Parallel Heat (13 page)

‘‘Tell me what you’re hiding,’’ she persisted. ‘‘I need to know.’’ There was anguish in her voice that almost leveled him to his knees.

He drew in a shaky breath. ‘‘My . . . cycle.’’ He couldn’t bear to tell her the rest.

She began to laugh, a nervous, explosive sound. ‘‘Is that what this is about? Again? We’ve already talked about this, a bunch of times. I know it started for you when we bonded—’’

‘‘It’s over,’’ he told her bluntly. ‘‘My mating season has ended before it even began.’’

‘‘That can’t be true!’’ she insisted, shaking her head in stunned disbelief. ‘‘Last night—’’

‘‘Was probably the best I’m capable of,’’ he explained hoarsely, gathering both of her hands into his own. ‘‘I’ve not cycled in all my thirty years, Kelse. I told you so, you know it. Something sparked in me after our mating and marriage, yes, but . . . with the turmoil of last night’s events, it seems to have snuffed out the urges altogether.’’

‘‘But you want me!’’ She clutched at his arms in desperation. ‘‘Just now, I felt how much you want me. This is insane.’’

He dropped his head, feeling his eyes sting with emotion. ‘‘I wish I were different, Kelse. I wish I were wrong.’’

‘‘I refuse to accept this.’’ She flung herself into his arms, burrowing against him. ‘‘Not without a fight. I felt what happened in you last night—I know what was starting.’’

‘‘Perhaps I’ve given you a child already,’’ he half whispered against the top of her head, but his voice sounded as dull as the words did to his heart.

She clung to him hard. ‘‘I won’t give up, not like this.’’

He fought the urge to cry. If there was any single thing he ached for in all the universe, it was to make this woman happy. To give her a full life, children, family. A home. Gods, he wanted her to have it all; and he wanted to have it all with her. ‘‘Then, love, I shan’t give up either,’’ he lied. His heart pounded a dull, lifeless beat inside his chest.

She pulled apart from him, her eyes bright and alert. ‘‘You can talk to Thea,’’ she suggested, full of excited enthusiasm. ‘‘That’s it, she can totally advise you. I mean, you’ve told me she cycles—and a lot, right? Then you need to ask her for help and advice.’’

He grimaced. Kelsey was so intent on solving their crisis that she wasn’t thinking through the situation properly. ‘‘I couldn’t hurt Thea that way.’’

Kelsey shook her head, over and over, as if she could deny their destiny—could prevent it from happening. ‘‘But she could help.’’

‘‘I’ll think about it. Right now we have other issues to address,’’ he reminded her, reaching for the letter. ‘‘Like whether I can truly trust this Marco. According to his letter, he betrayed us a first time, and I need to make my decision about his presence in this camp.’’

Chapter Eight

Language Specialist Hope Harper stared at her computer screen, luminous in the dungeonlike darkness of her work cubicle, and blinked. Retrieving her eyeglasses from atop her head, she leaned in closer, needing to verify that her eyes hadn’t misled her once again. Granted, she’d been translating intercepts for the past few days with hardly a break except to catch a few hours of sleep, but this latest batch seemed highly irregular. Working in linguistics for the FBI she was accustomed to unusual data, to unrecognizable dialects or obscure languages. But these new intercepts were far more disturbing than any they’d had her transcribe before.

For months they’d had her working with the counterterrorism unit, code-breaking the same unknown language, running it through filters and programs and all sorts of data interpretation. Security had briefed her in so that she had the clearance for what she was doing, but she wondered why, despite that fact, they were keeping her on a need-to-know basis, telling her almost nothing about the language itself. Then, in the past weeks, her superiors had urged her to go deeper, further and further into her analysis until she could practically speak the strange language in her sleep—and until she’d finally become convinced as to the truth of what she was actually dealing with.
Lost dialect my ass,
she thought, adjusting her Bose headphones, listening for perhaps the thousandth time to the man known sometimes as Jared, other times as J’Areshkadau, rattle off instructions and other directives in his native tongue.

The language was totally alien, not any undiscovered eastern European dialect as they had suggested to her—classic cover story. Her higher-ups didn’t say it and they didn’t have to. She was no idiot, and listening to the latest cassette tape—an aerial transmission intercepted by the Air Force—only confirmed one fact: The people they were tailing were into some serious, heavy stuff. But it wasn’t her job to question or interpret, at least not in this case, only to analyze data. She had wondered, too, why they hadn’t simply sent the tapes off to headquarters; after all, they had an entire language team there in DC. Surely someone would have been better equipped to handle the case. But they’d chosen her. For whatever bizarre, inexplicable reason, she was the one with the job.

In the past ten days the heat surrounding the case had been turned up considerably. More military intercepts had been sent in to the Denver office where she worked, and although she wasn’t certain, she believed there had been some kind of crash over in the Yellowstone area of Wyoming. She’d heard rumblings to that effect within the counterterrorism unit, though she was being kept in the dark by her superiors. She couldn’t shake the sense that there was a connection.

But at least she had an inside track on information. Her twin brother Chris was the lone special agent manning the Jackson, Wyoming, office, in charge of more than twenty-five thousand square miles of backwoods territory. Usually he focused on bank robbery, the occasional Al Qaeda suspect, violent crimes—but if there’d been a crash in Yellowstone he’d be right in the thick of things. That’s why she’d been pestering him for days trying to get more details. So far, he’d kept quiet except to indicate through slight voice inflections that she was onto something with the link between the crash and her case. But that was the way with them; as children, they’d shared their own private language, often not even needing to exchange a word aloud. They still possessed their intuitive understanding, even now, well into adulthood. Her family had laughed at their ‘‘twintuition,’’ as they called it; as adults it sometimes still served them well.

Leaning forward in her chair, she began typing an e-mail to Chris.

 
That ought to get a response, she thought with a mischievous grin. Chris smothered her like a doting father, and it always ticked him off that she continued to snowboard despite her illness and, now, the ever-increasing problems with her eyesight. But she needed to hear his take on recent events, and the only way to get that out of him was in person over a few beers.

Almost immediately a reply appeared in her in-box, Chris practically shouting at her across cyberspace that she was insane and going to get herself killed one of these days. Then after his cyber-rant he added much more pleasantly that he’d love to see her. She picked up the phone and dialed his number at the Jackson FBI office.

 
Marco pulled his Chevy truck up to the main cabin, his lungs barely able to fill with oxygen. It seemed he’d begun to hold his breath eight miles back down the road. He hadn’t seen Thea again since she’d left his room last night, but it hardly meant he hadn’t thought of her. She crowded his brain with images and memories and feelings, all of them as alien as they were familiar.

Sabrina, riding at his side in silence, had been right that his need to follow Jared, to serve at his side, wasn’t the only thing luring him back to the compound. Thea Haven possessed a mystic’s power. She had lain with him, in his bed—he, a ridiculously underexperienced virgin—tantalizing him to the far edge of his self-control. In that moment, he’d known what it would be to make love to Thea, over and over, tumbling in her arms, inhaling her wildflower scent, pushing her lithe, petite body beneath his own massive one.

Did he remember making love to her in some other lifetime? Not exactly, but the memory-thoughts were so fresh, so powerful, that he had no way of determining what they’d actually experienced together and what might be glimpses of their future. His hands tightened around the steering wheel, trembling against his will.

Beside him Sabrina sat up tall in her seat. ‘‘So this is it,’’ she said, watching as three soldiers filed out of the cabin and toward their vehicle. She turned to him curiously as the men raised their weapons, gesturing for them to remain in the Chevy.

‘‘I didn’t say he trusted me yet.’’ Marco held up both hands as the soldiers approached the vehicle. ‘‘But he will.’’

Their doors were opened simultaneously, and Marco was wrangled outside roughly, then pressed face-first against the side of the Suburban. Hands frisked him, confirming that he was unarmed, and he endured the entire process patiently. Jared would come to trust him—all of the Madjin—soon enough.

 
‘‘The main compound is connected to Base Ten via an elevator-shaft system,’’ Thea explained to Marco as they stepped into the corridor that led to the transport loft. She was keenly aware of his body near to hers, just behind her, and rued once again that she had somehow been tapped to give him a tour of their base facility. ‘‘We chose this location because of its position atop an old mining shaft. We installed a state-of-the-art elevator system, easily converting the former structure to suit our needs.’’

Arriving at the elevator, she pressed the panel. Beside her Marco listened, nodding dutifully, but she had the distinct impression he wasn’t hearing a word she said. When the lift arrived, the doors slid open noiselessly and they stepped inside. Staring up at the lit panel that indicated the ten levels they had to descend, she struggled to keep her body in check. Being so near to Marco—and now in such confined quarters—was almost more than she could bear.

Reaching around her, he slammed his hand against the panel, causing the elevator to stop middescent.

‘‘What are you doing?’’ she demanded hotly.

‘‘This.’’ He cupped her shoulders in his large hands, backing her against the elevator wall. His massive body pushed against hers; his hot breath fanned her cheek. ‘‘And this,’’ he murmured, reaching for both of her hands. Their fingers threaded together as if they were one. Slowly, he lifted her hands over her head, pinning them against the wall. The position caused her full breasts to strain within her uniform top. With his knee, he spread her thighs apart. From top to bottom, he’d laid her bare.

She could hardly breathe and he just stood there, sliding his gaze up and down her very exposed body. ‘‘I like you like this,’’ he whispered huskily, licking his lips. ‘‘You belong this way.’’

‘‘Looking like you’re about to take me?’’ she gasped, and he spread her hands a bit wider over her head, tightening his grip on her.

‘‘Yes,’’ he agreed thickly, leaning his dark head closer until she noticed the damp, curling hairs along his nape. From the snow, she thought, but then she noticed his heavy breathing and a thin sheen of perspiration on his forehead. ‘‘I want to take you,’’ he said. He worked his knee between her thighs, up and down, massaging her until she felt her panties grow damp.

‘‘Last night you said we couldn’t be together,’’ she ground out, gasping. ‘‘Now?’’

‘‘Now?’’ He released her hands, letting them fall to her side, and began unbuttoning her uniform top. ‘‘I want
this
now.’’ He growled as her shirt fell open.

‘‘But you told me it’s forbidden.’’

‘‘It is—in the worst possible way.’’

With his fingertips, he slowly stroked both of her nipples, watching as they puckered beneath the silken material of her bra. Thea snapped her head toward the elevator panel. ‘‘Someone will notice—they might send an engineer, thinking we’re stuck.’’

He tracked with her, looking at the panel, then turned back and, in one smooth gesture, covered her mouth with his own. She opened to him, unable to resist, and his rough tongue darted inside her mouth, seeking her out. His breathing became heavier, layered atop a low, keening growl—the sound of a Refarian male at his most aroused. She closed her arms around his neck, threading her hands through his silky black hair, then rubbing them lower down his back, feeling every line of his powerfully muscled shoulders and back. He had the body of a god—sleek, massive, seductive.

She thrust her hips against him, and in turn he wedged his hard thigh firmly between her legs. They began to rock together, he steadying her hips beneath his palms, working the motion of their two bodies; she edgier, perhaps more eager. So eager that she seemed to rush ahead of the motion he created, unable to hold back. She heard a rumble of his laughter, and he stilled her hips—forcing them back against the elevator wall. ‘‘Slow down, baby. Slow.’’

She gasped, sucked in air, tried to still her heart. He stroked a lock of loose hair back from her eyes, slipping it between his fingers like a caress. ‘‘You have such beautiful hair.’’ He sighed. ‘‘So rare and gold—I’d never even seen this color before I got to this planet.’’ He lifted the lock to his lips and, closing his eyes, kissed the ends ever so slowly. Thea felt the dampness between her legs grow hotter.

‘‘I-I’m from the border lands—you probably never went there as a boy.’’

‘‘I never left Thearnsk,’’ he agreed, still stroking her hair, working her ponytail loose until the curling, thick locks fell to shoulder length.

He sucked in a breath. ‘‘I love you with your hair down,’’ he said, his black eyes widening.

She felt her face flush hot and stared at the far wall of the elevator. ‘‘I wear it back because of work.’’

‘‘You shouldn’t.’’ He gathered handfuls of it, kneading it, then leaned in close and began to sniff. Her hair, her neck, her chest—gods help her, her breasts! Heatedly, he growled his pleasure, slipping her bra off of her shoulders until at last his lips made contact with one bare, exposed nipple. Drawing it into his mouth, he cupped the rest of her breast within his rough palm. The feel of his skin against hers, his warm mouth over her cool nipple, caused Thea to arch her back, her own body quaking with hot, wet tremors. She slapped her open palm against the wall, tamping down her overpowering desire to scream Marco’s name at the top of her voice.