Parallel Seduction (12 page)

He sucked in a breath as she trailed her thumbs over his closed eyes. "Why?" was all she asked, her husky, sexy voice filling the small distance between them. He swallowed hard, struggling to breathe even though his heart was about to explode out of his chest, it was thundering so rapidly.

"Why what?" he asked softly.

She jerked back, pulling her hands away, and he opened his eyes. "I-I wondered why you closed your eyes."

"To really feel you," he answered, taking her face within his own hands and drawing her lips to his. "I wanted to see things through your eyes right now. This moment."

"All that exists is the purest sensations," she answered, brushing her lips over his. "Sense, touch."

"Desire," he added, hardly recognizing his own voice; it was that filled with lust.

She moved closer, practically climbing onto his lap, but halted, cautiously running her hand across his thigh. "What about your injured leg? Is it better?"

He shook off the question. "Don't worry about it." His leg felt perfectly fine; she felt more than perfectly fine, heavenly, right here atop him.

"You need to get back," she cautioned. "You're still recovering—you shouldn't be here."

He gritted his teeth, clasping both of his hands about her waist, anchoring her closer to his own tensed body. "I won't leave you to him." Between his legs an erection had tightened his pants, straining and pulsing, begging for release. It hardly mattered that his leg ached a little bit; his third leg wanted only one thing: to fuck Hope Harper like mad, to drive into her, and hold her, and never let her out of his arms.

"I don't feel anything for him—it's you," she breathed against his cheek, and a stray strand of her hair tickled his face.

"You're asking me to trust you."

"Yes."

He'd never trusted anyone, not anyone apart from Jared and a few of their most inner circle. He'd certainly never trusted a human, not in the way she was asking it of him.

"Touch me, Hope," he begged. Suddenly. He needed to know—hell, he
had
to know what would happen if she did. Maybe if he was certain, he could let her walk away with their fugitive.

She nuzzled him, her lips warm and wet against the bristling beard of his cheek. "Where, Scott? Tell me, where?"

He growled, agonized that she was going to make him spell it out. "Between my legs, damn it." It was the wrong time, totally wrong, with every reason to get her out of here—to follow the other man's trail—but he couldn't seem to stop himself.

Just as she'd slowly felt out the terrain of his facial features, she slid one palm onto his upper thigh, then moved it into the place where both his legs met, finding the hard ridge of his cock. It swelled even more at her touch as slowly she rubbed her hand back and forth over his uniform pants, bunching the material. She wasn't gentle, not that he would have expected her to be. She worked him hard, then slid her other hand underneath the jutting erection and took hold of his balls, squeezing them until he groaned in painful ecstasy.

But she didn't relent. Working at the waistband of his pants, she managed to lower the zipper and, with a quick jerk, unfasten them. His swollen shaft sprang free into her cupped hand, filling it heavily, and her cool fingers closed about his thick tip, squeezing, stroking. He growled low in the back of his throat, clenching his thighs against the bed. With one hand she spread him open wider, sliding her fingertips along the underside of his cock where a large vein pulsed.

"Is this what you had in mind?" she purred into his ear, stroking his balls, rolling them in her hand.

"Insanity." He grunted, jerking at her sweater, yanking it halfway up her chest. His palm made contact with one ripe, buxom breast. For such a small woman, there was one area where All had graced her with size: the one that just so happened to matter to him most.

He pushed her face into the crook of his neck, and her grip on his long erection grew frantic, out of control, her strong hand sliding over him back and forth, until his own wetness slicked her motion.

Licking his ear with the tip of her warm tongue, she purred, "At least now I know how beautifully made you are," she teased, tightening her grip about him. "You feel … astounding."

And just that easily he was pushing her back into the mattress. He had her sweater up about her shoulders, had his own pants shimmied halfway down his thighs. Her pants were gone, seemingly by magic, just lost in the lust of the moment. The two of them were a tangle of limbs and lust and emotion, each grasping at the other with such desperation; he'd never felt anything like it before, not with any woman.

"He'll come back soon," he cautioned in her ear, shoving at his pants. As he rolled her beneath his body, he gasped slightly, and she stilled beneath him, clutching at both of his shoulders.

"We shouldn't do this, not with your leg still hurt."

"It barely hurts at all," he said, then added gruffly, "You be on top."

"You're not serious?" She collapsed into the pillows, seeming to study him, when he knew she was really only searching the darkness around them.

"I'll let you go with this other man because I trust you, but not before I make you mine," he told her, rolling her atop him as easily as he might have blown on a feather. "All mine, Hope. Understand? I won't hold back, not if you're going with him."

She nodded, and by the alarm clock light he saw anxiety knit her brows. "You're afraid of me."

She slowly shook her head from side to side. "Never. Not at all."

He cupped her bottom, sliding her atop him. Only her panties separated their groins, and he lifted into the silky web of material between them, nudging against her despite the thin membrane of separation. "Then what?" he asked in a throaty, lusty voice.

"I'm afraid of falling this hard for you," she answered, bowing her head. "After this, I'll never feel the same. Everything will be five thousand times more intense."

"Good," he said, puffing his chest out. "That's how I want it. You knowing that you belong with me. Not any other man."

"It's Jake. Jake Tierny, that's his name." Scott stilled beneath her, his hips dropping back from their upward thrust. "Do you know it?" she asked quickly.

"Never heard it before in my life," he admitted. That was what disturbed him. Yet something about it seemed to ring through the darkness, electrifying them both. Each knew the name had some massive significance between them; each felt it. But Scott would be damned to hell if he was going to tell Hope that he understood—that he knew, despite everything between them, despite the fact that he was a panties-width away from making love to her—that Jake Tierny was the biggest obstacle they'd ever face. A mountain, a fortress, a freighter.

The gazer in him saw it all in that split-second moment of revelation: Jake Tierny would drive a wedge between them, and it would never go away. Because, quite simply, Hope Harper would always love Jake Tierny. The shot fired across eternity was heard right there in that bedroom.

"Get off me," he whispered, very gently taking hold of her and sliding her onto the mattress beside them.

"I want this," she insisted, but he reached out to kiss her on the cheek. It was a strange, chaste kiss for an insatiable lover like him.

"It's not the right time," he disagreed, slowly tasting her mouth, then her face. Sniffing at her to really draw her scent into his lungs. "Not like this."

"You said you wanted—"

"I have to chase him, Hope. You do know that, right? I can let you go, but he's my enemy."

"I don't believe that."

"I know you don't, but I've been at this war for a lot longer than you. I chase. You'll run, and he'll run, too, but in the end? I'm going to have this guy's balls on a chopping block."
Especially so he won't take you from me. Especially, that.

"You could stay here, try to hear him out. He says he's your ally."

Scott rolled away from her. "If he comes here I have to kill him, Hope. And you've told me you don't want that." His voice sounded harsh, pained as a wounded animal. "I can give you a head start, but I can't let him go. Or you, if you go with him."

She felt a tugging motion that rocked the bed slightly, then heard his zipper as he closed his pants again. They'd been so freaking close to making love, to doing the one thing she wanted most in the world. For a long moment she considered telling him she'd forget Jake Tierny and his strange quest.

Scott blew out a tired-sounding sigh. She rubbed a hand along his back, surprised by the hard ridges of muscle, the way every line seemed so sharply defined. He had a lean, gorgeous body, not an ounce of fat or needless weight. She slipped her palm beneath his shirt, feeling the warm smoothness of the skin along his abdomen as she circled him from behind.

"I don't want to lose you." She caught herself with a laugh. "I mean, if I
have
you, which is pretty much a crazy stretch to begin with."

"You have me, Hope." He groaned softly. "Help my
vlksai
soul, but you have me. Completely."

"Then trust me," she urged, oddly aware that the room was growing brighter around them. "Please."

He laughed, a strange, bitter sound. "I do trust you, Hope," he told her. "But that man is my enemy—and more important? He's my king's enemy. My feelings for you can't come into play with that."

And the room around her seemed to fold in on itself, dividing her from him, pulling at her. She opened her eyes and found Jake Tierny examining her; at least, that was what it looked like through her fuzzy, splotchy eyesight. "Where's Scott?" she demanded, rubbing her eyes. "What's happening?"

"I left for a few minutes," Jake told her, his deep voice so different from that of the man she'd just been with.

"Scott was here—what happened?" None of it made sense.

"He's nowhere around here, Hope," he told her gently. "You must've been dreaming."

She jerked upward in bed, clasping at the bedspread, disoriented and feeling tears prickle her eyes. The bedside lamp was on, and she glanced first one way, then another, hardly able to believe that Scott hadn't truly been with her. Their experience together had been absolutely real—they'd nearly made love!

But as concrete and palpable as their time together had been, she could feel it receding like some distant shoreline. The only thing that lingered was his strange, altered scent.

"Do you smell anything?" she asked Jake, tilting her head up curiously, and he sank onto the bed across from her.

"What do
you
smell, Hope?" he countered.

"I asked the question."

He seemed to shrug, zipping up his parka. "Honestly, not sure what you're even talking about."

But she knew he was concealing something: that whatever she'd just experienced with Scott, the strange and very real dream, was tied to the scent still infusing the small motel room.

"You're Antousian. Do your people have some way that their scent changes? Something significant?"

But he ignored her question, pretty much his modus operandi, she'd been figuring out, and stood abruptly, car keys jangling in his hand. "We've gotta hit the road, and fast. They're going to close in on us soon, and they're not going to have mercy on me. Not for a minute; at least, not if I know Scott Dillon like I think I do."

"Do you sense them? Are they nearby?" she asked, cursing herself for sounding so breathless.

He released a low, soft chuckle. "You always did have a soft spot for Lieutenant Dillon."

"You should know that he and I are.…" Lovers? Not. In love? Maybe.

"Yeah, Hope?" he prompted, a strange smile in his voice.

"I'm with him, that's all. You should know that."

With two quick steps he had pulled her against his massive chest. The heat of his breath fanned against her cheek as he bent low and whispered in her ear, "I never said I expected anything to happen between us. Only that we were together. Once."

Her body tightened in reaction to his, and she didn't dare make a move, not forward or back. But he released her just as suddenly as he'd taken hold of her. Instantly she missed the heat of his body—not like she'd miss the warmth of a lover; no, that wasn't it. His natural body heat had comforted her on the deepest, most cellular level, as if nothing would ever harm her again, as if nothing ever could. Her trust was not misplaced; in that moment she knew it for certain.

"Tell me what I need to do," she whispered, reaching toward him. "I'll do whatever I can to help you."

"When do you need another insulin shot?"

She thought about the shots she'd stored in the room's small fridge. "Probably right now."

"Go ahead, then; take it. Because I've got a plan."

"L
ieutenant!"

Scott was dimly aware of a presence. Perhaps Anna. Perhaps Hope. But still connected with him somehow, linked in that half place where his spirit met the night wind.

Body! Need my body.…

He grew more alert, more cognizant of the fact that he was still in his natural Antousian form. A ghost, nothing more. Pure spirit, he'd have said, if he were in a generous mood, but most days when it came to his own species he wasn't nearly that kind. It was exactly as Hope had whispered inside him during their dream meeting: He didn't have compassion for his own people, and least of all toward himself.

He groaned, the soft sound a whining moan of wind across the hoary field. Fresh snow swirled toward the ground, almost more than he could bear as each and every flake splintered through his essence.
Never so nothing, never so thin. Weightless, inconsequential. Dying.…

"Scott Dillon," the woman's voice cried out. And inside of his center everything seemed to focus into a bright, scorching point of light.
Is this death? Was I dying when I saw Hope?

He couldn't possibly know, not like this, so ephemeral and lost.

Scott Dillon!

Perhaps that feminine voice belonged to All.

Take me back to her,
he prayed to the One who always circled him with protection and watched his back, no matter how bad the firefights got.
Take me back. Let me enter her dreams again. Let me know that she's safe.

There were people who needed him, were counting on him. Loved him. It was the one thought that kept circling his ghost self like a ravenous bird of prey. And that bird would not let him forget, kept screeching at him, nudging at him, demanding his attention like the far-off sputtering gunfire of his enemies. He thought of Trajsek, that night so many years ago when he and Jared had been cornered in an impossible firefight.

Save her,
the bird called out.
Come back! Save her! Come back!

The eerie cry was that of his own heart: There was no choice. To save Hope from Jake Tierny, he had to find his way back from this tenuous place—back into physical form.

V
eckus paced the deck
of his battle cruiser, annoyed to the extreme. None among his ground troops had offered any insights about the Antousian, the one he'd detected breeching the time wall. Now, here aboard his main cruiser, even his officers seemed thoroughly dull-witted. Was it always up to him to intuit their enemies' every move? Granted, he'd been gifted as a gazer since childhood, but still … it grew tiresome to be the most insightful out of their entire force. Then again, he was the leader of that same force, so perhaps it was only fair that he should see the most.

Some days, however, his position was more than wearying. Some days he just wanted to be a grunt, not in charge of the entire Earth conquest, but alas, that was not his fate.

Stopping at the main console, he pulled up his carefully drawn diagram, turning to face his under-lieutenants. "So, it's as I have described," he told the small group of women and men gathered on the cruiser's deck. "All the energy radiants indicate this area." He jabbed at the mid-air holographic display with his pointer, outlining a one-hundred-mile-square area inside Yellowstone Park. "This is where the first inter-dimensional breach occurred. And then, yesterday, the time wall was traversed here again. Right here, in the same position on the maps."

The only one of his lieutenants who possessed a shred of initiative, Dayron Lenlalt, spoke up. "And how are you certain of this fact, Commander?" the auburn-haired soldier asked, his keen blue eyes focused and sharp as he studied the hologram. "What served as your criteria?" Dayron frequently tested him, and usually Veckus respected that fact. Today, however, it simply bored and exasperated him.

Veckus turned on Dayron, grasping him by the shoulders. "Because I felt it. That's how. I'm the only gazer on this ship or in our midst. Gods knows why, but the fact remains true"—he jabbed his pointer emphatically, spearing it through the hologram's center until the image wavered—"and this is where we will corner our Antousian brother. Find out if he's on our side … or theirs."

"We've known that area was significant for a long time, but we've always come up empty-handed."

"Do you suppose I've liked coming up 'empty-handed', so you put it, Dayron?"

"No, sir. I don't suppose you have."  Dayron kept his tone and facial expressions bland, as if the entire interchange hadn't stirred his unflappable nature in the slightest. Veckus should have had the young warrior shot long ago for his outspoken ways, and made a mental note to put that execution on his calendar for sometime next year—pending, of course, a performance review. As irritating as Dayron could be, he was also quite useful on occasion, and it wouldn't do to make a hasty decision about his fate.

"Let's be certain that results—and I do mean proper ones—do not elude us this time." Veckus took his pointer and tapped it lightly atop Dayron's head for emphasis. "This, Lieutenant, is the only outcome I will accept."

J
ared sat on a large throw
pillow in his upstairs study, meditating, which really amounted to staring into the fire, blankly wondering why everything he knew about the present had become so ineffably muddled by the future. Scott and Anna had yet to return, hadn't called or contacted base at
all, and
now the first pink of morning light had begun cresting over the valley below the compound. Remaining calm required a tremendous amount of discipline when he really just wanted to send an entire legion after his two missing soldiers.

It was bad enough that Kelsey's life had been directly endangered just hours earlier, after they'd had shattering, heat-induced lovemaking in their shower. Jared shifted on the pillow, rubbed his jaw, and wondered—wondered if, against all that seemed possible—he and Kelsey might not have created a new
life
together. With a slight shake of his head, he brushed off his personal ruminations, focusing instead on the immediate problem at hand: That a fugitive, an Antousian from the future who claimed to be an ally, had penetrated their supposedly impenetrable fortress. The evidence implied that the man might just be what he claimed to be, someone with intimate knowledge of their workings,
their
rebel faction, and—most important—of their enemies' future plans.

On the other hand, given the dangerous mitres data that was fused within Kelsey's mind, the intruder might well be after her. That man might want to kidnap her, link with her, hoping to steal the codes lodged inside of her essence. Jared shuddered at the thought. That Kelsey was the sole key to powering their greatest weapon had unsettled him from the beginning. That she now welcomed it—embraced it—well, he didn't like that fact one bit. Yet their efforts to remove the codes had proved fruitless, revealing one sure and certain fact: His love was, quite simply, the keeper of their greatest weapon and power. She was, as the prophets had foretold, the Beloved of Refaria.

A knock interrupted his internal ramblings, sounding sharply in the silence of his study. This place was his sanctuary, and only rarely did any of his soldiers bother him here.

"Come in," he called, keeping his gaze on the fire.

Behind him he heard heavy footfalls and, without even looking, recognized them as belonging to Marco McKinley, his personal Madjin protector.

"My lord," he began cautiously, "I apologize for the intrusion."

Jared gave a slight wave, glancing over his shoulder. "I am lost in my own mind, Marco. Come, join me."

Marco studied him with an inscrutable, almost cautious expression. "My lord?" he asked uncertainly, but Jared indicated another pillow beside him.

"I have need of my Madjin," he said with a quiet laugh. "Come, sit with me and speak freely."

Marco smiled at him, not quite meeting his gaze, which was the way with all the Madjin protectors. They believed it a supreme transgression to stare into the eyes of their king and queen, although this particular Madjin was certainly part of a new breed. From what Jared had gathered, the young man had been raised mostly on Earth, taught by Jared's own mentor and protector, Sabrina. Still, there was something very different in the way he behaved around Jared. Familiar, traditional, but … refreshing. Beyond that, the man had made Jared's cousin Thea Haven happier than he'd ever imagined her to be. And their marriage made Marco not only his personal Madjin, but his cousin as well.

Marco settled his rangy frame beside Jared, crossing his legs in the familiar Refarian way, and stared thoughtfully into the fire, mirroring Jared's own expression.

"Talk to me, Marco," Jared encouraged with a brisk nod. "I sense that something is heavy on your mind."

Marco cut his gaze sideways. "The Antousian … I can't shake what he said, sir."

There was a pregnant pause as Marco waited for Jared's reply. "Go on," Jared encouraged with a slight nod.

"He knew about my other self, the dark one that came here to hurt you—" Marco made a slightly pained sound, a kind of strangled gasp, and Jared felt his protector's pain as if it were his own.

Jared turned to face the man. "We have already discussed this, you and I," he said. "I trust you completely, Marco."

"But he knew. All of it." His face twisted into a mask of pain. "And even if it doesn't matter what I might have done, sir, that man came from that same world. There's no other way he could know."

"I agree."

"So you believe he's what he claimed?"

"I'm not sure. I believe he's come from the future, but it's his intentions I'm uncertain of. You're an empath—what did you detect from him?"

Marco bowed his head, his black eyebrows quirking together in concentration. "It was very … unusual, sir, but there was a great deal of confusion inside the man. Fear, loyalty, anger." He shook his head slightly. "I don't think he actually meant you harm, despite my initial impression. The longer I've thought about it, something about him keeps disturbing me a great deal, but not because he wants to hurt you or my queen."

"Tell me what you mean."

"I … I'm not sure. Maybe it's nothing, but it was as if he's a twin, sir. As if he's brought someone else through time with him, and maybe it's that person who is our major threat. But that man? The one named Jake Tierny? I think he genuinely came here to kill me—the other me—and now that he's wound up empty-handed, he's not sure what to do or where to go. But it's this
other
man, the one he's linked to, that has me disturbed, because of the dark connection between the two of them."

"Perhaps Jake didn't realize someone followed him through inter-dimensional space."

"That would be ironic—that he was trying to follow me through time, but in the process someone else tailed him. Without his knowing, I mean."

Jared scrubbed an open palm over the top of his head, thinking about the implications of what Marco was saying. "It's a distinct possibility."

"We need to bring this Antousian back into the compound," Marco continued. "We need to question him and find out what he really knows."

"Lieutenant Dillon is still tracking him."

"It's going to take a larger team, sir. We both know it, and that's a risk, out in the open like that, among the humans. But capturing him should be our top priority."

S
cott studied the faintest pink
in the dawn sky, Anna kneeling beside him. He was a lucky bastard; he'd almost been unable to Change back into his physical body. In the end, though, his love for Hope had clinched the deal and he'd found his way back for one reason: her. Only for her … because she needed him, pure and simple. As he stared at the fading stars overhead, trying to regain his equilibrium, he thought about how close he'd come to letting go of this world altogether.

His species had a word for what he'd just experienced, one that had no translation in English, but basically meant "spirit slipping." It was that point when an Antousian was in his nonmaterial form, and his hold on life itself became tenuous. When the spirit self and the physical body became so disconnected from each other, it was as if the line between life and death wavered. He'd read in his people's scriptures about the freedom one could know at such times, but it was always considered highly dangerous. He'd also read that when caught in that tremulous place, his people were often drawn toward those they loved the most. To the people and things that held the greatest power over them.

Anna's face appeared in his line of vision, interrupting his ponderings. "A transport is on the way," she explained, studying him closely. Maybe for injuries, or perhaps just to verify he wasn't going to vanish on her all over again. "I've told them to touch down in the field behind us."

"Don't risk that," he said, scowling up at her. "I'm all right." But he couldn't quite get his body to budge, even as he tried rousing himself to a sitting position.

"You're bleeding out onto the snow, sir. It's a stealth craft; we're off the main road and we're getting you out of here. It's a done deal."