The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,64
clearly as by daylight, but he respected her privacy. He looked up at the ceiling to remove the temptation and said, “Do you remember the first time we joined our minds just for pleasure?”
She finished pulling off her shirt, one she had made herself only a few days ago from an old cushion cover. “No,” she said.
“That’s because we never have.”
“Yes, we did,” she said, automatically gainsaying him.
“When?”
It took her a moment to come up with a reply, but she finally said, “That first night in the desert with Kitarak, when we kissed each other goodnight.”
Jedra thought back to that night. It seemed a million years away, but he still remembered it clearly. “That was an accident,” he said. “Not that I minded,” he hastily added.
Kayan tossed her shirt into a corner and drew on her nightshirt: the robe the elves had given her, now laundered. “So what’s your point?”
“My point is, why don’t we do it again?”
“Because I’m tired,” she said, sitting down on the bed. “And I’m in a bad mood, and I have a headache.”
“All of which will go away instantly when we merge,” he said.
“And all of which will come back to haunt me tenfold when we separate again,” she replied.
“I bet it doesn’t.”
“What do you know about it? It’s not your headache.”
“Want to bet?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jedra reached out and took her hand, using his light-amplification ability just enough to guide him. “It means I’m not exactly happy here either, Kayan. I had no idea it would be like this. I wanted to live happily ever after with you, not spend most of my time feeling guilty about what I can do or jealous of what you can do.”
“There are no happily-ever-afters in this world,” Kayan told him. But she didn’t take her hand away.
Jedra pulled her gently back until she lay beside him. “So let’s go to another one,” he whispered. “Just for tonight. Forget Kitarak, psionics practice, and everything else. Let’s spend tonight in our own world, just you and me and no cares whatsoever.”
Kayan said nothing for quite a while. Jedra gave her time to think it over. He knew that any more coaxing would only make her decide against him. This had to be as much her idea as his in order for her to accept it, so he had to give her time to make her decision.
She was taking forever, though. He was afraid she had simply fallen asleep, but she finally rolled over to face him and said, “All right. Tonight let’s mindlink just for the fun of it. No cares whatsoever.”
Jedra let out a deep breath he hadn’t even been aware he was holding. “Thank you,” he said.
She laughed, the first time he had heard her do so in weeks. “Hang on to your hat,” she said. “We may end up miles from here.”
She leaned forward, and Jedra didn’t need night vision to know that she was waiting to be kissed.
When their lips met, so did their minds. Warmth and excitement swept over them, the perfect blend of emotional and physical stimulus drawing them deep into new realms of sensation. Kitarak and his lessons, Kayan and Jedra’s inequalities—all dwindled to insignificance in the face of the sudden, urgent imperative to experience every possible aspect of their convergence.
They didn’t return to consciousness until morning, and when they did they were so exhausted they didn’t even try to get up, not even when the aroma of the breakfast Kitarak was cooking wafted into their bedroom. They lay in a tangle of clothing and blankets, Jedra on his back and snoring softly while Kayan rested her head on his chest, and neither of them moved until noon.
After that, things changed. Not entirely—if anything, they were even more competitive by day—but they spent their nights exploring new territory that even Kitarak didn’t suspect existed. If he noticed, he didn’t mention it, but he didn’t ease up on them, either. When they began to fall asleep during their lessons he merely taught them how to suppress their bodies’ need for sleep and continued with his instruction.
Jedra lost track of how many things he learned. Most of them were becoming instinctive after so much repetition. When he entered a dark room, he amplified what little light was there until he spotted a candle, then he agitated the wick into flame. When he needed to speak to Kitarak or Kayan, he did it telepathically unless they were already in the same room. When he