She read his expressionas usualaccurately. "But you won't."

"It would not be fair," he repeated.

"Eos!" she exclaimed. "Are you still looking for fairness in a cosmos ruled by the Coalition? Wasn't it you who told me that anyone who trusts the Coalition is a fool?"

"What would you have me do?" he shot back. "Run and hide? Perhaps go back to the storehouse and reside there until I die of old age? I'd die of boredom first."

She studied him a moment, perversely calming in the face of his burst of temper.

"What would you do," she said at last, "if there was no one else to consider? If it were only you?"

He felt his shoulders sag; he'd wrestled with that thought far too often to feel anything other than weariness at thinking of it now.

"Dax?" Her voice was soft, coaxing. And almost against his will, he gave her the truth.

"When you first told me there were Triotians alive, I thought I...I wanted..."

"Wanted what?" she prompted, her voice so very gentle he couldn't refuse, even knowing his words would sound like those of a lost child.

"I wanted to go home."

"Oh, Dax," she said, her tone laced with pain. For him. He knew it was for him, and he couldn't bear it. He spoke quickly, denying the moment of weakness.

"It doesn't matter. I would not be welcome. If they've not already stripped me of my citizenship, it is only because they haven't had time to think of it yet."

"What if you're wrong? You could at least try, couldn't you? Surely they wouldn't"

"I would, were I them," Dax said grimly.

Califa covered the safe distance she'd put between them in a single lithe stride.

"That's because you are harder on yourself than anyone else could be. Even Rina sees that."

He stiffened. "Rina?"

"Do you think she doesn't remember what she said to you, when you first found her? That she blamed you for not fighting for Trios? Did you never wonder why she stopped?"

He shook his head. "I was just glad she did. It hurt too much to hear the truth from one so young."

"She stopped because she saw you were punishing yourself more than she ever could." She took a breath, as if to steady a voice that had begun to quaver. "But even Rina knows now that you couldn't have stopped the Coalition. And that you had a reason for not being there."

He stared at her. "She knows?"

"Not what the reason was, just that you must have had one. Such is her faith in you, Dax."

He closed his eyes against a sudden stab of pain. "Too bad it's misplaced."

Suddenly, unexpectedly, she threw her arms around him. "Eos, Dax. Or I'll swear to your G.o.d, if it will do any good. Can't you ever forgive yourself?"

Before he could stop himself, his arms went around her in turn. He pulled her close, and lifted one hand to smooth the silk of her hair.

"Tell me something, snowfox. Have you forgiven yourself, for all you did as a Coalition officer?"

He felt her go rigid in his arms. Then, so softly he could barely be sure he'd heard it, she whispered. "No."

A low, pained laugh rumbled up from his chest. "What a miserable pair we are, snowfox."

For a long time they just stood there, taking an odd sort of consolation in their mutual predicament. It was only gradually that Dax became aware of the shirt, of the increasing softness of her body pressed against his, of the warmth that had begun as comfort changing to heat of an entirely different sort. It had never happened between them this way before, slowly, gently. It was like watching the sun come up over the mountains and spill down over the meadows of Triotia, a first touch of warmth followed by a growing flood of heat and golden light.

He let his hands slip to the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair as he tilted her face back. She looked up at him, and he could see the warmth he was feeling mirrored in her eyes. But when he began to lower his head, his lips already parting in antic.i.p.ation of savoring the taste of her, she drew back.

"Califa?" His voice was rough, already husky with arousal.

"I...can't, Dax."

He drew back then, brows furrowing as he studied her. A possible answer came to him, and it was as if a sudden snow had struck his sun-filled meadow.

"I see," he said, his voice reflecting the chill that had swept him.

"Dax"

"So tell me," he said in that same cool voice, "was the controller the only reason you mated with me before? In the hopes I wouldwhat, be so appreciative that I would give it back? And now that you have it back"

Fury flashed in the ice-blue eyes. She pulled back fiercely, yanking herself out of his grasp. He saw her move, and barely saved himself from a ringing blow by grabbing her arm.

"d.a.m.n you to Hades," she grated. "You accuse me of willing wh.o.r.edom."

He saw her point, and released her wrist. He looked at her for a moment, then chose his words with care. "You must admit it seems...indicative that you should choose now to deny what happens between us."

"You mean what happens to me," she corrected.

His brows lowered. "I am as much in your power in this as you are in mine," he said. "So why, Califa?"

"Why won't I mate with you? You must ask?" She shook her head incredulously. "You say you are in my power as I am in yours. Do you think then that I enjoy seeing you in such pain?"

Dax froze.

"You think I could welcome even the incredible pleasure you give me, when I know it leaves you in agony?"

"I didn't think you"

"Noticed? Eos, help me! How could I not? If this is indeed some Triotian trait, then I'm astounded your race has survived at all. No wonder you don't believe in mating outside of bonding, if this is what your people go through."

"Califa, it doesn't matter"

"So you've said. I can't agree. I can only think how I would feel, if you took me so close and then left me wanting."

He swallowed tightly, knowing he owed her some kind of explanation, knowing it was amazing she hadn't demanded one before now. Yet he couldn't find the words to admit this last, ultimate flaw. "It pleases me to give you pleasure," he began.

"And no matter how much it delights my body to have you do so, my mind cannot accept that you do it at such cost."

"It is...worth it. To watch you unravel, and know that I have given that to you."

"G.o.d!" It burst from her, and he didn't know whether it was unconscious, this use of the imprecation of his world, or if she thought it would have more effect on him. "Don't you understand, Dax? I can't do this! It's too much like I was before, mating without thought to what it was costing my partner."

She whirled away from him, her arms wrapping around herself as if she were about to shatter. When she went on, her voice sounded nearly taut enough to shatter as well.

"I detest the part of me that was able to use slaves in that way, and now you're asking me to...to use you, to gain my own pleasure, while you suffer?"

He stared at her, at the gleaming cap of her hair, at the fragile nape of her bent neck. That this was her reason had never occurred to him.

"Besides," she said, her voice low and choked, "I can't help wondering if...it's me. If I'm lacking, somehow, that I don't have what is necessary to pleasure you in return."

"G.o.d, little snowfox," Dax said as he reached for her shoulders and pulled her back against him. "It's not you, it was never you. It's me."

She shook her head, as if she didn't believe that anymore. He drew in a quick breath, and knew that he owed her this.

"Listen to me," he said. "Triotians are...different. In mating as well as other things. You know that we believe in mating only inside a bonded or soon to be bonded relationship."

"Shaylah told me of this. I thought it merely another legend."

"It is one of our oldest beliefs. It is not a law, in that it is not inscribed with the other laws that make the Triotian creed. But it runs so deep that to some it is far beyond a mere belief. It becomes a physical thing. A bodily limitation."

He felt her go very still. Then, slowly, she turned to look at him. "Are you saying it is so with you?"

He sighed, knowing he was about to surrender the last and most deeply buried of his secrets to this woman. And knowing he had no choice.

"I'm saying," he told her, "that I've broken virtually every Triotian law on the tablets. I've run away. I've stolen, I've gambled dishonestly, I've committed arson, kidnapping, and piracy. I've denied my origins, and when pushed, I've killed. There isn't a d.a.m.ned law I've missed. Except the one that isn't written down."

He lifted her face then with a gentle finger beneath her chin.

"My mind may have let me run wild, snowfox, but my body won't let me break that last law. I don't know why. It has developed a will of its own, and the fact that I want you more than I've ever known it possible to want a woman means nothing. No matter how far or how long I go in mating, I never attain release."

She was staring at him, wide-eyed. "But I heard the crew... they were talking of some Daxelian female, and of others..."

He gave a weary, halfhearted chuckle. "Do you remember when I said I knew something of reputations? That appearances can be deceptive?"

She nodded, still staring at him.

"Well, mine is as...deceptive as yours was. Oh, I'm not saying that I haven't, as you said, sampled my share. There were certainly enough females who seemed eager to bed an infamous skypirate. But I soon learned it was...futile."

Her brows lowered slightly. "But those women, the crew said they bragged..."

"I know. I don't know how it started. But once the reputation was there, it seemed to take on a life of its own."

"'Seems every female in the system wants to be able to say they've mated with the most celebrated skypirate of them all.'"she quoted softly.

Dax shifted uncomfortably. "Who in Hades said that?"

"I don't remember. But it was Rina who told me you once said that some women wanted wild creatures for pets, to show them off."

"It felt that way sometimes," he admitted ruefully. "I think those women...fed it all, somehow. The notoriety just kept growing. I can only guess that each one thought she was the only one to fail."

"And so they lied," she said slowly, "to protect their own pride. That's why you believed me about...my reputation for free mating."

"I know it sounds crazy, but"

"No. It doesn't sound crazy at all," she said softly. "I believe I know just how they felt."

He gripped her shoulders then. "No, snowfox. You must believe this. That no matter the end, making love with you has given me more pleasure than I've ever known before."

He used the ancient Triotian love words without thought; there was, he realized, no other words that truly fit what pa.s.sed between them. He stared down into her eyes as if he could force her to believe him.

"Even before I left Trios, before my body began to betray me, I never knew such pleasure existed for me. If you deny me the pain, you deny me the pleasure as well."

It was an incredible statement. He knew it, and saw the same knowledge in her eyes. He spoke the only words he thought might convince her.

"I swear it, snowfox. On what is left of my world, I swear it."

"Oh, Dax."

She sagged against him, and for a moment he thought she was weeping. But then he knew he was wrong; his snowfox would no more allow herself that than he could. But she had believed him, against all logic, and he was holding her again in the way he'd sworn never to do again. And as they went down to his bunk together, he saw that his oath not to touch her was but a mote of crystal dust before the intensity of his need for this woman. He needed her as he had never needed anything, and every sign that she needed him as well sent surging bursts of heat through him.

He hunted down those signs, coaxed them out of her with his hands, then his mouth. He caressed every inch of her as he tugged away interfering cloth, until she was quivering, until, when he gently urged her thighs apart, she opened herself eagerly for his intimate kiss. She cried out in shocked pleasure as his tongue replaced his stroking fingers and he tasted the sweet heart of her. She arched upward, moaning his name, and the honeyed sound of it rang in his ears as he felt her body gather itself for flight. As she writhed under his caresses, he knew that every word he'd told her was true.

And by morning he had made his decision. He could not go on like this. Califa had been right, he was still sulking, still brooding over his failure. It was timepast timeto put it to rest. He knew there was only an infinitesimal chance that he would succeed, either in the task he had now set for himself, or the result, but he had to try. He couldn't rest until he did. And if that rest was of the permanent variety, so be it.

Chapter 21.

The crew sat in the lounge, gaping at Dax as if he'd lost his mind.

"Let me get this straight," Nelcar said. "You're going to gopurposelyto the Coalition's worst labor camps, in the hope a handful of Triotians might still be alive?"

Dax nodded. All eyes save Roxton's, who was busy on the bridgeDax already had his answer, no doubt, and Califa had little question as to what it had been swiveled to Rina, who looked as astonished as the rest of them. When she realized they were all looking at her, she shook her head.

"It's not my idea!" Then she focused her gaze on Dax. "You're not doing this for me, are you?"

"No, little one. It's for me."

Califa watched him as he watched his crew. Would he tell them, at last, that he was Triotian? Was what she suspected true, that the driving force behind this reckless mission was his hope that somehow it would be enough penance, and his ticket home, if not to forgiveness?

He'd said little to her this morning when they'd awakened in each other's arms, merely asked her to join the crew in the lounge, because he had something to say to them all. She'd sensed he'd reached some kind of decision, but she had never expected this. But the moment she had heard his words, she had understood. Perhaps better than he did.