“Well, I mean, it’s not like it affected me or anything.” Her eyes flickered away, not meeting his. “I was just playing a part—we both were—right?”
“Uh…right.” Brav nodded. He didn’t think now was the time to mention that she most definitely had been affected. His sensitive Kindred nose had told him exactly how hot she’d been getting while he was massaging her breasts and stroking her nipples—she had nearly come right there in his lap.
But since she seemed to be forgiving him for the whole “breast massage” situation, he wasn’t about to call her out on her statement that she’d just been “pretending” to be aroused.
“Anyway, it’s over now.” Danielle shrugged. “So let’s just leave it in the past, all right?”
“Agreed.” Brav nodded. “But I promise you, little girl, it won’t happen again.”
“Oh yes it will.” Danielle sounded surprisingly calm. “Look at where we are, Bravik—look at what the H’rakens are like,” she continued. “We’re going to have to live up to their standards of, uh, ‘marital affection’ or risk getting kicked out of the village before we learn anything about them. And I don’t know about you, but the more I learn, the more I want to learn. I mean, I have so many questions right now!”
“That’s the researcher in you, I guess.” Brav smiled. “For me, it’s all about making a worthy alliance for the Kindred. But if they’ve got some kind of energy source that can heal people—and help them heal others—that’s pretty fucking amazing and worth exploring.”
“Agreed.” Danielle nodded. “So look—as long as we’re here, we’ll do…” She cleared her throat, her cheeks flushing. “Do what we have to do in order to satisfy the H’rakens. But only in public, all right? When we’re here, together and alone, we’re just friends and coworkers. And that means no hanky-panky.”
Brav didn’t know what “hanky-panky” was, but he definitely got her meaning.
“Reading you loud and clear, little girl,” he told her. “It’s strictly hands-off when we’re alone.” He looked at her hopefully. “But did you mean it when you said we’d be friends?”
“Well…” She looked up at him appraisingly. “It could be that you’re not quite as much of an asshole as I thought at first.”
Brav broke into a grin.
“Glad to hear it. And I’m sorry we had a rough start. I just felt like you were going to be a…” He blew out his breath, trying to think of the right word. “A distraction when I was trying to do this mission. So I’m sorry if I was fucking rude to you.”
“Apology accepted.” Danielle nodded. “Now, what do you say we try to figure out a little bit more about this power source?” She nodded at the fireplace.
“What do you want to do?” Brav asked.
“This.” Going to the couch, she picked up one of the flowers she must have been sitting on earlier. It was crushed and wilted and withered. Danielle held it carefully by its stem and approached the fireplace.
“You’d better be careful, little girl,” Brav said anxiously. “You don’t know how strong that beam is—you could burn your hand off!”
“I’ll be careful,” Danielle promised. There was an intensely curious look on her face that Brav found immensely appealing. He loved a strong woman with a mind of her own and the curvy little female’s intellectual curiosity only made her that much more attractive to him. Still, he was worried about her.
“Maybe you should let me do that,” he offered.
But she was already leaning closer to the fireplace, one hand extended as she held the wilted flower closer and closer to the beam of vivid pink energy.
Brav watched, ready to yank her back if necessary, but what happened next so surprised him, that he almost forgot to be watchful. Because as Danielle extended the wilted flower towards the beam of pink energy, the flower began to change.
First, the petals seemed to fill out, as though something was plumping them up with moisture and life. Then the bloom itself lifted and the petals spread as it was returned to its former glory. Last—and this was the most surprising thing to Brav—a second bloom burst out of the flower’s stem and began spreading its petals.
“Seven Hells,” he muttered as Danielle pulled the flower back and examined it. “That was fucking amazing!”
“It was like watching a time-lapse vid going backwards,” she agreed. “The pink energy not only healed it—it caused complete regeneration!”
“This is definitely worth reporting back to the Mother Ship,” Brav murmured. “I wonder why they don’t keep it running all the time—the H’rakens, I mean,” he added. “If it’s so beneficial, why do they only run it at night?”
“And how do they run it?” Danielle asked, getting up from her crouching position beside the fireplace and coming back to sit on the couch. “Does the energy come from the Mother Stone and they channel it into different conduits the same way you’d channel water?”