The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  That was the only gentlemanly impulse that escaped the vortex of heat and need swallowing them both whole. Her satin flesh slid against his while he captured her mouth again and again, hands fisted in her hair. Her thighs parted and slid over his, settling the moist heat of her against his penis. That member throbbed in response to the contact, and the tiny motion combined with the pressure of her body against his opened her slightly as if in welcome.

  Caleb reached down to stroke her where their bodies nearly joined, finding her slick and ready. He didn’t waste any more time claiming her the way he’d wanted to since he’d watched her ride that wicked bull: parting her flesh, sheathing himself to the hilt again and again while she writhed and bucked against him, until they spent themselves and came to rest, panting, her small body shivering with aftershocks atop his.

  “Bed next time,” Caleb rasped against her ear. She gave a nod and a half-laugh. But despite his intentions, they didn’t make it past the couch the second time, where her upper half rested on the leather as she knelt on the floor, legs wide apart while he thrust endlessly into her from behind. After that, the shower, where he braced her against the wall with her legs wrapped around his waist. And then the bed seemed redundant, so they made their way to the kitchen with a towel slung around his waist and one tucked neatly sarong-style between her breasts.

  “Hungry?”

  “Famished.” Althea settled into a chair while he put together a plate of cheese, crackers and grapes. She tasted everything the way she had the beer, as if every flavor and sensation was something new to experience and savor. Come to think of it, she’d gone at him the same way.

  “Drink?”

  “Um.” She swallowed. “Yes, please. More of your own recipe?”

  Since he always kept a few bottles cold, that was an easy request to grant. He twisted the cap off for her and handed her the chilled brew. She took it gingerly, then followed his example when he drank straight from his bottle. Once she started, she gulped thirstily, so he offered her another. She accepted with cheerful greed.

  “So you’re some kind of illegal alien,” Caleb stated, not certain he was right about her status but dead sure she was from further away than another town or state.

  A peal of laughter escaped her. She raised the bottle in a salute, grinning at him conspiratorially. “You have no idea. I broke so many laws and regulations. Possibly all of them.”

  She was proud of her lack of visa, then. She didn’t seem the criminal type, either. Curiouser and curiouser.

  “But how did you know I was an alien? I pass for human perfectly as long as nobody scans my genome.”

  She couldn’t possibly be drunk. Not on fewer than two beers. Which meant she was joking.

  “You look very human.”

  She nodded. “So do you. That’s why you all got away with it.

  You have for hundreds of years, so I knew we could get away with it for a few days.”

  You? We? Caleb’s attention sharpened. “Who do you mean?”

  “All of us.” The hand not holding the bottle made an encompassing wave. “You and all of your genetic prototype, you’ve been on Earth since Attila and his men landed in their escape pods and decided to topple the local government. Their own being inconveniently out of reach.”

  “And who is we?” Caleb asked the question casually.

  “Myself and my team,” she answered promptly, taking another long drink. She paused to wipe her mouth on the back of her hand and beamed at him again. “This is so good. We have nothing like it. May I sample the molecular composition for later reconstruction?”

  “Be my guest.”

  She removed a plain metal stud from her earlobe and waved it over the bottle. It emitted a beam of light. When the light cut off, she restored the earring to its former position.

  Toy laser jewelry? Caleb decided to ignore that and stay on topic. “You were telling me about your team.”

  “Oh, yes.” Althea turned solemn. “We’re scientists. All women. We work in teams that way, segregated by gender as well as area of study. We’ve lived a very sheltered existence. I always thought it was to encourage us to focus on our work, but now I realize it was to keep us isolated from the general population and prevent unlicensed cross-breeding. They had to enhance our curiosity and creativity, you see, or we’d have been no good, but those traits made us a danger to the status quo. Much like your genotype.”

  “Mine?”

  “Mm, the super-soldiers. Not just brawn, although you all have that, of course, but high intelligence, adaptability, leadership, outside-the-box thinking. Mavericks. Renegades. And that was why they realized they had to get rid of you. They were afraid you’d stop following orders and start giving them. Judging by what the Huns did, a valid concern.”

  “And who is they?” Caleb asked, wondering if this was an elaborate fiction or evidence of mental illness.

  “Pangaea’s ruling body. The ones who set up the genetic-manipulation program and designated every future person for their predestined role. They threw you away like garbage, jettisoned to the far reaches of space, but you aren’t trash. You’re treasure. You’re the hope and future of our race. That’s why we came to find you.”

  “And have wild monkey sex.”

  Althea blinked. “Well, yes. We hijacked a space ship with FTL drive but we couldn’t steal a genetics lab, too. That limited us to natural methods. We don’t have the equipment for anything else.”

  “You’re telling me I’m an alien. And you’re part of a second wave of hot alien women looking to score.” It was the stuff of juvenile science-fiction fantasies, except that something about her kept him from dismissing her story entirely. Like the way she held a grape up to the light and squinted at it, studying it as if it were a specimen in a lab.

  His words made her grin in delight. “You think I’m hot?”

  “I did until you started talking aliens.”

  Her smile faded, and then became a frown. She focused on the bottle in her hand. “This beverage. This is some sort of truth serum.” She let it go so abruptly that it nearly spilled the remains of its contents on the table. Her hand flew to cover her mouth, eyes wide in horror. “I have to go.”

  Yes. Yes, she did. But she went faster than Caleb anticipated, and in a way he never could have. She twisted the stud in her ear. A rainbow of light encased her body. When the light went out, only an empty towel on her chair was left to dumbfound him.

  “Hey. Hey! Althea!” He shouted at the empty chair. “Dammit, come back!”

  But she didn’t. Even though he sat at the table until dawn broke outside the kitchen window. He would have been tempted to believe the entire episode was a hallucination, but when he got up and retraced their hurricane path through his condo, it ended in two sets of clothing on the floor. She’d left that much behind. Caleb knelt and gathered up her shirt and jeans, folded them neatly, and collected her boots. In the process, something caught his eye. Something small, winking in the light of day.

  A metal stud. Twin to the one she’d used to vanish, taking his genetic material with her. And it was at that moment he realized why she’d told him the condom wasn’t necessary.

  Althea might already be carrying his child.

  Three

  “I jeopardized the mission,” Althea repeated. Her lips felt numb. Her stomach felt like lead. “I told him everything.”

  “You didn’t,” Nia assured her. “I scanned your report. You never mentioned your favorite color, or that you slept with a stuffed koa until you reached your majority.”

  Althea groaned and buried her face in her hands. “I have to abdicate as captain. I’ve failed. You’re next in seniority, you should take over.”

  “You are behaving irrationally,” Nia said. “You’re the team leader. You organized the hijacking. You have more flight experience than any of the rest of us. I barely passed basic stellar navigation. I know just enough to pilot an in-system shuttle from moon base to moon base. And you didn’t
fail, you engaged your target. You may have told him more than you intended, but what can he do? Report you to the local authorities? You’ve studied their culture. People who believe in UFOs are dismissed as crackpots.”

  “I don’t know what he can do. That’s what worries me.” Caleb was dangerous and unpredictable. Precisely why she’d wanted him. She knew better than to dismiss him. If he chose to complicate her mission, he was capable of finding a way. He’d been designed to innovate on the spot, under any conditions. And to never give up until he won.

  “Worry in private,” Nia advised. “You’re the captain.”

  For better or worse, it seemed she still was. She took advantage of captain’s privilege and retired to her quarters. The walls seemed to close in on her after the expanse of a planet, so she took the time to synthesize the beverage she’d sampled at Caleb’s. It tasted flat. False. She sighed and discarded it. Another failure.

  “You can’t make it like a photocopy,” a low masculine voice said from behind her. “You have to brew it. It’s a process. The magic happens over time.”

  Althea turned slowly, not willing to believe the evidence of her ears until her eyes confirmed it. She took in the sight of Caleb, from his rumpled hair to his dark scowl, and something inside her breathed again. He was real. He was here.

  Then she remembered that that was a very bad thing and backed up as far as her tiny shipboard quarters allowed. Which wasn’t far enough.

  “Hello, Althea. Surprised to see me?”

  She licked suddenly dry lips and swallowed hard around the obstruction in her throat before she could answer. “Yes.”

  “You shouldn’t be.”

  “I didn’t underestimate you, if that’s what you mean,” Althea said.

  “I’m glad to hear it. The mother of my future child should have some respect for her baby’s father.”

  All her instincts had been right. Caleb was dangerous, and she’d given him reason to see her as a threat.

  “You’re angry,” Althea said cautiously.

  “No, I’m a little past that. You set out to seduce me in hopes of getting pregnant and then going on your merry way, taking my child with you.”

  When he put it that way . . . “You weren’t to know. I never intended to tell you.”

  “And you think that makes it better?” He stalked closer.

  “You have sex with strange women all the time,” Althea protested. “It wasn’t like I was trying to make you do something against your will. And they didn’t need you like I did.”

  His face abruptly closed, losing all expression. “But you didn’t, did you? You didn’t need me at all. I was just a convenient sperm donor.”

  Althea lost all patience. “There is nothing convenient about you, Caleb Bronson. You were difficult to analyze, nearly impossible to make contact with. I had to go to ridiculous lengths to gain your attention and win your interest. If you knew the hours I spent in a simulator running mechanical bull programs until I could stay on no matter what the computer threw at me, you wouldn’t stand there calling yourself convenient.” She spoke the last word like a curse.

  “If I was so inconvenient, why didn’t you pick on another man?”

  The question caught her off guard. “I, well, you were the ideal candidate for me.”

  “Really? Why? If I’m one of a batch of discarded genetic experiments, wouldn’t any other one do?”

  Her lower lip caught between her teeth. She began to feel trapped by more than his body and the cold panel pressing against her spine. “Your blood and tissue type, um . . .” she broke off in confusion.

  “What about them?” Caleb took a step closer, and into the tight confines of her cabin, bringing him within touching distance.

  Althea waved her hands in surrender. “Fine! Okay! Any other would have done for the mission.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “But only you would do for me.”

  “Oh, Althea.” He reached out to rub his thumb against her lower lip, tracing the line he’d kissed until the sensation made her head swim while she hungered for more. “You present me with a dilemma.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” The raw honesty was no defense, she knew. Yet it was all she had to offer.

  “I know.” Done with talking, at least for the time being, Caleb bent his head to hers. Their mouths met, clung, opened to taste each other more deeply. His hands captured hers, fingers tangling. When the kiss finally ended, Althea felt certain that whatever he demanded of her, she would be powerless to deny. The thought made threads of ice form in her veins, only to melt away under the onslaught of his body moving against hers.

  He rasped out, “We never did make it to a bed. You have one hidden away somewhere?”

  In answer, she pressed the button that made a folding bunk lower from the opposite wall panel. No matter what came next, she wasn’t about to rob herself of the chance to touch him and be touched by him one last time.

  Caleb swung her up in his arms and carried her to it, placing her on her back before lowering himself on top of her. Urgent hands made short work of clothing. She yanked at his, he tore at hers, and in moments they were gloriously skin-to-skin. The heat of him burned into her like a brand as his weight pinned her in place.

  Not that she had any intention of escaping at the moment. Althea was all too delighted to be caught by the press of his flesh into hers, the heady slide of his length inside her, the sensation of being surrounded by the heat and scent of him while he plundered her body like a warrior bent on conquest.

  The dizzying pleasure ended in a molten burst, as Caleb spent himself in her depths while her flesh clenched around his as if trying to prolong the moment and prevent the inevitable withdrawal. But it had to come.

  Althea bit her lip against the protest that she had no right to make as Caleb released her and rolled off to sit up facing away from her.

  When he spoke, his voice was hard and implacable. “Two things. First, don’t think you can settle every fight we have with hot make-up sex. Second, I’m coming with you.”

  Althea blinked. “What?”

  Caleb turned to glare at her over his broad shoulder. “Which part didn’t you understand?”

  She gave up struggling to make sense of the turn of events, and threw herself at the lifeline he offered. “All of it.”

  He rubbed his jaw as he looked down at her sprawled, naked form. “Okay, the first part. You can’t control me with sex. Well, maybe you could. But I’d know you were doing it and it wouldn’t end well.”

  He thought she could control him with sex? Now there was a revelation. “I wasn’t sure I was doing it right,” Althea confessed. “I did tell you I lived alone, no men, no distractions. Just work.” The possibility that she’d bent his mind into the bewildering dimensions he’d bent hers into delighted her as much as it surprised her.

  “You mean you’d never—?” he broke off. “Never mind. The next part. I’m coming with you. You want a child? You can have as many as you want. But I’m part of the package deal. The thought of you running loose in the galaxy makes my blood run cold.”

  “It does?”

  Caleb nodded. “Look what you’ve done since you broke out of your ivory tower. Stealing a space ship to hunt down dangerous renegades, riding mechanical bulls, going home with strange men. You could have been killed at least a dozen ways. If I go with you, your odds of staying alive long enough to give birth go way up.”

  If he went with her, her odds of survival and success were exponentially increased. But that wasn’t what made the giddy bubble of hope rise inside her. “Caleb. Why would you do that? Leave the only world you’ve ever known?”

  He shrugged. “According to you, and everything I’ve seen backs up your story, it isn’t even my world. And it’ll be a hell of an adventure. Think of it. The chance to explore strange new worlds, seek out new civilizations.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. That sounded tantalizingly familiar, but she’d waded through so much background material learni
ng about his culture that she couldn’t place the reference. “And is that all you want? Adventure?”

  “Hell, no.” Caleb scooped her up into his lap and cradled her close. “I can find adventure on Earth. And I have. What I can’t find there is you.”

  This must be happiness, Althea thought, dazed and amazed. She curled into him and nuzzled his chest. “Welcome aboard,” she said.

  After that, there wasn’t any more talking for a long time.

  Song of Saire

  Leanna Renee Hieber

  One

  Professor Brodin dialed back the ship’s filters so that there was no mental block between himself and the whole of his surroundings. He soared inside a vaulted ship of cool steel and Gothic arches called the Dark Nest. The craft was the only friend and hope of survival left to his people. He had to sift out the tumult of emotions of the ship’s grieving crew, and instead attempt to pierce the whole of space and time with one psychic lance. He dared to break into the mind of the woman who meant more to him than he’d ever been allowed to say.

  He put his fingers to the pressurized glass and stared out at the stars.

  Only in reaching out his hand did he notice how hard he shook; not because he was an elder – age was relative for a man of his power—

  The pristine white tunics of the first-grades were spattered with garish scarlet blood as shrapnel tore through little bones and vulnerable tissue.

  He shook for all the years he’d spent wondering if he could ever freely love her—

  She was running. Hard.

  He shook because a rare graft over his heart allowed him to feel her pulse in concert with his—

  Choking out the stench as the training school burned; buildings, turf, human hair . . .

  He shook to be truly with her in these terrible moments—

  Hiding the surviving children – all that were left from her class – in a cave in the mountainside . . .

  Success. He’d gotten through. He could sense her, see flashes of her mindscape. Her experiences hit him like swift blows to the head—