Amorous Overnight (44 page)

“Shelley,” he rumbled.

She cranked up her heavy eyelids far enough to see him staring at her breast. When she focused on her nipple, she frowned. Every tug of his fingers was drawing drops of fluid from her.

She touched a drop with her fingertip and tasted it. “Milk.”

“Tysan says the process is responsible,” Cecine told her, his gaze still firmly fixed on the beads welling and trickling down. “It’s causing your hormone levels to fluctuate.”

Then he looked at her face as he moved upward, resting over her on one elbow to suck off the wet tips of his fingers and thumb. His eyes had gone completely black.

“Shelley…”

Although she was heavy with satisfaction and barely hanging on to consciousness, the compulsion to offer him sustenance was undeniable. Reaching up with leaden arms, she pulled his head down and closed her eyes with a sigh. His growl as he latched on to her was the last thing she heard before she drifted into dreams of ecstasy.

The minute Shelley opened her eyes, she was wide awake—and starving. Her stomach growled as she stretched carefully and looked around. Hastion was asleep on the bunk to her right, fully dressed in his uniform and boots. On the bunk to her left, Monica was curled up under a blanket, also sound asleep.

Tysan hurried in, looking exhausted. “Good morning, Shelley,” he said in a low voice. “How do you feel?”

“Really good, actually. Is it over?”

“It is. Empran, elevate the head of the bunk thirty degrees.”

“Affirmative.” The head of the bed slowly raised so that she wasn’t lying so flat.

“How’d I do?” Shelley asked.

He smiled so brightly he practically glowed. “You made the fastest, easiest transition we’ve seen yet. I didn’t even have to sedate you. We’ll definitely be making some adjustments to the process based on what we learned from you.”

“Yay, me. So what day is it?”

He thought for a moment before saying, “It’s been five days since you arrived here.”

“Ah.” She’d forgotten they didn’t go by the same calendar here. “When can I see my babies?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” she said eagerly, yearning exploding inside her. She wanted to hug them and smell them and rub her face all over their tummies and hear them giggle.

Hastion sat up and blinked at her, suffering from a severe case of bedhead. “You’re awake.”

“Unless I’m dreaming,” she agreed with a smile.

He hopped off his bunk and hesitated only an instant before leaning down to gather her carefully into his arms.

“If you’re dreaming, don’t wake up yet,” he whispered. “I’ve missed you, Shelley-Belle.”

She hugged his neck tightly, inhaling his familiar, if slightly ripe, scent. “Thank you for staying.”

“As if anything could have dragged me away.”

Then she noticed her long, pointy elbows sticking out and her eyes widened. How could she have forgotten? “Ooh, I’m skinny! I want to see.”

Hastion pulled away with a grin. “You’re slender, not skinny.”

A full-length flare image appeared beside the bed and Shelley propped herself higher on one elbow to see herself. “Oh…wow…”

Her heart beating faster, she sat up carefully, sliding her bare legs from under the blanket to let them dangle over the edge of the bed. She’d seen Monica and Jasmine after their transitions and knew they looked really different afterward, but somehow she just hadn’t expected…

“I’m a completely different person.”

It wasn’t just her arms and legs that had stretched. Her previously round face was now long and narrow, just like the rest of her. Long, narrow feet, long, narrow hands, long, narrow neck, and from what she could see, long, narrow everything else under the pale-blue hospital gown. But she wasn’t pale and bony and frail-looking like Monica and Jasmine were after their transitions—her lips and cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright, though she could use a little mascara.

Her boobs didn’t look too much bigger, which was a relief, but they felt fuller and ached a little.

“After you’d passed the crisis, I healed the bruising with an accelerator,” Tysan said. “Otherwise you might not appear quite so luminous.”

“Thank you.” She held up her arm and flexed her biceps. “Wow. Muscle definition.”

“Rub it in,” Monica grumbled behind her.

Shelley leaned to the side and grinned at Monica’s sleep-rumpled reflection. “Hey, I worked for it, remember? Now all those hours in the training center are paying off.”

“They more than paid off during your transition,” Tysan declared. “Jasmine was very fit too, but underweight. You were at optimal body composition for the process and will probably be fully recovered in a matter of days.”

“I’m still taller,” Monica informed her smugly.

Shelley snorted. “Like I care. At least I’m not five-two anymore. How tall am I, anyway?”

“Six feet,” Tysan said, “though you could grow another half inch or so in the next few weeks.”

“I can totally live with that.” Then it struck her. “Where’s my hair?” She reached and felt a big, hard knot of hair behind her head.

“Here.” Monica hopped off the bed and stepped up behind her. “It was bugging you every time you rolled over on it so I got it out of the way.” Shelley felt a tug and then a thick blonde braid was dropped over her shoulder. It reached to her lap.

“Wow,” she said.

“Yeah, there’s a metric crap-ton of it,” Monica agreed with a smirk. “And guess what, Pony Girl…”

Shelley’s eyes widened. “No. Way.”

“Way.” Monica pulled Shelley’s chin back to the right and trailed her finger down a two-inch stripe of hair that ran from her crown down behind her ear and disappeared into the braid. “It goes down both sides, like a bright-pink headband. Holligan’s never going to let you hear the end of it.”

“Tysan, how in the hell did
this
happen?” Shelley demanded, turning her head both directions to verify Monica’s claim.

He shrugged. “The process didn’t target hair-color genes. You must have had another premutation that was completed by the genome resequencing.”

She sighed. “Oh well, if that’s the worst thing that comes out of all this, I won’t complain.”

Her stomach growled loudly and Tysan laughed. “I’ll take that as a request for solid food.”

“Please.” Shelley clutched at her long, unbelievably flat stomach. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in months.”

“A tray will be delivered shortly.”

Before she could thank him, the door opened and Cecine walked in carrying Wyatt. Tara was right behind him with Kallie.

Maternal longing shook Shelley like an earthquake and she ate them up with her eyes as she reached out with both hands. “Oh, my babies, I’ve missed you so much!”

Wyatt stared at her until Cecine tried to put him into her arms. Then he clung to Cecine, looking afraid.

Ice trickled into Shelley’s belly and she froze before pasting on a bright smile. “Wyatt, honey, it’s me. Mama.”

Wyatt’s little face crumpled and then he burst into tears. “Mama! Wa mama!”

Shelley swallowed hard. “Wyatt, I’m Mama.”

When Cecine leaned closer, Wyatt howled, trying to scramble up his chest.

“Shhh.” Cecine drew back with a frown, patting his little back. “Wyatt, it’s all right. This is your Mama. Do you remember my explaining how she grew?”

“Wa Mama!
Wa Mamaaaaa!
” Wyatt bawled, red-faced and yanking repeatedly on two slobber-soaked handfuls of Cecine’s hair.

Shelley covered her mouth with a shaking fist. Truly afraid now, she looked at her daughter, who was sucking her thumb with a worried frown. “Kallie?”

Kallie shrank away, laying her head on Tara’s breast as she watched Shelley with suspicion.

When Tara turned away a little, as if to protect Kallie from her, Shelley burst into tears. “Oh God. They don’t know me. My babies don’t know me!”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Hastion laid his hand on the back of Shelley’s neck and kissed her hot, damp temple. He’d never felt so helpless in his life.

“Shelley, please be calm,” the minister told her in a soothing tone.

“No,
you
be calm!” she sobbed into her hands. “I want my babies.”

“And you shall have them if you’ll just be patient.”

Dropping her hands, she wailed, “I
have
been patient—for five days! Five whole days!” Then she flopped over onto her side. “This is all your fault, you big, alien…
baby snatcher
.”

The minister’s jaw tightened but he wisely didn’t point out that she’d been unconscious for almost four of those days. “You’re upsetting the twins.”

“Well I’m upset too, so sue me,” she cried as the storm of tears continued unabated.

“Shelley’s body has just been through a tremendous upheaval and it could take weeks for her hormones, and therefore her emotions, to stabilize,”
Tysan sent, looking around at all of them.
“We must resolve this for her as quickly as possible. She’s in no condition to resolve it herself.”

“What can we do?”
Monica asked.

“Let me talk to Tiber. For now, take the twins home and let her cry. She’ll probably sleep. When she wakes, she needs to eat.”

“Can I lie with her?”
Hastion asked.

“If it doesn’t upset her further.”

He immediately climbed onto the bunk behind Shelley. Before he could wrap her in his arms, she turned and curled into his chest, weeping as if her heart were breaking. Hastion hugged her close, his own heart breaking for her.

Still holding his unhappy son, Cecine looked at Hastion with poorly concealed irritation.
“Everything will be fine, Ensign.”

Hastion stared back.
“If you say so, sir.”

Cecine’s eyes narrowed, but he turned on his heel and departed with Tara, leaving them in blessed silence but for Shelley’s muffled sobs. He held her until she cried herself to sleep, and then he and Monica took turns flaring to their houses to clean up.

When Shelley woke, her mood hadn’t improved. Hastion sat on her bunk, rubbing her hip through the thin blanket that covered her from head to toe.

Sighing, he said for the third time, “Shelley, you’ve got to eat something.”

“I told you, I’m not hungry,” came the dull, muffled reply.

Leaning against the next bunk with her arms and legs crossed, Monica said, “You know Tysan’s not going to let you out of here until you’ve eaten solid food.”

“What do I care? It’s not like anybody needs me.”

“I need you,” Hastion said at once. “And Wyatt and Kallie need you too.”

“Shelley, they’ll come around,” Monica told her. “Probably sooner rather than later. They just need a little time to adjust to your new appearance.”

“What if they don’t?”

“They will. But not if you don’t come out from under that blanket,” she added. “And not if you waste away to nothing. Now get your ass out here and eat.”

“I hate Garathani food.”

“Well I’ve got news for you—it’s not Garathani food. I sent that back and got you something from our house.”

An arm flopped the blanket down and Shelley blinked at the light. She looked terrible—her eyes were swollen, her nose red and wisps of her hair had worked loose from her braid.

“What is it?” she asked apathetically.

Monica pulled an orange box from behind her back and shook it. “Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch.”

Though Shelley’s stomach growled, her expression betrayed no interest. “Where’d you get that?”

“I think Kellen hijacked a delivery truck before we left Earth. He surprised me with a whole pallet of this stuff.”

“That beats the hell out of what your father surprised
me
with,” Shelley said petulantly.

“Yes, it does, but starving yourself won’t change it.”

Shelley sighed and sat up. “Got milk? And a bowl and spoon? Or do I have to eat it out of the box?”

Hastion rose and picked up the tray off the counter. “Empran, raise the head of Shelley’s bunk to eighty degrees.”

“Affirmative.”

When she’d settled back comfortably, he set the tray in front of her and helped her fill her bowl.

“This is cow’s milk, right?” she asked with a suspicious look when he poured it from the decanter.

He smiled. “One hundred percent Terran cow. Holstein, if I’m not mistaken.”

She took one unenthusiastic bite and then began shoveling it into her mouth with gusto.

“Hey, take it easy,” Monica said with a wide-eyed laugh. “You don’t want to puke it up, do you?”

Shelley shook her head. “Sorry,” she mumbled around a mouthful of the little beige balls. “But they’re so good and I’m so damn hungry.”

When Hastion plucked one out of her bowl and popped it into his mouth, she gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “You’re lucky this isn’t a fork or your hand would be pinned to the tray.”