Unchained Memory (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 1)

by Donna S. Frelick

  “Not so fast.”

  He sat back on my hips and let me look, his eyes taking their own tour of my naked body. My hands wandered across the taut muscles of his chest, skimming the fan of fine hair in the center to tease his nipples on either side. He sucked in a breath and smiled as he jerked in response. I hovered across his ribs, my fingertips as light as butterfly wings, tracing the outlines of his injuries, old and new.

  “Still sore?”

  “Probably.” His smile widened. “Not something I’m currently worried about.”

  “I’m so sorry, baby.” I meant the older scars, too, and when I looked in his eyes, I could see he understood. I allowed my hands to drop, then, down over the hard lines of his obliques, to his belly and finally to the thick shaft that rose from between his thighs. I let one hand fall to cup his heavy balls and with the other I gripped that beautiful piece of his at the head and squeezed lightly. Ethan gripped the sheets and sucked in a breath.

  I slid my hand down the shaft to the root and back up, loving the way the skin moved under my fingers, the way the hard flesh expanded beneath the skin. I did it again, noting the ridges and the veins, the warm pulsing in my hand when I closed my fist over the tip. I lifted my eyes to Ethan’s face. He was in an agony of pleasure and so was I. It was as if I was touching myself when I touched him.

  He moved down my body to face me, working himself between my legs so that every movement caressed me, tortured me. His hips rolled against mine, his mouth pressed at my temple, at my ear, at my throat. His heartbeat and mine slammed together until I pulsed and dripped with need.

  “I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you, Asia.” His voice was a low rumble I could feel in my bones. “I’m hard for you every minute of every day. All I can think about is how you screamed when I was inside you. I’ll do anything to make you scream like that again. I’ll give you anything you want.”

  There was only one thing I wanted. I gripped the back of his thighs and ground my hips under him. “I want this.”

  He grinned. “When you’re ready.”

  “Oh, God, I am so ready.”

  “Not as ready as you will be,” he promised.

  He drew back to kiss me, his tongue probing my mouth, his hand at my breast, rolling the nipple between his thumb and forefinger hard enough to hurt. Sensation flared between my legs so intense I groaned into his mouth, arching under him, forcing more contact with his rigid shaft. He shifted and his hand slipped between us to close around the head of his erection and guide it in maddening circles around my hungry core.

  “Please, Ethan.” God, I was desperate for him. “Please. Please.” I grabbed his hips and pulled at him, broke off the kiss to bite at his neck and shoulder, raked my nails up his back and begged him, and at last he quit teasing me and gave me what I needed.

  He plunged inside me—I was so wet I made it easy for him—and he made sure I felt him hard and deep and in all the right spots. He brought me up fast and wouldn’t let me come down until I’d shuddered myself boneless and screamed myself hoarse for him. He came with me the last time and filled me with his sweet stuff, and, when it was over, he held me for what was left of that night. And if there is a finer way to apologize in this life, I’m sure I’ve never experienced it.

  Ethan’s face was the first thing I saw as I came to life the next morning. His eyes were the color of the October sky and his smile crinkled them at the corners when he saw I was awake.

  “’Morning, beautiful.”

  If I hadn’t been in love with him before, that moment would certainly have clinched the deal. “Hey.” I offered up my lips for a kiss.

  He obliged with a tender, almost chaste, touch of his warm lips to mine. Then another. His lips wandered from my mouth to my throat, from my throat to my collarbone, from my collarbone to my breast. There he lingered, licking and nibbling at my nipple while my heart began to pound and my blood began to race to fill my willing flesh with heat again.

  The mood was shattered with a loud knock on the door. We jumped apart; Ethan rolled off the bed and dove for my bag near the bathroom. He thrust his hand in the bag and came out with the pistol and was standing at the door before the second knock came.

  Fortunately, the visitor announced herself before Ethan blew her poor innocent head off. “Housekeeping!”

  “Jesus Christ!” I exhaled.

  Ethan spoke to her through the locked door. “Uh, you need to come back later.”

  “Okay,” came the reply. “Y’all take your time.”

  “Holy shit.” Ethan sank down on the bed, his hand shaking as he put the safety back on the gun and lowered it to the floor. I crawled across the bed to put my arms around his shoulders. Then we both started laughing, howling hysterically with both relief and a sense of how ridiculous we looked, ready to fight the Men in Black in nothing but our birthday suits.

  Ethan shook his head. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m with you, Kemosabe. Whatever you had in mind for this morning can wait until we get to wherever we’re going.”

  Busy throwing clothes in the direction of his overnight bag, he simply smiled, a smile that promised everything.

  It didn’t take us long to get organized, once we decided to go. At nine o’clock the housekeeper almost met Jesus. At ten o’clock we had packed the car, ready to head out.

  Ethan backed the car out of the parking space and drove around to the office. “Hey, Baby’s purring this morning. Guess those guys tuned her up, too?”

  “Yeah, they had fun working on what they considered to be a classic. You’re really lucky they could find the part.”

  “How did you pay for it?”

  “Ethan, you were completely out of it, and I knew I didn’t have the money to pay for it.” My face grew red with embarrassment. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “What did you do? Rob a bank?”

  “I used your credit card. Ray and the boys weren’t too particular about who signed. I’m sorry—I couldn’t exactly ask for permission.”

  The worry lines between his eyes softened into amusement, and he laughed. “Sure you could’ve. I might have said anything! But it’s a good thing we’re leaving here today. Our friends will trace that card in no time. Maybe I’ll drop a few hints with the Front Desk as to where we’ll be headed next; put them off the scent.”

  Since our pursuers would soon know about the Marlinton location, we made full use of it. Before we left town we went shopping for some groceries and for camping gear that Ethan said was essential. We got cash from more than one ATM—enough to tide us over for a while. We were feeling flush and almost giddy by the time we left, heading north on the same winding two-lane highway we’d come in on.

  It was a crystal-clear fall day in the mountains. The sun was shining from a sky as blue as sapphires and the leaves were a patchwork of red and gold and stubborn green across the folded hills. We could almost believe we were a couple of tourists taking a drive over those torturous switchbacks for the pure pleasure of each other’s company and the view from the next scenic outlook.

  Yet if I stopped to assess my state of heart, below the tropical sea of emotions that washed around Ethan was a cold current of grief arising from my time in the mines of . . . where? I didn’t even have a name for the place where I had lost a friend, but I missed her here and now.

  I’d fallen silent as the late afternoon shadows lengthened. Ethan let me go for a while before he spoke.

  “The memory that surfaced last night is on your mind a lot today, isn’t it?”

  I acknowledged the truth of his insight with a humorless smile. “Dozen is on my mind a lot today.”

  He nodded. “She would be.”

  “You can understand why people insist on having a body to bury. You know, widows of MIAs or kidnap victims’ families.” I stared out the window, seeing nothing. “They can’t let go until they have those remains. I feel a little bit like that. It would be much e
asier to believe this whole thing never even happened—that it was all a dream or a vision. Except . . .” I looked at him. “Ethan, I know. I just know this place, these people, all of it was real. Dozen was real. Mose was real. And now they’re dead. And, damn it, that hurts.”

  He took his eyes off the road to meet mine, lifted a hand to brush away the tear that had rolled down my cheek. “I know. I’m sorry, Asia.”

  It was quiet again for a long moment before Ethan took a different tack. “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Sore. Not like this morning, though. Weird, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. The physical body retains a lot of emotional memory. When a painful memory is released, the body will often release the pain physically, too. I have a few friends who do body and energy work around that kind of thing.”

  That was a new one on me, but I did remember a few massages that had come close to being spiritual experiences.

  “Do you remember anything beyond the injury? I mean, do you remember what happened after the rock fell on you?”

  I thought about it. Every detail up to that point was clear—the grit under my hands and knees, the smell of the earth in my nostrils, the sound of the mountain groaning all around me before a pain like a meat cleaver sliced into my shoulder blade. Afterwards there was nothing.

  I explained this to Ethan. It didn’t seem to surprise him. He was after something else anyway.

  “Dozen was taking you somewhere to get out of the mine. This was an escape plan that had been set up ahead of time.”

  I nodded slowly, putting the pieces together. “She acted like she knew exactly where to go, what to do.”

  “She was working with others.”

  “Yes, but she never said anything about anyone else.” I thought back over every conversation I could remember having with Dozen, even the most trivial. She had hinted at the truth, but never revealed anything of substance. She had been careful. She had had to be. Even 1408 might have betrayed her. “I guess she was never sure of me until the end.”

  Ethan shot a look at me, then looked back at the road, understanding. There was another pause while he moved on to the next question in his mind.

  “The people she was trying to reach must have found you and got you out.”

  I smiled tightly. “Obviously, or I wouldn’t be here. But there’s a big piece of the puzzle still missing.”

  Ethan grinned. “Oh, you mean the whole time travel/space warp/little gray men connection?”

  “I thought that was supposed to be your specialty.”

  “Um, no. My specialty is convincing people that there are no little gray men, no abductions, no time travel, no space warps. I’m in a little over my head here. For this we need Stephen Hawking. Or maybe Isaac Asimov.”

  “Well, I think it may be too late for Isaac. And Stephen’s just going to tell us we’re nuts. So we’re back to you.”

  Ethan laughed. “The perfect circular argument.”

  “Then there’s the question of who’s after us. Are they government? Guns for hire? Aliens in disguise? Maybe we ought to let them catch up to us.” I wasn’t smiling when I said it. “Who knows? They might even be the good guys, trying to save Earth from the evil aliens.”

  Ethan looked like he might stop the car and shake me. “No. No, Asia. Good guys don’t come at you with a strong sedative and no explanation. They don’t make you disappear without a trace. They don’t scare an old woman so damn bad she takes her own life.” He turned back to the road, his expression set on grim. “I don’t know who they are, but they aren’t the good guys.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  By nightfall we had crossed into Pennsylvania, though the Appalachians stretched on in roll after unimpeded roll on either side. It was easy to see what a barrier they must have seemed to the restless farmers of the early days of the Republic, why the Conestogas made the long trek down the Wilderness Road to cross the Cumberland Gap into the Promised Land beyond those endless mountains. Even in this day of banked curves and smooth pavement, of internal combustion engines capable of carrying us at speeds unthinkable to our dogged ancestors, after five straight hours I was sick and tired of those damn mountains and ready to be done with driving in them.

  So it was with some relief that we finally hit I-80 going east in Pennsylvania and took the Beemer up to speed for a brief final push before calling it a night. But the good feeling didn’t last long.

  When I called to check in with Rita, she sounded more than just worried. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Long story. What’s going on?”

  “You tell me, ’cause it sure as hell looks like you got yourself in a mess.”

  “Well, you may be right about that, but what makes you think so?” I kept my voice even, but my heart had kicked into overdrive and my mouth was suddenly dry.

  “Those guys you were talking about Sunday? They paid us a visit at the office Monday afternoon.” Fear was something I’d never heard in Rita’s voice before. I cursed myself that I was responsible for putting it there. “They were rough characters, all right, but they seemed a little smarter than the usual credit bureau types to me. They asked a lot of questions, and they weren’t happy when I kept saying it was none of their damn business, if you get my drift.”

  “Oh, Rita, I’m so sorry. What did you tell them?”

  “I didn’t tell them shit! What do you take me for?” She sounded really pissed now.

  “I didn’t mean—Rita, I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I had no choice. I’m sorry.”

  There was a pause while my friend seemed to collect herself. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, worried. “Just listen. They left that day, but they came back this afternoon, and they talked to JW. God knows what he told them. And when they left, JW came out and let me know in no uncertain terms that if you were to call or come in, I was to say you no longer have a job here.”

  The news shouldn’t have surprised me. This was Wednesday, after all, and I hadn’t showed up for work in three days—that was enough for JW even without the rest of it.

  “Asia?”

  “Yeah, I heard you. Figures. You’re not in trouble over this are you?”

  Rita exhaled loudly. “Oh, hell. You know that asshole can’t do without me. He yelled most of the afternoon, but what could he do to me? I just said I didn’t know a thing—which is the freaking truth, by the way. Girl, what the hell is going on?”

  I glanced at Ethan, who met my gaze and slowly shook his head. I nodded to show him I understood.

  “I can’t tell you, sweetie. I wish I could.”

  “Are you okay? It’s not something with that guy, is it?”

  “No. I’m fine, thanks to him. I guess you could say we’re in this together.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “It’s a hell of a lot better than being in it alone, that’s all I know.”

  “But where are you? I went by the apartment, and the poor cat liked to knock me down for some attention. I took him home with me, since I didn’t know when you’d be home.”

  “Good thinking, since I don’t have a clue either.”

  “Those guys were scary, Asia. They meant business. You need to make sure you stay as far away from them as you can.”

  “I know. That’s the plan. Thanks for everything, Rita.”

  “I was glad to do it, honey. Is there anything else I can do?”

  “I’ll be in touch when I can.”

  “Okay. I guess. You take care of yourself.”

  I closed the phone and looked at Ethan. I could just see the planes of his face outlined in the dim light from the dashboard. The muscles of his jaw were clamped tight, and the tension I could read so plainly there was evident, too, in the hands that gripped the steering wheel and the forearms that served them.

  “You heard?”

  “Most of it.” He glanced at me. “Is she all right?”

  “Yeah, thank God. Guess they got what they ne
eded from my boss and left.”

  His head whipped around. “What could your boss have told them?”

  I shrugged. “Not a hell of a whole lot. My home address, I guess. I didn’t put down any emergency contacts or family information on my application when I signed on. I was trying to make a clean break with Hazelett and all that had happened. Never got around to ‘updating’ my forms, either.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Ethan seemed to relax a little.

  “Baby, you forget—I don’t have any family to worry about.” A minute passed in silence before I sat up and stared at him, newly terrified. “Maybe we should start worrying about yours.”

  Ethan shook his head. “My friends Dan and Lisa are visiting her mother in Florida. And my sister’s okay—she’s out of the country.”

  I tilted my head to look at him. “Don’t you have a brother, too?”

  He ran a hand through his hair and shifted in his seat, as if the mere mention of his sibling made him want to strangle something. “He’s a broker in New York City. If anyone’s in danger in this situation it would be the Men in Black.”

  “Wow. That bad, huh?”

  Ethan blew out a weary breath. “We have history.”

  “Is there a chance he’d tell them where we are?”

  He shook his head. “Brian thinks I’m a leftist hippie and my clients all lying social parasites, but he’s reserved the pleasure of killing me for himself.” Ethan didn’t appear to be joking. “He won’t tell them anything.”

  I exhaled and relaxed again. “Okay. So, Plan A is secure. Now, how soon can we stop for the night?”

  Ethan looked uncomfortable. “Guess that depends on how you feel about driving. Because I have another kind of phone call to make.”

  The next exit coming up offered lots of choices for lodging. I decided to give the poor drivers of Pennsylvania’s highways a break. “We’re distracted enough. Let’s get off the road before we kill somebody. Then you can call the President of the United States for all I care.”