Page 62 of Hot Zone

“Okay, so we’ve messed each other up. Any hypotheses as to why?”

“Maybe our mental energies operate on conflicting wavelengths,” she tossed out.

“Could be. Although, meaning no offense, humans aren’t advanced enough to generate wave lengths in the same spectrum as my people.”

“And yet I’m here,” she said lightly.

With a faint frown creasing his brow, he reached out and took her proffered hand. As usual, awareness of the local area promptly flooded her. She didn’t sense any large life signs in the vicinity. Rustam let go of her hand. Darned if she didn’t miss the contact with him.

“So what’s up with you needing to touch me to do your thing?” she asked as the horses settled into a ground-eating walk.

“I’m not sure. I just know that when our energies mingle, I recover a portion of my old abilities. The rest of the time, I seem to have lost my skills.”

Alarmed, she said, “Do you need me to stop touching you, then?”

He sighed. “Ahh, my dear. I don’t think I could go more than a few hours without touching you even if I tried.”

Warmth shot through her. Was it possible that he craved her the way she craved him? But then her thoughts derailed. He was an alien. She had yet to figure out if he was one of the good-guy Pleiadeans or the bad-guy Centaurians. Not to mention that anything between them would give new meaning to the phrase long-distance relationship. This was a short-term fling they were having, and that was all it could ever be.

She clamped down on her rampaging feelings for him. She could never pursue them. She could have epic sex with him, even like him.

But nothing more.

He would go his way and she would go hers, once she recovered the medallion. She was an army officer, for heaven’s sake. She had a vitally important job to do. Not the least of which was to return home and report the presence of this shipwrecked alien in ancient Greece.

She reached out with her mind to see if she could sense his thoughts, but got nothing at all from him. Did that mean he was sensing none of her thoughts, either? Hopefully, that was how it worked.

They made good time through the afternoon. It wasn’t as hot as the day before, and as the gentle hills continued, the terrain was immeasurably easier to traverse.

When the sun sank in the west, a blood red ball of fire, Rustam spotted a damp spot near the base of a large rock formation. “A seep,” he pointed out. “We’ll have to stop and spend the night collecting water, but it smells like the only moisture nearby.”

Gotta love that alien sense of smell of his.

They dismounted, and he started to set up camp and build a fire while she went to rig a collection system. The seep turned out to be a small spring, bubbling sluggishly from a crack low in the rock wall. She only needed to move a few large stones to get better access to the sheet of moisture trickling down the wall.

She’d lifted a big slab of rock, dumping it aside, when a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye made her freeze. A gigantic black snake, as thick around as her wrist, had lurched back violently, coiling itself defensively before her. A good three feet of the serpent lifted up off the ground as she watched, its head fanning out into the distinctive flat hood of a cobra.

Rustam!

She didn’t dare take her eyes off the agitated snake and didn’t dare move a muscle. She was no more than six feet from the creature, surely well within its striking range. She could only pray this wasn’t a spitting variety of cobra. The snake wove back and forth slightly, its forked tongue darting out every second or two. Tessa’s terrified gaze followed the beast.

Don’t move.Rustam’s voice flowed through her mind reassuringly.

And then a strange whooshing noise came from behind her and something whisked past her cheek, so close it stirred her hair. The snake flew backward, pinned against the wall. It writhed wildly for a few seconds and then subsided, hanging by what looked like three steel spikes lodged in its throat. Each spike was maybe four inches long and slightly thicker than a toothpick.

Rustam lunged to her side, gathering her in his arms. She turned to the comforting bulwark of his chest, shuddering in terror. She was a military officer, for crying out loud. She shouldn’t lose her cool like this! But man, that had been a huge snake, and it had been so close she could see the vertical slits of its pupils expand and contract as it had watched her.

“I’ve got you,” Rustam murmured. “You’re safe.”

She turned her head to look at the snake again. “What are those?”

“The flechettes? I shot my needle gun at him. It uses compressed air to fire metal spikes at hypersonic speed. I kept it when I sank my ship.”

“I would ask to see it, but humans in my time are just starting to experiment with that technology. I’d better not.” She paused. “Thanks for saving my life, especially given how much simpler yours would be if that snake had killed me.”

He went rigid against her. A fist under her chin forced her gaze up to meet his. “You are my consort. I will protect you with my life.”

Wow. She had to give the macho, alpha alien male credit. He sure knew how to make a girl feel special. “Uh, maybe we better have a little talk about this consort business. What exactly does that mean in your world?”

“You belong to me.”

Belong—“Come again?”

“You are mine. I own you. No other male may mount you.”

“Whoa. Stop. Rewind, big guy. You own me? Nobody owns me.”

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