Discovery (23 page)

Something else, she needed something else. She moved her hips instinctively and begged him for direction. Her legs rose and wrapped around him as he held her, his fingers digging into her backside. And he began to move. She gasped.

“Should I stop…” His words were more groan than speech.

“No, no. Please, Kent.” She felt dizzy, anxious, breathing fast. “I want you.”

“I’m here. Stay with me,” he murmured.

Kent waited until she relaxed. It wasn’t so tight then. She was very much aware of that the electric humming of her body added to the pleasure he felt. And right below that, somewhere, was his surprise. She smiled. No, we’re connected now, grounded together, there will no shocks.  Maybe it wasn’t the way he thought it should be, but to her, it was perfect. Then she stopped thinking.

She murmured his name repeatedly and said in English and her own language she loved him as the sensations in her body grew and grew until she thought she would explode from joy.

“Povresle,” she heard him say. She’d never hear her name spoken again without hearing the naked longing and love making Kent’s utterance so wonderful, so fulfilling.

“Kent,” she whispered, opening her eyes wide so he would be the last thing she saw as the universe exploded.

She wasn’t dead. Nor reduced to subatomic particles. And Kent, he also lived. How was that possible? How can anyone contain so much feeling and emotion and survive?

Panting, she lay close to his chest and listened to his heartbeat. For a moment she smiled, a slow sleepy smile of satisfaction. Understanding at last one of the mysteries that made a joining between a male and female so much more than a biological process.
Oh, Goddess,
she thought.
Thank you.

She would remember him forever. For her there would never be anyone else. She could only hope he would forget and be able to find happiness with a human female. Her eyes burned, her throat closed with the sobs trying to escape.

“Did I hurt you? What’s wrong?” Tenderly he smoothed her hair. His face was flushed. His eyes were gentle, peaceful, and Povre drank it in.

“You didn’t hurt me. You gave me pleasure and joy.” She traced his mouth with her finger and then kissed him softly. “Thank you.”

He swallowed. His jaw tightened. He said nothing, just crushed her to his chest and held her tight as if he’d never let her go.

“Benjamin is coming,” she whispered a few minutes later, and they disentangled themselves and got dressed, helping each other, managing to do a lot of extra touching in between.

“Take me with you,” he said again.

“Your life is here.”

“It won’t mean anything without you in it, Povresle.”

She pulled his face close and planted a long, gentle kiss on his lips, a sweet kiss. “Please let me go. Let me be a dream. But don’t let me stop you from living and finding happiness.”

He shook his head, and his eyes became shiny and wet the way they did when he was highly amused. Only this time, she felt no amusement from him. Only a deep sadness, a gut-wrenching gulf of loneliness, strong and sudden and then fading as he struggled to bring his emotion under control.

“I found what I wanted in life three nights ago, when I found you caught in the rocks. Is there someone else? Someone waiting for you at home, on your ship?”

“No one.”

“Then take me.”

“If you disappear, what then? It only adds to the negative aspects of your world ever making a proper contact.”

“I don’t care if Earth ever makes a contact. I love you.”

“I love you, too. But I don’t want you to die.”

“Die? What are you talking about? Why would I die?”

“Being away from your world might kill you as surely as staying here would kill me. Then we would be alone again. Knowing we both are living and thinking of one another now and then, isn’t that better?”

“No,” he said roughly.

“Kent, do you think this is any easier for me?” she cried.

He smoothed her hair. “My mother always said truly loving someone is the most painful thing sometimes.”

Povre remembered her father’s pain after her mother’s death. She had been all of ten years old at the time. During the long years, she’d done everything for him she could think of. But H’renzek still carried the pain, even now. Slowly he’d turned serious and gruff when he’d always been opposite, unless on a mission. And during those rare moments when they became father and daughter again, Povre could sense how much he loved her and dreaded the thought of anything ever happening to her. She could not bear imagining Kent burdened with such sorrow.

She took Kent’s face in her hands and tried to smooth the creases of concern and pain aging his handsome features, which made him look as old as her father. Humans weren’t like Sirgels. They could find someone else. Kent found her after Lynn left him, after all…surely after she was gone, another woman would find her way to his heart. A human female would be a fool if she didn’t find Kent worthy of her devotion and love.

“Everything will be all right,” she murmured, cradling his head against her breast and still finger-combing his long hair.

The sequence of light knocks on the greenhouse door broke them apart. It was Ben. Povre gave Kent a little push when he didn’t respond right away. He straightened and went to unlock the door. Povre took one last look around, not wanting to forget a single detail. Then she followed.

K
ENT HURRIED WITH POVRE AND
Ben through a fine drizzle across the quad and headed to the parking area. Dusk lay thick as the mist. Kent could see the gleam of the light atop Skinner’s Butte through the lowering clouds, and a flash of lightning made the pressing dark bank of clouds, promising heavy rain, more evident.

The weather matched the heavy feeling in Kent’s soul. To his right, Povre stumbled. She probably had her eyes closed against the rain. Her dislike of getting wet reminded him painfully of the incident in the motel. Jeez. He might have killed her throwing her in the shower like that.

And the fact she admitted she lived on an artificially constructed satellite orbiting her homeworld. No, weather was something Povre had never experienced before coming to Earth. And for all but three months of the year, it rained a lot in this part of Oregon.

She’s right,
he tried to tell himself.
It’s for the best.

Two dark shapes bolted from the shadows—four-legged shapes, growling. They barreled past Kent and knocked him to the ground. He lost Povre’s hand and heard her scream. His head scraped against the concrete retaining wall behind him as he went down.

Kent struggled for consciousness, aware of men around them. Where was Ben? The subtle mental presence he’d felt since meeting Goldberg was gone. Had he led them into a trap?

“Povre!” He struggled to rise and heard her scream again, but someone held him down.

“Get it! Quick!” he heard a man’s voice say in a powerful low tone that carried without shouting.

“Let her go!” Kent raged with anger and fear slamming through his body. He shoved the man holding him down aside violently. Two more dove on him. “Povre!”

“Kent!” he heard her sob.

Where was Ben? Kent twisted around, trying to break the strong grips holding him. Where the hell did he go? The dark shape he glimpsed nearby, slumped on the walk, answered that.

A fist-sized object moving at speed to an unerring impact with Kent’s solar plexus kept him from trying anything else for several critical moments.

* * * * *

HER ARMS PROTECTING HER
head, Povre huddled on the wet ground. The beasts stood growling over her. She felt a long hot mark on her arm oozing blood where one of the animals, in the attempt to bring her down, closed his teeth on the material of her jacket. She tried to reach inside the minds of the animals, but they didn’t respond. They had no wild instinct, no natural curiosity.

Kent was hurt. She knew that. Their physical union had created an even closer empathic bond between them, and she cursed her hindsight.

She heard the animals whine and snuffle over her and the heavy tread of human feet. She lunged for freedom but something cracked into her skull. Not hard enough to do any damage, but hard enough to render her dazed and powerless. Heavy material fell with a
fl-shuuuush!
over her body. A hard shove knocked her sideways and the heavy stuff closed, suffocating; imprisoning Povre in entangling folds.

She struggled as she felt herself lifted and carried. The material proved too tight, too close, and bound her freedom of movement. As frightened as she was, Povre thought that moment of nothing more than a kinship with a vegetarian burrito.

* * * * *

KENT FOUND HIMSELF ALONE
on the wet paving. Followed by a van and two other cars, a panel truck raced from the parking area. “You bastards! No! Povre!” he shouted. “Damn it! No!”

“Damn,” Ben said, pulling Kent’s attention toward him. The younger man pushed himself up. He held one hand to his temple and in the wet gleam of light from the parking lot and buildings, Kent saw red blood smeared over his face. “Damn it. Someone let the Feds get by. I didn’t think they’d have dogs.”

Kent grabbed Ben’s arm to support him as he swayed. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve had better days,” Ben said dryly, but after he picked up the crumpled remains of his glasses, he was the one to urge Kent toward the parking area.

“I hope you don’t really need those glasses. We don’t have time to glue them together.”

“No, I don’t really need them,” admitted Ben. “But that knock on the head will keep me from—”

“Using your psychic abilities?”

“Yeah. For a while. Hopefully a very little while. Damn it!” Ben blew out an explosive breath and stopped next to a small Toyota pickup. He handed Kent a set of keys. “You’re driving. I’ll need everything I have to concentrate past this artillery barrage inside my brain.”

Kent peeled out of the parking lot. Ben’s little truck would need a new set of tires by morning, but Kent was past caring. He only wanted to catch up with those jerks. There was only one way out of the campus from here, and he took it, knowing those who kidnapped Povre had to go that way as well.

* * * * *

AS SOON AS THE UNVENTILATED
cover was pulled from her face, Povre gulped in air and opened her eyes. She only half-stifled her scream as looming, faceless white figures bent over her. They were humans, encased head-to-toe in some sort of protective suits. Four of them. She was strapped down to something hard and cold inside a moving vehicle. She exerted her greatest effort to calm herself, to think in a rational, logical manner. Panic would get her nowhere.

Remember the rules, she thought, reaching for them now in desperation. At last, all those rules of the
“What To Do When Captured by Hostile Aliens”
part of her training for Exploration made sense. Povre, to the despair of her instructors, had been bored to death in the class. She was grateful for it now. Knowing she had something to fall back on until she got a better grasp of the situation was a comfort.

The first rule is: Don’t let them know I understand or speak their language.
She might have broken that one. She was sure they had heard her calling out to Kent. But she was quite sure all she had said was his name.

Don’t struggle, because that will only make them restrain or immobilize me even more and in such a manner I might never get free.

She felt sure she could wriggle loose from the straps across her body and limbs. Being double-jointed had its advantages. She only had to remain still and wait for an opening.

Look harmless and non-threatening, and if you think it might help, act scared witless.

Well, she didn’t know if it would help or not, but that last part she didn’t need to fake. Making her body limp, she allowed a wide-eyed, terrified expression to remain on her face.

“Must say it’s better looking than the ETs the pictures always show,” muttered one. “And I thought it was blue? Didn’t Jacobsen find
blue
hair? That’s what the dogs trailed from, wasn’t it?”

“Some kind of dye,” said another. Without a look or word to her he proceeded to cut the huge flannel shirt she wore and cast it aside. He pushed up the sleeve of the large T-shirt covering her upper body. “Yep. Dyed…see?” He took the cutting implements and snicked off a lock of her shaggy black hair.