Alien Terrain (9 page)

Jane looked out of the kitchen window into almost perfect
darkness. The clock above the stove said ten, which meant they’d spent as many
hours in the bedroom. Now the desert all around was velvet stillness—a few
lights far off in the hills, a sprinkling of stars and planets far away. It
seemed a shame to turn the lights on and start banging pots around. But she was
ravenous, and even he must be a little hungry now.

Not
he
. His name
was Raj.
One swiftly purring sound that tilted through her
like a loss of gravity.
Throughout her life, she’d use it as a secret
incantation.
An enticement.
A
protection.
Raj.
Raj.
Raj.

And he appeared.
A figure in the doorway.
Four light, even steps and he was by her side.

Jane wondered for the hundredth time if he could read her
mind. He’d sworn he couldn’t. She still felt him in her head.

“Are you hungry?” He stepped behind her, dipped his head
into her neck. “Should we eat something?”

“I was thinking I’d heat up some soup.”

He released her, arms spread in agreement. She started
foraging through her supplies.

“How about a beer?”
She looked at
him over the door of the refrigerator. On his signal, she got two cold bottles
out and twisted off the caps. “To life,” she said, handing him one.

“To life.”
They raised their
bottles in salute and drank.

Jane motioned him to sit and went back to the fridge. She
assembled what she had at the ready: olives, soft cheese,
marinated
artichokes. She took some crackers from the pantry and grabbed a tube of
Nature’s Garden Vegetable. “No meat,” she said, showing her guest the wholesome
picture on the package.

Jane downed another swig of beer and made quick work of
heating up the soup. She set out the bowls and spoons. All the while she could
feel his eyes on her, tracking her like she was part of some display.

“Is something wrong?” she said, pouring the soup into the
bowls.

“Not one thing.”

Why was he so sexy?
The stillness?
Or those eyes that conveyed just a taste of what he thought? His gaze was like
a shimmer in the distance.
A draw.
Warmth and contentment
pooled behind his smile.

She loved all his expressions. When he was curious or
interested, he looked like a great prince of ancient myth. When he was looming
over her in bed, he looked like sin made flesh. Now his features were at some
intriguing midpoint.
Somewhere between pasha and satyr.

Jane sat down at the table and began to eat. By the second
spoonful, she could feel
a jumpiness
inside her
stomach. Being with him made her giddy, like listening to the loud music her
parents played for her when she was just a kid. Why was eating soup the thing
that made her nervous when they’d spent all afternoon discovering which sexual
position she liked best?
Standing, sitting, on her back, her
belly, on her knees.
She still couldn’t decide.

Jane glanced up and caught Raj staring at her with his
mind-reader expression.

“What am I thinking about?” she challenged.

“Sex.”

She shook her head and drank more beer. “Too easy,” she
complained. She liked sex, as it happened. She liked it a lot. She liked the
physicality, the dampness, and the achy muscles. She liked the versatility, the
subtle shift in feeling when he bent her over, spread her open, helped her to
her knees. She liked everything, in fact. He seemed to like it too. And it
liked him.

She risked another, longer glance in his direction. What she
saw lent some weight to the idea sex was his best medicine. His handsome face
was perfectly restored. She couldn’t see a trace of what he’d been through just
the day before.

“Are you completely better?”

“I am,” he said.

Amazing.
It shouldn’t be possible.

“What else is different about you?”

“Different?”

“What else besides miraculous, sex-activated healing and the
kind of/sort of mind-reading trick?”

“I don’t read minds. Not even kind of/sort of.”

“Breaths,” Jane conceded.

“And heat.” He looked at her. She blushed. “Eat up,” he
said.

She frowned tilting her bottle to her lips. “Are you in a
hurry to go back to all your friends?”

“No.” Truthful, but she’d seen the hesitation.

“They’ll be worried about you.”

“Yes.”

“When it’s safe, I’ll find someplace to go and message
them.”

“I’ll go,” he said.

“For you it won’t ever be safe. You look
exactly
like the alien you are. I’ll do
it.
In a day or two.”

He was suddenly huge again, massive, displeased, and sizing
her up as an opponent. It was so abrupt, Jane almost found it funny. She was,
however, careful not to laugh.

“Doesn’t it bother you that they all think you’re dead?”

He ignored the implicit reproach. “You gave me your word you
wouldn’t risk your life for mine. Do you remember?”

“I remember.” Jane thought about explaining how
inconspicuous she’d be compared to him, but if she did, they’d argue, and she
didn’t feel like crossing swords with him.

She blew into her spoon and took a bite of soup. “You never
answered me.”

“I didn’t?” He was munching on a cracker in a way that she
found intimate and dear.

“I asked you what was different about you.”

“Ah.” He swallowed.
Took a swig of beer.
“I’m told I’m about forty percent stronger than most men on Earth.
Twenty percent faster in a sprint.”
He paused.

“Seventy to eighty percent handsomer,” she provided.

A smile curved around the lip of his beer bottle. His dark
gaze shifted toward her.
Devastating.

“So.
Do you just win hands down?
Backus everything, Earth zero?”

Raj shook his head. “Earth men have distinct advantages.
They’re better sports for one thing.”

“Meaning what?” Jane hadn’t seen much glowing sportsmanship
in her years at Rick’s Body Shop.

“It means your fellow Earthlings know enough to cut their
losses.
Which means they live to fight another day.
Backusians are more bloody-minded. When we fight, we win or don’t get up
again.”

“In the past, you mean.”

“The past?”
Raj blinked at her no
doubt concerned expression.

“You don’t fight now.” Somehow she’d convinced herself Backusians
had evolved past violence. Raj’s slight discomfort told her she was wrong.

“We fight less often now, perhaps.
But
there are still battles, all of which end badly for one side.”

“I’d have thought there’d be no time for fighting after all
that sex.”

Raj leaned back in his chair, his body open and magnetic.
“The focus we bring to the bedroom can be used equally well in battle, I’m
afraid.”

“What do you fight about?”

“The usual things: principles, territory, a threat to our
security. And women, obviously.”

Women?

“Have
you
ever
fought?”

“No, dear.”
He smiled at her.
“Not in earnest anyway.
I’m trained as a warrior, of
course.”

Of course.
So there was no way out
of conflict and aggression. Even in the stars.
Too bad.
Jane finished the soup in her bowl and looked around for ways to change the
subject. A question she’d been meaning to ask for a while sprang to mind. She
pushed her empty bowl away and looked at him. “Is there some reason you don’t
ever come inside my body?”

THE QUESTION WAS completely
unexpected,
and that fact more than anything made Raj sit up straight in his chair. How was
it he was missing all these cues from her? He who’d honed his skill at
observation with the greatest teachers on his planet. Had his brain really been
injured in that pathetic beating he’d received? He didn’t think so. At least he
didn’t feel diminished.

What he felt was happy. A new beatitude quite different from
the pleasure he was used to
had
his mind sluggish.
His heart brimming over with new feeling.

Raj had spent his life with women. Always as a part of
sexual devotion—a service sown, a bounty reaped. He’d never before known
feminine companionship. Jane’s company made him feel a new self emerging. Her
presence seemed to seep beneath his skin in ways a thousand intimacies never
could. She was so open to him and so vulnerable. Together they’d experienced
her first time feeling pleasure with a man. He didn’t have to ask. He knew.
They’d both been marked by it.

He looked at her and saw her jaw was slackening the way it
did when she was worried she’d said something wrong. “I’m not complaining
obviously.”

“About what?”

“
Your
cum.”

Raj clasped her arm with deep regret for having left the
question hanging. “It’s my training,” he said quickly. “No one in service ever
ejaculates inside a woman. With the exception of the mouth, ejaculation during
penetration is reserved for couples.”
Couples.
Raj
said the word and thought the word and knew with blinding certainty the word
applied to him and Jane.

“Come here.” He beckoned her a little closer, and when her
face was next to his, he cupped it with one hand. “I’ve never come
inside a women
in my life, but if you ask me to, I will.
Would you like that?”
Desire for her shuddered through him
like a gust of air through candlelight.
She witnessed it and cast a
longing look toward the bedroom.

“Would you like something else?” she asked. “The pantry’s
well stocked, but there isn’t much that’s fresh. I wasn’t thinking I’d have
company.”

“Are you sorry?” he asked softly.

She touched his face and smiled that unpracticed smile that
almost had him off his chair and on his knees declaring,
You
and no one else.
You above all else and always
.
The ancient
rite of coupling.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Again she glanced toward the bedroom. “What do you usually
do after ten hours of sex?”

“Shower,” he said. “Then have a snack and go to bed.”

“Is it okay to do it in reverse?”

“I love it in reverse,” he said with a great leer.

They rose and cleaned up. After which they washed each other’s
bodies. The sound of running water brought exhilaration. And then there was the
soapy water sluicing over her wet skin. His cock was hard. She washed it for
him, hand over soapy hand. And even though he could have lifted her and fucked
her then and there, he waited, both of them left on the simmer until they’d
dried themselves and crawled back into bed.

When Jane asked, “Do you want to sleep?” the sweetly
tentative question closed around his heart.

Raj shifted toward her in the darkness and let his burning
body answer for him.

Not all the ladies Jane had given solace to
were
dead. The one Bill had been directed to
was
by all accounts just damn close to it. He’d have to say
the tidy trailer park he’d pulled into was as good a scenario for checking out
as any one he’d seen. They had the old folks in a row of double-wides with
pretty desert plants
blooming
their hearts out all
around. And there were therapeutic animals too. He’d found a scrawny gray cat
circling the doorway of the trailer where Lois Grant was said to live. Bill
bent down and scratched the unsuspecting creature right behind the ears. Then
he picked him up and rang the bell.

By the time the old woman had made it to the door, the cat
in his arms had done enough struggling to get the message that it wasn’t going
anywhere. It was still now. Not happy, but not moving. In that respect it was
already a damn sight smarter than Rick Bard had ever been.

“Is this your cat?” He smiled at the old lady, and he meant
it in his way. She was what you’d call high functioning.
Dressed
up in tan slacks and a cotton top with gold buttons on the pockets.
No
depressing housecoat for this broad. He had to hand it to her.

“Misty.” The woman looked distraught, which was good news.
Their conversation shouldn’t take more than five minutes if the creature in his
arms meant something to her. “What happened?”

“She’s okay,” he said with his best look of fatherly
concern. “Just a little spooked I think. Why don’t you let me lay her down
somewhere?”

“Anywhere.”
The lady stepped aside,
motioning into the tidy living room. A radio in the kitchen was playing a
crackling version of some ancient rock and roll. Something about a girl named
Prudence coming out to play. Dancer surveyed the setup in the trailer while the
woman shut the door.

“I’m looking for Jane Bard,” he said with no change to his
smile.

The old girl might be stylish, but she wasn’t much good as
an actress. Everything she thought was right there in her eyes. Bill read her
panic like a ticker tape:
This is a bad,
bad man. He’s after little Janey Bard. I have to fight to save her and I will.

Just as soon as he
puts down my cat.

Bill closed his hand around little Misty’s throat. The woman
got the picture and immediately started whimpering. Her arms were moving weakly
toward him, two old, veiny claws grasping at thin air.

“Nice place,” said Bill, taking a stroll into the kitchen.
He tapped his fingers on the black door of the microwave and turned to her,
cocking his brow. “This thing still work?”

Old Lois Grant’s white face grew six shades paler.

Even the cat got in the spirit of the thing and let go with
a mournful howl.

The lady made a choking sound, her hand over her mouth. She
looked a little closer to the edge than Bill might like.

“Just give me the address,” he said. “That’s all I want.
Then I put pussy down and hit the road.”

“The address?”
Lois was halfway
there already. Already off the Jane Bard team and siding with the cat. He liked
that about her. Decided he’d give her a break.

“I ain’t even gonna hurt her,” he said, with his
let-me-level-with-you look. “Hell, I like the girl. Alls I want to do is talk.”
It all sounded so smooth, Bill half believed the words himself. He probably
didn’t even have to pop the door on the old microwave, but Bill did and it
worked a treat.

Lois started scribbling.
A little messy
for a granny, but Bill managed to read it just fine.
Even better for old
Misty, he believed it. He dropped the cat,
who
made a
beeline for the nearest thing to crawl under. His hostess almost fainted with
relief. Bill tipped his hat to her and headed off for the day’s next order of
business.

No rest for the wicked
,
he thought to himself and got back in his truck.