Hot Zone

by Cindy Dees

  Huh. Like you don’t do it to me? he retorted.

  She stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Are you two done?” Athena asked tartly.

  Guiltily, Tessa looked over at her boss. “Sorry.”

  “Were you telepathic before you met him, Tessa? I don’t recall that being in your profile.”

  She answered, “No. I can only do it with him. And only when we’re in close proximity.”

  Athena nodded. “It appears that you’ve, indeed, blended your powers.”

  Tessa met Rustam’s startled gaze with one of her own. Indeed, neither one of them had done anything with their powers without being within arm’s reach of each other for days now.

  “Bonded soul mates,” he breathed. “Of course.”

  “Come again?” Tessa asked.

  “It’s the stuff of legends among my people. I never dreamed it could be real. It’s when two star navigators share one set of powers between them. It’s reported that a bonded pair’s combined abilities are much greater than the sum of their individual powers. But it has been so long since a female star navigator existed who could bond with a male navigator that it has faded to the status of fable.”

  “You yourself said you find that most legends have a basis in fact,” Tessa pointed out.

  Rustam nodded, looking thunderstruck. He turned to Professor Carswell and said, “Your race wants to develop star travel, does it not?”

  Athena nodded.

  He continued, “Having now mastered time travel, more or less, you will need to turn your attention to star travel. My people know how to star-jump.”

  The three women at the table nodded, following so far.

  “My orders are to remove any potential star navigators from the human gene pool. Traditionally, my kind have assumed that meant killing any latent navigators. But what if I take Tessa with me back to Centauri Prime?”

  Tessa stopped breathing. She was pretty sure her heart skipped a beat. A couple of beats, in fact. Go with him? Back to his home world? Travel to another planet?

  “I can see to it she’s fully trained as a star navigator. I don’t believe I have any choice in the matter, actually. It does appear that she and I have, indeed, become a bonded pair. I won’t be able to travel without her from here on out.”

  Athena and Beverly looked as stunned as she felt.

  He added casually, “And then, of course, there’s the baby. He—or she—will need to be trained as a navigator.”

  The other women’s accusing gazes swung in her direction. Athena nodded slowly. “The third spirit I sensed. You’re pregnant.”

  “It appears that way,” Tessa said in a small voice.

  Beverly burst out, “With an alien child.”

  “She’s half-human,” Tessa protested.

  “And half Centaurian,” Beverly retorted.

  “Well…yes,” she conceded.

  Rustam interjected, “And fully a star navigator. Humans have no ability to train this child. But my people can. My people will. I promise you that.”

  “We need to talk again,” Athena said abruptly. “Out, you two.”

  Tessa followed Rustam outside yet again, her head spinning with the possibility of being the first human ever to move to another planet, to another civilization. Not to mention the prospect of getting to be with Rustam, after all!

  “Do you think they’ll go for it?” she asked him anxiously.

  He shrugged. “Who knows?” Do you still have your cuff on?

  Yes. Why?

  Between the two of us, we can generate enough power to make a break for it.

  This lab’s shielded. Unless we’re in the booth, we couldn’t get out of here.

  He sent her a word she didn’t recognize.

  “Is that my first Centaurian language lesson?” she asked wryly.

  He chuckled. “Yes. And never repeat it in polite company.”

  “Duly noted.”

  The door behind her popped open. The two women stepped out.

  Athena announced, “We’ve made a decision.”

  Twenty-Four

  Rustam held his breath. Everything depended on this. His life, his love, his future happiness. He eyed the time-travel booth and calculated the odds of getting there with Tessa before they were seized. Not good, curse it.

  “We will let her go…”

  His heart surged in his chest until he thought it might explode right out from behind his ribs.

  “But we have a few conditions.”

  He bottled up his exultation to hear their conditions, nodding cautiously. “And those might be?”

  Athena held up one finger. “First, I implant a crystal under Tessa’s skin where it cannot be removed. She must always have the option of returning here at her discretion.”

  The professor held up a second finger. “The child must be allowed to return to Earth to learn of his or her human heritage. You must swear not to prejudice the child against humans in any way prior to his or her return.”

  Tessa swallowed hard beside him, as if it was just starting to hit her what all he was asking her to leave behind.

  Athena held up another finger. “Third, Tessa must be fully trained as a star navigator…and she must be allowed to visit Earth to bring that knowledge to us.”

  His first impulse was to roar in outrage. He couldn’t give away his people’s monopoly on star travel just like that! It wasn’t within his power to give, and even if he could, he wouldn’t.

  Athena’s hard voice intruded upon his anger. “Think before you say no, Lord Commander. Mankind hovers on the brink of discovering it for ourselves, anyway. Your people have failed to erase the star navigator gene from our race. It’s too prevalent in human females for you to ever obliterate it completely, shy of eradicating our whole race. And if you were to do that, you know as well as I do that the entire Centaurian race would be annihilated in punishment.”

  He snapped, “You do not need to quote galactic law at me, madam. I am well aware of the penalty for genocide.”

  The professor stared him down, as uncowed as Tessa would have been in the same situation. Gods, these human women were something else. Reluctant admiration filled him for all of them.

  “Fourth, you will give us your most solemn vow never to reveal the time-place of this lab or any of the nature of our work or scientific progress to anyone outside this room. Tessa will be responsible for enforcing your promise.”

  “If I give you my word, nobody will need to enforce it,” he snapped, aggravated.

  “Do you agree to these conditions?” Athena demanded implacably.

  He didn’t bother to ask what the alternative was. He already knew. He would be imprisoned and experimented upon until he died because of their ignorance, or illness or else old age claimed him.

  “I agree to your conditions. But the real question is, does Tessa agree?”

  He turned to face her and said gently, “You will be leaving behind everything and everyone you’ve ever known. My culture is vastly different from yours and not particularly friendly to women in general. You will be a star navigator, which will grant you a certain special status among my people. But you will be an oddity at best and an outcast at worst.”

  She turned over his words, obviously weighing them carefully. Out of respect for her, he did not probe her mind to see what she was thinking. Besides, knowing her, she would tell him soon enough.

  She blurted out, “Will you stop sleeping with other women? I don’t want to share you.”

  A crack of laughter escaped him. She never did or said what he expected. But that was part of why he loved her. He replied honestly, “I haven’t thought about another woman since I first laid eyes on you, let alone bedded one, and I have no desire to do so. There has never been another female even remotely like you in my life, and I highly doubt there will be another. And besides, with all our children guaranteed to be star navigators, I’m certain my government will give the two of us strict orders to…how does your kind say
it…multiply and be fruitful with one another.”

  A blush climbed her cheeks. “That would be how we say it, yes.”

  He looked around the room. “Any other conditions any of you would like to set upon this venture?”

  Tessa turned to her superiors and surprised him by asking outright, “Do you expect me to spy on the Centaurians for you?”

  Beverly Ashton answered frankly, “Anything we can learn of them would be immensely helpful to mankind. We will not ask you to betray your lov—Lord Commander Rustam. But if he will agree to let you report back to us, that would be outstanding.”

  “My government will want to review any official reports she sends.”

  He and the general traded knowing looks. The Ashton woman had caught the nuance in his words. He hadn’t put a limit on any unofficial reports Tessa might send back.

  Beverly Ashton replied with a tight smile, “Understood. Do you think they might be open to some sort of diplomatic communication at some point?”

  He turned the idea over in his head, then answered regretfully, “My kind are a long way from accepting the idea of humans in the galactic community. They still subscribe firmly to the theory that all human females with star navigator talent must be eliminated. I am hopeful that Tessa can begin to change their point of view.”

  She gulped beside him. “I’m not sure I’m up to something like that, Rustam.”

  “Of course you are. You won me over, did you not?”

  “Yes, but I was able to…”

  Sleep with me?

  You’re a bad man—stop making me blush!

  That is what you were going to say, isn’t it?

  Well, yes.

  Aloud he said, “I have complete confidence in you, my dear. You’ll do fine.”

  Athena Carswell looked back and forth between them. “Although this lab is shielded, I am not entirely certain that it is proof against your race’s mental powers. The two of you should probably leave as soon as possible. Before more of your kind track this place down by tracking you.”

  He caught the faint frown that passed over Tessa’s brow and probed her aura questioningly with his mind. Ahh. Goodbyes. She wanted to say a few before she zoomed off across the galaxy.

  He murmured, “Dr. Carswell, I’ll need to align the new set of crystals to my vibrational field before we leave. That will take me a little while.” He turned to Tessa. “Perhaps you would like to take care of a few last-minute matters while the professor and I see to the crystals?”

  Tessa shot him a grateful look. His own heart swelled in response.

  “Are you sure you want to make this journey with me?” he asked gently.

  She nodded without hesitation. “Absolutely. I just need to make a few phone calls and then I’ll be ready to go.”

  Worried by the wistfulness in her voice, he commented lightly, “If I make you mad enough, you can always activate your crystal and come back home.”

  She sent back silently, Must be the baby hormones kicking in. I’m just feeling a little weepy at the idea of leaving behind my friends and family.

  You can still come back to visit.

  True.

  But not for too long. I’ll never let you go, you know. You’re mine forever.

  I love you, too.

  They exchanged affectionate glances that were heating up fast toward him excusing himself and his consort for a few minutes of privacy when Professor Carswell cleared her throat pointedly and shooed Tessa out of the lab.

  He spent the next several hours refining the rather crude crystals the humans were using to better fit his specifications. He hated to think of how many years he was advancing their time- and space-travel program by showing them how to align the vibrational frequencies of the crystals more precisely. But he damned well wasn’t risking his family’s lives with substandard crystals in the first cross-galaxy jump where their bodies came along for the ride.

  Tessa announced that she had one last phone call to make from the lab’s conference room—to a woman named Alexandra Patton, a friend who, Tessa casually informed him, was also a powerful psychic. He bit back an impulse to ask for more information on how to locate this Alexandra person, who no doubt also carried the star navigator gene, so his kind could find and destroy her. Tessa didn’t understand yet how strongly committed the Centaurian Federation was to stopping humans from acquiring space travel. But she would learn soon enough once they got to Centauri Prime.

  The road ahead was going to be hard for both of them. Were it not for the fact that their children were guaranteed to be star navigators, he would never dream of taking Tessa back to Centauri Prime with him. She would have been dead before she set foot on the Centaurian home world. But with the double protection of being his consort and their ability to turn out lots of little star navigators, they should be all right. They had to be.

  At the end of the day, he believed in the power of their love. He and Tessa were meant to be together, and neither time nor space was enough to keep them apart. Surely a little thing like politics couldn’t destroy them.

  He waited impatiently while Tessa completed the call to her friend.

  And then it was time.

  They stepped into the time-travel booth. As the door closed behind them, Athena asked, “Do you two need a power boost from me?”

  He laughed. “Are you kidding? Between the two of us, we can leap across the galaxy and back and hardly be fatigued. A single jump to Centauri Prime will be child’s play for us.”

  He wrapped his arms around Tessa, and she did the same, her warm palms caressing his ribs lovingly.

  He murmured, “Ahh, my love, this is going to be a grand adventure.”

  She smiled up at him with all the love in both of their worlds shining in her gaze. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  And the familiar indigo vortex began to whirl around them, lifting them and their unborn child up and out of themselves and flinging them forward into their future. Together…

  The End

  Before You Go…

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  Page Ahead for an Excerpt From:

  FEVER ZONE

  Fever Zone

  Danger in Arms, Book 1

  “Why are you here, Piper?”

  “I already told you. Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Because I can smell a lie at twenty paces.”

  “Oh yeah? What do I smell like?” she asked McCloud breathlessly. Her entire body felt electrified. Energized.

  “Cinnamon,” he murmured. “And peaches. You smell spicy and warm. Like slow sex in summertime.”

  Oh. My. God.

  “You can trust me.” His words were a caress against her lips. Another inch or two and they’d be kissing each other’s lights out. Sucking tonsils and tearing off clothes and going at each other like horny beasts. It would be epic.

  She struggled to recall what he’d just said. Oh, right. Trust. “It’s not about trust. It’s about what I am and am not allowed to talk about.”

  His head lifted enough for his sharply intelligent gaze read her eyes astutely. “Allowed, huh? ’Nuff said.”

  Dammit. She’d revealed more than she’d wanted to. Using the word, ‘allowed’ implied a boss. Classified information. An agency whose name could be reduced to alphabet letters.

  He stepped back abruptly, leaving her feeling cold and deprived. Goosebumps lined both of her arms. Whoa
, the effect that man had on her was unnerving. And the bastard had been coming on to her to distract her. Worse, it had worked.

  He shrugged casually as if she hadn’t had the slightest effect on him. “Maybe you’ll make it a full month in Khartoum, then. Hard to tell. You were reasonably agile when I tackled you.”

  Memory of his hard body slamming into hers, pressing her against the ground flashed through her mind. Crap, this guy did weird things to her head. “Gee, thanks. Was that actually a compliment from you?”

  “Nah. If I wanted to compliment you I’d tell you that, cleaned up, girlied up, and out of those combat boots, you might not look half-bad.”

  She scooped up her sniper rig and slung the nylon strap over her shoulder. “Go to hell, McCloud.”

  He chuckled and raised his water bottle to her in a mock toast. “Already there, darlin’.”

  Eyes narrowed, she said tightly, “Thanks for the diversion, but it’s time for me to get back to work.”

  “I’ll walk you back to your place.”

  “I don’t need a chaperone.”

  “Yeah,” he said flatly, “you do. Particularly since you’re wearing western garb.”

  “I’ll put my hair back up under my hat, and on one will know I’m a girl. I am wearing combat boots, after all.”

  He snorted. “One look at that tush, and nobody will mistake you for a guy.”

  She glared at him and he glared back.

  She took satisfaction from the fact that he was first to speak. “This is a Muslim town, chica. Unescorted women are asking for trouble. As much as I’d enjoy laughing at your funeral, my John Wayne genes won’t let me send you out there alone.”

  “Neanderthal,” she muttered.

  “Feminist bitch,” he muttered back.

  * * *

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  Fever Zone

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