Hunting the She-Cat (9 page)

“I do.”

“Misha.”

“Nice.”

“Again, please.”

She gasped as he began a trail of
kisses across her belly, ever lower, whispering Misha as he
went.

“Okay,” her breathing came ragged and
fast now. “That … works.”

“Now? I cannot wait longer for you,” he
whispered urgently. “To love you.”

He came slowly back up her body,
aligned his erection to the heart of her aching feminine core and
sank forcefully into her. She welcomed him with a gasp of delight,
opening for him, wrapping her legs around his waist, coaxing him to
begin the movement she craved.

“Lugar, Lugar.” She closed her eyes and
enjoyed the feel of him surging and throbbing inside her in the
most intimate connection between a male and female. Wild for him,
she undulated her hips to his.

“Wait, little she-cat, wait. If you
rouse me too far, I will be unable to satisfy you.”

She was not used to anyone calling her
little. But next to Lugar, she was indeed.

“I arouse you?”

“More than any other woman ever
has.”

“Cool.” She allowed her hands to stroke
his back, enjoying the bulge of strength and smooth masculine
muscle in her hands. She slid her hands around the curve of his
shoulders down to his elbows and back upward. Then she traveled
back to his chest. He growled a satisfying sound, echoing in her
ears. With her hands, she found the thrust of his hips, gently
clawing him, pulling him closer to her.

He groaned deep in his chest. “That’s
it. Yes, love. You are learning fast, Misha, mine.”

“It comes natural.”

“Ah, yes, but you are gifted. The
female assurance of your confidence calls to me, sings to
me.”

He smoothed one of his hands over her
hair. “So soft, so silken. The scent of you is perfect to my
senses. You are made for me.”

Misha knew she should tell him this was
not forever, not about being made for only each other, this was
about hot sex and the drive to finish it. But the look of amazement
in his eyes and a particularly deep thrust, pushed her over the
edge to the most amazing, reverberating orgasm. “Lugar, please,”
she yelled. “Easy, I … may fly apart in your arms. I … cannot …
breathe.”

“That’s exactly the idea, Misha.” He
kissed her long and hard on the lips. “Love your lips.” Then he
followed her to completion, his growling sounds of triumph
exulting.

She stoked his back, holding him to
her, not wanting to part from him. He leisurely kissed her neck,
her shoulders, her breasts.

“Next time we do this as
cats.”

* * * *

“Tell me all you remember from your
childhood, your earliest memories.” Lugar hated to rush her but he
had to know soon, had to have evidence of her innocence. The
morning sun filtered into her kitchen windows.

She stiffened as she stood at the sink
rinsing a melon. She laid it down and turned slowly to face him.
“Is it important that I dredge through my past?”

“More than you realize. Or I would not
ask. I do not want to bring back pain. We know something violent
happened. The homing locators the other two wore disappeared from
our view abruptly.”

“You tracked us.”

“Standard travel procedure. They each
wore ID.”

“Do I have ID?”

“The necklace you always wear.
Yes.”

Her eyes pooled with tears. “My mama
told me never take it off, not even to bathe.”

“And you obeyed Ladia.
Good.”

“You know my mother’s name.”

“I know of her. Well known
glaciologist.”

“She studied the glaciers?”

“On many worlds. Yes. Tell me what
happened to her, Misha.”

She wrapped her arms tightly around
herself. “No. No. No!”

Each word became louder, like a
talisman against the truth. “What of the male, Tryth?”

Her lovely, sad hazel eyes lit with
speculation. “You don’t call him my father?”

“He was not your father. He stole your
mother away.”

She sagged back against the counter.
“Thank God.” Suddenly great sobs racked her frame.

He jumped from his seat to take her in
his arms. “Shhh. Let it out. You have suppressed this for many,
many years.”

After allowing her to sob several long
minutes he forced himself to prod her, “Tell me.”

“Mama was dead, blood in her hair. He …
the man named, Tryth -- ” She turned, her face carried a pained
expression. “… murdered her. He killed my mama. I don’t know
why.”

“Oh. God. No.” He pulled her tighter in
his embrace, stroking her back. She allowed it for only a moment
before pulling away and facing him, composed now.

“I killed him back!” she said this as a
child might, spat it savagely. She drew back and looked at him with
eyes that were looking back through the years, reliving, almost
speaking as the child she’d been. No doubt she’d deeply buried and
repressed the memories until now.

Her tear-filled eyes searched his own.
“When he returned from taking her away -- I waited for him. As a
cat. I crouched, hidden, in the trees. A big cat. Big enough. I was
so happy to be bigger than a five year old child. We lived near
here. The woods were the same, a sanctuary. He walked home as a
human. No time for him to react. I killed him. Oh God, I killed
him.”

“Baby, baby,” he crooned, rocking her
in his arms as she sobbed.

She swiped her curls from her face.
“After … after that I stayed in the woods for days, lonely and
frightened -- hungry – I could not even kill squirrels to eat them
but I had killed a man. I wandered lost until the other cats, the
bobcats, found me.”

“Uncle Joe and his pride.”

“No, no. They’re not, you’re mistaken.”
She shook her head violently. So violently, he folded her head to
his chest to stop her.

“Doesn’t matter, baby. You needed to
feel you were the only one in existence. So you didn’t have to face
the death of your mother she-cat. Or that you had to kill to
protect yourself and others to avenge her from an evil
male.”

A part of him was awed that a child had
ended an evil man that so many good males had died trying to
stop.

“You’re a psychologist then?” Pulling
back a bit, her expression challenged him.

He grinned. She’d stopped sobbing so
pitifully and her sass was returning. Good. “There was much
speculation about the outcome of your landing here. No one on the
mission sent a report. For years we thought you’d died too. The
signal from your locator was weak. Some thought you lost to us
because of where you lived. That the influences were known to be
great, the risk of searching for you and bringing you back to live
among your kind too great.”

“They thought I would contaminate
them?”

“Not precisely contaminate.”

“Bull. I’m not sure I want to see your
Eliava.”

“Leadership has changed. We no longer
leave our people behind anywhere.”

“Why come for me now?”

“Recently our detection equipment has
become more advanced and we heard your damaged beacon. Perhaps it
repaired itself over time as well. The old senders were not
reliable over space distances either.” He lifted the locket into
his fingers, caressing it.

“Take it off me. I want it off.” Her
eyes were wild with remembered pain sand disgust for the
locator.

“This has been sending a message as
long as I’ve had it on?”

“Yes.” He took her hand and placed the
oval of the necklace in her fingers. He pressed a hidden key and it
popped open.

She gasped in shock. “I never knew it
opened. I’ve tried and tried.” She looked briefly to him as if he’d
just given her a great gift. She pulled the long chain outward so
she could see better. “My mother. This is an image of my mother.
Who is the man with her?”

“Your real father.”

“They look younger than I am
now.”

“Yes. They would’ve been. They mated
young.”

“Mated.”

“Yes. Perhaps too young, some would
say. Before they had full control of their feline
natures.”

“They look like they loved each other.
That’s all that really matters.”

“True.”

“How did Tryth come to have my
mother?”

“She’d been promised to him as his
mate. By prior arrangement with her adopted parents. She was an
orphan -- with less protections and rights.”

“No. So her lack of blood family meant
that she should be grateful for crumbs.”

“Yes.”

“How sad.” She was rubbing the images
with her delicate fingers. He followed the motion.

She turned to look into his eyes.
“Thank you. Thank you for opening it. I’ll treasure
that.”

“You have one?”

“I do. It’s a more modern version,
lighter, stores more data.”

“I see it now that you’ve touched it
but I didn’t know you had this.” She touched it, pulling him to her
gently.

“It becomes invisible.” He watched her.
“Safer. They’re worth quite a lot for the jewelry value
alone.”

“It’s not a good thing to
kill.”

“You had no choice, my
megisha.”

Her eyes pooled with tears. “I could
have run like hell.”

“He would have found you and killed you
to destroy the witness to his murder.”

“I didn’t know that at the time. I
sought revenge.”

“You were a baby, with the instincts of
a full grown she-cat. The trauma of your mother’s murder matured
you too fast. Leave it. I’m so sorry I made you remember. I had no
idea. We assumed they were killed in the crash.”

“No, instead my life is scarred by
violence and the unjust death of my mother.”

The pressing reason he needed to clear
her name was because the Prime Minister thought she was Tryth’s
offspring. Tryth’s blood children had been declared dangerous,
flawed because of his blood-thirty evil actions and the reliability
that he passed it on in his descendants.

“What are you thinking?” she
asked.

“Why did you lie to me when I came to
your office?”

“You mean when I denied being a
shapeshifter? I … lied because my mother told me to deny my blood
to strangers. She said I’d end up under a microscope. Well, those
were not her words.”

He grimaced. “Yes, I suppose she
softened it for a child. But you nailed it well. From the research
we’ve done, these human earthlings are an inquisitive
species.”

“Are Eliavans less ruthless natured
than Earth humans?”

He thought a moment. “No. Not really.
More advanced, a few thousand years more evolved, but we are, in
some ways, even more the blood-thirsty predators.”

Driving the troubling thoughts of what
he had to do from his mind for now, he moved in and kissed her
softly. He wanted it to be a healing comforting kiss. But,
unfortunately he’d not had much experience with those kind of
kisses. It soon evolved to something more. To a man and woman
kiss.

“Give me your necklace,” he
ordered.

“What? Why?”

“It needs to be off your neck, so you
are not found so easily again. ”

“But you just showed me how to open it
after so many years of wondering if it did open.”

He smiled at her childish
tone.

“I do,” she snapped. “I want to keep
it. It’s all I have of my mother.” But she was automatically
pulling it around and working the clasp. He helped her and took it
off her.

“You can’t wear it anymore. I will
remove the picture and copy it for you before I destroy
it.”

“What about yours?”

“Mine?”

“Yes, yours. It will need to go also if
you stay here with me.”

He shook his head. “Mine is hardwired
into my skin. Can’t remove it.” She looked alarmed. “But I can get
permission to stay here. No one is hunting me. I’ve served Eliava
well.”

“You would stay then? Live
here?”

“Yes.” No need to admit that he might
not be welcome at work after this. But he had no taste for a
mission that required he blindly destroy an innocent female. “I can
go back and forth. Listen to me, if we take this course you can
never see Eliava. Not for many years anyway. Until the legend of
the lost she-cat child who may be a royal dies away.”

“Fine, this is my home. I have no
problem with not flying through the dark of space. And I never
envied the royals here. They seem like nice people in a huge public
fish bowl.”

“Apt description. You would live in a
fish bowl as you say on Eliava.”

“No way.” She snuggled into his arms
and he made love to her again, long and leisurely this
time.