“Amber, the situation isn’t as clear-cut as you’re assuming,” Wrexel said gently but Amber was fixated on the tri-marriage.
“I don’t even remember what he looks like,” she wailed. “Is he young, or old?”
Wrexel grasped her hands when she reached for another mini bottle.
“Amber, Whyle is your closest friend; you have real affection for him,” he said.
“Oh great, so who is it that I love, Wrexel? All of you?” Her voice broke.
He gave her an injured look, but she brushed it aside.
“I’m sorry,” she hiccupped, “but I find it hard to be sympathetic to a man who would share me with somebody else.”
She was about to turn from him but he caught her hands. “I do not share you, Amber. You’re mine.” The look held a little warning.
“Except with Whyle,” she said sarcastically.
“I share you in marriage, yes, but not in the way you think…” He looked frustrated. “Your life… our life is very different… you are very different from the woman you used to be on Earth. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but remembering on your own is how you need to recover from this. If I start to tell you what to remember, I will also be telling you how to remember and that isn’t fair to you. There are also things I cannot share with you until you recall everything because you could unknowingly reveal something detrimental to Throm. You are part of the royal family!”
* * *
His gaze was desperate. She wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the way he looked at her but she experienced a wave of sadness that it couldn’t just be them. Why did her returning memory have to include three other men? Why couldn’t she stare up at her gorgeous husband without mad baggage?
“I don’t know whom I love. Who is the one that I…” She wailed but her words were lost as he pulled her to his chest. He kissed her deeply, showing her what he could not say. Despite the madness, she responded with a pent-up longing and raging desire. The alcohol made her reckless, as if she no longer cared about anything but the feel of his mouth on hers.
He tasted like heaven. His lips were warm and enticing, moving across hers with knowing.
God, he drove her crazy!
Overwhelming desire began to cloud her mind as he kissed her. She pressed against him, wanting more, wanting to get closer. She ignored the words that still spun in her head.
Travis saying, “You don’t love him, Amber.”
She didn’t know if this was true, but by God, she wanted him.
This man.
Her husband.
The alien.
The hot, masculine, desirable alien whose mouth moved over her neck as if he knew every spot that would make her melt. Heated lust thrummed through her body.
His roaming tongue coaxed and brought her to a point of insanity. She tugged at his jacket, wanting to put her hands on the chest she had seen for days. Wrexel lifted her off her feet, wrapped her legs around his waist, and took her to their bathroom. He broke their kiss for a few seconds when he set her down to turn on the shower and tear off his jacket. But then he tugged her back into his arms to recapture her mouth. Amber did not protest as he pulled her jacket off and threw it on the floor, nor when he lifted her by the waist with one hand to slide her pants from her. Amber kicked them aside willingly. Her whole being throbbed with need, and having him seemed as important as breathing.
Her body marched to a tempo that he set; she felt weak and languid, desire rushing through her like wildfire. Amber wanted to scream with the intensity of it all.
Somehow he found soap. She cried out when her bra fell at her feet and his hands slid the soft liquid over her breasts, teasing her nipples with firm thumbs. He moaned against her lips when she responded by grasping handfuls of his hair. The lingering questions, doubts, and fears were gone and nothing mattered but his touch.
“Wrexel.” His name came out of her mouth in between pants. His touch was maddening... so maddening she was sure the shower stall was shaking. She heard a crackle, faint at first and then it ricocheted off the walls as if an electrical charge had exploded in the bathroom. She frowned in confusion, trying to clear her hazy mind. Something was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
* * *
But then he lifted her, bringing her breasts to his lips and his hands snaked over her buttocks. Running over the sweet curve, he stopped just short of the part of her that needed his touch the most. She whimpered at the feel of his mouth at her breast, drawing her nipples to points with a very skilled mouth.
One infuriatingly accurate finger slid over her core, urging her to surrender, and she bucked against him, crying out when he began to tease her soft, slick folds.
Legs that clenched his waist tightly went slack as his teasing fingers moved slowly and maddeningly closer to the entrance of body. Water streamed down his chest in rivulets that made her jealous. She was grateful when he held her against the shower wall so her hands were free from his neck. She smoothed them over his shoulders and then dug her nails into him when her limbs began to shake.
* * *
She was about to beg him to take her when the charge she thought she imagined earlier crackled in visible green streaks of electricity. It circled them and then floated in the air.
Amber screamed when small emerald lightning tendrils wound around him and her, making them glow in the dark bathroom.
“Wrexel,” she cried again, and he heard her terror and froze. His fingers stilled and his head lifted from her breasts as the charge still flowed over them both.
He stared at her in the same dazed confusion she had felt just moments before.
“Something’s wrong. What are these green... lights?” She looked down at her body but they were gone.
She realized how crazed she sounded but she knew she had not imagined it. She stared at him in confused desperation
His chest heaved with exertion and he seemed to struggle in the same way she’d done to break away from the driving need between them.
He moved back a step, allowing her to stand as his eyes slowly dimmed from hypnotic violet to dark brandy.
“I really saw something,” she said in a small voice. As her mind cooled and her ability to think returned, she realized she had been giving herself with full abandon to a man she did not know.
He was her husband, but he was also a stranger. Her life… the little she did remember, was a hot mess. Jumping into bed with Wrexel before she remembered everything would have been a dire mistake. She looked around her urgently and moved from her position in front of him, needing to get away from the sight of his perfectly sculpted body and beautiful face.
She was ashamed that she was naked and did not even remember how it had happened. She felt his hand upon her shoulder and she turned to see him holding out a white towel.
She clutched it to her chest.
“I really saw… something like green lighting.” She choked on her words. “It moved around us.”
He ran his finger over her cheek without saying a word.
“What was it?” she cried. The look of honesty and confusion that crossed his features made her believe him when he said, “I honestly don’t know.”
* * *
The doorbell interrupted their thoughts and conversation. Wrexel’s face switched from confused to angry. “I’m glad you don’t remember Travis,” he growled, “because I’m about to kill him.”
Amber clung to the towel. Her legs were unsteady and trembling as Wrexel slid out of his wet pants and wrapped a towel around his waist.
Amber closed her eyes in relief when the sight of him naked and fully aroused jolted her to reality. She clasped her burning cheeks with shaking hands; she still throbbed from his embrace. Whatever had occurred in the shower, she knew it had saved her from a coupling she was sure would not only spear her body in two, but also rob her of her mind for all eternity.
She was in a total fog.
She wondered if it was something about him bein
g an alien that caused her to respond to him in this manner, for it wasn’t normal. No woman could want a man to this point of stupidity. He seemed genuinely confused by the crackling green tendrils in the bathroom but maybe he made it occur on purpose. Perhaps this was the way he numbed her mind and brought her to the point where she was ready to beg him to take her.
Amber slowly gathered her wits and took advantage of the warm shower, lathering up with the soap and shampoo provided, ignoring the telltale signs of her desire with a flush of embarrassment. She left the bathroom with the towel wrapped around her and blushed violently when she saw Travis still in the room, talking earnestly to Wrexel.
They both turned to gaze at her and she froze on the spot. Her cheeks were flushed with more than the effect of the hot water. Judging by the snug towel around Wrexel’s waist, he had not taken much time to conceal that he had been aroused in earnest.
Travis’s look of regret slowly faded as he visibly forced himself to continue his discussion. Wrexel watched her every move as she backpedaled hurriedly to the bathroom.
Amber combed her hair and stared at her reflection in the mirror, trying to make sense of her mind and her memories and the madness in the shower. She fled when Wrexel entered and dropped the towel from his hips as he walked past her.
* * *
Finally, when he came out and placed his clothes over a rail to dry, she peered with both relief and disappointment at the towel that was back around his waist
Would he be eager to pick up where they had left off?
She shook herself. “Wrexel, what happened in the bathroom?”
He frowned. “I told you I don’t know, Amber, but we have bigger problems to think about. It seems we are not destined to have uninterrupted time alone.”
He ran his fingers through his wet hair and sat down on the bed beside her.
“As you know, Rheese’s communication system is down.” He reached forward and stroked her hair from her face with a gentle hand. Momentarily distracted, he wound a tendril around his finger. “Do you remember when we arrived yesterday, the tall dark tower just outside of Rheese City?”
Amber had seen so much when she landed, she wasn’t sure.
“The eight planets in the federation, of which this is one... each has a purpose-built Watch Tower. The primary role is to scan outer space in a focused direction to ensure we have fair warning of any unwelcome visitors. This tower alerts us and sends out a beam slowing the approaching member of the 104 in their attempt at an attack.”
He touched a button on the Shehin and it showed the eight planets circling a center sun. Wrexel highlighted the Watch Tower on each planet and showed how their triangular scopes continuously monitored space.
“Rheese’s power outage somehow affected the Tower and their air space has been infiltrated by scavengers.”
“Are they going to attack? Are we in danger?” she asked.
“They are.” He separated them from the humans of Rheese. “We need to get back to our vessel so I can communicate with Throm for help.”
“Why didn’t you use it when we crashed?”
“I had issues then that I can overcome now.”
She wanted to stay on the topic of why he hadn’t done this from the start, but there was too much to consider. “Can’t Rheese fight them off?”
“No, Rheese has no army. This is why Throm maintained a presence here until recently; ordinarily, the Watch Tower would have picked up this approach and would sound an alarm. Throm or any of the neighboring seven planets with military would respond. But there are no Thromians here now and nobody to protect Rheese.”
Amber remembered Travis being pleased about this fact.
“They’ve all left because Travis has asked for the Rak nation from Huggraker to take over as immediate responders. Rak and Throm are not friendly even though we are in the federation together and not at war. Our clearout and their entry could not overlap, and sadly Rheese has a three-day gap of no protection.”
“I don’t understand. If you’re not friendly with the Raks, why are you in a federation together?”
“Neither of us is stupid enough to ignore the benefits of an alliance that protects the eight planets of our solar system against the 104.”
Amber nodded. “Who is attacking Rheese, Wrexel? Are we in a lot of danger?”
“They’re scavengers, always looking for an opportunity to strike. They must have somehow picked up that Rheese was in transition, so they took a chance.”
“So let’s fly to your vessel and help them,” she suggested.
Wrexel shook his head. “If we flew out they would shoot us down. We have to retrace all the steps we made on foot. Meet up with our friends the lizards and the night ghouls, have a little reunion,” he joked. She failed to laugh.
“I would leave you here to do this, Amber, but you’re safer with me.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m going to meet with Travis and his leaders to discuss a plan. Until then, try to get some rest.”
As if!
8
The Sketchi
Amber lay down after he left, but was too distraught to sleep.
The effect of the alcohol had faded, leaving her with racing thoughts about Wrexel, Travis, and, of course, Whyle. Not to mention the attacking “whatevers” and just for an extra measure of insanity, she threw Staede into her mind’s wanderings. She topped it off with the strange green lights – lights that she was beginning to think the alcohol caused, or maybe it was something Wrexel gave off when he was excited, although he denied it.
She looked at the door, sorry she had allowed him to go without her. His monitor lay on the bed beside her and she wondered if it would answer her.
“Shehin.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
“Show me Wrexel.”
“Wrexel has deactivated his tracking device.” Shehin responded by showing her a hologram of him instead.
Life-sized and unmoving, it rotated above the monitor. Wrexel in all of his royal regalia. He looked both handsome and terrifying.
Amber nibbled her lip and glanced at the door. “Show me Staede,” she said quickly before she lost her nerve.
The hologram of Wrexel faded and one of Staede was projected. Amber took a deep breath. He was as handsome as Wrexel but with none of the menace.
Lighter hair, mischievous green eyes. She caught herself smiling at the projection and then frowned, for seeing him produced instant joy. The memory followed swiftly. She was climbing through a hole in a thick stone wall and Staede was in front of her, laughing, holding out his hand for her to follow. His chuckle sent a shiver down her spine. He excited her, he offered her rebellion, and she cherished it.
Why would she need to rebel?
“Show me Shihlo.” She avoided asking for Whyle.
The memory slammed into her as soon as his angelic form appeared. Beautiful, wise Shihlo, her most trusted confidant, her friend. He carried her down a passage elaborately decorated with Thromian regalia. Concern was etched on his face. “I will get you something for the pain,” he promised her. Amber remembered her body aching, especially her neck and between her legs. She touched the back of her nape and felt the ridged scar.
Branding.
She remembered hearing her own scream as the laser burnt into her neck. She recalled Shihlo holding her, telling her to bite down on his bundled cloak. Amber’s former joy at seeing Shihlo faded. Why had she been branded and why was her brother-in-law carrying her when her body ached in such an intimate way?
Well, there was no avoiding it. “Show me… Whyle.”
The hologram started from his face and began to filter down, but the glare of his blue eyes was enough. The memory she had of him was so horrific, she dropped into a heap on the floor and lost consciousness.
* * *
She woke up when Wrexel called her name a second time.
“Amber?” Fear and concern faded into a sigh when she sat up.
“What happened?”
She
backtracked away from him in anger. “You’re sharing me with a fiend! I remembered Whyle tearing my clothes. I think he raped me.” She slapped Wrexel’s hands away. “You’re a liar.” She looked at the door; she needed to escape.
“Amber, calm down. What are you talking about?”
“I had a flashback of Whyle chasing me across a long balcony. He caught me by my hair,” she sobbed. “He tore my dress.”
Wrexel grasped her by her shoulders. “Amber, look at the hologram again, look at Whyle.”
Amber stopped her scrambling when the full image of Whyle loomed.
The man who had struck her in her memories was much older. The young one depicted before her now was either closely related to her attacker or perhaps him at a younger age. They had the same glaring sapphire eyes, although the ones she saw in the hologram of Whyle were kinder.
“He’s older now,” she sobbed.
“He’s my age, Amber. Your memory is not of Whyle. Look at him! Show the Monarch with Whyle,” Wrexel demanded of Shehin.
Amber stopped her hysterical outburst when the two holograms showed up side by side.
The man who had attacked her was the Monarch; the man beside him was his nephew and her second husband.
Whyle.
Amber grasped her mouth as tears flowed down her cheeks. Their matching ice-blue eyes had set off her anxiety. Whyle was young, his face kind. Several memories came to the fore – memories of her laughing and enjoying her time with him. So too did recollections of constant fear that the Monarch wanted her dead.
The attack had been real.
“Whyle saved you that night,” Wrexel said gently. “He stopped my father from raping you.”
“Oh my God. Why?”
“Do you remember Whyle now?” He avoided her question.
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