She shook her head hoping to make the pictures of him lying over her with his eyes on fire slowly drilling into her body go away. Ok, she didn’t love him, but his body pulled her the first time she saw it in that stupid alley. Spending yesterday with him only made her want to taste, touch and lick him.
Sighing, she tried to turn only to have white hot heat penetrate her everywhere he held her. Was it just him or was it his species, would anyone of them make her hot like this? She was aching for something she never really experienced before. Yeah, she had sex, but it wasn’t earth shattering. She blamed herself for that; she was never able to fully let her guard down with a man.
Allowing her mind to drift to his brother, the heat she felt dwindled the more she thought of Victor. He really stood as tall as his brother and they resembled each other, but nothing about Victor turned her on. It was all the male who held her securely in his arms. She pressed closer to him feeling the ache in her chest lessen. Even in his sleep he kept the pain at bay.
Lifting shaky fingers, she touched his brow smoothing it out. He really was handsome, such a mundane word for a man who could ignite her body with a look. His brown hair sat on his shoulders slightly unruly in sleep. His eyelids covered his gorgeous eyes allowing her to concentrate on his straight nose that had never been broken. She let her fingers caress the surface of it, smiling when he twitched it.
His cheeks were a masterpiece. If she was a painter she’d spend hours trying to do them justice. They curved in just a little giving him the look of a well-defined face, one that could be hard, like the face she had seen in the alley. Now it was relaxed in sleep, giving him a slightly boyish look. Then there was his chin, which looked hard enough to break stone. She ran her fingers over his face memorizing the texture and contour of it.
She knew he was awake when he captured her hand and kissed the palm of it.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” his deep voiced rumbled out making her quiver.
“Good morning.”
“How do you feel?” The question was asked with genuine concern.
Gratitude and anger warred inside of her. Gratitude that he seemed to genuinely care, anger that this happened to her because he and his people came to her planet. Without him and his enemy, she would still be living her dull life in sunny California.
“Not too bad. I can feel the entity moving inside of me. At least now I know I’m not crazy. I was right when I told the doctors my heart hurt, it really wasn’t just in my head.”
“It’s not just in your head. If we knew sooner, we would have brought you here. There seems to be no way for us to identify the women we are looking for until they either trigger us or their talents make themselves known.”
“So the Sudir’s have an unfair advantage over you?”
“Yes, if they run into a female child the fear she has will usually overwhelm her giving her away. We have found that the older the female is the better she is at not betraying the fact that she can obviously see the Sudir is not human.”
“Why does that happen?”
“We believe it’s how you are programmed by society. It has taught you that being different is an action to be avoided. So you will not melt down when you see the Sudir, but you will make a polite get-away.”
“I don’t know…I screamed in that alley when I knew better.”
“You were always safe. Your conscious mind didn’t know it, but the rest of you did. What would you have done if you met the Sudir on the street or in the grocery store?”
“I would have smiled while telling myself I was seeing things, then I would have left as quickly as possible making sure I never accidently came into contact with him.”
“That’s the difference between the child and the adult. Some children seem to have a talent for not giving themselves away. Selma was one of those children, which is why the Sudir’s want her. She spent years living amongst them and never betrayed herself.”
“Oh.”
“Selma grew up in a different time. The ability to hide in plain sight was needed then to stay alive.”
“I don’t think twenty four to thirty years ago can be considered a different world.”
“You’ll have to ask her about her past one day. She may even tell you how she and Victor met.”
She nodded slipping off the bed and heading towards the bathroom. Turning she looked at him.
“This is really happening, isn’t it? I have something -a venomous snake- twisted around my heart and in less than two days it will have the power to kill me.”
“I’m sorry, Paige. Yes, it’s really happening.”
She turned around and disappeared into the bathroom. Taking a good look at herself in the bathroom mirror she could see the lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there a day or two ago. It would be easy to attribute them to stress, but she knew better. There was a tiredness trying to take over her body, slowly sipping at her reserves of strength; it was insidious as it whispered in her head that there was no escape. If she gave up now it would be a nice easy death, if she should dare to bond with Calix the entity would make her suffer while killing Calix first.