The Spawning (32 page)

Adar and Teron exchanged a look.

“We worked.”

“That’s good. Anything interesting happen?”

Amusement flickered in Teron’s eyes. “There is not much about harvesting

jasumi
that is a challenge to the mind. We go down to find the
jasumi,
hack it away, put it in our nets, and then we go up to breathe and down to search again.”

Miranda looked down at her hands. Jobs did tend to be repetitious, most of them.

The only thing that made one more bearable than another was whether it was something you didn’t mind doing over and over again and/or there was some challenge to the one thing you did over and over that you liked.

It still made her feel badly for them. What a dull, hard life! It would’ve been bad enough any time, but when it didn’t seem they had anything to look forward to when they weren’t working it seemed even worse. “You go up to breathe?” she asked after a moment. “You don’t get air from the water?”

Teron looked as if he wasn’t certain whether to be insulted or amused. “We are not fish. We breathe air the same as you do.”

Miranda reddened slightly, feeling rebuked, but how was she to know without

asking? Wait and observe until she figured it out?

Actually, she thought, studying the Hirachi was a pretty fascinating subject. “I hadn’t had much chance to observe or to examine,” she said, smiling faintly. “When I was a detective, that was a good part of what I did—observe—and then try to unravel the mystery and find the truth. How long can you hold your breath?”

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 143

He considered it. “It differs from one to another. On average, around an hour.”

Miranda was more than a little stunned even though, logically, she realized that they would’ve had to develop the ability to hold their breath for long periods of time to be able to accomplish anything underwater. She wondered if that had had anything to do with the fact that they had such massive chests. It seemed likely even though she’d thought before that it was just very well developed muscles.

She supposed not being able to do something that came naturally to the Hirachi must make them seem pretty contemptible and worthless.

She didn’t feel inferior—she supposed she was too arrogant to—but she could see where they might think she was.

“I’ve heard we came from the sea … long, long ago but if we did, when we left it, we just left it.”

Teron and Adar both looked surprised, even a little pleased. She couldn’t figure out why until it dawned on her that they saw it as a kinship—and maybe it was, however minor. She didn’t see that she needed to point out that that theory had them climbing out of the sea before they’d even become human.

“The world you come from—there are no great seas?” Adar asked curiously.

Miranda looked at him in surprise and then realized he’d leapt to that assumption because she said they’d left the sea. Truthfully, she couldn’t remember, but it seemed to her that there was a good bit more ocean than land. “No, there are. Some mammals chose to stay in the sea and some chose to leave. Humans left. It was so long ago nobody knows why.”

“What is your home world like?” Teron asked gently.

Miranda felt a tightening in her chest. It was why she hadn’t asked them about their home world, because she knew it was bound to be painful to think about, and talk about, the world and people they’d left. “Blue skies,” she managed after a moment.

“Beautiful blue skies. It’s weird but I can’t even really remember noticing it that much.

I don’t think I ever looked up unless it was to check for storm clouds.”

“Like the eyes of the other women,” Adar said.

Miranda thought about it. “Something like that, but brighter.”

Teron frowned thoughtfully. “Why are you different from them? Yours are

green—and your hair red.” He paused, studying her as if he’d just noticed something.

“But it doesn’t seem as dark now as before and your skin … it is darker. What are the spots?”

Miranda hadn’t actually thought of herself as being different. They were fair.

She was, too, but the Hirachi didn’t seem to have as wide a variation in coloring. She caught a strand of her hair and examined it. “The sun’s lightened it a little—and darkened my skin. The spots are called freckles. Only very lucky people have freckles,”

she said with a wry chuckle.

“It is mark of beauty, then?”

Miranda glanced at Adar, wrestling with the urge to laugh. “I was joking. It’s just a trait some people have and some people don’t—like the hair color and the eyes.

There are plenty of people that have green eyes like I do, just not here, and it isn’t as common as gray … or brown.”

Teron looked thoughtful. “The sun has made it change? Is this why the hair of many of the others has begun to grow very dark like ours?”

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 144

Miranda stared at him in fascination, struggling with her amusement again. He was a doctor, a scientist of sorts. It didn’t seem right to lie to the man, but she also didn’t feel like it was her business to point out that more than half the ‘blonds’ among them weren’t actually blond. She cleared her throat. “A lot of things can make the hair color change. Sometimes a person has blond hair when they’re a child and later it grows dark.”

It was true and didn’t make her feel as if she was lying outright. She felt pretty pleased with herself about avoiding the issue without lying.

“And yours? It was different when you were a child and now is this color?”

Teron pursued.

Miranda shrugged. “Not really. It was pretty much always red.” Unfortunately.

She didn’t like it. She didn’t know many people that really did. A lot of people
said
they did, but if red hair was actually as popular as that implied, the hair dye shelves wouldn’t be full of blond and shades of brown.

Khan and Gerek arrived with plates of food. Handing them out, they headed back for the rest of the plates and the beverages. They all settled on the floor to eat picnic style and Miranda found herself entertaining them by answering their questions about

‘her world’. Either they were less interested in her personally, or they felt that it would be painful for her to talk about her own life. They focused on general information. She didn’t know how good a job she did in explaining what her civilization was like. So much of it didn’t translate, which she figured meant that the concept probably didn’t either, not just the words.

She didn’t know how entertaining they found it for that matter. They were

probably bored, or appalled, or maybe both. They didn’t actually seem to be bored, but she noticed they exchanged looks several times that hinted at disapproval at the very least.

The problem was, she was never really sure what it was that she’d said that they found shocking.

Overall, though, she was glad for the opportunity. As sad as it made her, it was actually a pleasure to ‘visit’ in her memories. She also felt, right or wrong, that it was a step toward beginning to understand one another better because they did give her a little insight into what their world was like, too.

She felt both relaxed and comfortable with them right up until she realized that it was getting late enough that the guests would be leaving and it occurred to her to wonder if she was going to be passed off for the night. It didn’t help that she liked all of them and couldn’t really make up her own mind which of them she liked best. She thought Khan, but then when she was around Teron, she was very drawn to him—and Gerek, and Adar, all in a different way—because
they
were different. They made her feel different, but never in a negative way, and the plain fact was that, sexually, she also couldn’t make up her mind.

Adar, she thought a little wryly, almost made her feel motherly in a sense. His bashfulness certainly brought out a strong desire to ‘baby’ him and tease him, despite his massive, fully six and half foot frame of pure brawn. He made her
want
to initiate, brought out the seducer in her.

Gerek brought out the reckless. He had the sort of ‘bad boy’ attitude they made a woman feel like they were playing with fire and the charm that made them want to, even when they knew in the back of their mind they were going to get burned.

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 145

Teron and Khan both made her feel all woman, supremely desirable, completely

and utterly feminine. Khan brought out the submissive side of her nature, though, made her feel like a woman in need of a strong man to lean on, made her feel like she could safely do that, could yield completely to him and never suffer a moment’s anxiety that he would break her trust … as if she
should
, because it was the way things were meant to be.

Teron made her feel like that, too, and yet she felt more of an equal with him, like she could safely yield to the primitive urge to be weak and let him be the strong one, but he didn’t seem as unyielding as Khan or as demanding that she fulfill the role she was born to. She felt like he expected her to be as strong and independent as she could be and that he’d be there anytime she fell down.

She was relieved and a little sorry, too, when the visitors left and she was alone with Khan. She was both glad and unnerved to be alone with Khan and she also felt guilty about the others. However it had come about, and whatever the parameters of this business about them all being her lovers, she felt the obligation of a lover to give them attention, as well. It made her feel guilty that the relationship, such as it was, seemed too one sided. She was receiving a lot more, it seemed to her, than they were.

There was also the little matter of her heart to consider. With no assurance that they were engaged further than the bedroom, she was reluctant to open herself to feeling things for them that would hurt when and if they decided to change partners. It was a risk people always took when they tried to build a relationship. She’d been through it a few times already herself, but it didn’t seem to her that the situation even offered the possibility that it could be more.

She completely understood how Beth felt, as if she’d been placed in a position where she couldn’t even hope to build a relationship—not with any of them. But how could she give herself, feeling like she already did about them, and still guard herself from being hurt?

She couldn’t. That was the main reason it was so unnerving to be alone with

Khan. One on one, forced by circumstances and her needs to give herself to him even if she hadn’t wanted to—which she did—she was more vulnerable.

Of course, there was always the chance that being too much in his company, or

any of the others, would have the opposite effect. She’d discover things about them that pushed her away or at least dampened her enthusiasm for them.

She didn’t really think that was likely, though. She didn’t think they were going out of their way to entice her, trying to make a good impression by concealing their less desirable traits and habits. They just did because of who they were.

She wasn’t really needy either—actually not at all. Khan had thoroughly satisfied her. She was pretty sure she was good to go for a while in that department. Men in general seemed to have a stronger sex drive, though, or at least want sex more often whether they felt a great need or not. She wasn’t against the idea, she decided. If he wanted to, she was willing to accommodate.

He didn’t seem to want to. In point of fact, he didn’t even join her in the bed until she’d fallen asleep. He roused her after a while when he climbed carefully in the bed and stretched out, but he didn’t make any attempt to initiate sex or even to cuddle. A flicker of uneasiness went through her despite the fact that she was more than half asleep, but she ignored it and the warning in her head and scooted closer to snuggle against him despite the lack of invitation. He stiffened, but seemed to force himself to relax. Curling THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 146

around her carefully, he nuzzled his face against her hair and then dropped to sleep in that really annoying way men had where they seemed capable of simply ‘switching off’.

He woke her when he got up. “I will take you to the nursery where you can visit with your friends.”

The words ‘friends’ and ‘nursery’ triggered a response she might not have

managed otherwise. Instead of swatting at him and telling him to leave her alone so she could go back to sleep, she got up. It didn’t take much to get ready and she wasn’t a lot more alert.

She actually thought that was probably a good thing. The trek from his pod to the

‘nursery’ wasn’t particularly pleasant. She was getting used to him breathing for her, she thought, but it was a long way from comfortable. When they emerged in the large pool, Khan’s hands loosened on her. She didn’t let him go, however. Instead, she glanced around, discovering that many of the women were already there and others just arriving as she had.

“I need to go,” Khan said, although he didn’t make any attempt to peel her loose.

She returned her attention to him, discovering that they were breast to breast, and nose to nose. They had been, of course, since they’d left his pod, but that was necessity and she was too distressed to feel anything else. She didn’t know why he’d been reluctant to cuddle her the night before—if it was because he just wasn’t used to it or thought it might make him want to have sex when he didn’t—but she felt an impulse to try to bridge whatever gap there was between them.

Or maybe just to stake her claim?

She moved closer instead of away, pressing her lips to his. He hesitated, but only fractionally, covering her mouth and kissing her with a heat that made everything inside of her melt and her eyes roll around in her head. She smiled at him a little drunkenly when he lifted his head. “I’ll see you to night.”

He looked a little quizzical, but he merely nodded and dove.

Miranda discovered she had to recover a little before she could hoist herself out of the pool. She still felt pretty weak kneed, though, when she stood up and looked around for Deborah.