Page 49 of Hot Zone

Eleven

Rustam glared down at the woman on the ground beneath him. She was no ignorant barbarian, tragically shipwrecked upon the shores of Greece. No woman, of his own kind or foreign, had ever done anything remotely like that to him during sex—or not during sex, for that matter. Tessa had mind-raped him! Those images were private.

She looked genuinely confused beneath him. A hint of fear glinted in her silvery eyes. He probed her mind with his, aggressively and without finesse. His truth sense was completely quiet. No doubt about it—she wasn’t telling him a lie.

Why, of all the women he could’ve met, did he have to fall for the one monstrously powerful psychic who had no idea whatsoever how to control her skill?

How could the magnificence they’d just shared have turned so quickly into his hand around her neck and enough rage to kill her?

Even if she’d blatantly and intentionally stolen his thoughts, he’d already declared her his consort. He couldn’t kill her if he wanted to; tradition strictly forbade it. Disgusted, he released her neck and sat up, turning away from her.

He’d known that if he could drive her far enough into the throes of passion, she might turn her power completely loose, accidentally or otherwise. And she had. Ye gods, had she ever. It had all but ripped his mind from his body permanently.

He’d had to struggle to draw them back to Earth, to their bodies, at the end. His orgasm had been so overpowering, he’d almost lost them both in it.

It would have been a hell of a great way to die, but he hadn’t fought this hard to say alive here for this long to throw it all away in a single moment of admittedly incredible pleasure.

He swore under his breath. He’d had some amazing sex in his day, but what they’d just done had been in another class altogether.

His people were frankly sexual, and males in particular took their pleasure freely and often. But in his not inconsiderable experience with sex, both here and at home, Rustam had never heard of anything like what had just happened to them.

What he and Tessa had made between them—that had been the stuff of legends. Mystics among his people talked about bonded soul mates in epic terms of love that transcended the physical body. Of expansion of mental powers into realms most of his kind couldn’t fathom. Of awareness that encompassed vast reaches of the heavens and beyond.

But…he and Tessa couldn’t possibly be soul mates! They were from totally different places. Their backgrounds and cultures were entirely dissimilar. She barely even knew she was psychic, let alone had begun to harness her abilities. They had nothing in common. Nothing at all!

Nothing except that swirling indigo vortex that built around them anytime they got close to one another. And that impossible flight to the far side of the stars and back.

They’d both let down all their mental barriers in that moment of orgasm. They’d both turned their power loose. Completely. Could it be? Was she more like him than he’d realized? In that way?

Impossible.

No female possessed his powers. Only the men of his kind did. And yet the incontrovertible evidence of her ability was staring him right in the face. Could she be a—

“I’ve got it!” she cried out from beside him, startling him badly.

He scowled down at her. “Got what?”

“I find lost things. I told you that, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, I’ve been looking for something lost. And I just got another read on it. It’s that way.” She pointed eagerly to the southeast. “Ten or fifteen miles, maybe. What lies in that direction?”

“How far is a mile?”

“A little over five thousand lengths of your foot.”

Rustam frowned and did some quick mental math. “That’s along the coast, or maybe even a little out into the sea.”

She frowned. “Did Xerxes recently send any ships that way?”

Rustam lurched. Only his status as a royal insider gave him the answer to that question. “Yes, in fact. He has ordered part of his personal fleet south to join his main fleet in chasing the Athenian navy.”

Tessa frowned. “How much farther until we reach Thermopylae?”

“In your miles, maybe seven or eight as a bird flies. But our route will be far from straight in this terrain. We should reach it tomorrow afternoon.”

“Any guess as to how long it’ll take Xerxes’s army to get there?”

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