Kraving Khiva by Zoey Draven

Chapter Twenty-Three

Acool breeze made Eve shiver as it threaded through her overcoat and traveled up her ankles under her long, thick dress. Even her stockings couldn’t deter the Programmers’ temperature change on Everton, as the seasons began to shift.

The Lake District was quiet that time of night. It was one of the largest areas of Everton, overtaking the entire Third Grid. The size of the lake, however, justified it. Eve watched light filter across it, from the animation and projection of two moons, one blue and the other silver, drifting across Everton’s sky, and she thought that it was simply beautiful.

She hadn’t been there in a long time. Often, her father had taken her there on picnics, as many other families and couples and friends did throughout the Everton year. But by twilight, most of the Lake District cleared out, as citizens left for home, or the Night District, or Restaurant Row.

It occurred to Eve that she had no idea where to meet Khiva, considering the size of the area, but she had faith that they would somehow find one another. Anticipation to see him, to hold him had kept her impatient all day and she’d passed her Sunday restlessly, spending most of it in the study once again, going through her father’s documents.

Eve stepped into a clearing, near the shore of the lake, and she breathed deeply as her eyes glided over the rippling water. She’d often wondered what air had smelled like, if it had had a smell, on old Earth. Did it smell any different from their air, which went through constant filtration?

She didn’t know how long she stood there, listening, waiting, but eventually, she sensed movement behind her, in the thick grouping of trees that were spread all throughout the Lake District, like the mysterious and mesmerizing forests she’d seen in pictures of Old Earth.

When Eve turned, she saw him, watching her from the edge of the trees. She smiled and immediately hurried to him, giddy, her heart thumping in her chest. He was wearing a long overcoat that fell to his ankles, with a large hood pulled up over his head. But there was no mistaking the swirling colors of his eyes when the light drifted over them, or his size. Still, even if a stranger saw him, they might just think he was a burly giant of a man. Certainly, they wouldn’t expect him to be a Keriv’i.

As always, when she was with him, she felt that need, that pull, that attraction.

“Khiva,” she said softly, hardly able to believe that they were there, in the Lake District, in open space, with a breeze rustling through their clothes, and not in a small, incensed room in a luxurious brothel.

She reached up to cup his jaw and he growled low in his throat when she tugged him down for a kiss, the sound needful and impatient.

And as always, her head swam when he kissed her and her skin tingled when his tongue did wicked things to her mouth.

Eve clung to him, pressing closer, feeling one of his hand cup her waist under her overcoat and the other curl around the back of her neck to keep her in place. It was unexpectedly sensual and dominant…but it was all Khiva.

Eventually, she smiled and pulled away, her gaze slightly dazed as she stood on the tips of her toes. He murmured something in Keriv’i, something she didn’t recognize, and then pulled her deeper into his body in an embrace. Eve tucked her arms underneath his overcoat, reaching around his back, and pressing her face into the steady warmth of his chest, breathing him in.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered, glancing up at him. The difference in lighting made his skin appear more blue and less gray.

“I needed to see you,” he murmured down to her. “I could not wait until next week.”

“Valerie said there would be consequences if Madame Allegria found out,” Eve said softly.

Khiva exhaled out a long breath. “It is not anything I cannot handle. Let us not speak of that now.”

“Khiva…”

“Please, leeldra,” he said, smoothing a hand down her hair. “I just want to be with you tonight.”

“Okay,” she whispered, though it didn’t lessen her worry. “Okay.”

“Come,” he murmured, leading her back into the thickness of the trees where they would be shielded from sight. “There is a clearing back here.”

Eve followed him through the closely clustered trunks and branches until they came across a small, cleared area in front of a large boulder. Trees protected them on both sides, with the boulder at their back, their own private little circle. In front of them, through a gap in the trees, she could see the shimmering lake.

“Have you been here before?” she asked, looking at the clearing.

“Pax,” he murmured. “Whenever a client cancels or if I can manage to sneak out, I come here. It is peaceful. Quiet. No one comes here this late at night.”

She’d asked the question before she’d even realized it. “Did a client cancel tonight?”

Then she froze, not quite sure if she wanted to hear his answer.

He let out another long exhale, but said, “Veki. I had Valerie cancel my client this night.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, reaching out to touch his forearm. He shook his head, but settled them both into the mossy, soft ground. Sprigs of grass tickled her ankles as she leaned into him. “I just hate the thought of you with other women. Hate is probably an understatement even. But I’m trying.”

“Leeldra,” he rasped, his arm reaching around her back to curl around her hips. He nuzzled his forehead into her temple and whispered in her ear, “You do not know how much I wish it was only you.”

Her chest ached at that, but it hurt even more when he continued.

“Keriv’i…we mate for life, with one being,” he murmured. “I have heard of humans that do the same, though I do not think my clients are prime examples.”

Eve’s lips parted and she met his gaze. “I imagine not,” she said softly, her mind racing at his words.

“You have not spoken of your mother,” he pointed out gently. “Were they a love pairing? Or a pairing of convenience?”

Eve smiled at the way he phrased the question and leaned her head into his shoulder, looking through the trees to the lake. “You have not spoken of your father,” she pointed out.

Khiva made an amused trilling in the back of his throat. “Answer my question and I will tell you of my father.”

“Fair enough,” she replied. “I do not quite know if my parents were a great ‘love pairing’ as you put it,” she teased, nudging his shoulder lightly, “but they held a very deep mutual respect for one another, a friendship that they’d had together all their lives.”

He made a sound. “They knew one another as young?”

“Yes,” Eve said, remembering everything her father had ever told her about her mother. “They grew up here, on Everton. They lived next to one another, near the Boulevard, and played together often. They were the greatest of friends. Over time, when my mother came of marrying age with no suitable partners in her circle, my father proposed to her because they both knew they would make excellent life partners. It might have not been an overpowering, romantic kind of love, but I personally think what they had was better.”

Eve smiled softly, remembering fondly the way her father had spoken of her mother…with warmth in his gaze, but a sadness, an emptiness that had never quite disappeared after her death.

Eve had never truly thought of it before, but in their own way, they had been one another’s soul mates.

“What became of her?” Khiva asked softly, stroking his fingers over her hip.

“She died from complications after my birth,” Eve said, her smiling fading.

Khiva inhaled an audible breath.

“I never knew her, but I felt like I did, from the stories my father told,” Eve told him. “Did you know that for Everton’s population, only two mothers every year die from birthing complications? And she was one of them.”

“I am sorry you never knew her, leeldra,” he murmured. “I am sorry she never got to know you.”

The way he arranged those words pulled at her heart.

“Me too,” she said softly, turning to look at him. “I was lucky enough with my father though. He never made me feel like I’d done anything wrong, once he told me how she died. He cherished me more, if anything, because of our loss. I was lucky to have him as a father.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Evelyn,” he argued.

“No, I know,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard though, knowing that she died to give me life.”

“It is the nature of our universe,” he told her gently. “Sacrifice for gain. It is a law, as old as time itself.”

Khiva was an expert on that subject, Eve thought. He’d sacrificed so much, too much. His planet, his family, his past life…all for the gain of a war that hardly anyone spoke about anymore.

She reached over and gently pulled back his hood so that she would see the entirety of his face. Unable to help herself, she tugged him down to press a small kiss to his cheek, the sharp bridge of his nose, his forehead.

Khiva was trilling by the end of it and he laid back, pulling her down with him, until they lay side-by-side, on their bed of moss and dirt and grass. Eve thought it was better than the most comfortable, most luxurious bed imaginable. She would have laid with him anywhere.

“Your turn,” she whispered to him.

Khiva huffed out a small breath and told her simply, “My mother and father’s union was one of situation and circumstance. My father’s line descended from wealth and as I told you, my mother’s line invented and created firestones. Two powerful lines, joined together by their union. It was a celebrated pairing. However, my father was much older than my mother. He died simply of the aging process before the Great War. While my mother mourned his death, she did not love him. As for my brother and I, our father was a figure only. He left us with my mother’s line to be raised and reared properly until we came of age, as was the old Keriv’i tradition.”

“Did you ever truly know him?” Eve asked.

He thought about it and finally said, “Veki. I saw him only at celebratory feasts and rare occasions. I respected him, naturally, because he helped give us life, because he was honorable and just and he treated my mother with respect. Beyond that, I did not truly know him.”

“I cannot imagine only knowing my father in passing,” Eve confessed.

“It is an old Keriv’i tradition,” he murmured. “It is the mother’s line that nurtures the young.”

Unable to help her curiosity, she asked, “If you had a child, would you be content to never know them the way your father never knew you or your brother?”

Khiva stiffened slightly but seemed to ponder her question thoroughly. Finally, he said, “No, I would not uphold the old Keriv’i way if I had young.”

Why did that make her pulse flutter?

He’d told her a couple weeks ago that Madame Allegria had all the Keriv’i injected with contraceptives on a yearly basis, rendering them infertile for that brief amount of time. But now, Eve wondered if Keriv’i and humans were even compatible in that way. She knew of many mixed human and alien hybrids. She knew that humans and Luxirians were the first documented inter-species breeding case and that many more followed when humans unlocked the power of space travel.

But what of Keriv’i and humans?

Eve’s cheeks flushed slightly and Khiva’s gaze caught it, even in the low light. “Kruvu?”

“Nothing,” she said, shutting down her dangerous thoughts.

He studied her, but didn’t ask anything further, to her profound relief.

Comfortable silence lapsed between them as Eve tried to memorize that moment. Everything about it. From the way he looked in the light, to the cool breeze, to the faint sound of rippling water, to the clean scent of the moss beneath them, and the lingering taste of him on her tongue.

She wanted to commit every detail to memory.

And he was watching her so intently that Eve knew he was doing the same.

She didn’t know how it happened, but eventually they began kissing. It was possibly a minuscule movement towards the other and then one of them answered the unspoken question. She didn’t quite know. But one moment they were looking at each other and the next, they were together.

Nonetheless, they took their time. The kiss started out soft and slow, like the rain on Sundays, their hands innocently touching and caressing and exploring.

But soon, it changed. Wandering hands gripped harder and became more urgent, tongues and limbs intertwined, soft moans met muted growls.

Khiva rasped, “Leeldra. We are not in that room this night.”

And Eve knew what he meant.

What he meant was that her flimsy excuse to not have sex with him no longer mattered. They were there, in the Lake District, under a canopy of trees, with no credits attached to their visit together.

For the first time, Eve wasn’t paying him for his time.

He’d asked to meet her because he wanted to be with her, because he cared for her the same way she cared for him.

His words were a question.

And Eve found herself saying, “Yes.”