by Tamara Hogan
First Rafe, then Gabe. It was enough to give her a complex.
Damn it, why had Gabe kept something so important from her? She needed to see him. Yell at him. Hug him. Both, simultaneously. The stool screeched against the floor as she shoved to her feet.
Andi cocked her head and gestured to Lorin’s gym bag. “Is that your phone again?”
“Probably.” Lorin reached into the bag, extracted the annoying device, and quickly looked at the display. A text from Nathan lit the small screen: Dude. Where are you? Check in. She scrolled. “Hmm.” Four text messages and a video from Nathan. A text and a voice mail from Mike, and a voice mail from Paige, all within the past two hours. “I’d better get these.”
“A fate worse than death,” Andi deadpanned as she stood and hugged her good-bye. “Go give him hell,” she whispered.
Andi knew her too well. “Count on it.”
As Lorin left, she saw Andi slam what was left of her smoothie, toss her shoulders back, and then approach Gabe’s guarded older brother—undoubtedly to dish out a little hell of her own.
***
Gabe took a deep breath and held it. Don’t drop it, don’t drop it, don’t drop it… Moving slowly and carefully, he transferred the minute metallic scraping he’d finally taken to the SamplPak and quickly sealed it.
Then he released his breath.
Finally. After an hour of dithering, he’d finally—
The lab door crashed open behind him. “Gabe! You—”
He jerked, rapping his head on the corner of the monitor suspended over the table on a boom. The scraping tool dropped to the table with a clatter as he closed his eyes and clutched the top of his head.
Lorin dropped a gym bag and hurried to his side. “Are you okay? Let me see.” She pulled his head down to examine his crown, pushing his nose right into her chest.
The initial, white-hot pain was already subsiding. The tips of her fingers stroking against his nerve-rich skull felt like heaven. Trying not to rest his cheek against her breast, he inhaled rosemary mint shampoo, floor wax, clean sweat, and… wolf.
“I don’t see any blood.”
He backed away several crucial feet, straightening his glasses. “I’m okay, you just startled me.”
Now that he could see her, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, highlighting her killer cheekbones and jawline. The clingy red workout clothes exposed yards of bare arms and legs, and hugged every dangerous curve. Dark patches of sweat on the midriff-baring top drew his attention back to her cleavage. She had an angry-looking floor burn on her stomach.
She’d walked through the halls of Sebastiani Labs looking like… that? The outfit had all the subtlety of a matador waving a red flag at a bull. He pointed to her stomach. “What happened?”
“Dove for a ball,” she said absently. “Never mind that. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He nodded.
“How is it going?” She indicated the table he’d been working at when she arrived, where the box glowed under bright lights.
That color. How to describe it? It was silver, fluid-looking, like the mercury in an old-time thermometer, with the slightest hint of green. Where had the metal been mined? It was unlike any alloy he’d seen. If this was Noah Pritchard’s fabled command box, its composition might give them their first real data about the incubus homeworld. Then again, Pritchard could just as easily have obtained it at the intergalactic equivalent of Walmart.
He’d spent the hours since Lorin’s departure testing the metal’s optical properties, its ability to conduct heat and electricity, its possible malleability and ductility—but the test he’d been about to perform just as she’d walked in wasn’t one that anyone would find in a scientific journal or text. Now that he’d taken the scraping, exposing fresh metallic molecules, the clock was ticking. He couldn’t lose this opportunity. “One more test today, and I have to do it now. Can you step back a little? I need to clear my…” He indicated his nose.
“Sorry. I imagine I’m pretty ripe. I didn’t shower before I left the health club.” As Lorin walked towards the door she’d just come in through, he stared at the muscles and curves shifting under the clingy fabric. “Hurry, though,” she said, stopping at the door and turning so she could watch. “I have news from up north.”
Gabe fought his attention away from her ass. “Is everyone okay?”
“Yeah.” A slight furrow creased her brow. “I think.” She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Hurry. Do what you need to do, then I’ll give you an update.”
He walked to the worktable and pushed the monitor up and out of his way. Placing his gloved fingertip at the edge of the scraping, he took off his glasses, setting them down next to the box where he would be able to easily find them.
As the world blurred away, his sense of smell shoved to the forefront. Quickly, before he picked up Lorin’s scent again, he lowered his head to the area of the box where he’d taken the scraping and inhaled deeply.
Nothing. How odd. No telltale sharpness, no metallic sting. Lowering his head, he touched the tip of his tongue to the minute scar. Still nothing. What the hell…? He’d never encountered a metal that didn’t have either a scent or a taste.
He drew his tongue the full length of the scraping.
Behind him, Lorin gasped. The pace of her breathing had picked up, soft huffs of excitement he’d tried to erase from his memory but failed. He slowly inhaled. No more tests were possible, because the light salt of her arousal crowded out everything else.
He registered movement—a shift of shadows, a change in the quality of the light. As she approached, aspects of her appearance gradually came into sharper focus but were still covered by a milky film: her tanned arms, legs, and stomach, darker than the snow-white wall behind her. Her breasts and lower torso were a dangerous bright red.
His nose tingled. His teeth itched. His wolf was dangerously close to the surface.
“Gabe.” Lorin leaned her face closer to his, her features blurry but familiar. She thrummed her thumbs up his cheekbones, stroking over his temples where his glasses typically rested. He slid his hands around her bare torso, resting them at the small of her back, and leaned into her touch with a rumble of pleasure. The light turned to shadow as she brought their lips together.
He sank gratefully into the kiss, which tasted, delightfully, of oranges. What delusional thought process had ever made him believe he could walk away from her? From this? Who had he been kidding? If Lorin wanted sex, he’d give it to her—as much and as often as she could handle—and deal with the emotional fallout later. He must be at least competent at meeting her needs if she was coming back for more. Gabe lifted a hand and tugged on her ponytail, baring her neck to his mouth. He’d sleep with her as long as he could keep her interest, and be damn thankful for—
A throat cleared theatrically from the door.
“Mom. Hi.”
Lorin stepped away from Gabe—but not before giving his lower lip a final, teasing nip that made him feel… claimed somehow.
If he wasn’t absolutely mortified, he’d sit up and howl. Caught necking at work by Lorin’s mother. The Valkyrie First. His—he gulped—boss. As Lorin greeted her mother, Gabe tugged his lab coat over his groin.
“Hello, Gabriel.” As Alka kissed him on both cheeks, Gabe tried not to wrinkle his nose. Something she wore smelled like bad taxidermy. “Where are your glasses, dear?”
Suddenly his glasses were in his hand. “Thanks,” he murmured to Lorin. He slipped them on, resting a hand on the table as his eyes fought to adjust.
“Did you get Nathan’s messages?” Alka asked. “He called me when he couldn’t reach either of you.”
Lorin mouthed a curse. “Yes, I picked them up after Andi and I finished playing racquetball. I was just about to update Gabe.”
Racquetball with Andi Woolf. He’d been so addled earlier that he’d completely missed the fact that the wolf he’d smelled on Lorin was female.
He had it bad.
“What’s happening?” Now that he had his glasses on, Gabe saw the origin of the gamy smell surrounding Alka. The belt slung around her ample hips was made of bleached bones and an animal hide of some type. Yak? Antelope? With Alka, one never knew.
“A new find.” Lorin jacked her phone into her workstation, and with a couple of clicks, she played the short video clip Nathan had sent. His cheeks heated as they listened. He glanced at Alka and cleared his throat. “Did Nathan say—”
“—dildo? Yes, dear,” Alka said matter-of-factly.
Gabe leaned closer to the monitor. There, half excavated, lying not two feet from where Lorin had found the command box, was a… capsule?—whose color was a visual match for the metal of the box glowing on his table. And yes, it looked very much like a sex toy. A giant’s sex toy.
“Obviously Nathan thinks it’s cross-contamination,” Lorin said, laughing.
Gabe nodded. He’d worked with Alka and Lorin long enough to have heard them talk about how, even at ancient archaeological sites, it wasn’t at all unusual to find current-era items such as cigarette butts or plastic bottle caps.
“Mike sent pictures of it in situ,” Lorin said, scrolling through a sequence of still photos that exposed more of the artifact with each click. “We need to update Elliott and decide what to do next.”
“We need to get it down here,” Gabe stated. “Fast.”
“Yeah,” Lorin agreed. “It’ll be safer down here. But I don’t want to alarm the crew.”
Alka glanced at her watch. “You could drive up to Isabella tonight, Lorin, see how things are going at the dig, and be back here with the find by tomorrow noon, easy.” She rested a hand on his shoulder. “I know you want to get your hands on it as soon as possible, Gabe.”
I want my hands on your daughter even more.
Lorin glanced at him, then at her mother. “Okay.”
Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Lorin sounded as disappointed as he felt. He’d spent too many days out of her bed. He could manage one more night.
Couldn’t he?
Chapter 12
“Shh. Be quiet,” Paige whispered.
Beddoe nodded as Paige tugged him along the shadowy side of the building. He’d met her at Tubby’s again, and after drinking raspberry cosmos together—tasty beverage, that; he’d have to offer them on board the TonTon—they’d walked, their arms wrapped around each other to fight off the chill, down the same tree-lined dirt road they’d sauntered down the last time they’d met.
But this time they walked the road to its end, and he hadn’t had to thrall her to do it. Shivering as they’d left the warm, smelly bar, Paige said she knew a private place nearby. Beddoe never imagined that he might be thankful for the bone-chilling temperature, but it provided the perfect excuse to access one of their buildings.
A man didn’t accomplish what he had without learning to trust his instincts. Something about the buildings down the road made his skin prickle. The Arkapaedis’s beacon—perhaps the Ark itself—was down here somewhere. Though currently quiet, the beacon could reactivate at any time.
He had to find it before it did.
Paige stopped at a darkened door. Despite the rough looking nature of the building—made of the stalks of the very trees lining the road!—he was glad there was shelter in his future. Here in the open, it was dark, dank, and colder than the rings of the Outer Pteralides. Though pleasure was definitely on the agenda, so was reconnaissance. He’d prefer to be warm and comfortable for both activities.
“Are we hiding?” he murmured against the delicate shell of her ear as he assessed his surroundings. The building he’d so carefully examined the last time he was here—the strapping woman’s residence—was dark, with soft textile coverings blocking the windows, but the bigger building across the open clearing blazed with lights. Through the window, he saw a group of people huddled around a glowing screen. On the screen, a handsome man and his fur-covered copilot navigated a beat-up ship through a field of stars.
If they knew about space travel, why did they use such ancient technology?
“Yes, we’re definitely hiding,” Paige whispered, tilting her head to the side so he had better access to her neck.
He licked his way down her tender vein.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
Beddoe glanced at the other building again. Though muffled sound escaped, the windows were closed to the chilly night air. No one would hear them. He had plenty of time.
“No guests allowed.” Paige’s low, smoky laugh wrapped itself around his groin like a hand.
He tugged the tiny dangle of her ear adornment into his mouth, then worried it between his teeth. As he suckled on it, a near-silent moan escaped her throat.
His incisors tingled in his mouth.
“Come on.” Sidling away from his touch, she opened the door and disappeared inside.
He followed her into the building, quickly closing the door behind them. Though it wasn’t much warmer than it was outside, at least they had shelter from the wind.
A single dim light. A wall of shelves, some empty and some not. A long table bisected the room, its top littered with simple hinged comps, imaging equipment, papers and writing implements, shallow trays, picks, and brushes. Though nothing gritted under his feet, the room smelled distinctly of soil.
What was this place?
The question evaporated as Paige slipped her chilly hand into his. Lifting their joined hands to his lips, he ran his tongue over her knuckles. Paige sagged back against the table as he nibbled his way up to the delicate veins in her wrist. So very tiny. He could crush her using only a fraction of his physical strength.
“Robert,” she whispered.
Paige’s voice soothed him like a balm and maddened him at the same time—he, who’d slept with some of the most beautiful creatures in the galaxy. What was it about her? Was it her fumbling, eager hands? The way she touched him with more enthusiasm than skill? How her expression shifted from supplication to dark dawning delight as he drove her to the heights of pleasure? In his world, sex was an exchange of services, but Paige seemed to want nothing from him but pleasure.
It was a novel experience.
Lifting her slight body up onto the table, Beddoe brought his lips to hers, sinking into her tempting mouth. She was so small, so delicate, but her taste was temptation incarnate. When she craned her neck, exposing that delicious, pulsing vein, his teeth shoved down in his mouth. “Will anyone interrupt us?” he asked, scraping his incisor against her neck.
“No,” Paige gasped as she twined her legs around his hips. She lay back on the rough table, pulling his upper body down against hers with surprising strength. “Lorin and Gabe are gone, and everyone else is watching a movie.” Their eyes met in the dim light. “Kiss me, Robert.”
Her demand inflamed him. His incisors throbbed, and his staff surged to life under his rough pants. “Witch,” he muttered against her petal-soft lips, flicking his tongue against the tender upper bow. He pressed her arms over her head, held her wrists in his hands, and simply stared. Her extraordinary hair spilled over the table in a nimbus of light. Tightening her legs around his hips, she writhed, making a soft mewing sound in the back of her throat—as if being denied his lips, his touch, caused her physical pain.
He wanted to pierce, to plunge, to lose himself in the tight clasp of her body. To possess her with both teeth and staff—a pleasure he had not yet permitted himself. Beddoe raked his gaze over the bounty of her stretched-out frame. Her outer garments covered most of her arteries, but even in the dim light, he could see the delicate capillaries tracing her temples, and the tender veins branching her wrists. Blood pulsed in her neck, and a vulnerable slice of bare belly was exposed by her writhing.
After a tongue-tangling kiss, he tugged at the waistband of her shirt, lifting it up her torso, baring her skin to the air. Her body arched as he kissed each inch of exposed skin. Her breath came in shallow pants the c
loser he got to her breasts. He jerked the bundle of fabric up and inside out—covering her head, trapping her arms, and exposing her torso. He examined every pale, unblemished inch, not touching her, until she groaned under the layers of fabric, pushing her luscious breasts toward his mouth.
“Please,” she moaned from under the layers of fabric.
“Please what?” Her tiny pink nipples were hard, begging for his mouth. He lowered his head, his hot breath puffing against the tender curve of her left breast. She shivered violently, writhing against the constraints of her clothing. Under the layers, her head tossed back and forth. Her hips rolled against his staff, her torso arching even higher off the rough table, demanding a harder touch.
He gave the nipple a tiny lick, and then backed away. “Tell me what you want.”
“Robert,” she groaned.
Pulling back slightly, Beddoe waited. The lovers who came after him would thank him for teaching her to accept, and ask for, what her body wanted—but in the meantime, he’d train her well, and enjoy the fruits of his labors. Perhaps their liaison could continue after he claimed this territory.
With a groan, Paige shifted her weight and pushed the nipple into his mouth with unerring instinct. “Suck me!” she begged.
“Gladly,” he murmured, finally latching on to her pink, crinkled skin, the delicious nipple. He tested its hardness with his tongue, suckling strongly to reward her.
“Ah!” Her entire torso lifted off the table in response. Tools clanked as she thumped down roughly. Her wrist hit the rim of one of the shallow pans littering the table. Reaching over to push the pan out of range, he saw the familiar shape, the familiar glint of metal.
A cryotube? Here?
His thoughts raced. It was unmistakably a cryotube—an ancient one, given the rudimentary touch clasp on the blocky outcropping at the base. Such devices had long been standard equipment on ships making long-haul voyages. He rarely thought about his own seed and skin cells nestled in stasis alongside those of his command crew in a similar unit on board the TonTon, but in the event the ship went down and rescue wasn’t possible, the ’tube’s contents gave survivors a fighting chance to repopulate, to avoid extinction.