Alien's Concubine, The (17 page)

“
Mmmm,” she murmured in
satisfaction, brushing her lips lightly along his chest. “I could
get used to this, very used to it.”

He tensed. Surprised, she lifted her
head to look up at him.

He stared back at her for a long
moment, his eyes glittering with some emotion she couldn’t quite
grasp. Disentangling himself from her, he rolled to the edge of the
bed and got up, took two quick strides, and then abruptly crashed
face first on the floor with an impact that shook the furniture in
the room.

Gaby bolted upright, gaping down at
his prone form in shock.

“
What do you mean by
that?” Anka growled, dragging her gaze from the body on the
floor.

Gaby blinked, a jolt going through her
as she saw Anka standing over the prone man, his hands planted on
his hips, his face taut with anger.

After glancing blankly from him to the
man, she scrambled out of the bed to examine the man, tugging at
his shoulders to try to roll him over. It was useless. He was far
too heavy for her to budge him. “What did you do that
for?”

Anka’s eyes narrowed.

Shaking her head in confusion, Gaby
dragged her gaze from his and checked the man for injury. He was
breathing, which was a great relief, but he seemed to be
unconscious, and she could see that he’d bloodied his nose when he
hit the floor so hard. He hadn’t even attempted to break his fall,
she realized. He must have been unconscious when Anka had abandoned
him.

Getting to her feet, she headed to the
bathroom to get a cold washcloth to staunch the bleeding. Anka
grabbed her arm as she started past him, dragging her to a halt.
“Where are you going?”

Gaby frowned at him, tugging at her
arm. “To get something to stop the bleeding. I think he might have
broken his nose when he fell.”

“
You have great concern
for his little hurts,” he growled in an accusing note.

Gaby’s jaw sagged in surprise. “What
are you talking about?”

He studied her face for a long moment
and abruptly released her, transferring his gaze to the man on the
floor. A shaft of uneasiness went through her when she saw the look
on his face, but she shook it off and hurried into the bathroom to
grab a washcloth and soak it in cold water. Grabbing her robe off
its hook on the bathroom door, she shrugged into it and tied the
belt around her waist, then wrung the excess water from the cloth
and headed back into the bedroom.

Both Anka and the man had disappeared,
she discovered, coming to a halt in surprise. After staring around
the room blankly for several moments, she left the bedroom and
traversed the short hallway to the living area and then, when she
didn’t see them, went into the kitchen.

The apartment was empty save for her.
Thoroughly confused, Gaby returned to the bedroom finally and
settled weakly on the edge of the bed, trying to figure out what
had just happened.

Anka was displeased with her. That
much seemed indisputable, but she had no idea why. She got up after
a few moments and dabbed at the blood spots on the floor to clean
the carpet and returned to the bathroom to rinse the cloth. There
was still no sign of either man when she’d finished, and finally
she returned to the bathroom to bathe and dress.

The kitchen was still a wreck from
Anka’s cooking efforts. She busied herself cleaning up, sampling a
bite of the food here and there as she cleaned and disposing of
most of it. She hadn’t eaten, but she discovered she wasn’t really
hungry.

Anger began to displace the tension
and confusion after a while because the longer she thought over
Anka’s anger, the more guilty she began to feel and she disliked
that feeling. She wasn’t even sure of why she felt it beyond the
accusation she’d sensed in his behavior.

She hadn’t done anything wrong, she
kept telling herself, but she felt as if she had.

After wandering around her apartment
for hours, trying to think of something to do to occupy herself
when she’d gotten out of the habit of doing so, Gaby finally gave
up and went to bed, still feeling vaguely affronted, uneasy, and
guilty. She lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling while
she went over and over everything that had happened between them
and everything that had been said, looking for some
clue.

No explanation beyond jealousy
occurred to her, no matter how hard she examined everything, and
she dismissed that because it just didn’t make any sense. Aside
from the fact that Anka had made it clear he expected her to grow
accustomed to the form he’d chosen—and, deep down, she had never
actually lost the sense of betrayal she felt whenever she was with
him in that guise—she couldn’t think of any way he could have
misinterpreted anything she’d done or said.

Maybe it wasn’t her at all? She
thought finally.

The man had awareness. Maybe it was
something he had thought that had made Anka angry?

But, if that was the case, why had
Anka behaved as if he was mad at her?

By the time Gaby got off work the
following night, she was spoiling for a fight. The apartment was
empty, though, when she arrived. After pacing a while, mentally
rehearsing the tongue lashing she meant to give Anka the moment he
appeared, she was slowly but surely brought to the realization that
he wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to blast him with her
temper.

That realization sent her emotions in
two diametrically opposed directions at once. Depression descended
upon her, undermining her sense of righteous indignation, and then
completely irrational anger filled the void. Stalking into her
bathroom, she bathed. Instead of preparing for bed as she usually
did, however, she stomped to her closet and examined the clothing
there for something suitable for a night out. Finding that she
didn’t really have anything that currently suited her mood did
nothing to improve it.

She was a respectable woman of science
and had carefully chosen a wardrobe to reflect her position. She
wasn’t about to go out in anything that screamed respectability,
however.

If Anka wanted to throw a jealous fit
for no good reason, she’d damned well give him a good
reason!

Abandoning the closet, she began a
search through her chest of drawers and finally unearthed a pair of
jeans that had passed beyond respectable to slutty when they’d
become too tight and worn in some fairly indecent places. She had
to lie down on the bed to fasten and zip them. Ignoring the little
roll that blossomed over the waistband when she stood up, she
searched until she found a collarless knit shirt she’d bought that
she’d never worn because it was just a little more fitted than she
liked. The placket down the front ended just above her sternum.
After studying the effect bra-less and then with bra, she discarded
the bra and unbuttoned the placket to the bottom. Her breasts
looked fuller with the snug knit, and, in point of fact, looked as
if they were on the point of spilling out the neck of the
thing.

“
Good!” she muttered,
dragging a brush through her hair and then deciding to leave it
loose instead of bundling it up in a neat little ball on the back
of her head the way she usually wore it at work.

Finishing up with a pair of clogs,
make-up, and a cloud of ‘come and get me’ perfume, she shoved cash
and her ID into one of the pockets of the jeans and slammed out of
the apartment.

The vague hope that she would run into
Anka on her way out so that they could have a rousing good fight
was dashed when she reached the sidewalk outside without
incident.

After chewing her lower lip
indecisively for several moments, she struck off toward the only
nightspot she recalled in the area. It was several blocks from her
apartment, but she was determined to have at least a few drinks
before she headed home again—determined to look like she’d had a
good time whether she did or not—and taking her car seemed unwise
given her agenda. She could take a cab home.

Unless she caught a ride with
someone.

It was late when she finally arrived
at the night club. Her feet were already killing her from walking
so far in shoes she wasn’t used to wearing and her clothes were
clinging from the sweat she’d worked up in the brisk walk. Her body
had heated up the perfume she’d unwisely applied a little too
generously and she felt just a little lightheaded from the
‘tainted’ air.

The place was rocking, packed to the
gills, she discovered with more than a little surprise since it was
the middle of the week. It was lady’s night. Disconcerted when she
found that out, she was already wondering if there was any point in
the exercise when she got inside and discovered her timing was far
better than she’d dared hope. Lady’s night only meant women could
get in free and drinks were half priced till eleven, and ‘ladies’
were on the menu. Droves of men were jostling to get in.

“
All righty then,” she
muttered under her breath, uneasily glancing around the place in
search of a spot to light.

She wandered around for a while,
looking for a table that wasn’t occupied and finally found one that
was tucked away in a corner. It wouldn’t give her much of a view,
she realized, or anyone much of a view of her, but she settled
there anyway, looking around expectantly for a waitress.

She’d just caught a glimpse of Anka—or
a man she thought looked like him-- when a waitress zoomed up to
the table to take her order, effectively blocking her view. Feeling
breathless with the way her heart was hammering in her chest, Gaby
looked at the women blankly for several moments, trying to decide
what to order, and finally settled on a screw driver. When the
waitress had darted off, she discovered the man had
disappeared.

Maybe she was wrong? She hadn’t really
gotten a good look at the tall blond near the bar.

She scanned the room anyway and caught
another quick glimpse as he stopped to speak to a woman.

Her eyes narrowed, hurt and anger
flashing through her. Her heart pounded a little harder. She’d just
positively identified him when the waitress reappeared with her
drink.

She’d lost all desire to stay by that
time, but she paid for the drink and sat staring down at the liquid
blindly.

So much for teaching Anka a
lesson!

Dragging in a deep breath to compress
the hurt crushing her chest, Gaby lifted the glass and took a large
gulp. Fire coursed down her throat. The Vodka settled in the pit of
her empty stomach like a pool of lava. A wave of dizziness rolled
off of it, making her brain feel as if it had spun in her skull.
Bracing herself against the dizziness, she took several more quick
drinks of liquid courage and finally looked around
again.

Acutely aware, now, of Anka winding
his way through the throng at the other end of the bar, Gaby
studied him through narrowed eyes, glancing away each time he
lifted his head to look around. She wondered if he could sense the
dagger gaze or if he was just looking over the selection of women
and trying to determine which appealed to him most.

Angry and hurt, she determinedly
looked around, as well. She wasn’t terribly impressed with the
selection. The place abounded with women from passable to very
pretty, but the men—average to below average—certainly nothing she
could see that had the potential to make Anka feel the least
threatened.

Ok, average it is, she decided,
immediately lowering her standards and looking around for a man
that at least had some physical appeal. The variety there was
fairly wide—tall, short and everywhere in between, thin to
downright pudgy, shaved heads to shaggy.

A big man was hunched over his drink
at the bar. The knit shirt stretched across his broad shoulders
looked promising. His profile wasn’t bad either, but there was
something about the way he was hunched over his glass that set off
warning bells. This one was either a dedicated drinker, or he was
carrying way more baggage than she wanted to deal with.

Dragging her gaze from him, she
finished her own drink while she took another survey.

Anka had moved onto the dance floor
with a giggly blond that looked like she must have used someone
else’s ID to get in the door.

The bastard!

The blond was all over him as the
music moved into ‘bump and grind’ rhythm, rubbing her ass against
his crotch one moment and then hunching his thigh.

Jesus fucking Christ! Gaby thought
furiously. Was she going to fuck him on the dance floor?

Draining her glass, she got up a
little unsteadily and looked around for the ladies’ room. Spying a
lit sign, she threaded her way along the edge of the dance floor
toward it, ignoring the speculative glances of several men along
the way. She’d already entered a stall and unfastened her jeans to
take a pee before it sank into her clouded mind that she’d had to
lay down on the fucking bed to fasten them to start with. Trying
not to panic, she finished and pulled them up again. She was
sweating profusely and dizzy from holding her breath by the time
she’d managed to fasten the pants and zip them. Weaving slightly,
she left the stall and headed for the lavatory.