especially for an empath.

Which also answered an unasked question of mine. If he were a telepath, he'd know what I thought. And why I felt what I did.

"Would it help if I told what I thought when you kissed me yesterday, after the Peyhar's service? I believe it was something in the order of a desperate desire to take your robe off, with my teeth." I stared hard at him, ignored the heat rising to my cheeks.

A smile played across his lips. "That would be totally acceptable behavior."

"Not when you're furred. And talking about adding me to your list of women."

He opened his mouth then closed it. Gabriel, the poet, the wordsmith, at a lack. Gabriel, chagrined. "There's no list of women."

"Good."

"But you still have confusion."

"Why didn't you tell me you're an empath, like Ren?"

He met my question with a long silence. "Fear. I couldn't bear losing you over this darkness that lives deep inside me."

"Is that how you think of yourself?" I asked softly. He'd told me Gabriel had been consigned to Hell. Is that what it felt like, being an empath?

"It's how everyone thinks of me."

"Everyone thinks I murdered the fourteen officers and crew of the Harmonious. Do you?"

"No."

I arched an eyebrow. "Well, then."

He closed his eyes briefly, shook his head. "It's not the same. When the truth about you comes out, and it will, you will be exonerated. The truth about Gabriel, the facts about Gabriel are only damning."

"That's not-"

His finger pressed against my lips again. "Hush. Gabriel has one last question." He didn't wait for my nod. "Can you accept me as I am, now, on faith? With what you know, and nothing more? Gabriel," he paused, "fears your need for facts, your need for explanations for things that perhaps can never be explained, will destroy the only chance he has. And he'll lose you."

His fingers brushed against my cheek then tucked a strand of hair around my ear. His voice was hoarse when he continued. "I promise, I swear I will never hurt you, could never hurt you. This is no lie." He hesitated, his gaze searching my face. "Gabriel does not lie."

A memory surfaced: one of three moons had risen. We sat across from each other as we had a hundred times before, but this time, the blackness of space didn't separate us.

Though I may be a veritable walking list of negative personality traits, the one thing I am not, and never have been, is a liar. It's my great downfall, Chaz.

I reached for him as I stood. My arms wrapped around his neck. His thighs closed around my legs, locking me to him. His hands framed my face.

"Can you accept me as I am?"

I wondered what Kingswell and Tessa had seen haunting the fathomless depths of Gabriel's obsidian eyes. I saw a ghost, locked in his own personal Hell. And a man named Sully, badly in need of a shave. And an answer.

I gave him mine. "Yes."

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