‘‘Wh-why this . . . effect?’’ he barely managed to groan, throwing his head back. The rigid warmth of his hardness filled his hand; back and forth he stroked, just gazing upon the woman he now realized he loved. He loved her. All that she was. He had no more arguments left—protection, duty, vows, honor, restraint—none of it meant a damn thing any more. It didn’t even matter, at least for this moment, the horrible thing that he was. I can win, he thought hungrily. For her, I’d control it. It doesn’t have to . . .
Love! she trilled inside of his heart. Love accepts!
‘‘No, no,’’ he argued with a guttural yelp, the kind common only to highly aroused Refarian males. ‘‘This is a hell of a lot more than acceptance, Thea.’’ He could hardly keep his eyes open, her overwhelming energy shimmered so starkly between them. Again, he growled and groaned, nearly coming in the palm of his hand. He felt light dampness form between his fingertips.
Then, in the same whirl of a heartbeat in which she’d made her Change, she stood before him completely naked, her clothes obviously consumed by the fire of her transformation. Her untamed, curling blond hair fell across her shoulders; her full lips were swollen as if he’d been kissing her all along; her pert breasts jutted outward with undeniable arousal.
And he was upon her before either of them could argue. ‘‘You said to make love to you,’’ he breathed, taking her into his arms. ‘‘You showed me everything about who you are . . . now feel this!’’ With every ounce of his own soul he reached toward her, allowing his energy to spiral around her, through her, around her.
Feel me inside of you, he breathed, stroking her soul with the tendrils of his massive power.
‘‘Wh-what . . .’’ she gasped, dropping to her knees.
It’s what I am, Thea. He placed his palm atop her head, allowing his heat to enter her body that way as well.
Again, he rolled his energy across her essence, caressed her, touched her until, just barely, he allowed their souls to touch. Risky, so damned risky, but he had to feel her.
She stared up at him, her clear blue eyes watering, and he stroked his knuckles over her cheek. This is all that I am, baby.
Beautiful. Gods, I’ve never . . .
He pushed his soul right against hers, closing his eyes so he could see the trailing red and purple of her own soul. Inhaling her scent, he stood like that, unable to move, knowing they were a mere heartbeat away from bonding. Their mating would have to be sealed by the lovemaking, of course—finished that way. But this was the first step.
Boldly, he pushed his soul atop hers, forceful. Brave. All his arguments against a bonding evaporating from his mind and heart. He was ready to take her, vows and honor be damned. Mine, he thought, I’m making her all mine!
And then he recalled every word that had ever been spoken about his kind back on Refaria. Dark. Ruined. Evil. Devil’s spawn.
Abruptly he withdrew, releasing his soul-hold upon her, dropping his hand away from the top of her head.
‘‘Why did you stop?’’ Thea demanded, gaping at him. ‘‘What I saw inside of you was amazing! Please, show me more!’’
‘‘Thea, we nearly soul-bonded just then—didn’t you feel it?’’
She smiled up at him. ‘‘What I felt was your gift—your soul—I can’t even tell the difference. But it was beautiful.’’
‘‘No, Thea, it’s not beautiful,’’ he told her coldly. ‘‘It’s the worst curse, the ugliest blight. It’s completely me!’’ Holding his hands up he worked to separate them physically, backing away from her. He had to save her from himself; he’d nearly soul-bonded with her! What would he do next time—when he lost full control?
‘‘But it’s so beautiful! Your gift is so beautiful,’’ she whispered in return, reaching toward him with both arms. ‘‘How can you call it a curse?’’
‘‘Because haven’t you figured out what I am?’’ he thundered, intentionally making himself sound threatening. ‘‘Don’t you get it, baby?’’
She shook her head, still reaching toward him, and he closed the distance between them, dropping to his own knees until they knelt together, slowly stroking one another’s faces. ‘‘I’m an empath,’’ he said at last, bending low to kiss her cheek. There, he’d said it. Maybe now she would understand why, more than any other reason he’d named, they couldn’t mate.
She pulled back, shaking her head. ‘‘No. No, that can’t be true,’’ she said intensely, blinking at him in shock.
He pulled her into his arms, cradling her head against his bare shoulder. He felt the warm wetness of her tears, and wrestled for words. ‘‘It’s what I really am, baby.’’
‘‘But . . . empaths never live,’’ she argued. ‘‘They’re insane. They always go insane. Or die before they come of age.’’
It was the absolute truth about his kind. On their home planet, empaths were considered a scourge, benighted by the devil himself—not endowed by All. It was a twisted, dark version of the Refarian gift of intuition.
She held onto him tightly, wrapping both her small, strong arms around his broad back and refusing to let go. ‘‘You are not an empath!’’ she finally insisted, squeezing him with determined strength.
He closed his eyes and told her the one thing he wished he could protect her from. The one aspect of his core nature that he’d endured since he was a small boy back on Refaria. ‘‘Thea, I almost did go insane—before coming here when I was eight. That’s what saved me . . . on Earth, for whatever reason, I’m balanced.’’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘‘Most of the time, at least. On Refaria, I was blinded by headaches, sick almost every day; if not for Sabrina, I would have died.’’
She pulled apart and stared up into his eyes. ‘‘What are you saying to me?’’ she asked, reaching a palm to his heated face.
He hesitated, thinking of how the Refarian mating rites meant the sharing of gifts; Thea’s natural affinity for healing and intuition would blend with his own empathy. And his empathy would overtake her so rapidly that without his lifelong skills with tempering his dark gift, she would be destroyed in a matter of days.
He pressed his forehead against hers, stroking her hair. ‘‘Thea, my vows are real, but now? Even they aren’t enough to keep me apart from you—not after this. Not the way we just shared with each other.’’
‘‘Then make love to me,’’ she insisted, clasping his face within both her palms. The smell of sweat creased into her hands sent a jolt of desire down his spine. As always, it was her scent that most seemed to drive him to the edge. ‘‘Right here, right now,’’ she begged, ‘‘let’s become lovers. We’ll hold back from soul-bonding; it doesn’t have to be that way!’’ Her lovely blue gaze searched his face hungrily, desperately, and it was almost more than he could bear.
‘‘Empaths don’t make love without mating, at least not most of the time. It takes too much control,’’ he whispered at last, staring into her eyes meaningfully. ‘‘We aren’t capable of it. We’re too wide open to stop ourselves. That’s the real reason I’m a virgin—not because I’m a saint or a master of self-discipline. Not even because of my vows, though they certainly matter. But because I can’t hold back my core nature, especially not while joining with you! It was like I said in the cafeteria, Thea, that if I so much as take you into my bed, I’ll be soulbound to you in a moment.’’
‘‘Then we’ll mate! Yes, yes,’’ she rushed excitedly, showering his jaw with hot kisses. ‘‘Oh, Marco, I want to mate. You saw me . . . you know. I accept you and you accept me—we can bond! Why not, I’m willing . . .’’
He broke away, pouncing to his feet; he hardly realized he stood before her naked, aroused, angry. With a rough gesture, he threw her his T-shirt so she could cover herself, and it slapped her in the face. ‘‘We are finished.’’ He growled furiously.
She shook her head. ‘‘We’re not even close to being finished. I won’t let us be!’’ She leaped to her own feet, facing him down like the seasoned soldier that she was. She flung his
T-shirt back at him and it careened off his bare shoulder. ‘‘You don’t make these rules!’’
The time had come to lay it all out between them, no more half-truths. He clasped her by both shoulders, leveled her with his empath’s gaze and in a calm voice shattered all of her remaining illusions. ‘‘Thea, if we mate,’’ he told her, ‘‘it will destroy you within days.’’
She laughed, clearly disbelieving him. ‘‘That’s ridiculous, Marco,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll be fine.’’
‘‘No, Thea, if we mate, you will become an empath just like me—and I’ve spent a lifetime learning to control my gift. I killed it, drove it into the recesses of my being. But you? You’d go insane—or worse. And there’s no way I could do that to you. Not when I’ve fallen in love with you.’’
With a furious gesture, he reached for his pants where they lay on the floor, putting his back to her. Then he found his T-shirt and yanked it over his head; he had to get away from her, or he’d never be strong enough to end things between them.
‘‘I don’t believe you,’’ she persisted. ‘‘Tell me who Marek Shaekai is. How does he figure in here?’’
Slowly, he turned to face her one final time. ‘‘I was born Marek Shaekai, empath, son of Laliea Shaekai, also an empath . . . also a protector. But I killed Marek so that I could live. That man—the one I was before—died long ago. It was the only way. And if I mate, Thea, with anyone . . . Marek will awaken. Dangerously, horribly, he will awaken. I can’t take that risk.’’
‘‘It’s worth the chance,’’ she half begged as he dressed hurriedly. ‘‘We’re worth the chance.’’
‘‘Nothing’s worth destroying you, Thea,’’ he said, lowering his lips to brush one last kiss across her forehead. ‘‘Gods help me, I can’t do it—not to you.’’
‘‘Marco, all I’m asking . . .’’
But he never heard the rest of what she said. He left the room and put Thea Haven, a princess and lady of the first order, out of his life forever. He was a servant, an empath, a tainted mongrel the likes of which should never have even touched her—much less have contemplated soul-bonding. Even though he felt her shattered tears in his wake, he knew that one day, somehow, she would thank him.
Chapter Seventeen
The room in the underground holding facility where they’d placed Scott Dillon was only ten by ten feet, small enough that the alien could be wrestled into a corner if control became necessary, but large enough that they were giving him at least a little breathing room. Either way, Hope felt surprisingly sorry for the alien. He sat compliantly at the small desk in the center of the room, despite the fact that they’d worked him over good—she heard him groan and exhale whenever he shifted in his seat, indicating a high level of pain. He smelled of nervousness and something else that Hope couldn’t quite place, a kind of musky smell.
Seated across the table from him, she worked to make ‘‘eye contact’’: A skill that she knew made people less nervous about her eyesight problems. Part of her job as a translator was putting subjects at ease; it got them talking more freely. She never wanted to spook anybody by not quite looking them in the eye because that could render her less effective. And if there was anything Hope Harper wanted it was to be the best at what she did, not ordinary, and certainly not perceived as disabled. Still, despite her efforts to meet Dillon’s gaze dead-on, all she could make out were a blur of black hair and the slash of black eyebrows against a fair face. If he had beard stubble, she couldn’t see it. If he smiled, she only had a sense of it.
The lead investigator had described the room to her in detail while security officers had biometrically scanned her palm and retinas. After that, they’d performed a DNA test by swabbing the inside of her mouth. Within ten minutes they were able to verify her identity based on those tests, confirming that she was, in fact, Hope Harper. The door had been unbolted, a series of locks and codes releasing the latch, and she’d been briefed that they were working the subject hard—going the uncomfortable, less pleasant route with him since he hadn’t been talking.
Apart from the small table, the only other accoutrements were a pull down rack bed—currently unmade and against the wall—and a small toilet on the far side of the room. The alien had no privacy for his ablutions, even as it was becoming equally apparent to Hope that he had no civil liberties. It went without saying that the Geneva Convention was meaningless for extraterrestrials, and now that she’d spent hours translating the interrogators’ questions, she’d begun to feel even sorrier for Scott Dillon.
He seemed so weary—had they even fed him since his arrival? Another linguist had led out with him for the first day or so; they were rotating her and unknown others. They had split up the duty, which explained why they hadn’t just relied on the language lab at headquarters. While she’d been working the intercepts all these months, other translators had been hammering out their own Refarian-English translations. None of them would ever be given the entire picture. Total compartmentalization—each of them on a need-to-know basis.
Hope had spent the entire morning translating for the alien, the interrogators’ questions focusing on the role of the Refarian military presence. What was the aliens’ interest in Earth? Why this particular quadrant of the planet? Why did the Refarian fighter jet they’d impounded at Mirror Lake appear different from the other jets they’d sighted in the past?
The questions went on and on, and all the while Scott Dillon refused to answer except for occasional phrases in Refarian. She knew he spoke English from the intercepts, but he wasn’t about to crack. She wished these guys running the show would let her free-form him for a while with a few questions of her own. Maybe, given her emerging facility with Dillon’s native tongue, she could make more headway than she had simply translating the interrogators’ questions.
‘‘Ask him why we spotted a squadron of their craft near the Canadian border yesterday,’’ the colonel instructed her. The three of them were seated at the table as if they were about to have coffee and doughnuts. ‘‘Ask him what his people are planning.’’
Hope drew in a breath, spreading her palms in front of her. She began her translation—it was too difficult to do so simultaneously, so each time she waited for the colonel to finish, then began speaking in Refarian.
Dillon sighed, then replied in his native language: ‘‘Not willing to answer.’’
It was a risk, but she decided to buck authority and shot back, ‘‘You speak English. You should talk to them.’’
She sensed him stiffen as a ripple of energy seemed to snake between them.
‘‘What did you just add, Ms. Harper?’’ Colonel Stevens demanded, his chair creaking as he turned to face her.
‘‘I forgot the part about what they’re planning,’’ she lied, covering her tracks. ‘‘Just tagging that on.’’
‘‘You lie,’’ Dillon observed in Refarian, laughing softly. ‘‘Amusing.’’
Not for me, you alien jerk, she thought.
‘‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’’ he continued, and she lowered her gaze to her lap.
‘‘Harper,’’ the colonel insisted, ‘‘what is the man saying to you?’’
She pushed back from the table. ‘‘He’s starting to bait me. You better bring in one of the other linguists.’’
‘‘I like that—taking charge,’’ Dillon snickered, but she ignored him, rising from her seat.
Still, something about this alien—a man she could hardly see—felt painfully familiar. Knocked the breath from her lungs, now that he’d addressed her personally. That was the real reason she’d stepped away: So he wouldn’t see how badly she’d begun to shake when he asked what was wrong with her eyes. It’s just the tapes, she told herself. You’ve been listening to his voice for months. He had a scratchy, husky voice and, when he spoke her own language, it had such a deep resonance to it that she’d often felt the hairs on her neck prickle while transcribing intercepts. I know this man, somehow, somewhere . . .
The colonel pulled her aside, speaking in tones low enough that only she would hear. ‘‘Are you sure, Harper? You’ve made more headway with the subject than the others.’’
She glanced back at Dillon’s blurry form, trying to discern whether he’d desist from his provoking behavior. ‘‘If you’d give me more freedom, sir—the ability to question him less rigidly, get more of a conversation going—’’
‘‘That’s not protocol,’’ he reminded her simply, jangling the keys in his pocket. Then he made a kind of whistling noise between his teeth—he probably had a slight gap in front. ‘‘Not even close to protocol.’’
‘‘I realize that, Colonel, but I might be able to hit him with the same questions, just get better results.’’
‘‘Harper, you’ve used unconventional methods before.’’ She’d gotten in trouble for them, too—and won the highest award for a linguist within the FBI: Language Specialist of the Year. ‘‘I like those kinds of methods, and that’s why I tapped you for this project.’’
‘‘You tapped me?’’ She couldn’t hide her surprise. How did a colonel within the Air Force tap an FBI linguist for something like this?
‘‘This is a joint project, Harper,’’ he explained, jangling the keys again. ‘‘We’ve picked our team going in. Carefully.’’
‘‘I understand, sir.’’
The jangling sound stopped. ‘‘Give it a go,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re getting it all on tape, audio and video. Why not?’’
It was odd, but for the first time since she’d entered the holding facility, Hope breathed a bit easier.
Scott watched the translator as she spoke in hushed tones with the colonel who’d been questioning him for the past days. Heightening his hearing, he knew what she was suggesting: That she take charge of the interview even though she was just the linguist, not an officer or special agent. The woman had a good mastery of his language, and it had startled him when she’d first begun in that soft, feminine voice of hers to form the language of his home. To see a human mouth speaking the words of his youth and his adopted people.
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