GABRIEL (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 4) (13 page)

As her fingers touched his temple, she remembered that his jammer would prevent her from reading or sending him her thoughts. She grasped the gold earcuff and gave it a tug, but it held tight. Before she could figure out how to remove it, Gabriel's hand clamped over her wrist.

"What are you doing?" he asked in a normal, yet accusing voice that inferred he knew the answer.

Shara stuttered a moment before she could defend herself. "I thought you were in a coma. I was trying to help."

His disbelief was evident. "I told you I'm a light sleeper. All you have to do is speak to awaken me."

"Speak?
I did everything but drag you out into the snow. Up until a few minutes ago, you were terribly ill—burning up with a fever. Your eyes were all red, and you... you..." She was so angry, she couldn't find the words.

"I
what?"
he asked, obviously not at all convinced by her explanation.

"You
raped
me!"

"Hah! Now you've gone too far. I would never commit such a barbaric act. Why not just admit why you were trying to remove my jammer and forget trying to fabricate an excuse? Did you think you could plant a suggestion in my mind to go along with your scheme to change history?"

She couldn't believe he had no recollection of any of what had just happened, let alone accuse
her
of taking advantage of him. "I'm
not
making this up. You were feverish and having trouble breathing, and... and scratching yourself. Look at your arms."

He glanced down where she pointed, then at his erection. "I can't explain how I got the marks, but I certainly don't appear to have had a release in the last few minutes."

"That's nothing compared to what you looked like before! How do you think you got out of the pouch? And who do you think ripped my clothes off?" She grabbed the torn bodysuit and shook it in front of him but there was still a hint of doubt in his eyes. "And this," she said, discarding the last of her modesty and bringing his fingers to the inside of her thighs to discover the ultimate proof. "Do you see another man in this tent who could have left this behind when he was done using me?"

For several seconds he was dumbfounded. His gaze darted from one piece of evidence to another but he saw only clues, not answers. His last words to her before they went to sleep came back to him.
I've never forced myself on a female before. I'm not going to start with you.
Shaking his head in confusion, he muttered, "I really don't remember."

Shara stared into his eyes for several heartbeats then replied quietly. "I believe you. I thought it might have been some sort of virus picked up during the time-hop but I don't seem to be affected and I've never seen a virus leave the body so swiftly. You have a lot more practical experience than I have. Perhaps it would help if you saw how you behaved. If you will allow me to touch your mind, I'll show you my memory of exactly what happened."

He hesitated, always fearful of allowing anyone access to his mind, but if he had committed the offense the evidence implied, he needed to try every avenue to learn what caused him to behave so insanely and to prevent it from happening again. "All right. It's worth a try. Just so you understand, I will receive everything in your mind, unless you consciously block it from me. It's entirely up to you to control what you want to send. I'm incapable of separating new information from past memory. And please don't speak aloud while my jammer is off. It causes such echoes I can barely comprehend anything. Ready?" His hand lifted to his earcuff.

"Yes. I mean, no. Please get dressed first." Though he was no longer in a fully aroused state, his nude body was still a formidable distraction.

He complied, but could not resist one lingering look at the gifts nature had given her before she concealed them. His preference would have been to forget about clothing completely for the remainder of the time they were alone there. He had always found the various usages of clothing in different cultures of great interest, possibly because he had grown up in a group that had no need for it.

Then again, considering Shara's negative attitude toward coupling with him, it was probably best to put the only available barrier between them. Although he could never remember having any difficulty controlling his body's physical reaction to a female, dressed or undressed, subduing his arousal had become a full-time effort around Shara.

And he didn't like it one bit.

As soon as they were both dressed, they sat down across from each other and he removed the jammer. Pressing two fingers against his temple, it was instantly apparent to her how vulnerable he was. She could have easily wandered through his thoughts at will until she knew every detail of his life. The unlimited power he had handed her made up for his earlier distrust a hundred times over. She let him know she appreciated his faith in her and promised to be careful not to abuse it if at all possible.

Shara recreated the scene for him, from her point of view, from the time she awakened until she reached for his earcuff.

"Drek,"
he whispered as he replaced the jammer and she backed away from him. "I thought I was dreaming... only you came to me... you were willing."

Shara straightened her spine and looked at him warily. "Tell me about the dream."

He frowned. "I didn't even realize I'd had one until just then. It's not clear. There are only flashes. I was hot, too hot, and somehow I knew you could cool me. I called you, you came, and the fire went out. That's it. An apology is hardly adequate under the circumstances but—"

"I had a dream also," she interrupted and he stilled. As she described the images she had had, he began nodding his agreement.

"Yes, that was it," he exclaimed. "Fire and lava, explosions of volcanic ash. Until you described it, I forgot why I was so hot. The fever might have caused me to have such a dream, or the heat I was radiating might have triggered it for you, but as long as I was wearing the jammer, we shouldn't have shared the same dream. And I definitely should not have been so deeply unconscious that I would act it out without being at all cognizant of it afterward."

"It wasn't exactly the same dream. I wasn't aware that it was you calling me."

"All right. Any other variables to consider?"

As long as they were analyzing it as if it were a scientific experiment, she could separate this man from the one who had forced himself on her. "I wasn't having any physical difficulties, nor was I unaware of what was going on." She frowned and shook her head in dismay. "Something's very wrong here."

"Did the dream arouse you?" When she lowered her lashes, he prodded. "From what you showed me, I didn't have any problem entering your body. Were you prepared for me?" He had picked up a brief sensation of pleasure from her before she blocked it. "Shara, this is important."

She crossed her arms in front of her and met his gaze. She resented having to admit that her body had betrayed her again. "Yes. My body seemed to be well prepared. But that doesn't mean I find that sort of act exciting."

"I wasn't implying that you did—only that your body was responding in a manner opposite your conscious will, similar to what happened to me, but on a receptive rather than aggressive level."

Shara maintained her defensive pose. She had touched his mind and knew he hadn't purposely assaulted her, but she had also discovered that he didn't have the mental power to force a physical response from her. "So can we draw any conclusions as to what happened?"

"I've only once seen a man show the same symptoms and behavior that I exhibited and the cause couldn't possibly apply to me. Thus, your theory that I contracted a strange virus is probably the best one we have. I feel fine now. More than likely it was an isolated incident."

Shara wanted to believe that. The only problem was that it didn't explain her responsiveness. Why was she drawn to him against her will? Why did his nearness constantly cause her to behave in such abnormal ways? Since she met him, she'd been angrier, more frustrated and more passionate than she'd felt in many years.

It was all unfamiliar and terribly uncomfortable.

By the end of the day, they had completely dismantled and rebuilt the tempometer, analyzed and reanalyzed every alternative, then chilled it outside to determine if external temperature had any effect on the device, then did it all again. Their original hypothesis was proven when they saw that several of the tiny chips changed color and contracted slightly when exposed to the icy weather.

Now that they were as certain as they could be that the tempometer would work again as long as it was kept above freezing, they only had one problem to concentrate on—the destination time.

"We may not be able to figure it out before we have to use it," Gabriel said during their evening meal.

"We're not running out of food yet, are we? I thought you said we had a week—more, with the reduced rations you've been serving."

He shook his head. "It's not the food. It's the time period that concerns me. We've been working so hard on the tempometer, we both forgot about something you said to me before we got here. If you're right about the eddies and flows in time, why were we pulled to this particular moment of the Frozen Era?"

Her spoonful of chowder stopped an inch from her open mouth and she lowered the utensil back to her bowl. "The cataclysm."

With a slow nod, he confirmed her guess. "It's the only event of any importance in this time period. The asteroid could be on its collision course right this minute and we'd have no way of knowing it."

Shara's mind soared through the facts she knew. The Frozen Era came to an abrupt end when a sizable asteroid hit Norona, knocking it onto an orbit closer to its sun. The impact caused a series of earthquakes, floods and tidal waves that temporarily wiped out most of life on the planet's surface. Thousands of years passed before nature calmed and the life cycle resumed. The period after the cataclysm was the only time of Norona's history that would have been less hospitable to humanoids than the Frozen Era.

Before they went to sleep, Shara set the tempometer next to her in case they needed to leave in a hurry during the night. It was programmed to return them to the time they had left... she hoped. This time, exhaustion was not sufficient to allow her to sleep soundly. Too many problems were playing screwball in her head.

Thus, shortly before dawn, when she felt the temperature within the sleeping pouch begin to rise, she immediately tensed. Needing to confirm what she feared was happening, she turned to Gabriel and placed her palm on his back.

He was burning up!

Chapter 6

"Romulus!"

Aster's shout sounded in his mind a second before Rom heard her call him aloud and by then he was already on his way to their living room.

"Did you do this?" she asked, her voice a nervous pitch higher than usual. She was pointing at a chair with brown-and-beige-striped upholstery next to the fireplace.

Rom frowned. Her confusion was interfering with his ability to read her thoughts. "Did I do what?"

"Exchange the chairs," she replied with some annoyance.

He took another look at the chair then realized what she was referring to. Now he was as confused as she. "Wasn't that the material that was my first choice when we picked out that chair?"

"Yes. But I convinced you that the floral print would brighten up the room. Remember?"

Rom gave her a wink. "In fact, I have a very pleasant memory of precisely how you convinced me." He cut off his affectionate thought when he realized she was growing more agitated. "Wait a minute. You think I exchanged the chairs?"

Aster threw her hands up, knowing he had done no such thing but grasping for a satisfactory explanation. "Last night when we went to bed, the floral chair was here. Now the striped one is in its place. Even if I went so far as to suppose Roman was playing a trick on us, he didn't know that the striped upholstery was your preference. But how else could it have gotten in here during the night and the floral chair taken away?"

Before Rom could formulate a guess, their son opened the front door, slammed it behind him and stood there glowering with his hands fisted on his hips.

"You're not going to believe this!" he exclaimed.

"What's the matter?" Aster asked, momentarily setting aside her questions about the chair.