Twilight's End

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Khan frowned, glancing around at the walls with a new understanding, and the realization that it wasn’t merely walls but containers. He still didn’t see how, or even why, this place was so important to her. He didn’t completely understand how the seeds would have been gathered and kept, but he had no trouble understanding that Dionne considered this to be her place, or that she would not willingly leave it.

  “We do not need these things,” he said finally.

  “You don’t know that,” Dionne responded. She saw when she glanced at him that he was glaring at her.

  “We live well enough with what we have,” he said tightly.

  She studied him for a long moment. “If you believed that, you wouldn’t have come here the first time,” she said shrewdly.

  Instead of responding, he glanced around at the lab. “If you must come here, then I will bring you--and I will take you back to the village when it is time to rest.”

  Dionne thought that over for several moments. The truth was, as primitive as the conditions were in the village, the lab was very little more comfortable and did not have the draw of human companionship. On the other hand, she strongly suspected she hadn’t convinced Khan that she could not allow him to consider her his woman, particularly after the way she’d responded to his touch. He might be a barbarian, but he was no fool. He hadn’t failed to notice, she was sure, that her reaction was extreme for someone who claimed no interest in him. “I should probably just stay here,” she said. “Really, I’ve seen enough of the village and I have so much to do here before I can begin the studies of the outside world that it’s pointless to stay in the village and travel back and forth.”

  “No.”

  Taken aback, Dionne simply stared at him for several moments. “No?”

  “It is not safe for you here--alone. If you stay, I will stay also.”

  Dionne couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cuss at his highhandedness. It occurred to her presently, though, that it would be better all around if she stayed on his good side. Even if she refused his help in every other area, her task would be far harder than it needed to be without his cooperation. As leader of his people, he could bring them to her, or turn them against her.

  Still, it went against the grain to simply bow to his orders.

  Apparently, he read the belligerence in her expression for he abruptly changed course again.

  “We will stay here. If this place is of such importance, then it, too, will need to be guarded.”

  Chapter Five

  Dionne studied his expression, unhappily aware that she wanted him to stay with her. She didn’t particularly feel threatened by the world she’d woken in. She didn’t lack confidence that, if there was a threat of any kind, the security measures available to her would amply do the job they had been designed for.

  She could’ve simply accepted the undeniable truth that she was accustomed to being surrounded by people. She’d never had any family beyond those directly involved in the project, but, until she’d gone into the bio-pod, she had rarely experienced more than a few minutes when she was completely alone.

  Regardless, she couldn’t lie to herself that the idea appealed to her only, or even mostly, because she wanted human contact.

  Khan intrigued her.

  It wouldn’t have bothered her if that interest had been purely on a scientific level, but she knew very well that it wasn’t.

  There was danger in her curiosity.

  She was keenly aware of that, but she had also evaluated the situation both scientifically and in regards to his importance to her mission and concluded that he was of tremendous value to her in those respects--something she couldn’t just dismiss because she was afraid of the temptation he represented to mate before she was called upon to do so, and without any consideration for whether or not he was a suitable selection.

  She would simply have to do what was best for all concerned and curb her personal interest in him, she decided. “That will be good,” she responded finally. “I should be finished with my preliminary studies this week, and then I will need to investigate changes in the environment.”

  She lost him after the capitulation, she saw, but she couldn’t decide whether it was because he hadn’t understood the remainder, or he simply wasn’t interested. “The cats will protect me, but stores are limited and it will actually be better for me if I have someone to--uh--someone with survival skills.”

  The look he gave her at that comment was sardonic--which left her in no doubt that he’d understood the gist of it, but he didn’t seem to resent her assumption that he would take care of her. Or, to do him justice, delight in the admission that she wasn’t certain she had the skills she needed to survive a hostile environment without help.

  He was surprisingly intuitive and intelligent, which, she supposed, was at least part of the reason she found him so fascinating. “Would you be willing to allow me to run tests on you?” she asked impulsively.

  He frowned, his gaze moving over her speculatively.

  “They wouldn’t hurt,” she added quickly. “At least, there might be a little discomfort, but nothing intolerable.” She waited tensely for his answer, wondering if he hadn’t understood, wondering if he had but didn’t particularly care to be a lab animal.

  “This is to help the people in renewal?” he asked finally.

  Surprise flickered through her. She beamed at him. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  He nodded ascent.

  Dionne was so excited her hand shook as she set the tablet aside that she’d been using to record her findings. Grasping his hand, she led him to the door to the examination room and activated it. He laced his fingers through hers, matching palms with her as the door opened and they stepped through. Dionne’s hand tingled from the warmth of his. She glanced down at their clasped hands, a little surprised that so simple a touch could seem so intimate, could stir to life things better left buried and ignored.

  His hand dwarfed hers. His dark skin contrasted dramatically with the paleness of hers. Why such things would appeal to her on a purely carnal level, she couldn’t understand, but neither could she deny the quickening inside of her that she didn’t particularly welcome. Smiling uneasily, she carefully extracted her hand and gestured toward the examination table.

  He simply stared at it, his expression unreadable, but as she watched, she saw his gaze move over the table and then lift to the scanner above it. His expression was eloquent of suspicion when he looked at her again.

  He was not as trusting as she’d thought he would be.

  She lifted a hand to stroke one of his arms soothingly. “I won’t hurt you,” she promised.

  Something flickered in his eyes. The next moment, so swiftly she hadn’t even realized his intention, he caught the hand she’d extended and jerked her up against him.

  She gaped up at him in surprise. He caught her face in one hand that was so huge his fingers curled around both sides of her jaw, making it abundantly clear to her that she hadn’t properly appreciated the sheer enormity of the man. “I--am--not--a--beast,” he said in a low growl, very slowly, very succinctly.

  Dionne felt color climb slowly into her cheeks until her entire face felt hot. “I didn’t imply that you were,” she said a little unsteadily, realizing almost the moment she said it that she had, in fact, on a subconscious level been treating him as if he were, or more accurately, a clever child.

  She could see from the look in his eyes that he didn’t believe her polite lie.

  Her eyes widened as he dragged her higher against his body, lowering his head until they were almost nose to nose, his expression rife with intent. Dionne sucked in a breath to order him to release her at once, but she didn’t get the opportunity to use her tongue--that way. The moment she opened her mouth to speak, he covered it--with his mouth.

  She was so stunned at his audacity that her mind went perfectly bereft of cognitive thought. Her senses did not shut down with thought malfunction. On the contrary, it seemed the mo
ment the reasoning side of her brain went into a state of catatonia, her primal side took over completely, focusing more acutely on reception. Warmth was the first sensation that registered as his mouth closed over hers with an aggressiveness that evoked a rush of adrenaline and made her heart palpitate so frantically that her lungs had to struggle to provide her with enough air. Faintly, the scent and taste of some kind of mint assaulted her as he thrust his tongue boldly past the barrier of her lips and the taste of him exploded across the sensory buds on her tongue. His own unique taste, laced with his potent male pheromones, flooded her mouth with the first rake of his tongue across hers and jetted through her by way of her laboring heart and lungs like a drug injected directly into her blood stream. It produced almost instantaneous euphoria. A wall of erotic heat enveloped her like flash fire.

  Warning sirens sounds, but failed to communicate more than a whimper of protest above the clamor her body instantly set up for more. Weakly, she pressed a hand against his hard chest in objection, but her body felt strangely boneless and it took an unbelievable effort even to offer that much protest.

  She forgot the need, and the reason, to object almost as quickly as it arose to her.

  His hunger communicated itself to her in the way his mouth moved over hers and his feverish exploration of her mouth, summoning forth a response from her body she was helpless to deny even if it had occurred to her to try. Aroused, the hunger within her matched his, then surpassed it. Her fingers curled reflexively against his hard chest. Too weak to hold herself up, she almost seemed to melt against him, drinking in the sensations that were pelting her from every direction.

  He lifted her more tightly against his body, turning. Her mind reeled dizzily at the movement. Disoriented, she felt as if she were falling. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging as he lifted her.

  The cool steel of the examination table sent a jolt through her as he settled her buttocks on it, but before her mind could formulate a protest, he wrenched her thighs apart, wedging his hips between them.

  Something as hard and thick as his forearm nudged her nether lips, parted them. Sparks of electricity shot through her in a debilitating rush as he moved against her and she felt the roughness of his loincloth teasing the sensitive bud he’d discovered. She shuddered, but the sensations enthralled her, called to her and she didn’t even attempt to resist as she felt his hand settle on her buttocks, bringing her closer, holding her tightly as he arched against her.

  Her belly clenched, quaking with an unidentifiable need as a powerful force gripped her, lifting her a little higher each time he thrust against her until she discovered that she was moaning into his mouth.

  Her body convulsed without warning, almost seeming to explode with euphoric sensation.

  Almost as abruptly as he’d begun the assault to her senses, he ceased, as if he’d discovered what he had wanted to know. Lifting his mouth from hers, he swung her from the examination table, setting her away from him, and finally releasing her. Wobbly kneed, Dionne felt herself sinking toward the floor. She sprawled there in a puzzle of jolting, sizzling nerve endings, too stunned to register pain if there had been any, too shocked even to figure out what had happened for many moments.

  The chill from the floor finally penetrated the heated cocoon that had enveloped her, sending an almost painful shiver through her. Dazed, she looked around in confusion.

  Khan, she saw when she finally glanced upward, had climbed upon the examining table. He was staring at the ceiling, his expression grim. Vaguely embarrassed, but too distressed to feel much of anything, Dionne struggled to command some strength in her jellyfish corpse and finally managed to get up.

  He exhibited no signs of either arousal or distress. Her gaze, as if magnetized, immediately zeroed in on the part of his anatomy he’d had wedged against her cleft and she saw that he’d either already tamed the beast, or he hadn’t actually been particularly stimulated to start with.

  Feeling more disoriented than anything else, Dionne looked around a little vaguely for some place to sit down before her wobbly knees gave out again. Nothing immediately presented itself and after a few moments she gave up the search and settled for trying to remember what she had intended to do when she’d come into the examination room.

  Khan glanced at her curiously, prompting her.

  Examination, she thought a little vaguely, still looking around a little helplessly while she searched her mind to figure out what kind of examination she’d had in mind.

  Finally, she simply lowered the scanner and, after studying the keypad for several moments, trying to jog her sluggish brain into providing her with the information of how to use it, punched in the code for ‘thorough’.

  Once the scanner was activated and began its slow advance, she remembered that there was a rolling stool beneath the table and dragged it out to sit down. As the scanner inched its way down his body, the weakness began to dissipate. Her mind opened the same way, thoughts rushing in like water flooding over an opened dam.

  She glanced at Khan, discovered he was still staring at the ceiling and then looked away again before he could sense her scrutiny and meet her gaze.

  Something irrevocable had happened, she finally realized.

  Without any attempt at penetration, Khan had marked her as his female. As surely as any other animal in the animal kingdom, the human male was capable of instantly addicting any female of his choice with a powerful dose of his pheromones--the more he wanted her, the more potent the injection and the harder it was to break the ‘habit’ when the female found that those pheromones appealed to her. Neither knowledge of human mating habits, or scientific evaluation of the situation, was going to break the addiction.

  She wondered a little vaguely if he was truly that attracted to her, or if she’d provoked him past caution and control by inadvertently wounding his ego.

  It didn’t really matter now. She was in a hell of a mess, not to put too fine a point on it.

  Chapter Six

  By the time the scanner had completed its programming, Dionne had recovered enough to remember that her intention had been to discover if his brain was sufficiently developed to handle the inner cerebral teaching device. If his brain was too primitive, the ICTD could have the opposite effect intended and cause damage.

  When the computer finished processing, she pulled up the brain scan and forced herself to concentrate on the read out, going over it three or four times before she managed to actually comprehend what she was reading and evaluate it. She’d already absently punched memory dump before it occurred to her that she should have saved the data for future reference, particularly since she hadn’t even glanced at anything beyond the data regarding his brain development. “Shit!” she muttered, irritated.

  She saw that Khan was looking at her piercingly and formed a tight smile intended to reassure him. “Nothing. I just should have saved the data to study it.”

  He tensed to rise from the table.

  She placed a hand on his chest to stop him and then snatched it back immediately as if she’d been burned.

  He settled back, however.

  “I want to try a little primary programming--if you’ll let me.”

  He frowned, which wasn’t surprising. She knew he couldn’t possibly understand the ICTD. “It’s--uh--sort of like the village Speaker,” she said on sudden inspiration.

  His expression immediately changed to comprehension and interest.

  “It will tell me about your world?”

  She couldn’t help it. Every time he displayed his understanding and intelligence, it gave her a thrill of hopefulness. “Yes--uh--not just at first. There are other things you have to understand before that.”

  He didn’t look especially pleased by that information, but he relaxed, waiting for her to explain. He looked confused and a little suspicious when she pushed the scanner out of the way and pulled up the cranial cap. Uneasiness slithered through her when she tamped the urge to reassure him
as she had before, but as leery as she was now of physical contact, she couldn’t avoid it completely. She had to settle the device securely on his head and make certain the nodes were correctly placed. She did her best to ignore the feel of his hair beneath her fingertips, the warmth and smoothness of his skin. Her belly was shimmying inside by the time she’d finished, however.

  Their gazes met when she straightened at last.

  With an effort, she broke the contact, focusing on the tattoo on his cheek while she fought the urge to offer reassurance he didn’t really seem to need despite the fact that this entire situation had to be so alien to him he would almost have to have some anxiety about it. “This mark,” she said finally, as much to distract his mind as because of her own curiosity. “Why did you place it there?”

  He lifted a hand to touch it. Before she realized his intention, he moved his hand from his cheek to her breast and stroked his finger along the area where her own skin had been tattooed. Even through the heavy leather, she felt his touch like a firebrand. “It is like this.”

  Swallowing a little convulsively, she resisted the urge to jump back. “Yes. That’s why I’m curious. It’s the logo of the resurrection project--an ancient symbol of life eternal. Did you--did you happen to see this--drawing when you were exploring the forbidden lands?”

  “It tells my line. I wear it as my father did, and his father, and the father before.”

  Dionne’s heart seemed to stand still in her chest as it leapt into her mind to wonder if there was any possibility at all that Khan was a descendant of one of the members of the renewal project. It seemed doubtful that he would know it, though, even if the possibility existed--but his intelligence certainly hinted at superior genetics.

  “You don’t know the origin, though?” she prodded, still hopeful.

  He frowned thoughtfully, but finally seemed to dismiss it. “Only what I told you.”