“I feel like I should be on my knees,” Sardius said, dropping to them.  From that position, with both his knees on the floor, he knelt in front of Jenna.

“Why?  You were already dropped to one knee when you asked me to marry you,” Jenna said, fluffing her hair with her free hand while he kissed the knuckles of her other hand.

“It’s not enough,” he said, peering up at her with his bluer than blue eyes.  “I feel like I should be on my knees giving thanks for what I’m about to receive.  You have no idea how I’ve wanted to run my hand up your thigh.”

Jenna looked down at him.  It suddenly occurred to her that what he had in mind for their wedding night might be a bit too much for her.  “Have we talked about what a chaste little nun I’ve been?” she blurted.

“We have,” he said, putting his fingers on the underside of her knee.

“Ya see, that’s funny, cause I don’t have any memory of you explaining about any of that for yourself,” Jenna said in a stuttering chuckle.

“I can’t believe you’re this shy,” he said smoothly as he stood up, running his fingers up the course of her bare leg until her dress stopped.  His fingers continued to touch her over her dress until his hand met her waist.  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Uh… I’m not sure I need to know anything specific about your past,” she said, thinking of the photographer and the two weeks they spent together.  “I just need to know your general habits.”

“Well, I haven’t had any romantic adventures since I was sent to prison,” he said, clicking his tongue against his molar in amusement.

One of her shoulders slumped.  “Yes.  I imagined that was the case.”

“Before that,” he volunteered.  “I wasn’t usually in a good position for that sort of thing.  It was in much the same situation you find yourself in now.  You’re in the public eye, a lot of people don’t like you so much they want to kill you, and someone attractive who appears is a thousand kinds of suspicious.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve met the female equivalent of Fallcet a hundred times.  That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t like him from the first moment I laid eyes on him.  Some idiot thinks that if they can somehow hit on the right combination of features, skeleton, the color, and shape of what you find attractive, you’ll be so overcome with lust that you’ll let your guard down completely.  Then they can do whatever vile thing they want to do to you in the privacy of your own bedroom.”

“So, you never fell for it?” Jenna asked, trying not to sound too suspicious.

“You never fell for it,” he said, giving her a spectacular look of admiration.  “Armen was not a good guy, but any one of those two hundred and twelve guys the Adamis sent to pick you up may have had worse intentions than taking you off-world without your permission.”

“Are you saying they may have been planning to assassinate me like the other diplomats?” Jenna asked in alarm.

His voice was sturdy as he replied.  “I have no idea what they were planning.  It did seem like they were merely trying to be wildly ineffective, so that is probably what it was, but you didn’t go along with any of them… So, it’s embarrassing for me to admit that I did have a brawl with a female assassin in my bedroom.  It was only that one time and I learned my lesson.”

“That sounds like a very interesting subject.  I’d like to hear more about that story,” Jenna said with a disarming smile.

Sardius cleared his throat.  “She was someone we rescued from a wrecked space station and she’d been on board my ship with a dozen other people for over a month.  One night she wore a backless dress with racerback straps and I hadn’t seen that much of a woman in so long, I’d forgotten what skin looked like.  I was stupid.  I took her to my room.  She attacked me and I…”

Suddenly, Jenna was aware that perhaps she should not have asked.  What if he killed her?  Jenna swallowed.

“I hurt her bad enough and she ended up in our jail cell with inappropriate medical treatment,” he admitted.

“You maimed her?” Jenna asked, rather appalled.

“She should have killed me in her first strike if she was serious.  She failed, but I had to take her seriously because what she did was not a move that could be interpreted as playful.  I didn’t kill her or let my men kill her because I wanted to remember what she represented.  I wanted to always know that she was out there and for my brain to think that anyone who approached me was her.”

“And you never cozied up to a member of your crew that you’d known for a million years?” Jenna asked, willing to let that one thing slide without further investigation.

“No.  Actually, I didn’t usually have a crew.  I did a lot of things on my own.  Listen, as long as I was a freedom fighter, a revolutionary, a terrorist… whatever… As long as I was doing all that stuff all my thoughts were geared toward ousting the government.  When I was sent to jail, I didn’t get caught because I messed up or because the enemy was so good they outsmarted me, or outmaneuvered me.  I got caught because other people in my faction betrayed me.”

Jenna gasped.

Sardius waved it away.  “They were well paid for their betrayal… And…” he stressed.  “The real reason why the old government didn’t kill me was because they thought that if I ever got out of jail, I’d go after my old friends to repay them for what they did to me.  It looked good for them.  They looked merciful.  But when I was sitting in my jail cell, I found that I was actually pretty tired of revenge.  If I ever got out of jail, I wasn’t going to hang around in that system and watch it implode up its own ass.  I was leaving.  Naturally, escaping from jail was not going to happen.  That place was like a locked box until the prison riot.  When I lived there, instead of thinking of escape, I started wondering if the prison was worse than some of the star ships I’d lived on.  I started looking around for a way to make my time there meaningful and that was when I saw you.”

Jenna’s breath hissed.  “Though I am so happy that I could be there for you at a time when you needed meaning in your life, even you must admit, it’s totally insane that my picture was in a jail across the universe in a different dimension.”

“Isn’t it?” Sardius said, his face alive with wonder.  “Isn’t it just insane?”

“Are you telling me all this because we’re not being watched?” 

“Yeah.  I’d rather be making love to you, but you clearly need us to clear a few intimacy hurdles before you could really enjoy it.  And I’d rather Ixy didn’t get to hear all the intimate details I want to give you and you alone.  I have a few ideas to give us some privacy after Ixy signs back on.  If you think of it another way, you could consider this conversation to be our wedding feast.  I’m on the menu.”

Jenna laughed at his absurdity.  “And you don’t need to ask me any questions?”

“No.  There’s nothing I need.  You have been very open with me from the start.  You fell for Armen for about thirty seconds, then you declared you hated him.  You crabbed to the Octavians about their interference in our relationship and you had Fallcet expelled from your palace before he had been on the floating palaces for a full day.  You’re perfect, and even if you weren’t, I’d still want you.”

Jenna felt very humbled by that.  She leaned in and touched his cheek.  “What about the photographer?”

“Madeline?” he questioned, blinking a few times.  “You’ve heard about her?”

Jenna nodded.

“Uh… That wasn’t on my radar as things I would need to talk about.  You wouldn’t be asking about her if someone hadn’t hinted that I’d had an affair with her.  Well, I didn’t.  She wasn’t asking.  In truth, the session I just had with Josh was racier than the work Madeline did with me and Josh is one of the most professional people I’ve ever met.  Before Madeline did that session with me, I hated having my picture taken because I was very sensitive about my looks.”

“Were you?”

“People who have had extensive cosmetic surgery are sensitive about their looks.  I had to have it because I had half my face burned off and I’d lost an eye when I worked on Don Leo’s ship.  Later, I did a lot of my rebel work alone in a spaceship blowing things up like a reclusive arsonist.  I got the surgery done because I didn’t want to be caught as a rebel and have my burned face be all over the news.  I wanted to be a handsome terrorist.  All of the skin on my face was grown in a lab and since the doctors didn’t have much face to work with, they built this look for me, turning me into the handsome terrorist I became.”

“So, this isn’t what you originally looked like?”

“Not even close,” Sardius admitted.  “Even after I had the surgery, I looked in the mirror and knew I was handsome, but I wasn’t able to own this face until Madeline did my pictures.  After helping me overcome such a huge block in myself, she decided to try challenging herself more.  She thought she had more to give if she did more than tell a single story with a single picture.  She became a director and I have to admit that when I relive our time together in my mind, I feel a lot of love for her.  Are you jealous?”

“No,” Jenna mumbled, giving him a squished pout.  “I feel really small after hearing all that.”

“You wanted to hear about my romantic past?  The women I’ve loved and the women I’ve left behind in case they suddenly arrive in our present?”

Jenna nodded.

“Well, there is the woman I maimed.  That’s part of my past.  Otherwise, I claim to be a workaholic who thought he would die if he ever lost focus.  That’s so true, I lost track of my birthdays.  I don’t know how old I am.  I don’t remember being in love before I saw you.  I only remember being afraid or angry, but like I said, I decided to give up being afraid or taking revenge.  From now on, I only want you.  Does my lack of romantic experiences make me less desirable to you?”

“No,” she said, pulling him into her embrace.  “I’m glad you were able to be honest with me.  I understand now why you wouldn’t have wanted any of that recorded or for Ixy to hear it.”

“And you’re ready to have our wedding night, right here and right now?” he asked daringly.

“Yeah,” she said, putting her arms around his neck.  “Although I’m a little worried the whole thing will be a bit hard on you after Josh told me about your scars.”

“You said you liked that,” he reminded her mockingly. 

She cast her eyes toward the ceiling.  “There might be a limit to that.  No woman wants her man wounded from head to toe.  Why don’t we just try getting you out of your shirt and see how that goes.  We’ll go slow.”

“Nothing would make me happier than to go slow,” he said, pulling her toward him for a kiss that was not supposed to be hot, but Sardius could not prevent it from being so.