LITMIR.BIZ

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you want me to leave?”

      She didn’t. That was the problem. Even now she could feel his vital heat at her back, imagine his strong, agile body standing relaxed and yet ready for any danger, envision his eyes glittering in the darkness.

      “I wouldn’t have interfered if he hadn’t been hurting you,” Timon said.

      “I understand,” Jamie said. She rubbed her arms. “You might as well sit down.”

      Timon eased himself to the ground beside her, supple as a cat.

      “Will you answer my question?” he asked.

      “I don’t know,” she said.

      “You don’t know if you’ll answer it?”

      “I don’t know if I want to marry him.”

      “What is he to you?”

      “A very old and dear friend.”

      “Then you don’t love him.”

      His statement was worse than just impertinent. He seemed to think he could see what was in her mind.

      “What do you know about love?” she demanded.

      Timon leaned back on his elbows, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Marriage usually requires love, doesn’t it?”

      “Your kind doesn’t marry, or even allow women to join your Brotherhood. I doubt that you’re any kind of authority on the subject.”

      Low laughter hummed in his chest. “You’re right,” he said. “What I know I’ve picked up from a hundred missions to human Enclaves and mixed colonies throughout the West. But the love-and-marriage situation seems to be about the same in all of them.”

      “And why are you so interested in something that will never involve you in any way? Don’t Riders usually stay Riders for life?”

      “Yes.”

      “And you certainly don’t have time to love anyone.”

      “We’re not monks, Jamie.”

      His voice was amused, but the words were pointed, and Jamie’s heart kicked inside her ribs.

      “I don’t think we share the same definition of love,” she said, regretting the words as soon as she’d spoken them.

      “But there can be so many definitions. You love your parents, don’t you?”

      “My parents are dead.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      He sounded as if he meant it. Though Darketans had originally been raised in barracks as soldier-agents in the Citadels, never permitted to see their Opir mothers or human fathers, that had changed in recent years. Matings that had once been considered shameful in the Citadels were no longer quite so rare, and many mixed couples fled the Opir cities to raise their children in freedom.

      It was possible that Timon had lived with his parents, grown up in something like a normal family. Jamie very much wanted to know. She wanted to know everything about him, all the personal things they hadn’t discussed.

      But she wasn’t prepared to risk giving too much in return for what she might get.

      “Please don’t interfere between me and Greg again,” she said, rising to her feet. “I can deal with him.”

      “By letting him believe you feel more than you do?” Timon got up slowly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, Jamie, it’s that you don’t play games. If you don’t want the man, let him go.”

      They stared at each other, and Jamie could see a flame burning in the back of his eyes.

      They’d known each other only a handful of days, spent a few hours riding together and speaking in generalities of her world and his. Until today, the question of any kind of love, carnal or otherwise, had never come up between them.

      But Timon had made it very plain. We’re not monks, he had said. Greg had warned her. If she’d had any doubts before she’d left the Enclave, Jamie understood now just how vulnerable she was to the same physical desires that drove most other people, human or otherwise. Desires she hardly knew how to act on. She knew that Greg thought of her as an innocent, even though as a scientist she was not nearly as naive as he guessed. She certainly felt something for Timon, but she’d never made any attempt to appear attractive to him. She had no idea how to compel a man’s interest, let alone how to seduce one.

      Even if it didn’t make any sense to her, Timon wanted her. If she gave in, if she let him see her feelings, she knew exactly where it would lead. They would end up together behind some tree or in the remains of some ruined building.

      I can’t, she thought. She believed in logic, not in some kind of animal lust that couldn’t be controlled.

      “Don’t be afraid of me, Jamie,” Timon said, perfect comprehension in his eyes.

      “No,” she said, her mouth dry.

      “Jamie, wait.”

      Turning awkwardly, she strode away from the fire and into the wild shrubs and low trees to the west of the track. If she could just break contact with him for a few moments, clear her senses and regain her composure...

      A hand clamped over her lips from behind. Instinctively she struggled, but the grubby fingers filled her mouth, and the body that held her was far too strong.

      Still, she kicked, and the man yelped. She was free for an instant before the world went black.

       Chapter 5

      Timon heard the attack before he saw it. He’d gone into the bushes after Jamie when the first shouts came, and he turned back for the wagons with his rifle in hand.

      This attack was not fake. Timon’s night vision showed him that the raiders bearing down on the delegates were almost certainly full-blood humans, tribesmen with long beards and animal-skin clothing. They rode toward the wagons with whoops and hollers, waving axes and a few rusted guns.

      The battle was fully engaged before Timon joined it, and the delegate’s human soldiers were fighting alongside the Riders. Timon crouched near one of the wagons and took careful aim, downing an attacker before he could grab the Senator’s aide.

      They’re after the women, Timon thought as a second raider charged the young medic named Akesha. The male nearly had her by the hair when Orpheus slammed his horse into the raider’s, knocking the bearded man from his saddle. Timon faced down the two raiders who were still threatening both women, circling like scrawny wolves around a pair of yearling fawns. He raised his rifle again, while Orpheus loosed one of his arrows into a raider’s shoulder.

      Then, all at once, the attackers were turning, fleeing, kicking their mounts into a frenzied gallop across the valley toward the hills in the west. The Riders chased them, firing their rifles and arrows, while Timon dismounted and plunged back into the brush where Jamie had disappeared earlier.

      She wasn’t there. But Timon quickly read the signs of struggle in torn earth and snapped branches. He followed hoofprints for a dozen yards and then stopped, cursing himself for his own stupidity.

      The raiders had been after women. And Jamie had been alone.

      Timon rode back to the column to take reports from his men. Akesha had been wounded but not seriously. The two other women in the delegation, the Senator’s aide and one of the soldiers, were shaken but unharmed; Greg Cahill was berating one of the Enclave soldiers for failing to protect them well enough.

      After gathering his gear and strapping it onto Lazarus’s back, Timon assembled his men near the front of the column. Amos Parks ran up behind him, sweating and pale.

      “Where is Jamie?” he

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