“What’s different is I don’t have parents. Or, maybe I have multiple parents. Or scientists with nothing better to do.” She frowned as she listened, as though she didn’t know what he was talking about. “What’s your name?” Rees asked her.
She wet her lips. “Talan.”
“Pretty name for a lady researcher. Okay, Talan, you can have my DNA. Mind if I think of some fun ways of giving it to you?”
“That’s all right, I’ll just take cells from your finger.” Talan reached into her robe, pulling out something that looked like a sharp knife with a tube attached to it.
Rees took an instinctive step back. Clinics, tubes, and knives always bothered him.
“Ready?” she asked.
Rees made himself hold up his finger. The holo-block sunlight glittered on his tanned skin and the black chain.
As though she saw nothing but his finger, Talan scraped a little of the skin from his fingertip. She closed the tube over the knife and put it back into her pocket, looking satisfied.
“Is that it?” Rees asked.
“Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
Rees shouldn’t touch her, he knew that, and not just because it was taboo. This little sweetheart stirred him up, and stirring up Rees was dangerous.
But he wanted to touch her. He needed it. One touch, that was all, and then he’d let her go.
He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.
Talan stared up at him in amazement, then her eyes softened. Rees’s Shareem touch, his voice, his gaze, were all created to melt a woman.
“You’re putting a spell on me,” she said softly. “I read about that.”
“I know. I can’t help it.”
She swallowed. “I have to go.”
“So you keep saying.”
Rees withdrew his touch. She sucked in a sharp breath, gave him another startled look, turned with another flurry of skirts, and made for the door.
“Sure you don’t want to stay?” Rees called to her.
“I am already very late. If I have to explain ...”
If her friends were the upper-class elite—women who’d decided that good old-fashioned screwing was bad, women who’d made laws restricting Shareem—Talan would be in for it, all right.
“Tell them you were researching,” he said.
“Good idea. Good-bye, Mr. Rees. And thank you.”
She turned again, walking straight for the wall. Triggered, the door materialized in front of her and opened. Talan ran through, the draft swirling her robes above a pair of legs that made Rees’s blood sing.
The door whooshed shut again, leaving Rees alone.
He stood there a moment while the tropical air caressed him, the palm trees whispered, and the ocean slithered up the beach behind him. Then he ripped off his loincloth and ran across the beach and into the waves.
His blood pounded, and every cell in his body burned. He was like a lava flow in the water—Rees was surprised the holo-sea didn’t start boiling.
It was all Rees could do not to run after the woman, haul her back in, lock the door. He’d lay her down, thrust his cock inside her, keep pounding until he came. And she came. And he came again.
But he didn’t.
She’d said thank you.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Rees’s cock, enhanced like the rest of him, stood out straight, even in the cool water. Thank gods he’d decided to do an ocean. If he’d picked the garden with the fountain, he’d be dead, because no way a little trickling fountain would cool him down.
Rees plunged underwater, letting the waves slither over his naked body. It helped—some. He pictured Talan coming back in, throwing off her robes, swimming out to him, twining her arms around his neck. Rees would lower his head and kiss her lips.
Wasn’t helping.
When Rees surfaced, blood still pounding, the pheromone levels in the room had decreased slightly—probably saving him from an early death. His heartbeat finally settled down. It took his cock longer to deflate, but disappointment helped.
He floated on his back, thinking. He’d remember her face. He’d see her again. Once he’d finished helping Rio, he’d seek her out. An upper-class woman called Talan wouldn’t be too hard to find.
And when he did find her, Rees would remind her of the lost opportunity they’d had here on the tropical beach.
The fucking will be good. It will be very good. He knew it in his bones.
About the Author
Award-winning author Allyson James is a pen name of New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. Allyson has written more than 75 published novels and novellas in romance, urban fantasy, and mystery under the names Jennifer Ashley, Allyson James, and Ashley Gardner. Her books have been nominated for and won Romance Writers of America’s RITA (given for the best romance novels and novellas of the year), several RT BookReviews Reviewers Choice awards (including Best Urban Fantasy, Best Shapeshifter Romance, and Career Achievement in Historical Romance), Prism awards for her paranormal romances, and Passionate Plume and CAPA awards for her erotic romances.
More about Allyson’s books can be found at the website
www.allysonjames.com
Or email Allyson at [email protected]
Eland and Jeanne
Tales of the Shareem, Prequel
Copyright © 2009; 2015 by Jennifer Ashley and Allyson James
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Excerpt of Rees copyright © 2005; 2013 by Jennifer Ashley and Allyson James
Eland and Jeanne was originally published as a free short story (4500 words; 2 chapters) called Eland by Ellora’s Cave. It has been revised and expanded to a 36,000 word, fifteen-chapter novella.
Cover design by Kim Killion
Eland and Jeanne (Tales of the Shareem) Page 13