Free Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams by Jacquelyn Frank Page B

quicker and easier these past nights, his troubling insomnia now gone since the dream in the gym.

    Until tonight.

    Tonight they were spaceborne, hurtling back toward Ebbany at a steady clip. They would reach the planet in two more days. He wished he could attribute his sudden sleeplessness to the anxiety one would have when making a forced march to certain death. However, he had too much faith in himself and his junior officers, in spite of ominous portents and obvious plots, to truly be that worried and fatalistic.

    So he was suddenly afraid that something else was amiss.

    “Great Being, Chapel, when did you get so superstitious?” Bronse muttered aloud to himself.

    He closed his eyes, trying to settle himself and his thoughts. He heard the treading of metal just outside his quarters and knew that it was Ender pacing the corridors just by the weight and cadence of his steps. Justice was asleep, as was Lasher. That left Ender on maintenance.
    Bronse smiled softly. Lasher was supposed to be on maintenance, but clearly Ender had made other plans. Bronse had no cause to object. He knew that Ender would have stayed on shift either way, even if he was ordered to his rack. The arms master did not like knowing he was on a suicide mission that someone else had plotted for him. Granted, that was probably the very definition of their jobs, but this was different. This was betrayal and treason at their most malevolent.

    Bronse had given each of the crew the choice of an out. He could not in good conscience do anything less. In his quarters, after they had received their orders and while sharing the midday meal, he had given each of them the opportunity to back out of the mission. He‟d almost faced a rousing mutiny at the very suggestion, and he still felt unbelievable pride in his crew when he remembered it. He had not thought they would abandon him in such a clear hour of need, but he had been obliged to give them a choice. They would likely be cut off, unable to depend on IM resources until they returned to the actual base. If he were JuJuren, Bronse thought, he would not make the same mistakes twice. This time he would see to it that Bronse was somehow cut away from his best resource—his crew—and then JuJuren would make his next attempt. The crew was a man down—their communications officer at that—and this would be viewed as an advantage for JuJuren. Normally it might be, if not for the fact that their comms officer had spiked the IM database already, giving the crew a crucial heads-up on what awaited them for this mission.

    “Bronse …”

    Bronse‟s breath hitched in his chest at that now familiar voice beckoning to him. His heartbeats shifted into double time. He could not help the reaction even if he wanted to. Great Being, how that silky, sultry little accent played over his senses. Did she have any idea how she sounded? For that matter, did she know how she affected him?

    He opened his eyes and sat up, throwing his legs over the side of his bunk. Bronse searched for her, waiting patiently for the slow fading in of her image. It came gradually, low to the ground, little more than the sweep of her dark, unbound hair. And yes, it was just as incredibly long as he had suspected it would be. And thick. He could see the density of it clearly now that it wasn‟t bound into those looping braids.

    It took him a moment to realize that she was kneeling on the ground, sitting back on her heels, and this was why he could see only the mantle of her hair.

    “Ravenna?”

    She turned her head slightly, then her chin dropped down and she turned back away.

    “I did not want you here,” she said. “Why did you come?”

    It was not the greeting he had gotten used to. She had been far more welcoming recently.
    This felt like a sudden step backward, almost like the sharp stinging slap of rejection.

    “I never plan these meetings,” he reminded her. It was only a half-truth at this point, however. He may not plan