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“We’ve talked about this before,” Bravik reminded her, frowning. “I know it feels like we’ve been together forever and we’ll be together forever, but you’re not going to always feel like that. When we get back to the Mother Ship, you’ll want to get on with your life, little girl, and I’ll have to get on with mine.”
“But what if we don’t?” Danni argued softly. “What if we decided we want to be together always? What then?”
Bravik sighed and ran a hand through his hair as she waited for his answer.
“Danielle,” he said softly, his use of her name letting Danni know he was serious. “You know we can’t stay together. I can’t bond you to me—a Joining between us would never last.”
“You don’t know that,” Danni protested. “Who says that bonding is necessary for a long-term relationship? There are plenty of human marriages that last for thirty, forty, fifty years and none of them are bonded!”
Bravik snorted.
“Don’t tell me that—over half of all human Joinings end in divorce. That only gives us a fifty-fifty chance. Those aren’t great odds, little girl.”
“It’s better than no chance at all!” Danni sat up, frowning at him. “But if bonding is so important to you, don’t you want to at least try to bond me to you before you just give up?”
“Baby, try to understand…” Bravik cupped her cheek and looked into her eyes. “I’ve tried to bond women to me before—twice—and both times were failures. Painful failures. I don’t want to hurt you like that.”
“You…you’re hurting me now,” Danni whispered, feeling tears sting her eyes. “You’re pushing me away—saying that the minute we get back to the Mother Ship, you won’t want anything else to do with me.”
“That’s not true!” Bravik growled. “It’s you who won’t want anything else to do with me. You’ll have your career to think about—what will you want with a washed up old warrior who’s never been able to give a female what she wants or needs?”
“You’re not old!” Danni protested.
In fact, neither one of them was looking their age at the moment. Most of the silver had disappeared from Bravik’s thick black hair and beard and the lines around his eyes and mouth were slowly erasing themselves.
The same thing was happening to her own body—wrinkles smoothing out, gray hairs disappearing. And more than that, her joints felt looser and more supple. In fact, Danni was beginning to feel like she had in her early thirties or late twenties.
It was wonderful to have all the old aches and pains which had slowly crept up on her as she got older disappear, but the strange youthening process she and the big Kindred were undergoing wasn’t her main concern.
Part of her whispered that she ought to be concerned—it was all very well for the two of them to look and feel younger but what if it continued? Neither one of them would be happy to return to adolescence, she was certain.
But somehow, she couldn’t make herself think about that or think of much of anything to do with the future at all—Bravik was her sole focus. Despite a life of being a planner and an organizer—always being two steps ahead in her notes— Danni found herself uninterested in anything except the big Kindred.
She had even stopped keeping up with her professional journal, where she noted down the habits of the H’rakens she wanted to study and scientific observations of their culture and ways of life. None of it seemed important anymore. She didn’t care about writing papers or getting published in scholarly periodicals or even making any medical breakthroughs.
She just wanted Bravik to love her and promise to stay with her forever. She just wanted to never be parted from him—that was the sum total of her ambition and Danni was fine with that.
But it was also the reason that his refusal to even try to bond her to him felt like a knife in her chest.
“If you really cared about me—about us—you’d try to bond me to you,” she whispered, her throat tight with tears that threatened to overwhelm her. “Or at the very least, you’d make love to me.”
“Baby…” He cupped her cheek again. “I’m afraid if I slip my shaft in your sweet little pussy, I’ll want to slip my Mating Fist in, too. And if I fill you with my Mating Fist, I’ll want to sink my fangs deep in your throat and inject my Essence. And if I do that, we’re going to have a Failed Bonding that will hurt both of us—but especially you.”
“I’ll take that risk,” Danni said fiercely. “And you would too—if you really cared.”
Then she left him and went to shiver in the big bed alone, where she squeezed her eyes shut and at last let the tears come.
But as the sobs shook her, she felt the bed dip and then Bravik was cuddling behind her, cupping her in the curve of his big, muscular frame as they lay on their sides on the puff ball mattress.
