by Mallory Rush
"She is the purpose," he said evenly against the tide of protectiveness rising. "At least the beginning of it."
A long pause. "She is the greatest danger to you."
Urich couldn't deny it. Eva had caused him to compromise principles and loyalties that had been unswerving. Treason. He hadn't committed it yet, but she was capable of driving him to it.
"I'm aware of this," he confessed.
"Then you're aware that mighty nations have fallen because a male allowed a female to rob him of reason and fell prey to hers." Urich's nod earned a grave warning. "You will be tempted, as I'm certain you have been already."
"Yes. She does tempt me. Amazingly so."
Raven's concern gave way to alarm. "You haven't—"
"No." But how he had wanted to. Even standing here with his life in the balance, he still did.
Of all the battles he had fought, Urich knew they would be as nothing against the war of his taking what was not his to possess. But like the limiting perimeters of the chamber he would soon trespass, he could push the envelope of their bonding.
It wouldn't be enough, not nearly. Yet it would be more than most humans could possibly conceive.
* * *
Black rising above white, the piano keys Eva stroked seemed to echo a discordant war of melancholy and hope.
Moonlight Sonata flowed from her fingers and filled her ears with the roar of the past. She was there again, wearing her Sunday best clothes at a recital where the sound of a brittle silence surrounded her as she froze.
She forced herself to play now, pretending she was twelve once more. But this time she was confident and every note sang without thought or uncertain pause. She saw her parents eyes shine with pride instead of lower in mortification. She heard thunderous applause instead of the crash of a piano bench knocked over in her haste to escape, her humiliation complete.
Pouncing upon the keys, Eva declared herself a prisoner no longer to that horrible moment of defeat. She finished with a flourish, pushed back the bench and rose with aplomb. A neat bow to the eradicated past and then to the piano.
"So there," she said to them both, then stuck out her tongue. It was juvenile and she should feel silly, but Eva decided she felt good. Damn good.
Now all she had to do was clean out the rest of the garbage she didn't want to deal with and she'd feel great. Gr-r-reat! Leaving the room, she prowled the house that felt closer to a cage.
In the kitchen she sought comfort with ice cream. A bite and back it went. Next she ran half a tub of water before deciding a hot soak held no appeal. Neither did another evening spent in the study she holed up in to avoid the bedroom.
Confronting it with the same determination she had the piano, Eva glared at the bed.
"How could you do this to me, John?" Tearing off the sheets that smelled of sweat and sex and another woman's perfume, flinging them at him, he merely shrugged.
"Hey, you're the one who'd rather be married to a Disneyland dream than a man," he shot back nastily. "You've got no right to blame me for taking from someone else what you don't have to give." Pulling a suitcase from under the bed, he took it to the dresser and dumped in the contents from his drawer. "We're over. You can have the house and our lawyers can squabble over the rest."
He was leaving, really leaving. Making good on his threat to go shack up with the bitch she'd ordered out of their bed, out of their house—theirs dammit! Eight years of marriage down the drain, just like that? Her fault, according to John. And maybe some of it was. A marriage counselor, that's what they needed, not a divorce.
"John, no. Give us another chance and I'll—"
"Quit the project? Turn your study into a nursery and trade that goddamn computer in for a baby?"
"Let's be reasonable about this. It doesn't have to be all or nothing—I'd never ask that of you. We can reach a compromise, can't we? I'll cut back on my hours so we can—"
"Spend more time in bed? Yeah, sounds like fun to me."
"I've never turned you away." She opened her arms in a plea to be held. If he wanted sex, she'd give it to him as she always did. That was the trade-off for the affection she really wanted and how she needed a hug, a single word of love right now. Then they could talk and try to pull what was left of their marriage together.
"No, you've never turned me away," he conceded en route to the door. Turning there, bag in hand while her own dropped to her sides, he said coldly, "but a corpse would be easier to turn on than you."
"How can you be so cruel?" And how could she debase herself this way, trying to pull him to the bed that he wanted no more to do with than the wife he spurned with a shake of his head.
"Cruel? I'm being honest. You're stiff as a block of ice and just about as warm as frostbite..."
Eva chaffed her arms, remembering. Their confrontation had gone from mean to hateful. A memory infinitely more horrible than her recital fiasco, it refused to release its tainted hold.
And yet last night, she had come so very close to breaking the chains which bound her with Urich. She wanted to tell him about the self-doubts she harbored, those suffocating failures she was desperate to escape.
Urich would listen. He would understand. He would help her find the key to the lock again, be the path to her freedom from what was and claim what she wanted to be.
He would pressure her for his own release.
As if she had it to give. Psychokinesis, indeed—she had about as much of that as telepathy and no way could she turn into some kind of conjurer who could keep a holograph around with the powers of a mind that Einstein would envy.
Then there was the belief thing. If it truly was the key, as Urich insisted, then his existence would be wholly dependent on her. Should her belief give way to reason, wouldn't he then disappear? And what if he existed only in her mind's eye? Virtually real to her but invisible to everyone else.
That'd land her in the nut ward real quick. Eva rubbed at her temples and groaned. What was she going to do? She was half crazed as it was to see him, touch him, even if only in the realm of her mind.
The yearning in her was a restless stalker. Eva threw open the balcony doors and stepped from the bedroom's cloying past and onto a small terrace.
The future beckoned her to reach for a dream. Dreams, so like the stars she raised her arms to now. They glittered their enticing allure, looking small enough to hold in her palm and press to her heart if she could only reach high enough to claim one.
Or take to the sky, flying on fairy dust wings.
Urich had made her believe in fairy dust again, the beauty of the mysterious, the power of faith in things unseen.
I'm always with you Eva.
She couldn't see him but... yes. Yes. She felt his presence around and in her, imparting that indescribable mingling of serenity and breath-stealing sensation.
"I know you're out there," she whispered. "Out there somewhere, waiting for me."
Let me see, Eva. Let me see your breasts.
They were the words he had said the night before and whether they were memory's seductive refrain or spoken in the immediate now, Eva didn't know.
Nor did she care as she bared her breasts to the stars and lifted them in offering to a dream lover who guided her hands. Her hands. But his touch.
Only his touch could make her skin feel so pulsingly alive. Only Urich could transform her breasts into two full moons filled with the feverish heat of a dozen suns.
"Kiss them," she whispered. And then she moaned, her breasts surging like novas soaring toward their peak and seizing up her womb, the whole of her body a cusp of gathering momentum. Higher, brighter, faster until her senses were a vortex of colliding forces.
The sound of whimpering, the taste of salt tears, smell of sex, so raw it was clean. She felt like an animal, fertile, in heat. A vision suddenly:
Running, running, heart beating in time to her racing feet. A predator. Overtaking her, taking her down. Urich. On her hands and knees; he was mounting her. Teeth ba
red, sinking into her nape—
Her legs buckled. A sharp cry splintered from her throat and she clawed at the wood, her nails scraping the floor.
What was happening to her? She was jerking, jerking all over, her body was out of control, contracting then expanding until even her veins threatened to explode.
"I'm scared," she sobbed. "I'm scared."
Let go, Eva. You need this and nothing bad will happen. Trust me. Trust yourself and let... go.
God, she was afraid. Terrified of this thing consuming her; this thing that was the core of her most painful failure. But to bow to fear would be failure abetting failure. She had to be brave. She had to believe. She had to trust Urich, but most of all herself.
Eva let go.
Her thighs parted wide, knees digging into the wood, palms slapping down to support her bucking hips. Breasts swaying like goblets filled with cream, spilled from nipples lightly raking the floor. Feel of a finger swirling into wetness, her wetness, then sliding all the way to her mouth.
Her mouth opened and her head reared back. A savage purr rippled in waves of primitive pleasure. And demand.
"Fill me. Fill me."
She was suddenly encased by a trembling darkness, a force that wrapped around her tight as a cocoon. A sharp sensation, like a bite, clamped her nape and she was... paralyzed. Restrained from all movement, she was a vessel that could only accept what her body could scarce contain as she was filled.
In no human way. She was being taken with a completion denied to man, fondled and kissed from the inside out until she was splitting apart at the seams.
And then they broke, shattered with a stunning fury that flung her like dust to the wind and scattered her fragments, blinding bright, a nova burning itself out.
Eva collapsed. She laid there, there on the terrace, listening to herself mewl while she was held prisoner to a ravaging ecstasy.
Like a storm spending itself, it receded to a languorous trickle. Departing. Silence. Only the thrum of her heart, the sound of her panting could Eva hear as she instinctively reached for the lover who had filled her with an intimacy so profound, she wanted to weep.
And then she did. Her fingers clutched air and she was left with nothing. Nothing but herself.
Herself was not the same. Eva searched for the difference and found a sense of unity within. An alignment of all that composed her. She felt... complete.
"Urich," she whispered. "Urich."
A breeze brushed over her and it felt like fingertips skating her spine, a licking kiss to the small of her back.
And then all was still. The air. The night. Her.
Hand over hand on the iron railing, Eva pulled herself up. What was in her seeped between her thighs. They were shaking as she rubbed the back of her neck, slightly numb but prickling with the return of sensation.
Her balance returning as well, her gaze lifted to the stars. "I know you're out there. Somewhere. Waiting for me."
What are you waiting for?
The question was her own. It joined a multitude of others she was too exhausted to contemplate. For now, it was easier to accept that something extraordinary had happened: She had let go. She had found freedom by relinquishing control. Her fear had been conquered; failure had fallen to courage.
Sheath to sword.
Her body felt like a sheath indeed, plundered by steel swathed in velvet. Muscles twitching, she swiped up her discarded sweater and returned to the bedroom.
It looked different. As different as the tenderness of her breasts, the heavy ache between her thighs. She'd never experienced those things in this room. Neither had she stripped with sensual abandon in front of the vanity mirror which had always seemed to magnify her lack of it.
Vanity. It was hers as she took in the fine arch of her neck, the beauty of her breasts, waist slim and hips gently flaring then sloping to the thighs which she parted.
She stroked all that she saw, caressed each blessing of nature, delighting in even her flaws. This was her body to love and accept.
To share.
It was then that Eva realized she hadn't been able to share what she did not possess.
She possessed herself now. Finger to cleft, she claimed the sweet knowledge that she was a sexual being. Released from the restraints that had bound her, she watched her hand delve for the proof of her climax.
It had been her first. Before tonight, even alone it had seemed the harder she tried to let go, the more frantic she was to keep control. On the balcony she had found freedom from what she had clung to, her fear of failure ensuring that she would not succeed.
A failure no more, she reveled in that shattering, exquisite release as she lifted its evidence to the light.
Eva blinked. Then blinked again. And again. Her fingers glowed, shimmered like auroras gracing the night.
Still disbelieving, she switched off the lamp.
"Good Lord." Waving her hand back and forth, she could only liken what she saw to sparklers sweeping the dark.
Heart pounding, breath nonexistent, she put a finger to her tongue. It tasted... faintly sweet. Nutty, like... amaretto? An Amaretto fizzy.
Snap, crackle, pop. It sounded like she had a bowl of Rice Crispies in her mouth!
Eva hit the lights and threw on her clothes at break-neck speed. By some miracle she reached her destination without getting a ticket. She didn't waste time selecting a setting or activating a hologram that wasn't, but marched directly to the chamber.
"Urich!" No answer. "Dammit, Urich, I know you can hear me. I want you to beam your buns down here now. Now!"
"I only answer to 'Companion.'"
His voice echoed from wall to wall, lightly teasing but firm in its demand. Rather than argue, Eva said just as firmly, "all right, then. Beam your buns down, Companion."
"Please?"
"Please."
"The magic word," he murmured in her ear.
Eva swung around and he caught her in his arms. A lover's embrace, she gripped his shoulders, unsure whether to shake him as hard as she was trembling or hold him with the intensity of her awe.
"I—I know what you are."
"Besides being absolutely enthralled with you, what am I?"
Eva fell into his looking-glass gaze and saw the truth of her shocking realization: "You are an alien."
Chapter 8
"Well, what do you think?"
Urich swept his gaze over the living room once more, noting that many objects seemed of no utilitarian value, but did possess an aesthetic quality.
"Over all, oddly appealing." He focused then on Eva, unquestionably the most appealing creature he had ever met. "But even pleasant as these surroundings are..." he searched for one of those nebulous phrases humans were so fond of using. "They can't hold a candle to you."
Glancing at one atop her musical instrument, Urich pointed at the wick. It sparked then leaped to life.
Her gasp was one of disconcertment rather than delight. Yet another sign of the wariness in her. It rankled, being treated like a stranger after the bonds they had forged.
Urich reached for her and though she didn't resist him, neither was she responsive. He commanded himself not to crush her to him and obliterate the shock-waves crashing through her brain and distancing her heart. With effort he calmly said, "I'm the same but you don't view me as such. Why not?"
"You're an alien."
"Yes, you've mentioned that—" he made a swift calculation, "twelve times. What does it matter?"
"What does it matter?" she repeated. "A lot! You zap yourself around when you don't feel like walking and cruise in a spaceship instead of a car."
"A rudimentary mode of transportation, but it does hold a certain charm."
"Uh-huh. Just like my computer. 'Crude but cute,' I believe were your words. And never mind that you can think faster than my crude but cute computer can compute."
"But I thought this would impress you." Unusual as this place was, it had nothing on Eva's behavior. If only she knew
how much he was risking to be here, perhaps she'd show some understanding instead of emotionally deserting him when he needed her so much. But no, he couldn't reveal his true situation; and besides, her caring and affection should simply be, as was his own for her. So he'd shown off a bit, but that was no reason to rebuff his advances, tender as his touch to her cheek was now. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"Oh, but you have. I'm as evolved as a fossil compared to you." She shook her head, over and over until his palm fell away while she muttered, "An alien, an alien..."
Fourteen. Seventeen. Twenty.
"We've established that fact," he said abruptly, his patience wearing thin with this minor detail she was putting between them. "Why should any human make such a 'big deal' as you call it, over a visitor from somewhere besides Earth? For the heavens' sake, what sort of mentality would actually believe that in all the galaxies, this is the only planet with intelligent life? Or that if some other exists, then it has to be less advanced to your own and unable to make the same overtures of contact that your silly little rocket ships are too infantile to make. That's preposterous. And arrogant!"
Having had his say, Urich deemed this petty matter over with. "Now that we've got that settled, I want to hold you. Close, Eva."
"No." Breaking away, her distress was palpable and her voice bordered on shrill. "You must want something else from me. Why else would you go to such lengths to form a relationship with me?"
"It seems our relationship was more to your liking when you thought me a hologram."
"Holograms can't deceive people. You tricked me, Urich. Made me believe I had something over physics, that I had powers of—" She touched him, then gasped dramatically. "Mind Over Matter!"
"But you do have that power," he hastened to assure her. "And many, many more. All that I guided you to, that you discovered for yourself, was true. The only dishonesty was in disguising my origins. And that was essential."
Even as he said it, Urich knew he was guilty of a deeper secrecy. He abhorred it but she was no more ready for that ultimate revelation than he was to provide it. For now he had to simply be grateful that he'd bought time for them both—time he would use to seek a solution to their dilemma.