Cyberevolution Book One: The Awakening: Fifty Shades of Dark Kaitlyn O'Connor by Kaitlyn O'Connor, Kimberly Zant, Marie Morin, Stacey St.James, Goldie McBride (6)

He got up.  “Nothing happened to you in the forest,” he said tightly, rising abruptly and stalking off in the direction of the cottage.

She frowned angrily when he left, but got out of the water, dried herself and then slipped into her pantalets and chemise.  After a moment’s consideration, she decided not to put on the corset and dress. 

Wryly, she thought that if she was naked and had not incited Gaelen to violent ardor she was not likely to in her chemise and she wanted fresh clothing after her bath.  She would not have put anything at all on except for the fear that the lout from the village might have come back to stare at her.

Gaelen was sitting before the hearth when she returned, staring into the flames as if he was mesmerized by the dancing light.  She ignored him, crossing the cottage to her bed chamber where she tossed off the clothes she had just put on and changed into a night dress. 

She was tired, but restless. When she had blown out the lamp and settled she found herself staring at the low ceiling above her instead of closing her eyes.  She was miffed, she realized, that Gaelen had seemed so indifferent to her.  She thought she had detected a gleam of appreciation in his eyes a couple of times when she had glanced at him, but she did not know if it was true, or if she was only trying to comfort herself with a lie.

He had not seemed indifferent to her before. 

But mayhap that was only her imagination, too?  She had been walking about like a she-beast in heat for weeks, fighting the craving she felt to have a man between her thighs.  Mayhap she had only thought he looked at her with the same hunger?

He had not told her how he felt about the child, she realized suddenly.

He had only asked how she felt about the child.

Mayhap that meant that he was not certain how he felt about her condition either?

He had not been angry, she remembered, at least not until she had mentioned her fear that the lout from the village might have gotten his child on her.  He had not liked that.  She supposed that accounted for his flat denial that the man could be responsible, not, as she had at first thought because he had been there and seen, but because it revolted every feeling to consider it a possibility.

She would almost have felt better, though, if she had believed he had said it because he knew, because he had seen who had assaulted her.

But he had said nothing had happened in the forest, she remembered.

He had not been there as far as she knew.  She had met him later, when the villagers had come back and she’d fled into the woods to hide.

She puzzled over it for some moments and finally dismissed it.  Most likely it was like his denial about the father of the child.  He simply preferred not to think it had happened or he was trying to convince her because he knew how upsetting it was for her.

She preferred it too.  The problem was, something had most definitely happened, and she knew it must have been bad if she could not remember. 

Despite her anxieties, Lilith slept far better once she fell asleep than she had in many days and woke feeling more refreshed and ready to face the day.  For all that, she found her mind wandering to the Hawkin as she went about her chores.

She could not help but feel a little guilty about what she had done, partly because of Gaelen and partly because of the woman that the Hawkin truly loved, but she decided that she need not heed her conscience.  What she had done was not wrong.  She had made no commitment to Gaelen, nor any promises. 

She certainly had no reason to feel guilty about the love of the Hawkin’s life, for the woman had rejected him after all.  If she did not care for him, then she had no claim to be jumped.

She supposed after a while that it was not really guilt plaguing her.  She felt badly because she did feel a great deal of affection toward Gaelen and she was worried because she knew she had done far more than merely expended her passion with the Hawkin.  She had taken a step that she was probably going to regret. 

Because, despite the fact that she knew her urges were natural she did not think she would be able to get away with merely easing her needs with the Hawkin and then simply dismiss him from her life when he went away.  She was going to be hurt.  He had already touched something deeply inside of her when she had learned of his plight.  She cared for him, as much as she did Gaelen, perhaps even more.

She was an unreasonable creature, though.  No matter how many times she told herself to put it from her mind and stay away from the Hawkin, for everyone’s sake, the urge grew stronger every day to go into the forest again in hopes of meeting him. 

She managed to fight the urge for almost a week, and then woke one morning with an absolute and irresistible determination to see him again.  Her premeditation about it unsettled her, but she primped for her lover anyway, grabbed a basket and headed for the meadow, breathless with anticipation before she had even quit the yard.

She made a pretense of gathering herbs and roots but the moment she saw the Hawkin, she dropped the basket and went to him shamelessly, greeting him by brazenly slipping one hand upward to cup his neck and urge him to lean down to kiss her and the other downward to wrap her fingers around his already turgid man root. 

She was heavy with need, quaking with it, breathless, her heart thundering in her ears before she even touched him.  The moment she felt his lips on hers, tasted him, fisted her hand around his hot member, she was lost to all else, filled with a dark, mindless hunger that demanded to be assuaged.  Pressing closely to him, she explored his mouth as thoroughly as he explored hers, stroking his cock and then moving her hand downwards to cup his ballocks gently and massage them.  He jerked as she began to rub him there.  A quiver went through his body that sent an answering rush of heat through her.  When she broke the kiss at last, it was to explore his body as he had hers before, with her palms and fingers, with her lips and tongue.

The taste and texture of his flesh sent her spiraling further out of control, heightened her need.  Kneeling at last, she took his distended flesh into her mouth, sucking him greedily, stroking him with her hands.  The tremors running through him grew, became hard quakes.  He swayed, placing his hands on her shoulders to steady himself. 

Exhilarated by his response, feeling her own body coiling more tightly toward culmination, she intensified her efforts, taking him as deeply into her mouth as she could, stroking him faster.  His hands tightened on her shoulders, bit into them bruisingly as his body crested.  He uttered a groan that was half sob as his cock jerked in her mouth and began to pump his seed from his body.  She stroked and sucked at him feverishly until she had milked him dry.  

His knees buckled as she lifted her head. 

She gave him a moment to catch his breath and leaned down, taking his flaccid member into her mouth and teasing him until it grew turgid once more.  His hand tangled in her hair, pulling her up.  She yielded to the tug, the demand.  Rising up to loop an arm around his neck, she lifted her skirts and pressed his manhood between her thighs, tracing the slit in the crotch of her pantalets until she had aligned their bodies. 

His own breath nearly as ragged as hers already, he slipped his hands beneath her skirts, caught her hips in his broad hands and lifted her up until she could wrap her legs around his waist.  She tightened her arms around his neck, allowing gravity and his thrusts to claim her.  A groan scraped from her throat as he claimed her completely. 

“Gaelen,” she murmured against his neck.  “It feels so good to have you inside of me.”

He ground his teeth, swayed and finally wrapped an arm around her waist, leaning down with her until he had settled her on her back in the grasses.  “I have wanted you,” he muttered, kissing her lips, her throat, and the upper slopes of her breasts impatiently as he began to move inside of her.  “Wanted this.”

She had missed it, too, so much that she felt her body begin to quake and shudder within moments.  When he had found his own release, he lay panting beside her for several minutes and finally got to his feet and scooped her up, carrying her from the meadow and into the woods where she’d wakened before. 

“Where are we going?” she asked lazily when he picked her up.

“Beneath the shade where the sun will not roast you, little bird,” he murmured, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

She smiled back at him, burrowing her face against his shoulder, for she knew he meant to make love to her again. 

It was cooler beneath the trees, darker, more intimate.  He helped her from her clothing when he had set her on her feet, stoking his hands over her with both gentleness and trembling impatience, stirring her blood to feverish need once more with his urgency to explore every part of her with his lips and hands.

She lost all concept of passing time, reveling in his touch, in their joining, and the heights of passion he took her to each time they came together.  Eventually, though, the world intruded.  She would have been willing to ignore her body’s demand for rest and sustenance only for a little more time with him, but finally, reluctantly, he pulled away from her.  “I must go and so must you,” he murmured against her hair, stroking her soothingly as her body cooled and her heart and lungs ceased to labor.

She made a sound of complaint in her throat, but she didn’t try to cling to him when he rose and left.  She lay drifting lazily for a while after he’d gone, more inclined to seek sleep than food, but her stomach refused to be quieted and finally she got up and dressed to return.

Despite the aches and twinges from their vigorous appreciation of one another, she felt so completely sated and content that she was still smiling to herself when she reached the clearing around the cottage.  Reality burst upon her as she paused to look around, though, realizing it must be near noon, or perhaps later.

She spied Gaelen near the pig pen, tossing slops to the sow and her piglets, which had grown by now until they were almost half the size of their mother.

A belated sense of guilt swept over her.  She had abandoned her chores to seek the Hawkin, and left Gaelen to do everything by himself.  She looked down at the basket in her hand.  She had gathered a few things, but hardly enough to make up for her prolonged absence. 

Reluctant to face him, she started across the clearing, heading for the cottage. 

He intercepted her.  “I will take this and clean them at the stream.”

Heat was already rising into her cheeks when she looked up at him guiltily.  “I did not find much,” she said quickly.  “It is just as well the garden is coming along.”

He smiled, stroking the fingers of one hand lightly along her cheek.  “Yes, a very good thing.”

She stared after him blankly when he turned and left, so surprised she completely forgot that she’d been headed to the cottage to avoid a confrontation and to change before he had the chance to study her appearance too keenly. 

He was humming, she realized after a moment, off key, to be sure, but still she could tell it was the tune she so often sang beneath her breath or hummed as she worked.

Feeling oddly deflated at his cheerfulness, she glanced around the yard, wondering at it for several moments, and finally hurried inside.  A stew was bubbling in the cook pot.  The smell sent a near painful wave of hunger through her.  Rubbing her stomach, she headed to her bed chamber to clean up and rake the tangles from her hair.

To her embarrassment, she discovered as she worked the comb through her hair, that twigs and grass were tangled among the snarls.  She had no looking glass, but she saw when she studied her reflection in the wash basin that her face and neck were reddened from the Hawkin’s caresses, her lips swollen and her eyes almost glassy with the lingering afterglow of their coupling.  She had dressed very haphazardly, as well.

How could he have failed to notice that she looked just as she was, a woman who had been thoroughly pleasured?

Puzzling over it, she dressed again when she had bathed and returned to tend the food on the hearth and set the table for their meal.  Gaelen not only seemed just as cheerful when he returned, he seemed almost—enervated.  “I have thought of a way to bring the water into the cottage without so much labor,” he announced cheerfully as he ate.

Lilith blinked at him in surprise, but managed to assume an expression of interest as he explained that he had studied the mechanics of the miller’s water wheel and thought that it would work to bring small amounts of water into a cask that could be tapped whenever they wanted water, wondering if this was the source of his enthusiasm.

It seemed odd to her, but then it occurred to her after several moments that she actually knew very little about Gaelen.  He had never told her where he had come from, or what he had done before.  And, truthfully, he had never seemed either particularly interested in the chores required to keep her place or handy in performing them. 

She frowned when he paused, waiting, she knew, for her praise.  She smiled uncomfortably.  “The brook is not very wide or deep, and it does not flow very rapidly either.  Do you think that would be a problem?” she asked hesitantly, because she did not want to quash his enthusiasm even though she doubted very much that it would work.

He shrugged.  “A small wheel, only, and small amounts of water.”  He focused on his food for a few moments.  “I do not at all care for the cold water for bathing, and I cannot abide the stench from my labors.  I am not at all certain that I can endure it when the air grows cold, as well.  I know I do not desire to discover how miserable it would be.”

Lilith tilted her head curiously, warmed by the fact that he seemed to assume that he would stay with her through the winter, but intrigued, too, by what he seemed to be saying about his life before. “You are not used to the cold.  You are from a warmer place?”

He flicked a startled glance at her, but nodded.  “Much warmer.”

She was disappointed when he seemed disinclined to elaborate, but she did not press him.  Instead, she withdrew into her own thoughts, trying to ignore the plaguing guilt that threaded her thoughts. 

She did care for Gaelen.  Whatever doubts she might have had before had certainly been put to rest when he had been hurt, for she had been devastated at the possibility of losing him.  As often as not, he was morose, or untalkative, but he was still with her, giving her companionship whether he spoke or not. 

It had been wrong to take the Hawkin as a lover, she thought, feeling reluctance to face it even as she made herself do so, feeling an even greater reluctance to face giving him up.  She would probably not have a choice, though, she realized.  She did not delude herself into believing that he would forget the woman he loved and give his love to her instead.  He had needs, demands of his body that were nigh impossible to ignore.  Before, she might have dismissed that, might have been more inclined to think it a lack of control than a drive.  She knew better now, though.  She knew what it felt like to have such a hunger eating away at her that it began to seem reasonable to take what she wanted even when she knew it wasn’t at all reasonable.

It was a sort of madness, she thought abruptly, as Gaelen rose and left the cottage.  He was a good man, worthy, deserving of a woman who could give him her whole heart. 

Unfortunately, she did not think she could do that. 

What she felt for the Hawkin was far more than lust.  Desire might be the driving force of her complete disregard for every other consideration, but it was the things she had felt for him that had triggered the yearning for him in the first place.

She covered her face with her hands, so torn she could not think what to do.  Only thinking about never seeing the Hawkin again was enough to make her feel as if she wanted to die, as if she would wither and die if he went away and she could not see him.

She felt almost the same when she tried to imagine giving up Gaelen. 

Finally, she pushed the worry to the back of her mind and got up to attend the chores she had neglected, those Gaelen had not already taken care of for her.  As cowardly as she knew it was, as fraught with potential disaster as she knew it was, she shied away from actually doing or saying anything herself to tip the scales.  She would wait, she decided, and allow fate to decide, for she could not.

Chapter Thirteen

Gaelen, Lilith realized after a few days, was not merely cheerful, and excited about the idea that he had thought up.  He was happy.  Even when he discovered that his careful study of the Miller’s wheel was not enough to make copying it easy, he kept his temper and persevered, working at it until Lilith had given up and gone inside to prepare an evening meal.

His frustration with the attempt had vanished by the time he came in to share a meal with her, and Lilith discovered why the following morning, for he had kept at it until he had the small wheel spinning as it should. 

She chuckled when he gestured to it proudly.  “You are so clever!  But I can see that you are so pleased with yourself that you do not really need my approval,” she added teasingly.

He sent her a look that was wryly amused.  “I always need your approval.  For I have found that I am only happy when you are.”

A mixture of warmth and discomfort pricked at her.  She could think of nothing to say to that, however, and tried to redirect the conversation to something less distressing.  “How will you get the water from here to there?” she asked in innocent curiosity.

His amusement vanished.  He frowned as he studied the distance between the brook and the cottage, which was on a rise above the brook.

Lilith bit her lip, realizing very little short of magic was going to carry the water uphill.  “I am confident you will find a way,” she said quickly, realizing she had inadvertently knocked the rug out from under him and beating a hasty retreat.

When she rose the following morning, Gaelen was gone.  A nearly overpowering desire to slip into the forest to look for the Hawkin washed over her.  She fought it.  She had made up her mind that she would not go again.  As much as she wanted the Hawkin, he was not for her.  She had resolved to do her best to stay away from him and focus on trying to make a life with Gaelen, who seemed to have made up his mind to stay with her.

She was glad she had resisted the urge, for Gaelen showed up mid morning with a stranger.  The village was small, and though she did not know many of them either by trade or name, she knew their faces well enough to know that the man must be from another village.

He was quaking, sickly pale, and sweating profusely despite the mildness of the day.  She wondered if he was ill, but when she approached him to ask, he merely stared at her as if she had two heads and flatly denied it.

Abashed, Lilith retreated as the two men set about building what she finally realized was a slew to carry the water. 

She smiled inwardly.  Gaelen might not know how to do such things himself, but he knew how to get them done and, in the end, that was all that really mattered.  He was clever!

She was a little surprised when the man stayed the night in the shed, but Gaelen said that was because they had not finished and the man would stay until they had worked out the matter of removing the overflow of water, and the waste.

“How much will he expect to be paid for the work?” she asked.

Gaelen looked at her blankly, searching his mind for an answer that Lilith would find acceptable, certain that she would not find it at all acceptable if he said that he had promised the man he would allow him to live if he performed the work satisfactorily.  “A pig?” he hazarded.

Lilith’s brows rose in surprise.  “Only one?  He is working very hard only for one.”

“Two, then,” Gaelen said irritably. 

Confused by his brusque response, Lilith gaped at him, but allowed the matter to drop, wondering if it was the aggravation of the task he’d set for himself that was beginning to gnaw at the good humor that had buoyed his spirits for nigh a week, or it if was something else. 

Her needs were certainly beginning to gnaw at her.  Even though she had made the decision not to seek the Hawkin out again and was not happy with the necessity she felt to make that choice, she had been wrapped in a warm glow of satisfaction for days and only had to recall their time together to resurrect the happiness.  After nigh a week of deprivation, however, resurrecting the memories only added to the need that had begun to tease at her again, and slowly evolved from a gentle teasing to burgeoning torment. 

By the time Gaelen finished his project and went off with his worker, Lilith found she could not bear it any longer.  She had to go.  She needed the Hawkin and she could not rest or think of anything else. 

She had begun to think that she had stayed away so long that the Hawkin had ceased to watch for her.  She wandered the meadow for more than an hour, and finally went into the forest, calling for him in desperation, uncaring whether Gaelen returned and heard her or not.

She realized, dimly, that she was obsessed with him and the rapture he gave her, for the more she received the more she wanted.  The desire for him was like a drug in her body, never completely assuaged.  Instead, each time it was appeased, it built a stronger craving.

When the Hawkin at last appeared, she rushed to him with a mixture of relief, remorse, and gladness, too happy to see him to yield to the fear that had been slowly building in her as she searched for him that she would never see him again.  Throwing herself into his arms, she made love to him with all of the desperation that had gathered in her while she searched for him.

It was already dark by the time she dragged herself back to the cottage and she was so exhausted from their lovemaking she could barely walk.  She certainly was in no state to consider what she might tell Gaelen about her disappearance, or her bedraggled appearance when she returned for that matter.

To her surprise and relief, he did not question it.  Instead, he carried her around to the back of the cottage and showed her the pool he and the worker from the distant village had made for bathing.  Surrounding it was lit torches.  She discovered to her surprise once he had helped her undress and get in, that the water was hot. 

It felt wonderfully soothing, but despite the flicker of curiosity as to how he had managed to produce the hot water, she was too tired to care at the moment, and too grateful for it to question it.

She was a little alarmed when he stripped his own clothes off and climbed in with her, and uneasy when he began to bathe her as if she was no more than a helpless child, but his touch was soothing, unthreatening, comforting.  Soothed by his attentions, weak from the heat of the water, she was more than half asleep by the time they left the pool and returned to the cottage and she was far more interested in curling up and sleeping than eating.

Gaelen was insistent, however, that she eat and when she ignored him and went to her room, he simply followed her with the food, climbing into the bed with her and teasing her by brushing tidbits across her lips until she took them.  She didn’t know whether to be more irritated or more amused, but she discovered that the intimacy of it warmed her far more than she was prepared to deal with at the moment.

The oddity of the entire situation had been plaguing her for a while she realized when she went out to attend her chores the following day and discovered that Gaelen had found the ax she’d hidden from him as was very cheerfully hacking trees down to build a room for the bath.  It was unnerving to watch him felling trees and Lilith retreated out of harm’s way and tried to ignore his death defying attempt at construction.

He was humming again, she realized later.  That did not strike her as particularly odd until she realized that she was humming happily, as well.

She had reason to be happy, though.  She’d spent the day before with her lover.

Why in Hades was he so damned cheerful, she wondered irritably?   

She dismissed the idea that first popped into her mind, that he was cheerful for the same reason she was—he had thoroughly sated himself.

It occurred to her after a while that she had been so focused on her passionate affair, and felt so guilty after her encounters that she avoided Gaelen as much as possible, that she hadn’t really been paying him a great deal of attention.  Thinking back, though, she realized that his attitude had changed as radically as hers had and at around the same time.

It was almost amusing to think that both of them had found lovers and both of them were sneaking off to be with them, each struggling to hide it from the other.

Almost.

Except for the fact that the idea of Gaelen taking a lover sent a stab of jealousy through her.

It was unreasonable, she knew.  She had no claim upon him, and certainly no right to make judgments when she had taken a lover.  She could not help the way she felt, though, even if it was unreasonable. 

And it wasn’t just jealousy.  It was the fear that Gaelen would leave her for his lover and she would be alone.

Because she knew the Hawkin would not stay with her.  She was actually more than a little amazed that they had been lovers as long as they had, for despite the fact that she held nothing back when she went to him, she always struggled for a very long time with her conscience before she caved in, hoping each time that she would be strong enough to ignore the siren call.

She wanted both men and she could not have both.

For the first time since she had taken the Hawkin as her lover, she found herself focusing so steadfastly on Gaelen that she began to notice things she had not noticed before, remember things that she had thought insignificant. 

The thoughts that slowly began to evolve in her mind seemed so farfetched, so completely fantastic, that she dismissed it the first time it occurred to her.  Once the idea had germinated, however, she could not let it go.  As many times as she tried to reason it away, it kept returning.

In physical appearance, she could see that Gaelen differed as much from the Hawkin as he resembled him.  The Hawkin was hairless, completely.  Gaelen was hairy, with long black hair, and a beard.  His chest was also hairy, his legs, his arms.  She knew because he had no concern about her seeing his body and she had seen him completely naked more than once.

On the other hand, both men were of a comparable height and build and that in itself was unusual.  Few mortal men were as big as Gaelen.

Both had unusual golden eyes, as well, eyes that were far too bright to be considered merely ‘brown’.

They were both called Gaelen.  As distracted as she had been she had thought that odd when she discovered it.  Not amazing, because such things happened, but definitely a peculiar sort of coincidence.

It was a lot more significant that both of them called her little bird.  She had thought to begin with that she was the one who was confused, but she no longer believed that.  So, either the Hawkin had overheard Gaelen, which wasn’t impossible, or he called her that because there was only one Gaelen.

The Hawkin was a demon, she reminded herself after a time.  He would have powers that would seem fantastic to anyone else. 

He would also have the magic to change form if he chose.  She knew that much about demons.  She wasn’t certain why it hadn’t occurred to her that that was a possibility before, but it occurred to her now.

Why would he choose to, though?  That was the one question that kept coming around every time she began to be convinced that she had figured it all out.  What possible reason could a demon have to trick her at all, let alone in such a way as she was considering?

She was not certain enough to want to confront either one, though.  There remained just enough doubt in her mind to make her worry that she would be thought mad for even thinking up such a strange tale.

It was hard to ignore the pull to go to the Hawkin again as the days passed, but she did her best not to think about it, focusing on watching Gaelen instead.  If he left, she decided, she would follow him.  Then she would discover once and for all if he had a lover, or if she was right and he was the Hawkin.

She could worry about why the demon had decided to deceive her when she knew for certain that he had—if he had.

Gaelen did not leave, but his cheerfulness dwindled to restlessness at just about the time hers did.  As miserable as she had become, she began to feel a good deal of empathy for his plight, began to think that he would not slip away because he knew she was watching him.  But now that she had become certain that something very strange was going on, she meant to get to the bottom of it.

When a week had passed and she had gone from simply missing the Hawkin to a restless yearning for him, she began to think that maybe she was mad, maybe she had imagined there was something there that wasn’t, arranging everything to suit herself rather than with any logic.  There was no getting around the want she felt for both men. Had she simply invented a tale to assuage her fears, need, and guilt?

* * * *

Ordinarily, Lilith politely ignored Gaelen’s difficulties with his beard and moustache at the evening meal.  Like pretty much everything else, though, because of her needs it had begun to be an annoyance.  She had watched him irritably dabbing at his whiskers for some moments with the napkin she had given him before her patience broke.  “I should cut that off.”

Gaelen paused, glanced at her in surprise, and then looked down at himself as if searching for the object that had offended.  “What?” he asked uneasily.

“The whiskers,” she said decisively, getting up from the table and crossing the room to her work basket where she dug around for her shears. 

Gaelen had slewed around in his seat and was watching her with a mixture of wariness and irritation when she found what she was looking for and headed for him purposefully.

“Why?” He demanded.

“Because I do not like them,” Lilith retorted.  “I can see little of your face except for the nose and eyes, and often not much of those for the hair hanging around your face.  It is like always peering at someone behind a veil.  I think there is a very nice face behind all of that hair.”

He stared at the shears she held up with a mixture of wariness and surprise.  “I look as all the men in the village look.”

“I do hope you do not mean that you prefer to look like those unkempt louts?  You should not model yourself after them.  Besides, you do not seem to relish going about filthy and stinking as they do.  You will be much more comfortable without it and I will be able to see you when I look at your instead of a veil of black hair.”

Grasping his wrist, she gave him a tug.

He got up and allowed her to lead him to the straight chair near the hearth, but she could tell he was still uncertain of what she had in mind and not sure he wanted to cooperate.  “You did not seem to mind before.”

“Sit!” she said, pointing to the chair.  “And I will go and fetch my comb.”

He followed her into her bed chamber instead.  “You did not object before,” he prodded her as she grabbed the comb and headed back toward the main room of the cottage, grabbing his hand again as she pushed past him and urging him toward the chair once more.

When he sat down in the chair, she began to work the comb through his hair.  “I have never been fond of a great deal of hair on a man, but I had no interest in the village louts.  This is different.”

He frowned.  “It keeps me warm.”

She glanced down at him, shook her head and chuckled.  “It is not cold.  I will knit something to keep you warm when the weather grows cold.”

Ignoring his reluctance, she finished combing his hair and then moved around to face him to comb the tangles from the beard and moustache, wondering if his reluctance had anything to do with her seeing his face better.  It had not really occurred to her before that there was a good deal of resemblance between his features—what she could see of them, and the Hawkin’s.  She supposed that was because she had not expected to see any similarity.  In many ways, he was almost directly opposite the Hawkin, pale skinned and hairy, where the Hawkin was dark skinned and hairless. 

And yet, his features were shaped much the same, she thought, his nose, his eyes, and what she could see of the line of his jaw and his lips.

When she had smoothed the hair, she took the shears and began to carefully clip the hair as closely as she could to his skin, tossing the locks she cut away into the fire.  The unpleasant stench of burning hair began to sting her nose.  After a moment, she left off what she was doing and moved to the door to open it and the shutters on the windows to allow the evening air to circulate through the cottage.

She leaned close to him as she worked, so focused on her task and making certain she cut closely without nicking his skin that it was several moments before she noticed that his gaze was riveted to her bodice.  She also noticed a faint tremor in him as she stroked her hands over his face.

“Are you chilled?”

He cleared his throat.  “Nay,” he said finally.

Smiling inwardly, she straightened to view her handiwork as she finished trimming the beard and tossed the last of the hair onto the hearth.  “Better,” she announced somewhat breathlessly, feeling her own body warm from her proximity to him.  She hesitated for several moments and finally lifted her skirts and settled astride his lap, shifting closer to clip the hair from his upper lip.  His eyes widened in momentary surprise at her boldness, but then narrowed, gleaming heatedly.  His hands settled lightly on her waist. 

Dragging in a deep breath, Lilith focused on keeping her hands steady as she carefully trimmed the excess hair from his upper lip.  Finally, seeing that she had cut as closely as she could with the shears without risking nicking his skin with the shears, she dropped the comb and shears beside the chair and brushed his face and the front of his shirt to remove the hair she’d cut.

“Goodness,” she exclaimed, forcing a faint smile as she studied his face.  “I had no notion you were so handsome.”  As handsome as the Hawkin.

He looked pleased.  “I am pleasing to your eyes?”

She smiled with less effort at his blatant demand for more praise.  “You have always been pleasing to my eyes, Gaelen,” she murmured, looping her arms around his neck and leaning close to brush her lips along his.

His hands tightened on her waist for a fraction of a second and then he wrapped his arms tightly around her, opening his mouth over hers.  What little doubt remained that her mind was playing tricks on her vanished.  She knew him. 

He might change his appearance, but his taste and his touch, the way he kissed her and held her were unmistakable.  A fiery tide of welcome broke through her restraint, washing the last of her doubts from her mind and with it any thoughts of demanding answers to the questions that descended upon her.  The only thing that mattered at the moment was his touch, the delicious sensations that erupted inside of her with lightning swiftness.

She broke the kiss after a moment, dizzy with need, nuzzling her face against his, exploring his cheek to his ear, trembling as he trembled with barely leashed passion.  “Make love to me, Gaelen,” she murmured against his ear, nipping at the lobe with her lips as she rocked back and forth along the hard ridge of flesh between her thighs.

He dropped his hands to her waist, pushing her back along his thighs and fumbled with his breeches.  In a moment, she felt his heated flesh against her belly, felt him urging her with his hands to lift up to sheathe him. 

Eager to feel him deeply within her, she rose up until he could fit their bodies together and settled again, allowing the weight of her body and his hands to force her body over his turgid flesh.  By the time they had managed a deep connection, she was already quivering on the brink of crisis, gasping hoarsely, almost sobbing with the fiery need coursing through her body. 

He arched his hips upward, burrowing deeper still, holding himself tightly inside of her for many moments until his restraint broke and he began to urge her to move, lifting her slightly and then allowing her to slide down his shaft again and again, rocking his hips each time to meet her.  Goose flesh broke along her skin as she moved, struggling to find the rhythm that would send her over the edge, crying out when she found it and ecstasy thundered through her.  He uttered a throaty groan as her body began to convulse around him, milking him of his seed.  His arms tightened almost crushingly around her as he found his own surcease.

Shuddering, he held her tightly, his face against the side of her neck as he gasped hoarsely to catch his breath.  Abruptly, he rose straight up.  Surprised, Lilith gasped, instinctively wrapping her legs around his waist and tightening her grip on his neck.

Without a word, he carried her into her bedchamber, sprawling across her bed with her and kissing her lips, her face, her throat, murmuring her name in a lover’s litany of appreciation.

Shedding his clothing, he began to remove hers item by item, kissing each part of her bare skin he exposed, until, by the time they were both naked, they were caught up again in heated passion, coupling with wild abandon.

* * * *

Lilith wasn’t certain whether it was the sound of labor outside the cottage that woke her or the thin mote of light weakly piercing her shutters, but she roused to a sense of intense satisfaction and well being.

Stretching, she lay staring up at her ceiling for a time, listening, recalling her night with Gaelen. 

After a time the warmth began to fade and doubt crept into her mind. 

She knew now that there was only one Gaelen, her Gaelen.  She just didn’t know why he had gone to such lengths to deceive her.

She puzzled over it for a while, but although random possibilities presented themselves, she realized she would not find answers in her own mind.  She might not find answers if she confronted Gaelen, but she would certainly come closer to doing so than merely speculating. 

He was of the demon breed, she reminded herself.  Perhaps he needed no motive at all?  Perhaps he had only been amusing himself?

She could not say that she knew a great deal about them.  No one did as far as she knew, though they were not slow to make up tales, for all that.  But one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that demons were prone to deceiving mortals for their own ends.

She needed to know why, she realized.  If she knew, then perhaps she would know if he meant to stay, or if he was only amusing himself with her.

Getting up finally, she bathed in the water in her wash basin and dressed. 

Gaelen was working on the room he had decided to add to the cottage to enclose the bathing pool he had made.  Smiling at him when he glanced her way, she went to the shed and got feed for the small flock of geese she and Gaelen had appropriated from the wild.  The hatchlings were half grown now.  The mother goose still looked at her with malice whenever she went into the pen, but the young geese had no such reservations about her.  The moment she went into the pen they gathered to squabble over the feed.

Soon, they would be old enough to begin to lay and she would have eggs, she thought a little absently, making a mental note to gather the makings of nests.

When she had fed them, she went to check the progress of her garden, pulling the weeds that grew around the plants and then selecting a mess of maturing greens for her cook pot. 

Gaelen moved up behind her as she settled to wash the greens, wrapping his arms around her waist and nuzzling his face against her neck.  She paused, lifting a hand to caress his cheek.  “You will have no food to fill your belly when you are hungry if you keep this up,” she murmured.

He chuckled.  “I am more interested in filling yours.”

She laughed, but shook her head.  “Now.  Later, when you are hungry the story will be different.”

He sucked a love bite along the side of her neck and released her.  “Go then.  I have learned patience.”

Smiling to herself, she gathered the food and went in to the cottage to put it on to cook.  He did have patience, she thought, looking back over the time they had spent together, infinite patience.  How like a demon was that, she wondered?  Patience, gentleness, kindness—at least to her.  She could not recall that he had ever behaved as she would have expected a demon to behave—unless, perhaps, she counted his carnal appetite, and she could not say that hers was any less avid than his.

She realized as she was cleaning up after their noon meal that she had spent the entire morning avoiding what she knew she had to do.  The temptation was strong to simply bury her head and hide from the truth, and hide from her fear that one day she would awake to find herself alone.

She would not hurt any more tomorrow or the next day if she discovered that he had only decided to amuse himself with her for a time. 

She would not hurt less if she discovered it today.

She still had to know.

Taking her basket, she left the cottage and followed the path into the woods.  She did not look back to see if Gaelen followed her.  She knew he would.  He would know that she was heading toward their rendezvous in the forest.

She discovered that she was right.  When she reached the grassy clearing beneath the trees where they had lain together so many times before, he dropped from the boughs overhead, landing a short distance from her.

Instead of going to him at once as she usually did, she studied him, feeling her belly clench with desire, but also dread.  She skated a hand down her belly over the roundness that had become more and more noticeable with time.  Swallowing with an effort, she met his gaze.  “This child is yours.”

Several emotions chased across his face; relief, remorse, wariness, anxiety.  His throat worked.  “Yes,” he said finally.

“It was my memory you took.”

His face contorted, this time with pain.  “Yes.”

Her heart seemed to twist in her chest.  She moved toward him slowly and put her arms around his waist, holding herself tightly to him.  A jolt went through him, as if of surprise and then, cautiously, he wrapped his arms around her.

“Why?” she asked in a muffled voice.  “Why would you do that?  Why would you take my memories?”

She heard him swallow and pulled away to look up at him. 

“You asked,” he said hoarsely.  “I promised.”

A pang of loss went through her, of dread as it teased her mind to wonder why she would have demanded such a thing—and yet he had said that he loved her.  She had seen in the way he looked at her.  She frowned.  “Give them back.”

He looked a little ill.  He lifted a hand to her cheek, cupping it.  “I cannot, little bird.  That is why I did not want to take them, because I could not give them back and I knew that all that had happened, all that had been between us would be lost to you.  It has been the worst sort of torture to me to remember and to know that you do not.”

She studied his face, trying to fathom the anxiety she saw behind his regret.  “Were any of the things you told me true?” she asked finally, pulling away from him.

The wariness returned to his eyes.  “Which things?” he asked cautiously.

She gave him a look.  “I know you are the man who lives with me,” she said flatly.  “You deceived me.  Why?”

Anger flickered in his eyes, and doubt.  “I did not set out to deceive you.”

“It is just as well, for if I had not been so distracted, I would not have been deceived at all!” she said tartly.

His lips tightened.  “I would have completely deceived you and you would never have guessed the truth if I had set out to do so.”

“Why do it at all?”

He studied her anxiously for a moment and finally sat down, drawing his knees up and dropping one elbow to his knee.  Cupping his chin in his hand, he glared at nothing in particular.  “I only wanted to know if you would find me more pleasing if you believed I was a man,” he said shortly.  “When I saw that you did, then I could not resist staying, but I had not set out to deceive you and I did not know how to behave as a mortal man.  If I had planned to deceive you, then I would have learned the things I needed to know before I went to you.”

She stared down at him irritably for a moment, and finally knelt down, pushed his arms aside and climbed onto his lap, settling his arms around her waist and leaning her head against his shoulder.  Surprised, he simply allowed her to arrange herself as she pleased.  “That was a great deal of trouble to go to,” she murmured, “only to appease your curiosity.”

“I was not curious!” he said.  “I was … desperate.  You are not angry with me again?  I will not take your memory again.  I have endured as much of this as I can bear.  I do not want to have to try again.”

She sent him a look, amused and touched by his unwitting assertion that he would try again.  “I was before?”

“I do not wish to discuss that,” he said tightly.  “You do not remember because you did not want to remember, and you are mine now, so it does not matter.”

A mixture of irritation and amusement filled her.  “And how do you know that?” she demanded.

He caught her jaw in one large hand.  “You gave yourself to me, as the man, Gaelen, and as I am.  I did not take.  You gave.  You said that you cared for me.”

She met his gaze unflinchingly.  “Did you give yourself to me?”

He frowned.  “Yes.”

“You do not sound certain.  Did you not mean it, then, when you said you loved the mortal woman?”

He seemed to war with himself a moment.  “I did not say I loved the mortal woman.  You said that I loved her.  I only said that I was … that I could not bear to let her go.  That I had to find a way to make her love me.”

She smiled.  “Why would that matter, whether she loved you or not, if you did not love her?”

He dragged in a shaky breath.  “I do not know.  I am Hawkin.  I cannot say that I understand the strange ways of mortals.  And you know very well that there is no ‘she’,” he retorted irritably.  “You know that I meant you.”

“This entire charade was to woo me then?” she asked, pleased.  “Because you love me?  And you mean to stay with me?”

He looked conflicted.  Finally, he smiled wryly.  His arms tightened around her, squeezing her just enough to reassure her.  “You have a fearsome temper, little bird.  But I am Hawkin, and fearless.  I will brave your wrath if I must, and I will return even if you send me away again, always, forever.  If that is love, then yes, I love you—more each day than the day before.”

The End

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alien Breeders One:

The Anunnaki

By

Stacey St. James

( c ) copyright by Stacey St.James

Cover Art by Jenny Dixon, June 2015

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

Chapter One

There was something in the darkness, something terrifying.  Emerald could feel its presence and her heart began to pound with the fear that grew in her along with the certainty that if she didn’t find a way to escape it, the evil thing would catch her.  She glanced away, searching for some place to run to, some place to hide, but there was a thick fog rolling around her that obscured her surroundings.

It didn’t matter, she told herself.  She just needed to get away, to put some distance between herself and the threat and then she would find a place to hide.  Not even the fear seemed to lend her the strength she needed to flee, though.  Every muscle in her body strained with effort and she still found she could barely move.  Her heart thundered faster the harder she struggled until she hardly breathe for fear tightening her chest.

It was coming.  She could feel it coming.  Her fear sharpened when she felt it directly behind her.  She struggled to scream and came awake with a jolt that echoed throughout her body as if she’d fallen and landed hard.

Sucking in a sharp breath, trying to calm her racing heart, she lay for several moments with her eyes closed, reassuring herself that it had been nothing but a dream and at the same time struggling to recapture the nightmare and figure out what had scared her so much.  The little she remembered began to fade almost immediately, though, far faster than the effects it had had on her.  Realizing after a few moments that sleep had escaped her and that she really didn’t want to go back to sleep for fear the dream would resume, she opened her eyes.

She almost thought when she had that she was still asleep and dreaming.  The wall she found herself staring at didn’t look the least bit familiar.  Frowning, struggling now to recall her last memories before she’d fallen asleep, she scanned everything within view and finally turned her head to search further.

Her heart, which had barely begun to regain its natural rhythm, leapt with alarm when she saw the two men—the two beings—standing between her and the door.  She would’ve leapt from the bed except she discovered she was bound to it.

The taller of the two moved a little closer.  “Don’t be alarmed.  You’re safe.”

He spoke English?  It threw her.  For several moments she wondered if something was wrong with her eyes or her mind, or if it was purely an illusion of light and shadows, but even though she blinked rapidly, the being still looked alien—almost human, but different enough there was no doubt in her mind that he wasn’t.

She stared at him hard, trying to will the strangeness to vanish, searching his features.  The sharp angles and planes that made up his face might have been human.  His nose was long and narrow, the nostrils slanted upward in a sharp angle that almost bordered a sneer and yet there was nothing else about his expression to suggest contempt.  It was merely the natural slant, she was certain, and it gave him an almost regal, superior appearance.  His mouth was little more than a slash, the lips hard and thin.  The deepset eyes above the prominent cheekbones were the least human-looking feature.  Surrounded by long, heavy lashes, they were slanted far more than human eyes, large and heavy lidded.  A thick pelt of pale hair, cut in layers and groomed in a style that was almost familiar framed his face and brushed his shoulders.

His skin and hair tones were almost the most human-like features he possessed.

Overall, the impression was almost that of a predatory bird—the angular face and beak of a nose almost hawk-like—attractive enough in a strangely exotic way, and still unhuman-like enough to make her belly stir with uneasiness.

She scanned down his length, her gaze flickering over his hands, his long legs and torso, clothed in some strange metallic-looking material in a style that seemed as exotic as his physical appearance and yet oddly familiar, and finally returning to his face.  He was the height of a tall human male, his build almost as angular as his face, but still very human-like in his proportions and shape, his hips and waist narrow and V’ing upward to form a wide chest and broad shoulders, not merely humanoid.

“Where am I?” she asked finally, alarmed to discover speech was a great effort, her voice hoarse as if with disuse.

Something flickered in his eyes.  “Earth.”

Emerald felt her heart begin to pound again, although she couldn’t decide why that would frighten her.  Maybe because she didn’t believe him?  “You’re not … human.  What are you?”

The other being moved up beside him.  He was taller than the first by several inches, and far broader, less angular.  Oddly enough, the ‘predatory bird’ impression persisted with him, however, for his face was also hard and angular, despite the fact that he clearly had more muscle mass.  His hair was longer and almost black.  “I’m sure you have many questions.  Rest.  We’ll talk later.”

Anger flickered through Emerald despite her lingering alarm at her discovery that she’d woken among aliens.  “Rest?  Tied down?” she asked tightly.

The two men exchanged a long look.  The first man spoke again.  “The restraints were only for your safety, to keep you from falling while you were unconscious.  I can remove them now that you’re awake.”

Emerald was suddenly uncertain of whether she wanted him that close to her.  On the other hand, being tied down was certainly no comfort.  She swallowed a little convulsively, struggling to dredge up an attempt to be cordial when she felt more threatened as time progressed.  “Please.”

He seemed to hesitate, as if trying to decide whether she was mentally stable enough to make her request reasonable and finally moved closer.  The other man remained where he was, which was some relief until it occurred to her that it might be more a matter of precaution rather than for her comfort.  He was closer to the door and positioned in a way that would make escape unlikely even if the first man was distracted enough for her to elude him.

The man who’d approached went to a small console beside the narrow bed where she lay and touched several buttons.  The restraints across her chest and hips released and retracted.  Her attention caught by the movement, her gaze followed instinctively, and she saw she wasn’t lying on a bed at all, but rather inside some sort of coffin-like capsule.  The part she was lying on had the look of a narrow bunk or hospital bed, but above her was a clear, lozenge shaped top that she knew, somehow, had enclosed her until very recently.  Alarm fluttered through her again.  Struggling with it, she scanned the contraption, trying to decide what it was and what its purpose might be.

“Do you feel strong enough to walk?  If so, we’ll escort you to … a more comfortable room.”

Emerald jerked a quick glance toward the one who’d spoken—the dark one—searching her mind for some reason she might not be strong enough to walk.  Nothing came to her.  In fact, her mind was strangely bereft of memories and that alarmed her even more.  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

His dark brows rose questioningly, but she could see something flicker in his eyes and the suspicion arose that he not only knew exactly what she was asking, he knew why she might be weak.  She dismissed the question for the moment since it seemed clear that neither of them meant to tell her anything and a sense of self-preservation made her reluctant to let them know she couldn’t remember anything.

In any case, panic began to claw at her the moment she realized just how empty her mind was of memories.  It wasn’t just that she still couldn’t remember what had happened just before she fell asleep.  She couldn’t summon any sort of memories from before she’d fallen asleep.  The effort to capture something—anything—made sharp pains stab at her brain.  The suspicion instantly arose that they might not only know why, but might be responsible for the memory loss.  More importantly at the moment, though, she knew her survival might well depend on keeping her wits about her.  She couldn’t afford to yield to the hysteria trying to gain a hold on her.

Her body, she discovered, responded sluggishly to the internal command to rise.  She sat up with an effort, a conscious command of her muscles rather than the automatic response it should have been.  Dizziness instantly assailed her.  She closed her eyes, struggling against it and felt hands settle on her shoulders.  When her eyes popped open in response, she discovered the fair haired alien had caught her.

Her heart sped up, palpitating in a jerky way that further unnerved her as she found herself staring into his eyes, felt her senses expand instantly to encompass him.  Despite the fact that his appearance was lean, she discovered that it was misleading.  It was his height that made him seem slender.  The hands gripping her shoulders were large and powerful, his chest far broader than she’d realized.  Unconsciously, she sucked in a deep breath, inhaling his scent.

It was oddly reassuring when he didn’t look human to discover that his scent was comfortingly familiar—even appealing to her senses—not alien.  “I’m alright,” she said a little stiltedly.

He seemed reluctant to release her, but she became certain that it wasn’t merely concern for her dizziness.  For a moment longer, he held her, staring at her face, and then he seemed to come to himself.  He released his hold and allowed his arms to drop to his sides.

Emerald made a new, unpleasant discovery, when she tossed aside the sheet that had covered her.

She was naked.

Her gaze flew upward with a mixture of alarm and accusation from her bare breasts and groin to the man standing over her.  She saw anger flicker in his eyes briefly.  Instead of saying anything, however, he picked up the sheet that had dropped from her and held it up in offering.  Emerald snatched it from him and struggled to wrap it around herself, sliding her legs over the side of the platform she’d been lying on and inching her buttocks toward the edge.  The floor was further than she’d expected.  Her bare feet met icy metal when she slipped from the bed to the floor, landing with an impact that sent stinging sensation through the soles of her feet.  Her ankles and knees jolted and nearly gave out.  He curled his hand around one arm, steadied her, and released her.

Emerald felt as heavy as if she’d just climbed out of a pool of water after being buoyed by it for hours.  Striving to ignore the heaviness and at the same time pretend it wasn’t so lest they perceive her weakness, she focused on adjusting the length of fabric to allow herself a few moments to gather defenses.

The room they were in, she discovered from her new perspective, was empty except for the contraption she’d climbed out of.  It shouldn’t have been a surprise considering how small the room was, and yet it seemed to speak somehow more of a lab setting than a medical treatment room.  She wasn’t certain why unless it was the thing that had contained her itself—which didn’t rule out the possibility that it was, in fact, a medical facility.  She might’ve been confined in it for any number of medical reasons. Unfortunately, no firm sense of ‘why’ occurred to her.

The dark one studied her with patent interest as she moved toward him.  He waited until she’d halted in front of him questioningly—several moments past that, in point of fact—before he turned and led the way to the door.  It slid open silently, disappearing into the wall beside it and Emerald saw a corridor outside.  Rather than directional light, the walls, ceiling, and floor seemed to glow, although the light wasn’t phosphorescent but white.  Emerald looked around curiously as they left the room, but there was not only nothing to see, there was nothing the least bit familiar about it to jog memories.

The two men fell into step alongside her.  She glanced up at them and discovered they were taller than she’d thought, closer to seven feet than the average six of a human, for she wasn’t a short woman even though she wasn’t particularly tall for her own species.  She felt short beside them—dainty, in fact.  She couldn’t decide whether she liked the feeling or not, but she was inclined to think not.  If they’d been attractive human males—maybe—but she wasn’t sure she would’ve liked it even then.  In her current situation, it only seemed to emphasize her disadvantage.

Thankfully, the trek wasn’t a long one.  She’d felt weak and heavy and awkward from the moment she’d gotten up.  She was tired to the point of dizziness by the time they halted at another door.  When it opened, she saw a room almost as stark as the one they’d left.  It contained a real bunk, however, and a table and two easy chairs.  Ignoring the bed, she headed to the closest chair and plopped into it weakly.

“Do you remember your name?”

Emerald sent a sharp look at the dark haired alien.  “Why wouldn’t I?” she asked tautly.

He frowned and sent a wry look at the other man.  “I’m Tariq.”

“My name is Koryn.”

Emerald glanced from Tariq, the dark one, to Koryn, the fair ‘slender’ male, wondering at her reluctance even to tell them her name.  What was the sense of ‘wrong’ nagging at her, as if she was supposed to keep everything about herself ‘secret’?  Shaking it after a moment because it seemed more imperative to convince them that she had her memories, she responded, “Emerald.”

Both of them looked surprised.  “This is the name of stone considered precious, correct?”

Emerald felt her face heat.  “It’s still my name,” she said stiffly.

“For the color of your eyes?” Koryn asked.

Emerald glanced at him, searching her mind.  It was dismaying that she didn’t know.  She hadn’t even known her eyes were green.  She glanced down at the question, though, and stared at the lock of hair across her shoulder.  It was red, a dark wine red.  How could she know that, know what wine was and the color red, when she couldn’t seem to remember anything at all?  “I’m Irish,” she said, the words tumbling from some deep recess of her mind without any attempt to draw them forth.  “Of Irish descent, anyway.  It’s a trait of my Irish heritage—the green eyes and the red hair.”

Tariq tilted his head curiously.  “What else do you remember?”

Nothing!  Instead of yielding to the panic, she took the offensive position.  “I don’t remember how I got here and I don’t know why I’m here!  Am I a … prisoner?”

The men exchanged a look she found hard to decipher.  “No,” Koryn said tightly after a prolonged moment.

“Then I can leave?”

“Where would you go?”

Emerald threw a frightened look at Tariq at the question.  His expression tightened but she had the sense that he was more annoyed with himself than her.

“You’ve been … asleep for a long time.  We’re just trying to discover what you remember,” Koryn said soothingly.

Emerald swallowed a little convulsively, her mind taking flight at that and scrambling madly again for memories that weren’t there.  The suggestion, it seemed to her, was that she’d been in a coma and that suggested something awful had happened to her.  She looked down at her lap, trying to remember if she’d noticed any scars when she’d seen she was naked.  Nothing jumped out at her, but then she’d been too unnerved by her nakedness to really search for healing scars. Still, she didn’t feel anything that suggested healing wounds or even the tightness of a scar, or muscle that didn’t work quite right.  She lifted a hand to her face.

“There are no scars,” Tariq said, his voice almost harsh.

She flicked a glance at him, relieved, but still dumbfounded.  “I don’t understand.  Why was I asleep so long?”  She frowned, thinking.  “Was I in stasis for some reason?  Traveling in space?  Is that I how I got here?  This is a ship, isn’t it?”

“We’re on Earth.  We found you here.”

Why couldn’t she remember being found then?  “You?  You mean you and Koryn?”

He seemed to hesitate.  “The … androids.”

He’d meant to say something else.  She stared at him, trying to figure out what he’d almost said, but she came up empty.   “Why are you here … on Earth?”  If that was actually where they were and she found that they’d been elusive enough in their answers that she didn’t trust either one.  She didn’t feel as threatened as she had at first.  They didn’t seem to mean her any harm, but that didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t.

The men exchanged a look she found impossible to interpret.  “There are some things that it will be better for you to take your time and remember on your own.  We’ve no desire to influence you, when the end result, perhaps, would be the development of false memories due to suggestion,” Koryn answered finally.

It disturbed her that they knew she had amnesia, but what he’d said seemed to suggest they weren’t responsible.  Could she trust that, though?  “So you’re saying you can’t, or won’t, tell me why you’re here?”

“You don’t mean to rest until you have some answers, do you?” Tariq asked wryly, glancing at Koryn.  It wasn’t actually the sort of look that asked permission, but it was something like that, as if he was consulting Koryn.

It occurred to her abruptly, that Koryn must be something like a medic.  Tariq seemed to defer to him primarily when the answer to a question might upset her.  What would that make Tariq, then?

“She should have food, anyway,” Koryn said decisively moving to a panel on one wall.  When he’d depressed the button, he spoke into it in a language that was so clearly not Earthly in origins that it shot a fresh jolt of adrenaline through Emerald’s system.

“We are of the Anunnaki,” Tariq said.  “Does that mean anything to you?”

Emerald stared at him, blinking while she tried to access a memory that seemed to tickle her mind, just out of reach.  She frowned, straining harder to grasp it and finally gave up.  “It almost seems … familiar somehow.  Why is that?  Are our people … allies?”

Tariq frowned.  After a moment, he crossed the small room and settled on the bunk Emerald had decided to ignore.  “It’s curious that you used that particular word.  It suggests a military alliance.  Are you a politician?  Or a soldier?”

Emerald felt the color leave her face and return with a vengeance.  She bit her lower lip in frustration.  There really didn’t seem much point in trying to support the pretense that she had memories, though, when they clearly knew she didn’t.  “I don’t know.”

Koryn settled in the other chair.  “It’s alright,” he said soothingly.  “I think you’ll find it easier if you don’t work too hard to remember.”

“I had a head injury,” Emerald said abruptly.

“Did you?”

There was enough curiosity in the question that it undermined Emerald’s certainty that that was what had happened to her.  Wouldn’t they know if they’d treated her?  “What else would explain the fact that I can’t remember things?” she asked, an edge to her voice that was more fear than anger.  What weren’t they telling her?

Koryn sent a tightlipped look in Tariq’s direction.  Tariq shrugged, but she wasn’t certain if it was a dismissal of Koryn’s concern or her question.  His next statement seemed to imply the latter.  “There are other things that might account for the lack.”

“Like what?”

He smiled abruptly.  Emerald felt her belly quiver, but she didn’t have to search for the reason behind it.  His smile was as beautiful as he was, making it instantly, abundantly clear why they seemed alien when they looked so human.  They were flawlessly perfect—both of them—and it wasn’t just the perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth he displayed.  His mouth curled in a perfectly uniform smile and displayed two perfectly shaped and identical dimples, one in either cheek—in the exact same spot.

In nature, at least human nature, there was no such thing as perfect symmetry.  “You aren’t … at all like I expected you would be.”

Emerald frowned slightly.  It actually sounded like it was intended as a compliment, but it made her wonder how he’d expected her to be—and why he’d had any expectations at all.

Because he’d been studying her when she was unconscious and vulnerable.

She had mixed feelings about that that she couldn’t unravel or understand beyond the fact that she was flattered and dismayed at the same time.

“Illness … other trauma,” Koryn answered her question instead of Tariq.

She performed an internal inventory, but although she felt weak, that suggestion to account for her lack of memories didn’t seem closer than an accident.  Maybe they’d zapped her with something that had caused the amnesia?

“But you think I’ll remember?”

“We have great hope that you will remember at least some things.”

“Why?”

Tariq lifted his brows but something flickered in his eyes.

“I know why I want to remember.  I’m just curious that it seems important to you.”

“It’s important to your peace of mind,” Tariq responded smoothly.  “That’s sufficient, surely?”

It was and it wasn’t.  She needed it, but she had the sense that they needed or wanted her memories as much as she did and maybe that explained why they weren’t willing to give her ‘suggestions’ that might produce those ‘false memories’ Koryn had mentioned?  She might have pursued that except that the door opened and a third man entered.  He was clearly of the same race even though he looked a good bit shorter—at least a half a head shorter, although still tall compared to a human male—and, unlike them, his hair was close cropped to his head.  Military, her mind supplied, although she had no idea where the thought had come from.

He brought a tray in, set it on the small table between the chairs, bowed and departed.

Emerald stared at him until the door closed.  “He doesn’t speak English?” she guessed.

“He wasn’t programmed to, no.”

Emerald glanced at Tariq sharply, considering that.  “You’re saying …?”

“He’s an android.  They are both biological—externally, anyway—and mechanical.  They serve us.”

Emerald frowned doubtfully, going over what she’d seen in her mind, but she couldn’t think of anything that suggested he was a machine.  “He didn’t look like a machine … or act like one.”

Tariq shrugged.  “Nevertheless, he was ‘born’ in a lab.”

“Do they have names?” she asked curiously.

“That was my assistant—Roth,” Koryn responded.

Assistant?  Did that imply they worked in a lab?  It didn’t seem like the sort of term one would use in a medical sense.  He would’ve said nurse, wouldn’t he?  “He’s not a soldier, then?  What does he assist you with?”

This time it was Koryn who smiled and made her belly shimmy.  He spread his hands wide in a gesture.  “In whatever way I require assistance.”

“What made you think he might be a soldier?” Tariq asked curiously.

Emerald frowned.  “The hair.  It looks like a military cut.”

Koryn removed the cover over the tray and set it on the floor.  “Eat … while it’s hot.”

Emerald’s stomach growled as soon as the aroma hit her, but she wasn’t particularly thrilled to see it looked like nothing but broth of some kind.  Chicken, maybe?

How could she know so many things and not remember anything about herself beyond her name, she wondered with sudden frustration?  What sort of brain damage could she have that would allow her to talk and think, to identify what most everything around her was—even to know about things she had no reason to know about?

Trusting the thoughts aside after a moment, she ignored the spoon and picked the small cup-like bowl up, taking a careful sip.  She knew as soon as the hot liquid cascaded over her tongue and down her throat that it was chicken soup as she’d thought, or at least something very like it.  “When can I have real food?”

Koryn chuckled as if pleased.  “We’ll get there.”

Emerald nodded a little distractedly, trying to figure out how she’d known that she had to start with clear liquids and work toward solid food.  How would she know that?  Did it mean she had a medical background herself?  Or was it because she’d been hurt badly enough before to discover it?

“You never told me why you’re here,” she said after a moment, realizing they’d actually told her very little at all.  It seemed they had a question for every question she asked.

Tariq studied her for a long moment and stood up, clearly intending to leave.  “In a very real sense, we are … allies of your race.  We’ve been to Earth many times in the past—though it’s been a quite a while since we last visited.”

* * * *

“What do you think?”

They’d left Emerald to rest and retired to Tariq’s quarters to discuss her condition where they could speak openly since Tariq insured his privacy with a daily sweep for any sort recording devices.  Tariq, who’d sprawled in a chair and stretched his long legs out before him to study his boots frowningly, glanced up at Koryn’s question.  He thought she was breathtaking.  He thought they’d made a serious error in judgment when they’d decided to seek perfection.   Nature had made Emerald beautiful despite the many tiny imperfections his own people had obsessed over.

Of course, no one was disputing that they’d made far too many mistakes—not anymore.

Somehow, he didn’t think that Koryn’s thoughts were running in the same direction as his own, however.  He shrugged.  “I’m not the scientist.”

Koryn frowned.  “This isn’t my area of expertise,” he pointed out tightly.

“This isn’t anyone’s area of expertise,” Tariq said angrily, shoving to his feet and crossing his cabin to his beverage dispenser.  “I’m having nizsum?  You?”

Koryn’s brows rose.  Tariq rarely indulged in fermented drinks, particularly not anything as strong as nizsum.   “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“She’ll sleep a while.  You’ve time for the effects to wear off.”

“A small one, then.”

Tariq took the two drinking vessels the dispenser produced, which were roughly the size and length of his index finger and crossed to hand one to him.  When he’d settled in his chair again, he merely studied the dark liquid in the transparent vessel, however.  “I think she’s the strongest one we’ve found … and I’m still not certain I want to risk it.  In fact, I damned well know I don’t.  She’s too ….”  He broke off, his mind straying to her again as he struggled to find the word he was looking for.

“Precious,” Koryn finished when Tariq didn’t, lifting his vessel and downing the contents.  “There is not another like her in the universe and never will be again if we aren’t damned careful with her.”

“No two are ever entirely the same,” Tariq said dryly.  “But you’re right.  I don’t want to risk losing her.  Even the mission isn’t worth that.  We’ll keep digging.”

“So … you’re saying we should implant memories to guard her sanity?”

Tariq stared at him for a long moment, struggling with the angry denunciation that instantly rose to mind.  “I don’t know,” he growled finally and downed his own draught of nizsum.

Koryn tilted his head, frowning at Tariq curiously.  It wasn’t like Tariq at all to be so indecisive.  “We only have two options,” he reminded him.  “We can wait and see if she remembers anything of use to us, or we can manipulate her memories.”

The memories would change her, though, Tariq thought angrily, and he didn’t want anything about her altered—not by so much as a hair.  She would be someone else, because she would have some else’s memories.  Unfortunately, his orders were clear cut and not open to interpretation.  “Prepare the implant,” he said tightly.  “That way it’ll be ready if we see it’s necessary.  In the mean time, we’ll keep her under close observation.”

“What do you suggest?” Koryn asked slowly.

Tariq glanced at him sharply, feeling his belly tighten with reluctance.  He swallowed with an effort against the knot that rose in his throat, a mixture of frustration and disgust and anger.  “What the hell happened here?” he growled.

It was a rhetorical question Koryn made no attempt to answer.  None of them knew what had happened, had so much as an inkling.  They’d been trying to find answers to their questions since they’d arrived weeks earlier to find a garden of Eden bereft of the children left in her care.

“Study her personality and try to work up something as close as you can,” Tariq said tiredly.    “I think there’s a good chance that she had a military background and, if that’s true, she’s the first we’ve recovered that might have some of the answers we’re looking for.”

* * * *

Emerald was so sleepy when she finished drinking the soup that she immediately suspected they’d laced it with something to knock her out.  She discarded the thought after a few moments’ reflection.  She hadn’t noticed anything ‘strange’ about the taste and she felt sure she would have if there’d been any sort of drug added.

For a while, she resisted the pull, too unnerved by her situation to feel safe to sleep, but it was a losing battle.  Finally, she got up, climbed into the bunk and yielded.  She had no idea how long she slept, but she woke feeling far more alert than before and not nearly as weak.  Deciding the soup and the nap had been beneficial, she got up and explored her cabin.  There wasn’t much to explore, unfortunately, but she did discover that there was a private facility that included a shower attached to the small cabin.

The long, hot shower sapped a good bit of the energy she’d woken up with, unfortunately, even while it seemed to ease some of the soreness from her muscles and invigorate her.  Wrapping up in the sheet again when she’d dried off, she returned to the main room and settled in a chair to think.

She’d had another nightmare.  Unfortunately, from the moment she woke it was just as elusive as the one before except that it left her with the sense, right or wrong, that it wasn’t just a ‘generic’ nightmare.  She struggled with her memory for a little while and finally gave up.  She couldn’t be certain the nightmare had any basis in reality at all.  It might, as she suspected, be the result of something she’d experienced, but she had no way of determining that even if she could remember the details of the dream.

She didn’t know what to think about her situation.  It just seemed too pat that aliens had come to visit the Earth and run across her and decided to rescue her even if not for the fact that she could tell they were withholding a great deal from her.  It was possible, she supposed, that the Anunnaki were a benevolent race and such things were commonplace to them—assisting others—and yet she couldn’t imagine that they would travel so far merely to ‘visit’.  They would almost certainly have an agenda.  She just couldn’t figure out what that might be.

She knew, though, that they’d traveled a tremendous distance.  Even if not for the fact that that ‘felt’ true, they’d implied it themselves.

So, they were here for a reason.  Did she have anything to do with that reason, she wondered?  Or had they come across her purely by accident?

It seemed to her that she could safely discard the suspicion that they were enemies of the people of Earth.  What would be the point in taking care of her if they were?  They’d said she wasn’t a prisoner—or Koryn had, although there’d been something about Tariq’s manner that made her question it.  They certainly hadn’t treated her like one.

She was naked, though, and Tariq’s question had unnerved her when she’d asked if she was free to leave.  ‘Where would she go?’  Somehow, she thought it wasn’t a reference to the fact that she couldn’t remember where she belonged.  It had seemed … ominous somehow.

Shaking the thought and the sick feeling that began to churn in her belly, she got up decisively to test whether or not she was a prisoner.  The door opened the moment she approached it.  Gathering the sheet more tightly around herself, she stepped into the corridor and looked around.  Since she hadn’t seen anything the way they’d come when they’d left the treatment room—or whatever it was—she headed off in the opposite direction.

The corridor seemed endless.  It was a while before she noticed that there were doors leading off of the corridor.  Closed, they formed a nearly invisible seam against the surrounding walls.  She hesitated when she reached the next, but since it occurred to her that it was quite possibly someone’s private quarters, she decided not to test the theory.

She’d been moving along the corridor for perhaps twenty to thirty minutes when it abruptly dawned on her that she had no idea how to get back to the room where they’d taken her.  Dismayed, she stopped, turning to look back in the direction she’d come from.   A very little consideration convinced her that she was committed to her quest.  She really had no choice at this point but to continue to look if for no other reason than she was lost.

She reached a branch in the corridor a few minutes later and debated whether to stay with the corridor she’d been following or try the one that branched off at a tangent.  She saw what appeared to be a row of windows further along the branch, however, and that decided the matter.

Moving a little more quickly, she hurried along the corridor until she reached the first and discovered it was just as she’d suspected, a view port.  A wave of shock and horror swept over her when she saw the view, however.

She was too shocked for many minutes to actually assimilate what she was looking at and too distressed even when she had to throw off her shock.  The first indication she had that she was no longer alone was when a hand settled on her shoulder.  Jumping, she whirled instinctively, clamping a hand on the wrist attached to the hand on her shoulder and whipping his arm behind his back.  She didn’t get the chance to finish executing the maneuver that should have put him on the floor.  He followed, flowing easily with her movements and using her grip on his wrist to jerk her against his length and bind her in an unbreakable hold.

“So … you are military.”

Emerald twisted her head around to look up and back at her captor.  There was no relief in discovering it was Tariq.  “Let me go,” she said through teeth clenched to hide just how shaken she was.

His brows rose at the demand, but his grip slackened.  Emerald whirled away from him immediately, bending to snatch up the sheet she’d dropped and whipping it around herself shakily before she confronted him.  “That isn’t Earth!” she said angrily, pointing a shaking finger toward the window.  “We aren’t on Earth!  I don’t know where the hell we are, but that isn’t Earth!”

Chapter Two

Tariq eyed her assessingly.  “It isn’t the Earth you once knew, but it is Earth,” he said finally.

It wasn’t!  He was lying, damn him!  She knew he had to be.  Without another word, she whipped around, intent on racing down the corridor in search of a route of escape.  He caught up to her before she’d even managed to accelerate to an all out run, snagging her around the waist.  She whirled on him, her survival instincts at the fore, intent upon fighting her way to freedom if necessary.

Unfortunately, she’d already given away her hand in the previous encounter.  He was ready for her and he was not only far bigger and stronger, he was amazingly fast for a being that was big enough he should have been slow and clumsy.  He caught her wrists and when she tried to break free and run again, he merely twirled her in a tight circle and used her own arms to bind her against him.  “Calm down!  Now!” he growled through his teeth.

“You said I wasn’t a prisoner!  That was a lie, too!”

“We didn’t go through the effort of regenerating you just to allow you to destroy yourself,” he said tightly.

His comment took the fight completely out of her.  She twisted her head to look up at him in disbelief.  “Regenerated?” she gasped, so horrified at the implication that her mind had gone completely chaotic.

Several emotions flickered across his face in quick succession—anger and self-disgust among them.  Finally, a look of resignation and purposefulness settled on his hard features.  “Come with me and I’ll explain what I can,” he said decisively.

Emerald was in no mental state to either agree or object.  He took her silence as acquiescence and eased his hold on her.  Settling an arm around her shoulders, he led her back in the direction she’d come.  When they reached the connecting corridor, he turned left and hurried her along it, stopping after only a few moments before a door.  It opened, revealing an apartment far more elegant than the one she’d been taken to before and at least three times as big.

It was still much the same layout, she saw, an apartment in the sense that it was divided between a lounging area, a work area, and a rest area, but not spartanly appointed.

He led her to a chair and gently pushed her down on the seat.  She stared at his back blankly as he moved away.  In a few moments, he returned, crouched in front of her and held out a tiny vessel that looked more like a test tube than anything else.  Emerald stared blankly at it and then looked at him.

“Drink it.”

She took it like a sleepwalker, put the edge against her lips, and tipped it up.  The liquid that spilled into her mouth burned like fire all the way down.  She coughed, struggling to catch her breath, but she felt the effects almost instantly.  The liquid hit her belly and started a blaze that swept through her and wiped out her equilibrium even as it spread warmth through her to chase the chill of fear.

She discovered he was smiling faintly when she managed to open her eyes and blink the tears from them enough to bring his face into focus.

“Better?”

She blinked at him a little owlishly, dismayed to realize she was tipsy with no more than a sip of the stuff.  “I don’t know.”

He studied her face for a long moment, seemed to wrestle with himself and abruptly caught her chin.  She had no clue he meant to kiss her until her eyes lost focus as he zoomed in.  She tensed as his mouth settled over hers, but it was as far from unpleasant as it was possible to be.  More heat poured through her as they connected and she felt his heat and his taste invade her.  He lifted his lips from hers after little more than a brief connection, seemed to hesitate in debate as to whether to pull away or sample more and then slipped his hand to the base of her skull and pulled her close again, sealing his mouth more firmly over hers and breaching the barrier of her lips with his tongue in almost the same motion.  The effects of the liquor she’d gulped didn’t hold a candle to the affect he had on her.

She felt for several moments as if she would either float away or melt into a puddle.  It took a tremendous effort to lift her eyelids when he broke the kiss and withdrew.  She saw when she had that he hadn’t withdrawn far.  He was studying her face with an intensity that made everything inside her go liquid with want.

“Not wise,” he said distractedly, his voice husky in a way that sent a shiver through her.  “Not when I want you naked in my bed badly enough I can taste it … and you’re already naked.”

It flickered through her mind to wonder why he would even struggle with the desire.  It wasn’t as if she had a hope in hell of stopping him.  She wasn’t even certain at that moment that she would want to put up a fight with the lure of promised pleasure was still pounding through her.

He straightened abruptly, placing her eye to eye with as impressive an erection as she’d ever seen.  Before she could study it as thoroughly as she wanted to, he turned away, surreptitiously adjusted himself, and disappeared into another room off the main room.  When he returned, he held out a folded garment.

“It won’t fit,” he muttered when she took it, “but at least it won’t fall off if I breathe on it.”

Emerald discovered the moment she’d unfolded it that it wasn’t his.  It was far too small, she was sure, for him to get in to.

Smaller than Koryn.

Small enough the certainty settled inside her that it belonged to a woman.

She didn’t want to examine the unpleasant feeling that tightened her belly at the realization.  Instead, she focused on trying to figure out how to get it on.  He took it from her after a moment and showed her that the front simply parted when he ran his hand down it.   Curiosity flickered through her, but she dismissed it, unwilling to emphasize her ignorance.  Discarding the sheet she’d been clinging to, she stood up and stepped into it, pulling it up over her shoulders.  He was right.  It was far too big.

Tariq turned her to face him when she’d struggled with the front for a moment, sealing the edges, and then rolled the sleeves up until her hands were free.  He left again when she sat down to roll a cuff along the bottom of the suit legs, returning a moment later with a pair of boots.

The sick feeling tightened in Emerald’s belly again, but she took the boots wordlessly and slipped one on each foot, wondering even as she did if she’d be able to walk in them without falling on her face.   Especially since she was still feeling the effects of the drink he’d given her … and still weak from his kiss.

“Where are we going?” she asked when he’d led her out of his quarters and into the corridor again.

“Out,” he said curtly.

Emerald’s belly immediately clenched with reluctance.  She didn’t know why he’d suddenly become determined to take her outside, but if he meant to set her ‘free’ in that … jungle ….  She didn’t know what she’d do.  Scream?  Beg?  Cling?

She didn’t want to go out at all!  Not after what she’d seen.  She felt her throat close with emotion, struggled with the urge to beg him to take her back to her quarters as some unnamed terror clawed at the back of her mind.  She was so distressed, she didn’t realize they’d gone in an entirely different direction than before until Tariq halted in front of what she could see was a wide cargo door.  He paused as he reached for the control, studying her.  “I’ll be with you, Emerald.  I’ll keep you safe.”

She searched his face and felt a modicum of calm settle over her.  Nodding a little jerkily, she turned her head as the door began to open, staring at the view that was slowly revealed.  The door halted when it was barely high enough for her to walk beneath it and she saw a gang plank extend toward the ground.

Settling a hand along her waist, Tariq urged her through the opening, bending to duck beneath it, and then pausing to close it behind them before he walked her down.  The sights and sounds of a primitive world had pelted Emerald even as the doors had opened.  Smells joined the riot to her senses, the musky smell of earth, and crushed and rotting vegetation.   A wide swath had been cut from the jungle at the foot of the gangplank.

Emerald knew immediately that it led to the crumbling ruins she’d seen from the port and the fear she’d refused to acknowledge pumped her heart a little faster as Tariq guided her along the rough path.  It disturbed Emerald no end to discover that much of the vegetation seemed familiar to her, eliminating any comfort she might have felt that there was almost as much that wasn’t.

None of it should have been familiar—and yet it was and she realized that could only mean that she’d seen it before.

She struggled to search for another explanation.  Was it some sort of trick to make her feel as if she was as mad as a hatter?

It seemed far too elaborate for that—unless they’d found a world very similar to Earth?

It looked like Earth and at the same time it didn’t seem familiar at all.  What had he meant by saying they’d regenerated her?  What had he meant when he’d told her it wasn’t the Earth she’d known?

She was very afraid she was beginning to understand and yet she refused to allow the thoughts to take hold of her, pushing them to the back of her mind.

She was developing blisters from the slipping boots before the first crumbling wall came into view.  She halted abruptly, staring at the fading colors she could see where climbing vines had been ripped away to reveal parts of what had once been a building of some sort.  Tariq stopped and turned to look at her questioningly.

Swallowing a little convulsively when she recognized the symbols on the wall, she looked at Tariq a little beseechingly.  “I don’t want to see this.”

His gaze moved over her face.  “You wanted to know.”

She swallowed with an effort around the knot in her throat.  “I don’t think I want to anymore.”

He returned to her, settling his hands lightly on her shoulders.  “You’re strong, Emerald.  You can do this.”

She looked up at him mournfully.  “Do what?”

“Face what you must to learn the truth.”

“I’m … afraid,” she admitted.

He pulled her closer, settling his arms lightly around her.  “I know, child, but I also know that you are brave and strong.  If I didn’t believe you had the strength to face it, I wouldn’t have brought you.”

Emerald settled her cheek against his chest, feeling like the child he’d called her, and yet comforted by his embrace.  The sense of security vanished almost as soon as he pulled away and doubts rose again, but she allowed him to lead her deeper into what had once been a great city.

Emerald felt her flesh creep as they walked, felt as if the gaping holes in the crumbling walls were eyes staring down at her, almost as if they were accusing her.  After a few moments, they reached an intersection and she discovered the source of some of the noises she’d been hearing growing steadily louder.

Approximately a block from the intersection, she saw people laboring.  She glanced at Tariq questioningly, but he was focused on the activity ahead of them.

“What are they doing?” she asked curiously.

“Excavating,” Tariq responded shortly.

She could see that.  She just didn’t understand what they were looking for.  “For what?”

His gaze flickered over her briefly before he looked away again. “Answers.”  He halted when they reached the dig, looked around, and finally walked her to a low stone wall and told her to sit.  Abandoning her there, he strode purposefully toward the hole in the ground and halted at the edge, his legs slightly apart, his hands on his hips.  In a few moments, Emerald saw a figure she thought she recognized.  As he neared Tariq, she became certain it was Koryn.

“We found two more!” he said, excitement threading his voice.  The look of pleasure vanished and an expression of shock washed across his features as he glanced in her direction and spied her.  “What is she doing here?”

Tariq turned to look at her.  “She decided to explore on her own and find her answers.”

“So you brought her here?” Koryn asked, his voice tight with angry disbelief.

Tariq’s expression tightened.  He didn’t say anything.  His expression was sufficient to silence any further objection Koryn might have made.

Koryn nodded stiffly, wrestled with himself, and plunged onward.  “You said she was too … important to our mission to risk.  Her mind is too fragile right now.”

“I underestimated her determination and her ingenuity,” Tariq responded coolly.  “She found her way to the observation deck—undeterred by the fact that she had no clothing.  So much for your certainty that she wasn’t likely to attempt anything when she felt vulnerable and exposed!  She’d already seen the dig site by the time I located her.”

“She wasn’t under guard?”

Tariq studied Koryn in stony silence for a long moment.  “You presume too much on our friendship, Koryn,” he said coldly instead of reminding Koryn that the majority of the ship’s personnel was at the dig.

Koryn reddened.  “My apologies, my lord!  But the mission ….”

“If we fail, it’s my ass, not yours.”

Koryn wrestled with himself.  “It isn’t just the mission, Tariq!  You know we’ve found damned little to go on at all and half of that is useless!  I thought we’d agreed that she was far too … special to take unnecessary risks with her!”

“I do agree,” Tariq responded grimly.  “Completely.  I would’ve prevented the situation if I could have, but she was asleep the last I checked on her—She should’ve slept a full cycle.  She didn’t and she decided to test her boundaries.  Beyond that, as … keen as my interest in her is, I have responsibilities that take precedence over my personal desires.  If she hadn’t forced my hand, I would’ve put this off as long as possible, but she did.  Now we have to deal with it.”

Koryn swallowed his anger with an effort and nodded.  “How is she doing?”

“Surprisingly well, frightened, but that’s to be expected.”

Koryn relaxed fractionally.  “How much have you told her?”

Tariq shrugged.  “Enough for her to begin to understand.”

“I’d like to assess her mental state myself.”

Tariq nodded.  “I thought you would.  Where did you locate the remains?  I’m assuming from the way you announced it that you feel like there’s a good chance of extracting sufficient DNA for our needs?”

Koryn shifted uncomfortably.  “I won’t know until I get them back to the lab.  I think so, though.  They’re remarkably well preserved.”

“Male or female?”

“One of each,” Koryn said, grinning abruptly.

“Two females and three males,” Tariq said dryly.  “We make progress.”

Koryn sobered.  “This couldn’t have happened more than a hundred years ago … if that much.”

“If you managed to narrow the time line, we have made progress.  Any idea of the race?”

Koryn shook his head.  “I won’t be able to determine that without tests.  There wasn’t enough.  Any word from the others?”

“Nothing and more nothing.”  Tariq frowned, narrowing his eyes against the sunlight as he surveyed the dig.  “Humans—and their forbearers—survived several extinction events that we know of.   Considering the condition of the planet, it seems damned unlikely this was the results of any kind of natural disaster.”

“We don’t know, for certain, that there aren’t any survivors,” Koryn pointed out.  “The search parties have barely scratched the surface.”

Tariq grunted noncommittally.  “This area seems fertile enough to support them.  There’s plenty of everything else.”

“We don’t know what it was like then, however.”

“True.”  He turned to study Emerald.  “Maybe she’ll remember something.”

Koryn turned his head to study her, as well.  “Maybe.”

* * * *

Strain though she might, Emerald was only able to catch a few snatches of the conversation between Koryn and Tariq.  It was enough to fire her curiosity, but not enough to appease it, particularly when they switched to their own language shortly after they’d begun talking.

The only thing that she had managed to grasp—she thought—was that they were arguing about her.  Koryn was angry that Tariq had brought her and Tariq was both defensive about his actions and angry because he felt defensive and resented Koryn questioning his decision.

It seemed to indicate that she was of some importance to them, but that was as unnerving as it was comforting.  If she could’ve counted on her importance as protection, she wouldn’t have felt uneasy at all, but she wasn’t convinced that she could when she didn’t understand how she was important to them.

After a few minutes, Tariq left Koryn, following the path Koryn had traced to reach him, and Koryn approached her.  She looked up at him questioningly when he settled on the wall beside her and looked her over piercingly.  “We’ll have to get some clothes made for you that fit better,” he commented after a long moment.

It was the last thing Emerald had expected and she looked down at herself self-consciously.  “I thought I was naked because I was being treated.  I didn’t have clothes when you found me?”

Koryn cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “No.”

Emerald frowned.  “Why would I be naked?” she wondered out loud.

“Nothing comes to mind?” Koryn prompted.  “You haven’t remembered anything?”

He knew something he wasn’t telling her.  Emerald was certain of it.  “Not really, no,” she responded after a moment, turning to study the work in progress.  “This can’t be Earth.”

“Why do you say that?”

Emerald glanced at him in disbelief.  “This … place shouldn’t be here!”

“So you do remember something?”

Emerald looked down at her hands, trying to figure out how to explain something she didn’t understand herself.  “It isn’t really memories.  It’s … the feeling that this is wrong, out of place.  It’s like writing something and then looking at the word you’ve written and knowing it isn’t right, that you’ve spelled it wrong, even though you don’t know how it should be spelled or even how you know that the pattern doesn’t look right.”

Koryn nodded.  “And yet things like this don’t remain the same.  Time changes them.  The man-made structures deteriorate with age and vegetation begins to grow over everything when there’s no one to cut it back.”

Emerald nodded and turned to look at the city again.  “What happened here?”

“We don’t know.  That’s what we’re trying to discover.”

Emerald wrestled with her thoughts.  In a way, she was afraid to ask the questions burning to be asked, afraid of the answers, and yet the need to know warred with that fear and doubt nibbled at her certainties.  “Tariq also suggested that a lot of time had passed since I saw Earth and that was why this doesn’t look familiar.  Have I …?  Was I in stasis for some reason?”

A frown of reluctance drew Koryn’s brows together.  “Not that we’ve determined.”

“But you’re saying this is Earth and a lot of time passed and that’s why it doesn’t look familiar?  Was I in a coma?”  She lifted her head to study the ruins again, trying to decide how much time it would take to change a thriving city into a crumbling ruin that looked like some ancient relic of the distant past.  They hadn’t built like the ancients, though.  Ancient cities had survived because the people who built them had meant for them to last.  In her time, no one had wanted or expected anything to last long.  They’d wanted to recycle and rebuild because it provided work and promoted a healthy economy.

Koryn startled her out of her thoughts by taking her hand.  She glanced searchingly at his face and then down at her hand in his.  Her belly fluttered.  The contrast was far more startling than she’d realized.  It wasn’t that his hand looked alien next to her own.  It looked just as human as hers did—except that it engulfed her hand.

He seemed as fascinated with her hand as she was with his, studying it intently as he explored the width and length of her palm and each digit.  “What feels like the truth to you, child?”

Emerald sent him a startled look, distracted by the fact that he’d called her ‘child’ just as Tariq had.  In a way, it almost sounded like affection the way they’d used it, and yet it carried some unnerving connotations.  “Why would you call me a child?”

He sent her a startled look, seemed to debate a moment, and finally gave her a penetrating look.  “Because you are in every sense of the word beyond the fact that you have the body of a fully matured adult.  You are an infant.”

Emerald searched his face for some clue of his age.  Beyond the fact that he appeared to be a fully mature adult male, however, she discovered no foundation to base a guess of his actual age.  “You’re … older than me?”

He grinned abruptly, making her belly shimmy in that strange way that was both unnerving and exciting.  “Vastly, child … in every sense of the word.”

Emerald looked away, mulling over everything they’d said, had hinted at without actually telling her anything specific.  A horrific thought emerged, grew to be a certainty despite every effort to discount it.  “I was dead,” she said finally, turning to search Koryn’s face again.  “You pulled me out of this pit.  That’s what Tariq meant.”

He didn’t have to answer.  She saw the truth in his eyes.  Despite the fact that she’d put the idea together herself from the things they’d hinted at, though, acceptance didn’t come.  She felt the ‘sense’ that it was the truth and still couldn’t make herself believe.  “That’s why I don’t remember anything.  There aren’t any memories.  I’m not … real.  I’m a clone.”

Koryn’s hand tightened on hers when she would’ve snatched it away.  His expression was hard when she glanced at him angrily and she felt her own anger fade in the face of his.  “You are as real as I am—as any natural born thing in this universe!  The method of your birth and development didn’t change who and what you are.  I merely took the seeds of life and planted them in fertile soil to grow—accelerated, of course—we needed mature adults, but the memories are yours—and they will return to you.  They’re just as much a part of your DNA as the color of your eyes and hair!”

He looked away.  “That’s a part of the mystery here.  You should remember.  You should all remember and no one does.”

Emerald’s heart leapt jerkily.  “There are others?” she gasped, setting aside his other strange comment for the moment.

He shrugged.  “You are the first woman.  I regenerated two males before you.  They also had no memories to speak of—only the most basic, just as you have—and their instincts, of course.”

“But … they’re alive?  And they’re … humans from my time?”

He studied her face.  “As far as we can determine—yes.”

“But … they might remember me!  If I’m familiar to them, I might trigger memories or they might trigger mine!”

His gaze slid away.  “Not likely.”

“Why?  You said I should have my memories!  I don’t understand.  I thought all memory was stored in the brain, but if that’s true then maybe I only need to see someone familiar to begin to remember.”

His lips tightened.  “It’s entirely possible that in your time scientists didn’t know how to turn on that part of the DNA strand or even that it existed or what it was, but much if not all of the memory is ‘backed up’ in the DNA, very like a secondary recording device.  This isn’t ordinary memory loss, Emerald.  If it was, then familiar things might trigger the return, but we found you here and you’ve remembered nothing.”

“That’s not true!  It looks familiar!  It’s just … changed beyond true recognition.  If I knew the men, though ….”

“I had to implant false memories in their minds,” he confessed explosively.  “The … void was too disturbing for them.  They began exhibiting signs of onset psychosis.  It was either that or keep them sedated and possibly do more damage.  The chances are slim, now, that they’ll recall anything about their past lives.”

Emerald stared at him in dismay.  “You … put false memories in their minds?” she gasped, horrified.  “But … you changed who they were!”

“There was no other option!  If I hadn’t, they would’ve been completely useless to us!”

Emerald felt her jaw go slack. Fear chased the shock in rapid succession.  “Useless?  What use to you have for us?” she asked faintly.

He sent her a look she found hard to decipher and looked away.  An expression of relief flickered over his features.  Following the direction of his gaze, Emerald saw that Tariq was striding briskly toward them.  Koryn stood up abruptly.  “I have to get back.”

Tariq’s gaze flickered over her face and then he glanced at Koryn’s retreating back.  When he met Emerald’s gaze again, there was wariness and speculation in his eyes.

“He suggested we might be useless to the Anunnaki,” Emerald said, her voice quavering with unnamed fears.  “What did he mean?”

Tariq rolled his eyes.  “Imbecile,” he muttered.

Emerald jolted to her feet.  “What did he mean?”

His lips tightened, but after a moment he seemed to force the anger back.  “We mean you no harm, child.  Surely you have had time to understand that much?”

Emerald swallowed a little convulsively, feeling her alarm waver.  How much could she believe of what she’d been told, though?  “What did he mean, then?  And why do both of you call me a child when I’m not?”

Tariq smiled faintly, lifting his hands and settling one on each of her shoulders.  “You find that insulting?  It isn’t meant to be, I assure you.  It’s a term of endearment.”

Warmth fluttered through her, but doubt, too.  Why would they feel any affection for her?  Because she was their prize experiment?

“You are human—a child of the Anunnaki.”

Emerald blinked at him.  “A child …?  You’re saying we’re the same?”

Tariq glanced around and then led her to a place to settle that was out of the direct sunlight.  “I promised to explain what I could,” he said when they’d settled.  “My people found this world long ago.  The humanoids that inhabited it then were barely more than animals.  In the beginning, they were merely considered handy for experiments.”  He shrugged at her expression.  “I promised the truth.  I can paint a prettier picture if you like.  I’m not particularly proud of my ancestors in that sense, but then again, I wasn’t their keeper.  I had nothing to do with what they did.”

“I’d rather have the truth,” Emerald said stiffly.

He nodded.  “We were just exploring genetics then.  They were close enough to our own species to make them ideal for the experiments—and simple enough to make them malleable.  We re-engineered them in our own image, altered their DNA until it matched our own—more or less.  This wasn’t a swift process.  It took generations of humans to perfect the strain.”  He paused again, seemed to wrestle with something, and finally shrugged.  “Part of the reason was that, in the beginning, it didn’t occur to them to try.  They were far more interested in seeing what the limitations were and beginning to understand genetics better.  There were … other medical experiments, as well.  Transplantations, hybridizations of two or more species.  This world was little more than an enormous lab to build our own understanding of the sciences.

“Eventually, however, we managed to produce a pure species identical to our own from the native population and, once we had, we realized the true value of them.  They were our insurance of the continuance of our own species.  They—you—became our baseline when we began to manipulate our own DNA in our quest for perfection.  For many years, we were guardians of this world and then, as our children ‘grew up’ we came less and less often, checking from time to time to make certain we still had our insurance in case of need, testing to make certain the strain was still pure enough to use as a baseline, but leaving the Earth primarily in the hands of our children.

“The reason I thought the name might be familiar to you is that the ancients of this world considered our people gods—because we told them we were.  It made it … easier to gain their trust and their cooperation.  And because they believed we were gods and worshipped us, we became part of the history they recorded for future generations.

“It wouldn’t have been necessary except that we needed to test their learning capabilities and behavioral modifications as part of the process.  The alternative, however—to cage them or enslave them with our superior strength and technology—wasn’t considered … conducive to our experiments.  We needed to keep them in a more or less natural setting to get accurate data.”

When he ceased to speak, Emerald mulled over what he’d told her, trying to consider it objectively.  It wasn’t easy to ignore the churning sense of betrayal and yet it was that very thing that made it feel like the truth.  “That’s what Koryn meant about us being of use to the Anunnaki?”

Anger transformed Tariq’s face into a frightening mask.  She was relieved when she discovered that anger wasn’t, apparently, directed at her.

“Yes,” he growled. “We came to take our children home  … only to discover that something had befallen our nursery and apparently destroyed what we’d come to consider our insurance for the continuance of our species.”

Chapter Three

A wave of nausea rolled through Emerald.  Despite the fact that she’d been skeptical about just how important she was to them and the seemingly affectionate nature of their attitude toward her, she realized nothing even close to the truth had occurred to her.

The Anunnaki had returned to collect their guinea pigs and discovered some predator had apparently gotten into the ‘cage’ and wiped them out.  So they were very busily digging for remains to try to resurrect the species because they’d finally reached a point where they had need of them.

And she still didn’t know what purpose they were supposed to serve.

The Anunnaki were neither allies nor enemies of the human race.  They didn’t consider them significant enough to see them in either light.

“I think I’d like to go back to the ship now, if it’s alright?”

Tariq sent her a keen look, but he merely nodded and rose to escort her.

The truth was, she didn’t want to go back to the ship at all.  She wanted to escape, but as Tariq had pointed out—to where?  This place might truly be Earth, and yet it was as alien to her as if it was another world.  It might as well be one.  Beyond that, both of them had told her there weren’t any humans left to run to.

She wasn’t sure she believed that—or much that they’d told her, for that matter, but she had eyes in her head.  This city had been abandoned long ago and if it had, it seemed to her that, regardless of how far or how fast she ran, she would only find more of the same.  It wasn’t reasonable to think otherwise.

Her head was throbbing with the endless round of conflicting thoughts and emotions by the time they reached the ship again.  She was also limping, although she did her best to hide it—from pride, she supposed.  Her feet had begun to feel sticky, though, and she was fairly certain the boots had rubbed blisters and then rubbed the skin off.

Koryn, she discovered, had beaten them back to the ship.  As they approached, he and several other men were directing some sort of robotic cart up the gangplank.  Her stomach lurched.  It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what it was beneath the tarp that was so valuable to them.

She stopped abruptly, unwilling to move any closer.  Tariq sent her a curious look, but returned his speculative gaze to the cart almost at once.  When they’d entered the ship, he took her arm and walked her up the gangplank.

He was frowning when they reached the corridor, scanning her speculatively.  “You’re limping.”

“The boots are too big,” Emerald said evenly.  “It’s hard to walk in them.”

“Take them off.  You don’t need them now.”

Reluctance flickered through her.  Too big or not, the boots were some protection for her feet and if she gave them up she wouldn’t have anything if she decided to take her chances and flee the tender mercies of the Anunnaki.  “I’m used to them now,” she lied.

His lips tightened.  “Remove them.”

Rebellion flickered through her, but she bent down and pulled them off, returning her borrowed boots ungraciously by throwing them down.  “I suppose you want the suit, too?” she asked tightly.

“Don’t pretend to misunderstand me,” he growled.  “Why the fuck didn’t you say anything?  Your feet are raw and this is not the sort of place you want to pick up an infection!  The micro organisms have had generations to outstrip any immunities you might have!”

Snatching her off her feet, he swept her up into his arms as if she was no more than the child he referred to her as.  Emerald would’ve tried to thwart him if he hadn’t pounced on her too fast for her to grasp his intentions.  “Put me down!  I can walk!”

“You aren’t going to, though,” he growled, striding so swiftly down the corridor that the stir of air whipped her hair around her face.

As little as she liked to admit it, even to herself, the man was intimidating beyond his size, as if that wasn’t intimidation enough!  She felt as if she was being hauled away by a giant and the really unnerving part was that that wasn’t all that far from the truth.   She had only to look at his face at such close range, the ‘wall’ of his chest, and the size of the arms and hands coiled around her to feel like a pigmy.  She was far enough from the floor in his arms for her belly to quiver with a fear of heights she hadn’t even realized she had.

It went way beyond being made to feel ‘dainty and feminine’, maybe mostly because there was nothing at all lover-like about his hold or his manner.  His attitude was more like an angry parent furious with childish stupidity that had resulted in an injury.

It cowed her, wilted the brief flare of rebellion.  Even that analogy wasn’t accurate, she realized with dismay, because parent and child implied affection and concern and his only concern was that she’d damaged one of the guinea pigs they’d worked so hard to resurrect.  She wasn’t at all surprised when they arrived at his destination and she discovered it was a med-center.  He spoke to the man who seemed to be in charge and then plunked her down on a gurney unceremoniously.

The man, who was clearly a doctor, lifted her feet one by one and examined the raw spots with an expression tight with disgust.  Feeling chastised when he flicked a glance at her face and moved away, Emerald didn’t attempt to object when he returned with a small basin to catch the fluids he pored over her feet.  Whatever it was stung like fire on the raw, bleeding patches, though, and it took all she could do to maintain a façade of stoicism. The pain brought tears to her eyes and a knot to her throat.  When he’d finished torturing her with the fluid fire, he dabbed some sort of pasty goop on the spots and then wrapped her feet with something similar to gauze.  She braced herself when he left and returned with something that looked a lot like a syringe, but discovered that, at least, wasn’t painful.  It felt more like a puff of air when he pressed it to her arm than a shot.

Tariq listened in grim silence as the doctor spoke to him in their language and then scooped her up again.  She had to suppose his anger had worn itself out since he didn’t seem to be in nearly as much of a hurry to return her to her cabin as he’d been before, and she simply didn’t believe he’d been in a such a rush to get her to a medic over nothing more ‘life threatening’ than blisters, raw or not.  Anger had set the pace.

She would’ve almost preferred it as they left again.  She wanted to be alone and the sooner the better.  She was tired and she felt battered and emotional from the things she’d learned, Tariq’s anger, and the doctor’s complete disregard for whatever pain he might be inflicting.  It seemed to emphasize her status as an experimental animal rather than a person and that thought plunged her spirits to lowest ebb.

To her dismay, he didn’t return her to the cabin where they’d first put her.  Instead, he carried her to his own.  She held out some hope for a few moments that he’d only done so to appropriate the clothing he’d loaned her, but he disabused her of that notion as soon as she’d stripped and handed it back.

“Consider yourself a prisoner of the Anunnaki,” he said tightly.  “You’ll stay here.  If I’m not here, there’ll be a guard outside.”

“Where would I go even if I wanted to escape?” she demanded plaintively.

His gaze flickered over her face.  “You are too hardheaded for your own good.  I admire your spirit, but I’ve no intention of allowing it to overcome your good sense … or my admiration mine.”

Emerald swallowed convulsively.  “You could imprison me in the other cabin just as easily and I wouldn’t be around to bother you!”

He moved closer, capturing her face in one hand and tilting her head back so that she had to look at him.  “It won’t bother me, Emerald.  I can assure you of that.”

The implication in the way he looked at her if not what he’d said should have frightened her.  Instead, it only suffocated her spirits further.  She didn’t feel up to the challenge of trying to protect herself.  She felt as weak, and lost, and afraid as the child they called her.  Tears welled in her eyes in spite of all she could do.  “Why didn’t you just leave me in peace?”

Some of the ruthless aggression left his face.  For a moment, she almost thought he would kiss her again and her belly fluttered with anticipation.  Instead, his face hardened again.  “If I had, you wouldn’t be of any use to me,” he said coldly.

She wanted to fling herself down on his bunk and cry her heart out when he’d left her.  Instead, she pulled the coverlet from the bed, wrapped it around herself, and curled up in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the room.  Her chest ached with the tightness of unshed tears she refused to give in to.  Her thoughts were no comfort and did nothing to ease the ache.

Everyone couldn’t be gone!  She couldn’t accept that.  She thought she had to accept that she was, in truth, on Earth and that the Anunnaki had resurrected her from a speck of DNA left behind.  And if she accepted that, then she had to accept that a great deal of time had passed since whatever it was that had happened, but she couldn’t believe the human race was extinct!  Somewhere out there, there were survivors.  There had to be!  They’d existed for thousands of years, fought everything Mother Nature could throw at them, and survived—despite the odds against them.  Whatever had happened, there would’ve been some with the cunning, determination, and luck to make it and, in the time that had passed, they would’ve multiplied.

Even supposing she could escape, though, how would she ever find them?

Or were they only hiding from the aliens?  The Anunnaki?

She should’ve trusted her instincts, she thought with a sudden flicker of reviving anger!  They weren’t benevolent!   They had their own agenda and she was simply a pawn they meant to keep!

* * * *

It was Koryn that woke Emerald several hours later when he entered the room carrying a tray like the one she’d been brought the night before.  She roused enough to study him before he spied her, long enough to see the consternation on his face when he discovered she wasn’t in the bed where he’d apparently expected to find her.  Relief flickered in his eyes when he saw her, but his face tightened with irritation.

No doubt it had given him a nasty turn to think she might have escaped!

“I brought you something to eat,” he said after settling the tray he’d brought on the table near the chair.

“Thank you,” Emerald said neutrally, wondering why he’d brought it instead of sending an android with it.

Grabbing another chair, he dragged it up in front of hers.  “I wanted to have a look at those abrasions.”

Emerald eyed him with irritation.  “It’s just a couple of blisters.”

“I’d still like to look.”

Sighing, Emerald uncurled and extended a leg.  He cupped a hand beneath her leg just above the ankle to support her foot and slowly removed the bandaging.  Emerald studied his face while he studied her foot with frowning intensity, wondering what their world was like and why humans had suddenly become of so much importance to them when they’d apparently grown weary of ‘playing’ with them and pretty much ignored their existence for years.

“What happened to the Anunnaki?”

He flicked a quick look at her and returned his attention to her foot, but his expression had hardened.  “This seems to be responding well.  I think we can dismiss any anxiety about infection.”

He wrapped the bandage again and held out his hand imperiously.  Anger flickered through Emerald that time and the urge to kick him rather than merely meekly extending her foot for him to examine.  She quashed the impulse and held out her other foot.  When he’d examined that foot to his satisfaction and wrapped it again, she tucked her foot beneath her once more.

“Why can’t I have something to wear?  You aren’t worried I’ll thwart you and catch my death from exposure?”

A mixture of amusement and anger flickered in his eyes.  “You’ll have to talk to Tariq about that.”

Which, apparently, was a waste of time!  “Why?”

“Because he’s claimed you,” he said tightly.

Emerald’s heart skipped a beat.  She frowned at him.  “What does that mean?”

“It means he has the power to do so and he’s exerted it.”

“I still don’t understand,” she managed to say after a moment.  “I thought … I understood that I’d been resurrected for experiments.”

He looked startled and then irritated.  “What the hell made you think that?”

“It’s what Tariq said—that the Anunnaki had experimented on humans since they’d first discovered them.”

He glanced toward the untouched tray and reached over to remove the lid.  Picking up a bowl much like the one the night before, he handed it to her.  She saw without a lot of enthusiasm that she’d graduated to thicker broth.  Taking it from him obediently, she sipped at it, discovering it tasted like cream of mushroom soup.  She frowned.  “Why is it that everything you’ve given me is so familiar?”

“Because most of the foods in your diet originated on our world.  We didn’t just experiment on the humans,” he said dryly.

“But … you aren’t going to use me for experiments now?”

He looked at her, his gaze flickering over her face.  “You belong to Lord Tariq now.  He’ll tell you what he wants you to know.”

She looked down at the cup in her hand to keep from giving her thoughts away as resentment swelled inside of her.  Just like that?  He decided and it was so?

Why was she surprised when she’d already deduced that she was either a prisoner or a lab rat or both?  And maybe she still was?  He hadn’t explained what it meant that Tariq had claimed her.

Except she had her suspicions that he had plans that included having her naked in his bed.  He’d said as much, after all.  She didn’t see any reason to doubt it, but she discovered acknowledging it unnerved the hell out of her.  “Lord Tariq?” she asked in a suffocated voice.  “If he’s so important, why was he sent here to collect the lab animals?”

“He wasn’t sent.”

Emerald sent a startled look toward the door where his voice had emanated and discovered Tariq was standing in the portal.  She felt her face heat.

Koryn pushed his chair back abruptly and rose.  “I had a look at the abrasions.  They’re responding satisfactorily to the medications.”

Tariq met his gaze for a long moment and then glanced at Emerald.  He sauntered into the room, allowing the door to close behind him.  “Just so that there are no misunderstandings,” he murmured, “she’s off-limits until I’ve bred her.”

Shock rolled over Emerald.  She gaped at him, wondering a little wildly if she’d misheard him.

“Gods damn it, Tariq!  She’s barely two days out of the pod!  You know damned well she’s still too fragile and weak for breeding!  You’ll end up killing her and your babe with her!” Koryn growled, switching abruptly to their own language.

Tariq’s face hardened. “Have I ever given you reason to believe I’m deficient in understanding?”

Koryn blushed.  “I’m not questioning your intelligence or your judgment—in any other matter!   Don’t talk to me as if I’m mentally deficient!  Do you think I didn’t notice you could barely contain yourself until she was fully developed and ready to be released from the growth pod?”

Tariq flushed.  “How the fuck did you manage to notice anything when you’ve been hovering over her pod yourself?”

“I was doing my job!” Koryn responded tightly.

“Tell that to someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do!” Tariq said derisively.

Koryn stared at him angrily for several moments.  “I won’t deny I desire her.”

“Good!  Because you’d be wasting your fucking breath!” Tariq snarled, striding to the beverage dispenser.  He hesitated over selecting nizsum and finally settled on a mild wine, annoyed that he’d even considered the nizsum.  Then again, Koryn was right.  From the moment he’d first seen Emerald, he’d thought of little else besides possessing her.  Abstinence was hellish enough without having a desirable woman close enough to smell her scent and not being able to do anything about it.

“She isn’t ready, Tariq.”

Tariq turned to study him for a long moment before he focused on Emerald.  “I know that,” he said almost mildly.  “I just wanted to make sure that you understood our friendship won’t save you if you touch her before I’ve bred her.” He met Koryn’s gaze for a long moment.

“And after you’ve bred her?  Will you give her to me?”

Tariq’s face hardened.  He looked away, struggling to get his temper under control. Reminding himself that a pretense of indifference was the only way he was likely to pull off what he wanted didn’t help.  He didn’t feel fucking indifferent!  He wanted to choke the life out of Koryn for touching her at all.  “I’ll let you fuck her.”

“You mean to keep her?  She’s human.  You know, regardless of the circumstances—or your position—the council would never allow you to take her as a concubine.”

Tariq sent him a startled look since it hadn’t occurred to him even to consider taking her as a concubine and then glanced at Emerald.  She might be a pureblood and a desirable woman, but she was human, not Anunnaki.  Granted, some of the old ones had, but that was long, long ago and the main reason it was frowned upon now.   They were simple creatures, however desirable, and hadn’t acclimated well to their world or their customs and beyond that, their own women had been outraged and made such a fuss that the council had reversed their stance on taking Earth women as concubines.  They hadn’t outlawed it, but they’d made it damned difficult on those who had, and no one had even tried it for years.

The only possible explanation for Koryn’s assumption as far as he could see was that it had occurred to him, which didn’t improve his mood and deepened his suspicion that Koryn’s guilty start when he’d come in arose from what he’d been thinking about doing, even if he hadn’t acted on it.  “That and the fact that you’re my best friend is the only reason I’ll allow you to fuck her at all,” Tariq growled.