She came up onto her knees to move closer to me. Her pale eyes were bleak instead of relieved.
“I have to go back.”
I stood abruptly. Her words hit me like a blow to the solar plexus. “What?”
She couldn’t just leave. She’d just arrived. I’d just found her. She was mine and I was not giving her back.
“I have to testify. I have a personal transport nodule implanted in my skull.” Her hand lifted to a spot behind her ear. “When it’s time, it will transport me back to testify. Usually, all the matches for Earth’s brides are permanent, but that’s not true for me. They plan to bring me back to Earth for the trial. I have to go back.”
“When? Why did you not tell me?”
“I don’t know when. They said the trial would be in a couple of months. I was supposed to blend in here on Trion and hide until they summoned me.”
“No. I won’t give you up. Just have Doctor Rahm take the nodule out.”
She shook her head slowly. “It doesn’t work that way. It was part of the agreement. They wanted to keep me alive to testify. Obviously, I wanted to stay alive, so I agreed. I didn’t know where they would send me or to whom. I knew nothing, just like you. I made them agree to bring me back, not only to testify and put the man in prison, but because I needed a way to go home.”
My heart was beating so hard I was sure Eva could hear it. I felt it aching at the very idea of her being so many light-years away. I hadn’t even liked her being in the harem across the outpost.
“And now? Do you want to go home?”
“I… I don’t know.”
Her indecision was fine with me. She didn’t say yes. She didn’t jump eagerly to her feet in anticipation of returning to Earth. She looked lost and confused. If she wanted to stay, then she was giving up her world, her way of life, forever. As a convict, she’d had no choice, but Eva had known all along that she could return home. She was conflicted about it.
It was my job to sway her, to make her stay. Perhaps she read my thoughts, for she said, “I have to go. I don’t have a choice. The transport technology will take me back. I don’t even know when it’s going to happen.”
There had to be a way. I had to discover how to
keep her. For now, I had to show her, to make her doubts go away. She had to know that she was mine. I’d said it over and over, had pushed her, bullied her even, into the idea. Now it was time to show her my real feelings, to convince her to stay through the connection we shared.
I moved back to the bed, tilted her chin up with my fingers so her eyes met mine. Held. “Is Eva really your name?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t matter that the bride program matched us. All that matters is what we think. I know you are my perfect match. I feel it.”
Tears dripped down her cheeks. I knelt before her and opened my palm.
“The chain between your breasts marked you as mine for all to see, but it was a symbol of my power over you. You witnessed it firsthand in the meeting earlier. While I proved my possessiveness to the councilors, it was at a cost to you.”
I affixed one of the green gems to the ring on her right nipple, then the other to the left.
“Now you are again marked as mine. These, however, I hope—” I lifted my gaze from her nipples to her eyes, “—you will wear because you are proud to be mine. They show that I am very much yours in return.”
She was even lovelier without the chain. The gems made her pale skin glow and made her hair shine like fire. My cock throbbed in my pants, reminding me that while my heart might want to tell her of my feelings, my cock wanted to show her.
“It’s too much,” she replied.
I frowned and cupped both her breasts. “They are too much? They hurt?” Her skin was like the finest of silk, my palms so rough and dark against her tender flesh.
She shook her head. “The gems. They appear precious.”
My worry eased. “You are precious.” I grinned then, ready to shift from this mood. I did not share my feelings with others often—if ever—and I was ready to turn my time with Eva toward more carnal directions.
“Did the rings you wore do this?” I waved my hand in front of the gems and they began to vibrate. The piece that attached the gem to the ring was a stimulator that I could control.
“Oh,” she gasped. “You have… you have many different kinds of toys.”