by Mallory Kane
She unearthed a pair of jeans, a I, and some underwear in the guestroom. Holding up the jeans, she measured them against her. If she hadn't gained too much weight in the past two years, she could still fit into them. She'd started toward the bathroom at the end of the hall before she remembered the front door.
She threw the deadbolt and put on the chain, then went back toward the bathroom, passing Skipper's room where Rider was stretched out on the bed, his breathing soft and even.
For a moment Kristen stood in the doorway and watched him sleep. He was so tired, so hurt. In sleep, with his features relaxed and his lashes resting against his cheeks, he looked like a lost little boy. Gazing at him, she hoped he'd had a good childhood, because it sounded like his adult life had been hell.
She turned toward the bathroom, then back toward the bedroom. Maybe she would take her shower in Skipper's bathroom. After all, she'd nearly been blown up twice, almost been run over by a car, and been shot by a blaster, all within the past twenty-four hours. Maybe she'd rather have somebody between her and the outside world, even if he was sound asleep and crazy to boot.
She quickly showered and towel dried her hair, taking care to protect her blistered hand. Then she wrapped it with gauze and slipped on Skipper's bathrobe. With its softness against her skin, she got another lingering echo of her brother. She was reminded of him telling her to trust her senses.
When the right man comes along you'll know it. I'll know it too, I'm sure, because the whales will probably start singing their heads off.
Smiling sadly, she walked out into the bedroom. Rider was sleeping peacefully, his breaths even, his limbs relaxed. Kristen looked longingly at the empty space beside him in the bed.
It had felt so good to lie next to him in her bed. It was a sensation she'd never experienced, that of sleeping next to someone, of knowing the other person was there even if you weren't touching.
And his dreams—
Kristen shivered, remembering the vestiges of his dreams. She had moved closer to him in her sleep and his dreams had gotten mixed up with hers. Something about angels and clouds and good, good kisses. Were the kisses part of the dreams? Or had the dreams been born out of the kisses?
Her head nodded and she caught herself. She was almost asleep on her feet. She really didn't want to sleep in a room by herself, especially the guest room, which was in the front of the house where people might be able to see in through the windows, or break in.
No, if she wanted to sleep, she probably should just curl up on the edge of Skipper's bed with Rider. Just for a few minutes.
She lay down next to him and closed her eyes, comforted by his presence, feeling his cautious relaxation, his wary comfort. He still hurt. She could tell, even though it was nothing compared to the wrenching spasms that had gripped him earlier. Now her senses told her it was more of a dull ache, behind the bruises and scrapes, beneath the exhaustion and the sore muscles. Good. The anti-nausea pills were working.
Carefully, not wanting to disturb him, she shifted, curling up inside Skipper's robe, finding a comfortable position for a short nap—just a short one, before she tried to sort out her feelings about this man who had dropped out of the blue, perhaps literally, and disrupted her life.
With the passing thought that if she really wanted to, she could still call the police and make up a plausible story, she dozed.
Rider tensed. He lay very still without opening his eyes for an instant until he realized that the sound he had heard had been the pad of soft footsteps across the carpet. The movement had been the sinking of a slight body into the bed beside him, and the odor that was now tickling his nostrils was the clean washed smell of his angel doctor. He hated the fear that engulfed him every time he woke up, and the unwelcome desire that seared him every time he looked at her, or thought about her.
What was it about her scent, her essence? Was he remembering his wife? With that thought came a dizzying pain and a faint breath of nausea. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to endure the memories, such as they were. Marielle. His wife. The name evoked a vision of dark blonde hair, a dazzling smile, and a pleasant, spicy scent. He closed his eyes and tried to capture a vision of his wife. Black leather pants and jacket? Could that be right? And some kind of night vision goggles?
His gut spasmed again and he gave up, wiping sweat from his face. He was getting her mixed up with the Deviants, somehow. That was their underground uniform. He wasn't sure how he knew that, he just did.
Rider wiped the disturbing thoughts out of his head and turned his attention to his angel doctor. He breathed deeply of her newly washed skin, her damp hair. She was curled up on the edge of the bed, engulfed in a big terry cloth robe. Her hair was tousled in waves around her face like a halo, fitting for an angel. Her eyelashes were spiked with dampness and dark against her pale cheeks.
The slender column of her neck disappeared into the terry cloth much too soon for his taste, but pink toes peeked out from the bottom of the robe and they were enough to set his blood on fire, to increase the pressure of his erection against the slick fabric of the sweatpants he'd borrowed from her brother. With the desire came the pain—the searing burn of the imprint on his thigh that reminded him of who and what he was.
But even the pain wasn't enough to blot out his memory of the hours spent crouched in the alley, hours during which he'd vacillated between the hatred that gnawed at his entrails and a sweet desire unlike anything he could remember.
He watched her face as she dozed. Her lips were slightly parted, her mouth curled in a winsome smile. He wondered what she was dreaming about, or who.
Those long hours, with her nestled intimately between his thighs, he'd dreamed about her—about his angel, come from heaven to save him. He'd dreamed she was there, touching him, not as his hostage, not afraid of him, but willingly, nestled against him in a lover's embrace. He'd dreamed she had responded when his body had begun to throb against her.
But he'd awakened to find her tense and shivering, obviously terrified of him, and had remembered why he held her imprisoned there. Then the nausea and the pain and the fear had returned, and he'd been plunged back into the same hell from which he'd tried to escape by going to sleep.
But was it all a dream? Hadn't he been awake when she'd pushed backwards against him and turned her head at his gentle urging to allow him to kiss her? Hadn't she arched her back to press her breasts into his hands, to reach his mouth with hers? Surely he hadn't dreamed that.
Rider moved cautiously, groaning at the soreness in his muscles, wincing at the sickening pain in his ribcage. But still the sweet desire was strong enough to override the pain and soreness.
This was stupid. He had no right. Still, what difference would it make? He was dead anyway. Death just hadn't caught up with him yet.
He looked at her and a strange thickness coated his throat. An unfamiliar stinging in his eyes made him blink. She was as good as dead too. If not him, then someone else would kill her. The thought of her dying made him sad.
As his eyes feasted on her delicate form, he remembered the dark figure holding a blaster. A sleeker, more stylized piece than he'd ever used in training. He’d seen the glint of metal. They hadn't been able to send any weapons back with him, because of something about the magnetic fields created around metallic objects. They hadn't even been able to transfer metal buttons or a watch. So the only conclusion was that they were still trying to destroy Kristen years after he'd transferred. His eyes stung with a ridiculous relief at the realization that he hadn't killed her by then.
Nausea gripped him and sweat beaded on his brow. What was the matter with him? He hated her! He hated everything about her. She was a Deviant. She was dirty, disgusting. She read minds, for God's sake.
She had killed his wife. Rider clenched his teeth and repeated the words like a litany. She had killed his wife. It was her fault—her descendants were murderers. Why was it getting harder and harder to keep his mind on that fact?
He
remembered her question. Why? He'd asked the same question. Why had the Deviants killed Mari? Why had they blown a hole in their apartment and stormed in with blasters? He was just a college professor and Mari was just a housewife.
An image of Mari dressed in the unrelieved black of the Deviant underground flashed across his vision again. He turned his head and squeezed his eyes shut, but the vision didn't fade. She was fiddling with dials on an old-fashioned XXXadonnaXXXor-type radio.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, clenching his jaw against a bitter tang at the back of his throat. Where were these confusing memories coming from? Why did he keep getting Mari mixed up with the Deviants? Was it Kristen's Deviant mind, getting inside his head and mixing up his memories?
The picture finally faded, leaving him bewildered and weary. Rider took a long breath, trying to calm his racing thoughts, and Kristen's scent assaulted his senses. Unwelcome desire began to stir in his loins again.
He tried to force his mind to stop thinking. All he wanted to do was feel. He almost chuckled. That was a switch. Wanting to feel emotions that should have been destroyed. Since their damned conditioning hadn't removed his emotions as effectively as they'd told him it would, why not make something of what little time he had left? He and the Doc were both as good as dead. They were no match for the superior weaponry of the twenty-sixth century and beyond. So what the hell difference did it make if he lost himself in lust for a few minutes?
Quietly laughing at the transparency of his so-called logic, he eased closer to her on the bed. If Kristen didn't want him, if she made even the most token protest, he'd stop. He'd just go shower again, this time with cold water.
He stopped when his body was just centimeters from hers, when his bare torso could feel her newly bathed heat. He breathed deeply, taking in the sight and feel and smell of her. He wouldn't mind stopping time right there. Even battered as his body was, he didn't remember ever feeling this good. Sad as he was, he couldn't remember ever being happier than right now, lying beside her.
But time wouldn't stand still. It moved like a river, continuous, never-ending, and whether he was standing to one side watching it, or plunged into the middle of it, he couldn't alter its course. All he could do was flow with it.
Slowly, so slowly, flowing with the inevitability of time, Rider pulled the sash of her robe loose. Slowly he pushed the fabric off one perfectly rounded shoulder. Still promising himself he could stop, he lifted his head and touched his lips to her skin, tasting the soapy cleanness. His tongue traced a path up the rounded slope of her shoulder toward her neck, savoring the different flavors of her, while his heart pounded like thunder.
She gasped, a tiny sound that barely reached his ears, even though they were only millimeters from her lips, and her body tensed. He raised his head and met her gaze, dreading what he would see. The amber-green eyes were wide and questioning, caught by his. He searched them, looking for fear, for disgust, for anything that would force him to abandon his quest, but he didn't find any of those, only an uncertainty and an anticipation that confused and stirred him.
He pushed the robe a little further, until the top of one breast became visible. His breath hissed between his teeth as his eyes took in the flawlessness of her body. Her rounded flesh was pale and blue-veined. As he touched it, he had the peculiar notion he was exploring a virgin land.
Her breath quickened at his touch, and he glanced back at her face to assure himself it wasn't with fright, or worse, with disgust.
When he did, she licked her lips. A quiet growl escaped his throat. She had to know by now what that gesture did to him. With an urgency born of desperation, he pulled her to him and covered her mouth with his, ignoring the burning in his thigh and the faint tickle of nausea at the back of his throat.
Amazingly, she didn't stiffen or pull away. Rider nibbled at her lips, teasing them, torturing himself, until she parted them. Then he deepened his kiss, pushing his tongue between her teeth, gasping when he touched the soft wetness of her tongue.
He felt the change in her, maybe even before she did. Her body softened, went slack against him. She bloomed. He felt the suppleness of desire in her limbs as he rubbed her nipple gently between his fingers, testing. Testing her, testing himself, knowing with a kind of fear that now nothing either one of them did could stop him. He placed his palm against her belly, feeling her quick breaths, the taut muscles.
She was ready for him. Ready and willing. His erection throbbed against her thigh, so sensitive, so sweet, he thought he might pass out. He pulled his head back to look at her. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her lips slightly parted. When he pulled away, her fingers clutched at him. He didn't want to break the spell like he had in his dream, but he couldn't stand the suspense a minute longer.
"Doc?" The single word was laden with meaning, weighted with all his hopes and fears. His voice nearly failed.
Her gaze was centered on his mouth, and when he spoke, she raised her brilliant eyes to his. She wrapped her hand around the nape of his neck and pulled his face down to hers. Rider was horrified to find himself almost sobbing as he tore his mouth from hers to push the sweatpants off his legs and push aside the robe that still partially covered her. His breaths were harsh in his throat, his eyes burned. How long had it been? How long since he'd even cared to feel this way? Once he'd thought he would never want to again. Until he'd been rescued by an angel.
She opened herself beneath him, gasping and arching as his hand moved over her gently rounded belly, then lower, to seek the place where all her sensation was centered. She grasped his arm as if she would stop him, but she didn't. Instead, she encircled his back and pulled him closer, whimpering and whispering his name.
His questing fingers told him what he'd already known, that she was ready, and so he lifted himself above her, gritting his teeth to keep from losing control, and gently pushed into her.
And stopped.
"Doc?" he rasped. "What—?"
She looked at him, a blush suffusing her face with heat that he could feel on his. "I never—"
"God. Oh God," he whispered brokenly. "It's going to hurt you." Nothing had prepared him for this. Not her shyness, not her hesitancy. Certainly not the knowledge of her that had been conditioned into him. But these thoughts flitted quickly through his brain and were gone, because her hands around his back moved downward, to cup his buttocks and pull him closer, closer.
Suddenly, he had no more control, and he thrust hard, tearing through the barrier, his heart breaking at her startled cry. He watched her, watched her brow furrow, her lips stretch back against her teeth, her eyes squeeze shut.
“I can stop,” he lied, then, truthfully, “I didn’t want to hurt you.” As the shadow of pain faded from her face, her hands still held him to her.
"Kiss me," she whispered. "I can feel it all when you kiss me."
He kissed her without even wondering what she meant, but as he did, something began to happen deep inside him, much deeper than the physical sensations that were rocking him. Deep down he felt a bond with her, with his angel doctor, a bond not born of knowledge, or fear, or even intimacy. But it formed a link between them that he was sure not even time could sever.
As he kissed her, she began to move beneath him, in the timeless, ageless dance that all lovers know, and he was overwhelmed by the feel of her surrounding him as his passion grew and exploded. He cried out and her arms tightened about him as his climax shuddered through them both.
For a long time he lay above her, resting his weight on his arms, just savoring the feeling of being joined with her. They kissed languidly, softly, and Kristen nuzzled his neck as he breathed in the sweet clean smell of her hair.
"It can be better, Doc," he muttered.
"I know," she whispered, stroking his hair.
"I didn't want to hurt you. I swear."
"I know. I understand," her breath caught a little. "I'm a doctor, remember? I understand these things."
She paused for
so long that Rider lifted his head to look at her.
"But the textbooks and my giggly schoolgirl friends didn't tell me how wonderful it feels to bond so closely with someone else. How can people treat it so casually?"
Rider stared at her as she smiled tearily at him. It scared the crap out of him that he knew exactly what she was talking about. It was what he had felt at the moment of their union. He was sure he'd never known anything like it before, doubtful he ever would again. The tickle at the back of his throat warned him against thinking too much, warned him against feeling anything at all.
His arms were giving out and he didn't want to look at her shining eyes any more, so he collapsed beside her. He pulled her close and she curled against him, splaying her fingers across his belly.
"Why didn't you tell me you were a virgin?" he asked, stroking her hair.
Her shoulders moved against his side. "It never came up."
"Why?"
"Why didn't it ever come up?"
"Why—me?" he asked, knowing the answer. Wanting to hear it. Not wanting to hear it. Thinking he would die if he was wrong. That he'd die if he was right. Swallowing hard against the sick pain his thoughts and emotions evoked in him, he asked her. "Why did you wait?"
Kristen sighed, her warm breath tickling his nipple. "It's hard to explain. When guys started noticing me in high school, I'd go out with them just like all the other girls. They all talked about kissing like it was something wonderful. But when I tried it, I was always repelled by what the boy was feeling."
A dull ache centered itself in Rider's gut and sweat beaded his brow. Something about her words was eerily familiar to him. Something far, far back in the recesses of his brain, back behind the conditioning the TAINCC had so carefully laid over everything that had once been Rider Savage. He lay still and listened to her against his conscious will.
"See, there's this thing inside me," Kristen continued. "This sense. When I'm close to someone, especially if I'm touching them, I can feel what they're feeling. Sometimes it’s almost like I can hear them think."