Her husband remained still as a statue, refusing to look at her. At last she opened the door, steam clouding before her eyes. "Talk to me."
His reply came as a barely audible whisper. "I nearly killed you."
"No, no, you didn't," she disagreed, and slowly he turned to face her.
"What I am almost killed you," he continued thickly. "And I can't risk that, not ever again. Don't ask me to either."
"This isn't just your decision, Jared."
"Don't you understand?" he shouted, rounding on her. In the wetness of the shower, she thought she saw tears in his eyes. "I cannot touch you in my natural state. I have said it from the beginning. I cannot! The power is too much; it would destroy you."
"So, then you don't touch me," she said. "Duh, Jared, this isn't that hard. We set rules, limits."
"Kelsey," he ground out. "At the springs? I couldn't stop myself. I had to have you; it was all I could do to keep away. I fought it off, but I came so close to falling upon you. And if I had?" He made a choking sob and averted his face, burying it in his hands.
"Shh, Jared." She stepped into the shower, still wearing her nightgown. The water instantly plastered it against her chest and thighs. She took him into her arms and shushed him, cupping his face and forcing him to see her. "Look at me. I'm okay," she reassured him. "I'm right here, and I'm fine."
"You have no idea, Kelsey," he groaned. "The thing I most want, even now?" He glanced at her, his expression guilty and pained. "The thing that is driving me toward the edge of madness? Is just to touch you with my other self. To take my fire and lick it all across your skin and consume you with my blazing touch. I want to pull you inside that inferno, that part of me that … is all wildness and fury." He gave her a horrified glance, but one filled with hunger, even now. "It's terrible and it's true. I still want it, even now, almost to the point of irrationality. The drive is blinding me—enough that I don't trust myself with you, not like this. That's why I didn't come back."
"You don't know that it's not safe." She kissed his muddied cheek, tasting blood there on the skin where he'd managed to scrape it somehow. She lapped at the wound with her tongue, wanting to soothe him.
"Yes, we do know, Kelsey!" he thundered, jerking apart from her. He slipped, almost losing his footing, but caught his hand on the smooth tile of the shower. "Don't ever invite me again like that! Never again!"
She followed him to the edge of the shower, intent. "Why not, my lord?"
His chest rose and fell with pained panting sounds. His eyes flared bright. His jaw flexed and tightened. And Kelsey smiled; his season had only been beginning, and now he was back with her, where he belonged. So long as they stood together in this, they would be okay.
"Stay away," he ground out, trying to back up, but she caressed his cheeks with her open palms. She pushed him backward, against the slick-tiled wall of the shower; she had him exactly where she wanted him.
"Jareshk," she purred in his ear, "your season is upon you, my lord."
Throwing his head back, he released a keening, guttural sound and spun her hard against the shower wall, pinning her from behind. Forming his body along hers, he held her there. "You wish to tease?" he rumbled in her ear. "You wish to tempt?"
"Take me," she urged, splaying her hands to catch herself against the slippery surface of the shower.
"You have no idea what I am," he threatened, his voice rumbling with barely restrained energy and lust.
"I do know you."
He jerked her soaked nightgown up about her waist. Spreading her thighs with his hand, he parted her, driving up into her harshly. The sheer force of his roughness caused her to gasp aloud; faint pain and ecstasy blended in that moment.
"I told you to stay away," he cautioned, his voice reaching an unrecognizable timbre.
"Why … would I … do that?" She laughed, her voice catching. He drove up into her again, one arm braced around her shoulder, the other grasping at her hip. It hurt a little, but it felt wondrously pleasurable, too. Divine. Pure. Everything she'd ever wanted with Jared, all these years, seemed to boil down to this very moment in which their physical bodies joined in a union of flesh and sweat and slickness.
He no longer spoke, making only untamed, groaning sounds against her ear. Nothing else: no Refarian words, no English. Just the unadulterated sounds of a fevered Refarian taking his mate in their shower, the most natural thing in the universe. And then he gentled, slowing his pace, restraining his urgent thrusting. He paused, slipping one palm over her breast, stroking her firm nipple beneath his rough fingertips. She could feel how hard he wrestled to hold back, when what he wanted most was to take her, hard and fast and raw.
"I'm yours, Jared." She panted, leaning her forehead against the tile of the shower. "Don't hold back. Please, I'm yours."
With a low rumble he pinned her firmly against the wall and teased her into a quick, feisty rhythm. They moved as one, aligned like the core of the very universe, perfectly in tune. Back and forth, in and out, they found that white-hot center of their bond. Felt it unfurl like time itself.
But he couldn't hold back for long. Not in the deepest throes of his mating season. Once again he drove into her hard, over and over, until after a few demanding moments he shot into her, a warm feeling that she'd not experienced with him before. She'd only read about it in the Refarian mating books. It signified a D'Aravnian male's highest fertility, his seed—often warm inside of her—had achieved a nearly volcanic quality. For a long moment after her own orgasm had speared through her body, she staggered against the shower wall, feeling dizzy and weak from the sharp, burning essence he'd left inside her. He braced himself there, pressing wet kisses all over her face, her eyes, her neck.
"I'm sorry," he kept mumbling, sounding embarrassed. "So sorry. Sorry, Kelse."
"Why are you apologizing?" she managed to pant, still trying to breathe from what he'd done to her.
"I hurt you."
"It's okay."
He drew in a shuddering breath. "Not smart, this."
"It's okay, Jared."
He wrapped both strong arms around her from behind, cradling her against his muscular torso; she felt safer than she ever had with him. She wished she could translate that feeling to him somehow, but knew that she couldn't. He tried whispering in her ear, "I—I—" He wanted to tell her something, but then just shook his head, kissing her shoulders, licking at them with his tongue.
"Tell me," she urged.
"It was all I could do not to Change, Kelsey," he admitted in a whisper. "Promise me. If this happens again, just … leave me. If I Change, leave."
Although he said he could kill her, the one thing she most wished for in their lovemaking was for him. All of him: his fiery, gorgeous self that she loved with every bit of her heart and soul.
"Promise me!" he begged.
"I promise," she affirmed, nodding, and he buried himself against her, the two of them slipping to the floor, the stream of water falling onto their glistening bodies.
"Good." He groaned, rolling onto his back. His eyes drifted shut, the water pelting his jaw, washing away the last remnants of mud on his face. "This is good, human wife," he managed, then passed out completely.
For a long time—until the water ran cool and then cold—she sat on the tiled floor of the shower, his head cradled in her lap, just watching him. Afterward, long after she'd turned off the water and sat there in her clinging, wet gown, he remained there, unconscious and unaware that he slept, and still she watched him. She watched and she wondered: Did the fire building inside her abdomen mean what she hoped?
Had they managed to create a baby tonight? She pressed her eyes shut and prayed that her instincts were correct: that a new D'Aravni had come into the universe.
"Hope, where the hell are you?"
She adjusted the cell phone against her ear; they had only a few moments if she didn't want Chris and the entire FBI to get a fix on her position. Scott had given her an outside limit of three minut
es and she didn't want to even touch that fault line before hanging up.
"I'm fine, totally fine," she reassured her brother, blinking her eyes against the muted glow of the television.
"Yeah? Well, just so you know, Mom and Dad thought you died in that explosion."
"Shut up." She leaned back into the sofa pillows behind her. She felt terribly guilty, even as she knew her twin was lying, totally talking out of his ass.
After a lifetime of closeness, he knew how to work her, and yeah, she felt bad thinking about her family, but at the same time she had serious doubts that any of them had ever really believed she was dead.
"Sometimes it's like you—" His voice cut out momentarily as the reception wavered. "—anything happened to you. God, Hope, what were you even thinking?"
Adjusting the phone against her shoulder, she sank deeper into the sofa. She was calling from an alcove in the main cabin that the aliens had dubbed their "media center." It was a small, cave-like room containing a massive flat-screen TV with surround sound, and—rock her world—an Xbox. Apparently even these aliens had twenty-first-century entertainment needs, technologically retroactive as the equipment might be for their intergalactic crew.
"You don't know anything, Chris," she grumbled, watching the CNN crawler on the muted television. "That's the problem: You always think you know it all, when you don't know crap."
"Tell me what I'm missing." He sounded so sincere, utterly sincere, and it only made her feel worse.
"I've gotta go soon." The clock was ticking; it would be only a few more moments before he could get a fix on her position.
"Not without telling me what's going on."
"I'm fine, Chris, just fine. Stop worrying so much. I'm happy. I'm well; nothing's going wrong."
"So far." He didn't exactly sound convinced.
"I'm on the right side of things for once!"
"For once?" he scoffed. "Geez, Hope, why does everything always have to be so totally extreme for you to feel like you're alive?"
"You know what? You suck. You totally suck, and I'm hanging up—"
"Why? 'Cause I called it?"
"Because you never get me, and you always think you do." She rose to her feet, pacing in circles about the small media room. "Stop doing that. Stop being so sure you know exactly what's going on in my head when you're freaking clueless. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, I actually know what I'm doing? That I'm with these people for a reason?"
"You're way too easily led."
"Shut up!" She held the phone a few inches away from her mouth. "God, you're too easily annoying. I'm hanging up now. I'm alive, okay? I'm alive and fine and happy. For once. I guess that's more than you can stand."
There was a crackling silence, and she drew the phone back against her ear.
"Sis, I believe in what you're doing … at least, I think so. I saw what happened at Warren. Just be careful. Watch yourself. Okay? Keep up with your meds and be smart."
"I'm a freaking genius."
His quiet laughter echoed over the line. "Way, way too smart to have gotten into such a mess."
She shut her eyes. "You don't know anything," she repeated one more time.
"I know you're out to prove something, just like always."
"Shut up! Shut up, shut up!"she cried, and hit the end button with a furious stab. He was undoubtedly doing everything in his power to lock on her position, and she'd already promised Scott that she wouldn't talk long enough for that. Scott had been trusting and fair enough to give over her cell phone; the least she could do was keep her call short.
Shoving the phone into her back pocket, she collapsed onto the sofa, considering exactly what lengths Chris might go to in order to shield her. For the first time in days she wondered if coming here had been a terrible idea … especially given her twin's protective streak. He never could let anything go; she hoped that she—and her foray into the aliens' compound—might somehow be the exception to her brother's rule.
Jake Tierny studied the darkened sky and knew that the time to make his move would soon be upon him. He would go directly to his king; that was, if he could enter the compound fully undetected. Only one man present might pinpoint his identity, the only man who could track a fellow Antousian for several miles, going off scent alone: Lieutenant Scott Dillon.
Don't let me see the bastard, Jake prayed. Gods, not him.
If he could make it past Dillon—around the man's perimeter and sensory skills—then he might have a decent chance of getting Jared to listen. On the other hand, if his path and Scott's collided, this entire mission would likely become dust. Hell, he would likely become dust … and if he failed tonight, there would be no one else to stop Marco McKinley before he could accomplish whatever his objective had been in coming back to this time.
All these years, so many battles, and it had boiled down to this. One moment, one choice, one destiny. Was it really possible that he'd lost so much over the past years? Glancing through the forest, he marveled at the pristine world around him. No war yet. No real war, anyway. No ruin and loss. It was all here—including her. His one true love. She was here even now—she had to be. And if not here in the compound, here somewhere on Earth, not lost to him forever, as she was back in his own time.
Jake battled a spasm of pain, the kind he'd long ago learned to push down rather than allow himself to feel. But being here in her world was almost more than he could bear, so strong was the temptation to find her, and to save her this time.
I have a mission, nothing else, he thought darkly. It's not about us anymore. It hasn't been, not for a long fucking time.
Checking the weapon at his hip once again, he stood from his crouching position and began to advance carefully upon the compound.
"What did your brother have to say?" Scott reclined on her bunk, pretty much in the same position she'd left him in earlier when she'd gone to call Chris. She settled beside him, not wanting to relate any of the highly irritating conversation with her twin. "He knows I'm okay; that's all that matters."
"Are you sure?" came Scott's throaty, seductive voice out of the darkness.
"I've got to hit the medical complex again. I need to pick up some insulin." She swung her legs onto the side of her bed, having had enough of men trying to control her for one day. "And you should go there, too—you have no business being out so soon."
Lying on his back, he grumbled, "I'm not staying in that place another minute."
"How will you get better?" She glanced over her shoulder.
"You seem like a perfectly appropriate nurse to me."
"Was that your big plan? To come lie around in my bed for as long as the recovery process takes?" Her face burned suddenly just at the thought of how he might define "recovery." Sexual healing, indeed.
"You've pretty much got the picture."
She forced a serious expression onto her face. "Well, I'm not playing along. You were critically injured, S'Skautsa," she told him in his own language. "You know where you belong. Besides, I have to find a real place for myself here in this world of yours. Not just hole up in my room with you."
"I've already spoken to my commander," he told her quietly. "We have a position for you, translating our intercepts of your own people."
She jerked her head in surprise. The Refarians were taping humans? In what capacity? The role reversal was mindboggling. All this time she'd been analyzing the FBI's intercepts of these aliens, when, in fact, the aliens had tapes of their own.
"What kind of intercepts?" She struggled to sound calm. "It seems that you all speak English quite fluently."
"Well, it's not translating, per se, but analyzing. Interpreting subtext. Helping us to understand the score between our people and yours."
She smiled; he obviously cared for her a great deal if he'd gone to bat for her already. And he truly "got" her too: She could never be part of his world and simply remain idle. She needed a purpose, a driving ambition, no matter where she lived or made her home.
"Sounds intriguing," she said. "We can talk about it once you go back to the hospital."
"Won't happen," he told her simply. "I have things to do, responsibilities. I need to get on my feet now, not later."
His pigheadedness angered her, but she sensed it wasn't wise to argue. She rose cautiously to her feet, unfolding the cane she'd been keeping in her back pocket. "I understand that feeling." She understood because she never wanted her own limitations to slow her down. "Listen, I have a question for you," she broached, thinking of the nurse's earlier suggestion. "What is genetic therapy, at least what is it here, among your people? How could it help me?"
"Forget it." She heard him jerk upward in bed and make an abrupt inhalation at the pain such quick movement caused. "It's not for you."
"Why not?" His angry, dismissive reaction puzzled her.
"Because it's a lousy idea, that's why," he blurted. "It could hurt you … or worse."
She turned to face him. "Then why did they suggest it?"
"Genetic therapy is a great idea, Hope. A perfect fucking idea that could heal you of your diabetes completely. Except for the side effects." He reached out to her, touching her shoulder. "And there are always unintended side effects."
She shot a scowl in his direction. "I don't see why you're so angry."
"You wouldn't."
She found his aggressive reaction perplexing, but it also pissed her off. No man would tell her what she could and couldn't do—not even up here, in her own personal Twilight Zone. It was enough that her twin always tried to smother her. "Look." She gave a shrug and launched herself off the bed. "I'll talk to you later." He yelled after her, but she plunged ahead into the darkness, working her cane to feel the way. "Later, Dillon. Okay? Just later."
Even when she left the room, she could still hear him trying to call her back, but it was one thing for him to be so stubborn about his own recovery, and quite another to try to block her own potential healing after a near-lifetime of disease and limitation. Too many men in her life were always trying to prevent her from making her own decisions; she'd be damned if Scott Dillon would be yet another in that long line.
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