“I don’t have to warn you to be careful. He’s stronger than his muscle mass indicates. See for yourself.” She tapped the monitor and pulled up a recording of her initial treatment.
In the recording VelKalevi had regained consciousness, but something was clearly wrong; he shouted in an alien tongue and flailed his arms and legs as if he were fighting off enemies. Zheng had to call her assistant to restrain him before she could administer the sedative.
“Our patient was suffering a delusional state and was unable to communicate coherently,” Zheng said, stopping the recording. “He was extremely fast, just as he was on the bridge.”
Cynara patted the stunner at her waist. “I’m prepared, Bolts. You can watch, of course—just stay out of sight.”
Zheng nodded and left the ward. She would remain right behind the observation window, where she could note everything that occurred in the ward without being seen by her patient.
Cynara pulled up a stool beside the bed and waited for VelKalevi to regain full consciousness. Inevitably her eyes were drawn to the lines and planes of his body, as if to something alien and exotic but enticingly familiar.
She had seen unclothed men many times since she’d left the protection of her family’s palace. From her first day of command aboard the Pegasus, she had treated her crew with no regard to gender, a fact that frequently distressed her Dharman contingent. She had lived in close quarters with males of every description and several cultures, some of whom regarded sex as a casual diversion.
She’d felt no interest in any of them. That part of her had been shut down like an obsolete drive coil, and not entirely because of Tyr, as her parents believed. Tyr’s gender had given him all the opportunities denied her—until he’d bestowed his final, devastating gift.
Gift, and curse. All his knowledge was hers, all the skills she had hardly begun to absorb before her father had betrothed her to Fico Nyle Beneviste. She, a woman, had become captain of the Pegasus.
The price had been virtual rejection from Dharman society, horrified looks from every burgher-lord who considered her neither man nor woman but a grotesque combination of both, unfit for marriage or the position she held by virtue of Tyr’s extraordinary death.
Their judgment was no more than convention, a terror of breaching the high wall between male and female. Once she had known what it felt like to want a man. Sexual need—unspoken by Dharman women except in hushed whispers—had vanished since the blending as if it had never existed.
But as she looked at Ronan VelKalevi, she realized with faint shock that those obsolete biological functions had come back to life. She recognized them in her response to Ronan’s strong, scarred body, the steadiness of his gaze, the courage he must possess to have borne such pain.
Poseidon. She closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath. Tyr was no part of what she felt now. Once she unbarred the gates to desire, she might never close them again.
How much do you know of human women, Ronan VelKalevi? Have you even been with one?
Ronan’s arm dropped over the edge of the bed. Cynara had one second to bring her thoughts under control before he turned and opened his eyes.
“Cynara,” he croaked.
He obviously remembered her, though she’d mentioned her given name only once. His breathing remained steady, but his pupils had constricted to mere pinpoints. The monitors showed a slight spike in his pulse.
“Ser VelKalevi,” she said, “how are you feeling?”
His gaze shifted from her face to the monitors and medical equipment suspended from the overhead. Cynara could see the memories playing behind his eyes, the rapid acknowledgment of his situation. He tried to swing his legs over the bed, but Cynara stopped him with a firm touch on his knee.
He tensed as if he might resist and then relaxed his muscles. The tight ridges of his stomach had their own share of scars, and he seemed not to notice that the blanket had fallen to the floor.
Furred sentients with little sexual dimorphism had no real need for modesty. Ronan had evidently not learned the concept from his human parents. He looked into Cynara’s eyes with open interest.