by Tasha Black
“Wow,” he agreed, kissing the constellation of freckles on her nose.
She turned over onto her side to face him, sending her breasts bouncing against his chest in a very pleasant way.
But when she slid her hand down his body, he caught her by the wrist.
“No,” he told her.
She looked up at him in surprise.
“It’s not that I don’t want it,” he told her.
“Clearly,” she said, raising an eyebrow at the shape of him, stark and stiff against her through the towel.
“You know what happens if I click with you, right?” he asked.
“But you don’t do that unless you’re mating for life,” she said, looking a little worried.
“That’s right,” he told her. “I would not want to do that unless we were ready to take that step. But my heart has already chosen you as my mate. So if I make love with you I’m not sure if I can stop it from happening.”
“We don’t have to make love,” she suggested, taking his hand and rubbing his index finger across her plush lips.
He felt it in his cock and closed his eyes against the pleasure.
“No,” he told her. “But I don’t want to risk doing anything you’re not ready for.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” she said. But he could feel her relaxing into the idea.
“May I hold you while we sleep?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. And in spite of all that had just passed between them, she sounded a little embarrassed.
He lay on his back and opened his arms to her.
Cecily scooted close and rested her head on his chest.
“What did you mean when you said your heart had already chosen me?” she asked after a moment. “Does that mean that all of this is inevitable? That I don’t have a choice?”
“Of course you have a choice,” he told her. “I have to choose you as my mate. Then you have to choose to accept me as yours. After that, we could click. But only if you accept me. If you asked me to leave today, I would never love another, but I would be able to go. If we clicked, I’m not sure what would happen if you didn’t want me around anymore.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Are you sorry that I chose you?” he asked, trying not to wrap up his hopes too much in her answer.
“No,” she said. “I- I really care about you, Solo. I’ve tried hard not to, but I can’t seem to help it.”
He laughed.
“I guess that’s not a very romantic thing to say,” she said, laughing a little.
“It’s honest, and that’s one of the reasons I love you,” he told her, kissing the top of her head. “I’m glad you care about me.”
“Me too,” she said.
She was quiet a long time.
He stroked her back with his fingers.
When he was sure she must be asleep he felt her lips move against his chest.
“Let’s try, Solo,” she whispered.
“Try what?” he asked.
“Let’s see how the relationship thing goes,” she said. “No mating for life and no promises. Just us, seeing what it’s like to be together.”
“I’d like that,” he told her, tears prickling his eyes.
“Mmm,” was her only response.
Her breathing went soft and slow and he knew she had gone to sleep.
But Solo stayed awake for a long time, joy bubbling in his chest at the possibilities tomorrow offered.
12
Cecily
Cecily awoke feeling rested and content.
She opened her eyes to find herself in the motel cottage. The soft pink light of dawn filtered through the curtains.
Solo was heading into the bathroom, his towel over his shoulder, a change of clothes in his hand.
Cecily held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t notice she was awake as she checked out his bare assets.
Holy crap.
He really was an amazing specimen of a man.
Her thoughts went back to last night, and the feel of his hands and mouth all over her body.
Solo closed the bathroom door quietly behind him as Cecily rolled over and buried her face in her pillow to hide her enormous smile.
This was happening. And she wasn’t scared. She was actually pretty jazzed.
She hopped up and retrieved her pajamas, grinning to herself as she thought of how he’d slipped her clothes off of her like a magician.
For a guy who had never slept with a woman before, Solo had some slick moves. She wondered just how much pornography they had shown him back at the lab.
Thinking about the lab made her think about clicking. She wondered if it was true that sex with her would automatically make him click permanently into his human form and bond them together forever.
While she was nowhere near ready to think about that kind of commitment, she felt pretty crummy about leaving him high and dry last night.
She wondered if there might be a way to give him satisfaction without risking it.
The door to the bathroom swung open unexpectedly snapping her out of her pleasant thoughts. She hadn’t even heard the water turn off.
Solo came out, resplendent in a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans.
“Good morning,” she said.
He stared at her from across the room, his eyes smoldering just like last night.
Cecily felt her body respond instantly.
If they weren’t careful, they could get stuck in this loop endlessly.
A knock at the door broke the spell.
“You guys up?” Kate’s voice came through the door. “We’re going to try and hit the road early.”
“Yes, we’re up,” Cecily called back. “Give us ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes and counting,” Kate called back.
“I have to get dressed,” Cecily said.
“You have to get dressed,” Solo agreed sadly.
He stepped out of the way for her to use the bathroom.
She powered through the world’s quickest shower, pulled on her clothes and dashed out.
“We still have one minute,” Solo said, giving her a half-smile that made her toes curl.
She went to him, going up on her toes and twining her arms around his neck.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her like he was going to war.
There was another knock on the door.
“Kate sent me,” Kirk called to them.
“Here we come,” Cecily said.
Solo let her go and opened the door as Cecily scooped the last of her belongings into her bag.
“Good morning, brother,” Kirk said politely. “Did you sleep well?”
Cecily turned around just in time to see Kirk’s expression when he noticed there was only one bed.
“I slept very well,” Cecily said, sweeping past the two men and out into the parking area, allowing Solo a minute to catch up with his brother.
Just ahead of her, Buck was carrying his things and Bea’s in one arm, and supporting his mate around the waist with the other.
Bea wasn’t a morning person. She leaned against Buck, her usually beautiful face pinched against the soft light of dawn.
“Good morning, Cecily,” Buck said, grinning.
“Good morning,” she replied.
They arrived at the RV at the same time. Kate was stacking water bottles into the cooler.
“Hey sleepyhead,” she called to Bea.
“Mmrmmph,” Bea replied, climbing into one of the double seats in the back.
Buck climbed in after her.
“You and Solo are on first shift,” Kate said, handing Cecily the keys.
“Great,” Cecily said. “Did you guys eat already?”
“Already on top of that,” Kate said, reaching into her backpack and fishing out a box of granola bars. “We’ll eat these on the road and then stop for a good lunch. Sound good?”
“Perfect,” Cecily said.
She was kind of dying to tell Kate what was going on
with Solo, but he and Kirk were already approaching.
“Here are your rations,” Kate said, handing over two granola bars and climbing into the RV.
Kirk climbed in after her.
Cecily turned to Solo and held out her hand with the granola bars in it.
“Your breakfast,” she said.
He grabbed the keys from her other hand instead.
“You eat, I’ll drive,” he said.
“You don’t know how to drive,” she said, wondering if he was joking.
“You’re kidding right?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Of course I’m not kidding,” she said. “Driving is hard. I’ll teach you sometime. But not today.”
“I’ve designed, built and flown spacecraft that could travel light-years across the universe while sustaining human life. You really think I can’t operate a combustion engine with a wheel?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Kate admitted. “But there are rules to driving.”
“This thing?” He held out a dog-eared driver’s manual. “I memorized it.”
“Time to go, guys,” Kate yelled from the back.
“Don’t you want to eat your breakfast?” Solo asked.
Cecily’s stomach grumbled right on cue.
“Fine,” she said. “But only for half an hour. When we get closer to the city I’m taking over.”
“Sure,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat.
13
Solo
Solo glanced over at Cecily.
She was asleep, her feet tucked up under her on the passenger seat.
Ahead of them the road spread out like a ribbon between an endless corridor of trees.
A quick peek in the rear view mirror told him that the others weren’t noticing the detour he was taking.
Bea slept with her head in Buck’s lap as he paged through a graphic novel.
Kate and Kirk were playing an intense game of chess at the little table.
Solo had awoken before Cecily and stolen a look at her cell phone. As he had hoped, her mom’s contact was still in her address book.
From there it was only a matter of adjusting the GPS directions once she fell asleep in the RV.
Now they were headed to Greenfield, population 11,239, instead of Chicago.
Though he was sure Cecily would be surprised at first, he hoped she would wind up feeling pleased at the sight of the place where she had grown up. Maybe she still had friends or family there, even though her mother was gone. Her mother had mentioned an uncle in the vision, and he knew he’d heard Cecily talk about an aunt.
With any luck, they would find her father, too.
The thought of reuniting Cecily with the one missing puzzle piece in her life made him feel warm and fuzzy all over.
He tried to picture what her father might look like, but he kept envisioning the man from the lemonade commercials he’d seen when studying human films on Aerie.
Instead, he focused his mind on the road ahead.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, the woods gave way to fields, and the fields to farmland. Cecily slept on beside him.
“Where are we going, brother?” Kirk asked quietly from the back.
Solo stole another glance in the rear view mirror.
Kate was listening to headphones and Buck had curled up around Bea and was napping with her.
“I thought we’d make a detour to Cecily’s hometown,” Solo replied.
“You’re looking for her father,” Kirk mused.
Solo nodded.
“So she wants to find him. That’s a good thing,” Kirk said.
“No,” Solo said. “She doesn’t know.”
Kirk blew air out between his lips.
“You think it’s a bad idea?” Solo asked.
“I guess we’ll find out when she wakes up,” Kirk said.
Solo watched a sign approach.
Greenfield 2 miles
As if on cue, Cecily began to stir in the seat beside him.
Solo fixed his eyes on the road, resolved. If she got mad at him that was okay. He was going to fill the hole in her heart. And then there would be a place for him in it.
14
Cecily
Cecily awoke when the rumble of the RV stopped. She squinted against the light.
Something was off.
She looked around.
Everyone in the RV was looking back at her.
“Hey guys,” she said, mystified.
“Hello,” Solo said, smiling at her. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Um, okay.” Cecily tried to imagine what that could be.
After last night, the only surprises she could think of were definitely not the kind to be shared in front of her friends.
The view out the window hit her.
She was home.
Not the studio in Queens - her old home, Greenfield.
“Why are we here?” she asked, blinking the sleep out of her eyes.
“I wanted to see the place where you grew up,” Solo said. “I thought you might like to visit as well.”
“I told you I didn’t want to come back here,” Cecily said.
She began to get a panicky feeling. Tears prickled her eyes.
“We were passing right by anyway, and we left so early. I thought we could afford a detour for a few hours,” Solo said.
“Let’s stretch our legs,” Kate said softly to the others in the back.
Cecily bit her lip and gazed out the window as her friends exited the RV.
Solo had pulled the RV in beside one of the town parks. Cecily remembered rollerblading around it when she was a kid, with the family dog on a leash. She had come home with so many skinned knees. Birds sang in the maples that lined the perimeter of the park, just as they always had.
“You waited until I was asleep and then you did something I asked you not to do,” she said as calmly as she could.
“I thought that you might really want to do this,” Solo said. “I thought that you might want to explore your past.”
“There’s nothing to explore in my past,” Cecily said bitterly. “It’s all gone.”
She turned away from him to gather her thoughts. She would go retrieve the others and they could get back on the road and try to put this all behind them, in every sense.
“Cecily, there’s something I need to tell you,” Solo said earnestly.
His calm voice was even deeper than usual.
She turned back to him, curious in spite of her anger.
“My brothers and I have certain… gifts,” he said carefully.
“Sure you do,” Cecily said, rolling her eyes. “Look, you’re good in bed, but that doesn’t mean you can play games with me.”
“Oh,” he laughed nervously. “That’s not what I meant. But thank you.”
“Go on,” she said.
“These gifts are more like… well, I guess you would call them powers,” he said. “Things no human can do. We think that they may have manifested as a vestige of our personal strengths on Aerie.”
“Super powers?” Cecily asked incredulously.
“Well, some are more super than others,” Solo said. “But yes, enhanced abilities.”
“So what’s yours?” Cecily asked.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “But I guess I would describe it as reading object memories.”
“What are object memories?” Cecily asked her anger almost forgotten in the face of this new discovery.
“Well, for example, I grabbed your backpack the other day instead of Kirk’s and I touched the keychain,” Solo said. “And I saw… I saw your mother give you the bracelet.”
Cecily stared at him. He appeared to be telling the truth.
“Wait, no, I told you about the bracelet,” she said.
“You were crying in your bed the night before Father’s Day breakfast,” Solo said softly, looking down at his hands. “And your mother told you that your uncle would come to the breakfast with you. And
you asked her about your father and she wouldn’t answer. Instead she gave you the bracelet.”
Cecily froze.
He had described the scene exactly, with details she certainly hadn’t shared with him, or anyone for that matter.
“Dr. Bhimani said we should not tell anyone about our gifts until we were mated,” Solo said sadly. “But I don’t feel I have a choice. You have a right to know.”
“Thank you,” Cecily said automatically. She was still processing what he had said.
“And I’m sorry that touching your things can be an invasion of your privacy,” Solo continued.
“That’s why you didn’t want to hold my stuff,” she said, putting it together.
“Most times I can control my gift,” Solo told her “But when it comes to the people I care about, sometimes the object memories just happen, whether I want them to or not.”
She nodded, trying to imagine what it would be like to see memories by touching things.
“At any rate, I saw that you want to know more about your father,” Solo said. “And with my gift, I thought if we came here, maybe I could help you find what you want.”
Cecily looked out at the park again.
A little girl and her brother were trying to fly a kite, leaves dancing on the tree branches above them as their dad looked on from one of the benches.
She had longed to see her own dad on that bench once upon a time. Would she still want to see him now?
The feelings bubbled up in her chest again, as strong as they had ever been. Anger, loss, and a burning curiosity. The only way to stop the volcano of emotion was to not think about it.
“If you knew about him, maybe you would feel better,” Solo said softly.
She wondered if that could be true.
“Okay,” she sighed. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?” Solo asked.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she said. “Let’s look for him. Let’s try to figure this out.”
“Really?” Solo asked, his eyes dancing.
“Really,” she replied. “But we’ve only got a day, so let’s not get too optimistic.”
“We’d better get started,” he pointed out.
“Not yet,” Cecily said. “There’s something you have to understand.”