by Lauren Esker
I don't mind at all.
She wasn't sure if she thought the last part strongly enough for him to "hear" it through the link, but he shot her a quick glance. "You don't mind?"
"Not at all."
She still had to admit to a certain amount of nervousness as she peeled off the clothes she'd been wearing for—wow, how long now? Days? She'd completely lost track of how long it had been since she'd left Earth. She didn't even know how long day and night were on this planet, compared to what she was used to.
But that didn't matter, not really, not right now; what mattered was that the last man to see her naked had been Aaron, ten years ago. And a decade left tracks on a woman's body. She was only in her mid-30s, but as she peeled off her shirt and pulled down her jeans, she still feel acutely self-conscious of every sag and blemish. Lyr was so gorgeous and smooth and toned, like a bronze statue, gleaming in the sun. She was—
*Beautiful.*
The thought came into her head so strongly that it staggered her.
She looked shyly away from folding her jeans to see Lyr gazing at her in unconcealed wonder. The link between them was as open as it got, and he was sending Beautiful, lovely, wonderful at her—not in words, but in a steady flow of inarticulate appreciation.
Girding herself a bit, she undid her bra. Lyr's fascination and wanting-to-touch surged at her through the link, along with a strong feeling of restraint—she could sense him holding back. She couldn't help tickling the link back with want-you-to-touch-me and she both felt and heard him take in a quick breath.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
His appreciation tingled through her, a shared circuit of desire, rolling back and forth between them and growing stronger every time.
"You know," she said, as she folded her clothes and put them on a rock away from the risk of getting wet, "I don't think it's fair that I'm not wearing any clothes, and you still have your pants on."
"You know, I think you're right." He stripped off his trousers, making her aware that first of all he wasn't wearing any underwear, and second, if there were any anatomical differences between his people and hers, they weren't visible on the outside. He was gorgeous, wearing nothing but his cuffs. Which of course led to thoughts like—
"Why do your people look so much like humans, Lyr?"
"I love that that's what you're thinking about right now," he said, smiling as he waded barefoot into the water's edge.
"I can't help it! I've been medically trained and I keep wondering about it."
"We are shapeshifters," he pointed out. "Adjusting our shifted form to resemble our primary trading partners makes sense for us."
"Well, okay, but does all the equipment ... er ... work?"
The smile broadened and became teasing. "Come here and find out."
"Just a minute." She dug through her pockets. "I found these soap thingies in the bathroom. At least I think that's what this is."
"Yes, that's what it is," Lyr said as she held up the packets. "It's a powder. A little goes a long way." He held out a hand. "Come here and enjoy your first bath on this world."
Meri put her foot in the water and instantly jerked it out again. "Oh!"
"It's cold," Lyr said, looking playful.
"I know, I know." She stuck her foot back into the water, curling her toes on the sandy bottom.
"It'll be easier if you just get in. You'll warm up."
"Hypothermia is a thing, you know."
But he was in the water and she wanted to be where he was, so she waded in to her knees, gasping with every step. He was right, though: the icy chill became less noticeable the longer she stayed in.
Or it could just mean that I'm going numb.
She tore open a packet and poured out some of the powder into her palm. It was pale blue and made her think of the pink delousing stuff, which she was still finding traces of in the folds of her clothes. She sniffed at it. There was no smell.
"Do I need to do anything special, or ...?"
"No, it foams on contact with water. One packet should be enough for both of us."
She passed him the rest of the open packet and tried scooping up some water. He was right; it frothed instantly when it got wet, tingling in her palm and looking a lot like shaving foam. She spread it over her skin, and she wasn't sure if there was actually some analgesic property or if it was just psychological, but it seemed to soothe her bruises and smooth away the itching. Splashing cold water on her skin to wash it off was startling but invigorating.
She decided to leave her hair alone; the twists were good for at least a few more days yet, and aside from having to dust off delousing powder occasionally, she really wasn't to the point where her hair needed washing.
Lyr scrubbed himself briskly and efficiently, scooping up handfuls of sand for additional exfoliation. Meri decided she wasn't quite that ready to commit to Daniel Boone wilderness survival tactics. Mainly she was just enjoying watching him, the flex of his wet body in the sun, the smooth ripple of his muscles. He was nearly hairless, but his oddly spiky blue hair grew all the way down his neck to the top of his spine, almost like a short mane.
And yet, he seemed physically human in so many ways. She watched, fascinated, the interplay of muscles and bones in a body that could almost be human, but for the gleaming soap-bubble colors of his iridescent skin. She wanted to run her hands over his ribs and collarbone, tracing the anatomy that she'd seen in textbooks to tease out the subtle differences.
Lyr had closed his eyes as he poured water over his head from his cupped palms, but when he opened them, he was smiling. "You can touch, if you want. You don't have to stand over there."
She waded to him. Her hands were still slippery with soap. She laid a hesitant palm on his chest, and he put his hand over hers, strong wet fingers guiding the glide of her hand across his pecs.
The hairlessness was both fascinating and strange. Aaron hadn't been a particularly hairy guy, but he'd had chest hair, a scattering of tight dark curls tracing a treasure trail downward. Lyr's chest was—
—was Lyr's, she thought, and he deserved to be taken on his own, not compared to another man. Lyr was himself, utterly unique and utterly beautiful.
Her soapy hands glided over his pecs and shoulders, traced gentle circles over the little dimples in his skin where the spikes came out: a scattering on his shoulders, a line running down each arm to the thin seam of his arm blades. He was a sheathed knife, dangerous, she knew, but not to her. Never to her.
His hands, when they came to rest on her hips, were exquisitely gentle.
She mapped his skin with her hands and then her lips, pressing kisses to his chest. He leaned down to kiss her—the height difference was more noticeable like this—and she finally had a chance to run her hands through his hair, feeling its odd spiky texture, almost more like fine feathers than hair. She stroked her hands through it at the base of his neck, where it grew short and bristling, and felt him shiver against her when she ran her fingernails across his skin.
He kissed her deeply and then made her gasp as he lifted her, bearing her weight seemingly without effort. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders and found his mouth again with her own.
The music played on, but it seemed to fade in and out beneath the rushing of wind and water. A soundtrack from another world, blending seamlessly with the sounds of this place, as their bodies melded together until she could hardly remember where he ended and she began.
With telepathy, there was no need for questions. He knew what she wanted, and after years of marriage—even if it was a lifetime ago—she had no hesitation about going for what she wanted. Without breaking the kiss, she reached down to guide him into her.
If she'd had any lingering doubts about whether aliens could have sex the way humans did, it was dispelled in moments. He thrust into her and she cried out in incoherent ecstasy. The link thrummed with their shared pleasure.
"I'm not—on any kind of birth control," s
he gasped between his thrusts.
"I cannot make your kind pregnant," he murmured against her hair. "We are not compatible that way."
"Oh—carry on, then ..."
After ten years of enforced celibacy, her body had absolutely no doubt that it knew what it wanted and it was headed there at breakneck speed. "Lyr," she gasped, struggling to hold back, but she'd forgotten that he would be able to feel her approaching orgasm through the link. He sped up; she cried out, unable to contain herself any longer, and as the tingling rush became a flood, she felt him start to tip over the edge too. Their shared pleasure washed through her like a tidal wave, and she gasped through the surges with her mouth open against his shoulder, tasting soap and salt on his stream-washed skin.
His shuddering eased, and he let her down carefully into the water, sliding out of her.
"Holy shit," she muttered, clinging to him. She raised her face and Lyr, after a moment's confusion that she felt through the link, realized what she wanted and carefully sampled her mouth.
*Good,* he sent to her, with his mouth fully occupied with hers. Once again, it wasn't words, just an overall feeling of pleasure and satisfaction.
*Good,* she sent back. *But my feet are getting cold.*
*I think we both need another bath now.*
The mental link gave her a hint of what he was about to do. "Lyr!" she gasped as he swept her up in his arms. "Lyr, no! If you dunk me, I'll scream and attract every predator in a twenty-mile radius, I'm not kidding!"
"I'll keep you safe," he murmured, and bent his knees gracefully, taking them both down into the cold pool.
She managed not to scream, but it was a close call as the cold water engulfed her body. The feeling was shocking but not unpleasant—far from it, in fact. With her body already tingling and sensitive, the chill of the water over her whole body brought a flood of new sensation that rushed through her and left her shivering not with cold but with reaction and something bordering on sensory overload.
The water closed over her head. She could very easily have splashed her way to the surface—the water wasn't deep—but instead she let Lyr bear her down to the bottom of the pool. She opened her eyes, something she'd never done underwater before, and found him looking at her through the clear water. He smiled, and she grinned back; then cold water flooded her mouth and she sat up quickly, spitting and choking.
"I'm sorry," Lyr said, supporting her with an arm around her back. "Are you all right?"
"Fine, just thinking I might need more practice at playing in pools." She shook her head, flinging drops of water from her saturated hair, and scooped up a handful to splash on her face. Sitting on the bottom of the pool, the water was up to the tops of her breasts. She was getting used to the chill. The current tugged on her gently, like a slow-motion Jacuzzi as it eddied behind the rock dam. Her entire body was full of a sense of well-being and general deliciously good feeling, despite the goosebumps stood out on her arms.
"I haven't been swimming in a really long time. Can you swim, Lyr?"
"I suppose so," he said thoughtfully. "I haven't ever tried it. I expect it would be much like flying, except underwater—"
He broke off and put a wet hand on her arm.
Meri was silent, responding to the sense of warning coming to her through their link. It wasn't fear that she sensed from him, more like a wary alertness.
*You need to get back to the ship,* he told her through the link, his sharp gaze scanning the dense brush and trees around the pool.
"Why?" she whispered. "What is it?"
*There is something in the woods.*
14
___
L YR WISHED HE COULD BE more specific, sensing that he was alarming her even more with his vagueness, but he wasn't sure himself; he wasn't even sure, at first, what had alerted him. It was the sounds of the small animals of the forest, he thought ... or rather, the lack of them.
There was always background noise on a planet. It had made him jumpy at first, but he was starting to think of it as something like the noise of engines and life support equipment on a ship. The background noise meant everything was working as it should. It was when things got hushed that you knew something was wrong.
And right now, things were hushed. The cheerful music seemed extraordinarily out of place.
"Could you turn off your music?" he asked her quietly.
They waded ashore together. Meri was starting to shiver now, with the breeze caressing her wet skin. She shook water off her hand and tapped her device. The music cut out, making him all the more aware of how quiet it was. Ominously so.
Staying close to Meri, Lyr looked around, seeking a hint of what might have alerted him. He even looked up at the clear sky above, bisected with the colorful band of the planet's rings. It wasn't weather. There was something down here on the ground with them, in the thicket surrounding the pool.
As he had done on the ship while looking for survivors, he tentatively opened his mind to the world around him.
On the ship, it had been overwhelming enough. Here, the thriving ecosystem around him slammed into his mind like a bolt of lightning. He staggered against Meri, sensing her alarm, and managed to stabilize himself only by shutting his mind like the airlock of a ship, with all that life and all those tiny minds on the other side.
He was going to have to practice back at their camp. Until he relearned some control, it was simply too much. He couldn't rely on telepathy to tell him what might be coming for them.
"What should I do?" Meri asked quietly.
*We should dress and get back to the ship. Necessities only,* he added as she reached for her underwear, and she dropped it and started pulling on her trousers instead.
"Is it that urgent?"
*I'd rather not find out.*
He was sealing the snap-strips on his trousers and Meri was hastily pulling on her shirt when branches snapped in the thicket. Lyr moved to interpose his body between Meri and whatever might be coming out of the woods. Movement flashed among the sun-dappled shadows.
"Lyr—" she began.
"Stay behind me," he told her softly.
The creature that slunk out of the thicket's edge, across the pool from them, was like a huge version of the smaller lizards Lyr had seen darting in and out of the woods. It was long and lean and big, with its pebbly hide mottled green, yellow, and brown in a camouflage pattern that made it nearly vanish in the sun-and-shade dappling of the forest.
"It's a velociraptor," Meri murmured, her voice shaking with the effort it was taking her to remain calm. "A huge one. More like a T-rex-sized—"
Lyr clamped a hand on her wrist. *Don't speak aloud. There are more of them.*
She opened her mouth and then closed it as another creature slunk out of the woods, abreast of the first one.
"Lyr!" Meri had forgotten to be silent, but he didn't blame her, because her alarmed thoughts warned him even before he glanced over his shoulder that two more of the creatures had stepped out onto the path leading back to the ship.
They were surrounded.
Lyr cursed himself for a fool. He had checked for signs of predators or spoor around the stream this morning, but he'd never expected anything to come upon them so quickly, let alone predators that were clearly intelligent pack hunters. He had allowed himself to be distracted by Meri's beauty in the sunny glade, and had forgotten they were stranded on a planet filled with unknown dangers.
"Can you fight them?" Meri asked quietly, struggling into the other sleeve of her shirt without taking her eyes off the creatures.
"Hopefully I won't have to." He aimed at the nearest, fingers curled into a loose fist, and unleashed a low-power stun burst from the cuff.
The green light flickered across its scales, and nothing happened.
"What the—" He raised the power and shot it on the lethal setting. This time there was some effect—it flinched violently and jumped back, then growled low in its throat. Smoke curled up from a shallow, scorched place on its scal
es.
"What's wrong?" Meri asked.
"My weapons can't penetrate their scales." He'd heard of it, but had never seen it. A few kinds of creatures were naturally immune to Galatean energy weapons. Something about their scales was acting like natural armor, deflecting attacks as shields did.
The whole pack now had their attention focused intently on the two people by the spring. Heads went down, tails swished. That was hunting behavior.
Meri pressed closer to Lyr.
The scales couldn't possibly cover them everywhere. He ought to be able to shoot them in the eyes, but it was going to take some very precise targeting. If he poured enough power into it, a single shot should be able to penetrate their natural shielding, the same way a high-powered energy weapon could punch through a shield. But he only had enough power for one or two shots like that. Not enough to take out the entire pack.
Well ... let them deal with a dragon, then. He could already feel his draconic instincts climbing up inside him, eager for a fight. Letting go against the pirates had been so one-sided that it hardly felt satisfying. It had been a very long time since he'd been able to fight an enemy that gave his dragon a good workout. He curled his hands as the claws began to lengthen. His fangs extended sharp in his mouth, his fighting spines slid out of his arms—
—and Meri flinched away with a gasp as the spines pricked her.
Meri.
He couldn't just let go of his rational side and fight. Meri would be hurt. That awareness was like a bucket of ice water thrown over his growing bloodlust. He battled it back and got rational control of himself again.
Another of the lizard-creatures had appeared upstream. That made five of them, and possibly more hidden in the woods. It would be a challenging battle even without Meri to worry about.
Getting her to safety was his first priority.
"Stay where you are," he told Meri quietly, and getting a firm grip on his dragon side, he released it slowly, and flowed from his smaller shape to his larger.
The world around him eddied into a new configuration. Everything was much smaller from this vantage. The enemies that had seemed so huge were now rather small, each of them about half the size of his dragon. With his sharper senses, the world was rich in sounds and smells.