“What is he asking?” Ja-rael demanded abruptly.
Elise glanced up at Ja-rael guiltily. She forced a smile. “He wanted to know if you would be willing to go inside where we could negotiate this situation in a civilized manner.”
Ja-rael didn’t look entirely convinced, but he nodded decisively after only a slight hesitation. “I have shown myself willing to negotiate.”
Kenneth, sweating profusely now, his smile looking more pained by the moment, nodded and gestured for them to follow. When he turned back toward the habitat, he raised his voice jovially. “We have a visitor, everyone. Let’s all go inside and make him welcome and offer refreshment.”
For several moments, everyone merely gaped at him blankly. Finally, after glancing anxiously at one another, they began to move toward the habitat slowly.
Elise ground her teeth, tempted to strangle Kenneth. She supposed she could see his point. He wasn’t convinced that there wasn’t a threat and he wanted everyone boarded up inside if there was, but it was easy to see that between Ja-rael himself and Kenneth’s nervous reassurances, everyone was on the verge of panic.
She glanced at Ja-rael worriedly several times. She couldn’t honestly say he was harmless, despite the fact that he hadn’t offered her harm in any way. His species was advanced enough to have space travel, but he also bore the build of a fighter and not just the build for that matter. When he’d felt threatened, he’d reacted instantly, like someone accustomed to reacting to violent aggression.
On the other hand, she had no reason to believe he had any intention of doing anything beyond protecting himself.
On impulse, she slipped her hand into his and laced her fingers through his. He glanced down at her with a mixture of surprise and pleasure, smiling faintly, one brow lifting questioningly.
She smiled back at him and then glanced around surreptitiously at the others to gauge their reaction. They’d noticed the gesture and some of the tension seemed to be dissipating.
It was blessedly cool inside the habitat after the heat of the late afternoon and everyone seemed to relax a good deal more, moving almost gaily toward the dining hall where everyone gathered for meals. Once her eyes had adjusted to the dark interior, Elise saw that those with kitchen duty had already begun preparing for the evening meal. They looked up in surprise and not a little irritation to see everyone filing in early, but apparently decided they had the time wrong, for they began to move more quickly in setting up.
Ja-rael flinched when the evening bell sounded, glancing around sharply. Elise squeezed his hand and released it. “It’s OK. That’s just the dinner bell, calling everyone in to eat.”
He sent her a curious look, but seemed to dismiss it, examining the people and his surroundings with interest. His curiosity prompted Elise to actually look at the habitat for the first time in a very long time. She was both surprised and embarrassed, seeing it now through the eyes of a stranger.
The habitat was painfully utilitarian. It was kept scrupulously clean, but there was nothing even approaching aesthetic beauty about it. She, like everyone else, had been too busy with the business of surviving to take much note of her surroundings, but she supposed, in a sense they all had.
Small wonder everyone was so depressed considering their surroundings. There was no beauty, nothing ‘homey’ about it, nothing even actually ‘personal.’ She had a few personal effects in her quarters, but very little. She doubted anyone else had much more than she did. They hadn’t been allowed to bring more than they could carry in two bags, which had left no room for anything but absolute necessities and not even much of that. She’d brought a few mementos, but she’d almost regretted even the little she had brought. They belonged to another world, another life and only made the exile even harder to bear.
They were never going home again.
Shying away from the pang that thought caused her, Elise focused instead on showing Ja-rael where to find the tray and utensils as the service crew began serving the evening meal. Even that caused her a pang, however. It gave the meal an institutionalized atmosphere. It was practical, the only sensible way to provide for so many, but it still made her feel more like a prisoner than a member of a working society.
Kenneth directed them toward his table, unsettling two from their usual seats to go and search for another place to perch. It was patently obvious, however, that no one was especially anxious to sit with their visitor. Kenneth’s wife, upon discovering that the only free chair left at the table was next to Ja-rael, looked around the room a little helplessly, as if someone would rush over and rescue her from sitting next to the ‘beast’. Elise regretted taking the seat across from him then. She glared at Maude pointedly for several moments. Maude gave her a superior glance down her nose and finally settled, muttering under her breath about savages with loincloths.
“You’re right,” Elise put in. “He should dress for dinner like we all do.”
Maude reddened at the sarcasm. “He might at least have freshened up a bit.”
Elise had to fight the urge to counter the insult with something really nasty. The heat and humidity was awful, but she’d been closer to Ja-rael than any of the others. She knew damned well he didn’t stink. “Sorry. That’s probably me. I missed my tea cup bath.”
Water was rationed. They all did their best to maintain good hygiene, but it was difficult to say the least when they were only allowed two liters of water per day for that purpose. They’d already had one well dry up. For months, until they’d managed to get a new well dug and run the pipes, everyone had had to go down to the stream and lug water back for bathing, cooking, and drinking. No one wanted to experience the misery of doing completely without running water again so they grumbled beneath their breath at the primitive conditions, but they stuck to the rations they were allowed.
Kenneth cleared his throat before Maude could think of a come back, giving both his wife and Elise an admonishing look. Maude was effectively silenced--as usual. Elise merely glared back at him. Finally, realizing he wasn’t going to be able to cow her with a look, he glanced at Ja-rael. “You seem to have a different accent than the other Torrines I’ve spoken to. Not from around here?”
Ja-rael’s face tightened. It would have been obvious to a block of wood that he found it insulting to be thought a Torrine.
She could see it went right over Kenneth’s head.
“I am not Torrine. I am Meeri.”
“Oh? Is that far from here?”
When Ja-rael named the distance, Kenneth’s jaw dropped. “But … but the whole planet isn’t that big! I must be confused about the units of measurement.”
“Meeri is the sister world to Torrine.”
Kenneth’s chair made a screeching noise as he pushed back from the table to stare at Ja-rael. “I beg your pardon? Did you say ‘sister world’?”
“It’s another planet,” Elise said helpfully.
“You mean to say he thinks he’s from another planet?” Kenneth demanded, forgetting to switch back to English.
Ja-rael gave him a look. “I do not think it. I know it.”
Kenneth turned an unbecoming shade of red. “Oh! I beg your pardon! I didn’t realize I’d spoken in Torrine.”
“It makes it so much better for him to think we’re insulting him every time we speak English,” Elise said dryly.
Kenneth ignored the rebuke. “But there isn’t another habitable planet in this system.”
“How would we know that?” Elise demanded. “We were all in the hyber units when the computer made the decision to land.”
He gave her a look as if she were an imbecile. “I’ve been over the logs. This is the first planet our ship came upon that was within the parameters we preset.”
“Which doesn’t rule out that there is another world in this system. Besides, I know he’s telling the truth. I’ve been on his ship. I can’t say that I examined it all that closely, but I know an interplanetary cruiser when I see one.”
Kenneth turn
ed to study Ja-rael as if seeing him for the first time. She knew what was running through his mind. They’d all immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was some sort of primitive--because of his clothing. It was absurd to base an assumption on so little. After all, if anyone had stumbled upon the lot of them, they would probably have thought the same thing.
Actually, upon consideration, she wasn’t so sure they could even claim to be members of a technologically advanced civilization anymore. They had a hell of a time even fixing the toilets in this heap.
“Hey! You think it might be that moon we only see occasionally?” Sawyers, who was sitting just beyond Kenneth, exclaimed on sudden insight. “I thought it was a strange phenomenon.”
Elise could see the gears turning in Kenneth’s brain and she wasn’t sure she liked the turn things had taken. She hated Torrine as badly as the next person, but there was no way they were ever going to get their ship off the ground again, and who was to say Meeri was any better anyway? Besides, they’d already put a lot of time and effort into carving out a place for themselves here. She wasn’t so sure anyone had the energy to start over from scratch somewhere else. She was pretty damned sure she didn’t.
When he spoke, she saw she’d read him precisely.
“This Meeri--is it like this world?”
Ja-rael’s expression went perfectly blank. He glanced at Elise. “Why?”
Kenneth forced a laugh. “Just curious. I figured we should get to know a little something about each others’ culture … and so forth.”
Elise was embarrassed. One moment everyone was acting as if something nasty had fallen into their swimming pool, and the next they were suggesting going with the ‘nasty’ to join him in his pool. Ja-rael knew it, too. It was just as obvious that he wasn’t enchanted with the idea now that he’d gotten the chance to get to know her ‘tribe’ a little better.
Ja-rael frowned thoughtfully. “You said that you were not the sire of Leez .”
Kenneth forced another laugh. “The customs. You see, that’s just what I was talking about. We do things a little differently. From what you said, I gather your own customs on Meeri must be very similar to those practiced by the Torrine.”
Ja-rael studied the cooling food on his plate, but Elise doubted he had much interest in it. He’d eaten very little--probably because it was the next thing to inedible--his manners, however, whatever his customs, were far better than those practiced by most of the people she came in daily contact with.
She had the feeling that he was considering his next move, partly because he’d already displayed that he could be extraordinarily single minded, and partly because he was obviously uncomfortable about Kenneth’s interest in his home world.
“Why do you think it is strange that I come from a world other than this one when Leez has told me that you have traveled here from a world far away?”
Kenneth turned red, opened and closed his mouth several times and finally managed a smile that looked more like a grimace. “It’s just that we hadn’t met anyone before except the Torrine people. And then, too, from what I was able to discern from the ship’s onboard computers, this was determined to be the only habitable planet in this system.”
“This is truth, then? Your people traveled here from another galaxy?”
Kenneth shrugged. “Sadly, yes. Mankind’s first, and unfortunately, last, venture beyond their solar system. We were fortunate we were ready to take the next step. We had colonies spread throughout the system, but we hadn’t harnessed the speed we needed to go beyond--not within a reasonable time span. When our mother world became dangerously destabilized, we had spread out as far as we could reach. The meteor pretty well finished it off, but the worst of it was that, when Earth was destroyed, it destabilized the entire system. Those who could evacuated into the great unknown, hopeful our ships would carry us to other worlds where we could live … and we are grateful every day that we found this one and the Torrines have been kind enough to allow us to stay.”
Ja-rael turned and looked directly at Elise. His expression was carefully neutral, but she knew he realized that what she’d told him was the truth. Oddly enough, the realization saddened her. He’d thought that she was beautiful. He’s said she took his breath away. No one, in her entire life, had ever told her she was beautiful.
But he’d thought so because he’d thought she was the same species as he was.
She couldn’t begin to imagine how he felt now, or what was going through his mind.
She should’ve just been relieved. At least now he understood why she wouldn’t let him claim her as his mate and cart her off to another world.
“This habitat,” Kenneth said rather loudly, and expansively, “is a perfect representation of our technology at its finest. You wouldn’t know it to look at it, I know, but this is actually the ship that brought us here--and it’s truly an engineering marvel, designed for intergalactic travel, and once the perfect place is located, the ship converts with very little effort into a habitat.
“Of course, it did take a bit more effort than we’d expected. Engineers, you know--always assuming everyone else can figure out what they had in mind-- and the directions were confusing as hell--but it’s sound, secure, and quite comfortable.”
Ja-rael didn’t even bother to glance around. His gaze remained on her and Elise felt something stir to life.
Desire.
Dread.
She clenched her hands in her lap, wondering if anyone around her had noticed, feeling dread keep pace with growing desire, trying without much success to fight off the lethargy that was stealing through her.
She was going to embarrass herself and everyone else if she didn’t do something to distract Ja-rael.
It was as she was looking around a little frantically for inspiration that she happened to notice that Maude was looking Ja-rael over with interest. She’d ceased to eat and was merely toying with her fork. Her eyes were slightly unfocused.
Elise blinked. She knew that glazed look.
Even as it dawned upon her that Ja-rael’s pheromones weren’t just bombarding her, but Maude, as well, Maude dropped her fork and began to walk her fingers across the table toward Ja-rael’s arm.
Glancing around, Elise saw that every female at every table around them had begun to fan themselves and look around, as if searching for a target for the desire they, too, were feeling. A mixture of possessiveness and anxiety filtered through her own desire along with the sudden realization that half the women in the habitat were going to be curled around Ja-rael in moments, fighting over who was going to mount him first if she didn’t do something quickly.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed at that thought, jumping to her feet and knocking Ja-rael’s beverage glass over, sending the chilled water spilling into his lap. He gasped, leaping to his feet so quickly his chair overturned.
“What the hell?” Kenneth exclaimed, breaking off his monologue.
“I’ll take care of it!” Elise said a little breathlessly, scurrying quickly around the table. Grasping Ja-rael’s wrist, she tugged him behind her, heading for the nearest exit with no clear idea of what she intended beyond removing Ja-rael from the mob of women that was likely to assault him at any moment.
Chapter Nine
Either the cold water dampened Ja-rael’s ardor, or panic supplanted Elise’s. She managed to make it out of the dining hall without incident. By the time she’d reached the corridor, however, she couldn’t think far beyond the need that was burning inside of her. She felt dizzy, dehydrated, shaky and weak kneed, almost ill. Without a word, she turned down the corridor, still dragging Ja-rael behind her, and headed for her quarters--which thankfully were only one level up.
She had to key the code three times before she managed to get it right. Tugging Ja-rael inside, she slammed the door and began rubbing against him, moaning in pleasure to at last feel his flesh against her own.
“Now?” Ja-rael asked, his voice gravelly with desire.
The soun
d of his desire made her belly clench. “Yes. Right now,” Elise demanded breathlessly, trying to pull the robe off, remove his loincloth, and rub herself against him all at the same time.
He caught her shoulders, pushing her a little away. “We should not. We have settled nothing.”
“We’ll talk later,” Elise murmured, straining toward him and licking a path along his chest to his neck. A dizzying rush went through her as she tasted him on her tongue, felt his taste and scent flow through her veins like a euphoria drug.
A shudder went through him. He shook his head, obviously trying to tamp his own desire. “You are not a maned lioness.”
“I’ll be one if you want me to,” Elise muttered distractedly. “Just give it to me. I need you inside of me.”
His fingers tightened on her shoulders. He shook her slightly. “You can not be what you are not.”
Elise looked up at him at that, trying to figure out why he wasn’t cooperating. Dimly, she realized that Ja-rael was striving for a rational conversation-- which she should want to take part in. She felt, however, like someone who’s had just enough alcohol not to give a damn about anything beyond her focus at the moment--which was stuffing his cock inside of her as quickly as she could get her hands on it. “Not now,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can’t think when you do this to me. Fuck me now. We’ll talk later.”
Something flickered in Ja-rael’s eyes, something she couldn’t begin to read in her current state. “I have done nothing beyond desire you.”
“Yes,” Elise gasped. “That’s it. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It sets me on fire. I feel it the moment you do. Smell it. Taste it.”
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