She sucked in a sharp breath and whipped a look of horror at Torin.
He caught her, picked her up, and threw her toward the bed.
She felt as if she’d fallen from a mountain, felt the long drop, felt the abrupt jolt when she landed, and then she sat up with a jerk and looked around.
She discovered she was sitting where the body had lain. Not on top of it. In the place where it had been only a handful of moments before.
“Why did you follow? How? They will be more angry, now, that I sheltered invaders and I have had a battle on my hands trying to protect you as it is! If I were not their leader ….”
Claudia whipped a look of confusion at Torin when he spoke and discovered that he was sitting in the bed beside her in the place where the body had lain before—his body. “I don’t understand … any of this,” she said haltingly. She frowned, trying to recall what had happened. “I woke and I …. It felt as if I was being pulled.”
Torin stared at her, hard, as if he could see right through her and into her soul. Abruptly, he seemed to dismiss his fury. He caught her arms and dragged her against his chest, twisting and carrying her down on the mattress beneath him in almost the same motion.
“You had convinced me that you felt none of the things you have made me feel. You are joined to me, Tita,” he growled in a husky voice. “You just have not accepted it.”
Chapter Nine
Claudia’s sense of confusion and fear vanished like mist when he carried her down onto the mattress. Eagerness and anticipation replaced them as she lifted her gaze to his and saw that his eyes were tumultuous with desire. His heat, as he moved closer, enveloped her even before the first brush of his lips. Electricity almost seemed to leap from him to her, making her lips tingle with the phantom touch of his mouth against hers.
And then he enveloped her mouth with his own in a kiss rough with need, thrust past the barrier of her lips and swept aside any objections she might have thought to make with the first thrust and sweep of his tongue in conquest, lathing intoxication through his touch, scent, taste.
She was of no mind to protest, unmindful of the anger that had sparked the passion or least seemed to.
Liquid, heated desire flooded her, the fire fueled by the mastery and possessiveness of his touch as he glided his hands over her, tugging and pulling at the sarong-like garment she was wearing until she was as naked as he. His scent and taste went beyond merely pleasing. They inebriated her within moments until she was so dizzy she felt as if she was floating and spinning weightlessly. The mattress beneath them faded away, seemed to become insubstantial.
She kissed him back feverishly, dueling with his tongue in a way that built the heat in both of them in a matter of moments from desire to desperate need, to a delirious hunger they needed to appease at once.
Claudia had gulped air until she felt almost ill.
She ceased to stroke him and began to pull at him in demand.
He lifted his head, studied her for a long moment and then pushed her thighs apart and sat up. Kneeling between them, he commanded her to look at him, refusing to touch her again until she acknowledged that it was him she wanted, that she was not laboring under any delusion that he was the same as her.
Piqued, she lifted her head to stare at him in demand, feeling her ardor cool from his withdrawal in spite of her determination to hold onto it.
“I am not made as you are … but I desire you, Tita. Say you want me and I am yours. I need to know that you accept me as I accept you.”
Resentment flickered through her.
He clearly had no intention of allowing her to lie to herself, later.
She dismissed it.
Sitting up, she stroked her hands over his broad chest and hard belly and then cupped his testicles and gently massaged them.
His cocks, turgid, both fully erect, jerked reflexively.
She was intimidated by the size of them.
One would be a tight fit.
She looked up at him, unable to keep the worry out of her expression. “I don’t … I’m not made for two.”
Fire lit his eyes. He caught her shoulders and pushed her back down on the mattress, kissing her lips and breasts until she was writhing with desperate need once more, pulling at him in demand. “You were made for me, Tita. I know this in every fiber of my being. I will find a way to please us both,” he murmured raggedly as he aligned his body with hers.
She sucked in a harsh breath and held it as she felt the head of his cock pressing against the mouth of her sex, digging her fingers into his shoulders.
Torin sawed shallowly in and out of her tight passage to coat his flesh with the moisture her body wept for him and then began to push slowly and steadily inside of her until he had filled her completely. He paused for a moment, then, struggling to regulate his breath, and then shifted onto his elbows to watch her face as he slowly withdrew and just as slowly entered her a handful of times. Then he pulled away until no more than the head of his anterior cock was inside of her and reached between them to align the posterior.
Even suspecting what he meant to do, Claudia sucked in a sharp breath when she felt the press of a second cockhead, felt herself stretched to the point of burning discomfort. To her relief, he paused once he’d achieved the double penetration, allowing her to grow accustomed before he delved deeper.
It blew her mind when he did, when she felt the thick, hard flesh gliding along her channel. She could feel the muscles all along her passage quake with the strain of accommodating two penises, of being filled almost beyond capacity. Her heart commenced to pounding with a mixture of anticipation and nerves as he drove deep, retreated, and then drove inside of her again. But that tremble wasn’t merely a reaction to the strain of hard flesh against resistant muscles. Tremors of impending climax followed in the wake of each stroke and she found herself struggling to hold on long enough to fully enjoy his possession of her.
Either the tremors excited him beyond control or he sensed her impending crisis. After a handful of slow strokes, he picked up the pace, pumping into her faster and faster until she reached the pinnacle and then flew over the cliff and exploded with rapturous convulsions. Almost immediately, Torin uttered a choked sound and began to shudder and jerk with his own release.
Claudia dragged in a shaky breath of relief when she finally stopped convulsing, struggling against the chilling, rational thought that almost inevitably followed in the aftermath of pleasure, the creeping sense of guilt for having indulged, the sense of ‘wrong’ that began to oust the sense of very right.
Torin forestalled her.
Without separating his body from hers, he began to kiss her, to awaken her senses to him once more.
She welcomed the sign of appreciation and, perhaps, even affection that the kiss seemed to represent, warmed by it and then heated, to her surprise, displeasure, and dismay.
For a few moments, she teetered between relaxing and enjoying and the desire to set pleasure aside for rational pursuit.
And then he submerged any desire to behave rationally.
He lavished her breasts with his affection, massaging and suckling and stroking them until she was writhing on the hot coals left from spent passion, pulling at him in demand. He refused to give in until he had thoroughly acquainted himself with her body, however, stroking and nipping at her sensitive flesh until she felt as if she was on fire.
“Torin!” she gasped a little desperately.
He took her to the heights of rapture then and when they’d rested, he took her there again, until she fell into an exhausted coma of repletion, still throbbing all over from the multiple orgasms.
* * * *
The room was darkened when Claudia woke again, but ambient light began to slowly lift the shadows surrounding her, illuminating the same place where she’d wakened before.
There was a familiarity about it now that made it almost seem like a place she belonged to.
Of course, she didn’t.
She’d had a dream experience in this place once before with a man who wasn’t a lover but had seemed to be and then she’d woken here after the strange dream where Torin and his people were trying to command the elements in some sort of perplexing ritual ….
And then Torin had brought her back to her body and made love to her ….
She sat up and looked around, taking in the details of the furnishings, the size of the space, the size of the bed she was sitting on.
She thought it was the same place—not a mock up, not a place that was somewhat similar—the same in every detail that she could recall.
The light seemed to be coming primarily from what appeared to be a window, but when she slipped from the bed and moved to it she saw it seemed to be more in the nature of a video or possibly some sort of high tech shadow box. It depicted a scene that no long existed.
She didn’t know where the thought came from, but she was sure of it the moment it occurred to her. It was a real scene, just not real now.
It was a cityscape—an exotic city on an alien world, the architecture strange and unfamiliar and yet … not entirely unfamiliar.
Because, she realized abruptly, it reminded her of the Far East on Earth.
The architectural embellishments, anyway.
People thronged the streets, their skin in varying tones of blue in the light from the diminishing red sun she could see on the horizon.
She stared at it for a very long time, fascinated by the details, before it occurred to her why someone would have gone to such extraordinary lengths to preserve something that had vanished many centuries ago.
It had been designed for someone who remembered it, perhaps longed for it.
Because it was home.
The almost silent swish of the door sliding open across the room drew her attention away from the ‘window’ and she turned to see Torin striding purposefully toward her.
He looked so handsome it made her heart leap in her chest and then brake to a halt for several seconds.
Something teased at the back of her mind, just beyond the reach of consciousness, something that sent her emotions into a tumult of confusion and confliction.
Something that inevitably eluded her.
His hair was long and inky black.
She’d never cared for long hair on a man and yet …. It didn’t just suit him. It seemed to set off his masculinity.
The blue skin tone that had jolted her in the beginning had become familiar enough that it no longer shocked her, diverted her from appreciating everything about him that was worth appreciating from his wonderfully proportioned and muscular body to his handsome face.
It occurred to her abruptly to wonder if his appearance was merely an illusion—perhaps designed to wow her into submission or at least compliance.
And yet, why wouldn’t he adopt the skin tones familiar to humans if he was going to go to such lengths to impress her?
He halted when he caught sight of her by the window, seemed tense as he studied her piercingly for a long moment without saying a word.
* * * *
An unpleasant jolt went through Torin when Claudia turned and looked at him with the eyes of a virtual stranger.
He had imagined many reactions to the consummation of their joining, but this was certainly not one of them.
How ironic was it that making love to her had bound him more tightly to her and only seemed to have served to set her free of the same bond?
Was it the fact that it brought home their differences? That he had made her see him as he was and forced her to think of him as alien when that was the last thing he wanted?
Or did it have nothing to do with that at all?
Katia had said that she’d had a relapse from her injury, said the flight to join him and the others had been too much for her primitive mind. She’d had to induce a coma to allow her to heal, had had to erase memories his Tita could not deal with.
But none of that made sense to him. It had not when she had told him and it did not now.
Claudia should still have felt the bond.
Even without the memories.
Unless he had broken it.
She would have if she had been a woman of Vishnu, he thought, struggling with the pain of loss, trying to cling to his pride.
He was the father of his people, their monarch, their leader.
He had formed the bond for them, to save them. If the bond had been broken, then that was the way it was meant to be.
Even he could not argue with the cosmic truth.
“I see that you have noticed that there are things in Earth culture that are very similar, familiar in a confusing way. It is not … coincidence. My people visited yours long ago …. When we first realized our star was dying. Our primary star. The one our world depended upon for life.
“We fought a war there—for Earth. And here on Vishnu, as well.
“There were those among us that saw Earth people as primitive and beneath consideration. They thought we should simply take what we needed as if it was ours by right.
“But there were also those who knew that to be wrong, to be against all that we have ever been or thought and they refused to allow it.
“So we fought amongst ourselves to save your people and destroyed the peace and harmony of Vishnu.
“We thought that we would have to accept the death of our entire race, but in the years that we waited for that eventuality, we learned that we had the ability to save ourselves. We had always had it. We just had not realized that we could unite and join with the cosmic collective and channel our powers.”
Disbelief flickered through Claudia, but she was standing in the proof that he hadn’t just made that up. If he’d been human she would’ve known immediately that he was certifiable. “Your people … brought Vishnu here?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
That blew her mind, threw Claudia into such a state of shock that she couldn’t process it. “That’s why it’s behaved so … erratically that NASA hasn’t been able to figure out what it would do or where it would go ….”
Torin studied her while she grappled with the implications, thankful that he didn’t see hostility even though he also didn’t see the love he had come to expect, given the strength of the bond he’d formed with her.
“You look … well, Tita.”
The comment sent an alarm jangling along Claudia’s nerve endings, diverted her instantly from the line of thought she’d been chasing.
She thought since he’d paused that he might have meant to say something else. Instead, he’d said ‘well’. Why well?
And then the memory hit her. She looked down at herself, searching for a wound that she knew from her internal search had long since healed.
A life threatening wound she hadn’t expected to survive.
When she lifted her head to look at him again, there was accusation in her eyes. “How long have I been here?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Time is relative …. Long enough to heal as you’ve noticed.”
“Why don’t I remem ….” She broke off suddenly as a horrific thought occurred to her. “Where’s Reyes?”
He almost seemed … relieved at the turn of the conversation. He gestured toward the door he’d entered through. “I have come to take you for a visit with him.”
Claudia sucked in a sharp breath of joy and disbelief. “He’s …?”
He settled a hand along her back, ushering her toward the door. “You must see for yourself.”
There was a wide hall outside the room and a few yards down it a door much like the one to the room she’d been occupying. It slid open as they reached it and Claudia saw Reyes standing by a ‘window’ similar to the one in her room.
He turned at the sound of their entrance, his expression less than welcoming until his gaze settled on her. He lit up then in welcome. “Kid!”
Claudia rushed to him, but then paused a little awkwardly once she reached him, wrestling with that first impulse to flin
g herself at him.
They were crewmates and she thought of him as a friend, but they’d never been close in the sense of being comfortable with touching.
Reyes settled the matter by grabbing her in a brief, brotherly, bear hug and then releasing her almost as quickly. “I was told you were hurt?” he asked, concern clouding his gaze.
She’d managed to put the incident to the back of her mind, but it poured back at that prompt. She swallowed with an effort. “Shelly.” She bit her lip. “She thought ….” She shook her head in confusion. “I don’t know what she thought. She seemed to think I was stealing the supplies and had the intention of leaving everyone else to their own devices—God knows where she thought I was going. But she lost it when Torin showed himself and started firing her weapon.
“I still don’t know that she actually intended to shoot me, but she’d threatened and when she started firing, I returned fire. I … I killed her.”
Reyes frowned. “And this is how you were injured? You were shot?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how I made it here. Well, I wouldn’t have if not for Torin,” she added, turning to include Torin in the conversation only to discover he’d disappeared.
Consternation flooded her. A painful, wholly unwarranted, she thought, sense of loss followed. She knew he hadn’t gone far. She had no idea why she felt as if her heart had been ripped out.
“They appear and disappear like ghosts.”
Claudia jerked a startled glance at him. “They?”
“Torin and that healer,” he ground out, enunciating the word ‘healer’ in a way that made it sound like a profanity.
“You … dislike him?”
“Torin?” He shrugged. “He saved my life. Well, you did, actually, but he directed us here, got me the help I needed. No. He seems like a great guy—for an alien, I mean.”
“The healer.”
“The healer is a female.”
A jolt went through Claudia. It brought with it a confusion of images. Memories? Dreams? She wasn’t sure, but she had a vague impression of malevolence. Hate, directed at her. Pain, deliberately inflicted.
And then Torin had appeared suddenly, threatened to choke the life out of the woman and sent her away.
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