Page 68 of Hot Zone

Sixteen

Tessa sprawled on top of Rustam, his heart pounding like a jackhammer in her ear.

Wow.

That had possibly been more incredible than last time. That suspended chunk of time, where nothing existed but the two of them, had felt so right. She’d never wanted to come back from that place. Already, she wanted to go back as soon as they could possibly get there.

It was humbling to have a man like him give himself completely over to her. He didn’t strike her as the type to allow himself to be vulnerable often. And yet he’d opened up his very soul to her, given her an intensely private and personal piece of himself tonight. He’d said please to her, for goodness sake. That had to be hard for him.

In return, she had let go of all her inhibitions and fears, diving headfirst into that whirling indigo maelstrom they created between them. And it had been…transcendent.

She wasn’t sure there actually were words for what they’d shared. It was almost as if they’d become part of one another.

He murmured something in a tongue she didn’t recognize, but she didn’t have to. From his tone of voice, the meaning was obvious.

She smiled lazily, too sated herself to do much more than that. The poor boy had just gotten a thorough initiation into Earth-style lovemaking, and it appeared to have blown his mind. He seemed completely poleaxed by the idea of the woman taking the lead and giving pleasure to the man.

“Great spiraling Milky Way,” he finally breathed.

She murmured against his perspiration-slick skin, “I take it you liked that?”

“I am your slave, woman. I shall serve you to the end of time if you but do that to me again.”

She laughed outright. “I’m glad to have done my part to broaden your romantic horizons.” Although she hoped she hadn’t ruined his enjoyment of his harem forever.

Tessa was quickly coming to the conclusion that no Earth man was ever going to match up to him in her lifetime. Maybe he would take the concept of letting the woman have her way in bed back to his females and share it with them. Who knew? Maybe she’d started a revolution that would sweep his society and revolutionize the role of alien females.

A pang of jealousy shot through her. This was a man she would want all to herself if she were to have a long-term relationship with him. She wouldn’t do well in a harem. She couldn’t see herself sharing him nicely with other women.

She frowned. How could his people, with their rigid, layered view of society, be the same enlightened Pleiadean race that had planted the pieces of the Karanovo stamp on Earth, and who’d nudged mankind—human females in particular—for millennia toward developing into a race capable of star travel?

Was he Centaurian, after all? But how could he be? They hated humans, by all accounts, and particularly hated human females. The man who’d just surrendered himself entirely to her was no hater of human women.

He dragged her blanket over both of them and locked an arm at the small of her back to hold her in place when she would have rolled off of him.

“Am I too heavy? Should I move?” she murmured.

“Stay right where you are. I wouldn’t have you anywhere else.”

“Mmm. I like the sound of that.”

“What am I going to do with you?” he muttered.

“I think we’ve established at least one thing you like to do with me.”

He laughed. “We’ve established several things I like to do with you.”

Rapidly becoming drowsy, she murmured, “Don’t worry about it tonight. Sleep now. There’ll be time enough tomorrow to ponder the question.”

Except tomorrow turned into a long, hot day of dodging Greek soldiers streaming north. Once the Persians fought their bloody way past Thermopylae, the Greeks would fight a guerilla-style delaying action, pestering Xerxes’s army all the way to Athens.

Oh, the city would eventually be sacked and burned to the ground, but the constant harassment would buy the citizens of Athens enough time to evacuate, taking with them their culture and their great stores of knowledge.

Unfortunately, the Karanovo fragment, which had been steadily moving south along the coast, had stopped overnight, somewhere in the vicinity of Chalcis. Chalcis sat at the narrowing of the gulf about halfway down the Greek peninsula.

Tessa had discovered by accident, once when Rustam was holding her hand and searching for soldiers nearby, that if she reached out with her mind to search for the medallion piece at the same time, she got a strong, clear reading on it.

Frustratingly, though, she continued not to be able to pick it up on her own.

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