He came to stand before me, looking down.
“I have not,” he said quietly. “But others have tried. No pregnancies have taken.”
Relief was like a cooling rainstorm on a dry, summer day. “Really?”
“I think I see some jealousy in your eyes,” he teased.
“Maybe,” I said, ducking my head.
“About what you said.” He began, sitting down on the coffee table in front of me. “About me caring for you.”
“I know you don’t. I know you’re only here for the baby,” I said quickly.
Long, pale fingers covered mine, linking with my hand resting in my lap. I studied them, the way they curled around mine gently. I felt the radiant heat his skin gave off, and I experienced the usual surge of energy I always did when he touched me.
“I’m not only here for the baby,” he spoke.
I stopped breathing, still staring at our hands.
“At first, yes. But now… now I’m here for you too.”
I lifted my chin. His amethyst gaze was sincere when he searched my face.
“The way you responded when I touched you. The way your emotion is so raw that it radiates out of your skin and I can feel it in the air. You make me feel things too. The way your eyes tell me exactly what you’re thinking and the way you make me want things…” His voice trailed off.
“What things?” I whispered. Butterflies took flight beneath my ribcage and my heart rate increased with his words.
“I never realized how singular we were, how isolated Sapiens made themselves. Even in a room full of others, we were still always alone. After being with you just a few times and then going back up in my hovercraft alone… it was so silent. I missed you. Once a person begins to feel something, it’s hard to go back to nothing.”
Tarek always had a way of getting beneath my skin, from that first moment he pulled me into his ship. Even scared and bewildered, I’d been drawn to him. Even when he was cold and distant, I was drawn to him. Even before I’d seen his face, I was drawn to him.
He wasn’t being cold and distant now. He was saying things that literally made my heart bleed.
I wasn’t just drawn to him now.
I was irrevocably in love with him.
“In my world, people don’t care, people don’t belong to other people,” he said. “But you have me,” he whispered. “I belong to you.”
Automatically, I pressed a hand against my chest and took a deep breath. So much emotion, so much overwhelming feeling, overcame me it felt as if my heart might burst right out of me. If I hadn’t just admitted to myself that I loved him, it would be painfully obvious in this moment.
“Tarek,” I whispered, tears welling in my eyes.
He frowned, pulling his hand away to brush at the wetness trailing down my cheeks. “I upset you.”
“No,” I said. “You made me very happy.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“Because you filled me up with emotion and it’s leaking out,” I said, turning my cheek into his palm when he stroked my face. “And because pregnant women cry a lot,” I added.
“I want to stay here,” he said instantly. “With you. You need me and I’m good for the baby.”
I smiled. “You think so?”
He nodded seriously. “You’ve been nothing but drained. I’ve noticed the nights I’ve sat in your room, watching you sleep, you are more rested the next day. And after you slept in my arms last night, you…”
“I felt better than I have in weeks,” I answered for him. I glanced up suddenly. “You sit in my room at night?” How had I not known?
“Not always. But sometimes after I leave the bananas, I watch you. Some days you seemed wearier than others. It… it worried me.”
“How did you know I would like the bananas?” I asked abruptly.
“All women on my planet eat them.” He shrugged.
Alrighty, then. Next question. “So you think your presence gives me energy?” I said, trying to understand.
He nodded. “I think the baby drains you. Sapiens have higher energy levels and higher metabolisms than humans. It’s been a concern of mine that the baby would take too much from you. It seems when I am around, he is able to somehow pull from my energy as well, thus making it easier to carry him.”
“You didn’t think I needed to know that?” I said, annoyed.
He shrugged. “It didn’t seem important.”
“If it’s about me or this baby, it’s important and you need to tell me.”
He nodded.
“Can I ask you something else?” I asked, tilting my head to the side.
“Of course.”
“Why haven’t any other pregnancies with humans taken?” It made me nervous. What if there was something incompatible between me and Tarek? What if this baby wouldn’t make it? Nerves scattered through me, making my foot tap insistently on the floor.
Tarek reached out and placed a steadying hand on my knee, effectively stopping my rapid movement. His fingers caressed the area and the warmth of his hand seeped through the leggings and into my skin.
“I’m not sure. But the more I’m around you, the more I watch humans, I think it might have something to do with emotion.”
“How in the world can emotion have any impact on carrying a child?”
“You’ve taught me that emotion is very strong. It can tether you to a person.”
My heart tripped a little as he spoke because it was the exact same as I felt about him. Tethered.
“Our bond strengthens our baby. And in a sense, your body knew what was happening even before your mind did,” he explained, releasing my knee and standing up to pace the room.
I watched him, entranced by the graceful beauty of the way he moved.
“Do you remember when you asked me not to take away your memory?” he said, looking over his shoulder at me.
I nodded. “I thought you were going to strip it away.”
“I was. It’s common practice of the Sapiens. Humans aren’t the most accepting of others.”
“By others you mean an alien race who beams us up into ships to experiment on us?” I pointed out, trying to make him see why humans might not be so tolerant.
His teeth flashed with his easy smile. Have I mentioned how beautiful his smile was? It literally lit up his face and made his eyes even more incredible. “When you put it that way…” he said.
I laughed.
“But you wanted to remember,” he said, giving me a searching look.
“You’re too amazing to want to forget,” I replied softly.
The look he gave me melted my heart just a little. Tarek paced to the window and looked out into the night sky. “It was wrong. Taking women, checking their health, their ability to carry a child. Then implanting them with Sapien sperm once we knew they were healthy. We took their memory of it. The mind-body connection was disrupted,” he said. It was almost like he was talking to himself now, working it out in his own mind. Even still, I found what he was saying fascinating.
“Their bodies were different. Changed by pregnancy, but they didn’t understand. Their mind didn’t even go to that possibility, didn’t allow for it. And so their bodies rejected what was happening. They rejected the child.”
“You really think that’s what happened?” I asked.
He seemed to remember I was there and turned to look at me. “I wouldn’t say it’s out of the realm of possibility.”
He studied me quietly for a moment. “Even if the pregnancy took, it’s very possible the woman just didn’t have the energy levels to maintain and give to a Sapien child.”
“But that’s not going to happen to me.” I worried, jumping up from the couch and holding my stomach. “This baby will be okay.”
I felt him watching me. I didn’t like the lack of expression in his eyes. “Tarek?” I questioned.
He closed the distance between us in the passing of a single second. “You love this baby, don’t you?”
“Of course!” I said as if it were obvious. “I’m his mother. All mothers love their children.”
“Not all mothers,” he said softly, gently brushing his fingertips down my cheek.
“Your mother?” I asked, sorrow draping over me.
“I don’t remember my mother. Most Sapiens are not raised by the woman who gave birth to them.”
I drew back and met his eyes. “That’s terrible. Did you ever think that taking a baby away from a mother time and again might be the reason the women on your planet aren’t getting pregnant? I don’t care how you are raised; that has to be emotionally damaging.”
He tilted his head to the side, considering my words.
“I haven’t even had this baby yet.” I continued. “Technically, I’m not a mother yet, but I already love him so much. I can’t imagine someone trying to take him away from me.”
A look drifted behind Tarek’s eyes and then a frown weighed down the corners of his mouth.
The words he spoke to me not so very long ago chose that moment to sneak in and totally chase away the ease Tarek was making me feel.
I will be back in seven months to get the child.
I backed away from him, all the beautiful words he’d just filled my head and my heart with evaporating like smoke. “You’re going to take this baby from me, aren’t you?”
His body language stiffened like he’d been caught with an ugly secret.
I gasped. “Everything you just said… you only said to make me compliant. You don’t want me to fight you.”
The backs of my legs came up against the couch and I began to skirt around it.
He flashed forward, taking my shoulders in his hands and staring down at me intently. “Everything I just said to you is the truth. I care about you.”
“And when the baby is born?” I asked. My heart felt like it was shattering in a million pieces. “Will you still care about me then?”
His fingers tightened around me. I could see his mind spinning.
He was not going to take this baby. I would never allow it.
“Sophie…” He began, and my heart pounded.
This was it. Whatever he was going to say, the words he chose to speak next would have so much power over my future that my skin actually broke out in a fine sheen of sweat. Maybe he did care about me. Maybe he was only here for the sake of his child. From this point on, he was either with me—with us—or against us.
His eyes glittered like polished amethyst, and I found myself wanting to make a wish on those silver specs in their depths, wanting desperately to wish he would love me, that he would understand how much I wanted him.
But there weren’t really stars in his eyes.
Wishing something wouldn’t make it true.
He opened his mouth to deliver the words that would determine my next moves in life.
Bright neon light flooded the living room. It was so intense I actually flinched away, shutting my eyes against it.
“What is that?” I asked.
Tarek pulled me into his chest, hiding my eyes from the intrusive light.
“They’re here,” he said, his voice seeming far away.
I glanced up. He was looking over his shoulder at the window where the light poured in.
“Who?”
“The Sapiens.”
Fear clawed the back of my throat. Intuition told me not all Sapiens were like Tarek. I gripped the front of his T-shirt, crushing the cotton between my fingers.
“Tarek?”
He palmed the back of my head and looked down at me, his eyes softening. “They just want to talk to me.”
I shook my head. “Don’t go.”
He smiled softly. “It’s okay. I’ll be back.”
“What if you aren’t?” Suddenly, all the bad things that could happen to me when he wasn’t here far outweighed the things that could happen when he was here. It seemed that intuition also told me Tarek wouldn’t hurt me.
He cupped my face; the gesture was so intimate and gentle that my chest actually tightened, even amongst this moment of severe anxiety. “Remember what I told you.” He reminded me softly. “I belong to you.”
He pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead and then looked into me with his gem-colored eyes one last time.
And then he was gone.
Just like that.
The neon light disappeared with him.
I was alone.
The baby fluttered in my belly, reminding me I wasn’t as alone as I thought. Even though I was still confused, even though I didn’t get to hear whatever Tarek was going to say, even though I wanted to break down right there and cry… I wouldn’t.
I was going to be strong for me. For this baby. For whatever the hell was going to happen next.
There was a muffled knock on the door, and I spun around to look at it.
“Soph?” Matt said. “It’s me.”
After everything, I completely forgot he was coming by. Now, not only did I have to worry about Tarek and if he was coming back and what would happen with him if he did, but I also had to essentially break up with a guy that I wasn’t really dating and had no idea the otherworldly crap he’d indirectly become involved in.
I glanced out the darkened window one last time, seeing the stars so distant in the sky, and wondered if Tarek was up there among them.
I glanced at the hoodie I’d brought out to cover up my pregnancy. Then I turned away and straightened my shoulders.
Screw that.
I wasn’t hiding anymore.
Matt knocked a little louder this time. “Sophie?”
“Coming!”
The End… for now.
Look for the conclusion to Distant Desires July 2014.
ABOUT CAMBRIA HEBERT
Cambria Hebert is the author of the young adult paranormal Heven and Hell series, the new adult Death Escorts series, and the new adult Take it Off series. She loves a caramel latte, hates math, and is afraid of chickens (yes, chickens). She went to college for a bachelor’s degree, couldn’t pick a major, and ended up with a degree in cosmetology. So rest assured her characters will always have good hair. She currently lives in North Carolina with her husband and children (both human and furry), where she is plotting her next book. You can find out more about Cambria and her work by visiting http://www.cambriahebert.com.
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