The Spawning (5 page)

A ripple of uneasiness stirred through her and the other women around her, but she was too completely focused on the beings to notice the reactions of the others to any great degree.

The first thing that struck her was the color of their skin—golden, but more

yellowish than brown—which was sharply contrasted by the black hair slicked back from their faces and gathered at their crowns to form a long ‘pony tail’. The chests and shoulders were broad, everything, she saw as they emerged, bulked with muscles as if a herd of body builders were marching unhurriedly from the sea. It wasn’t until they’d emerged enough that she could see that, unlike their upper bodies which were obviously bare, their lower bodies were encased in britches of some kind that she returned her attention to their faces and discovered they’d been spotted.

The creatures halted on the edge of the beach, tension in every line of their

massive bodies. After several unnerving moments, the majority seemed to dismiss them, heading toward the containers she’d noticed before. One of them separated from the others, though, striding directly toward them.

* * * *

Khan noticed the machines first. Every fiber of his being tensed at the sight of them, the sense of threat that washed through him surpassed only by the rage that followed. It occurred to him after a moment that the machines were nothing like the things belonging to their hated enemies, the Sheloni. That didn’t necessarily mean they were less of a threat, and it was certainly no less of an offense that they’d encroached on territory the Hirachi considered their own.

It might or might not mean, however, that they could be more easily destroyed.

Having noted every detail that he could from where he stood, he dismissed them for the moment and turned his attention to searching for the beings they belonged to.

His gaze slid over the cringing, pale skinned beings along the wall and settled finally on the one clad in an environmental suit similar to those worn by the Sheloni. He wasn’t nearly tall enough to be one, however. If he had been, he would certainly not be standing nonchalantly by what was obviously his captives. He would know that it was more than his life was worth to appear in a Hirachi stronghold so poorly defended.

The presence of the captives pegged him as being of their ilk, regardless,

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 21

strengthening his distrust and dislike, though doubt had begun to percolate through him that threat was intended, whether he felt it or not. Everything about the creature’s posture suggested he expected to be welcomed.

He was propped negligently against the stone wall behind him and the machines

seemed to be focused entirely on watching the captives, not ranged around him for his protection or situated in a formation of defense.

Signaling the others to continue with their work, he strode toward the intruders to discover their business.

* * * *

Focused on the one striding toward them the moment he separated from the others and moved purposefully toward them, Miranda’s heart clenched in her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs as he approached closely enough for her to fully appreciate his size.

They were giants, she thought, feeling a jolt of shock roll over her—not just

massively built, but tall—six and a half feet, bare minimum. The one approaching them had been taller than the others standing near him, which had caught her attention even before he started toward her group, but she could see he was easily six eight or ten, which meant the others had to be at least six and half at the shortest.

She might not have noticed with the distance that still separated them, because he wasn’t disproportionate as so many of the very tall men she’d seen were. He didn’t have the stretched out looking torso that made him appear as if his body had out grown his arms and legs, or the stork-like legs and gangly arms and ‘normal’ sized torso that gave some very tall people the appearance of a water-bug. His arms, legs, and torso seemed, in fact, perfectly balanced and proportioned.

It was the size of his parts that brought home the fact, without anything to

measure him against, that he hailed from a tribe of giants.

Dragging her attention from the powerful legs, arms, and chest, she focused on his face, trying to discern his features, which, at a distance at least, had seemed as human-like as his form, fully expecting as he drew nearer to discover they weren’t at all human-like.

She discovered she was wrong. His nose, eyes, and lips, at least from what she could see, were formed like human features, not distorted in any peculiar way. He looked as completely human, in that regard, at least, as any man she might have met on the streets of the city. The face itself was a collection of sharp angles and planes—his cheekbones high and distinctive, his forehead a broad, flat slope to his hairline, his chin boxy rather than rounded and almost belligerent in the jut of it, his jaw line as squared as his chin.

His ears, she discovered with a jolt of surprise, were pointed.

Her overall impression, despite his strange skin tones, despite her absolute

certainty that he was as alien as the creature that had kidnapped them, was that he was a remarkably attractive being. His powerful, beautifully male body certainly didn’t detract from that impression, but neither did the face that went with the body.

* * * *

Khan wasn’t certain what made him alter his direction. Truthfully, he wasn’t even aware that he had, at first. As he drew nearer to the group ranged along the far wall of the compound, however, began to discern the manner of beings they were, his entire THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 22

focus shifted from confronting the alien to inspecting the ‘cargo’ he’d brought with him.

It wasn’t just the jolting discovery that it was females—strangely colored

miniature females—though that certainly caught his attention the very instant his gaze flickered over them and was snagged by the glimpse of clearly feminine genitalia. An odd sense almost of awe swept over him the closer he came to them and the more certain he was that he wasn’t merely imagining that the tiny, almost ethereal creatures were almost Hirachi-like in face and form. If he hadn’t been so stunned, he thought later, it would’ve been obvious to all, especially the gods damned trader, that he was beyond intrigued by them. Enthralled might have come closer to the mark, though he wasn’t certain that was strong enough.

The glimpses of full, rounded, pink tipped breasts disabused him of the brief

suspicion, and anxiety, that they were children, not adults, though—as tiny as they were.

Tiny women—not young children, he realized with a relief that was almost

dizzying.

Ignoring the lizard-man completely, he strode directly toward them. Jolting to a halt when he was close enough to thoroughly appraise them, he scanned each woman slowly, struggling with the fascination that grew more pronounced in him the longer he studied them. Huddled as they were, he could tell at a glance that not one would stand more than breast high to him, and yet they weren’t misshapen or disproportioned. They were, in point of fact, very pleasingly proportioned for females of any race, tiny, but beautifully made. Even their faces were pretty, as pale as they were, as obviously frightened as the poor little mites were.

It was as well, he thought wryly when he saw the alarm in their eyes, that he

hadn’t gone any closer, though he couldn’t claim any forethought in it. He’d stopped to struggle with the urge to grab the nearest and thoroughly examine the miniature body parts to see if they were as flawless, and still fully functional, as they looked.

He couldn’t decide whether or not he liked their coloring, though. The pinkish white skin seemed almost as strange to his eyes as the pale hair—and their pale eyes.

That was startling. For several moments he wondered if they were blind, but he noticed almost immediately that they could see him quite clearly.

Obviously a little too clearly to suit them, he thought wryly, wondering briefly if they were as disconcerted about his size and his skin tones as he was theirs. Somehow, he doubted they were as captivated as he was—something about the way they trembled alerted him to that, he thought with a touch of sarcasm to cover his sense of

disappointment and irritation.

And he
was
captivated, however disconcerted he also was.

Dragging his attention from the two he’d focused on when he finally noticed their reaction wasn’t quite the delight he’d felt, he scanned the others.

One near the end closest to the gate caught his eye as he did so—almost literally knocked the breath from him. Her skin was much like all the others, but her hair—it glowed like fire in the sun’s rays. As fascinating as he’d found the hair of the others—

warm, golden shades near the color of Hirachi skin—warm like flickering fire, hers was the deeper shade of the hottest flames of a fire.

He felt oddly lightheaded as he studied her, as stunned as if he’d caught a jolt of the electrical charge from a thunderbolt—not quite comatose, but not far from it, he realized when he’d finally managed to gather some of his wits.

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 23

He was almost as amazed that no one seemed to notice he’d been struck witless as he was to realize he had been—that it had taken no more than the connection of his gaze to her to completely short-circuit his brain.

He could no more have prevented himself from moving closer to her to study her than he could’ve ceased to breathe. He wasn’t even aware he had until he found himself crouched in front of her, studying her almost face to face, so close her scent tantalized him, not just her appearance, so close he could see flecks of gold in eyes the color of summer grasses, so close he could see that the texture of her skin looked as smooth and soft as the petal of a flower.

The urge to touch her moved through him with a nearly irresistible force. He

tensed every muscle to fight the impulse, but the effort left him feeling drained, dizzy, left his mouth and throat feeling parched with the dryness of desperate thirst.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. As certain as he’d been when he approached her that he’d find she wasn’t nearly as wondrous as she’d seemed from afar, he saw that she was even more perfect than he’d imagined. Want settled in his belly like fire, the desire, the absolute desperation to possess her.

It shocked him.

It shook him to his core when he recognized it for what it was.

He’d never felt such a fierce need to possess any
thing
, let alone a thinking being.

They were not to be possessed, could not
be
owned. They belonged only to themselves and only shared whatever part of themselves they were willing to share.

He was repelled that the thought had even occurred to him, but he couldn’t shake it, regardless. It didn’t go away because he knew it was wrong. It didn’t even diminish.

* * * *

Regardless of her ability to appreciate the surprising, but interesting, even attractive, aspects of the alien approaching them, it threw Miranda into complete disorder when, instead of heading directly to their captor, he veered toward them. Thankfully, he stopped to the study the women at the far end from where she sat, but his interest, in any of them, was still unnerving.

She wasn’t the only one unsettled. The ripples of uneasiness from the women

nearer to him seemed almost to telegraph through the chain that bound them together.

She
felt
their urge to take flight as surely as she felt her own natural instincts toward fight or flight, confronted as they had been with a being so completely alien, and so totally threatening in size alone.

It didn’t stop there, however. As handsome a creature as he was, there was that about him that screamed barbarian. The breeches and boots that covered his lower body seemed intricate enough in design and craftsmanship to suggest some familiarity with civilization, but the long flowing hair, the extensive tattooing across his bulging upper chest muscles, and the rings that pierced his male nipples, to say nothing of his imposing

‘presence’ and hard, unsmiling, almost fierce features, suggested more than a passing familiarity with purely physical contests of strength and aggression.

After studying the women closest to him with a thoroughness that made even her uncomfortable, despite the fact that it wasn’t her that held his attention, he lifted his head, scanning the rest of the women with far less intensity, almost what amounted to disinterest considering the focus he’d directed at the women at the end. The modicum of relief she’d felt that he seemed more interested in the blonds vanished when his gaze THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 24

reached her and stopped, zeroing in on her with the piercing, unwavering intensity of a laser sight—or a predator.

That latter impression intensified when he straightened abruptly, his entire body tensed with alertness, and then began to move toward her without so much as a flicker of interest in any of the women between them.

Briefly, the hope arose that it wasn’t her that had caught his attention, that she was mistaken and he was actually looking beyond her at Carol, or maybe at Deborah, who sat on her other side. He wasn’t. He didn’t pause until he was directly in front of her. When he sank to his knees, she found herself nearly face to face with him, discovered he was so close she could feel the warmth of his body, hear a faint waffling of his breath as if he was struggling to control his breathing.

Instinctively, if not consciously, she recognized it for what it was—desire.

Despite her uneasiness, her body responded, warming to that barely discernable sign of sexual interest more strongly even than it reacted to the darkening of his golden eyes as his pupils expanded until there was no more than a thin ring of gold around the darkness.

Her heart, which had seemed to freeze in her chest as he stopped in front of her, jerked to life, ran away, pounding hard enough it put her lungs in greater distress. She found herself panting slightly for breath, her mouth and throat as dry as dust and still so frozen at the look in his eyes that it wasn’t until he finally released his hold on her by shifting his gaze that she could move her own.