Blue Dawn (12 page)

Erik turned her hand over, palm up. With slow and gentle motions, he began tracing concentric circles on her palm.

“I’ve never really felt the need or the desire for a friend before,” he said, gazing at her palm.

His thumb strayed to the inside of her wrist, stroking the tender skin there. Allie struggled to stay still. “But—but weren’t—aren’t you lonely without friends?”

His dark eyes flickered, then held her gaze.

“It’s not something I thought about. It’s just the way it was.”

The pressure of his thumb on her wrist increased. He brushed it across her palm, then slowly, carefully along each of her fingers in turn.

The breath caught in Allie’s throat. Erik had done nothing more than touch her hand, but already her body was straining towards him. The hum in her head had begun a steady spiral upwards, along with a gentle whispered refrain:

“I’m your friend. Now and forever.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to tell herself it was merely an everyday reaction to friendship.

“You said ‘was’,” she whispered. “Does that mean . . . does that mean you’ve changed your mind? That friends are more important to you now?”

For a moment Erik remained silent. His dark gaze seemed to settle on her mouth, then her throat before returning to her eyes. “Yes,” he said finally, his voice low and gentle. “And no.”

He raised his hand to her face, and brushed her hair back, the rough pads of his fingers grazing her temple.

Despite herself, Allie trembled at his touch.

“Yes and no? What does that mean?”

“Exactly what I said.” He smiled faintly, and the moonlight gleamed off his cheekbones, making his broad strong face appear more foreign and exotic than ever. He continued to stroke her hand, his touch excruciatingly slow. “I don’t necessarily want a lot of friends. Only one.”

“One?” Allie swallowed. “Who would that be?”

She saw herself reflected in his eyes even as his head lowered towards her. “I think you know who that is.”

“I do?”

His hand cupped her chin. “Yes.”

Then slowly, with unimaginable gentleness, his mouth settled over hers, like the warm whisper of the wings of doves returning home at dawn.

A whimper escaped Allie as his lips met hers.

He kissed her lightly, undemandingly, but it was enough to send the first sparks of yearning zinging through her blood. Allie shut her eyes, and let her senses fill with his masculine scent, with the taste of his lips on hers, and the intoxicating touch of his fingers on her neck.

Then, just as quickly as it began, the kiss ended. Erik released her and sat back in the darkness.

Allie blinked, vaguely disoriented and filled with a disturbing sense of loss.

She glanced at Erik. His face was lit with the wide grin of the kid who’s put something over on the teacher.

The first sparks of annoyance flared up.

Annoyance at him—for messing up their lovely, platonic day, and annoyance at herself for exercising so little control. Would she never learn?

“For someone who rarely smiles, that’s an awfully big grin,” she snapped. “What are you smiling about anyway?”

Erik’s grin grew wider still. “I thought you weren’t going to kiss me.”

The laughter reached his eyes and Allie suppressed an urge to reach across and choke him.

“That wasn’t a kiss,” she declared grumpily.

“No?” Erik raised his eyebrows. Since when, Allie wondered, had he mastered so much more expression?

“In my experience, that had all the usual trademarks of a kiss,” he persisted. The smile was gone, but the corner of his mouth twitched suspiciously.

“Well it wasn’t a kiss.” Allie drew herself up primly, her nose in the air. “It was . . .” she struggled to find the right word. “It was merely a thank you.” She pounced on the idea like a drowning woman on a life ring. “A fond thank you for your help today painting my apartment. And for the cat food.”

“Hmm.” Erik appeared to ponder her statement with due seriousness, though a suspect light still flickered in his eyes.

After a moment he looked her full in the face, his expression solemn. “Well then, you can’t be very grateful.”

“Pardon me?”

“That kiss can’t have lasted more than four or five seconds. In ratio to the ten hours I spent painting your apartment, that’s not much thanks.”

“What?” If Allie didn’t know better, she’d think that the blunt and usually humorless Erik was teasing her. But she couldn’t be sure.

Her irritation abated, but only slightly. “And what exactly would you suggest as fitting thanks?

A night in bed?”

“Oh no. Nothing as . . .” His dark, sensuous eyes flickered over her with appreciation—and unmistakable humor. “Nothing as time-consuming—or intimate as that. Perhaps just a longer kiss, initiated by you.”

He turned towards her and tugged her to her knees. “Kneel up,” he said quietly, ”and put your arms around my neck.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

The humor in Erik’s eyes fled, replaced by something darker, warmer, that took Allie’s breath away.

“Because,” he said, his gaze never leaving her face, ”you’re polite, and you’re generous, and you do want to thank me properly. But most of all, because you want to kiss me as much as I want to kiss you.”

Allie’s throat felt dry and she could hear her heart pounding frantically in her chest, along with the crazy buzz filling her head. It was true. As much as she wanted to deny it, she couldn’t do it.

Slowly, she relaxed her arms and laced her fingers through the thick hair grazing the back of his neck. She looked into those dark eyes, drawn by the promise she saw there. “All right,” she whispered, her gaze falling to his mouth. “You win. But only one. Just one friendly kiss.”

Gently, his hands spanned her waist. She raised her face towards his, kissing one corner of his broad mouth, then tentatively moving across, nipping him, her lips alive with his taste. She rubbed across his cheek and chin, rough with a day’s growth of beard, each touch increasing the sensitivity of her mouth, and the desire flaring once more within her.

Despite the fact she’d barely moved, she felt breathless, dizzy, her limbs heavy and full. Her arms tightened around his neck, drawing him closer to her needy mouth.

Then, with a fire that seemed to burst out of nowhere, he kissed her back, responding to her touch and her taste like a man who’d waited far too long. The touch of his lips on hers, the sensation of his tongue exploring and tasting her sweetness, overwhelmed her senses, making her dizzy and faint with the growing ache of need inside, melting her resistance and obliterating every desire but for the kiss to go on and on.

She kissed him longer, harder, unaware of her hands twisting convulsively in his hair, her frantically beating heart. Aware only of the aching need within her.

Suddenly everything stopped. Over the racing of her heart, her ragged breathing, and the returning control of her body, she realized that Erik had stopped kissing her. She blinked and opened her eyes. Erik had moved back on his knees, and was watching her, his eyes dark and unreadable.

“You’re welcome,” he said quietly.

“What . . . you . . . you’re welcome?” Allie blinked, confused. “What the . . .”

Suddenly she realized that Erik was doing exactly what she’d told him she wanted him to do: keeping things friendly, not pushing too hard to move their relationship into the sexual.

Instead,
she
was the one who had lost control.

She
was the one who was running headlong into a romantic relationship with a man she still barely knew.
Dammit!
Hadn’t she learned anything?

Anything at all?

She swore violently. Surprise and confusion flickered across Erik’s face, but she didn’t stop to ask why. She jumped up and yanked the blanket out from under him, sending their empty drink containers and hamburger wrappings flying.

“I think I’d like to go home now,” she said as she flung the blanket over her arm.

She spun on her heel and marched towards the parking lot.

Sprawled on the grass in the remains of their dinner, Erik watched Allie stomp towards the car.

He blinked, too confused to marshal the focus needed to probe her thoughts. What had he done now?

Automatically he rose to his knees and gathered up the wrappers and paper cups, his mind already at work trying to reconstruct what had just happened.

Allie had said she wanted to be friends—

platonic friends. In an effort to win her affection, and her trust, he had attempted to play by her rules. The painting, the cat food, had all been part of his plan.

Even the kiss. Especially
stopping
the kiss, something he’d found far harder to do that he could ever have imagined. Because, from the first enticing touch of her lips, he’d wanted to kiss her until they were both senseless, unable to stop the love-making they both wanted.

Instead, he’d covered up his desire with something he thought she’d understand and appreciate. Humor, as well as respect for her wishes. Or at least he’d
thought
it was humor.

Apparently it wasn’t. Instead, he had angered her.

Worse, he had hurt her, and he didn’t even know why.

He looked up as Allie reached the Jag. She tried to open the door then, finding it locked, leaned stiffly against it, her back to him.

He’d hurt her, by the moons of Zura, the last thing in the world he’d wanted to do.

Erik stood up. His brow furrowed. One by one, his carefully-laid plans were failing to work and the murky confusion in his mind wasn’t helping any. He didn’t understand why Allie reacted the way she did. He didn’t understand his
own
reactions.

He frowned. He’d better understand fast.

Because he had only six weeks left to complete his mission—and to do it on terms best for himself, and even more importantly, on terms best for Allie.

Back in his apartment hotel, Erik wasted no time. There was no one on Earth or on the Zalian spacecraft hidden behind the planet’s moon that he could consult for advice.

But there was one thing he could do. He could review his destiny to determine whether a mistake had been made. The Zalian seers rarely made mistakes, but it
had
happened before. Certainly his grandmother’s abduction and mating with his grandfather had to have been a mistake, though never acknowledged. He wanted to continue pursuing Allie, but his courtship was not unfolding as smoothly as the other destined events of his life. A dangerous error seemed the likely explanation, and there was only one way to find out.

He retrieved his briefcase from the closet and snapped it open. Beside his communicator lay a small black bag, of a material similar to something Earthlings called velvet. He removed it, and slid its contents into his hand.

The gray crystal lay dark and cool in his palm, a memento of the most important day of his life, the day on which the seers foretold his destiny. In Zalia it was customary to bestow one of the crystals used that day upon the child concerned.

But it was also possible to use the crystal to view one’s destiny again. Indeed, his father had insisted, for reasons Erik had not understood, that they review what had been forecast. Always it had remained the same, but Erik now wondered if he and his father, far away and immersed in Zalian life, had missed or confused the final aspect of his destiny. Certainly neither of them had foreseen the difficulties he faced in winning the intransigent Earthling, nor the problem of dealing with his own humanity.

Erik pulled aside the drapes on the sliding door to the balcony. Moonlight streamed into the room.

Reverently he placed the crystal on the spot where the light hit the floor, then sat cross-legged before it. Perhaps, here on Earth and with his limited powers, the destiny hidden in the crystal might not be released. But he had to try. He had to make sure he wasn’t making a mistake he would rue for the rest of his life.

Erik shut his eyes and carefully cleared his mind. One, then two, then several minutes passed in silence. Slowly he receded from this planet, and the part of him that was of the Earth, and gradually repossessed his Zalian persona: Barak of Zura, son of Royl and Vzaro, and a commander of Zalia’s counter-insurgency forces. A commander and leader of Zalians come to Earth to claim his mate!

Through closed eyes, Barak concentrated all his powers on the crystal, urging it to fire once more and release the secrets held deep within. The thought was neither a request nor a demand, but a simple statement of what was required.

Suddenly, though his eyes remained shut, Barak saw the crystal begin to flicker with a weak yellow light. The light wavered several times, almost disappearing. Then it steadied and grew, flaring upwards and taking on an amber cast that colored the room.

In the warm golden light, Barak saw his destiny unfold, as it had been foretold so long ago, and as he had lived it over the past years. He watched as a younger version of himself entered the military and language academies, worked hard and eventually graduated with honor. He watched as he joined the military and swiftly rose to his destined post and level of accomplishment.

Through it all the light grew stronger and steadier.

Barak started. Without warning the light faded abruptly. He feared it would flicker out completely, leaving him with no answers. Pushing the fear aside, he concentrated once more: He had to know the truth.

Despite his efforts, the light continued to fade.

Barak had begun to give up hope, when a spurt of blue, like the light welcoming the cool of a Zuran dawn, shot upwards through the crystal, dispelling the last of the warm golden light. Shaky and irregular, the blue flame shot wildly around the room.

Barak tried to find the center of the light, the place that held his destiny, but it kept changing and evolving, much like his relationship with the woman whom he’d always believed was destined to be his mate. After several minutes, the light settled into a cold, wavering column. An image started to form at its heart.

In Barak’s mind’s eye, the image grew clearer and stronger, but still distant and strangely out of reach. At last he could see two people, a man and a woman, standing a little apart. He knew instinctively that the man was himself. But the woman?