Season of Strangers (22 page)

His low, gruff chuckle cut her off. “I'm fine, love. Believe me. I have never felt better in my life.” He moved then, slowly, sensuously, easing his hard length out then thrusting deeply back in. Hot wet kisses followed, waves of heat washed over her, and a sweet piercing ache settled low in her belly.

She was burning inside, on fire with need and wanting. Dear God, she couldn't get enough of him. She clung to his shoulders, arched upward to meet each of his thrusts, and felt his hand slide under her bottom to lift her and drive himself more deeply inside. Then he was pounding into her, riding her with a deep thrust and drag, carrying her toward the pleasure she craved. She could feel him straining, feel the flexing of his buttocks as he drove himself inside, then she was slipping over the edge, tasting the hot sweet spirals of climax.

Crying his name, Julie clung to him, trying to survive the fierce onslaught of passion. Several more pounding thrusts and Patrick's tall frame went rigid. He clenched his teeth, making the muscles stand out on his neck, threw back his head, and shuddered with his own massive release.

Neither of them spoke. Patrick slumped on top of her, his lean, solid body covered by a sheen of perspiration. Julie smoothed back the damp hair clinging to his forehead, pressed a soft kiss against his cheek.

“My God,” he whispered with something close to awe.

Julie knew exactly what he meant. This time she was the one who laughed. “I swear, Patrick, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were new at this.” His muscles went tense. “Not that it wasn't completely wonderful…
you
were wonderful, Patrick.”

He relaxed then, wedging himself beside her on the couch. Sliding an arm around her, he pulled her back against his chest. “It was better than wonderful. It was incredible.” He shifted a little so he could see into her face. “And in a way I
am
new at this. Everything in my life is new. I haven't made love to a woman since I got out of the hospital.”

She looked up at him. “Really?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Julie pressed a finger against his lips. “Don't say that, not even kidding. I'll never forget the way I felt when I saw you lying on that sidewalk. I never want to feel that way again.”

Patrick said nothing, but a dark look crept into his features. Julie wondered what he was thinking and a shadow of fear moved through her. It was as if he felt it, too, for he dragged her beneath him and began to kiss her again, press hot sweet kisses along her throat and shoulders. He stroked her breasts and the plump, slick passage between her legs, then sheathed himself and slid deeply inside her again.

He took her with fiery need, yet his kiss was so achingly sweet tears burned her eyes. She prayed she had done the right thing in giving herself to him. Only time would tell.

Julie wondered what tomorrow would bring.

A
t four o'clock in the morning, Val's eyes snapped open. He lay next to Julie in his king-sized bed, wide-awake. Where he came from, there was no such thing as sleep; they had evolved from the need for sleep more than ten thousand years ago. But his body here on Earth demanded it in order to stay healthy.

He had learned to sleep for a couple of hours, a normal sleep cycle, but when the cycle ended, instead of falling into a consecutive period of sleep as most people did, he usually awakened. He would pad around the house for a while, read, or write in his journal, then return to bed and try to get another two hours of rest. Sleeping that way, in short intensive cycles, six hours was enough, but the task took maximum effort. It was a battle he constantly waged. Like eating Earth food, it was a fight he couldn't afford to lose.

Stretching his long legs out beneath the sheet, Val lay back against the pillow. Julie's red hair curled just inches away from his nose. He reached over and brushed a soft strand away from her cheek, then pressed a light kiss on her temple, thinking he had probably slept more soundly tonight than he had since his arrival. Recalling the reason, an erotic tremor slid through him, settling low in his groin.

His mind replayed the incredible experience he had shared with Julie, more intense than he could have imagined. Their bonding had been so powerful, so consuming, there were times he wasn't sure he would survive it. It was Julie's encouragement that had overcome his fears and enabled him to continue. In the end, with Patrick's memories to guide him, they had both attained unimaginable pleasure, a feeling so new, so acute Val had thought he might actually come apart.

He smiled as he remembered, his body beginning a now familiar pulsing, a steady throbbing heat that stirred his arousal and made him go rock-hard.

He wanted her again. His memory said it wasn't surprising. Patrick's virility, combined with the newness of the experience and Val's own heretofore unexplored sexuality, set up a hunger that left him burning with desire for her. He would get up for a while, then wake her when he returned, take her again as soon as he came back to the bedroom.

His strides grew longer on the way to his study. He closed the door, picked up his apartment keys from the top of his black teakwood desk, silenced their soft jangling, bent and unlocked the bottom drawer he always kept carefully closed. Inside were some of Patrick's personal files. Beneath them, Val kept his journal, as well as the small communications device he usually carried with him. Tonight, with Julie in the apartment, he had locked it away in here.

He picked up the device, flipped it open and saw, to his surprise, the small red light was on. Glancing toward the door to be sure he had closed it tightly, he responded to the call and discovered he was being summoned immediately to the
Ansor
for a meeting with his superiors.

He keyed in his response.
Must wait at least another six Earth hours.
Time enough to get Julie up and dressed and returned to her home. For some odd reason, he found the notion of her departure disturbing.

A new row of symbols appeared.
Request your arrival now, Commander
.

He thought of Julie, his mission, and what he had learned of his subject that night.
Not possible
, he put in.
Request six-hour delay
.

The screen remained blank a few seconds longer than before.
Six hours confirmed.
The
Ansor
signed off and the powerful device went dark.

Val turned off the instrument and locked it in the drawer. The transfer to his ship would be made from his apartment at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, though his human form would remain behind in a state of suspended sleep. With luck, he would be back in time for lunch. He smiled to think what Julie might have to say about the speed of his upcoming journey.

 

Brian Heraldson listened to the empty ringing at the opposite end of his cell phone, finally gave up and ended the call. Damn, he knew she was there. He would give her another hour to cool off, then dial her number again. If she didn't answer the next time, he would drive over there and make her let him in.

He grumbled something at that. Not exactly a gentle bedside manner. More like an aggressive alpha male determined to resolve a conflict with his woman, a thought that sat no better that the first. Damn, Laura Ferris was getting under his skin and he didn't like it one bit. He didn't like the hot rush of desire he felt whenever he looked at her, and he didn't like the fact that he was worried about her.

He didn't like the argument they'd had any better. A discussion that had started over lunch the day after he had driven her home from Long Beach, an argument about her attendance at Winters's alien abduction group that had turned into a shouting match and wound up with Laura slamming her apartment door in his face.

For God's sake, he was supposed to be a trained psychiatrist. Instead he had reacted like a worried spouse. Well, he wasn't her husband, but the worried part was correct. And on a far too personal level. Thank God, he'd been smart enough to end his professional association with her.

He thought about the fight they'd had, escalating the moment they left the intimate Venice Beach restaurant and continuing all the way to her apartment. “It has to be something else,” he'd said. “There are no such things as aliens.”

“You're the one who suggested I see Dr. Winters.”

“I know, but that was before I heard those supposed
abductees
talking.”

“Those people are telling the truth.”

“The truth as they see it. But the fact is, there are at least a dozen explanations—we'll find the one that fits and work this thing out.”

“All your so-called explanations add up to the fact that I'm crazy.”

“I never said that.”

“Delusional. Hallucinatory. Paranoid—maybe even schizophrenic—that's your answer to this. God, I couldn't even say that word until this happened.”

“You're having emotional problems. That doesn't mean you're crazy.”

“I'm
not
having emotional problems. I was abducted, just like Robert Stringer and the rest of the people in that group.”

“Matthew Goldman is schizophrenic.”

“All right, all right, not him. But the others have all been victims. Whether you believe it or not, it happened. And you know what else?”

“What?”

She stood in front of him in the living room, her hands set with determination on her hips. “I think my sister was there, too. In the back of my mind, I remember seeing her there. How do you like that?”

He didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit. “My friend Aaron Newburg is a competent psychiatrist. More than competent, and he'll keep an open mind. Promise me you'll see him.”

“Go home, Brian.”

“Promise me,” he said, backing toward the front door Laura had opened.

“I'm not promising anything. I'm going back to Dr. Winters's group. I'm going to hear what the others have to say. That is the only promise I'm making.” She backed him out on the porch. “Goodbye, Brian.”

“Damn it, wait—” But the door slammed solidly in his face and that was the last conversation they'd had.

Now, sitting at the desk in his office, Brian picked up his coffee cup, found it cold and full of thick black dregs, and set it back down on his desk. Laura Ferris had him spinning in circles. He didn't like it, but he couldn't seem to stop.

Now she was dragging her sister into this whole unbelievable mess. He vowed not to mention it to Julie and hoped Laura would have sense enough to forget it.

 

Hovering twenty-five miles above the surface of the Earth, the
Ansor
's green-and-red sensor lights flashed in the rim of its silver shell. It was disk-shaped with the exception of a rounded surface that rose at the top, rather like a bowl turned upside down. It was difficult to see in the daytime, and often mistaken for a satellite or passing aircraft at night. Inside the ship, three hundred crewmen attended their myriad duties, keeping the ship operational and on course.

In the science wing, Commander Val Zarkazian stood at the end of a long rectangular table, its clear, hard surface allowing him to see through to the spongy dark blue floor. Around him all ten members of the ship's High Council had come together to hear his progress report and discuss the observations he had made during his time thus far on Earth.

Val glanced down at the journal resting in front of him on the table. Reviewing the thoughts he had transcribed each day, he finished a brief summary of what had transpired to date, excluding the mating ritual, which he wasn't yet prepared to discuss, then sat down to an extensive round of questions. By the time his superiors had finished, he was beginning to tire, and becoming more and more uneasy about the direction the meeting was taking.

One of the ministers spoke up from the far end of the table, his voice vibrating with disapproval. “We appreciate your thoroughness, Commander. You've presented an interesting array of observations, but a study of your surroundings was only your secondary assignment. Your primary task was to study the female subject Julie Elizabeth Ferris. What you have told us so far—what all of this rhetoric comes down to, is that you have gained little more insight into the human in question than you knew before.”

“On the contrary,” Val argued. “I believe I've made great strides in understanding the subject, as well as others of her species. These people, though extremely primitive by our standards, are far more complex than we at first imagined. As I mentioned in my report, they are creatures of intense emotion—a subject Torillians understand only in the abstract. More and more, I'm coming to believe it is these emotions, in one form or another, they use to resist the probe.”

“Emotion…” Calas Panidyne, his immediate superior and head of the council, ran the word distastefully over his lips. “Feelings are not unknown to us, Commander. Torillians experience pleasure and displeasure, happiness and unhappiness. I can't see how human emotions—”

“It is the degree of emotion they experience, sir, that makes them so different. Where our spectrum of feelings might be likened to gently rising hills and shallow valleys, theirs would be more closely equated to towering peaks and nearly bottomless pits. They feel things with such intensity it colors every thought, every reaction, every response they make.”

“Even if emotion is the key,” said one of the female members of the council, “that still doesn't tell us what sort of emotion accounts for the resistance presented by the Ferris female and others like her.”

“I suggest we bring the subject in for more testing,” the minister said to the group. “Every hour Commander Zarkazian remains on the surface heightens his element of risk. Unification is still in the experimental stages. We don't know what side effects might occur once the commander is permanently back aboard. Testing the woman—”

“No!” The negative cracked across the table like a meteor hurling through space. Even Val was stunned by the force with which he had spoken. He was angry, he realized, knowing now what had caused the unexpected outburst. Anger had no place on the
Ansor
. It was an emotion that did not exist on Toril, hadn't for ten thousand years. He couldn't be angry, he told himself. Only Patrick Donovan could do that and Patrick wasn't there.

Val forced himself under control and prayed his associates would not suspect what had just occurred.

“What I meant to say is that finding answers is never easy. It is bound to take some time. Every day I encounter vast amounts of useful information. In a few more Earth months—”

“Weeks, Commander.” Panidyne studied him with fathomless dark eyes. “This study was never designed to be a long-term project. We were hoping a brief interlude might help us resolve a problem that has arisen a number of times and assist in ending any further loss of life. However, if your observations cannot give us what we need, we shall be forced to resume our tests.”

Val's mouth felt dry. The thought of Julie being returned to the
Ansor
, of her continued resistance and the near certainty of her death, was enough to make him sick.

“Perhaps you're right,” he conceded, not meaning a word of it. “However, in the time remaining, I am convinced I'll be able to find the answers we need. Assuming that is the case, there'll be no need to subject the woman to further examination.”

Panidyne smiled blandly. “That would certainly be the preferable solution.”

Val forced himself to return the emotionless smile. “Then you may count on it, sir. Which means the sooner I'm back at my task, the better the odds for success. If the council has no more questions, perhaps I might be excused to return to my work.”

“Does anyone have anything else to add before we end our session?” Panidyne asked.

At the negative mumble from the group, Panidyne turned in his direction and excused Val from the meeting. Fifteen minutes later, he was gone from the
Ansor
and back in his penthouse apartment. He was exhausted, more so than he would have expected, and yet adrenaline pumped through his veins.