The Rowan
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Tower and the Hive #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Rowan». Краткое содержание книги:
The kinetically gifted, trained in mind/machine gestalt, are the most valued citizens of the Nine Star League. Using mental powers alone, these few Prime Talents transport ships, cargo and people between Earth's Moon, Mars' Demos and Jupiter's Callisto.
An orphaned young girl, simply called The Rowan, is discovered to have superior telepathic potential and is trained to become Prime Talent on Callisto. After years of self-sacrificing dedication to her position, The Rowan intercepts an urgent mental call from Jeff Raven, a young Prime Talent on distant Deneb. She convinces the other Primes to merge their powers with hers to help fight off an attack by invading aliens. Her growing relationship with Jeff gives her the courage to break her status-imposed isolation, and choose the more rewarding world of love and family.
The Rowan did for she had never been so hungry, nor appreciated a plain meal more. As she washed plates, pans, and mugs after the meal, she was suffused with an unaccustomed sense of contentment. She was also tired, with a fatigue of body, not mind; that was as soothing as it was soporific.
"Hey, you're asleep on your feet, mister," Turian said, his voice warm with amusement but his brows were slightly puckered in concern.
"I'm all right, now, Turian, really I am. You were marvelous back there. If you'd been in the hopper with me, I wouldn't have been so scared." At the anger in his face, she held up a hand, "It wasn't anyone's fault. In fact, I survived because I was in the hopper. The only one who did." Then she wondered if she'd given away more than she intended. To hear Siglen tell it, everyone on the planet had been aware of her terror. Maybe he'd been at sea. He certainly wasn't insensitive.
"You've no family?" Somehow that distressed Turian most.
"I have very good friends who have cared for me better than family would." He shook his head. "Family's best. You can always count on family. Surely you had kin left someplace?" The Rowan shrugged. "You don't miss what you've never had, you know." She knew that upset him deeply, a man who knew every one of his blood relatives, to whom family ties were sacred. "I'll have a family of my own one day," she said as much as a comfort for his distress and a promise to herself. Maybe that's why Reidinger quizzed her so on the course students: he seemed to dwell more on the boys than the girls. Primes were supposed to form alliances, preferably with other high Talents, to perpetuate their own abilities. Was Earth Prime also a marriage broker?
With that running through her mind, she was unprepared for Turian's embrace. She clamped tightly down on her emotions as his arms enclosed her and drew her tenderly against him. She surrendered to the luxury of being caressed, the feeling of a warm, strong body pressed against her, of gentle hands stroking her head, rubbing up and down her back. She turned her head against his chest and heard a heartbeat, faster than normal and knew that Turian was reacting to his outrage over her orphaned state.
And suddenly the Rowan realized that this was decision time: without meaning to, she had achieved the desired effect on Turian.
With only the slightest mental push, she could.
She didn't have to make a decision. Turian did it for her. A wave of tenderness, tinged only slightly with pity, but mainly comprised of approval for her courage and resilience, emanated from the man. She had never felt so appreciated, so comforted and… and wanted. Startled by the intensity of his emotion, she looked up and received his gentle but insistent kiss.
The Rowan had no time to do more than try to reduce the surge of her emotional response to an acceptable level.
The past few hours had awakened many emotions long kept under strict control. To have contained them all would have had serious repercussions. She'd have enough, and so would the unsuspecting Turian, if she wasn't careful. And she didn't want to have to BE careful for once in her life. Sensuality flared into full awareness in mind, heart, and body and as Turian responded, she received his attentions with wholehearted honesty.
He did not expect her to have been untouched and she was aware of both anger at her deception and his inability to slacken the incandescent desire which now consumed him. So she encouraged him with body and mind, with her hands and her lips. The hurt was minimal to the blaze of passion that overwhelmed him which she experienced through his mind and touch. She cursed her own ineptitude which kept her from matching his release but the glory which awaited her the next time she made love with him was vividly seared in her mind.
The Rowan awoke suddenly, aware that the comforting, warm length of Turian was missing from the narrow bunk on which they had fallen asleep. It hadn't been the gentle slip-slop of waves against the sides of the Miraki which had roused her. It was Turian's mental distress.
He was suffering intense feelings of guilt, self-castigating himself for the loss of control which had resulted in deflowering a virgin, anger with her for what he thought was a studied attempt to seduce him, and a terrible longing to repeat the act of love which had overwhelmed him with its intensity.
The Rowan felt keen remorse for his state of mind.
What had begun for her as half-game, half-challenge had backfired with disastrous effect on an honest man, well content with his work and his life-style. She was little better than Moria!
She rose, dressed rapidly but the cold was pervasive so she wrapped the blanket firmly around her as she quickly made two mugs of a steaming stimulant. Securing the blanket about her with one hand while balancing both mugs with a touch of mental assistance, she went topside.
Turian was slouched in the cockpit in a mind funk, shivering convulsively in a mental and physical chill of devastating proportions.
His mind kept inexorably returning to the intense sexuality of their spontaneous union and his inability to control his participation.
"We need to talk, Turian," she said quietly, startling him. She handed him a mug and, throwing part of the blanket over his shoulders, deliberately sat close beside him. "You've no cause at all to feel guilty about last night." He shot her a furious glance. "How do you know how I feel?" "Why else would you be sitting out on a freezing deck looking as if you'd committed a major crime. Drink up, you need the warmth." She used the firm tone Lusena often adopted with her and he took a judicious sip.
"Now," she said firmly, giving it a mental accent, "let's come to an understanding. I didn't set out to have you seduce me." He snorted disbelief, hauling the blanket around his right shoulder, but he did not move his chilled body from her warmth. "But I did want you to stop looking at me as a kid, a young girl, an unperson. I wanted very much for you to see me! Me, the Rowan." Slowly he turned his head toward her, the whites of his eyes more visible in the dark as they widened in the surprise of recognition.
"I remember that name. I did meet you before. I knew your face was somehow familiar." "I was with a party of four, three girls and my guardian, four summers ago. You sailed us about. At the sea gardens, one of the girls, a terrible flirt, got badly stung because she didn't listen to your warning." "And you had, and treated the little bitch." Then he cocked his head a bit. "How old are you, Rowan?" "I'm eighteen," she said, facetiously adding, "going on eighty. So I'm old enough to have an affair and to know when I should. But honestly, it just happened. I liked helping you fix up the Miraki. It's such a change from the sort of work I do all year long. That alone will make this the most memorable holiday I've ever had, Turian, and last night was pure serendipity. I don't see much of that, I assure you."
She was reaching him with her quiet explanation, for he was basically a sensible man. A hand, warm from the mug he'd been holding, covered hers. She could feel the tautness of body and mind through that contact and tried to find in his mind a clue to reduce that stress. He was still thinking in a circle that went from her youth to last night's eroticism.
"I've made love to a lot of women since I first learned how but I've never had it quite like you!" He let his breath out heavily.
"Never like that before!" His mind paused once more on that unexpected blazing intensity that caused his frame to tremble at its recall.
"You've about ruined me for anyone else." He resented that. He liked his affairs short and sweet and uncomplicated, affairs in which he was always the dominant partner and in complete control as he had not been last night.
"Me? The kid, ruining you, Captain Turian?" she asked, with humorous skepticism. "I doubt that, though that's quite a compliment you've paid me. I'd no idea what to expect once we got started. You're a marvelously tender lover. Even if I have no other experience for comparison, I could appreciate that. And I know you for an honest, decent, caring man. But ruined? Highly unlikely. You couldn't ever settle to just one woman, or one port and one reach of the Altairian seas. If you want my opinion," and she had to phrase this carefully or give away her illegal prying into his personal files, "I don't see you as a family man though your kin mean much to you. But I just can't see you staying on the land to raise kids. The Miraki's wife and child to you. I'm right, aren't I?" She rather hoped her sly cajolery would work and was immensely relieved to feel the shift in his thoughts at her candid remarks. "Even if we had a chance of some sort of an association, this ship would win and I'd be the one left dry." He gave a wry laugh. She knew that he was within an inch of reaching up to ruffle her hair in that casually affectionate gesture, but his mental state was still inhibiting him. She took his hand and laid her cheek against it, to allow a healing anodyne of respect and abiding friendliness to seep through the touching.