Amorous Overnight (55 page)

“But I still have plans for you.”

“So do I,” Shelley purred, reaching over to grab his other wrist.

Hastion’s breath caught at the possessive lust and love in their eyes, and he let them pull him down between them. His drawings could wait.

His future could not.

Turn the page for a sneak peek at
Emilie Overnight,
the next book in Robin L. Rotham’s Overnight series, coming soon from Samhain Publishing!

Emilie Overnight

Sneak Peek!

Tysan woke at 6:00 a.m. US central standard time, in keeping with his patients’ circadian rhythms, and rose from his bunk in one of the med lab quarantine rooms. He could have returned to his assigned quarters once they reached Garathan—now that all the mating recruits had been removed to the surface, along with a good portion of the ship’s crew, overcrowding was no longer an issue. But since he spent every waking moment in the med lab, he didn’t see the point.

After bathing and donning his uniform, he walked into the main chamber, where the lighting level had already brightened from 5 to 20 percent. “Good morning, Empran.”

“Good morning, Dr. Tysan,” the computer replied.

When he looked down the two rows of undulating therapy bunks, a holoscreen appeared over the head of each patient, and Tysan initiated his morning ritual by walking to the first bunk on the left side.

“Good morning, Selah,” he said, taking his patient’s hand and squeezing it. “Did you rest well?”

Selah, of course, did not respond, but he continued to hold her slender hand as he assessed her physio scores. Dr. Ketrok had once asked him why he bothered with such pleasantries, and Tysan had replied, “To keep me mindful of the fact that they are more than experiments—they’re living beings. Besides,” he’d added, “how can we be certain they do not hear us? Just because they’re unresponsive to external stimuli and our scanners detect no significant brain activity doesn’t guarantee there is no speck of awareness or emotion in them.”

“They would not be here if their lack of awareness were in doubt,” Ketrok argued. “Their Terran families would not have parted with them if there were any hope of their recovery.”

“I’m certain that’s true. However, I prefer to err on the side of compassion.”

Ketrok shrugged, but, thereafter, he and the other project staff had greeted all the females courteously, if not with the warmth Tysan did.

After he’d performed a physical examination, checking her skin condition, muscle tone, reflexes and joint flexibility, Tysan tucked her thin blanket back into place with a sigh.

“Well, my dear, it looks as though you’re ready to be transferred to the surface facility,” he said. Selah was the first subject to undergo the retroactive neogenesis process, and because her body hadn’t yet begun to atrophy when they received her, she was also the first to successfully transition. It had been the crowning achievement of his med-science career.

Placing his palm against her warm cheek, he leaned down and pressed his lips to her brow. “Thank you, Selah. It has been a joy working with you. May your implantation be as successful as your transition.”

Dismayed by the tightening of his throat, he straightened quickly and moved to the next bunk. It was disturbing how attached he’d let himself become to these Terran females, particularly Selah and Emilie. If any of the project staff had witnessed his maudlin behavior, he’d have been instantly reassigned and sent for a psychological evaluation.

He was engrossed in Brittney’s scores when a high-priority alert sounded. An instant later, the flare lighting dimmed and then went out, plunging the chamber into complete darkness.

“Empran, what happened to the lighting?” he asked, gripping the edge of the bunk to keep himself oriented. When there was no response, he frowned. “Empran! Tysan to Tech Engineering. What’s—”

The lighting resumed normal function and the alert ceased.

“Empran has been deactivated,” a mechanized voice announced. “Backup command module Esitran is now online.”

“Deactivated!” He gaped for a moment. “Esitran, for what reason was Empran deactivated?”

“Commander Kellen called the sapience-threshold event code.”

Tysan rolled his eyes. Of course he did.

Wasn’t it time tech-science learned to control computers that exceeded sapience thresholds rather than execute them? If he dispatched every patient who didn’t do as he wished, he’d have slaughtered half the ship’s crew by now.

He sighed. Damn, but he’d actually come to like Empran after she began interacting with Monica and loosened up a bit. She’d even learned his routines and started intuiting his commands, making herself more useful to him than ever. But of course the instant a computer became that useful, it was punished with deactivation and he had to begin all over again with another. The irony left a bitter taste in Tysan’s mouth.

“That’s unfortunate, Esitran, but I imagine we’ll get along just fine,” he said with more optimism than he felt.

“I am a computer, Dr. Tysan, not a crew member. If we do not ‘get along’ as you wish, the fault will almost certainly lie in your expectations of me.”

“Peserin save me,” he muttered. “Esitran, must I reprogram all my experiment protocols?”

“Negative. All operational protocols were backed up to my module.”

“Thank the Powers for that, at least.”

Resigning himself to the situation, he continued down the first row of bunks and up the second, performing physical examinations of each patient.

Two hours later he stood at Emilie Engel’s bunk, the last stop on his morning rounds. He gnawed on his lower lip for several minutes as he stared at the holochart displayed over her head. Though the slight improvement in her brain function persisted, there had been no repeat of her anomalous behavior two days earlier—no wailing or thrashing, no tears or words of denial.

No anguished, terrified looks from her lovely green eyes.

As much as he wouldn’t wish that sort of torment on the young female, he was vastly disappointed. He’d hoped the episode was a sign of an impending spontaneous recovery. They were exceedingly rare in patients who’d been declared brain-dead but they did happen, and if such a recovery were to happen to one of his patients, he would have it be Emilie.

Finally he laid his palm against her warm cheek with a heavy sigh and leaned down to press his lips to her forehead. “All right, Emilie, I’m going to break my fast,” he told her, just in case she was even marginally aware. “I’ll return within a half hour.”

After he walked out of the med lab, the door slid closed behind him. For a moment the only movement in the chamber was the undulation of the bunks, and then Emilie took a deep breath, followed by another, and yet another. In the simulated early morning light, she opened her eyes and reached up to explore her face and neck with her fingertips.

Then she smiled and whispered, “I’ll be here, Dr. Tysan.”

About the Author

When I complained of being bored the summer before 7th grade, my mother (who worked at a bookstore at the time) handed me a stripped copy of Victoria Holt’s
The Shivering Sands
—and I was hooked. I became a voracious reader and an aspiring author, bringing home stacks of books from the library every single week.

The next year, I did a school report on Ms. Holt and wrote to her asking for information. In reply, she sent me an autographed photo and a lovely two-page handwritten letter in which she encouraged me to follow my writing dreams. Sadly, both the photo and the letter were lost over many moves, but my writing dreams remained.

At 14, I tried to write my first two romances. The first was about a federal agent masquerading as a bank robber, and a smart-mouthed customer who drove a custom baby-blue Trans Am named Shark. The “robber” stole Shark as his getaway vehicle and the heroine, Nicki, dove in beside him. That was as far as I got—I could never see beyond their flying down the highway, bickering as they were chased by bad guys.

The second was a hot mess of an erotic, Gothic, paranormal involving an eighteen-year-old governess and the sixteen-year-old eldest son of the house who made quite inappropriate advances toward her via astral projection while she slept. I wrote 100 pages, front and back—in pencil—before I hit that I-HATE point in the story and shoved it under my bed. When I retrieved it two years later, the lead was so smeared I couldn’t read it. The End.

After that, I set my dream aside to address the more practical matters in life—matters like eating and putting a roof over my head. It took finding my own hero to reignite my passion for romance writing. More than 25 years after my last attempt, I bought a used laptop on eBay and wrote my first erotic romance.

Mr. Robin and I have been married for seventeen years; we live on a farm and have three wonderful kids. I love to hear from readers, so don’t be timid about dropping by my website,
www.robinlrotham.com
, to say hi!

Look for these titles by Robin L. Rotham

Now Available:

Carnal Compromise

FrankenDom

A brilliant woman, a couple of mad scientists, and an erotic experiment with shocking results…

FrankenDom

© 2013 Robin L. Rotham

Vascular surgeon Dr. Rachel McBride knows she’d be insane to pass up the chance to work on Julian Kilmartin’s cutting-edge research project. The reclusive neurologist has been the object of her submissive daydreams since residency, and time and distance have only strengthened the dark compulsion.

To complicate matters, a former lover who was all too aware of her attraction to Julian is also on the team. Charmingly obnoxious Dr. Colin Carter was Julian’s protégé back in the day, and nothing appears to have changed…or has it? There’s an earnestness to Colin now, an urgency she’s never before seen in him.

When she accepts the offer and travels to Eastern Europe, Rachel discovers that research is only part of her job description—and her total submission is only the beginning of the sexual excesses Julian and Colin will demand from her.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
FrankenDom:

October 13

When someone pounded on my apartment door like they meant business, I fumbled one of my mother’s second-best teacups and almost dropped it.

If I’d had any idea who was doing the pounding, I might have let it fall and bitten my knuckle in suspense. Instead, I blew out an annoyed breath and finished wrapping the delicate cup in newspaper before answering. I would have ignored the rude summons altogether but I needed boxes too badly.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said as I threw open the door. “I need some… Colin?”

He grinned. “I’m just in time then.” When I blinked at him in shock, the grin widened. “Good morning, Rachel.”

“I thought you were the movers,” I said blankly. The last time I’d been this close to Dr. Colin Carter, he was pulling his underwear up over his spectacular ass. Why was he standing on my doorstep five years later, fully dressed in blue jeans and a black leather jacket?

He looked into the living room. “May I come in?”

After a moment’s hesitation, I stood back, tugging self-consciously at the stretched-out hem of my faded purple UW sweatshirt. Then I glanced at the living room, which was a shambles and not just because I was moving. Organization had never been my strong suit. Boxes and books and stacks of medical journals made an obstacle course of the floor, and piles of paper covered every horizontal surface.

I flushed. “Sorry, I wasn’t really expecting company. It’s a bit of a wreck.”

“Not a problem.” He wrapped one arm around my shoulders in a loose embrace and brushed a kiss over my cheek before walking past.

My lungs collapsed in a nostalgic paroxysm of pure lust, leaving me practically gasping in his wake. Oh God, he still smelled like…
Colin
. Wind and leather and unrepentant sex—mind-bendingly dark sex that satisfied me on some unfathomable level, even as it left me craving more.

I was wet and ready to go in an instant, something that hadn’t happened in a depressingly long time.

Feeling exposed, I demanded, “What are you doing here?”

He turned, wearing an ironic smile, his hands in his pants pockets. “Never were much for small talk, were you? Just…” his blue eyes skimmed down the front of my body, “…get right down to business.”

“Please do,” I said acidly as heat gushed into my cheeks. “As you can see, I’ve got a lot going on.”

“You certainly do,” he murmured, his gaze fixed on my breasts as if he’d never seen a pair before.

I crossed my arms. “Colin!”

When he dragged his eyes up to mine, the feral hunger radiating from them took my breath away.

Then he blinked and all I saw was the gleam of a challenge. Had I imagined it?

“All right,” he said in a portentous tone, “I’m here to offer you a fellowship.”

My eyes just about popped out of my head. “Really? You leave town without a word, show up unannounced five years later to leer at me and then offer me a fellowship? Gee, how can I resist?
Oh wait
, I’ve already got a fellowship, so fuck off, Colin.”