Daughter of Destiny (25 page)

Naia slipped her feet into
sneakers, ones with self-adjusting compression flaps so she didn't
have to fumble with laces, zippers, or anything. "I understand.
Robert, get the computer. That'll give them the answers they
want."

Robert put his hand on the
biometric lock on their safe inside the closet. The click of a
safety deactivating right by her ear made Naia jump back. She ran
smack into the door jamb, hitting her head hard enough to see
stars.

"Do that very carefully,
Mr. Sheffield."

In slow motion, Robert
opened the safe door, allowing the soldier to see that no weapon
sat concealed in its depths. The stack of papers, small stash of
cash and jewelry, and the computer reassured him and the safety
clicked into place again.

Robert retrieved the
computer and held it out to the men. "You can have it, but, seeing
as I encrypted the information on there, you'll need my help to
access it."

"Fine by us. Come on. We've
wasted enough time." The faint green illumination cast by the
safe's lock screen showed a young Caucasian man with a scowl etched
into his face.

Naia waited for Robert to
take her hand. One soldier in front of them and the other behind,
they headed to the front door. The atrium light she always left on
did not cast its comforting glow.

Robert stopped as the point
solider put his hand on the front door to open it.

"Before I walk out that
door, I want to see I.D. and badges. You could be terrorists posing
as government officials for all we know."

A moment of silence passed
and then the atrium light flipped on, momentarily blinding her.
Both men flashed badges and identification, but they could have
been homemade for all she knew.

"How am I supposed to know
that's real?" Naia asked.

"They're real," Robert
said.

"How--?"

"My security classification
status is higher than either of these two guys."

The man at the door blushed
at Robert's condescending tone. Whether from anger or
embarrassment, Naia didn't know, but thought maybe from the former.
"Uh, thanks."

The man behind them said,
"I’m Agent Graves. That’s Agent Wilson." Agent Graves flipped the
switch on the wall, circumventing the voice protocols. The atrium
light went out again and Wilson opened the front door to the chilly
autumn night. Halfway down the walkway, two other agents joined
them. They all got into the rear of a black hover van. A myriad of
surveillance equipment and weapons crowded the back of the
van.

Naia took a seat beside
Robert on a bench while the two agents they hadn’t been introduced
to climbed into the front. Naia tried not to let her gaze rest on
the impressive cache of weapons, but it proved difficult. They
could wage a small war with the amount of firepower in the van. As
usual, Robert zeroed in on the techno gadgets, so she made it her
job to study the agents. The driver was a young wiry Asian. He
remained silent with his eyes darting back and forth from the road
to a small dashboard radar screen. The Caucasian woman in the front
passenger seat, her dark hair tucked into a black baseball cap,
looked about thirty to thirty-five years old. With swift, confident
motions she took out a device and entered a series of typed
commands. In a voice that carried a slight mid-west accent, she
pitched her voice toward the rear of the van. "All clear, sir. Any
eyes or ears in the area are deaf and blind."

"Good," Agent Graves
said.

The van rocked gently as it
lifted into the air. Naia looked at Graves who relaxed and leaned
back on the bench seat opposite them.

He met her look and she
glanced away, finding it difficult to meet his penetrating eyes.
She suspected he read her file as Robert suggested. The pity aimed
her way made her uneasy. Usually it pissed her off, but after
totally losing it in front of the man, she couldn't summon any
anger.

The way the man sat without
moving a single muscle, the stare that assessed everything,
reminding her of Zane. She found herself wondering if Zane did
things like this.

"How long have you been in
contact with extraterrestrials?"

Wow. Talk about getting
to the point.
Naia swallowed. "Define contact."

"No bullshitting lady. You
know what I mean."

"Don't answer him,
Naia."

Graves pointed his gun at
Robert and his lids lowered into a mean looking stare. "I'm sure I
didn't hear you right."

"Yeah, you did. No offense,
Agent Graves, but you don't have the clearance to hear any of what
we have to say. We'll be happy to talk to your superiors, but until
then we'll just have a nice quiet ride."

After a long minute Graves
huffed out a breath. "Orders are to transport you to a secure
location. You're right, I don't have clearance and I wasn't asked
to question you, but you'll understand if I'm curious as to when
the fuck you met aliens. Nothing's showed on radar, although SETI
said something about odd EM readings."

Robert laughed. "SETI
wouldn't have even noticed the transmissions if I had thought to
route and encrypt through the damn satellites instead of a straight
beam into space. You got lucky. Thing is, it's actually a good
thing I forgot, because there's a huge ass problem that needs
government attention ASAP. Turns out we didn't have to track you
down; you got in touch with us. Very handy."

Graves harrumphed and the
rest of the trip passed in tense silence with Naia snuggled next to
Robert as the business end of a gun kept them in its
sights.

Zane wandered in a thick
mist for ages. He could not discern any landscape or anchor of any
kind to the real world. The last thing he recalled was overwhelming
pain unlike any he ever imagined and made the injuries he suffered
in the past pale in comparison. A pale light far above him provided
the only relief to the pervasive mist.

Am I dead?

A couple of times he
attempted to approach the light, but something weighed him down
like trying to jump on a gravity heavy planet. When he managed to
get a small bit closer, pain slammed into him like a giant mecha
crushing him in a duratanium fist.

On second thought, maybe I
should forget the light.

Several times he tried to
let go, to just drift in the mist. At one point the light faded to
a tiny pinprick and he felt himself drifting, expanding, but then
something yanked hard and pulled him back with a vengeance. The
pain swamped him until he wept and when the light drifted to that
taunting distance again, letting the pain fade, he stopped
fighting.

For a long while, or
perhaps only a short time, as nothing existed with which to measure
its passage, Zane thought of nothing. Then Katarina's face intruded
upon his listless state. At first, he pushed all thoughts of her
away. The pain of her grief hurt beyond any measure of his physical
pain. She refused to be set aside. Time and again her image
whispered around him like a specter of his guilt for failing her.
In spite of himself, his longing made him reach out to the specter
again and again. In a tortuous silent dance she appeared, he
reached for her and she disappeared again. Not until the light
bathed him in warmth did he realize she had drawn him closer to the
light. In the moment that he expected to be swamped by pain, the
bond they shared pulled him from that place of mist, encompassing
him with her love.

His eyes snapped open as
consciousness rushed in. The hard surface beneath him at first led
Zane to think he lay on the floor of his cell, but as his vision
cleared, he rolled over and sat up. He spent plenty of time in IGC
medical bays to recognize one when he saw it. He reached down and
disconnected the intravenous line inserted in his arm.
What
happened?
He searched his mind for memories buried beneath the
trauma of his last ordeal, but nothing coherent
surfaced.

He sensed Katarina nearby
as surely as he knew that if he tried to stand he’d collapse to the
floor. Zane managed to pull himself to the edge of the exam table,
but his vision grayed in and out. Dull aches answered his efforts
from every part of his body. The nearest comm console sat across
the room, much too far away. Not to mention, if IGC planned to toss
him in the brig as soon as he woke up, he didn't want to alert them
to his conscious state.

"Katarina! Where are
you?"

As soon as he uttered the
thought the med bay door whooshed open and Katarina ran through the
doorway. She flew into his outstretched arms, kissing his mouth,
his face, laughing and crying all at once. She tried to pull away
after a minute, but Zane clamped his arms around her. "You aren’t
going anywhere."

Katarina laughed and kissed
him again. The ache that began the moment he left her on Earth
finally abated. He held her close, relishing her rounded softness,
her sweet scent, and the joy he felt just from having her in his
arms.

Katarina wriggled until he
let her climb up beside him on the table instead of hanging
awkwardly half on, half off. Neither one of them spoke, words were
too simple to express what they felt. He placed a hand on the swell
of her abdomen. Zane could sense the infants and felt small thumps
against his hand as limbs kicked and stretched. He closed his eyes
as the enormity of what he almost lost hit him.

Katarina’s emotions
mirrored his and they turned to each other, content in gentle
caresses and quiet lingering kisses. Then Zane cupped Katarina’s
breast. Already ample, they now spilled out of his hand. He scraped
a thumb over her nipple, and it puckered into a peak, thrusting
against the material of her dress.

Katarina gasped her
pleasure and then lifted her mouth away for a moment. "God, how I
missed you, Zane!"

"I missed you, too." Zane
gave her a full-wattage grin and guided her hand to his crotch. "In
more ways than one." She rolled her eyes, but her grin spoiled the
expression. He nuzzled her neck. "Love, I think you’re overdressed
for this party." Zane kissed her deeply as his fingers found the
hem of the dress.

She batted at his hand.
"Zane! You are in no condition to have sex. You need food and rest
first. For heaven's sake, you almost died!"

"All the more reason not to
waste time."

"No. I mean it, Zane. You
need rest."

Zane didn’t care if he was
on death’s door. He waited seven months. He almost died. He might
never have held her in his arms again. He wasn’t waiting a moment
longer. He flooded their link with his pent up desire, seven
months' worth of longing, of love so deep it rewrote his view of
life.

"That’s not fair, Zane,"
Katarina said. She clung to him and whimpered as her desire ignited
and matched his in fervor.

He reached out and let his
hand trace a line from her neck to her thigh. "You can do all of
the work." He could sense her resolve weakening. Zane moved his
hand a few centimeters over and touched her center. Even through
the material of both her dress and panties he felt her
wetness.

Katarina sucked in a ragged
breath when he touched her. "All right. I’m insane, but all right."
Katarina yanked her dress over her head, tossed it aside, and then
pulled the blanket over both of them. "Lie down and enjoy. Let me
do everything."

***

Katarina straddled Zane and
moaned when his thick shaft penetrated her flesh. She’d read that
the pregnant sex could be absolutely spectacular because of the
increase in blood flow. She agreed. Just the act of seating herself
sent her to climax. She rode the wave of pleasure and then rocked
back and forth. True to his word, Zane let her set the pace, but
when she bent over him, he took her breast into his mouth. Desire
pulsed through her veins, but she drew out each movement, enjoying
the journey instead of letting need rule. She nuzzled his neck and
he tangled his hands in her hair. She stroked his face and
feathered kisses across his eyes and sampled his lips. His hands
traced her spine and sides of her breasts, sending tingles of
feeling all the way to her toes. Submerged in the blissful world of
soft touches and lingering kisses, the tension built and exploded
with shocking intensity. She screamed Zane's name and clasped his
shoulders as her orgasm claimed her. His hands on her hips
tightened as he joined her a heartbeat later, and they found the
unity that only existed when they were buried deep in each other
and cresting together.

Mindful of Zane’s weakness
and her larger size, Katarina collapsed to his side instead of on
top of him. Sated and content they clung to each other.

The med bay door whooshed
open. "I heard a scre--," Commander Vrion's words faded into
embarrassing silence. "I don’t think they covered this situation in
academy training."

Katarina blushed and buried
her face against Zane's bare chest. "Well, hell."

Zane had the gall to laugh,
his chest shuddering with each rumble of laughter. Katarina raised
her head and glared at him, but only for a minute before she
started to giggle.