by 1
She blinked and tried to take in all the contrasting options from histories of worlds she had never imagined. Statues of a hundred species lined the walls. “Some of those have to be new additions.”
He led her down the row and pointed to a figure that was disturbingly familiar. “An image is made of you the moment that the Orb accepts you. You are the first of your species to be identified.”
She looked around eagerly. “There doesn’t seem like a lot of them, where are the others?”
His features darkened. “When a Nameless goes off active duty, their image is removed to storage.”
“Do we die a lot?”
He pulled her away from the image of herself and walked her toward the scents that had been teasing her. Randr’s image was near the end of the line. But he hauled her past the copy and into the dining area.
It was her first meal in her new situation and she took snack foods from nine races she recognized and five that she didn’t.
Aura expected some of the others to come by and speak to her, but instead, she received suspicious glances. “What is it?”
“No one knows quite what you are yet. They are wary of having an untested power in their midst.” Randr shrugged. “They will get over it after you acclimate.”
She finished her food and pushed the tray aside. “What will my education entail?”
Randr completed his own meal and sat back. “Do you want to learn about it here or shall we take a walk to the library?”
Eager to get started, she nodded. “Library, definitely.”
He rose to his feet and she to hers. As they turned to leave the dining area, a male blocked their path.
Randr’s tone was irritated, “Tavik. How nice to see you again. Aura, this is Tavik. He is the newest Nameless except for you. Tavik, this is my pupil, Aura.”
The young man looked at Randr with a possessive gaze. “I see that you are willing to take on the position of instructor when it suits you.”
Randr shifted to stand between Aura and the young male. “You are not mine to teach, Tavik, Aura is. I have seen her in my timeline since I first looked into the Orb.”
Aura blinked in surprise. Interjecting at this time would not have been a good thing.
In a move so quick, she barely saw it, Tavik flickered and then appeared at her side. “What have you done to make him loyal to you, cow?”
Aura didn’t like being talked down to and she really didn’t like the sneer on Tavik’s face. With a swift move, she kicked his knees out from under him, punched him in the throat and had her new knife at his neck.
Randr was standing with an amused smirk on his face. “That would earn my loyalty.”
A strange impulse ran through Aura and she opened her mouth, inhaling sharply. A spike of swirling power left Tavik and nestled in Aura’s body.
“You won’t be able to jump again for a while. Learn some manners, Tavik. You are giving us newbies a bad reputation.”
He swallowed and something flickered in his eyes. If Aura were a little more used to his features, she would have said it was the seed of respect and a little bit of fear.
When his limp posture made it clear that he had surrendered, she released him and sheathed her knife.
An audience had gathered, but the only person she was looking at was Randr. She had been prepared for irritation or even fear, but the heated arousal in his expression was unmistakable.
She straightened her gown self-consciously and squared her shoulders. “I believe that we were going to the library?”
Randr offered his hand. “Wherever my lady wishes.”
The crowd parted and Tavik got to his feet, bowing to her as she walked past him on Randr’s arm.
“That was weird.” She murmured it as they walked out of the elegant building along another side-less bridge.
“Tavik has had trouble adjusting and he despises the fact that his tutor is one of the seven councillors. At his point in time, his race has not yet learned the value of equality and having a woman in a superior and senior position to him is too much for him to deal with. Your little display will either make him rethink his attitude or get you an enemy for life, which around here can take quite a while.”
She winced and he wrapped his arm around her.
“Aura, why did you react with violence?”
“That wasn’t violent. It was intercession in a situation that could become much more difficult if it was allowed to continue. He had to know that I would not be intimidated.”
“Why?”
“Because Tavik is a bully and there is no way to teach him a lesson without making him vulnerable first. He will only pick up on what he can use to his advantage.” She shrugged.
The library was a most peculiar affair. Frames were around the edge of the room with tiny plaques under each one. The rows of frames swirled upward along the walls, an endless procession that went up into the hundreds of feet.
“How does this work?” She walked up to the nearest frame and it flickered, an image taking shape inside it.
“You select the point in time that you want to see and focus on the planet and general area. It will show you everything that one of the Nameless has seen in that place and time.”
The frame nearest to her was a relatively current era. She pressed her palm to the smooth panel on the side and focussed on Tarral Nich.
Watching your own death was creepy, but Aura had to make sure.
“You should not be watching that. It will upset you.” Randr put his hands on her shoulders and the image dimmed for a moment.
“I have to see it. I need to make sure he was dead.”
Randr’s fingers tensed. “Fine. Watch your own death then.”
“Thank you, I will.”
She concentrated and focussed, watching her hands and body attack the assassin and being stabbed in return.
“Why is this the point of view?”
“You are the one who saw this moment in time. You saw what he did and what you did in return.”
She didn’t hush him but watched her blasting the assassin over and over until he wasn’t breathing or moving.
From that moment, her focus spun and another set of eyes was now walking toward the assassin. A blade came out and slit the man’s throat as his three eyes opened in recovery.
Aura knew that hand. It wiped the blood off the knife and then the image was running through the halls to sweep her into an embrace and lift her into his arms. A ball of light covered them both and then, he was striding into the medical centre at Home.
She watched the medical teams cut her clothing away and the healers who worked on her in a human-fashion surgery. She watched the hands of Randr stroke her hair back from her head and idly start to weave her hair into the arrangement that she had woken up with.
Images flickered as different points of view showed her during her surgery and then Randr’s hands bathed her slowly and she saw herself in a completely different light.
Blushing furiously, she jerked her hand away from the frame and turned to face him. “You saw me naked?”
He winced. “It was necessary.”
With a happy sigh, she draped her arms around his neck and smiled. “Well, what did you think?”
Chapter Six
Light shimmered around them as he bent his head to hers for a kiss.
Aura’s mind hummed with pleasure as his caress of her lips sent sparks of sensation through her body.
“Where are we?”
He bent and nibbled his way down her neck. “My quarters. I thought it would be better than defiling the library.”
She moaned and tilted her neck as his hands worked at her gown, easing it until it pooled at her hips. Randr worked at her belt and when the dagger fell to the ground, he pushed the dress after it.
Facing him in nothing but her breast band, panties and shoes, she blushed under his frank scrutiny.
“In all my views of time, past and present, I never thought that I could be more smi
tten than I am at this moment.” He drew his hands along her skin in a slow caress that showed he was enjoying all the textures he touched.
“Smitten is a pale word.”
“Enthralled, enraptured, entranced. Pick your word. I am busy.” He dropped to his knees and he pressed kisses to her skin as he removed the last bits of scarlet clothing.
He flicked her a gaze that showed heat in those swirling stellar eyes before he wrapped his lips around one nipple and suckled strongly.
Aura wove her hands into his midnight hair and arched into the pull of his mouth. Her knees started quivering as a riot began in her nerve endings. A prickling in her body beyond the sensual started and he trailed down her ribs and belly before pressing a swift kiss against the soft curls at the core of her and then grabbing her and tilting her to her back.
Power writhed around her, holding her up and just at a comfortable height for Randr to press his mouth between her thighs and part her with a long slide of his tongue.
She floated closer to him when he tugged on her flank and energy held her to him as he worked into her with wet heat and brought forth her own response in a wave of shivering, gasping energy.
Randr’s hands cupped her ass, pulling her firmly to him as he delved into her with abandon.
His sharp teeth were pressing against her clit as he flicked into her with his tongue in endless, wet slides. When he withdrew his mouth from her sex, he replaced the thrust of one appendage with two long fingers that curved and stroked the upper wall of her channel.
Mewling and helpless, Aura tried to grab for his head, but with the energy holding her in place, there was no way to sit up or move to grip anything. She was trapped with her nails digging into her palms while her body jerked with every caress of her g-spot.
Her voice panted and whined as she fought to gain her release, but it was when he wrapped his lips around the small bud of her clit that she screamed as the flick of his tongue sent her over the edge.
Aura’s hoarse shout was Randr’s signal to toss her to the bed. While she waited for the spasms of her channel to cease, Randr was stripping out of his clothing.
For a man with a pale complexion, his body was structured like a warrior who did nothing but fight and preparing to fight. Long limbs, slabs of muscle, lithe legs and wide shoulders gave her quite a bit to absorb, but the wide, flared cock that was taking center stage made her eager to get on with the assimilation.
Aura sat up to reach for him, but he pushed her back with gentle and insistent hands. He linked his hands to her, palm to palm, and as their fingers wound together, he worked into her.
She wanted to close her eyes to savour the feeling of his cock sliding into her, but facing him and watching his expression as he moved into her for the first time was too tempting.
The stars in his eyes, the swirling galaxies that she could see against the blackness, they hypnotized her and pulled her in.
As her body was swallowed by pleasure, her mind opened to see every moment of her past. Every disappointment, every moment of enjoyment and all images of her friends and family swamped her thoughts. All of her time came to her, crystal clear and she rocked with Randr as a new series of images filled her mind.
She saw Randr as a lover laughing with her in the morning light, her family as seen from a distance, being handcuffed in front of the seven and knowing that it would not end well, Tavik coming to her aid and a new branch of the Nameless taking form.
All of these images were hazy, blurred as if they were not yet set, but Aura recognized a few of them from her own past. If she was right, she was going to break some very big rules for the Nameless.
Light started to pour out of her, her skin glowing brightly in Randr’s embrace as she arched against his increasingly powerful thrusts. Each slide and rock drew a gasp from her and when she screamed, he shouted, grinding his hips to hers and his own glow met and mingled with hers, his timeline pouring into her mind.
His hands were still holding hers, his lips moving softly against her neck when she blinked herself back to the present.
She tried to kiss him, but she was firmly pinned to the bed. A low laugh worked its way out of her throat. “Defile the library indeed.”
He raised his head and pressed a kiss to her jaw, working his way up to her lips in minute increments. His smile kept the kiss from being more intimate, but she got the idea.
“Why can I see parts of your life in my mind?”
He looked surprised. “I haven’t heard of that before. Usually, we only share our viewpoints for the present.”
Aura braced her feet on the bed and rocked her hips slightly. “Does this kind of thing happen often among the Nameless?”
Randr feathered kisses along her forehead. “Not that often. We normally take casual lovers in the timelines we visit.”
“So, this is unusual?”
He pressed his lips to hers. “Not where you are concerned. The unusual is the everyday with you.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“It is a fact. Nothing about you is standard or usual. You are exceptional in every way.”
She closed her eyes and went through her view of Randr’s timeline. He had grown up on a high-tech world over a century ago. Despite his people being evolved, they chose combat as a method for settling their differences and he was a good citizen and went to war.
On a battlefield in the rain, he had been dying from a series of wounds inflicted by a shattering vehicle. A woman wearing a hood had come and knelt at his side. With surprising strength, she tore one arm of his blood-soaked uniform from him and draped it over the large puddle of crimson at his side.
She had simply lifted him and carried him Home in a burst of light.
Agrohan was his rescuer and her bondmate, Ickola, was his healer and tutor. He had learned the ways of the Nameless and begun to live a life after his had ceased.
“How are you doing that?”
She smiled at his question.
“I have no idea. There is so much inside me now, and I am not even counting you.” Tilting her hips against him caused an answering twitch inside her.
He retreated and slid forward, thrusting deep. “Concentrate on me, the rest will sort itself out in the morning.”
She laughed, “If this is part of my instruction, consider me an attentive pupil.”
As he rocked into her with short shifts of his hips, she shivered. Her first day as a Nameless might have started out rough, but it was ending with a bang.
Chapter Seven
Learning to move in space was easy at Home. Since it was a fixed point in space and time, removed from both, it did not move while one of the Nameless was stepping from place to place.
“Come on, Aura. We are not going to have breakfast unless you can walk directly to the refectory.”
Randr was sexier this morning than he had been last night and that was saying something. Today, he was wearing a dark crimson shirt, black trousers and black boots. For her, he had retrieved the Terran wear from the previous day’s selections.
“While that clothing is very form fitting, it is not that flattering to you. I much prefer you in the gown of yesterday.” He sighed heavily.
She laughed and concentrated on calling the Orb power within. “You seemed to prefer me in nothing yesterday.”
“True.”
“Then, shush and let me concentrate. These clothes are comfortable and let me move. That gown was a little restrictive.”
He snorted. “I am sure that Tavik is grateful for it.”
She gave him a dark look and got back to concentrating. When she managed to create a doorway to the refectory, she stepped through and had to stifle the frantic inner applause that her mind was generating.
Randr appeared at her side in an instant. “Well done. First lesson learned and passed.”
“Hardly my first lesson. For example, that thing you did with your little finger last night was completely new to me.” She laughed as he stood there with a
shocked expression on his face.
This morning, she stayed on the safe side of the foodstuffs that had been acquired for the Nameless.
She sat and ate with her tutor, asking him anything that passed her thoughts. “So, nothing grows here because time is a static state?”
“Correct.”
“Then how was I able to heal at all, how are we able to speak and move?” Aura nibbled at her experimental food for the day, substance on a stick.
“The Orb gives us the ability to live outside of time, as for your wound, I sped up the healing process to allow you to live. It was the same way it was done for me and the same way it was done for everyone here.”
She chuckled. “So, the Nameless are a bit lemming-like in their habits?”
“I don’t understand the reference.”
“We tend to die a lot.”
“Well, yes. But, if our collectors are paying attention, then we are taken up at the moment that we die.”
“What if the collectors don’t get there in time?” It was a legitimate question. She wanted to know how many of her new people were missed in the shuffle.
“They die and are not healed and given the power of the Orb. They live and die a normal life.”
She shrugged. Billions of people died every day. Some had tremendous potential but died anyway. It was not fair, but life wasn’t fair.
Aura felt a searing pain and she clutched her head. Images of her beaten sister sobbing against her mother, the police standing in the living room and taking the information of the attack swarmed through her thoughts.
When she was fourteen, her nineteen-year-old sister had been out with friends and had been abducted from the parking lot of the bar while they were waiting for a cab.
Beaten and bloody, she had stumbled home, but her mother had refused to let her shower. With no recriminations and no shame, Aura’s mother had taken Carola to the hospital and stayed by her side while she gave the details to the police.
Aura was reliving every moment, but when the police arrived to notify Carola that her attacker had been killed, everything went bright.