Return to Eden (12 page)

Enough foreplay! I’m dying
here,
she thought!
Do it, damn it!

Almost as if he’d read her mind, he
moved into position. Anya lifted her legs and curled them around
him, trying to tighten them and bring him down to her.

He resisted the pull, cupping her face
in one hand. “Ah-na.”

“
Mmm?” she responded,
pulling at him.

“
Open your eyes,
Ah-na,”
he said harshly.
“I’m not going to let you pretend I’m someone …
or something else.”

Naturally enough since he was speaking
in his own language, she didn’t understand anything but her name,
but there was something about the tone that penetrated her
determination to stay sealed in the cocoon of pleasure he’d
created. She slitted her eyes and looked at him a little
resentfully. He released his grip on her jaw. Meeting her gaze, he
slowly moved closer until his lips were hovering just above
hers.

It wasn’t until he touched his lips to
hers and then sank deeply, carrying her away on a fresh, hot tide
of desire, that she realized what he’d been about.

He wasn’t leaving her any room to
pretend she was too swept up in the moment to realize she was
fucking an alien!

It didn’t matter … at the
moment!!

She was too far gone.

She was so close to the edge that she
began to quake with imminent release almost as soon as he began
attempting penetration. Attempting because she hadn’t imagined the
size of that ‘club’ he was swinging! He’d barely managed a handful
of strokes when she went off like a rocket. Fortunately, he seemed
to know she needed fast and hard to get the full effect. He pounded
in to her until she’d screamed herself hoarse and went limp and
then paused briefly and started over, sawing slowly.

Anya groaned and not from
pleasure. She was done, damn it! He
might
have had the consideration to
finish
with
her!

Despite that uncharitable thought,
however, she discovered his search for his own culmination was
having a very desirable effect on her. The tension began to build
inside of her again and it kept pace with his rising
desire.

She rode the second wave with him and
discovered that it was even more mind blowing to cum with him than
it had been the first time.

Or maybe it was just that it was the
second climax and so close to the first, she wondered
dimly?

She had to admit, though,
that it was the best man-made climax, hands down, that she’d
ever
had!

Actually, it made her wonder wand
climaxes pale by comparison!

Which was seriously disturbing,
particularly since it dawned on her that it wasn’t a ‘man-made’
climax at all.

She didn’t have a lot of time to dwell
on the disturbing aspects of the situation. Her mind was just so
much mush directly after explosion number two. Her brain
reassembled and functioned logically for a handful of seconds and
then descended into the abject darkness of total peace. She’d spent
too many days in terror, exhausted herself from far more activity
than she ever had in her life and had virtually no sleep, food, or
water.

She hit orbit, burned out like a
shooting star as she dropped toward earth again, and sank toward
oblivion.

Obviously Aidan joined her in Neverland
because they both jumped high enough and hard enough at the
squawking intrusion a little later to fall off the bunk in a
drunken tangle on the floor.

Chapter Seven

“
Message from Central
Command in two parts: In regards to the report filed by IA unit
6194 residing aboard stolen starship cruiser …. The Terraformers
have been disabled. Repeat: The Terraformers have been
disabled.

“
Second part: Directive to
Linguistic Anthropologist Aidan Montiero from the Emergency Session
called in High Council on nineteen Keper in the year thirty thirty
zero nine: A full and unconditional pardon is offered on the
charges of grand theft by taking, initiating unauthorized flight
plans, and fraud arising from unauthorized usage of government
project funding if you are willing to act as ambassador for our
people and negotiate a peace treaty with the people of G-1493,
which was inadvertently targeted for colonization due to faulty
intelligence that suggested the system was NOT inhabited by an
intelligent species.

“
It is felt that your
training and experiences, and the happy circumstance of your
current location, make you uniquely qualified to handle this
delicate situation—which you must assure the people of G-1493 was
purely a misunderstanding. The Terraformers have been disabled and
we have our people working feverishly at a solution to
reprogramming the genesis nanites. Further assure the people that
we are not relying entirely on that possibility to bring relief to
the citizens of G-1493. Even now, we are preparing to send a mother
ship fully stocked with supplies to aid the residents of G-1493
made homeless—purely by accident—and construction bots to repair or
replace property damaged by the genesis nanites.”

Leaping at the sudden, loud
interruption of his sleep was an instinct. Unfortunately, Anya’s
reaction was much the same and the end result was that they both
ended up losing their balance and crashing onto the floor. Beyond
that instinctive and almost instantly disastrous reaction, however,
Aidan wasn’t even completely certain of what had happened at first.
Brought so abruptly from deep sleep after a very long period of
deprivation, he was too exhausted even to feel a great deal of
shock about discovering the long range communicator hovering over
his bunk and the message it delivered barely sank in—at first.
Dimly, he registered the charges the government was prepared to
throw at him but relief was uppermost—next to discomfort that he’d
been caught in a private moment he damned well didn’t want
public—as he stared at the eye of the deep space communicator and
listened to the terms the High Council had lain out.

They
knew
about the disaster they’d
created—thank the gods! That was why the nanites had ceased to
break down everything in sight!

Well! They’d made a hell of a stinking
mess and now they expected him to clean up behind them when he’d
warned them this could happen and they’d treated him as if he was a
moron—when they listened at all?

Not that he had a lot of choices that
he could see if he wanted to see his home world again as a free
man! Because he could see he was going to take the fall if he
didn’t manage to clean things up.

On the other hand, he had already
pretty much taken on that job, hadn’t he?

“
What is that thing?” Anya
demanded. “Is it … like a floating camera? Because that’s what it
looks like!” She turned to glare at Aidan. “If you made a sex tape
of us ….”

Aidan studied his wrist computer with
frowning intensity. He felt his face heat with discomfort at the
accusation, but he felt a touch of amusement, as well. “I no did
dis ting. Shee—ip is cop setup. I no know dat, though. Follow an’
report. Good ting! Dey shit down nanos. No more destroy
tings.”

Anya gaped at him with
burning eyes, her sluggish brain struggling to ‘interpret’ when she
would’ve had a hard time figuring out what he was trying to say if
she’d been completely alert. The cop setup thing actually
registered fairly quickly, though. “You’re saying you
stole
this ship?” she
demanded, aghast.

Aidan’s discomfort increased. “Friend
stole. I borrow. Need she--ep come here prove intelligent life on
G-1493. Good ting. Dey report fuck up.”

Anya digested that a while, trying to
decide if she actually had understood him and had enough pieces to
fit the puzzle together or if she was allowing him to dupe her
because she really hated the idea of having had mind blowing sex—of
coming to trust and depend upon—an enemy of her own
species.

Because it sounded to her
like he was saying his people had targeted the planet without
realizing it was already taken and he’d come to try to prove
it
was
already
taken—which in effect was saying that he’d come to save
them.

Or at least, he’d come to prove a
point.

And apparently at great risk to
himself.

She had a headache coming
on in nothing flat and decided she
had
to have something to eat and
drink---and hopefully some clothes or
something
to hide her nakedness. “Is
that thing still on?”

Aidan wrestled with the impulse to be
completely honest and the certainty that the truth would not make
her happy or particularly cooperative. “Still on. Property of cops
… or High Council. Uncertain. But no mine. I no can turn
off.”

Anya studied his earnest expression for
several moments, charmed in spite of every effort to disregard any
appreciation. The plain fact was, though, that she couldn’t help
but think his efforts to speak English were ‘cute’.

Because he was cute and she thought he
was sexy as hell.

She needed her head
examined.

It was just plain
wrong,
on so many
levels, to find him so attractive on so many levels!

She was sure it was.

Dismissing those thoughts
with an effort, she turned to glare at the hovering camera/robot
thingy, holding the coverlet a little closer. “If you don’t fucking
mind I’d like a little damned privacy,” she growled.
“
I
haven’t done
anything even if
he
has!”

Aidan sent her an indignant look—which
she ignored. Getting to her feet with an effort, she jerked the
coverlet off of Aidan, wrapped it around herself, and looked
around. “I need a bathroom.”

“
Ship facilities are
through the cabin door, down the corridor two meters, and then
through the door at the right hand side of the
corridor.”

The voice came out of nowhere and spoke
English way better than poor Aidan—English minus the heavy, awkward
accent. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant surprise to discover yet
another ‘intruder’ although Anya had decided even before she got a
response that it must have been an onboard computer that had
answered her question. “Who are you?”

“
AI unit 6194,” the
computer responded.

Anya was a little taken
aback even though she’d thought it must be a computer—mostly
because it
seemed
to respond to her. Of course AI units—computers were designed
to seem as if they were responding, or at least she’d always
thought so. “You’re a computer?” she said doubtfully.

“
With AI.”

“
I got that. How come you
can speak English better than Aidan?”

There was a significant pause. “Because
he is a biological unit and must learn as a biological unit
does.”

Irritation flickered through Anya.
Maybe she was wrong, but it seemed to her that the uppity computer
had a superiority complex. “I meant how did you learn
English?”

“
I accessed the
information available through your technology. It seemed imperative
to know how to communicate once I ascertained that the object which
caused the damage to the ship was a manmade satellite indicating a
technologically advanced civilization. The language is similar in
many aspects to languages on the Grinderian home world.”

Anya felt her heart sink. “Technology
that’s gone now,” she said flatly. She didn’t even want to think
about what the world was going to be like now that they’d lost so
many of the things everybody depended upon. No doubt it was going
to be a great deal cleaner without cars and factories to pollute
everything but how were people going to get to work? And what were
they going to do if they didn’t have a job to go to anymore because
the f’ing building had gotten eaten by nanites?

“
Not entirely and the
Grinderians fully intend to restore what they inadvertently
destroyed.”

She’d believe that when she saw it!
Shaking her head, she followed the directions the computer had
given her and found the facilities. A hot bath and the discovery of
clothing—even though it was clothing that didn’t fit all that
well—went a long way toward restoring her equilibrium. She
discovered when she left the bath that the smell of food was in the
air and her cup runneth over with joy and gratitude. Thank god for
civilization!

Aidan eyed her somewhat warily when she
reached the kitchen/dining area, having followed her
nose.

She didn’t have a
clue
of what was on the
plate that Aidan handed her—and she was pretty sure she didn’t
really
want
to
know—but it smelled wonderful. It was hot. And it tasted like the
food of the gods. She hoped it wouldn’t kill her, but she thought
she would die happy if it did.

Days
without anything but a few bites of those horrible survival
bars!