The Sevarian Way Read Online Free PDF Page B

being so…intellectually curious. I would teach you again, any time.”
    “I hope you will.”

Chapter Three
     
     
     
    Paul lifted his head, peering down at Suka’s face where it lay, looking sidelong at him from his chest.
    “I know the stone has this effect,” he said, “so the High Council would excuse us what’s just happened. They would understand we had no choice. Don’t worry about getting into any trouble.”
    Suka bit her lip, hesitating to speak her mind.
    “No choice,” she said at last. “It was the stone that made us do it.”
    “That’s what the High Council will know.”
    “Is it true?”
    “What do you mean?” Paul’s grip on her tightened and he frowned.
    “Oh, nothing.” She buried her face in the rumpled material of his uniform top, which he had not bothered to take off for the ceremony. Was he able to disconnect, just like that? View what had passed between them as an occupational hazard ? She could hear his heart beating next to her ear, hammering away, but she thought perhaps it was just a sound recording, standing in for a vacancy down there.
    Paul pulled at her tight braid. “Are you sulking?” he asked sternly.
    “Of course not.” She raised her head, chin up, mouth in a tight little line. “I am bloody starving, though. Should we eat an energy bar?”
    “Good idea.” Paul held Suka carefully by the shoulders while he sat up and swung around, vacating the altar. “We should get out of here. Come on.”
    The back entrance of the temple took them out to a garden, overgrown and untended, but still beautiful. They found a bench to sit on and took the energy bars from their waist packs, neither one of them speaking.
    Suka bit into the teeth-achingly sweet bar and chewed it silently, watching the birds that still inhabited the planet as if they hadn’t realised it was dead.
    Now what? Am I supposed to go back to a formal professional footing with a man I just lay beneath, in the throes of orgasm? Does he really expect that to happen?
    Her trousers, back up now, felt tacky and clingy, and a reminder of Commander Paul’s recent presence leaked out of her and stained the material at the crotch.
    He spoke first, just as the silence was at its heaviest.
    “Are you embarrassed?”
    “Should I be?” she replied quickly.
    “You know it wasn’t my intention to take advantage of you.”
    “Do you feel guilty?”
    “I suppose I do. I’ve gone well outside the boundaries of professionalism, let’s say.”
    “And the stone made you do it. It wasn’t the stone that made you pick up that whip, though, was it?”
    Paul turned, his eyes wide, flashing alarm signals at Suka , who shrank back instinctively.
    “No, that was you , Ensign. Because if you’re suggesting otherwise—”
    “I’m not,” she said quickly. She bit into the bar again, thinking about her next conversational move. “You’re just a plaything of the gods today, aren’t you? First your bad little ensign makes you do things, then the temple stone. Poor Commander Paul. It must be terrible, being so coerced all the time.”
    Paul finished the final bite of his bar, scrunching up the biodegradable wrapper and discarding it in a neighbouring bush.
    “You think I don’t want to take responsibility for all this?” he said. “I accept it, Suka . I accept full responsibility. When I chose you to come down here, I thought you could handle it. I made a bad call. It won’t happen again.”
    Suka felt as if he had kicked her in her already tender crotch. The almost-irresistible urge to scream Fuck you! swept over her and she held her fists tightly clenched and counted to five while it passed.
    “What exactly have I done that was so wrong?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice level.
    “You’re taking everything personally,” said Paul. “You seem to be blaming me for all this. You’re disrespectful and sullen now. Why?”
    Suka turned her face away. “Because I made a mistake,” she muttered. “I