For now, Nik, Gantry and his team seemed to be in a bit of a holding pattern, collecting intelligence versus step-by-step planning of a full-blown op.
Gantry told me he still had a guy on Michael Evers, too.
I also knew––again from Gantry, not from Nik––that the two of them were trying to figure out some way to track the morph’s signatures when they transformed. Nik apparently shared that humans from his home dimension had a way to do that, and Gantry had been trying to replicate that process ever since.
Nik wanted to wait before they moved on Razmun, too, according to Gantry. Apparently, Nik wanted a better idea of what Razmun was planning. I had to assume he was referring to the terrorist bombing and fingering me and whatever else, but knowing Nik, it could be a dozen other things, too, including things connected to the inter-dimensional gate.
Gantry also muttered something about “morph boy” knowing a little too much about science to make Gantry strictly comfortable.
I had to assume Gantry meant Nik by that, not Razmun.
Gantry also grudgingly conceded that Nik was smart. Of course, in doing so, he implied that Nik was maybe a little too smart for Gantry’s liking, given what he was.
I had to wonder if it was weird for Nik, to be siding with humans against his own kind. I knew that wasn’t the full story, of course, but I still wondered if it bothered him. Whatever his reasons, Nik was teaching a human how to track his people. He was teaching a human––one with intensive military training and connections, no less––some pretty sensitive stuff about his people’s anatomy and weaknesses, too.
Nik would know why Gantry asked to know those things. He’d be perfectly aware that a good chunk of that reason would be in case Gantry had to kill Nik’s people, assuming things between the two species went wrong.
Nik would also know that Gantry wanted to know how to kill Nik himself, in case he became a threat at some point in the future. A threat to Gantry, perhaps...or to his ops team. To me. To America. Hell, to the human race.
Given how things turned out for Nik’s race in his last dimension, I knew he had to have some pretty mixed feelings about all that.
If he did, he didn’t share those feelings with me, however.
I also knew, whatever he might be telling Gantry, that Nik probably had his own ideas on how to handle Razmun.
Again, however, Nik didn’t tell me any of that himself.
Gantry told me that the two of them had been back to the golf course, though, presumably so Nik could assess the stability and location of the gate. Nik had been back a few times on his own, too...and he’d taken Irene with him once, as well.
I tried really hard not to react to that last bit of information, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t pull it off. Not well, anyway. I could tell Gantry picked up on my bristle, although he didn’t comment on it, at least not to my face.
Nik did mention the night before, when all of us were sitting in Irene’s living room, eating pizza, that he’d discussed some of the particulars of gate-stabilization with Gantry. He implied the conversation had been both frustrating and illuminating, in that he’d learned a lot more about how things worked here, meaning on Earth and in the United States, including how humans tended to view the land and buildings they owned.
He also learned some of the real-world barriers to doing anything on private property that might be noticed by that property’s legal owners.
Following that discussion, both Nik and Gantry agreed that real, practical problems existed around trying to put any kind of gate-stabilization system in place.
Meaning, people were going to notice if Nik built a fifty-foot stone arch in the middle of a private golf course. Especially an expensive, exclusive golf course like the one attached to the Seattle Country Club near Lake Washington.
Nik said that for the gate stabilization process to work, they would need to build something of significant mass and weight to hold the gate in place, even before he worked on the intricacies of “snaring” the gate there in the first place.
He didn’t explain what that latter part consisted of, or even what it meant.
He did say that the larger and more volatile the gate, the larger and heavier that gate-stabilization structure needed to be. Nik also said that he believed the gate in Seattle to be a big one...possibly bigger than any of the three he’d encountered on his home world. He explained some of the factors that led him to believe that, and what it might mean, in terms of the types of worlds that the Seattle gate might access, how dangerous it might be, and what might be done on this end to mitigate some of those risks.
And yeah, a lot of that explanation went over my head.
It also went over Gantry’s. And Irene’s.
I got the gist, however. Basically, any of the various configurations Nik might use to try and stabilize the gate would be too conspicuous here, and he would likely need to experiment with those configurations to truly stabilize the gate, which could take weeks, if not months or years. According to Nik, they would definitely be noticed before they could be successfully completed. Erecting a gate stabilizer was something that generally took time, experimentation and planning, even for morph...not, say, a night, where we could be in and out before anyone figured out what we were doing.
The stone gate itself was only part of the problem, according to Nik.
That gate’s mass could be used to draw and then hold the gate for short periods, but there were a lot of other elements and processes that would need to be tested and put in place before Nik could lock a full-blown gate down for real.
Nik muttered that he might even need a few other morph to help him.
He also mentioned something about the kind of stone he would need, and confessed he wasn’t positive that stone even existed on Earth, since everything had different names. Irene planned to hook Nik up with some geologist pal of hers from Arizona so Nik could investigate that end of things more thoroughly, which is why he dragged her down to the gate area in the first place. But yeah, there were...well, barriers, as Nik put it.
Probably insurmountable ones, if I were being honest.
The biggie was the location of the gate, of course.
How we’d manage to get that arch built smack dab in the middle of an exclusive country club was a mystery. I knew the only way that would happen would be if we somehow managed to convince the golf course to let us do it...which probably wasn’t going to happen unless Gantry got the government involved. None of us were ready to go the government route, though, not even Gantry himself. Me, least of all.
Knowing the risks to Nik, I seriously doubted I ever would be okay with that.
Which meant stabilizing the gate might be a total no-go.
On the other hand, Nik seemed to think that didn’t preclude using the gate altogether...or convincing Razmun to use it to leave Earth.
It just...complicated things...as he put it.
I really needed to drag Nik somewhere private, though, and talk to him in a real way. He’d been avoiding me, like I said, and not just about personal things...although personal things were a big part of it, yeah. He’d been sleeping on the floor since that night, too, presumably to avoid sleeping next to me. He’d even avoided sitting next to me on the couch, preferring to sit by Gantry or Irene instead, or on the floor.
We seriously needed to clear the air.
Maybe more importantly, I didn’t feel comfortable knowing he probably had his own plans brewing on the side of whatever he had going with Gantry.
But yeah, Nik had been giving me a lot of space.
I knew he didn’t want us to have sex until I told him I was committing to this thing with him. I also knew he was keeping his distance from me until he knew for sure where I stood in relation to him and Gantry and whoever else. I hadn’t tried to talk to him about how ridiculous that was since that one night...at least, ridiculous from an Earth perspective...but I knew I needed to. I knew it might be a lost cause, if only because I knew how stubborn Nik could b
e.
But I had to try, at least.
I needed him to understand how things worked down here, not necessarily for the sex side of things, but just in general. And, okay, maybe some of it was about the sex.
I hadn’t been sleeping all that great, either, since that night.
After five days of us playing avoidance tag, I finally mustered the nerve to corner Nik that morning.
I found him in the kitchen and told him I wanted to have a personal conversation with him, as soon as possible...and that it was important. I meant to stop there, of course, but somehow, I didn’t. I added that I wanted to talk to him today, if possible, and that I was sick of the bullshit with him sleeping on the floor. I told him that I hated that we were avoiding each other. I told him that he needed to grow up, and stop punishing me for being honest.
I also told him I knew he was going somewhere with Gantry, so it could wait until that night, but that if he didn’t show up that night...or only showed up at like three a.m. or whatever, with Gantry and the boys in tow...then I was done. I told Nik if he did that, I was going to move out of Irene’s the next morning, and he could just go ahead and hang out here with her. I added that he could go ahead and fuck her, too, if she was into it...since he seemed to be so anxious to sleep with a human being as long as that human wasn’t me.
Nik, who’d been messing with the coffee pot––probably trying to figure out how to turn it on––just stood there, holding the empty glass container by the plastic handle as I continued to talk. He looked surprised at first, then alarmed when I got to the part about my moving out, then borderline stunned by the time I finished talking.
But, yeah, I could tell he was open to the idea of talking about it.
Mainly I figured that out when he put down the coffee pot and caught hold of my waist. Before I could figure out where he was going with that, he pressed me up against the refrigerator, pinning me there seconds after I finally stopped talking.
He kissed me, hard, once he had me there, shirtless and wearing only a pair of Jake’s jeans. I couldn’t exactly pick apart his thoughts, in terms of what I’d said to him and the intensity of his reaction, but I definitely got the sense he’d been waiting for me to come talk to him.
Needless to say, Nik’s, err, enthusiasm caught me off guard.
I hadn’t exactly pushed him away, though.
In fact, my hands, arms and body––along with some less-logical parts of my mind––responded with a fair bit of enthusiasm in return.
Maybe more than I should have, all things considered.
Either way, we were pretty hot and heavy there for a few minutes.
I could tell Nik wanted to do more than kiss. I felt it through the lock, even apart from the fact that certain body parts of his made that abundantly clear while most of him pressed flat against most of me. His frustration interacted with mine in ways that got both of us pretty out of control in just a few minutes of kissing.
By then, he had me pinned against that ancient refrigerator for real, one hand wrapped around my ass and the other gripping the back of my hair. He groaned aloud as he slammed me up against the old appliance again. I had a leg coiled around his waist then, too, and he held it there once he’d slid his hand from my ass to my thigh, pressing against me harder as he groaned again, massaging the muscle of my leg with strong fingers.
Which of course ended up being totally awkward when Irene, Gantry and Jake walked in on us right in the middle of our make-out session a few minutes later.
Nik let go of me right away, but I know how we must have looked.
I also saw more eyes than just my brother’s focused on Nik’s crotch in those jeans.
Jake himself had been delighted, of course.
Irene looked mortified that she’d walked in on us, yet again.
I couldn’t help noticing Gantry looked annoyed, though. He tried to hide it, but for once, he didn’t do a very good job.
Everyone except Jake did the awkward but polite thing and pretended they hadn’t seen anything. As soon as Nik and I parted, one by one, the three of them took over chairs in Irene’s small kitchen. Once they weren’t staring at us outright, Nik leaned close to my ear and let me know via the implant that he wanted to talk, too.
So I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised when Nik appeared at the door of the Culare Modeling School’s back room on this particular day, Jessica Rabbit in tow.
I was surprised, though.
I figured he’d be busy with Gantry all day again.
The two of them left that morning while I was still on my first cup of coffee, and still pretty warm in the face from me and Nik’s “discussion” by the refrigerator door. Irene, Jake and I hung out through a few more cups of coffee and some toast, while Jake tried to get dirt on me and Nik and Irene expressed worry about our nocturnal visitor from the week before. Nik and I had been sleeping in her room since that night, partly to reassure her and make her feel safe...and partly because Nik wanted to catch whoever it was if they came back.
While we hadn’t seen or heard anything since, I knew Irene had been obsessing about the whole thing in her own quiet way.
She’d also avoided being alone in her house.
Over breakfast, she asked me to not move out with Nik right away, either.
The way she said it made me wonder if she’d overheard me yelling at Nik before we started making out. Which of course made me feel like crap, all things considered, not the least of which being that Irene had been nothing but cool to me. Pretty much always, but especially since I’d gotten back to Earth after being gone all of those months. Given how Jo reacted to my reappearance the other day, I couldn’t help being a lot more grateful for Irene’s calm acceptance, not only of me and what happened to me, but of Nik, too.
I ended up talking to her longer than I normally would have as a result, and didn’t get to the modeling agency until around ten o’clock.
I’d been up pretty late anyway, and was feeling the lack of sleep.
The night before, Gantry was at the house until late with one of his Special Forces pals, talking to Nik. They’d been there already when I got back from the Culare Modeling School that day. They worked pretty much all afternoon in the back yard, only coming in at dinner to eat pizza with the rest of us and then going back out there for another few hours.
When it got dark for real outside, Gantry, his Special Ops pal and Nik took over Irene’s living room and continued talking until about two a.m.
I caught enough snippets to know that Gantry might be on the verge of telling a few of his people about the morph thing. Which surprised me, honestly.
For now, both of them treated Nik like some kind of “consultant.”
In fact, from the way Gantry talked to the other guy, he’d been implying to his people that Nik worked for the government.
I fell asleep before I could make up my mind what Gantry was doing, exactly...or what Nik was up to with Gantry, for that matter.
I’d woken up about six hours later to find Nik on the floor again, naked and asleep on his back, uncovered by his one and only blanket...and pretty obviously not dreaming about ice cream. And no, I hadn’t bothered to wake him up to tell him that he wasn’t doing much for my ability to get a good night’s sleep at this point, either.
Instead, I looked away, turning my back on Nik and Nik’s erection to burrow back under the covers. I let myself doze off again, deciding to ignore it.
But that might have been what prompted me to confront him this morning, honestly.
When I woke up the second time, maybe an hour later, I forced myself out of bed when I found Nik missing from his spot on the floor. Muttering under my breath about naked morph wandering around the house, I made my way, bleary-eyed, into the shower, where the hot water had been completely gone.
And yeah, I was pretty sure Nik had done that, too.
He still had a bit of a “thing” going with the water pressure and hot water of Seattle.
&
nbsp; In Nik’s dimension, we mostly washed with a sticky, acidic powder that burned off skin cells and barely verged on satisfactory in terms of a tactile cleaning experience. So yeah, considering that, I couldn’t really blame him for loving the hot showers. I still hadn’t gotten over the novelty of being back in the land of hot showers and warm bagels, either.
Maybe for the same reason, I had to force myself to not get pissy when I realized he’d left me with ice cold nada for the third time that week.
That might have been another thing pushing me to talk to him, however.
Either way, that talk hadn’t been much of a talk, more me venting my frustration at him for a lot of things that had been piling up in my own head...and now, seeing him in the doorway of the modeling agency’s back room, I found myself appraising him, even as I bit my lip in a confused mixture of irritation, anticipation and apprehension that he’d showed up here, unasked.
I wasn’t quite over that kiss, I guess.
I’d thought I’d have more time to think about it, though.
I could see a few leggy women in the hallway and lobby behind him, too, talking amongst themselves and staring in our general direction, which didn’t help.
So yeah, I already knew Nik had clearly been a hit with the young models.
With his symmetrical, too-perfect face with its high cheekbones and prominent jaw, the currently pale green eyes, lean but muscular body and broad shoulders, none of that should have surprised me. It looked like Jake had been dressing him again, too, given the designer jeans, leather belt, rings and leather jacket, which probably didn’t help.
It did surprise me though, if I was being honest.
And irritated me.
Without me even realizing it, I’d gotten pretty weird about Nik, I guess.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him grumpily, ignoring the irritated, scrunchy-faced frown I caught from one of the long-blond-hair types lurking in the lobby area behind him. “Didn’t we talk about this? About the low-profile thing?”
Jessica Rabbit squeezed Nik’s bicep, grinning at me.
Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two Page 17
