DREAM WARRIORS

By

Angelique Anjou

© copyright by Angelique Anjou, July 2004
cover art by Jenny Dixon
ISBN 1-58608-491-7
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com

Chapter One

"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is the pilot of the private cruiser Laurel-Lynn M4J679. I’ve just passed through a micro meteor shower in quadrant LBT13009 in the Horseshoe Nebula and have experienced structural damage."

Laurel Conyers switched off the microphone while she waited to see if anyone would pick up the signal. Seeing that she’d dropped within viewing distance of the planet below her, she activated the craft’s stealth mode. There was no sense in scaring the shit out of the natives.

Her radio squawked as it picked up a counter transmission. She turned it on again and started panting and gasping.

"Mayday! Mayday! This is the pilot…." She repeated the previous message.

"Laurel-Lynn M4J679--this is Station O2412 on the outer rim. What’s your status?"

Laurel frowned, dropping a little lower as she saw a land mass appear in her viewing port. "Station O2412--This is Laurel-Lynn M4J679. I’m hemorrhaging air. The rudder is sluggish. Some computer malfunction. I’m going to have to set it down for repairs. Copy?"

"Laurel-Lynn M4J679, this is Station O2412. You are in restricted space. I repeat, you are in restricted space. Can you make it to the next system?"

"Negative. I’m going to have to find something closer--really close," Laurel said, panting into the microphone for a little added drama before she turned it off and leaned forward in her seat. A smile curled her lips. There was a village just below her. Pulling the cruiser in a wide turn, she headed back for another look, dropping a little lower.

"Private cruiser Laurel-Lynn M4J679, this is Station O2412. You are not authorized to land in that sector. I repeat, you are not authorized to land in that sector."

Laurel activated her microphone again. "Just what part of ‘I’m fucking crashing’ do you not understand, Station O2412?"

As she did her second fly by, she saw that it was a good sized city. In the center was a large building she decided was probably a temple--primitives were always big on worshipping gods. There were two smaller buildings on either side of the ‘temple’ which she figured must be gathering places of some sort, since they looked to be too big to be a single family dwelling. Unless they were something like apartments? The streets were laid out in a perfect grid, forming squares. Dwellings nestled shoulder to shoulder around the squares.

It looked perfect to her--not too big, but big enough to have a reasonably good sized population, she decided. She began looking for a clearing where she could land her craft.

"Laurel-Lynn M4J679 this is Station O2412, the only planet in that system with breathable air is the fourth planet from the star, NY3410--primitive society, believed to be hostile, protected species. Can you make repairs in space?"

"Negative, Station O2412. Guess I’m just going to have to take my chances with the barbarians. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple of weeks, tops. I’ll check back when I’ve had time to look everything over. Laurel-Lynn M4J679 out."

Really! All the panting and gasping and acting fearful was starting to make her head swim.

Switching off the radio, Laurel concentrated on the terrain below. It was pretty thick with vegetation--no bare spots. "Shit. I’m just going to have to make a hole."

After checking the distance from the village, she targeted a spot near a small stream of water, did a life form scan and hit it with a laser beam when she saw there was no higher life forms within the immediate vicinity. The beam cut a twenty foot diameter swath through the vegetation, clearing it to the dirt. Satisfied, she dropped her cruiser into the ‘hole’ she’d made.

When the onboard computer informed her that the craft had landed, she shut everything down, threw off her safety belts and moved to the viewing ports. A shiver of delight went through her. "I’m going to have the best damned thesis that University has ever set eyes on!" she said gleefully.

Unfortunately, she only had a couple of weeks, tops, to gather her data. Less than that if there was a confederation cruiser close enough to do a fly by and check her story out.

With that thought, Laurel drew her laser pistol from the holster and studied the interior of the cruiser carefully, trying to decide where to put the holes. Fortunately, it occurred to her before she’d done it that micro meteors would have struck outside to in, not vice versa. Sighing, she opened the hatch and lowered the gang plank.

The scent of vegetation that struck her as the door slid open was nearly overwhelming. The smell of flowers, and fruit, dead things, rotting vegetation--and burned vegetation, assaulted her in a cacophony of smells.

"This is going to take some getting used to," she muttered. "Who’d have thought plants would smell?" The plants on the space station didn’t seem to have that much smell, but maybe it was because there weren’t nearly so many plants so close together?

Or, maybe it was the dirt?

Or the animals?

Shrugging, she went down the gang plank and picked her way around the craft carefully, studying the ship speculatively. She really hated having to put holes in it, but the enforcers of the Confederation Policing Agency were bound to check her ship to see if she’d made up her ‘emergency’ landing. Sighing, she moved around to the rudder and pull a couple of half inch holes in it, scattered a couple on the fins in an artful splash and then, after studying the cockpit carefully for some time, placed two in the main cabin.

When she’d finished, she went inside to check the damage. "Well fuck! Wouldn’t you know it! I hit the damned radio!"

Now they were going to be wondering how she’d managed to call for help. "Fuck it!" she muttered irritably. She could fix it later. She’d just have to tell them she’d had to patch the radio up before she radioed in her distress call, but she couldn’t get the other holes plugged.

That would work.

She was probably going to have to put a few more holes in the ship before she left though.

Fortunately, she had brought plenty of supplies for repairs, just in case she met up with an accident on her trip to the Perrsons Star System, which just happened to make it necessary for her to pass right by the HS Nebula.

Shoving her pistol into her holster, she went to her locker and started pulling her instruments out and checking them.

First things first--she was going to have to get close enough to pick up speech with her translator before it could start analyzing the language. Once she had enough input, though, she’d be able to tell what they were talking about and then she could start taking notes on their social order, religious practices, mating rituals and so forth.

This was just sooooo exciting! She was going to be the first, the only, person to study the primitives of NY3410!

* * * *

Faine D’Arten narrowed his eyes as he sensed the strange disturbance in the sky above the village once more. When he focused upon it, he saw that it was almost cylindrical in shape--like a curved piece of the sky. Frowning, he followed it with his gaze until he determined the direction of its path and set off through the jungle. There he followed it by the disturbance it created in the tops of the trees. He was nearing the stream when he saw a bright light appear in the forest before him. The vegetation simply turned to ash before his eyes.

His expression hardened. He had known it must be one of the star people. They were forbidden to visit his world, but he had seen the evidence of their trespass before.

Grimly, he found a position to watch and waited to see if he could determine what the intruder had come for.

As the strange object began to settle toward the ground, it ceased to look like a piece of the sky and took on the look of the jungle surrounding it. If he had not known it was there, he might have overlooked it. It did not look just the same. The images were wavery--like when heat danced upon the horizon, but unless one were specifically searching for it, the disguise was good enough to fool most.

Of course the desecration of the forest would have been a strong indication that something was not as it should be.

When he heard a faint sound that seemed to indicate activity, he moved around the perimeter for a better look. A hole had opened in the side of the object. His heart slammed against his ribs as he saw the creature that appeared in the opening.

It was the most beautiful being he had ever set eyes upon, with hair the color of the sun and pale, golden skin. His gaze dropped to its chest. When he saw that it was female a sense of desire and possessiveness moved over him.

Mesmerized, he watched the bounce and sway of her breasts as she walked down the board that led to the ground, bringing her closer so that he could see he hadn’t just imagined how beautiful she was. She wore some strange garment that covered most of her body, but it conformed to her shape and he could see that her body was as beautifully formed as her features. Her hair, drawn back tightly from her face and worn tied together high on the back of her head, swung as she walked, catching sunlight within it that sparkled like the yellow metal the women of his people were so fond of adorning themselves with.

He had no desire to adorn his body with anything but hers, he thought, stalking her as she moved around the strange object, watching curiously as she pulled a stick from a carrier along her hip. His eyes widened when light shot from the stick--straight into the object that had carried her to his world.

A smile curled her lips as she studied what she had done and then she turned and went inside once more.

Puzzled, he settled down to wait until she came out once more, dividing half his mind between trying to understand what she had done and why she had done it, and the other half in trying to decide how best to capture her.

The weapon--it had to be a weapon--would be almost as good a prize as the female herself, but he had no desire to discover what it would do to his body when something much like it had reduced the forest to ash.

He was glad he had not ignored the strange dream vision that he had had.

He was glad he had waited to take a wife.

Chapter Two

The sun had already begun to sink toward the tops of the trees by the time Laurel had everything organized. She hesitated on the gang plank, wondering if she should just wait until the following morning before she made her first excursion to the village. Time was something she didn’t have much of, however.

It was really irritating, though, to be at the mercy of nature. She’d never thought it would be so inconvenient.

Shrugging, she went back inside and added a portable light to her bag. When she’d reached the ground, she turned and aimed the remote toward the controls for the gang plank and the door, waiting until the ship was secure, and then dropped the remote into her bag and pulled her communicator out, pulling up a map of the area, frowning in concentration as she carefully oriented her current position with the one the computer had mapped for the village.

It was only a fifteen minute walk according to the computer’s calculations.

Shifting her pack to a more comfortable position on her back, she struck off through the dense jungle. Twenty minutes later, huffing for breath--sweating!--she stopped to examine the map again.

According to the map, she was only three quarters of the way there. "Computer, calculate the walk according to the current terrain," she said testily.

"Thirty minutes."

"Well, for chrissake! Couldn’t you have done that in the first place?" she snapped.

"You told me to calculate on the distance."

"Explain to me why I bothered to pay extra for artificial intelligence--because if I was going to have to rely on myself anyway, I could have saved that money!"

"You should be aware that you are within hearing distance of the barbarians if you continue to speak in a loud tone of voice," the computer said warningly.

Laurel glared at the tiny viewing screen and shoved it into her pack.

There was a slight rise at the edge of the village along the tree line. As soon as Laurel began to hear sounds indicating that she was nearing it, she crouched down and began to move more cautiously. Finally, she reached the rise. Below her, she could see the natives moving about. Settling on her belly, she pulled the pack from her shoulder and dragged her translator out. When she’d adjusted it to maximum range, she set it carefully on the ground and activated her recorder.

"I have now reached the outskirts of the village of the barbarians. Currently, it appears that they are making piles with limbs of vegetation and setting fire to them. I’m not certain what the purpose of this is, but I think they might use them for light since it’s late evening now and growing dark," she whispered into the tiny microphone.

Lifting slightly away from the ground, she craned her neck to see a little better. "The primitives do not appear to wear clothing of any kind--perhaps because this stinking planet feels like a fucking sauna--wait! I see a female now. Her genitals are covered by some sort of garment. It looks like some kind of woven natural fibers--so they have some manufacturing capabilities. This garment is fastened around her hips and looks like a long rectangle, which leaves her thighs bare. She has something on her breasts--a bra like thing, but that appears to be metal in nature."

"The primitives are a humanoid race, very tall from what I can see from my observation position--dark. Their skin is brown, probably because they run around naked in the sun, or half naked. But their hair is very dark, as well, so it’s possible they are naturally dark anyway."

Hearing the snap of vegetation very close by, Laurel stilled, listening. When she didn’t hear it again, she decided to carefully check the area to make certain none of the wildlife had grown curious of her. As she glanced around, though, she saw that there was a foot--right beside her.

Staring at it blankly for several moments, she finally followed the leg the foot was attached to, rolling onto her side when she discovered her position prevented her from seeing anything but the bottom half of the male standing over her.

"There is a very large, very angry looking primitive standing over me. He is wearing--tattoos," she said into her recorder, sliding her hand down along her thigh very slowly in search of her laser. She found the holster, but to her consternation the pistol was gone. "This particular specimen is very lean and muscular, which seems to indicate a healthy diet and rigorous lifestyle.

"He may see me as a threat and I seem to have dropped my weapon somewhere. I have not yet analyzed their speech patterns, but I will attempt to communicate via facial expressions and gestures."

She smiled at him, holding her hands out palm up to show him she didn’t have a weapon.

He squatted down.

She hadn’t realized until that moment that he was standing with one foot on either side of her. She tried not to notice the genitals that were hovering just above her torso, swaying slightly--the balls were swaying. The cock was looking her dead in the eye.

She swallowed with an effort. "The … uh … genitalia of the male is very much like that of a human male. The pubic hair has been shaved into some sort of pattern--it doesn’t look natural, but I’m not certain if this is some sort of … uh … fashion statement, or if it, perhaps, has mystical implications. The … uh … hooded man is at half staff, so I’m assuming that he is not attracted to … wait … it’s standing at attention now. I may have been a little premature in my previous observation."

"I am Faine D’Arten. Who are you? And what are you doing here?"

Laurel’s eyes widened in excitement. Blindly, she felt around for the translator. "The subject spoke to me. I’ve no clue of what the fuck he just said, but it sounded just a little bit threatening," she said into her recorder, then smiled at him again.

Finally, she found the translator and closed her fingers around it.

"Hi! My name’s Laurel Conyers. I’m a grad student and I just came to do a little research for my thesis. I know you haven’t got a clue of what I’m saying right now, but if you’ll notice, I’m smiling and this denotes a non-threatening gesture."

He caught her wrist when she lifted the translator. Her hand went numb almost instantly. Taking the translator from her limp grip, he studied it suspiciously for several moments and finally closed his hand around it, crushing it as if it were a wad of paper.

Laurel’s mouth fell open. "My translator!" she gasped in dismay. "Oh! This is good. Have you got any idea how much one of those damned things cost? And, I might add, now I’m not going to be able to talk to you at all!"

His brows rose at her tone. Reaching down, he grasped her upper arms and stood up, pulling her with him.

When she was on her feet, she discovered she hadn’t merely imagined the primitives were big--they were big. She figured she could walk beneath his outstretched arm without brushing the top of her head or bending over. "The subject I am currently observing appears to be somewhere in the neighborhood of six and a half feet tall."

He studied her for several moments, his gaze zeroing in on the tiny microphone.

"What is this?"

He’d hardly spoken when he snatched her ear piece off. Laurel made a grab for it. He held it up, out of her reach. She leapt up, grabbing for it, but saw she couldn’t snatch it back as long as he was dangling it about four feet over her head. Balling her hand into a fist, she planted it in the middle of his stomach. It felt like she’d driven her hand into the bulkhead of her ship. The impact sent painful vibrations all the way up her arm. "Shit!" she yelped, slinging her hand until the pain subsided, then glaring up at him. "Give it back!" she demanded.

He looked bemused as he stared down at her from his towering height. Apparently, he hadn’t expected her to fight back.

Laurel narrowed her eyes. "I demand that you give me my recorder back right this instant! You’ve already trashed my translator. I need my recorder!"

Instead of handing it to her, he turned and tossed it into the woods. Laurel whirled to race after it. He caught her around the waist, knocking the breath out of her as he lifted her off her feet. She hung limply for several moments, trying to catch her breath. When she recovered, she saw that he was following a path that led toward the village.

Laurel balled her hand into a fist and hit him on the thigh, but she wasn’t at a very good angle for packing much of a punch. There was nothing for it.

She grabbed him by his genitals.

"Shit!" he exclaimed.

He dropped her. She hit the ground hard enough her breath left her in a loud grunt. She didn’t know what he’d said, but he sounded just a little bit pissed off. Scrambling to her hands and knees, she headed for the brush.

"Damn it, woman!" he growled. He caught her around the waist once more. This time, however, he slung her over his shoulder.

She grunted as his shoulder pushed the air from her lungs again. When she recovered, she started hammering against his back. "Put me down, you savage!"

His hand came down, hard, on her ass.

Her eyes widened. Rearing up, she grabbed a handful of his long, dark hair and gave it several vicious tugs.

"By the gods!" he roared, dropping her to the ground once more and glaring down at her. "You’re an ill-tempered female! Dream vision or no, I’m not so sure I want you for my mate!"

Chapter Three

Laurel sat on the floor next to the bed, giving the alien the evil eye as he emptied her pack on the table in front of him and studied the contents curiously. He’d bound her wrists and tied her to the damned bed! She’d promptly climbed out of it again, but the rope he’d used wasn’t long enough for her to get as far away from it was she wanted to.

She couldn’t get her mind off of that little "howdy ma’am" his hooded man had given her in the woods.

Of course, it might have been because she was examining it and he thought that meant that she was interested, which she certainly wasn’t! She’d only been curious. That was all, and she figured she should make notations on all of her observations. One never knew when one might discover a piece of information that fit with something else and presented a broader picture.

He picked the communicator up first, turned it over a couple of times and set it aside.

"According to my calculations, you are inside the perimeter of the primitive village, Laurel. Should you be doing this?"

"Shut up!" Laurel snapped.

The barbarian had glanced at the communicator when the computer started speaking. He transferred his gaze to her when she answered it. Picking up the device once more, he studied the map on the screen, moved it around, watching the small blinking dot. Finally, he rose and moved toward her. "What is this thing?" he asked, squatting down beside her and pointing to the dot.

Laurel stared at him blankly for several moments, realizing with more than a little surprise that he’d figured out that the dot was her--she thought.

He pointed to the dot again and turned the map around.

He had figured it out, Laurel thought in sudden excitement. This was … amazing! Everyone thought they must have a very low intelligence, but he, at least, had to be pretty bright. She pointed to the dot. "Laurel," she said slowly, and then pointed to herself and repeated it.

His dark brows rose. "You are called La-rel?"

Laurel nodded excitedly, repeating the name.

He pointed to himself. "Faine D’Arten."

It was a lot harder to repeat the words exactly the way he’d said it than she’d thought it would be. She curled her tongue around the strange sounds several times and finally managed to reproduce a close approximation.

Faine felt his lips twitch with amusement at the way she said his name. "Clever girl!" he said, patting her head.

Laurel blinked in surprise when he patted her head and then glared at him when she realized that the gesture was suspiciously like patting a pet that had learned a new trick. "Ass!"

He tucked a finger beneath her chin and tipped her head up, studying her face. Laurel took the opportunity examine his face, since he was so close and he was examining her.

It was an interesting face, surprisingly attractive--for a primitive, she added mentally. Actually, honesty compelled her to correct that, it was a very nice face, period. The bone structure of his face would have been enthralling even if his features put together had not really appealed--which they most definitely did. His eyes, which surprised her considering that the natives were dark skinned and had dark hair, were green. She would’ve expected the eyes to be pigmented much as the hair and skin was.

His mouth was very nice, especially when he smiled, but it made her belly feel trembly even when he was frowning.

She sighed. "I do wish you hadn’t thrown my recorder away! I’ll never remember all this stuff if I can’t get it recorded."

A faint frown marred his brows. After a moment, he lifted his hand and placed his palm along the side of her head, spreading the tips of his fingers along her skull from her temple to a point just behind her ear.

Something … tickled her mind. There was no other word to describe it. It was very light, but like a physical touch.

She jerked away from him, staring at him in surprise.

He got up after a moment and went back to the table where he’d been sitting. Lifting something from the things scattered across the surface, he returned, squatted beside her once more and dangled the object he’d picked up before her nose.

Laurel blinked, staring at it in stupefaction. It was her recorder!

"How did you do that?" she gasped, making a grab for it.

He snatched it out of her reach.

She narrowed her eyes at him as she prepared to launch another attack.

He shook his finger in her face. "Behave yourself, you little savage, and I’ll let you have it back."

Laurel grabbed his finger and tried to bite him. He snatched the appendage away from her before she had the chance to clamp down on it. Frowning at her admonishingly, he sat back, just beyond her reach, crossing his legs and dropping his arms onto his knees. "This will be difficult," he murmured.

Hers was a curious race, almost child like, despite their obvious intelligence. She had set off through the jungle as if it had never occurred to her that there was danger there for her, with nothing but that gadget she carried to take her to the village to spy upon them and then find her way back to her transport.

Perhaps it was only that she was young? Her people would have to be intelligent, he felt sure, to build the machines they were so dependent on--unless they had stolen them from others?

He supposed he shouldn’t have broken her language machine.

It was going to be difficult to court her when she could neither speak his language nor communicate with her primitive mind--that part of her mind was undeveloped, at any rate. He should have realized that there was a reason she had brought such a thing, other than the obvious one that she was recording their language for others of her kind.

He began to think he had allowed his lust to overcome his sense. He had been so blinded by her physical beauty that he had not considered that he might not find her at all compatible otherwise.

She was like the little meanix--spitting and growling and trying to bite any time he came near her--relatively harmless because she was small and weak--but, like the meanix, she made up for the lack of size with tenacity and a very short leash on her temperament.

There would be no peace with such a one. He would enjoy a woman of fire in his bed, but not if that fire was going to be directed at removing his hide.

Perhaps he should have simply pretended he didn’t know that she was there? The others would not have known that the dream crystal’s foretelling had come to pass--that the golden star child that was to be his life mate had come. He could have sealed his mind from them and she would have gone away again.

But he was a leader of his people, and that included guarding their way of life as well as their lives. He could not allow her to take the knowledge of the people with her to the others of her kind. It would only bring more intruders.

He would have to see if he could pull the ability to speak her language from her while she slept. He had his doubts that it would work when she was not a creature of his world, but he could think of nothing else to try. She was destined to be his mate. He must try to make the best of it.

* * * *

Laurel decided she didn’t particularly like the way he was studying her. She supposed she shouldn’t have let her frustration get the best of her and tried to bite him, but as much as she hated to admit it, he was big, really big, and strong, and he scared the shit out her.

She thought, maybe, it was the tattoos that made him look so fierce. He hadn’t hurt her, which had really surprised and relieved her, but he hadn’t needed to to do pretty much any damned thing he wanted to--which, she reluctantly admitted was the scary part. She’d fought him tooth and nail to keep him from dragging her here. Except for that one notable moment when she’d grabbed him by his genitals, and his obvious irritation at having to subdue her, she couldn’t see that it had put a great deal of strain on him--or at least nothing but his patience. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

She’d be willing to bet there wasn’t a single soul living in his village that didn’t know she’d arrived.

The confederation was going to be really pissed about that.

What made it much worse was that the natives had to know she couldn’t be from anywhere around here. Her flight suit was enough to make her stick out, but the fact that she was blond was a definite giveaway. There wasn’t one barbarian--man, woman or child--that hadn’t come to gape at her as Faine had hauled her through the village, as if … well, as if she was an alien.

That was going to make escape a little difficult.

It was a pity it hadn’t occurred to her to disguise herself as one of the natives, but then she hadn’t known what they looked like until she’d arrived. And she sure as hell hadn’t expected to get captured.

She decided not to worry about that. She could figure out something to do with her glaringly bright hair. Getting loose was the problem. The bindings weren’t tight enough to cut off her circulation, but it was still too tight to wiggle her hands out. She might be able to loosen the knot with her teeth, she supposed.

She still couldn’t figure out how he’d found her, though. She’d been so careful to be quiet!

She wouldn’t have minded quite so badly if he’d just let her have her recorder. Then, she could at least be doing a little research--as long as she was here anyway. She hadn’t intended to get so close, but she hated giving up the opportunity that had dropped in her lap. She didn’t want to trust everything she experienced to her memory. She wanted to record her impressions fresh and uncluttered by other experiences.

Deciding to ignore him, she glanced around at his abode. She assumed it was his. It didn’t look like more than one person occupied it and she didn’t figure he would have brought her to this place if it hadn’t been his.

It was surprisingly roomy. Of course, she wasn’t exactly used to single person dwellings. She’d grown up on Station Zebra375 and the university was on the Station, so she still lived with her family--which was her mother. Her sister had married and moved off with a terra farmer, so she had a bunk to herself now.

Actually, this was her first trip off Station.

The dwelling didn’t look nearly as primitive as she’d expected it would. It was made out of natural materials from what she could see--the dwelling and everything in it--but the primitives she’d studied in school lived in dirt floored huts, with animal skins over the door openings and windows, if they had windows at all.

He’d brought her to what she’d thought was the temple in the center of town. It didn’t look like any of the images she’d seen of other temples, though, and it seemed a good many people lived inside of it, so she thought it might be something like a primitive version of an apartment building.

His compartment had a solid door, made out of slabs of tree, if she wasn’t mistaken. It also had very large windows, which almost made her uneasy since the cubicle she and her mother shared only had one porthole and it was a very small one. There was something clear over the windows--she didn’t have a clue of what. Some kind of crystal-like material. But the main part of the structure seemed to be stone--the floor, the walls--there was even stone above their heads--which was unnerving--which formed another floor above them.

The bed had actually been pretty comfortable. She hadn’t done much more than bounce off of it, because she didn’t want him to get any ideas, but it had definitely been soft and springy.

It looked like pretty much everything was all in one room, like the apartment her and her mother shared. She didn’t see a galley, though--or a head for that matter.

He didn’t look dirty and he didn’t stink. He had to bathe.

Actually, to be perfectly accurate, he smelled good … really good. She didn’t know what that was he was wearing on his skin, but it must be some kind of aphrodisiac type chemical, because she’d gone light headed the minute she got close enough to get a really good whiff of it.

That was one of the reasons she didn’t want him too close. She figured he must have bathed in something to attract females, some sort of pheromone "perfume", and she wasn’t about to find out what it was like to fuck an alien--especially a primitive alien. A lot of her friends said it was a real experience, doing it with aliens, especially the less civilized ones, but she figured they just wanted to share the guilt--the old ‘everybody does it so it’s OK if I did too’ routine.

"I really would like to have my recorder," she muttered.

Faine sighed. If she was going to talk to herself anyway, he supposed she might as well have the thing. At least she’d stopped trying to wrestle it away from him, and she seemed to have calmed down. He held it out. "My re-cord-er."

She turned to look at him in surprise. "My recorder," she said belligerently.

He nodded. "My recorder."

She snatched it out of his hand and held it close to her chest. "Mine--not yours!"

He frowned, partly from confusion, and partly because she’d gone back to being antagonistic. "La-rel."

She blushed. "Oh! I thought … never mind."

"Hungry?"

She stared at him blankly. He made an eating motion. She frowned at him, watching him for several moments.

"Eat what?" she asked warily, feeling very uneasy about the fact that he’d said her name and then made an eating motion.

He studied her face for several moments and finally a smile tugged at his lips. Chuckling and shaking his head, he got up and went to the door, tugging at a cord.

A female appeared at the door. Faine spoke to her. Nodding and bowing, she left. When she came back a few minutes later, she was carrying a large tray, which had a pitcher, mugs, plates, and several odd looking mounds of what she finally decided, from the smell, must be food. Faine took it, settled the tray on the table and nodded. The female bobbed up and down several times and backed out of the room.

Laurel watched the exchange curiously, wondering why the woman was behaving so strangely--not as if she was really afraid of Faine, but--almost awed.

Maybe this was supposed to be a temple after all and he’d convinced the others that he was sort of a god, or maybe a demigod? Maybe a priest?

"Subject is a male--the same male that captured me--no idea of what his age might be. It’s hard to say except he looks young, not real young, but not old--or middle aged. Something like the equivalent of a thirty year old human, maybe? Which certainly isn’t young, but…. I can tell by the way he keeps glancing at me that he’s not sure what the recorder is for. He thinks I’m babbling to myself, I guess, but he seems to find it amusing.

"Note--the natives seem to have a strange sense of humor. This one is called Faine D’Arten. He was also amused when I tried to speak his language. He patted me on the head. The natives may not realize I’m another humanoid species."

He glanced at her. She blushed when she realized he must know she was talking about him. No doubt he was wondering what she was saying, too.

"Ha!" she muttered. "And just wouldn’t you like to know? But you’re not going to find out because you broke my damned translator and it cost me a whole month’s pay, damn it!"

When he turned around again, she spoke a little lower. "They seem to have fairly sophisticated dwellings. They have no modern power supply that I can see. Everything they use seems to be natural. The confederation would have a field day fining them for inappropriate usage of natural resources! But they do seem to cook their food. The female that brought the food behaved strangely toward the male--as if she held him in awe, which makes me curious of his position in their social structure.

"Actually, he is pretty awesome looking, but I would think these people were used to looking at him."

Deciding she’d spent entirely too much time dwelling on him, she thought back over what had happened since he’d captured her. "Still haven’t figured out what the fires they were building outside were for. Some kind of ritual? Or maybe I was right and it’s just for light outside?"

He caught her attention when he scooped her belongings off the table and back into her pack.

Setting the pack to one side, he dragged pottery out and dropped a healthy dollop of whatever that was on the tray in the middle of each. She was still wondering if he meant to sit down and eat while she watched when he strode toward her and squatted down so that they were eye level.

"If you’ll behave, you can sit with me."

"Subject keeps talking to me as if he thinks I’ll figure out what he’s saying."

After studying her a moment, he reached for the knot he’d tied in the strip of binding--which she was very much afraid had once been part of something living and didn’t even want to think about the dead skin touching her skin. When she saw that he was going to untie her, she cut a surreptitious glance toward the door. It was shut, but he hadn’t locked it that she could see.

Would it be better to make a break for it now and hope she could outrun him, she wondered?

She might not get another chance any time soon, and it was dark out. That ought to help her chances.

Of course, she was going to have to make it down the corridor and a flight of steps and another corridor before she could even get out of the temple, but she was pretty sure she remembered the way they’d come in.

Mostly, she’d seen the floor, but she still thought she could remember the direction.

He glanced at her.

She smiled.

When he’d untied her, he grasped her arm and helped her to her feet. He didn’t release her, immediately. He walked her to the table and pointed toward a chair. Laurel looked at the chair, glanced at him, reached for the chair … and slung it at him, dashing for the door.

Chapter Four

Laurel heard a growl behind her, from the chair impacting with Faine’s shins, no doubt. It galvanized her into more speed. Grabbing the door, she threw it open and dashed outside. He tackled her. She managed to catch herself with her hands, but she still hit the stone floor with a bone jarring thud. He’d caught her around the waist.

His face was in her ass.

Grunting, she tried to wiggle out from under him.

He levered himself up over her and she let out an inelegant grunt as he covered her. Panting, she tried to heave upward, discovered she couldn’t budge him and collapsed, defeated, panting for breath.

After a moment, he rolled off of her, dragged her up by one arm and walked her back into his compartment. When he’d locked the door, he grabbed the chair from the floor, set it upright and pushed her into it.

Laurel sent a meek look up at him, wondering just how pissed off he was. He was looking down at the dirt all over him. Sending her a warning glance, he moved to a tall pottery cistern and washed his face and hands.

When he returned to the table, he sat down across from her, eyeing her with disfavor.

Laurel sent him a placating smile. "I didn’t get to wash my hands," she pointed out, showing him her hands.

He stared at her hands, met her gaze coolly for several moments and then began eating.

"They are definitely barbaric," Laurel muttered into her recorder. "He didn’t even offer to let me wash my hands."

He sent her another hostile glare, and she turned her attention to the food before her, trying to figure out what it might be.

It was definitely not processed. It still looked like it belonged to something that had once run around on legs. She picked up the leg on the plate with her thumb and forefinger, looked it over and then sniffed it. It smelled--pungent. Whatever it was, it actually smelled rather appetizing, but maybe that was just because she’d had a lot of unaccustomed exercise and she was hungry?

She wondered if she dared eat it.

He was eating it, but then he was from this planet.

Sighing, she closed her eyes and stuck the tip of her tongue to it to test the taste before she actually tried biting into it. The moment the tip of her tongue made contact, fire shot through her, making her eyes water. She breathed on her tongue, waved her hand over it and finally grabbed the mug off the table and stuck her tongue into the cooling liquid. "Tthit!"

Her whole mouth was on fire. She took several gulps of the liquid before she realized that that was part of the source of the fire.

Digging her fingernails into the table top, she gasped for several minutes, trying to catch her breath. When she’d blinked the tears from her eyes, she saw that he’d stopped to watch her. "I don’t think I’m hungry," she said hoarsely.

He tensed when she started to rise and she stopped, hovering for several moments over her chair. Finally, she sat down again, folding her hands meekly on the table in front of her and studying them while he ate. After a moment, he pushed a brown, rounded thing toward her. She looked at it, then looked at him.

Picking it up, he broke a piece off and took a bite, then broke another piece off and handed it to her. She sniffed it, but it didn’t smell pungent like the other food had and she took a cautious bite, ready to spit it out and make a dive for the water if it burned like the other had.

Thankfully it had a bland taste, no fire, and a pleasing texture. It seemed to absorb some of the burning sensation that still lingered in her stomach from whatever was in the mug--which wasn’t water.

When he’d finished eating, he got up and moved around the table. She watched him warily, but he merely grabbed her arm and urged her up. To her surprise, instead of marching her back to the bed and tying her up again, he walked her out of the door and from the "temple". Crossing the open area of the village, they stepped onto a path that led through the jungle. It was dark, but the body that orbited his world shed a surprising amount of light along the path they followed.

Hope surged through her when she saw that he’d led her to a small stream. She looked around excitedly for her craft. Except for the light from the stars overhead and the risen moon, there wasn’t much visibility, though. For that matter, she didn’t remember there being a path anywhere near where she’d landed.

He must mean to let her go, though.

He pointed at the water and scrubbed his hands together.

She stared at him. He’d brought her all the way down here to wash her hands? She looked at the stream and turned to him again. "Confederation law prohibits willful pollution or corruption of natural resources. Penalties are jail, fines or both."

He nudged her toward the water. "Bathe."

She plunked her hands on her hips. "Look, you! You might can get away with this, but I’m not supposed to. Why don’t you take me to my ship, and I’ll just wash up there?" she added, pointing downstream.

He followed the direction of her finger with his gaze, frowning thoughtfully. When he glanced down at her again, his eyes were gleaming with amusement.

She scrubbed her hands together and pointed again.

Pulling her closely to him, he placed his fingers along her temple. Laurel was too startled even to think about resisting. What did he think he was doing when he put his fingers on her head, she wondered?

After several moments, he removed his hand. Turning, he began to follow the stream, dragging her behind him. "Not this way! The other way!" Laurel said impatiently as she stumbled along behind him.

He ignored her and kept moving.

Irritated, she felt silent, concentrating on trying to keep from tripping. After a few minutes, he stopped. Laurel looked around, realizing they were in a clearing--a burned clearing. She glanced around in confusion and finally enlightenment dawned. She’d been turned around, pointing in the opposite direction, but how had he known that?

She realized when she looked up at him that there was only one way he could’ve known exactly where she’d parked her ship. He’d been watching her when she’d landed!

She dismissed it. She’d had the ship in stealth.

But he’d walked her directly to the spot.

He pointed to the ship.

Shrugging, she turned to look at the ship, realizing belatedly that she didn’t have her remote access key. She’d put it in her pack and the pack was back in his living quarters. Walking over to the hull of the ship, she tilted her head back. "Bertha! I forgot my key. Open up!"

She waited several moments for a response. When nothing happened, she pounded on the hull with the palm of her hand. "Open up, damn it! I need a change of clothes."

"Laurel. There is a barbarian standing within a three foot radius of your position," the computer said at a very low volume.

"No shit! Open the damned hatch."

"Confederation law prohibits the corruption of this protected species."

Laurel struck the hull again. "Open the damned hatch, Bertha! Or, I swear, I’ll get you reprogrammed when we get back!"

"I’ll have to note this violation, Laurel," the computer responded.

Laurel heard the low whir, however, of the hatch opening and the extension of the gang plank. She made an aborted attempt to snatch her arm free and race up the gang plank, but apparently he’d suspected she might try something. His fingers were curled around her arm like a manacle.

He escorted her up the gang plank and looked around curiously when they were inside.

"Lights!"

The interior of the ship flooded with light. "Close the hatch, retract the gang plank and prepare for take off," Laurel said in a singsong voice, forming her lips into a parody of a smile and trying to keep the thread of desperation from her demeanor.

"There is a barbarian onboard."

"I know. Take off anyway."

"Confederation law prohibits the removal of a protected species from their natural habitat."

"Fuck! Take off, damn it!" Laurel said through gritted teeth.

"The penalty for violating this law is ten years imprisonment."

"We’ll put him back later," Laurel snapped. "Just do it!"

"You will need to remove him first."

"Just how do you propose I remove him? He’s attached to my fucking arm! He weighs twice as much as I do, easily, and he’s a foot taller than I am--to say nothing of the fact that he tosses me around like a rag doll any time the notion strikes him!"

The computer was silent for several moments. "He is not twice your weight. More accurately, he is…."

"Shut up! I don’t want to know how much he weighs. I want him off my ship."

"The barbarian weighs 5 times your maximum lifting capacity. I do not believe that you can remove him."

"Tell me something helpful. Have you managed to analyze his speech patterns?"

"I do not have that programming."

"I know you don’t have that programming, but can you do it?"

"Negative."

"You can at least try!"

"I have recorded the words he spoke. I can give you a list of those that I have determined the meanings of."

Laurel huffed impatiently. "Do that, then."

"In what order?"

"Any order! Alphabetically, I guess." She listened to the list of words in growing dismay. "That’s all?"

"Affirmative. He doesn’t seem to be very loquacious. However, this may be due to the fact that you are unable to converse with him."

Laurel ground her teeth. "Repeat them more slowly so I can pick the ones I want."

The computer complied.

"I … am … Laurel," Laurel said. "Am doing here vision savage. I want you let…." She stopped, realizing she didn’t have one really critical word--go. "I want you let …" She stopped again and moved her hand up into the air.

He lifted one dark brow. "No."

"What did he say, Bertha?"

"Unknown."

"What do you think he said?"

"I’m guessing here, but ‘no’?"

"That’s what I thought," Laurel said glumly. She considered her options and finally gave him an ‘oh well’ shrug and a smile. "Guess I’ll just have that bath now," she said, heading toward the cockpit.

"You’re going in the wrong direction, Laurel."

"Shut up, Bertha. Manual override, please."

Faine’s hand tightened on her arm, pulling her to a stop before she could reach her seat at the console. He surveyed the cockpit.

"Do you think he’s figured it out?" Laurel asked anxiously.

"From the body language and the facial expression, I detect that he is highly suspicious."

After studying the room thoroughly, he pulled her around and pushed her toward the door again. Sighing, Laurel moved down the narrow corridor toward her cabin. He looked it over thoroughly, moved to the head and looked inside and finally released her.

Laurel’s lips quirked wryly. Finally, deciding to ignore him, she opened a compartment and found a change of clothes, studied them and then tossed the garment over her shoulder. Ten minutes later, she’d emptied the compartment, but finally settled on a body suit that looked a little sturdier than the casual ones she generally wore. It was hard to decide what to wear as a captive, but she thought this might hold up to being dragged around better than the others.

She studied it critically and it occurred to her that it was actually a little hot to be wearing a body suit. Sifting through the pile on the floor, she finally unearthed an ankle length, flowing robe. It was white, but that couldn’t be helped.

She headed for the bath.

Faine followed her. She’d already opened the jumpsuit from the neck to the crotch before she realized he was now standing in the doorway of the head. She gave him a look. Finally, she stepped toward him, placed both palms in the middle of his chest and pushed. He stood his ground. She dug her heels in and pushed a little harder. He looked the room over again and finally yielded to her determination to oust him.

Closing the door, she used the facilities and dressed.

When she emerged, he looked her over with a glance of pleased surprise. She reddened. "I’m only wearing this because it’s cooler," she said tartly. "So don’t get any ideas."

He lifted his brows at her tone, but merely grasped her arm and led her back down the gangplank and to the village.

She wasn’t really surprised when he tied her to the bed again, but she was disappointed. She dismissed it. He would have to sleep sometime. All she had to do was to lie down, pretend to go to sleep, and once he was asleep, she could untie the binding and leave.

After several hours of tossing and turning and peering at Faine through her lashes, Laurel finally drifted off to sleep.

Almost immediately, she began to have a very strange dream.

Chapter Five

The thing that struck Laurel first about the dream was that, unlike her dreams usually were, this dream seemed more vivid--almost "solid". She found herself on a hill, looking down at the village of the barbarians. The ground beneath her feet was covered with short grasses and flowers.

She could smell them. She could see the colors, too, and she didn’t remember seeing colors in her dreams before. She certainly didn’t remember ever smelling anything.

Feeling a presence beside her, she glanced to her right and saw that Faine was standing almost shoulder to shoulder with her, gazing down at the village. As if he felt her gaze, he turned to look at her. "Why have you come?"

She frowned. It was really odd, because he seemed to be speaking his own language, and yet she could understand him. "I came to study this world and the people."

"I thought as much, but I do not understand what the purpose is."

Laurel shrugged. "The pursuit of knowledge only for its own sake. To know instead of wondering why things are the way they are."

"You could not understand us in the time you have allotted for yourself."

Irritation surfaced. "It would have been easier with the translator."

He smiled faintly. "Your youth makes you impatient to sample life."

The irritation deepened. "You’re so old and wise, huh?"

He turned toward her, slipping his hands around her waist and moving closer. "Old enough to know that there is much in life that should be taken slow and savored."

She felt her heart kick into high gear. She wasn’t certain if it was his nearness, the look in his eyes, or the suggestion in his words. She looked at him uneasily. "Been there. Done that. Wasn’t impressed."

He smiled faintly. "You have no idea of what I’m speaking."

"Sex, right?"

He frowned. "You have been with others?"

She chuckled. "Get real! I’m in college, for heaven’s sake! Working on my master’s thesis, I might add. If you were looking for a celestial virgin, you need to keep looking."

He didn’t look at all pleased with that. "Women should be chaste until they are wed."

Laurel rolled her eyes. "If the men were being chaste, they would be. I wasn’t bumping uglies with a girl."

His eyes narrowed. "You have vast experience then?"

She sighed. "I just said I wasn’t impressed, didn’t I? That means I tried it. I’m willing to try most anything once or twice--the good things more than that, but all that slobbering and sweating just didn’t do anything for me."

"Sometimes it takes the one person you were destined to be with."

This time, she smiled indulgently. "That’s sweet, really! I had no idea you were such a romantic!"

"It will be different with me."

Laurel rolled her eyes. "Why?"

"Because you and I were destined to be mated."

"Ah. This is the most bizarre dream I’ve ever had. I mean, I really think you’re hot, so I can understand the sex thing. What I can’t figure out is the mating thing. Unless … maybe that’s because I was hoping I’d find out a little bit about the mating practices of your people?"

His brows rose. His eyes gleamed with both amusement and desire. "I am not certain what this ‘hot’ means."

She chuckled, lifting up on her tiptoes, she wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled his neck. "It means I like the way your skin smells. I like the way your voice sounds, but most of all, every time I look at your mouth it just makes me hot and creamy," she murmured, nipping at his chin with the edge of her teeth.

He caught her hair, tugging at it until she was looking up at him. His eyes blazed with heat as he studied her face. All traces of amusement had vanished. His face had grown taut.

When he surged toward her, her lips parted in anticipation. Her eyes slid closed as the heat of his mouth and the elixir of his scent and taste encompassed her in a web of instantaneous, fiery desire. Without quite knowing, or caring, how it had come about, she felt the earth beneath her back, the warmth and substance of his body pressing against her, felt the heat and need of his cock as he pressed it against her belly. She was intoxicated by the feel of his mouth and tongue on hers as he kissed her, and by the urgency of his possession.

His kiss felt far better than she’d imagined it could possibly feel. He made her whole body feel feverish with need.

"Is this the mating ritual?" she whispered dizzily when his lips at last parted company with hers and burned a path along her throat.

"Yes," he said huskily. "And when our bodies join, our souls unite… forever."

* * * *

Laurel jerked awake as if she’d fallen off of something. Gasping for breath, disoriented, she opened her eyes and looked up at the strange view above the bed blankly.

Turning her head, she came face to face with Faine. He was lying beside her on the bed.

And he was awake.

Startled to find him in the bed with her--awake--she rolled away … and fell off the bed. When she finally regained her equilibrium, she turned her head and peered at the bed. Faine was lying flat of his back now, staring up at the ceiling. As if he sensed her gaze, however, he rolled onto his side, stared at her for a long moment, and finally reached for her, pulling her back up on the bed and rolling so that she was lying across his chest.

She braced herself with her palms. "Maybe I did something in my sleep that gave you the idea that I was OK with this, but … I’m not."

He frowned. Finally, he released her.

Laurel sat up on the edge of the bed, her back to him, cradling her head in her hands. She still felt sluggish from waking up so abruptly, and oddly jittery, as if she’d had a nightmare or something. Try though she might to recapture the dream that had wakened her, however, she couldn’t seem to remember much besides the fact that Faine had been in it and she’d thought when she was dreaming it that it seemed a lot more real than her dreams usually were.

Dismissing it finally, she wondered when, and how, Faine had gotten into the bed with her. The last thing she remembered was watching him stare at her from the chair across the room and faking sleep while she waited for him to nod off. Obviously, she’d caved in first, and as soon as he’d seen she really was asleep, he’d climbed into bed with her.

It seemed unlikely she was going to get the chance to execute her escape plan. He seemed wide awake now.

She must have been moving around in her sleep … or something.

She was too tired to consider escape tonight anyway. All she really wanted to do was to lie back down and drift off again, but to her way of thinking, sleeping in the same bed with him was just asking for trouble. She didn’t particularly want to sit on the floor and try to sleep with her arm over her head, though, and she didn’t think he would agree to give her the bed and sleep on the floor. Finally, she compromised by lying down on the edge.

She was just dozing off when Faine grabbed her around the waist and dragged her across the bed, fitting her snugly against him and throwing an arm over her waist. It roused her, but she was too far gone to care.

When she woke, Faine was gone, and her wrist was unbound.

She woke tired. She’d dreamed all night and she was exhausted from it. She couldn’t remember much about the dreams except that Faine had been in them.

"The man’s giving me nightmares," she muttered, stretching, which was when she discovered he’d untied her wrist.

She jackknifed upright in bed and looked around.

She was in the compartment--alone!

Rolling out of bed, she hit the floor running. As big a hurry as she was in, though, she wasn’t about to leave her belongings behind. In the first place, they were hers and she wanted them. In the second, she didn’t want to be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life wondering when a cop was going to grab her for corrupting the primitives by leaving technology lying about for them to study.

Grabbing her pack, she looked around to see if anything had been left out of it, then secured it and slung it over her shoulder. Tiptoeing over to the door, she opened it a tiny crack and peered out. A female, who was raking a bundled wad of brush back and forth over the floor, was at one end of the corridor--the end Laurel was going to have to pass.

She bit her lip indecisively, but she didn’t know when she might get another chance. Finally, she simply walked out the door as calmly as she could, closed it behind her and wandered around the temple until she finally found her way out. Then, she headed for the path Faine had taken her down the night before.

Ten minutes later--she was going to send Bertha in for reprogramming for plotting her a path straight through the damn jungle when she hadn’t been more than a few minutes from a well beaten path!--she’d reached the stream. She looked both ways, trying to remember which direction they’d taken the night before. All she could remember, though, was that they hadn’t walked long before they came upon the site she’d cleared for landing.

Shrugging, she just chose a direction and headed out. When she’d walked for at least fifteen minutes and seen no sign of the spot, she turned around and walked in the other direction for a while. Passing the path again, she came at last to the unmistakable mess she’d made right in the middle of the untouched wilderness.

There was only one problem.

The ship wasn’t there.

Chapter Six

Laurel was totally speechless for a stretch of time that she couldn’t even count because she was also struck catatonic. When it finally filtered through her mind that the ship really was gone, she still couldn’t believe it. "Shit! Fuck! Damn! All right, be calm! It has to be here somewhere."

Maybe it was the stealth mode? Maybe the conditions were just particularly good today to make it work at its peak? She crisscrossed the burned circle back and forth, waving her hands in front of her for another thirty minutes before she finally had to accept that the ship really was gone.

She sat down, crossed her legs and dropped her chin on her hand, thinking.

"The intrepid explorer of the forbidden planet has just discovered that her fucking ship has disappeared," she muttered into her recorder. "The question is where did it disappear to? I don’t care how. I don’t particularly care when. I just want to know where."

It must have been Bertha. She’d compromised the ship when she’d taken the barbarian onboard, and Bertha had taken it into her head to move the ship so that the barbarians couldn’t find it.

Dragging her pack off of her shoulder, she poured the contents on the ground and looked through them. Her communicator was missing.

That conniving, good for nothing savage! He’d taken her communicator. Now how was she supposed to find her way to the damned ship!

Had he figured that part out too?

She frowned, thinking it over. "There’s something very strange about these barbarians. The subject I’m currently studying--and will probably get the chance to thoroughly study because I can’t find my frigging ship!--is oddly clever for a primitive being. I could almost suspect that he might have had something to do with the disappearance of the ship, except that it took me six months to learn how to fly the damn thing and I absolutely can not frigging believe he figured it out while I was asleep!"

After a while, Laurel decided she might as well return to the village. Unless she just happened to find her ship, she was going to have to wait until the confederation sent someone to investigate her distress call. She might just as well do some research in the meanwhile.

"I have been wandering around in the woods for approximately an hour now. Note: In the future, it would probably be best to use the paths the natives have cut through the woods since I don’t seem to have a very good sense of direction. If I find my way back, I’ll be sure to use the path next time. I’m not certain how the natives manage to find their way out of the jungle when they go in. The path goes directly to the small stream, which they apparently use for bathing, despite confederation guidelines regarding the proper use of natural resources."

She was just beginning to get really anxious when she heard a sound that reminded her strongly of an alarm. It was shrill, piercing and continued to repeat at short intervals.

Perking up, she turned slowly around until she was pretty sure she had the direction of the sound’s origin and took off through the woods. A few minutes later, to her relief, she came to the rise overlooking the village. As she reached it, however, a commotion drew her attention and she stopped, turning toward the sound. Her eyes widened. "There’s a herd of barbarians stampeding this way. They’re carrying some sort of stick-like things that must be a weapon of some sort. They seem to be converging on the temple in the center of town. Now, they are racing up the steps to the top of the temple walls. I see my barbarian standing at the top. Perhaps he summoned them for some reason?" She stopped, gasping in surprise. "Holy shit! They have … they dove off! No! They launched themselves into the air. They’re … un-fucking-believable! They have sprouted wings. Actually, they have changed shape altogether."

Laurel fell silent as she watched the townsmen--who didn’t look at all like people anymore--fly off toward the setting sun. Feeling weak kneed when they disappeared from view, she sat down, still staring toward the point on the horizon where she’d last seen them.

"Apparently I was mistaken about them being humanoid. I’ll have to give this some thought. A lot of thought. What was really bizarre was that they changed into different … things … creatures. OK. The bizarre thing was that they changed at all. But the other part is equally bizarre. One would think that they would all, basically, be the same sort of … creature."

She looked around, swatting at a buzzing insect that had landed on her arm and started gnawing. "I don’t think I’m asleep. They could pass for nightmare creatures, though--except, thankfully, I’ve never had nightmares like that.

"Some sort of hallucinogen? Maybe there’s something in the water and I only thought I saw them change into strange winged beasts? But … that would mean I must not have seen anything, because otherwise they’d be piled in the dirt at the base of the temple.

"Maybe there’s something in the water that made them change? Gruesome thought. I’ll have to see if I can find an alternate liquid until I can study this further."

After a little while, because the insects were really starting to feed on her, she got up and made her way back into the village. She noticed the villagers were burning again. She also noticed the insects weren’t gnawing on her now. Stopping, she sniffed the smoke coming off the burning vegetation and decided, maybe, the only purpose was to chase away the insects--which it seemed pretty effective at doing.

She couldn’t help but notice that there didn’t seem to be a lot of males around.

They really weren’t in the village anymore.

She didn’t feel like she was hallucinating. Shouldn’t she feel strange if she was?

But how possible was it that it had actually happened like she thought it had happened?

Faine wasn’t in his compartment.

Of course, she thought she’d seen him fly off into the sunset, looking like some kind of really big, scary looking beast.

Settling in the compartment, she thought the event over for a little while.

She’d heard something that sounded like an alarm and then seen the men come running, carrying things that looked like weapons.

"I may have timed my visit a little badly. The barbarians appear to be in the middle of a war," she muttered into the recorder. "I still haven’t figured out the beast part, but the rest of it seemed an awful lot like soldiers responding to a threat to me."

Someone knocked on the door, interrupting her thoughts. When she opened it cautiously, she saw it was the same woman who’d brought food the night before. The woman motioned for her to follow. Shrugging, curious, she left her pack in the room and followed the woman from the temple to the building that stood next to it.

Once they were inside, she saw that the majority of the huge room was taken up by a large pool of water. Men, women and children were splashing in the water, bathing.

Why had Faine taken her to the stream? She wondered.

The woman motioned at her to remove the gown she was wearing. Shrugging, Laurel removed it and handed it to the woman a little reluctantly. The woman tugged her toward the pool, chattering at her.

It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out that she was being urged to join the others.

Laurel didn’t particularly want to. It didn’t seem very hygienic to bathe in what looked like a public bath.

She wondered if that was why Faine hadn’t brought her. But was that because he thought she might be reluctant? Or was it because he was reluctant for her to bathe with all of the other men and women?

From the way the men were studying her, she couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. Finally, she decided to get into the water so that she wasn’t so exposed to their view.

To her surprise, the water was very warm--almost too warm. It also smelled strongly of some sort of herbs, or maybe chemical--no, she corrected that thought. It wouldn’t be chemical, unless it was something that was naturally in the water.

Maybe there was something in the water that killed the germs? Otherwise, since they all seemed to use it, it looked like they would have a problem with diseases and the people looked very healthy.

Was whatever she smelled what made them change into beasts, though? Or what made her think they’d changed into beasts?

Shaking the worrisome thoughts, she splashed the water over herself experimentally, deciding she liked the way it felt on her skin.

The woman who’d brought her appeared beside her with a cloth and some sort of sudsy lotion. Laurel balked at being bathed, however. Determinedly, she took the cloth and washed herself.

This was a really primitive sort of ritual.

She decided, though, that she’d record it later. The natives were already looking her over as it was. There didn’t seem to be a lot of point in drawing more attention to herself.

She discovered when she got out that the woman had done something with her robe. Anger surged through her, but naturally, there was no way to express her feelings beyond yelling things at the woman she couldn’t possibly understand. Resentfully, she took the skirt the woman held out to her and put it on. The woman had to help her with the top.

She didn’t particularly care for it. In the first place, it didn’t just look like metal. It was metal, and, as little as there actually was to the thing, it was stiff and uncomfortable. She didn’t see much point in wearing something that spiraled around her breasts, leaving most of them exposed, and only actually covered her nipples.

When she was "dressed" the woman led her back to Faine’s compartment and left her. A few minutes later, the woman returned with a tray of food. Laurel eyed it suspiciously and stuck her tongue out and waved her hand at it.

The woman looked taken aback. After a moment, however, she giggled and shook her head.

That at least seemed to answer that question. A more important one was on Laurel’s mind, however. She thought it over, but nothing really came to mind. Finally, she cupped her sex and crossed her legs.

The woman really did look at her oddly then. After a little more dramatization, she managed to get it across to the woman that she desperately needed to relieve herself. Laughing and shaking her head, the woman led her across the room and drew back a curtain, revealing a short hallway. At the end was a door.

Hoping the woman really had understood, Laurel followed the hallway, opened the door and peered inside.

It was a head--not that it looked like what she was used to, but this sort of thing was pretty basic when all was said and done.

Relieved, in two ways--she really hadn’t liked the idea that she might have to find a place in the woods to squat--she washed her hands in the basin, thinking how odd it was that the primitives seemed to have running water and wondering just what stage of development in civilization they really were-- she returned to the main room and sat down to eat. To her relief, the woman seemed to have understood that part too. The food didn’t set her on fire.

She found when the woman had taken the tray away that she was bored.

She was also tired. She’d wandered around in the woods most of the day and the hot bath and the food combined had her ready to nod off in no time.

Trying to shake it off, she sat down and recorded everything that had happened since she’d found her way back, but finally reached the point where she simply couldn’t fight it off anymore.

She removed the garments the woman had given her. They were just too uncomfortable to sleep in and it didn’t look as if Faine would be coming back--not any time soon, anyway.

Almost as soon as she drifted off, she began to dream.

* * * *

"Where did you go today, princess?"

Laurel frowned, looking around. She saw she was still in the room, laying on the bed.

Faine was lying next to her, his head propped on his hand, his eyes gleaming as his gaze moved along her body.

She saw when she looked down that she was naked.

Of course! She’d gone to bed naked. She was dreaming she was lying in the bed naked--which she actually was.

Except she was dreaming Faine was with her, which he wasn’t.

She stretched, then propped her head in her hand, facing him. "I went to look for my ship so I could leave. This hasn’t gone at all as I’d expected, but I discovered my ship was gone."

"What did you expect?"

She frowned. "I had read that this was a very primitive place, and it does seem strange, because it’s not at all what I’m used to, but it doesn’t really seem primitive. The woman took me to a public bath. Even the head works. How do you do that?"

He frowned. "Shala took you to the public bath?"

"Who’s Shala?"

"The woman I left to attend your needs."

"Oh--well, yes. She took my damned robe, too. I don’t know what she did with it."

He said nothing for several moments. "Most likely she only took it to clean it, but you are not to go to the public bath again. I will speak to her."

"Why not? Doesn’t everyone bathe there?"

"You are not everyone. You are to be my consort."

"What’s a consort?"

"The wife of the King of Merisea."

"What’s Merisea?"

He chuckled. "The land where you will live."

"Oh. Well, I can’t stay. It’s nice of you to offer, but I’ll have to get back. They’ll be looking for me soon."

His face hardened. "Who will look for you?"

Laurel was a little taken aback. He certainly was testy about something that really wasn’t any of his business. "The Inner Galactic Police, probably the enforcers of the CPA, too. I faked a crash to land here. I wasn’t supposed to land," she added.

He studied her for several moments. "They will go away again."

"Yeah but with me. I sure hope I can convince them I really did crash, because it would suck to have to pay a fine--especially when I’ve had so much trouble already."

To her surprise, Faine lifted one hand and caressed her cheek. "You will grow accustomed."

It made her feel strange in the pit of her stomach--the touch and the look in his eyes. She cast around in her mind for something to focus on besides the unsettling sensations. "I don’t know. I don’t have my translator, so I can’t talk to anybody. Besides that, I saw something really weird. I thought I saw it, anyway. Some guy started blowing on a big animal horn and all the men in the village just raced up to the top of the temple and jumped off. I thought they were going to splatter at the bottom, but instead, they changed into these strange, winged beasts and flew off."

"We summoned the dreams spirits and leapt from the parapets of the fortress. This is no temple."

"Huh?"

"The ancient ones. In our dream walks, we summon them and join with their spirits. When we need their strength, we summon their powers and become one with them," he murmured, slipping his arms around her and dragging her closer, so that her body brushed his each time she took a breath.

The warmth in her belly became heat, spreading outward. Even in her dreams Faine had this strange effect over her!

Chapter Seven

Laurel sighed, wondering why she bothered to talk to the dream person at all. It wasn’t like it was real or she was actually finding out anything of use. Besides, the temptation to give in to his persuasion was becoming really hard to ignore.

What harm could there be in dreaming she’d had sex with him?

And it was her dream. She could make it as good as she could imagine.

She looked up at him. He really was handsome. Just looking at him made her pulse beat a little more quickly, made her breath catch in her throat. Merely thinking about his mouth on hers made her grow damp and jittery with nerves.

Lifting a hand, she traced the lines of the tattoo that covered one cheek. "What is this for?" she whispered.

"It is the mark of the kings of Merisea. It tells my family line."

After a moment, she dragged her finger teasingly along his neck, down his shoulder and traced the tattoo on his upper arm. "And this?"

"Before I became king, I was prince. That is the mark of the prince of Merisea."

There was a gleam in his eyes now. Laurel smiled back at him, tracing a path down his arm and along his back to the tattoo she remembered just above his buttocks. "This one?"

"The totem of my dream beast."

She remembered that the tattoo on the cheeks of his ass was a sort of swirling pattern and traced a series of circles over one buttock. "What about this?" she asked huskily.

"It symbolizes the dream dimension where my totem resides."

She settled her palm over his buttock, enjoying the feel of the taut muscle, then skated her hand up along his back. Lifting her face, she moved closer, inhaling the scent of his skin. It sizzled along her nerve endings as if she’d taken a drought of potent wine, warming her, making her pleasantly dizzy. Lightly, she brushed her lips along his throat and then his jaw. When she reached his lips, she hesitated, gazing into his eyes. Ever so lightly, she touched her lips to his, testing the sensitive flesh, tasting him, relishing the accelerated rhythm of her heart and the heat it pumped through her body.

Pressing her lips fully against his, she flicked her tongue out and traced the seam where his lips met. He sighed gustily, opening his lips over hers, dueling briefly with her tongue before he thrust past the barrier of her lips and explored the sensitive inner flesh of her mouth with his tongue.

Laurel sighed, enjoying the pleasing sensation of mingled breaths, his taste, the feel of his tongue against hers and the heady rush of dizziness that engulfed her in a heated cloud of pleasure. Lifting her hand from his back, she gripped his shoulder, moving closer to him.

He pulled her tightly against his length and then rolled, lying half atop her, moving his hand along her body in exploration as he made love to her mouth, cupping her breast, teasing the distended peak and finally moving lower, along her waist and belly and tangling his fingers in the curling thatch of hair that covered her mound. She moaned into his mouth when he found her clit and teased it with the tip of his finger.

She lifted her leg, curling it around his, giving him better access, and he traced her cleft, pushing one large finger inside of her. She moaned again, lifting toward his hand, enjoying the feel of his finger as it slipped in and out of her wet passage.

A shudder went through him. He broke the kiss and moved downward, kissing her throat. Shifting, he nudged the leg beneath him with one of his and Laurel opened her legs for him, allowing him to settle between her thighs.

Lifting her arms, she clasped them around him as he moved down her body, kissing her breasts, building the pleasurable tension tighter and tighter inside of her as he caressed the tender, distended peaks until she found she could not be still, until she was moving restlessly against him with her need.

Relief and anticipation flooded her as he lifted slightly away from her and she felt his hard member nudging her clitoris and then moving downward along her cleft, collecting the dew of her desire on the rounded tip before his body engaged hers. She spread her legs wider, lifting up to meet him as he entered her.

Her breath left her in a rush as she felt his turgid flesh stretching her, pressing slowly but surely inside of her, deeper and deeper.

It felt so real … so wonderful.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, gazing up at him dreamily as she felt the slow, sensuous caress of his turgid flesh along her passage, sending quakes of delight through her with each thrust and retreat. "Mmm, you feel so good, Faine," she murmured, feeling her the muscles of her passage clench around him in delight.

His face went taut. He squeezed his eyes closed, hesitated fractionally and then he lowered himself until his chest was pressing tightly against hers. His lips sought hers once more as he increased the tempo of his caress, plunging and retreating more rapidly, more forcefully. She kissed him back, wrapping her arms around him tightly and arching her hips upward to meet each hard thrust as she felt the pleasure mounting inside of her, felt her body tightening until she began to feel as if she could hold it no longer.

Abruptly, it seemed to explode, to fragment inside of her. It was almost as much the surprise as the explosion of ecstasy itself that wrung a cry of delight from her.

As if it were a signal to him or her pleasure shot his own over the top, he shuddered with his own climax and went limp against her.

Laurel stroked his back dreamily as the heated eruption of pleasure mellowed to warmth and an all over feeling of complete satisfaction. "That was … like nothing I ever felt before," she murmured on a sigh of absolute delight.

He lifted his head slightly, nuzzling her cheek and finally rolled off of her, carrying her with him. He stroked her cheek. "The next time I make love to you, my queen, it will be in fleshly form, not spirit," he murmured, kissing her lightly on the lips. "And it will be far, far better."

* * * *

Laurel jolted wide awake, clutching her chest and gasping for breath as if she’d run a mile. Sitting up quickly, she glanced down at the bed and then looked around the room.

She was alone.

Massaging her aching chest, she leaned back against the pillow again, staring up at the ceiling above her. "It was just a dream," she muttered. A shiver skated through her. What had made her dream such an outrageous thing?

Her pussy was throbbing like hell. She reached down and felt herself, shivering at the prickles of sensation that went through her … as if she really had had sex and it was still throbbing with aftershocks. After a moment, she touched her breasts and discovered that her nipples were sensitive too.

She’d never had a wet dream before. It hadn’t occurred to her that it could be so real.

It had been worlds better than the real thing!

What had made her think of the other though? The "you’re mine now" part?

It occurred to her abruptly that she’d dreamed that before. Sort of. She hadn’t been able to remember the dream after she’d woken up, but she realized that she’d dreamed that Faine had told her that when they joined in their dreams they would join spirits … or something like that, and be together forever.

It was odd that she remembered it now. Maybe the one she’d just had had jogged the other memory? Or maybe it was the first that had made her dream the second?

She shook her head. Why would she dream such crazy dreams at all? Especially dreams about people that could go inside of dreams and … actually mated in dreams?

There must be something in the food. Or maybe the water?

Unnerved, she lay wakeful for quite some time. Finally, however, she found that she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Her last thought before she drifted off was that she was going to have to figure out some way to find her ship and leave before Faine came back.

She knew it had just been a dream, but all the same it made her really uneasy.

Chapter Eight

As soon as Laurel woke the following morning, she grabbed her pack, dumping the contents in the middle of the bed and sorting through it. It didn’t take more five minutes to concede that there was nothing in the pack that could conceivably be used or adjusted that might help her locate her ship or communicate with Bertha.

Her recorder patched into the onboard commuter, of course, to record the data, but it didn’t actually communicate with the computer.

Stuffing everything back into the pack, she got up and looked around the room. An hour later, she’d searched every square inch of it and begun moving across the floor, tapping on the stones to see if any might be loose and hiding a cavity where her communicator might be located.

She was still on her hands and knees, testing the flooring, when the door opened. Her head jerked up guiltily. She relaxed fractionally when she saw it was only the maid who’d brought food before.

Apparently the woman was becoming used to the fact that Laurel did some really strange things. She scarcely looked surprised at all. Nodding pleasantly, she set the tray on the table and turned to go.

Laurel wasn’t really certain what prompted her to do it. The idea simply popped into her head when she thought about the dream she’d had the night before. "Shala?"

The woman stopped abruptly and turned to look at her questioningly.

Laurel felt a cold sensation flood through her.

A wave of dizziness quickly followed. Apparently she looked a little faint, too, because a look of worry gathered on the woman’s face. Rushing forward, the woman got down on her knees, as well, chattering at her a mile a minute.

Laurel wouldn’t have paid her any attention if she could’ve understood what she was saying. She was too shocked at the really unnerving coincidence that she’d dreamed the woman’s name.

She would’ve liked to think she might have overheard it, but she knew better. She considered the possibility that it wasn’t a name at all, that maybe it was a word she’d picked up without realizing it, but she couldn’t convince herself that there was a real possibility of that.

It took some coaxing to get rid of the woman. When she finally managed to shove her from the room and close the door, she moved to the bed and sank weakly down on it.

"This place is seriously fucking with my mind," she muttered.

Glancing around, she found her recorder and placed it on her head, ordering a playback. She listened to everything she’d recorded thus far, but there was no mention of the word Shala at all.

She urgently needed to find that ship. She couldn’t wait for the Confederation to come after her.

Besides, if they found her sitting in the middle of one of the primitives’ cities, she’d be up shit creek for sure. It was one thing to fake a crash she had every reason to think she could convince them was real, but she didn’t think they would be at all happy if they found her living among the natives. Particularly when they discovered, as they almost certainly would, the handy little gadgets she’d brought with her that were now in the possession of the primitives.

After a while, it occurred to her that, since she didn’t have any sort of device to help her locate the ship, she was going to have to rely entirely on her own senses, or figure the puzzle out.

It was a staggering thought. She was so stunned by it that she spent a good deal of time trying to figure out if it was even possible to succeed without any sort of electronics at all. It occurred to her after a while, however, that the primitives seemed to cope without electronics and that it must be possible to do any number of things if one were determined enough.

This structure--in her dream Faine had said it was a fortress, and now that she thought about it, it looked a lot more like a fortress than it did a temple--was really tall. If she went up to the top of it, maybe she could see the ship?

It was certainly worth a try.

There were warriors on the battlements. She didn’t know why she hadn’t expected there to be, except that she’d thought pretty much all of the men had gone off to fight. They looked startled to see her. She couldn’t decide whether it was because she wasn’t supposed to be on the observation deck, or if it was specifically her that had surprised them.

None of them said anything to her--which would’ve been a waste of breath anyway--but they didn’t take their eyes off of her either.

She tried to be casual about her "stroll", but she wasn’t certain she was very convincing. Every time she stopped and gazed into the distance, studying every tiny clearing she spotted through narrowed eyes, she turned to discover the men closest to her were peering in the same direction intently. By the time she’d made a complete circuit of the observation deck, most of the men were looking distinctly uneasy. They’d stare hard at the land surrounding the city for long moments, then exchange questioning comments. It occurred to Laurel as she finally gave up and went downstairs once more that they might have misinterpreted her keen interest in the forest surrounding the village, but that was hardly her fault.

Shrugging it off, she returned to the room once more to ponder her lack of success and see if her mind would furnish her with an alternative. As tall as the fortress was, she’d expected to be able to see for a great distance. Unfortunately, there were a lot of really tall trees blocking her view.

She’d seen a taller structure, however. There was one at each of the four corners of the box like building. Unfortunately, she’d been so intent upon looking out over the forest she hadn’t paid them much attention. As she studied over it, though, she recalled that she’d seen some sort of rungs going up the side of one of them.

The question was, would the men stationed up there allow her to climb the towers?

They must be watchers, which meant their attention should be on the area around the fortress, but she had a feeling if she went up again she’d meet the same keen interest of before, which would make it impossible to sneak up the any of the towers for a better look. If they were there to watch, it didn’t seem likely that there would be a time when she could go that the place would be empty.

They probably wouldn’t notice her if she slipped up after dark, but she doubted she’d be able to see much even if she managed it.

It was a damned shame they didn’t wear uniforms. If they had, she could’ve stolen one and blended in. As it was, going up "dressed" as they were, naked, was only more likely to gain more attention, not less.

It was possible, she supposed, if she went up a couple of times a day and walked around they might get used to seeing her and stop watching her so closely, but that would take time and she really didn’t feel like she had a lot of time to spare. Faine was bound to be coming back before long and once he did he would be watching her too closely for her to escape even if she did find the damned ship.

There didn’t seem to be an alternative. She couldn’t just wander around the woods on foot, hoping she would run into the ship. She could wander forever.

Deciding she really didn’t have any other options, she waited until after Shala had brought the evening meal and went up to wander along the observation deck once more. They still glanced at her as she strolled by, but it didn’t seem to her that they were as keenly interested as before. This time, she made several circuits before she went down again.

The following morning, she went up again. Unfortunately, they’d changed the guard sometime--probably during the night or first thing in the morning--and she encountered the same curious glances as she’d drawn the first time--which made it impossible to take a chance on the towers. She did take the opportunity to study them more closely, though, and saw that she’d been right. There were rungs running up the side of each for climbing to the top.

She waited until late in the evening before she went up again and was relieved to see that the men were the same as had been on the observation deck the evening before. They barely paid her any mind at all.

Just to be on the safe side, she made several circuits of the deck before she stopped beside one of the towers. Glancing around casually, she saw that the men nearest her were staring out over the forest.

Ever so casually, she sidled a little closer to the rungs and then looked around one more time. A couple of the men glanced at her, she noticed out of the corner of her eye, but she pretended to be staring off into the forest and after a few moments, they looked away. Seizing the opportunity, she grasped the rung just above her head and started climbing. She’d almost made it to the top when she heard a yell below her. Ignoring the shout, she climbed faster. She was huffing with exertion by the time she managed to hoist herself over the top edge.

Below her, she could hear the scrambling of many feet along the stone walk.

"Shit!" It sounded like the whole pack of them were heading her way.

Getting to her feet, she moved to the edge of the platform and studied the forest. She’d been right. She could see much further from this position. Her stomach did a strange little free fall as she neared the edge of the platform, however. Swallowing with an effort, she did her best to ignore the sharp drop off and scanned the forest quickly, expecting any moment that men would come pouring up the ladder, grab her and haul her down again. She’d made it halfway around the tower when a bald spot in the forest caught her attention. She stopped, staring at it intently.

The space looked big enough, and flat enough, to have landed her craft, but it was hard to tell from such a distance--and equally hard to tell just how far away it was--or what direction.

She looked down, trying to find a landmark that would line up with the place.

It was a mistake.

The moment she looked down a wave of dizziness went through her. She felt herself sway, felt her balance shift. A strong gust of wind thwarted her attempts to right herself. Before she quite knew what was happening, she saw that the ground was rushing up toward her.

She didn’t get the chance to scream. She’d just drawn in her breath to express her supreme dismay when something snagged around her waist, knocking the breath from her. For several moments, while she struggled to catch her breath and fight off the darkness threatening to consume her, she thought she’d actually hit the ground. Pain materialized, but not the sort of pain she’d expected.

And as the darkness began to recede, she realized that she was still falling.

Or floating.

Not floating. Something hard was against her back and banded around her, like a great claw.

She did scream when she saw it actually was a great claw, her head whipping around to see what had her.

It was a monster. She squeezed her eyes closed. "If you’re ever going to faint, Laurel, now’s the time," she muttered.

The landing jolted her from her concentration on summoning a faint and she opened her eyes. When she did, she discovered the monster had vanished.

Faine was holding her and he didn’t look at all happy.

She smiled at him a little weakly. "Oh. It’s you! When did you get back?"

He made a sound that was a lot like a growl. Grabbing her by one arm, he began dragging her along the observation deck where they’d landed toward the stairs. Laurel discovered very quickly, however, that the fright had taken the starch out of her knees. She only managed a couple of steps before her legs crumpled beneath her.

Uttering another sound of anger, Faine hauled her to her feet and tossed her over his shoulder. She was too weak in the aftermath of her near death experience to do more than hang limply over his broad shoulder as he stalked down the stairs, heading for the room they shared.

She knew she was in trouble the moment he set her on her feet and slammed the door behind him.

Chapter Nine

The torrent of words that spilled from Faine’s mouth were completely incomprehensible, but Laurel could tell by the scowl on his face and the way he forced the words through clenched teeth that he was really pissed off about something.

She stared at him blankly until he paused for breath. "Guess you’re mad, huh?"

His eyes narrowed.

Laurel forced a look of innocence onto her features. "I wasn’t supposed to go up on the tower?"

He took a step toward her. She took a step back. She really didn’t like the look of intent on his face at all.

"I didn’t know," she lied uneasily. "I only went up to have a look around." She mimed her actions by shielding her eyes and pretending to look around.

Something flickered in his eyes, comprehension, but he didn’t look the least appeased by her explanation. His lips tightened.

Feeling her own anger surface, she planted her hands on her hips belligerently. "Well! It’s my damned ship! You didn’t have any business hiding it from me to start with! And don’t try to look innocent. I know it was you. I don’t know how you did it, but I don’t believe for one minute that Bertha just decided to relocate!"

Faine glared at her furiously. "So what you’re saying is you didn’t take the hair brained notion that you could shift like we do and go up to the tower to see if you could fly? You risked taking a header off the tower knowing full well you were going to splatter at the bottom if you fell off?" he demanded, pointing angrily in the direction of the tower.

"If we hadn’t returned when we did, you’d be dead now--or wishing you were!"

Laurel folded her arms over her chest. Watching his sharp, angry gestures, she had a fair idea of what he was accusing her of--stupidity. As if she’d fallen off on purpose! "It’s all your fault, anyway!" she snapped huffily.

Turning, she stalked to the bed to sulk.

Faine caught up to her as she reached it. Plunking himself down on the bed, he grabbed her, dragging her across his lap. They wrestled for several moments, but Laurel knew it was a lost cause. She had a fair idea of his intentions even before he rolled her onto her belly and tossed her skirt over her head.

Cool air wafted across her bare buttocks. She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting to feel his palm on her ass any minute. When nothing happened, she reared up and twisted to look at him.

He was staring at her ass with a vacant look on his face, his hand suspended mid-air. Her movement distracted him and he turned to look at her, their eyes meeting for one long heartbeat. Abruptly the angry intent on his face altered to an entirely different purposefulness and he shifted her onto the bed, sprawling on top of her.

As Laurel opened her mouth to protest, he covered it with his own and she forgot all about her fear and indignation as an electric current of fire suffused every pore and molecule of her body with the first touch of his mouth on hers. Without stopping to consider the wisdom of it, Laurel kissed him back with a fervor that matched his, so enthralled by the riotous sensations pouring through her as her body registered the weight, and strength and heat of the body pressed so tightly against hers, the aphrodisiac of his scent and taste, rational thought fled. She wrapped her arms around him as she dueled with his tongue in intimate swordplay, twining her tongue along his, stroking it.

He eased slightly away from her so that he could stroke his hand over her body. Reaching her waist, he snapped the fragile tie of her skirt and pushed the fabric aside, stroking her hip and the side of her thigh before he moved his hand upward along her inner thigh and cupped her mound. He paused only momentarily, however, to her great disappointment, and then slipped his hand upward again. Catching the tiny chain that linked her bra in the front, he parted the links and pushed the stiff cups aside, catching first one breast in the palm of his hand and then the other, massaging them and sending shafts of delight through her.

Laurel broke the kiss, releasing her grip on him just long enough to toss the uncomfortable garment aside, then pressed tightly against him once more, flattening her breasts against the hard muscles of his chest as she lifted her face to nuzzle along his neck. Vaguely, she was aware of a sense of familiarity about his taste and scent and touch, the feel of his body along hers, but, as delightful as the dreams had been, the sensations flooding her now were far more intense than when she’d dreamed of making love to him and infinitely more devastating to her senses.

Within minutes, she was moving restlessly beneath him, encouraging him to possess her fully. One leg was pinned beneath the weight of his, but she lifted the other, twining it around his leg sinuously as she pressed her mound against his lower belly.

Bending his head, he possessed her mouth once more as he skated a hand down her back and cupped one cheek of her ass, squeezing it in a massaging motion before he slipped his fingers into the cleft and followed it, carefully parting the fragile layers of flesh surrounding her sex and delving all too briefly into the hot, moist cavern.

Lifting slightly, he dragged her leg from beneath him, settling between her thighs and rolling until he lay atop her. Laurel moaned in pleasure as she felt his rigid cock settle against her cleft, nudging her clit.

The abrupt pounding on the door of the apartment sent a shock wave through both of them. Faine lifted his head and glared at the stout panel for several moments. Finally, reluctantly, he untangled his body from hers, rose from the bed and stalked across the room, jerking the door open.

Still more than a little disoriented, Laurel grabbed the coverlet, flipping it over herself as he jerked the door open and bellowed at the man on the other side. A low voiced conversation ensued. Faine glanced toward Laurel several times during the course of it and she wondered if the conversation had anything to do with her.

Finally, Faine closed the door once more. Turning, he studied her for a long moment with an unreadable expression. Laurel sat up as he moved toward her once more, wondering if he meant to finish what he had started.

Apparently, he didn’t. He merely leaned down and kissed her briefly on the lips.

When he drew away, he gave her a look filled with both promise and threat.

"You scared me out of ten years of my life with that stunt. If you pull anything like that again, I swear by my ancestors I’ll beat your ass till you can’t sit on it for a week!" he growled.

Laurel was still watching him with her jaw at half mast when he straightened, turned and stalked from the room.

She stared in disbelief at the vibrating door for several moments after he’d left and finally let out a growl of frustration. "You asshole! You did that on purpose! Just see if I let you finish later, damn you!"

* * * *

Faine was still furious as he strode down the hallway to his own chambers. His second in command, who was waiting near his door, bowed low at his approach. "Your pardon for disturbing you, sire, but I was certain you would wish to know of the visitors immediately."

Faine waved the apology aside. "Where are they?"

"Your houseman placed them in the waiting chamber."

Faine’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "It will do them no harm to keep them cooling their heels for a bit." He turned to look down the hallway toward Laurel’s room. "Have two guards posted outside her door … see to it our visitors do not leave the waiting chamber. You may relay the message to them that I will grant them an audience."

His second in command nodded and saluted.

"And, Captain Millenue, assemble your men. Make certain they understand that I am aware that my bride is a very resourceful young woman, but if she endangers herself again, I will have the skin flogged from their backs. If she comes to harm, they die."

"Yes, Sire," Captain Millenue responded sharply. Saluting once more, he departed as Faine turned away and entered his own quarters.

When he’d closed his chamber door, Faine rubbed his painfully throbbing balls absently. His member stood erect at once, however, and he sighed irritably and strode toward the bath.

It seemed likely that the guards on the walls would have stopped Laurel before she even reached the top of the tower if they had not been distracted by his return, but they lacked discipline or they would not have allowed even that to so distract them that they had failed to watch her.

As badly as he had wanted to order them flogged on the spot, he’d thought it best to allow himself time to cool his temper before he did something he might later regret. He decided, when he’d settled into his bath, that he would merely order five days intensive training to teach them the error of their ways, but they would find that he was not nearly so merciful if they failed him again.

Part of the fault was his own, he knew. He should have ordered a guard to shadow her from the first. He had not wanted to make her feel a prisoner, however. As aware as he was that she did feel that she was a captive, and that she spent her days trying to figure out a way to escape, he’d wanted her to come to accept her situation and had thought it would be best to allow her as much freedom as he dared.

He still felt that he’d not erred in his judgment of her character. She was accustomed to making decisions on her own. He would have to woo her and bind her with affection to have what he wanted of her. If he was forced to openly disclose her captivity, she would be far more difficult to woo, if not impossible.

He thrust those thoughts aside and concentrated on his bath, but he found his mind kept returning to the moments of intimacy they’d shared before they were so rudely interrupted. He’d expected her to struggle, or at least offer a token resistance. The fact that she’d welcomed him with heated passion had completely disarmed him.

Very likely she was as angry about the interruption as he was, but she could not understand why he’d left so abruptly … which meant she was probably furious with him now, he thought wryly. And he would probably find that she wasn’t nearly so welcoming the next time.

He frowned. Laurel had warned him that her people would come for her, but he had not expected that they would when they had taken so much care in the past to keep their distance. He had certainly not expected that they would arrive at such an inconvenient moment.

He had been sorely tempted to merely have them sent packing, but the strength of their determination to retrieve her had disturbed him. If they wanted her badly enough to approach him, then they would only await an opportunity to snatch her, he knew. He rather thought he preferred having them close enough that he could watch them.

The hot water of his bath did nothing to cool the fire in his blood, but it did soothe the ache in his muscles from the two battles he’d engaged in to oust the invaders at his borders.

Still brooding over the intrusion and pondering the best way to handle the three very different problems presently plaguing him, Faine allowed his manservant to help him into the deep red robes of his office and left his chamber once more, striding quickly toward his reception chamber.

Chapter Ten

Laurel fumed for a good fifteen minutes over Faine’s inequity before it occurred to her that she’d allowed herself to be completely distracted from her purpose. Abruptly, she left the bed and grabbed up her clothing from the floor, then stared at the damaged garments in dismay.

She’d forgotten Faine hadn’t bothered to remove them.

As eager as she’d been at the time for him to tear them off of her, anger surged through her now. She couldn’t go looking for her ship naked!

She fiddled with the skirt for a time and finally managed to knot it around her waist but quickly discovered the bra was hopeless. Irritated, she threw it down again and looked around the room.

That was when she spotted her robe, neatly folded, and lying on a trunk in one corner of the room.

Grinning triumphantly, she discarded the wrecked skirt and dashed over to her robe, pulling it on over her head and settling it around her.

She discovered as soon as she opened the door, however, that she wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. The moment she cracked the door to peer outside, two arms wielding two pointed pikes crossed before the threshold. She stared at the barricade blankly for a moment and finally poked her head far enough through the door to see that a guard stood on either side of it.

Uttering an irritated hiss, she slammed the door again and stalked across the room, settling on the bed to sulk and to consider if there was any possibility that she could thwart Faine’s determination to keep her a prisoner in the room.

* * * *

Faine propped an arm on the arm of his throne and dropped his chin onto his balled fist, studying the visitors through narrowed eyes, torn between firmly tamped amusement at their attempts to blend with the natives and irritation at having to deal with them at all.

There were four of them--all male. The clothing they wore was a reasonable facsimile of those his people wore when they were not on alert in battle readiness as they had been for the past two months. Even from a distance, however, he could see that the cloth they were made from was nothing like anything that could be found on his world, however. Moreover, their skin, their eyes, and even their hair, was pale … and they were far more attractive than he liked when he considered that they had come believing they would fetch his woman and take her away with them.

Three, he was certain, were warriors. They were not as heavily muscled as his own warriors, but he could tell from their build and stance that they were trained in the art of battle.

The fourth was older, thinner. He decided this man must be of some political office, or perhaps a scholar since he seemed to speak for the group. His grasp of their language was adequate … which infuriated Faine since it meant that they had been intruding far more than he’d believed.

When he signaled that they might approach, the foursome detached themselves from the others crowding the audience chamber and strode confidently toward him, the older man in the lead. They stopped when they were told to do so and bowed respectfully.

"Your highness, I am Wilhem Johanson. My fellow travelers and I have come a great distance … uh … from across the great sea in search of…."

"From what kingdom?" Faine interrupted.

The man gaped at him a moment, glanced a little nervously at the man to his right and began stammering. "Uh … the horse … shoe. That is to say, Horsham."

Faine lifted his dark brows. "I have not heard of this kingdom. Across the great sea, you say?"

The man reddened but managed a deprecating smile. "It is a very small kingdom, sire."

"Since I have never heard of it, it must also be a new kingdom," Faine said dryly. "By what name is your king known?"

The man gaped at him stupidly for several moments. "Uh … name? King Stanley Holms, sire."

Faine’s eyes narrowed. He sat back in his chair, studying the man thoughtfully for several moments. Obviously, he was no diplomat or he would be capable of lying more easily. As tempting as it was to toy with him a little longer and watch him squirm while he thought of lies to cover the questions, Faine had no intention of allowing him to state his business and the longer he allowed the audience to continue the more danger there was that the man would ask him point blank about Laurel. He forced a faint smile. "We welcome our visitors from across the sea."

He lifted a hand, summoning his houseman. "See that our visitors are given comfortable accommodations."

Returning his attention to the visitors, he nodded pleasantly. "We are preparing a celebration in honor of my bride. You are welcome to attend," he said dismissingly.

"Sire! If I might have only a moment more of your time?"

"You can arrange for another audience at a later time. At the moment, I have matters regarding the kingdom that require my attention," Faine responded coolly.

The visitors exchanged meaningful glances, but finally bowed and turned to go.

Faine watched them until they’d been escorted from the room. When the doors had closed behind them, he stood abruptly and left the receiving room, returning to his private chambers to pace and consider the situation.

He did not delude himself that all his resources put together were any match for the forces the visitors could wield. His kingdom was a powerful one on his own world, and his army a formidable one, but he suspected Laurel’s people filled many worlds among the stars and he had seen enough of the devises they carried to know he could not hope to fight them and win.

The question was, would they be willing to fight to regain her?

Did he dare risk all to keep her, gambling that they would not call his bluff?

Almost as if he’d summoned her, Laurel’s image rose in his mind’s eye and with it a coldness and a terrible sense of loss at the thought of watching her leave with those who had come for her. He had bonded with her. He could no more yield her willingly than he could offer his limbs to be hacked from his body.

He would have to think of a way.

* * * *

Very likely due to the fact that Laurel had spent her entire life on a space station, it didn’t occur to her to consider the window as a possible avenue of escape. Otherwise, she would have been long since gone when the men arrived the following morning to install bars in it. As it was, she could only grind her teeth in frustration for the opportunity missed.

After two days of impotent fury and abject boredom, Shala arrived late in the afternoon practically dancing with excitement. Laurel would’ve given a great deal to know just what the excitement was all about, but unfortunately she had only managed to pick up a few words in the time she’d spent on Faine’s world and those were not enough to really communicate.

She felt a momentary rise of excitement herself when she realized that Shala was taking her from her ‘prison’. It fell when she discovered two guards and a half a dozen women waited in the corridor. With great solemnity, the group bowed almost in sync and then surrounded her and escorted her, to her surprise, down the corridor in the opposite direction from which she usually went.

The group practically hummed with suppressed excitement and Laurel found that it was contagious. By the time they halted before the huge door at the end of the corridor, she was burning with curiosity to know what was afoot.

One of the two guards who stood on either side of the door tapped on the panel. After a moment, an older man, dressed in the garb of a servant, opened it and held it wide and the procession urged her forward once more.

Surrounded as she was, it was difficult to see as much of the room as she would’ve liked, particularly since the group herded her across it immediately, heading for a wide doorway. She could see that it was an enormous chamber, however, and opulently furnished. Thick carpets with intricate designs woven into them covered most of the stone floor. A massive bed, situated near the center of the room, dominated the space. Deep red fabric hung from a frame above it and was pulled back and tied at each of four elaborately carved corner posts that held up the frame above the bed. Along the far wall was a huge fireplace, the mantel above it supported by two winged beasts carved from stone. On either side of the fireplace stood two large, heavily padded chairs. Four tall windows were set into the wall on either side of the bed, but these were draped with the same heavy, deep red fabric as the bed and little light filtered through them.

The light in the room was provided by dozens of small flickering tapers which gleamed off of the surfaces of the assortment of glossy wooden furniture about the room.

Laurel was delighted when she discovered that the room she’d been escorted to was an enormous bath. Although built on a far smaller scale than the public bath she’d been taken to before, the pool in the center of the room was easily big enough to swim in.

She was less pleased when she discovered the women who’d escorted her expected to attend her. Shrugging mentally, she yielded to their insistent tugging and pulling and allowed them to undress her and escort her into the pool. When she had been bathed and her hair scrubbed, they led her out again and urged her to lie down on a bench. There they rubbed oils into her skin.

Laurel was so relaxed by the time they’d finished massaging the oils into her skin and buffing her with thick cloths she would almost have welcomed the opportunity to climb into the huge bed in the next room and nap for a while. She discovered when she was escorted back to the main room, however, that Faine was sprawled in one of the chairs near the hearth.

This was a Faine such as she’d never seen him before, though, and it was several moments before recognition kicked in.

His deep black hair had been combed back from his forehead and was held in place by a band wrought of gold that encircled the top of his head. A large red stone was set into the front of the band. It twinkled like captured fire as the light from the tapers glanced off of it.

He was clad in black, loose legged breeches and a white vest that revealed almost as much of his chest as it concealed and only seemed to accentuate his bare, muscular arms and chest.

Laurel felt her mouth go dry as she stared at him. Every foul thing she’d promised herself she would call him the very next time she set eyes on him vanished from her mind along with every other thought. The heated gaze he trained upon her set her body to humming like a revving engine.

She was distracted from her fascinated examination by the women who surrounded her once more, this time helping her into a gown that was much the same color as the fabrics that decorated the room. She saw when they had settled it and twitched it into place, however, that the fabric was far more fine. It was simply made, in much the same fashion as the loose fitting robe that she’d taken from her own wardrobe on the ship, but more form fitting. The sleeves of the gown fit snugly to her arms to a point just above the elbow and then flared. The gown, once the maids had tightened the lacing at the back, fitted closely to her body from shoulder to hip, then, as with the sleeves, flared to her ankles.

When they had finished fitting the gown, she was escorted to a short bench set before a table that held a large framed material that reflected her image back at her. To her surprise, instead of urging her to sit facing the mirror, the women indicated that she was to sit on one end. Once she had settled on the bench, two of the women knelt at her feet and laced a pair of sandals on each foot, tying the lacing at her knees. She was turned to face the mirror then and her hair was rubbed with cloths, combed and then rubbed again until it was dry and then combed once more until it gleamed. When they were satisfied that all the tangles had been removed, her hair was parted into three segments and carefully woven together behind her head into a single plait and tied with ribbons. Lastly, a sheer piece of fabric of the same color as the gown was draped over her head and secured in place with some sort of metallic clips and then she was helped to rise.

Faine, she discovered when she turned away from the table, had crossed the room. He studied her for several moments from the top of her head to the toes of her sandals, an appreciative gleam in his eyes. Finally, he moved to stand directly before her.

She saw when he lifted his hands that he held a band similar to the one he wore on his head. With great care, he settled it on her head, then caught her chin and tipped her face up.

His expression was solemn as he studied her. "From the moment that I first saw you I thought that you were the most beautiful being that I had ever beheld. Whatever fate has in store for us, I am more grateful than I can say that it brought you to me."

Laurel’s lips parted in surprise as she realized she had understood every word that he’d spoken. His accent was still thick with his own language and many of the words in need of deciphering by her mind, but she’d understood him.

Before she could utter a single word, Faine drove every thought from her head by covering her mouth with his own.

Chapter Eleven

Heat cascaded through Laurel like a flow of liquid fire as the warmth of Faine’s mouth enveloped hers, setting off sparks of keen awareness throughout her entire body. She made an unconscious sound of pleasure and moved closer to him until she felt the brush of his hard body against hers with each labored breath she drew. A shudder went through him. His arms slipped around her, tightening until she was molded against him from chest to hip. His erection dug into her belly, making her passage flood with liquid warmth and the muscles low in her belly clench with anticipation and need.

To her disappointment, he withdrew just about the time she reached the melting point. Briefly, he molded his lips to hers once more in a kiss of apology before he lifted his head.

"We will be late." Lifting one corner of the veil that covered her head, he tucked it into one of the pins so that the entire lower part of her face was covered. "You must wear this so for now. It is tradition."

Laurel frowned at him uncomprehendingly, her brain too fogged with heat still to identify his thickly accented words for many moments. Before she’d entirely digested the comments, he caught her hand, lacing his fingers through hers, and led her from the room.

In the corridor outside, an entourage of similarly dressed men and women awaited. They bowed as Faine and Laurel stepped from the room and then fell into step behind them as Faine strode past them down the wide hall.

Bemused, Laurel followed without protest, feeling curiosity begin to filter through the heated haze of thwarted passion that lingered in her brain. From somewhere close by, she heard strains of music and the confusing chatter of many voices. The noise grew more pronounced as they progressed. Turning at the intersection of another corridor, Laurel saw before them at the end of the corridor a pair of doors. As they approached, the men standing on either side of the doors snapped to attention, then reached for the door handles and pulled them wide.

Laurel’s heart leapt in pleased surprise as she saw the gathering that thronged the great room beyond the doors. She glanced up at Faine as they crossed the threshold, smiling. "A party! Kewl!"

He chuckled at her enthusiasm, but tightened his hold on her hand when she would have hurried forward. As they entered the room, almost as if a signal had been given, it began to fall silent. A man, dressed in a vest and loose legged breeches similar to those Faine wore, ascended the two steps to reach the raised walk where Laurel and Faine stood. In his hand, he held a bright red ribbon. Faine lifted their laced hands and the man very solemnly wrapped the ribbon around their wrists, then laced it between their interlocking fingers. When he’d finished, he stepped back and turned to the assemblage below them.

"Behold! His royal highness, King Faine D’Arten and his queen, La-rel!"

Laurel glanced up at Faine as everyone shouted an enthusiastic hurrah at once. "What did he say?"

Faine lifted the hand laced with his and kissed her knuckles. "We must dance."

"Oh … OH!" Laurel nearly stumbled as he led her down the stairs. "I don’t think I can do this!" she whispered frantically as he led her to the center of the room and she saw that the two of them were, evidently, expected to dance alone.

Faine pulled her closely to him and bent his head low. "Only do as I do."

To Laurel’s great relief, when the music began, the melody they played had a slow beat. With even greater relief she discovered the dance was really very simple and she managed to follow his lead, only stepping on his toes two or three times within the first few minutes. Slowly, as she got the hang of it, she began to relax and move more fluidly.

Faine smiled down at her encouragingly. "You see."

She chuckled wryly. "Yes. A few more and I might be able to get through one without walking all over your feet."

To her delight, Faine chuckled, as well.

"When did you learn to speak my language … and how?" she asked after a moment.

He shrugged slightly. "I still learn. The box with the images teaches me."

Laurel frowned in confusion for several moments. Finally, enlightenment dawned. When it did, both surprise and irritation surfaced. She managed to tamp the latter. "My communicator?" she asked in a voice threaded with disbelief.

His brows rose. "The box you used to find your way to my city."

She could hardly credit it, but there was no getting around the fact that he had certainly learned her language somehow. If she hadn’t known better, she would’ve suspected that he’d known her language all along, but she found it almost as difficult to believe that he would have purposefully deceived her as she did that he’d not only figured out how to use the devise, but learned a good grasp of English.

The knowledge stunned her to silence for a time. Finally, she collected her scattered thoughts. "Why?"

"For you."

Laurel felt a blush of pleasure creep into her cheeks. "Really?"

He smiled wryly. "I had thought it would be easier."

Laurel grimaced. "You’re doing far better than I am. I’ve only managed to learn a few words in your language … and not very useful ones at that."

He lifted his brows. "What words have you learned?"

When she told him, he chuckled.

Embarrassment filled her. "That bad, huh?"

He shook his head. "Very good. I enjoy to hear you speak my language. I will teach you."

Laurel’s own enjoyment took a nose dive at that comment. She wasn’t going to be around long enough to learn his language, and she was dismayed to realize how much regret filled her at the realization.

How was it, she wondered, that she had become so focused on getting away that she’d failed to realize that she wasn’t actually desperate to escape … in fact, in no great hurry to leave at all?

She was fascinated by his culture, of course, but it was far more than that. Somehow Faine had caught her completely off guard and burrowed so deeply under her skin that she felt a terrible sense of loss only to consider leaving.

Swallowing against the knot of misery in her throat, she leaned closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder and breathing in his scent as she moved with him in the dance. Before she was entirely ready for it, the dance ended. Gently, Faine disengaged himself from her and led her from the floor. The man who’d laced their hands together with the ribbon removed it and tied it around Faine’s upper arm.

Laurel watched curiously, wondering at the ritualistic, almost symbolic tying of the ribbon. The moment the ribbon had been tied, however, another shout went up from the assemblage and the great chamber immediately began to fill with the noise of happy celebration.

Faine led her to a raised platform at the opposite end of the room, up four steps, and to a pair of ornate, high backed chairs. When they’d seated themselves, he lifted one hand and the musicians immediately began a rousing tune. Within moments, the dance floor was full of men and women twirling and dipping and stomping their feet in time to the music.

Fascinated, Laurel watched the dancers, wishing she had her recording device with her so that she could record her impressions of the celebration, tapping her foot in time to the tune.

"You wish to dance?"

Laurel glanced at Faine in surprise, but chuckled, shaking her head. "I wish I could. It looks like such fun."

He stood, taking her hand and helping her from her chair. "Then come. There is a dance I wish to teach you … and we have stayed long enough."

Laurel lifted her brows questioningly, but there was a look of promise in his eyes that sent a shaft of anticipation through her. Without a word, she followed him as he descended the stairs and left the room.

To her surprise, he led her to the room where she’d bathed and dressed earlier.

"Should we be in here?" she whispered when he pulled her inside and closed the door.

"It is ours now," he murmured, pulling her close and tugging the veil from her face.

"Really?"

He kissed the tip of her nose. "Really," he assured her. Reaching up, he pulled the golden circlet from her head and strode across the room to a tall chest. Opening the narrow doors, he set the circlet inside carefully, then removed his own from his head and set it beside the one that she’d worn. Raking his fingers through his hair to loosen it, he turned to look at her once more, a faint smile on his lips. "As beautiful as you are in that gown I believe I like what’s beneath it far more."

Laurel stared at him a moment while his comment slowly sank in. Her heart seemed to trip over itself when the full meaning hit her. She moved toward him then, turning as she reached him and presenting her back. He removed the veil first, tossing it in the general direction of a nearby chest, then tugged at the tie laced through the back of the gown. She felt the heat of his breath along her back a moment before she felt his lips.

Prickles of sensation instantly erupted all over her body at his touch, her nipples puckering and standing erect, hooking briefly on the fabric as it began to slide from her shoulders and down her arms. A sigh of pleasure escaped her as he followed the widening gap in her gown with a trail of kisses until he reached her buttocks. He turned her to face him then, pushing the gown from her hips and covering the mound of her sex with his mouth. She gasped, grabbing at his shoulders to steady herself as she felt the flick of his tongue against her clitoris and a knee weakening jolt of pleasure shot through her.

She was shaking with the effort to stand upright when he rose at last. Shrugging the vest from his shoulders, he pulled the tie of his breeches, releasing them. When they fell to his feet, he stepped out of them, lifted her against his chest and strode toward the bed. Settling her on the edge of the mattress, he pulled the ties of her sandals and pushed them from her feet before turning his attention to his own.

Laurel moved further up on the bed, propping her head in her hand as she watched the play of muscles in his back and arms. When he’d discarded his sandals and turned to look at her, she leaned back against the pillows, lifting one hand in invitation. He caught her hand, placing a kiss in the center of her palm and then pressing her palm against his chest over his heart as he moved closer, bending his head to nibble a trail of kisses from her belly up to her breasts.

Without pausing, he caressed each in turn, thoroughly, with his mouth and his hands until Laurel was on fire for his possession. She shifted, spreading her thighs in invitation. He accepted, pushing her thighs wider and settling between them as he shifted higher and covered her mouth in a kiss that told of his own impatient need. She slipped a hand between them, grasping his rock hard erection and guiding him along her cleft until she felt the head of his cock pressing against her opening.

He broke the kiss, lifting slightly away from her so that he could watch their joining as he pressed inexorably deeper until he was fully sheathed within her passage. Laurel felt her breath catch at the exquisite pleasure of fullness as her body adjusted to him, accepted his possession, wept with the pleasure of it.

He caught her gaze and held it as he began to stroke the length of her channel with his cock, sending one shock wave of pleasure after another through her with each slow caress until Laurel felt her body winding tighter and tighter with a tension that needed release. She dug her fingers into his back, lifting to meet him, urging him to move faster, moaning as he complied and the jolts of pleasure built higher and more quickly until she found herself hovering, fighting desperately to reach the peak.

When it caught her, it exploded shatteringly through her, dragging a sharp gasp of ecstasy from her throat. He groaned, shuddered, and began to thrust faster still until his own climax caught him, wringing a hoarse cry of satisfaction from him as his cock spasmed, spilling his hot seed inside of her.

His head fell forward on his shoulders as he gasped for breath. His arms trembled with the effort to hold himself above her. Finally, he shifted, pulling his expended cock from her and collapsing beside her.

Laurel rolled onto her side and kissed his chest, just above his pounding heart. "You were right," she murmured huskily.

He opened one eye a crack and gathered her close, stroking her back in a leisurely caress. "About what?"

"This was even better than when you came to me in my dreams."

Chapter Twelve

Faine paused. After a moment, he moved away from her and pulled on a cord that hung on the wall near the head of the bed. Dragging the coverlet loose, he spread it over the two of them once Laurel had rolled off the coverlet and onto the sheets.

"You remember the dreams?" he asked after he’d gathered her close against him again.

"Some things. They weren’t really dreams, were they?"

"It is hard to explain."

Laurel pulled away and propped her head on one arm, looking at him expectantly.

"It is another plane of existence. A world that exists beside the one your conscious mind knows."

Laurel was still studying over it when someone tapped on the door and entered. Clutching the sheets, she sat up and watched as servants carrying trays entered the room. Without once glancing in the direction of the bed, they laid out a banquet on the large table opposite the fireplace. When they’d finished, they moved back to the door, bowed, and departed, closing the door behind them.

"Hungry?"

Laurel chuckled. "There’s enough food there to feed an army. But, yes."

"Stay," Faine ordered. Rolling from the bed, he gathered up an assortment on two plates and returned. Setting the plates on the narrow table nearest that side of the bed, he went back to gather up a bottled beverage and two glasses.

Laurel looked at him questioningly when he climbed into the bed again, but took the plate he offered her. "The bed will be full of crumbs."

He shrugged. "The servants will clean it."

Settling the plates on the bed between them, Faine stretched out on his side and propped on one arm. After a moment, Laurel followed suit, frowning thoughtfully as she ate. "So what you’re saying is that even though I thought of them only as dreams, they were a different reality?"

Faine eyed her speculatively for several moments. "Yes."

"It really freaked me out when I called Shala by name and she answered," Laurel said noncommittally.

Faine frowned. "I do not understand."

"Slang. Unnerved me."

He nodded comprehension. "This is when you began to realize that it was more than ‘only’ a dream?"

Laurel frowned. "I think I had begun to realize it before that. I just hadn’t really accepted it until then." She thought that over for a minute. "Actually, I wasn’t really ready to accept it then, but I had to. Before, I’d thought it was just a strange kind of coincidence that you had explained so many things to me that I didn’t understand. I suppose I thought it was only that I’d puzzled over them and my subconscious mind had figured it out."

Sitting up, Faine turned, opened the bottle and filled the two glasses. Laurel looked the clear liquid over suspiciously and finally took a cautious sip. As she’d suspected, it was some sort of fermented juices. From the first sip, heat settled in her belly and a pleasant sensation of floating began to spread through her body. It was good. Before she’d quite realized it, she discovered she had drank half the glass.

She frowned, realizing her thoughts were wandering. "You said, in one dream, that you were the ruler?"

"I am," Faine said, removing the remains of their meal and setting the plates on the table once more. When he turned toward her once more, he placed a tiny rounded fruit on Laurel’s hip, then leaned forward and caught it with his teeth. It popped and a trickle of cool juices ran down her hip and belly. Laurel drew in a shaky breath as he carefully licked the juices from her skin, feeling a different warm glow settle in her belly.

After a moment, he lifted his head, gazing into her slumberous eyes. Laurel rolled onto her back, inviting him to continue. Taking her glass, he set it on the table as well, gathered a couple of tidbits and, with great care, balanced them on strategic positions of her body. She held her breath as he tipped his glass, pouring the last few drops of the liquid into the hollow of her belly. Reaching behind him blindly, he dropped the glass on the floor as he leaned down to suck and lick the liquid from her stomach.

Laurel held perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe as he nibbled the tidbits from her one by one. By the time he’d finished, her entire body felt as if it was a mass of exposed, throbbing nerve endings. Heat flashed along the sensors, gathering in her sex and so that the inner walls quaked with expectation.

When he raised up to study her, she sat up. Sliding her arms around his neck, she moved onto his lap, straddling him as she lifted her lips to nipple his teasingly. In a moment, he seized the initiative, covering her mouth and kissing her deeply, hungrily. She shifted, sliding a hand between them and lifting slightly away so that she could align the head his engorged cock with her body and then bear down to engulf his flesh within her body.

He let out a muffled sound of pleasure, grasping her hips to steady and guide her as she began to move so that the throat of her sex massaged the length of his cock, eliciting tremors of delight in both of them. When he broke the kiss and lay back, she leaned forward. Propping her palms on the bed on either side of his chest, she moved until she found the stride that produced the most exquisite sensation, increasing the rhythm as she felt her body soaring upward toward its peak, watching his face as she gave him pleasure.

Suddenly, she felt her muscles clench, spasm as her body orgasmed. She faltered, squeezing her eyes tightly, so caught up in the throes of release every other consideration vanished from her mind. He caught her hips, lunging upward in hard, jolting thrusts that brought him to his own culmination.

Weakly, Laurel sprawled on top of him when their bodies had ceased to convulse in pleasure, laying her cheek over his pounding heart while she struggled to catch her breath. A poignant warmth spread through her as the passion flowed from her body and mind and her focus turned to the feel of his body beneath hers. It was more than release, more than satisfaction. It was a sense of belonging, of security.

She was half asleep when he shifted, tipping her head up and placing a lingering kiss on her lips.

"You are sticking to me."

Laurel chuckled. "Not my fault you’re a sloppy eater."

He slapped a palm against her buttocks. "Up, wench! We must bathe."

Reluctantly, Laurel slid off of him. "The bed’s full of crumbs too."

He rolled to the side of the bed and pulled the cord again. Catching her hand, he tugged until she climbed from the bed and followed him to the bath.

The bath took a little longer than Laurel had expected. They bathed each other, made love, then bathed again. When they returned to the room at last, it had been cleaned. Grateful, Laurel climbed into the bed and collapsed, completely sated in every way. She was asleep almost before Faine had rolled her under the covers, gathered her against him and tucked the covers around them.

* * * *

There were a number of questions that hovered on the tip of Laurel’s tongue over the two glorious days she spent cuddling with Faine in his bed and making love, but she discovered a great reluctance to voice them. Somehow, in the back of her mind, she feared that the answers might rupture the fragile bubble of happiness and she realized she was extremely reluctant to let go of it.

Regardless, she knew it couldn’t last forever. She was disappointed when she woke on the third day and saw that Faine had risen and dressed, but not really surprised.

Yawning, she stretched all over, and finally sat up. Faine, she saw when she returned from the facilities, was standing at one window, staring out at the view. Two women waited to help her dress and arrange her hair.

When they had finished her toilet and departed, Faine turned from the window, his face grim.

"We have … visitors."

Laurel’s heart skipped several beats. She knew just from the look on his face who the visitors must be. She swallowed with an effort, nodding slightly. After a moment, he approached her and offered his hand. She took it, allowing him to lead her.

The chamber he took her to was one she had never seen. It was perhaps twice or three times the size of his bed chamber, but not nearly so large as the great hall where they had danced … where, she had finally realized they had wed in the strange little ritual that had played out before his people.

A number of people were standing on either side of the room, leaving a center aisle clear, waiting expectantly. As she and Faine entered, they bowed.

The floor where they entered the room formed a raised platform. In the center, two high backed chairs much like those they’d been seated in at the party faced the chamber.

Leading her to them, Faine guided her to one and took the other.

Laurel glanced around a little nervously. Minutes passed. Finally, the doors at the opposite end opened and a group of men entered. They made their way up the aisle, stopping a few yards from where Faine and Laurel sat and bowed respectfully if a little stiffly. Laurel studied them, her heart thundering so hard in her ears she could barely hear anything else.

The eyes of all four men were trained on her when they lifted their heads once more.

The older of the four men addressed Faine. "Sire, we have come in search of a young woman lost to us."

Faine’s brows rose. "Why do you search here, in Merisea? Surely, if you lost her and you have not been here before, then you could not have lost her here?"

Laurel bit her lip as the man reddened, wondering what the two men were saying to one another. She could see the visitors were wearing translators. Despite the fact that they were dressed as the people of this world, they stuck out as aliens even without the translators. She knew they must be representatives of the Confederation, and that they’d come for her. An awful sense of impending loss filled her. As hard as she’d tried not to think about it, she’d known in the back of her mind that she must expect it.

She glanced at Faine uneasily and saw that he’d turned to study her. He held his hand out to her, palm up. She frowned in confusion, but laid her hand in his trustingly. His fingers closed around hers and he tugged slightly, urging her to come to him. Flushing, she rose from her chair and looked at him questioningly.

He pulled her onto his lap, settling her against his chest, then placed the fingers of one hand along her skull, just above her ear.

Do you wish to know what is being said?

Laurel glanced at him sharply. There’d been no strange tickling sensation this time. She’d heard him as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud. For a moment, she thought he had spoken aloud.

He had said that they would bond.

Yes.

Nodding ever so slightly, Faine turned his attention to the men below them. "You may continue."

The man looked flustered for several moments. "She was traveling … uh … with her companion and was lost."

"This companion told you that she had been lost in Merisea?"

"Yes! It was the companion who told us."

"How did it come about that the two were separated from one another?"

The man simply stared at him miserably for several moments. Finally, he turned to the other men and consulted with them. Laurel sat forward slightly, straining to hear their low voiced conversation, but, to her disappointment, she couldn’t make out enough to tell what they were saying.

"There was a storm, sire. A great storm, and the … uh … ship was damaged."

"And, somehow, this woman you seek was tossed from the ship while the companion managed to take the ship back across the sea?"

"Yes! Well, I’m not entirely certain, sire, but it must have been something like that."

"How do you know the woman still lives? Perhaps she perished?"

The man blanched. "I don’t think that’s at all possible. In fact, we are convinced that she was stranded here and … we must take her back. Our pres … our king insists upon it. For it is forbidden for her to leave the boundaries of our … uh … land."

Faine was silent for a long time. "Why?"

"Why?" the man echoed in dismay. "I … uh … its a law!" he managed finally, mopping the sweat from his brow.

Laurel heard Faine swallow audibly and turned to look at him. He held her gaze.

"By what name is this woman known?"

She could tell from the look in his eyes that he knew it was her they’d come for. There was pain there, as well, and it made her ache to see it.

"Laurel Conyers, sire."

"Describe her," Faine said after a long moment.

"She is twenty three years old, with blond hair, blue eyes. Weight around one hundred fifteen pounds. Height five feet six inches."

Faine dragged his gaze from Laurel and turned to study the man speculatively for several moments. "Much like my queen?"

This time, Laurel heard the visitor swallow. "Exact … uh … yes. A very great deal like your queen."

"There is no other like my queen in all of Merisea," Faine said coldly. "Or in all this world," he added after a moment.

"I’m entirely certain you’re right," the man said incautiously, reddening profusely when Faine’s eyes narrowed challengingly.

Faine turned his attention to Laurel once more. "La-rel is the woman my dream vision promised me. I have bonded with her, allowed my soul to unite with hers. Without her, I would no longer be whole." He paused for several moments. "But my love for her is boundless. If she wishes to go, I could not make her stay."

Laurel felt her chin wobble. Tears filled her eyes. "The laws," she whispered hesitantly.

"I am the law giver here. The laws of their world mean nothing to me."

Laurel blinked the tears from her eyes. "You don’t know how powerful they are!" she said in a frightened whisper. "They could … do terrible things."

"I know."

"I couldn’t let you take the risk."

He shook his head slightly. "They must know that you stay of your own free will. I must know it."

Laurel studied him for a long moment and finally turned to the representatives of the confederation. "I am La-rel D’Arten, wife of Faine. I may look a great deal like the woman you came for, but I’m not her."

The older man frowned. "The Confederation laws.…"

"Prohibit the interaction of people of your world with this world. I am Queen La-rel, of Merisea, wife of Faine, and … I love him. I couldn’t bear to leave him. You must go back and tell them that the woman you came to find is no more."

The man frowned and turned to speak with the others. Finally, he turned to her again. "You are certain? You are not … being coerced?"

Laurel shook her head, smiling as she turned to gaze up at Faine. "I am bound by nothing but the hold he has upon my heart."

The End