Alien's Concubine, The (10 page)

“
What? I’m not your little
Moonflower anymore?” Gaby demanded testily.

His eyes gleamed with both desire and
amusement. Before Gaby could catch her breath or even attempt to
banish the hallucination, she found herself swept backwards onto
the bed, sprawled on her back with the ‘apparition’ planted firmly,
and solidly, on top of her.

How could she feel his weight? Heat?
Even the tensile strength of his muscles and the silkiness of his
skin?

He shifted his ‘weight’ onto his
elbows, levering himself slightly away from her to look down at her
face. She felt the touch of his finger as he tapped the tip to her
temple. “Because I make it so … here.”

Gaby closed her eyes. “I knew I was
losing my fucking mind,” she muttered a little sickly.

His warm breath tickled her face as he
chuckled huskily. “You do not truly believe that, my treasure, do
you?”

Gaby swallowed. “I don’t know what to
believe … not anymore. Are you like … a ghost?”

He studied her thoughtfully but
finally shrugged. “No. I am a being … as you are, just … somewhat
different.”

“
Then why is it that I
only see you the way the statue looked? And what body lies in that
sarcophagus we brought back from South America? It is a body, isn’t
it?”

He rose upward. He didn’t climb off of
her and then the bed. He simply levered straight upright and
settled on the floor. And then brushed his hands over himself as if
brushing off dust. And then he was naked.

A breathless sense of awe filled her.
He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. It took her breath
just to look at him, stilled her heart in her chest and squeezed it
painfully. As beautifully sculpted and perfectly proportioned as
his body was, his face was … almost too handsome. He grinned at
her, showing even white teeth and a pair of dimples in either
cheek, a purely human expression that was cocky, sensual,
seductive, and devastatingly effective.

In the blink of an eye, literally, he
moved from the side of the bed to sprawl on top of her once more.
Gaby had a split second to feel absolute disbelief before he threw
her into complete disorder.

The feel of his mouth on hers was as
real as anything she’d ever felt before, more real, more ravaging
of her senses. She tasted him as he thrust his tongue into her
mouth with possessiveness and hunger, and his taste sent a heady
rush of pleasure through her. She felt his heated breath mingling
with her own, stirring currents of fiery, exquisite need to life
inside of her.

Uttering a sound of surrender, making
no attempt to fight the rush of feverish need that swamped her
senses, Gaby’s body, mind, and spirit surged upward to join with
him. She’d missed this desperately, she realized, wanted it with a
hunger that had left her feeling unwhole, lacking of strength, or
will, or spirit.

Her body tingled at his touch, came to
vibrant life beneath the stroking caress of his hands. Heat
scorched her as she felt his mouth and tongue replace his hands.
Her belly trembled with need, her passage clenching and unclenching
rhythmically as her body sought the hardness of his flesh, wept for
it.

“
Anka,” she breathed when
she could breathe at all, the whispered word a blessing, a prayer,
a demand for fulfillment.

She sucked in her breath in a sharp
gasp as she felt him penetrate her body, his cock surging and
withdrawing along her passage as he rode her fiercely with his own
need, thrusting into her almost savagely. Clutching at him, she
began to moan as if she was dying.

She felt as if she would, could hardly
catch her breath for the fire that scoured her, for the tension
that coiled her tightly into herself. Her climax broke over her
abruptly, wrenching a hoarse cry from her throat. Every muscle in
her body, it seemed, convulsed so hard it snatched her from
consciousness and she felt as if she was falling into a deep
pit.

* * * *

He had his head in the refrigerator
when Gaby halted in the kitchen doorway. For several moments her
heart seemed to stand still in her chest, not because she was
afraid, not even because she was startled. What struck her was the
very ‘normalcy’ of the scene, when nothing about it should have
seemed the least bit normal.

She’d woken feeling absolutely
wonderful, satisfied, complete, and then discovered she was in her
bed alone and she’d had to fight the urge to burst into tears and
cry her heart out—because he was gone and she was alone and it
hadn’t been anything but a dream.

Finding him standing naked in front of
her opened refrigerator door was such a pleasant jolt of surprise
that she could hardly believe she was actually looking at him for
several moments.

“
What purpose does this
serve?” Anka asked curiously when he’d shut the door.

Swallowing against the tightness in
her throat, Gaby folded her arms over her chest and leaned against
the doorframe, content just to look at him and marvel over how
absolutely gorgeous he was. “Refrigerator,” she responded absently.
“It keeps food cold so that it lasts longer.”

He had his head in the freezer by that
time. “And this?”

His voice sounded strangely hollow
emerging from the interior. “Freezer compartment—freezes the food
so that it lasts even longer.”

He closed the door and looked at her
for the first time, frowning when he saw she’d pulled on her robe.
“I prefer you naked.”

Gaby couldn’t help the smile that
quirked her lips even though the imperious way he’d voiced his
displeasure piqued her just a little. “Do you? Well, I’m used to
wearing clothes. You should get used to it, too.”

He shrugged dismissively. “I have no
need for clothing. The elements do not touch me. I could not sense
the cold of the box. This is why I asked.”

Gaby frowned, digesting that as he
moved to the stove, opened the oven, and shoved his head inside to
examine it. He couldn’t feel?

Stupid! she chastised herself,
distressed in a way she didn’t even want to examine. Nerves
produced sensation and the brain interpreted it. Without nerve
endings, no sensation.

“
And this is
for?”

“
Cooking the
food.”

He straightened from his inspection
and looked around the kitchen. “This entire room is set aside for
food storage and preparation?” he asked in surprise.

Gaby shrugged, examining the kitchen
from an outsider’s perspective. It was a big kitchen for one
person, granted, but it was the main reason she’d taken the
apartment. “All homes have them,” she replied. “The chamber where I
found you was pretty big,” she pointed out.

His eyes crinkled at the corners with
amusement. “Where I found you,” he corrected her. “There was a
purpose.”

“
For the
chamber?”

“
Yes.”

“
What did you mean, where
you found me? Weren’t you in there before I got there?”

“
Long before, centuries I
suspect.”

“
It’s 2006,” Gaby
supplied.

He chuckled. “This number means
nothing to me, Moonflower.”

Gaby reddened. “Of course not. That
was stupid,” she muttered.

He moved toward her, reaching to cup
her face in his hands. “Thoughtless,” he corrected her, caressing
her cheek for a moment before he was drawn away again to explore
further. He stopped to study the small appliances. Bending down, he
extended one finger toward the button that controlled the
blender.

“
It’s not … plugged in,”
Gaby said. Before she could finish the sentence, though, blue light
shot from his finger tip and the blender started up, making them
both jump at the sudden noise.

“
That’s handy,” Gaby
commented, feeling uneasy for the first time.

He glanced at her, but he didn’t
respond to her remark. “Much has changed,” he said thoughtfully,
“unless … this is a different land, no?”

“
It’s changed where you’re
from, as well.”

He studied her a long moment. “You do
not know where I am from, Moonflower. You only know where I was
when we met.”

* * * *

Gaby’s mind was a riot of conflicting
thoughts and emotions as she stared down at the body on her
examination table. Reluctance dominated, however.

This was the man she’d spent the night
with, she reflected. She was totally losing her mind, obsessing
over a man who’d been dead thousands of years, and she couldn’t
figure out why for the life of her.

She had no idea how long she simply
stood as if turned to stone, staring at the aged rags that covered
him, but she didn’t emerge until someone in the room cleared their
throat.

The sound made her head lift, her eyes
seek, instinctively, without conscious thought. After staring at
her assistant blankly for several moments, she glanced at the
Hispanic representatives waiting expectantly around the table and
finally returned her attention to the mummy.

What she was about to do was
unthinkable and it had nothing to do with the fact that performing
an autopsy on remains of this antiquity was rarely done because of
the damage that could result. She wasn’t concerned about the
possibility of losing what might be the greatest find of the
century … or the one before, for that matter, maybe the greatest
find of all time, she thought a little wildly.

Her hand shook as she poised the
scalpel in her hand at long last over a segment of bandaging. There
was no end that she could see. She would have to make a cut to
begin unwinding it from the remains.

Something brushed lightly at the hair
near ear. “This is interesting, Moonflower. I am not familiar with
this particular ritual.”

A jolt traveled all the way through
Gaby from her ear to the hand holding the shaking scalpel.
Goosebumps followed like geese taking flight. Puppet-like, Gaby’s
head jerked upright.

Everyone was staring at her tensely,
but she couldn’t see that anyone looked the least shocked or
disturbed in anyway.

“
They cannot see me,” Anka
murmured in a conspiratorial whisper.

“
Because you’re not really
here,” Gaby muttered under breath.

“
Of course I am, my
treasure, and like animals, they sense my presence even though I do
not permit them to see me,” he said arrogantly. “Look at their
faces, the tension in them.”

Gaby looked. They did look tense and
uneasy, but she’d figured that was because they were as on edge
about the procedure as she was, albeit for a different reason.
“It’s the body,” she muttered under her breath.

“
What about it?” Paul, her
assistant demanded in a nervous whisper as he leaned
closer.

Gaby stared at him blankly, trying to
jog her mind into supplying her with something to say. “Nothing,”
she said tersely and then glanced around at her audience. “Excuse
me a moment. I’ll be right back.”

Without awaiting a response, ignoring
the looks of shocked surprise and dawning outrage on their faces,
Gaby dropped the scalpel, peeled off her gloves, whirled on her
heel, and stalked from the room. She was shaking all over by the
time she reached the ladies room.

Moving to the lavatory, she turned on
the faucet, ran cold water over her palms, and finally cupped
handfuls and splashed it over her face. When she lifted her head to
look at her reflection, she saw him, sprawled negligently on the
counter across from her on his side, his head propped in one hand
as he studied her appraisingly. Uttering a squawk, Gaby whirled to
face him.

“
What are you doing here?”
she demanded when she discovered he hadn’t disappeared as she’d
more than half hoped he would.

“
This is a strange place,”
he said instead of answering her question. “What is it
for?”

Gaby blinked at him. Slowly, heat
flowed into her cheeks. “The restroom?” she asked
cautiously.

He grinned. “This
building.”

“
Oh. It’s a
museum.”

His dark brows rose
questioningly.

“
We preserve and display
antiquities here so that everyone can learn about them.”

He looked amused. “Yesterday’s trash,
today’s treasure?”

She wasn’t certain if it was his
arrogance that irritated her or the comment, which denigrated her
work. “We learn from the past,” she said tightly.

He sat up and settled to the floor,
moving toward her with the slinking grace of a prowling cat.
Delicious shivers crawled up and down Gaby’s spine as she watched
the play of muscles with his movements.

He was wearing the breechclout once
more, and the leather gauntlets—not the mask, but he still looked
like some dark, infinitely dangerous warrior who’d stepped out of
the distant past. “Learn what, my pretty Moonflower?” he asked in a
purring voice as he reached her and lifted a hand to brush his
fingers lightly, caressingly along her cheek.

Gaby stared into his tumultuous green
eyes feeling perfectly blank. “Things,” she finally managed to say.
Her mouth felt desert dry. Gathering moisture with an effort, she
moistened her lips with her tongue.