by Elsa Jade
But how to convince her?
At least she already knew some of his secrets. He took a careful swallow of the hot coffee. “I wonder if the yurk would like the herbs.”
She stiffened. “Weren’t we not talking about that?”
“Since you’ve already seen me at my worst, I sort of think we are okay,” he told her.
Although he hadn’t intended to invite her scrutiny, her gaze flicked over him once, an assessment he felt all the way up his body, as if all his nanites were sitting up at attention like the Fallen A ranch dogs, Chip and Pickle, being offered a meaty bone.
To his surprise, a faint flush colored her cheeks. In the height of summer, if she’d been sunburned, or the depths of winter when she’d be wind-burned, he wouldn’t have even noticed the rose-petal pink. Such a delicate color for a female of her stature. A reminder, he decided, that the same blood flowed in all of them.
Not in him, of course. His blood was full of nanites which tended toward gray. He’d been among the Earthers long enough to notice—unlike Mach who hadn’t cared before Lun-mei—that there was more than one explanation for red in the face. Anger, shame, sickness. But he didn’t think Lindy’s blush was any of that.
She desired him.
He took a deep, surreptitious breath, and widened his stance, making himself look bigger. As a Delta V, he wasn’t one of the largest in his matrix, but he was built more substantially than most Earthers. Surely she would take that into account when she contemplated his usefulness.
More of him to desire.
Although he was back in his standard Earther disguise of properly worn-down blue denim and checkered cotton shirt along with the wide-brimmed hat that helped disguise the nanite pathways burning under his skin, her gaze tracked over him as if he were still in his armor from the night before. Almost all their specialized equipment had been lost or destroyed in the crash, but they’d been shipped in their under armor. And good thing too, or they would’ve spent their first days on their new planet utterly nude, which would’ve earned them more stares than the tight, black plates of thin plasteel. The plates were specifically measured to his musculature, meant to move like a second skin, but for the first time he was aware of how it displayed every part of his body, as if he were naked.
His skin, his muscles, his bones, even the synthetic implants in between seemed to ache with the intensity of her gaze. His throat tightened with the urge to ask her what she was thinking, but somehow he knew that was the wrong question. He had chosen her already, but she didn’t yet know he was hers.
And unlike Mach, who confined most of his study to practical knowledge of their adopted homeworld, Delta had borrowed from most of the shelves in Diamond Valley Depot’s small library. And from his reading of romance novels, he was uneasily aware that his behavior toward Lindy was bordering on…creepery.
But he couldn’t tell her everything about him, not yet, not until she’d fallen in love with him.
The interest in her gaze was a good first step, wasn’t it? And she had freely, if reluctantly, offered him a cup of coffee. As connective rituals went, he seemed right on track.
Next, there must be some sort of physical interaction. He knew Mach had taken Lun-mei home one night and wooed her with the overwhelming majesty of his alien lovemaking. Perhaps he should try that.
Aware that he might be missing a few steps, the overwhelming urgency of this moment left him vague on the intervening stages. Seduction wasn’t covered in his built-in programming or trained wargames. And honestly, sometimes he didn’t read every single page of his romances; he liked to jump to the end where the lovers declared their permanent bond. Sometimes the hard part in the middle—with its loneliness and confusion—was too much for him to stand.
Which was a problem now, he realized. Maybe that was the point of the books—to show Earthers how to get through the hard parts until the happily ever after.
Well, he’d figure this out. He might be just a Delta V, but the book characters solved their problems in only a couple hundred pages, so how hard could it be?
In the seconds of his racing thoughts, Lindy took another drink of coffee, maybe hoping to disguise the flush in her cheeks. “Why do I get the feeling that you didn’t come here just for apologies, herbs, or to pass off leftover pastries?” She locked her gaze on him, as if her momentary flash of desire meant nothing. “Be straight with me now, Halley, because I got no use for crooked.” Despite the seriousness of her words, her lips curved. “Queer, yes. Crooked, no.”
If not for his romance novels, he might have been confused by her meaning. He hadn’t realized she was queer—although now that he thought about the other female who’d worked alongside her for years, it seemed obvious. Maybe he should stop nagging Mach about his obliviousness.
“I came to court you,” he said. Wait, no, that wording was more in line with the era when the matrix ship had crashed. “I mean ask you on a date.”
Now it was her turn to fall silent, staring at him in consternation. Which was fine. He could stare at her all day. She was easy to look at, with her eyes like clear skies, her skin textured with the same contours as the valley—lines and curves, rough and smooth—oh, and now brightened again with that perfect chroma of pink like a wild rose in bloom.
That last might’ve been slightly influenced by the romance novels.
She sputtered. “You are kidding me.”
“I didn’t know you were gay,” he explained. “I thought I had a chance.”
“Not with a stale-ass donut,” she muttered.
He gave her a wounded look. “It was chocolate. The last one.” Then he straightened, clutching his mug. “Do you mean if I’d brought fresh trout jerky—”
She held up one hand. “Stop right there. I don’t mean anything.” Her blue eyes were narrowed. But that telltale pink blush remained. “You’re too young, too close, and not my type.”
“Because I present as male.” He looked down at his clenched hands. While his nanites could disguise and even rearrange some of his physiology, his base model had been selected for its raw morphological potential: easier to grow bigger, tougher, more aggressive.
All lies, of course, or at least bias. But the consortium that built him had never been interested in fairness.
“You are very definitely male.” Lindy took another sip of her coffee. “Not that that’s a deal-breaker for me.”
So he did have a chance. His pulse jumped as his nanites prepared for battle. “And I’m not as young as I look,” he interrupted. He made an internal note to direct his nanites to add more lines to his face when she wasn’t looking. “And I’m not really that close. We have two thousand acres between us, so you wouldn’t have to worry that I’ll intrude too much. Unless you want me to.” He peered at her questioningly.
She made a low noise in the back of her throat, almost a growl. “Yeah, and I suppose you could always fly away on your dragon.”
“Yurk,” he reminded her. “I thought we were pretending that didn’t happen.”
She gazed at him steadily. “And that’s why you’re not my type, Delta Halley. You have too many secrets lurking in those gray eyes. I’m long done with secrets about who I am and what I want.”
Of course she sensed he was lying to her. The ranch was in some ways its own world, and she was its sole mistress since she’d lost her mate five years ago. No wonder she wasn’t interested in his bumbling seduction. Still, she was his best chance for imprinting, having already seen the yurk and being close enough that their shared flightpath wouldn’t attract more attention. He didn’t need her to love him, just to lock down the keyholder pathways in his programming that would make him vulnerable to reclamation and enslavement again. She obviously didn’t need love from him—an unnatural, unfeeling construct of dubious origin—not when she’d had the real thing. Still, they could be something to each other if she’d give him a chance.
“Everyone has secrets,” he told her, trying to keep the desperation out of h
is voice. “That’s why you go on dates. To strip them bare.”
“Strip them bare,” she mused, eyeing him.
“The secrets, I mean. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
She took a step toward him, and the shockwave of heat from her coffee mug and her body belled against his sensors, triggering a warning deep inside him. He thought it was a warning anyway; something panged in his core and stood at attention, and it wasn’t his nanites.
She gazed up at him. She was tall and big for a woman, but of course he was taller and bigger, having been designed and built to dominate entire worlds. And yet when he looked down into her eyes, he was the one who was falling, delving deeper as if he might find the midnight stars behind the clear blue.
She leaned toward him, and he caught the whiff of her personal scent. No synthetic perfumes, just the same soap he used—how convenient—and healthy sweat, fresh straw, and cold air. He took a deep breath of her fragrance, marking it in his most primitive subroutines. He’d know her anywhere now. This was just like in his favorite romance novels…
To his shock, she plucked the coffee cup from his slack hands. For a heartbeat, his hands stayed right there, holding nothing. Good thing it hadn’t been his blaster; that would’ve been embarrassing for a genetically and cybernetically enhanced killer.
She stepped back, setting both mugs on the rail behind her. “Okay, well, this has been really…enlightening. I think it’s time we both got back to work.”
Though he hated the loss of her body heat and scent, he stepped back too. “Okay,” he said agreeably. “I’ll see you around. Or over, whatever.” He flashed her a grin that he’d learned from the working ladies in the dusty saloons back when the ship had crashed in this world’s Wild West days. It was a smile that said I’m here, I’m available, and I’ll hardly cost you more than a couple pennies.
Lindy’s breath caught, just the slightest hitch. But he was attuned to her now and didn’t miss it.
He turned and descended the porch steps, heading for his truck. He had just enough strategic sense as a Delta not to look back, but he flashed a goodbye gesture over his shoulder. Two fingers flickering in what could be a friendly farmer wave, a sign of peace, or—if she wanted to read more deeply—a promise for the two of them becoming one.
When he left the Strix Springs Ranch, he wheeled the truck toward town. Never mind what Mach and Lun-mei had told him. He needed to get some more romance novels from the library and catch a clear enough electronic signal to download a copy of the Intergalactic Dating Agency’s Guide to Romancing an Alien. Yes, there might be secrets and grief and danger and questionably compatible biology between them, but she hadn’t shot him down yet and, as she told him, her rifle had been right there by the door.
He pressed the first knuckle of his fist to his lips, pretending the lingering warmth of the coffee mug was the heat of her body, and was surprised to find his hand shaking. Deltas might be the least of the matrix, but he knew from his reading of this world’s mythologies that even the lowest knight errant had to pledge his life to someone. And Lindy Minervudottir was going to be his queen.
Chapter 3
Watching the truck’s rooster tail of thin gravel dust spiral into the sunny sky, Lindy was shocked, horrified—and strangely intrigued.
She’d practically forgotten about the damned dragon. Maybe that had been Halley’s intent: to distract her from his tempting secrets by giving her something else to bite on.
Not that stale donut though, what the hell. He’d seemed almost hurt by the rejection. Men were often hurt by rejection, of course, but usually they reserved that insulted indignance for dismissal of their studly masculinity, their deep pocketbooks, their institutional power. The Halleys, with their big ranch and huge, um, physiques and apparently some covert black ops with Air Force bioweapons engineering, had all that, but Delta had been most protective of his pastry. That was almost—almost—cute.
For a moment, she wished her college girls were around. It had been a long time since she giggled with anyone about a cute guy, and when her interns weren’t discussing organic farming practices, sustainable animal husbandry, and whether speeding up the aging process in Amber’s old still behind the barn was cheating or not, they had a lot to say about dating. Amber, who’d never had any use for men and who believed that time was as crucial to distilling as any other ingredient, would’ve taken the donut.
But none of them were here, and afternoon chores awaited.
Lindy put Delta out of her mind and got to work.
But he kept popping back into her thoughts. When she heaved hay into the tractor. When she washed the dishes including his mug. When the sun started to go down and the first star appeared overhead.
The moon would be rising soon. Would he be flying that thing again? Not that it was any of her business…
Which was how she found herself driving down the two-lane road between their ranches. She could almost hear Amber laughing in her ear—because when had not being any of her business ever stopped any self-respecting country gal?
She passed the brand for the Fallen A and the stylized serif wings at the bottom of the A suddenly made more sense. It had always seemed a bit pretentious to her—as if they had any special claim to the sinfulness of the fallen—but if the Halleys were breeding and raising sentient fighter planes for the military, maybe they could be forgiven some of their solitude.
As her truck lights beamed across the house, she stifled a gasp, not that anyone could hear her. Staring at the sprawling structure, she tried to remember the last time she’d been out to the house. Maybe with her grandmother? That would’ve been several decades ago. She vaguely recalled the house looking like a fairytale castle to her childish eyes, but she’d been more interested in horses in the paddock at the time.
Now she could see it wasn’t so much a castle but some strange amalgamation of Old West saloon front and born-again church, with a touch of Gothic Revival, as if the house knew it was supposed to be a ranch house but wasn’t quite sure how to pull it off. She shook her head. Surely she’d been out this way since her grandmother’s death, but now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure she’d been met halfway down the road by Mach. Or his father. Who, now that she thought about that, looked an awful lot like Delta.
She frowned. How much genetic tinkering had they been doing out here?
Crossing her right hand over the wheel, she was ready to crank it hard and drive away from this mystery she hadn’t asked for. She could continue on into Diamond Valley and get her own damn donuts.
But before she could speed away, Delta emerged from the barn, dressed in his Sunday rancher best rather than the skintight black superhero get-up from the night before. A bit of a disappointment, that, if she was honest; she hadn’t minded the beefcake eyeful. He stood under the yard light for a moment, and she almost had the impression he knew she was thinking of fleeing.
Which of course meant she couldn’t. She turned off the engine and got out of the truck.
He sauntered toward her with the loose-hipped, bowlegged stance of a lifelong rancher. Of course she knew he got that way not astride some sturdy, sensible cow horse but on that unnatural monster he called a yurk. In the harsh beam of the halogen yard light, he looked older than before, maybe closer to her age than her college girls. When he’d been drinking coffee on her porch, she’d noticed that his hair—bronze in moonlight—was more copper in the daytime, and the silver circuitry pattern was still embedded in his skin, not part of the high-tech black suit, like a tattoo. God knew her interns were tatted across most of their exposed skin and probably some parts too private for the light of day.
Delta hadn’t seemed to care she was eyeballing him, even if he did have secrets. She wondered if that mutant beast was in the barn behind him.
He was everything she didn’t want or need. And somehow that was exactly what she was looking for on this night of all nights.
He stopped a few strides away, as
if he thought that might minimize the way he loomed just by existing. But there’d been plenty of times when she was the only woman in the room or the rodeo, and she knew how to use what God had given her. Watching him, something tightened inside her, almost like another rejection. He was just more of the same that she’d turned aside in favor of a woman and a love that nothing could replace. But maybe that was why she’d felt compelled to come here tonight. Delta Halley might not be anything special, but she’d had special. She didn’t need another one-of-a-kind diamond like Amber had presented to her, or even a what-the-fuck donut like he’d held out to her earlier.
Tonight, she was looking for just one thing. And having seen him in his underoos, she knew he had it.
She lifted her chin, staring at him. “So here’s the thing, Halley. It’s been a decade since I had a real live flesh-and-blood dick between my legs. But if that’s what you were offering earlier today at my place, that’s what I’m here for.”
His eyes narrowed. “Date,” he said, enunciating clearly. “Daaaaate. That’s what I was offering earlier. Along with a chocolate donut, which you didn’t want.”
Yup, he was still hurt by that. “Here to make it up to you,” she drawled. “By making out with you. And then making love to you.”
He jerked his chin back, his eyes widening with a surprise she would’ve dismissed as feigned except for the way he shifted his weight restlessly from one boot to the other. “Real live flesh-and-blood dick,” he mused. “If that’s the only reason you’re here, that’s gonna be tricky.”
Having him repeat it back to her sounded more crude than she’d intended. Although in retrospect, yeah, it was gonna be crude. But why’d he need her to be delicate anyway? Wasn’t she obviously not that?
No, that wasn’t fair. Just because he was big and burly and a boy didn’t mean he didn’t have a right to some tenderness, not to mention a bit of foreplay.
To her annoyance, her face heated again. Damn her Nordic skin. In the last decade in question, Amber had been the only one to ever make her blush. And that had been her whole body, even her bones catching fire sometime. That was why she was only cold ashes now.
