by Cara Bristol
Two months? That’s all the time she’d have with Cam? Even four months was nothing!
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.” Was it selfish to hope the hangar didn’t pan out? She and Cam spent days working side by side, nights making love. They cuddled and held hands on the sofa watching TV, sometimes talking. She’d never been so happy, and she wasn’t ready to give him up yet!
When he left, she would get her heart broken, but at least this time, it would be for the right reason—because she cared for somebody deserving.
Kevanne dusted her hands on her pants. “This is enough work for today. Let’s do something for fun.” She pushed his leaving out of mind.
“Like what?”
“How about a drive around the lake?”
“I could take you on the scooter.”
Kevanne gave a little jump. “Yes! I’d love that!”
Hand in hand, they strolled back to the house. Lazy, thin clouds drifted across an otherwise clear sky. Birds sang in trees perfuming the air with pine and cedar. Wildflowers had sprung up among grasses that had greened almost overnight. With Cam at her side, and the day so warm and sunny, life seemed idyllic. She wished this moment could last forever, that she and Cam could have this kind of future.
All good things must come to an end. He’d been open and honest with her, telling her upfront he couldn’t stay. Focus on what I can control, not on what I can’t. What I can control is enjoying what I have now.
Cam squeezed her hand and peered down at her. His smile turned to an expression of concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She forced a smile, intending to deny the melancholy but caught herself. She’d spent her entire marriage ignoring the problems, suppressing her emotions, pretending life was normal, and she was fine. She would not repeat past mistakes. “I was feeling down about you leaving. I understand you have to—I accept that—but I’m going to miss you.”
“Ah, Kevanne.” He wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. She buried her face against his chest. “I don’t want to go. If I could stay, I would.” He rested his face on the top of her head. As time sped by, eating up the minutes they had left, they stood on the gravel lane and clung to each other. “Maybe I should have stayed away. I don’t want to cause you pain.”
“No!” She lifted her head. “I want to spend this time with you and have the memories.” She twisted her mouth and quipped, “It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved all.”
She froze, her stomach dropping as she realized what she’d just admitted—to him, and to herself. I do love him. She’d fallen fast, furious, and hard.
In his eyes she saw shock but also tenderness and intense heat. “I love you, too.”
Then don’t leave me, she wanted to say, but she refused to beg. What she could do was ask for an explanation. What were the stakes? Why did he have to leave? If he’d been any other man, she might have thought he was making excuses, but she saw what lay in his heart because he wore it on his sleeve. She’d never met a man with better intentions than Cam Leon. “Why do you have to leave Earth? Why can’t you stay, Cam? I want to understand.”
A nerve ticked in his cheek, and the inner corners of his eyebrows pulled together as if he were in pain. “I would tell you if I could.”
“So you keep saying. I don’t understand the secrecy. There are other aliens on Earth, so what’s the big deal? I’m not going to tell anybody. I haven’t told a single person you’re here.”
She slipped out of his embrace as doubt crept in. Maybe he hadn’t told the truth. Maybe he wasn’t leaving, or he had a wife on his home planet. With experience and therapy, she’d thought she’d become more discerning, but she didn’t have a good track record with men. She hadn’t always been a good judge of character; she’d been too accepting, too trusting. Had she fallen into that trap this time, too? Everything had happened so fast.
Or was second-guessing herself part of the problem? Dayton hadn’t made her wary of others, he’d caused her to distrust herself.
“I helped refugees escape a planet under destruction. I have to ensure they aren’t captured.”
Refugees? A planet destroyed? It was about the wildest story she’d ever heard, akin to the old pickup line, I’m a surgeon/airline pilot/CIA operative, and if I told you any more I’d have to kill you. Except Cam wasn’t some lounge lizard in a bar seeking to get laid. He was an honest-to-goodness extraterrestrial. Nothing was more incredible than him turning from a billboard model into a big blue alien with a tail! If that was possible, so was his story.
It didn’t explain everything, but then she had her secrets, too. Or used to. She’d pretty much shared everything about her past life with Dayton with him. Maybe overshared. It was amazing the weight of her emotional baggage hadn’t sent him running for the hills.
Or maybe he was leaving because she had too many issues.
Stop it! Get off the crazy train! If anything proved she was still a work in progress, this did. Cam had told her he loved her, and, in a couple of short mental hops, she’d begun doubting him and herself.
She touched his arm. “I don’t mean to pressure you or doubt you. It’s…I’m going to miss you terribly when you leave.”
“I’m going to miss you, too,” he said. “I miss you already. I think about leaving you, and it tears me up inside.” He grabbed her and hugged her as if his life depended on it. His arms banded around her, squeezing so tight she could hardly breathe. His heart banged against her ear. His exotic smell filled her nose.
And then he raised her chin, and his mouth slammed against hers. Their tongues lashed, teeth clacked, and there was no holding back. He crushed her against his body, his hard-on rigid against her stomach. He squeezed her ass, roaming his hands over her back and shoulders.
When her feet lifted off the ground, she hooked her heels around his hips. He carried her to the house, the ride around the lake forgotten.
He slammed the door, set her on her feet, and they tore at their clothes. When they were naked, she flew at him with a desperation to make every second count, to pack in as much living and loving as she could in the remaining time.
“I love you,” he said against her mouth.
“I love you.” She dragged her hands over his body, following up with kisses, touching every inch. “I need you. Now. Can’t wait.”
He lifted her up against the wall. With a single thrust, he entered her. She cried out at the suddenness, the almost painful stretching, but he filled her, leaving no room for doubts or shadows. They were together now, and it was enough. He loved her. She loved him. No promises, except the moment was the promise. Their explosive union felt like a pact. If they couldn’t be together forever in time, they would be together in spirit. Her orgasm struck hard and fast, rolling through with a ferocity that would have knocked her to her knees if he hadn’t been supporting her.
From the living room, they stumbled into the bedroom, fell upon the bed, and made love slowly, gently, another pact, a recommitment to now. Now was for living and loving; regrets could come later.
Afterward, she curled up next to him, her leg thrown across his thigh, her head pillowed on his chest. He pressed a kiss to her damp hair. “You want to take that spin on the scooter around the lake?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather spend the rest of the afternoon doing this.”
“I hoped you’d say that.”
“Maybe tomorrow though?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Your scooter looks like a cross between a moped and a rocket ship,” Kevanne said. “How fast will it go?”
“Faster than any of your automobiles. I haven’t revved it up to full speed because your vehicles on the road present too many obstacles.”
“Doesn’t the scooter fly?”
“It hovers,” he corrected. “Who would you like me to be? The guy from the billboard or someone else?”
“Be yourself,” she said
.
“I want you to sit close to me, and my tail will get in the way.”
“Oh! Well, then the guy from the billboard.” She grinned. “I met him first.”
Concentrating on the image, he willed his body to transform. When the personification completed, he swung his leg over the scooter. “Hop on.”
She slid on behind him, and he activated the propulsion system. When the vehicle lifted about two feet off the ground, he guided it out of the garage.
She squeezed his waist. “Oh, my gosh!”
“Do you want to close the garage door?” he asked.
He chuckled as she clutched him tighter with one hand while reaching into her pocket for the remote control. “You’re not going to fall off,” he said.
“You’re not going to do any loop the loops are you?”
“No. The scooter can’t do that—it can do this though. Hang on—” He raised the front end.
“Cam!” She squealed.
He laughed.
After closing the door, she grabbed him with both hands again. “If I can’t fall off, why did you shift so that I could sit closer to you?”
“So you would sit closer to me.” He adjusted the settings on the scooter.
“You’re such a man!” She paused. “What did you just do?”
“Activated the light refractor, which serves as an invisibility shield,” he said. “Why?”
“Because I felt it—like a change in air pressure.”
“Not only will people not be able to see us, but the barrier provides an additional safety feature. You can’t fall, but if you jumped with the scooter in motion, the barrier would keep you from hitting the ground.”
“I appreciate that,” she said. “Do you know how to get to Lake Argent?”
“I have the coordinates programmed into the machine, but I’d like to show you something else first.”
“What?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“All right,” she agreed. “I trust you.”
Her casually spoken words warmed his heart. She could be his mate, possibly a genmate. What were the odds of that? He’d doubted he’d find a woman who completed him—but never would have guessed he’d have to leave her when he did. He wished he could be honest with her, but too many lives were at stake, including hers if the consortium figured out Earth had harbored fugitives. When he left her, there would never be another female for him. Across time and space, he would remain bonded to her until he died.
The scooter raced down the lane to the forest service road. She squealed with laughter. “This is like flying! Like some weird virtual reality motorcycle ride. Can we go faster?”
He picked it up a bit but then slowed as the scooter swerved into the woods. They flew around trees and up and over fallen logs, going deeper into the forest.
They emerged into a clearing where the Castaway sprawled.
“It looks like a pterodactyl!” Kevanne gasped.
“What’s that?”
“A flying dinosaur.”
“You have dinosaurs?”
“Not anymore. They’re extinct.”
Chameleon switched off the invisibility screen and cut the power. The scooter settled into the grassy field.
The dull-gray ship lay over scorched ground like a huge, lame bird. The photon blast, the jump, and the fiery entry into Earth’s atmosphere had damaged several major systems, but most of the ship remained intact.
The surveillance drone buzzed overhead, recording and sending its feed to the ship’s brain. Tigre and the others would learn he’d brought her here, but they wouldn’t find out until later. Had they been here, they would have vetoed the tour. But he had a strong desire to share his world and experiences—the positive ones anyway—and the ship was all he had left. It had been his private vessel, and he’d named it the Castaway to describe how he’d felt—adrift, separated. He’d never fit in among other Xenos or even his own family. He’d inherited his position on the High Council from his geneticist father, who’d been Xeno to the core. Once he’d believed in Xeno supremacy, but by the time his father had passed, his loyalties had shifted from the consortium to the beings they had fathered.
Everything the council stood for had been anathema, but the position offered the best opportunity to counteract its policies. When politics, rivalries, secrets, and dangers got to be too much to bear, Chameleon would take off on the Castaway to planets afar. The vessel had come to mean escape and freedom. It belonged to all of them now, but, in his heart, it was his, and he wanted to share it with Kevanne.
She bounded off the scooter and ran toward the craft. After reverting to his normal form, he followed.
She circled the vessel, studying everything. “It’s incredible. Can I touch it?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
She flattened her hand against the hull as if she were petting a large animal. “It’s not plastic, is it?”
“The hull is fabricated from an IRC—an ionization resistant compound, formulated to be near impervious to extreme temperatures and radiation such as x-rays, gamma-rays, and UV,” he explained.
“Everything you’d want in a spacecraft,” she quipped.
“Would you like to go inside?”
“Can I?” Her face lit up.
The ship rested in sleep mode, but its computer systems remained alert and operational enough to open the hatch. Stairs lowered.
“Are your friends on board?”
“No. They’ve gone to meet with Mysk. He says he has an idea for fixing the ship faster.” He started up the steps.
She scrambled after him. He showed her the sleeping berths, his cabin, the austere brig—omitting he’d been a temporary guest—the engine room with the pulsator coils, the med bay pods, the galley, and the large and small replicators.
“Let me have your garage door closer,” he said.
She handed it to him. He placed it inside the scan chamber of the small, operational unit. The machine hummed as it analyzed the components. In the next compartment, the machine duplicated and assembled the remote. A conveyor rolled out the original and the copy. “Here you go. Now you have two devices,” he said.
“It copied it exactly!” She peered at it. “Even the manufacturer’s name is worn away like on my original. Are you sure it will work? Remotes have to be programmed.”
He nodded. “The replicator duplicates everything.”
“Thank you!” She kissed him. “I only got the one remote when I bought the place. It’s nice to have a spare. Do you have to have the original object to create something?”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “We have program codes for items we use all the time: clothing, medicines, and ship parts. If we don’t have a code, then we need the object or a good image with a 3-D view. That’s how we replicated Earth-style clothing. We use this unit for small objects.”
He patted the sliding door on the large replicator. “Despite our shields, an energy pulse fried the components of this one. This is what we would have used to repair the ship.”
“That’s a replicator? It’s as big as my woodshed! It looks like a decontamination chamber or something!”
“It has to be large to fabricate big items. Besides making the parts we need, Mysk’s designers and engineers will try to repair this unit.”
“How is it we’re able to help you at all? The scooter, this replicator, the ship are more technologically advanced than anything we have on Earth. It would be like a person who lived three thousand years ago trying to manufacture and program a smart phone.”
Pockets of advanced ingenuity did exist, like Mysk and his people. “Someone from three thousand years ago would have the same intelligence as present-day humans. What he or she would lack would be a body of knowledge to build upon. There is a natural evolution to advancement. Certain systems have to come first. It would be like trying to invent the automobile before the wheel,” he explained.
Having met humans and Kevanne, in particular, their intelligence
had impressed him, and he’d been a Terranophile for a long time, admiring the genetic diversity that had evolved without much scientific tinkering. Recently, they had started to engage in genetic manipulation, and if he could, he would have warned them to proceed with caution. There was a lesson in one of their old legends about letting the genie out of the bottle. Once you let him out, you couldn’t put him back in.
Next, he led her to the bridge. Wide windows spanned a semicircle over the control panels, allowing a view to the outside. There were eight crew stations, including the captain’s position, navigator, and engineering.
“It’s much bigger than I would have expected,” Kevanne said.
“For safety, redundancies are built into the system. The computer flies the ship, but the captain can override the program. Every function can be performed manually or by computer—and from the bridge or from engineering. This vessel has sleeping berths for thirty but carries only six of us, so, as it happens, all of us can convene on the bridge, which makes it convenient.”
She strode to a screen projecting vid of the woods.
“Live feed from a surveillance drone.” His sweeping arm encompassed the wide viewing windows. “We can see in front of us but not behind. Hence, the drone keeps an eye on things.”
“Won’t your friends mind me being on the ship?”
“Probably,” he admitted. “But you’re worth it.” As a member of the High Council, he’d guarded the consortium’s secrets. As a member of the opposition, he’d kept secrets from the consortium. His whole life had been consumed by secret-keeping. When would it end? He hated he couldn’t be more open with his mate. His loyalties were torn in three directions: his mate, the castaways, and the other ’Topian refugees. Responsibilities couldn’t be ignored, but she made him wish he was a different man in a different time. He might not be able to share everything with her, but he could give her a tour of the ship.