Especially after the disease that ran through the Core Worlds caused the extinction of so many avians.
In the Core Worlds.
He’d been here on Old Earth ten years ago, surrounded by the wildlife of the planet. Plenty of birds on the wing, yet he’d never seen it. He’d been looking for that librarian, not chickens.
Teams of galactic marshals, timber reapers, protesters, none of them had seen what was right in front of their eyes.
Because no one was looking for it.
So chickens and some of the other birds hadn’t gone completely extinct. Cooks had used the Core Worlds’ extinctions as an excuse to stop preparing them.
There were some history texts needing revision.
Ease of life had become paramount in the past few decades. Most citizens wanted comfort over excitement. Had they become too comfortable?
“Here.” Zana piled carved chunks of the delicious smelling meat on a plate and handed it to him along with a fork.
Skeptically, he took a bite. Chewing the soft, slightly stringy texture caused succulent, savory flavors to burst in his mouth. He’d never tasted anything like this before. “This is really good.”
Zana, her mouth stuffed full, mumbled around the morsels. “Mmph . . . could use a little salt.”
Real chicken. Amazing. Food taken directly from an animal, just like the ancients used to eat.
“So, your planet back-teched? You eat like this all the time?”
“Like this?” Zana chuckled. Her emerald eyes sparkled as they caught the bright sunlight. “No. We eat much better than this. At least we used to.”
She patted the live cell sampler on her belt. “With luck, we’ll be eating well once again. That’s why I’m here.”
Kyle couldn’t fault her courage or her determination. “When we’re done eating, I want to check out that tree again. If it brought me here, maybe it can teleport us back.”
He wasn’t ready to believe in a magic tree. Yet, something unknown had brought him here. Science was always finding new and better ways of doing things. Might they be dealing with an ancient alien technology or something?
A change in the breeze wafted the fumes from the smoldering spacecraft his way. He scanned the wreckage and sighed.
Believing in magic was probably a better bet than counting on her ship to take them home.
Kyle examined the gnarled trunk as high up into the branches as he could climb. He found no secret compartments, no switches or apparatus, nothing to indicate an ability to teleport people or objects. The tree appeared completely natural. “How did you make it work?”
Zana shrugged. “I just touched the tree trunk and you were here.”
Kyle held his palm to the rough bark. Nothing. No tingling, no click of underlying circuitry . . . no one else appeared out of nowhere. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Closer inspection of the grassy field around the tree revealed rotting stumps. Lots of stumps.
Kyle yanked off a termite-infested chunk and held it closer for inspection. “This land was clear-cut during the timber culling a decade ago. Before that it must have been heavily forested.”
So why had they left this one tree?
The only logical answer had his gut churning.
They hadn’t.
He’d seen the devastation. Ten years earlier, fresh out of the academy, the timber culling of Old Earth had been one of his first assignments. Stationed in the northern Great Lakes area, he’d been assigned to the team searching for that missing librarian.
They’d never found the man, but he certainly hadn’t been hiding behind any trees. No tree had been left standing across most of the planet. Only an organized protest had stopped the complete deforestation of Old Earth. If this area had been clear-cut like the rest, this centuries old tree hadn’t been here ten years ago.
Kyle stood, arms crossed, in front of the gnarled trunk digesting that bit of information.
“You look confused.”
Zana’s glib comment jolted Kyle out of his reverie. He drew in a deep breath. “This tree shouldn’t be here.”
She shrugged, bending down to pick up a rock, then tossing it out into the field. “With no other people on Old Earth, it probably doesn’t have anywhere else to go right now. I don’t know if it works on roos.”
The woman believed this tree could move. She believed it brought destined lovers together.
For all his wariness, Kyle was beginning to believe a bit himself. He certainly hadn’t come up with any other explanation that worked.
His gaze lingered on Zana’s round ass and the sleek lines of her long legs. She undoubtedly was his type. Sexy, quirky, full of fun. An adventure all onto herself.
At first, he’d thought of her as young and naïve. Looking at her now though, he saw nothing but a lush, alluring woman. His mind veered into the erotic and his cock rose to attention.
Desire, on a level he’d never felt before, whirled in his head. To hold her, taste her, experience every inch, every morsel of her.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts.
Needing a distraction, he forced his gaze back to the tree. One of the small, oval leaves let free of its branch, fluttering down. Pale green on one side, silvery on the other, like none he’d ever seen before. The leaf mesmerized as it glided in the light breeze, catching the sunlight on its silvery side. He tried to grasp it, missed, and watched it tumble past to land right between Zana’s pert breasts.
She brushed the leaf away, and her breasts jiggled with an appeal that had Kyle holding his breath. Once again, desire swept him away.
A vision of those rose tipped orbs crept from his subconscious—the memory of his quick glimpse of their bare expanse.
“I . . . um . . . uh . . .” Gods, his brain suddenly wasn’t even functioning.
Zana’s heart stopped.
Kyle’s eyes were glazed, his speech slurred and incoherent. Just like Benj Imunds when he had his stroke.
Was Kyle ill?
“Hold on.” She closed on him, wrapped her arms around him to support his weight in case he lost his balance.
Benj had bashed his head on a counter top when he fell over. The farmhand had never really recovered from the head wound or the stroke.
Kyle’s arms enfolded her as well, holding her tightly to him.
She darted a quick glance back the way they’d come, wondering how she’d be able to carry him to the ship. He was so big and muscle-y.
“Zana.” His voice was rough.
Her gaze slid back to him, and he stared deeply into her eyes. His brow wrinkled.
Not a stroke after all. Then what?
His hands slid up her back, his fingers laced into her hair, and his mouth descended onto hers.
He held her in his strong arms. His lips gently ravished hers, and she surrendered to the tenderness of the moment.
She’d been kissed before, but never like this. Desire rumbled through her core, her body filled with sudden heat, pebbling her nipples against his solid chest. His desire became plainly evident as he drew her closer.
She opened to him, and his tongue danced with hers—a passionate synth-tango of sensations. Her body melded to his, relishing the strong, firm, masculine lines.
Pure, hot, sexy as hell.
Sex?
She broke the kiss, pushed him back. “N . . . no!”
How the hell had she let herself get into this situation?
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
Her stomach roiled, nausea pulled everything to her center. “You kissed me.”
Hadn’t that been exactly what she’d wanted? Her lips still tingled. His taste, wonderful, sexy . . .
Gods, she was so messed up. She wasn’t ready for this.
She had to look away. She couldn’t bear his heated stare.
“I didn’t . . .” His voice lowered. “I hadn’t planned on kissing you. It was just, you came to me. Put your arms around me like you . . . I’m sorry.”
“Oh, now you’re sorry you kissed me. It was that bad.” No. Those words came out all wrong. Her head spun, her gut knotted. How could she ever explain what she didn’t understand herself?
“No.” His tone hardened. “I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
He stood highlighted by the tree. The fucking Soul Mate Tree. The thing that had put her in this situation in the first place.
Their eyes met for only an instant before he turned away, placed his hand against the tree’s trunk, and bowed his head. “I don’t know what possessed me to kiss you, but I liked it. I liked it one hell of a lot.”
He’d slipped. He’d sworn. He never swore.
Kyle’s mind whirled and his lips tingled in the aftermath of their kiss.
Certainly he’d misread her advance. Perhaps he’d only seen what he wanted to see. When she’d approached and put her arms around him, her body pressed against his, her lips only a breath away. He couldn’t help but sample what appeared to be offered.
His palm still contacted the rough bark of the tree trunk. A faint pulse rippled through his hand.
The frackin’ tree.
If it was some kind of magical artifact from a bygone age, and he wasn’t sure he could accept that, could it be affecting them? Drawing them together?
His actions had been inexcusable.
Or had they?
She was a suspect in a string of crimes.
He was a galactic marshal.
She was a beautiful, sexy, desirable woman.
He was only human.
Another pulse, like a heartbeat, radiated through the tree trunk, then into his palm.
As if burned, he pulled his hand away. “We have to get away from this thing.”
Chapter 6
Sex.
Had it really been eight years since Zana had had the Talk with her mother?
Men put their thing inside you. Put their stuff inside you. And make babies. Even if you don’t want babies.
Didn’t you want me, Mother?
We love you, Zana. Both your father and I. You were just . . . unexpected. I don’t want you to make a mistake. Stay away from boys. Stay away from sex. Until you’re ready to have a baby.
Zana had heeded her mother’s words. She’d pushed the boys away. She’d certainly been propositioned, though not by anyone who really caught her interest. And she wasn’t ready for babies yet.
Still, Kyle should be different. Wasn’t he the one? Hadn’t the tree confirmed that? Why had she balked?
Her body had been singing in his arms. That kiss, that amazing kiss, had opened up a whole new world of wonderful sensations for her. She’d wanted him. Wanted whatever it was kissing led to.
Then the old warnings, the fear, had raised her shields.
“Oh gods.” She’d pushed him away. Made him think she didn’t want . . .
Her only exposure to a male body had been brief, accidental glimpses and changing diapers on the boy babies she occasionally took care of. But she’d gotten an eyeful of Kyle, and he was huge. Intimidating.
Her friends, those who had much more experience than she, told her they got bigger. Some of the more brazen ones even compared sizes and talked about how wonderful sex was.
Some of them had also gotten pregnant before they were married.
Her mother never failed to point them out.
Save your gift for your special someone.
Kyle was her special one, wasn’t he? Was she still supposed to save it?
“Shit.” Her mother wasn’t around to ask.
Kyle poked his head under the craft’s command console. The maintenance droid beeped and booped as it pulled wires and rerouted circuits.
“No.” Kyle grunted at the droid after checking its assessment on the display screen. “Maybe you’d don’t need life support, but Zana and I do.”
Heat and oxygen were kind of vital in the void of space. Well, oxygen at least. With Zana around there was plenty of heat.
His attraction to the sexy rim rat was unhealthy. And it appeared it was also unwelcome.
It was time to turn his attention to getting home. The tree appeared to be no help there, so his only option was this ship. Somehow, he needed to get it flying again.
“Up the scanner range to 200 kilometers and route it through the central com console.”
Zana had told him they were in the western region of the old North American continent. When he was here before, the Marshals had a ship repair facility at the Los Angeles Spaceport. There would have been parts and supplies left behind when they departed the planet. Protocol called for leaving facilities intact in case a return mission was needed.
“Kyle?”
Zana’s soft tones brought his head up, right into the underside of the command console. “Ouch.”
The woman affected him on such a visceral level. That kiss. The incredible sweetness. The way her body had responded until the moment she’d shut down.
He hadn’t imagined her response to his kiss. She’d felt something, been onboard at least for a while. What had caused her to back off so suddenly? He wiggled out from under the console, rubbing his throbbing head.
Zana’s shy smile greeted him. “Sorry.”
There was a lot of sorry going around since they got back. Both of them tread lightly with the other, keeping their words and tone as neutral as possible, ignoring what had happened under the branches of that tree.
Still, he didn’t need to force a smile. One spread naturally across his lips whenever he looked at her. She was so beautiful, and her spunky manner had reemerged soon after they’d returned to the ship.
He captured her gaze. “Any luck?”
She’d volunteered to do a reconnaissance to the west of the crash site.
“I found Merng and the roo gang about fifteen minutes out. They say there’s a big, deserted humie city about an hour’s hop to the southwest. They fear it, and haven’t gone in.”
A couple hours he could spare. Bixby, the service droid, had at least that much work to do before Kyle would know if the ship could lift, hover, and maneuver.
If the big humie city happened to be Los Angeles and the ship could be patched enough to make a short trip, they might be in luck. The thought of packing parts back on foot, how many trips it would take, made him cringe.
He shouldered the pack of kelp bars.
Zana raised her eyebrow.
“We might get hungry.” They’d completely cleaned the bones of that cooked chicken.
She rolled her eyes. “Not that hungry I hope.”
He chuckled. “I’d rather not take the time to have you cook something else right now, but when we get back . . .”
His mouth watered at the thought of cooked, real food.
She handed him the blaster and holster. “Here. You’re a better shot than me anyway.”
He buckled the holster belt around his waist. At least she trusted him.
The harder part of the equation was how much he trusted her.
“Hold?” Kyle’s query had Zana chuckling. The word held the same meaning in both galactic common and Old Earth English.
The bold lettering on the hillside had drawn their gaze. H O L then a long empty space before the D.
“Hollywood.” Four letters were still standing in the iconic sign, though the one standing L appeared to have lost a bit of its top. “They say it was a land of magic.”
“Oh. That’s where they produced the first tri-vision shows in the late twenty-first century.” Kyle motioned her
to move forward. “I’ve seen a few. Not really what I’d call magic. No real interaction at all, you just watch them.”
Zana’s friend, Bogdon, had an ancient tri-vision unit in full working condition handed down from his family. Watching the old three-dimensional movies in their original format was a fun step back in time.
“You can’t see the magic without popped grains and fizzy colas.” At least that’s what Bogdon said.
“I may have to give that a try.” Kyle stepped over what appeared to be the foundation of some old building. The crumbling concrete stuck up out of the bare ground about a dozen centimeters.
She could see no remains of whatever structure had once rested on it. Wood-based no doubt, the planet had had plenty of trees before the culling. Easy to build with, but without care, the structures could rot to nothing in less than a century.
Beyond, cracked and crumbled asphalt created a trail that must have been roadway at one time. Thick clumpy weeds thrust through every crack and crevice. The trail coiled and twisted up, down, and around hills.
Around one of the turns, Kyle cried out. “Yes!”
A large, half-track vehicle rested by the side of the trail. Tank-like treads on the back made the vehicle virtually unstoppable over just about any terrain. The storage bed even featured a crane for loading. Unlike other vehicles they’d encountered on their hike, this one seemed intact, and rust free. Obviously it hadn’t been sitting here for over a hundred years.
Solar panels covered the front and top of the large cab. Hopefully the unit would be fully charged and ready to roll.
“This has to be one of the vehicles left behind by the timber cullers.” He climbed up on the track and opened the wide door. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he hit a switch on the dashboard and lights flickered on. “Please start.”
Between Venus & Mars (The Soul Mate Tree Book 3) Page 5
