by Ann Macela
“I mean, n-no, I can’t think of any other choice,” she whispered.
“Good,” he whispered also and lowered his lips to hers.
Clouds drifted over her mind and fogged her ability to think. Her eyelids lowered of their own volition. All that operated was her sense of touch—concentrated on her lips.
He brushed his mouth across hers—once, twice, as lightly as a feather and as softly as a rose petal. On the third, he stayed, a beguiling, unhurried caress. She felt his hands clasp her waist, and his tongue trace the seam between her lips. She opened and tentatively touched tongues.
And the sun went nova.
And she was engulfed by the resulting shock wave.
He swept into her mouth, taking possession, and she exulted. You’re his, a voice said in her mind.
He’s yours, it said when he retreated, and she followed to stake her claim on him. Their tongues dueled, teased, tasted.
She vaguely felt his arms wrap around her in a viselike hold, but she wanted, needed to be closer, and being there felt so good. She knew her hands moved up to fist in his silky blond hair. One of his slid down her back and pulled her hips to his, inside his open coat.
Ah, that was better, and better still when she tilted her pelvis—pressure where she needed it.
She heard him groan. She heard herself hum.
This was where she must be, in his arms, closer, kissing—oh, how the man could kiss—hugging, touching, holding.
It wasn’t enough.
The heat pouring from him warmed her, right through her suit, right to her bones.
She slowly rubbed her front across his.
Ah, better still.
Another groan, another hum, as he responded with a rub of his own, lower down.
Oh, best!
He was holding her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t care.
She wanted more.
Finally one or the other of them—she wasn’t sure, probably both—ended the kiss. Bowing her head to his chest, she gasped for air. He rested his head on hers and did the same. She could feel his heart pounding. Hers thumped in unison. A vague hum with no origin droned around them.
Slowly they both relaxed their grips, and she thought she could feel each and every muscle unwinding.
She brought her hands back to his lapels. He moved his to her waist again.
Still breathing heavily, they each took half a step back. The hum disappeared.
It was only when Glori looked up at him, saw the tension and starkness in his face, the blazing blue of his eyes, that her mind started to work again, her brain regained the ability to think.
“Ohhhh,” was all she could say, however.
He opened his mouth, shut it, cleared his throat, and said hoarsely, “I think we have a problem.”
She nodded, swallowed, tried again. “That was more than one alien. It was an invasion by a whole army.”
He took a deep breath, let go of her waist, stepped back a full foot until they weren’t touching at all.
Immediately cold, she hugged herself and sat down on one of the armchairs before her shaky legs collapsed under her.
He walked around the coffee table and began to pace in front of the windows.
She watched him for a moment, but when he said nothing, only stopped to stare out at the city, she pulled herself together. It was either calm down or fling herself into his arms again, and that would lead to a place neither of them wanted to go—where they’d take the second, more potent test for soul mates. He was the one who wanted to talk and who came up with the kiss idea. Did she have to force words out of him to discuss the mess, make sure they were still in agreement, and decide what to do next? Sure looked like it.
She took a deep breath, sat up straight, and forced the intellectual, scientific part of her brain to work. “All right, what happened? We performed an experiment. What did we learn?”
He turned back from the windows, rubbed a hand over his face and around to the back of his neck. “That it’s not simple attraction between us.”
“Agreed.” She put her hand on her magic center. It didn’t itch; in fact, it didn’t hurt for the first time in days. It seemed, instead, to be humming. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been kicked in the head. Like an equation fell off the board and its pieces are lying all over the floor, laughing at me for assuming I knew what I was doing.” He ran his hand through his disordered hair, then finger-combed it like he was trying to restore order.
She mentally smirked for being the one to disturb his perfection, but this was not the time to mention it. He hadn’t understood her question. “No, really, how does your center feel?”
“My center?” He looked at her blankly before moving his gaze down to his chest. He rubbed the spot. “It doesn’t itch. It feels …”
“What?”
“Smug. The damned thing feels smug.” He almost spat out the words.
“Mine’s humming.”
“Wonderful.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
She rolled her eyes. He had wanted a “scientific” experiment. How come she was the one interpreting the results? A theoretical mathematician evidently couldn’t deal with practical empirical data.
They didn’t need an argument on an extraneous subject, and she kept her tone even as she would have when explaining her reasoning to a student. “Therefore, we can conclude our experiment, our test, proved we’re under the imperative’s influence. We have an altered situation, one changed by the new information. We need to decide our course of action.”
After seeming to give himself a shake, he walked over and sat down on the couch. “Also agreed. Our new situation … But first, what hasn’t changed? I still don’t want any soul mate, and you don’t want one who’s radically different from you.”
“I don’t see how so many differences can work in a mating, and above all, I want a man who wants to be with me. However, in this situation, what we think or want doesn’t matter. The reality is that the SMI will be pushing us to come together.”
“What can we expect when we don’t? More itching and pain? Something worse? What did your family say?”
“All they mentioned was the first two. Since the non-practitioners didn’t have the slightest idea an outside force was at work, they thought they were developing ulcers. For all four of them, basically the imperative made their lives uncomfortable, but they weren’t incapacitated, unable to work, or function in general.”
“What are our options? What happens if we reject the imperative, decide not to give in to it? At all. Ever.”
He didn’t know? Was he serious? The look on his face told her he was. “Didn’t your parents tell you about it?”
“Stefan gave me the standard talk, and I decided that I wasn’t going to let it happen to me, ancient force or not.” He shrugged. “Never thought about it after that.”
“According to my mother, you reject the imperative—and your soul mate—at your peril. You will never be happy—ever—if you do. You’ll die a bitter, miserable person, totally alone.”
“Better that than …” He shut his mouth abruptly, then muttered, “Never mind.”
Better misery than … what? Something else was going on with Forscher, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to get whatever it was out of him at the moment. Not the way he slammed that “never mind” door in her face.
He stood up abruptly. “I don’t want to accept that outcome. I don’t doubt your mother, but I’d like corroboration, details. During next week, why don’t we both research the situation, see what our alternatives are.”
“Fine.” She couldn’t keep the exasperation out of her voice. However, as closed down as he seemed to be, she doubted that he heard it. “I’m not going to be in Austin. We can also evaluate our reactions to being apart. We can meet at the debate in Denver and discuss our findings.”
“Okay. I’ll see you next week.” He picked up his folder, walked to the door, looked back to say “good n
ight,” and left.
“Good night,” Gloriana said to the closing door and scowled at his abrupt departure. Looked like they were both rattled, although he more than she. Wonderful—she felt her mouth tighten as she gave the word a sarcastic twist in her mind—she didn’t want to be the only one suffering here. She did, however, want to discuss their plans more fully, especially to discover the reasons behind his rejection of the entire soul-mate concept.
One certainty: she wasn’t going to get answers tonight. She hauled herself out of the chair, turned out the lights, and made her way to bed.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Lying in bed later, Gloriana reassessed her calculations. There was no other interpretation for their reactions during that kiss. The imperative had them in its clutches.
So, what to do?
She had to keep her head on straight, not fly off the handle as she usually did, according to her brother. If she was arguing with Clay, she’d attack to force his reasons out. Not a good approach to Forscher, as closed as he was. He’d lock himself deeper in his cave, and they’d get nowhere. Better to remain calm. Be ready for any outcome.
What did she want that outcome to be? Truth be told, she did want a loving mate and children. She expected it. Having a family was part of being a practitioner. She’d never thought about it much until her sister and brother had both found their mates in the course of a year. If she let it, the idea consumed her thoughts. Daria’s pregnancy must have stirred up her own hormones, her own latent desires. Why else the panic she’d experienced at the news?
She wasn’t against having a mate, only this particular one. She didn’t even understand his magic. When he’d displayed his equations and proofs, it was like looking at gibberish. She knew chemical and molecular formulas and diagrams, but his math was way out of her league. She knew he understood it, down to each little sigma and plus-or-minus sign.
How he manipulated his mathematical illusions was another question. Were they true illusions, the same kind she used when she created the figure of a panther around her? Complicated illusions could take a long time to build. Ones that performed like computer spreadsheets—change one variable and see the effect ripple through it—were far beyond her expertise.
She’d never seen her father cast a spell like that with his auditing and accounting techniques. Furthermore, her mother understood what her father did, even if she couldn’t cast his spells. Daria understood Bent, and Clay understood Francie. Shouldn’t she expect the same?
What did her inability to understand mean for her being with Forscher? Soul mates were supposed to be helpmates, too—able to offer support and encouragement. How could she when she couldn’t offer even an intelligent comment about what he did? On the flip side, how could he help her when he seemed almost frightened of her magic?
They hadn’t discussed the emotional side of the situation, either. Oh, she’d experienced practically every emotion possible in the course of their discussion—especially before, during, and after that kiss. But what was he feeling? The kiss had certainly affected him physically. Emotionally? He’d reverted to the intellectual, emotionless man he’d been from the start. She could almost see him build the walls to shut in his feelings—and shut her out.
Yet she had always been about feelings, emotions, passions, as much as she’d been about the intellectual pursuit of her profession. To deal with him, she’d have to keep her emotions out of the equation—oh, how she was coming to hate that word—and talk in his terms. Be logical, practical, composed like he was, or he’d never hear a word she said. Keep her head on straight and, most importantly if he was going to reject her, guard her heart against the imperative’s efforts.
What on earth could have caused him to be that way? He came from a soul-mate family. He had the same sort of parental example she did. Soul mates always loved each other, and that love always encompassed their families. How could he not want to be a part of it?
That brought her back to the basic problems. How could two such different people possibly be mates, but how could she convince an invisible, magic power that it was making a mistake? If she did, would another soul mate appear? Who knew?
He, on the other hand, was implacable, completely against having a soul mate, her or anybody else. Worse, he didn’t appear to be someone who easily changed his mind.
Where did all her thinking leave her? If they were mates, she was damned if he rejected her, and damned if she did the rejecting.
Either way, she’d never have what her brother and sister had—a mate who loved her as much as she loved him and the possibility of children.
She almost wept at the thought, and her center vibrated in sympathy. Then it hummed—a distinctly encouraging feeling. She put her hand on the spot, and a pleasant, soothing tranquility settled over her.
In her floating state, she began to wonder what her children with Forscher would have looked like, how the combinations of hair and eye colors would have worked out. She fell asleep mentally constructing a possible family tree like biologist Gregor Mendel had done for common pea plants.
Marcus refused to let himself think about his—or their—predicament even after he returned home and retrieved Samson from the boarding kennel. The hound was definitely unhappy about being left with strangers instead of his usual stay with George and Evelyn. Too bad. He knew he’d have to face his friends soon enough, but not right this instant. Not yet.
Evelyn, however, smashed his resolve to atoms when she called and ordered him to dinner on Wednesday, no excuses accepted.
So, he went, luxuriated in her hug, drank some of George’s superb scotch, and discussed the debate, which they had watched on the Webcast.
“How did the evaluations go?” George asked over Evelyn’s delicious pot roast. “I’m always leery of those on-the-spot forms.”
“Ed e-mailed me today with the quantitative results. If you leave out the extremes, ninety-two percent of the respondents want more discussion. A few said they had actually tried the formula, and one reported trouble with the ‘ingredient measurements.’“
“That’s been one of the problems from the beginning,” Evelyn said. “Did anything new come out of the comments?”
He wasn’t going to worry them with the four rabid replies, of course, so he simply said, “Nothing that I could see.”
“All the information’s really out there already,” George said, “what with the articles and reports and the Webcast. If we practitioners act like we usually do, we’ll hash and rehash the issues until some real research is done on how to apply calibration to magical power. After that, we’ll talk some more.”
“We caught a glimpse of your family and the Morgans in the audience,” Evelyn put in. “Your mother looks as beautiful as ever. How are they?”
“They’re fine. Yesterday they left for Europe—a little vacation, a conference for Judith, meetings with colleagues for Stefan.”
“What about Gloriana?” George asked, his tone innocent and his eyes full of glee.
“She’s fine.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
George chuckled. “What about her being your soul mate?”
“George, I told you not to tease the man,” Evelyn scolded.
“I’m not teasing, honey. I really want to understand.”
Marcus looked from one to the other. Evelyn and George had been his friends and mentors for years and had helped him in immeasurable ways. They had stood behind him in ways his parents never had. He owed them some explanation—but not the complete one.
“We didn’t have much opportunity to see each other in Boston and only talked for a few minutes. We both think it’s possible, only not probable. We’re extremely different, nothing like soul mates are supposed to be.”
“The only difference you have to worry about is that you’re a man and she’s a woman,” George stated. “Everything else is window-dressing.”
“You know how I feel about the entire so
ul-mate business—” Marcus began.
“Yes, I do. Must I remind you again that you are not your father. Gloriana is certainly not your mother, and you have no reason to believe you or she will act like them.”
Marcus opened his mouth to protest that reasoning, and shut it again without uttering a word. George simply didn’t understand the situation. He hadn’t lived it.
“George, don’t badger Marcus,” Evelyn said. “Finding your soul mate can be difficult and confusing.”
“So, what are you going to do about it—try to deny the imperative?” George said mildly, his tone clearly meant to assuage his wife.
“We’re not sure yet. We both have reservations about the choice of the imperative.”
“Oh, Marcus, you can’t reject your mate. Terrible things will happen.” Evelyn’s face was creased in worry lines.
“What? What will happen? What, exactly?”
“If one mate rejects the other, they both suffer. As long as the rejecter lives, the other will never find a replacement. I’ve only heard of one instance of rejection between practitioners. The one rejected, a woman, committed suicide after ten years of loneliness and imperative pain. The man who rejected her actually married a non-practitioner, and that marriage failed in a very short time, as you would expect.”
“Is that fact or anecdote?” Marcus asked.
“I had it on good authority,” Evelyn answered, “but I’m not absolutely certain.”
“From everything I’m hearing about our ‘ancient force,’ it ranks right up there with the most horrendous torturers of all time,” Marcus said.
“That’s only if you resist,” George responded.
“What about free will?”
“The reality of the practitioner world contains the imperative,” George stated. “We can change it no more than we can change any other reality. To use a math example, you’ll always find the roots of a quadratic equation with the formula: ‘As long as a doesn’t equal zero, then ax2 plus bx plus c will always equal zero.’ Nothing you say or do will change that reality. For the soul-mate reality, the same applies. If you’d relax and enjoy it, you’ll be fine. The imperative doesn’t make a mistake.”
