Claimed Page 10

  “No.” Baird shook his head. “I can’t. I mean, I couldn’t go on. I, uh, stopped it before we went too far.”

  “What?” Sylvan gave him an incredulous look. “I thought you wanted Olivia more than life itself. You said you’ve been dream-sharing for six months. Why did you stop?”

  “Because she wasn’t really ready, damn it.” Baird banged his fist on the bar in front of them, making the other Kindred males sitting along its length stare at him. “It was just my mating scent working on her, making her crazy. But she didn’t really want me—not the way I want her.”

  “But she responded to you?” Sylvan took another sip of his drink.

  “Her body did but it wasn’t really what she wanted.” Baird ran a hand through his thick black hair. “I don’t want to take her against her will, Sylvan. I need her to be all in. To be as crazy for me as I am for her. You know?”

  His half-brother nodded after a moment. “I understand. You don’t want a bond with an unwilling female. If she’s not committed to you heart and soul, the bond between you would be incomplete. Not to mention unhappy.”

  “Unhappy’s an understatement,” Baird growled. “She fuckin’ hates me. If anything I’m further from bonding her to me now than I was when I first claimed her.”

  “Give it time,” Sylvan patted his arm. “I think I understand the problem—she doesn’t want to be parted from her sister, Sophia. Did you know they were twins?”

  Baird looked at him apprehensively. “Are human twins like the Twin Kindred? Do they have to share a mate? Because I have to tell you, Sylvan, I don’t think I can handle more than one like Olivia. And she’s the only one I want, anyway.”

  “No, no. Don’t worry about that.” Sylvan shook his head. “But the bond between them is extraordinarily strong. I spent some time talking to Sophia and she told me they had never been parted even for a single day.”

  Baird frowned. “That is like the Twin Kindred. Do you suppose they feel actual physical pain while they’re separated?”

  Sylvan looked thoughtful. “I don’t think it’s physical so much but certainly the pain is a very real thing. Sophia was very concerned about Olivia. She was, ah, worried that you might hurt her.”

  “Hurt her? How?”

  “Well…” Sylvan took another drink from his mug before answering. “I told her about your past—how you’d spent the last six months as a prisoner of the Scourge before you made your escape. I just wanted to make her understand that you needed Olivia as much as she did,” he added when Baird gave him a black look. “Anyway, she thought you might, I don’t know, have a bad dream and mistake Olivia for one of the enemy and hurt her.”

  “What?” Baird couldn’t believe his ears. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Olivia doesn’t smell anything like those bastards!” Just the memory of Scourge ship’s sickening sour stench turned his stomach.

  “I know.” Sylvan nodded. “I told her that but she didn’t seem to understand. I don’t think humans have a very keen sense of smell. Or else they don’t rely on it much.”

  “Well, it’s keen enough to make them react to our mating scents,” Baird pointed out. “So I guess that’s all they need.” He sighed. “If you talk to the sister again, tell her I would never hurt Olivia. I love her, damn it. I just…can’t seem to make her realize that.”

  “You will, just give it time. Remember, you just claimed her this morning.” Sylvan patted his arm again and stood.

  “I know.” Baird finished his drink and rose as well. “It’s just that we’ve been dream-sharing already for six months—that’s almost three times as long as most Kindred have to connect with their brides. Even you Tranqs with your damn cold hearts claim your brides after a month or two at most.”

  Sylvan raised an eyebrow at him. “And your point is?”

  “That it ought to be enough, damn it! We’ve been inside each other’s heads for months now. I know her inside and out—what she wants, what she needs, the way she likes to be touched. Why can’t she just admit we have a connection?”

  “Maybe because she’s scared to,” Sylvan told him gently. “Scared to lose her sister and everything she loves. You have to give her a reason to give that up, Baird. Be patient with her.”

  Baird sighed. “I’ll try but you know patience isn’t exactly one of my virtues.”

  “I know but you waited for six months and went through hell to escape from the Scourge ship to be with her. You can wait a little longer.” Sylvan smiled. “Come on, you’d better get going. I’m sure your new bride is waiting for her things from home.” He nudged the cardboard box with his foot.

  “You’re right.” Baird reached for the box and the bags of human food he’d bought at the Human Relations market in the Earth brides section. “I’d better go attend to her needs.”

  “See that you do.” Sylvan smiled at him, showing a hint of fang. Baird nodded and turned toward the lifts that would take him back to his suite. He just hoped his new bride would be in a better mood when he got home than she had been when he left.

  Chapter Ten

  “Oh my God!” Liv straightened up abruptly, snatching back her hand. The not-milk container dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and its round red cap came off. As white liquid gurgled quietly out onto the floor, Liv backed away from the weird blue teddy bear creature, her heart pounding.

  For a moment the creature went to all fours and sniffed at the white alien beverage, making Liv hope that it would forget all about her and get drunk on the stuff. She herself was suddenly perfectly sober—a blinding flash of fear was as good as a strong cup of coffee any day, she decided.

  Unfortunately after a few sniffs and one tentative lick of its dark green tongue, the blue animal shuffled forward, obviously more interested in Liv than the happy hour happening on the kitchen floor.

  “N-nice teddy,” Liv heard herself saying in a trembling voice as she backed away. “Don’t bite me, just stay away.”

  But the bear thing seemed to be attracted to the sound of her voice rather than put off by it. With an interested sounding huffing noise it came closer and Liv backed further away.

  She found herself backing down the dim hallway, blinking to see since her eyes had grown accustomed to the light in the kitchen. Still the alien teddy bear followed her making huffing sounds in a hoarse voice and snuffling the air as though trying to identify her scent. Walking on all fours as it now was, Liv estimated that it was probably just a little smaller than a Pomeranian but about a hundred times scarier because A—it was clearly an alien creature with unknowable intentions and B—it had teeth like a freaking shark.

  “Nice teddy,” she whispered again, fumbling around for the door to the bathroom. Maybe she could lock herself inside somehow until Baird came back. She didn’t know how the weird bear creature had gotten into the suite in the first place—maybe it was some kind of parasite that needed to be exterminated like a really huge cockroach—but at least Baird was big enough to take it out of commission. If he would ever freaking get back. Where was the human food store located on this ship anyway? And what the hell was taking him so long?

  Finally she felt the bathroom entrance and backed slowly into it. But as she went her foot caught on something on the floor and she lost her balance. Windmilling her arms desperately, she shrieked in surprise as she tried to keep from landing flat on her ass.

  Unfortunately her big arm gestures and ear-splitting screams seemed to have a bad effect on the creature. Previously it had appeared to be simply curious about her but now it reared up on its hind legs again and let out a hoarse and awful roar that chilled Liv’s blood. Dear God I’m about to be eaten by a blue alien teddy bear, she thought wildly as it came toward her. What the hell are they going to put on my tombstone?

  Here lies Liv,

  Without a care

  She died from the bite

  Of a teddy bear.

  Okay, so maybe she wasn’t completely sober yet but she was completely terrifi
ed. Where was Baird?

  The creature roared again, breaking her strange paralysis and Liv stumbled backwards into the bathroom, trying to get away from the menacing little monster. Feeling a hollow space behind her she remembered the alcove with its weird massaging mat. Normally she would have avoided it but she quickly decided a massage from a weird inanimate object was better than having her toes chewed off by a blue rampaging teddy bear.

  Hoisting herself up, Liv crawled onto the mat in its recessed alcove. At once she felt the massage begin. The mat had come to life and was kneading every part of her it could reach, mostly her hands and knees since she was crawling toward the end of the alcove and praying the scary blue bear wasn’t able to come after her. It wasn’t very tall even on its hind legs but could it climb? She looked over her shoulder apprehensively but to her relief she didn’t see anything following her into the dark recesses of the alcove.

  The mat’s kneading massage was a creepy feeling but not as spooky as she’d feared. Still, when she turned over to sit down it felt beyond weird to have the thing grabbing her ass, especially since she still had no panties on. Remembering the buttons she’d seen on the wall during her earlier inspection Liv decided to see if they really did control the mat. It looked like she was going to be stuck here for a while—at least until Baird came back and rescued her from the alien bear—and she didn’t want to put up with a continuous butt massage the whole time she waited.

  The buttons were within easy reach to her right but it was still too dark to see any of the instructions printed below them. Well, it would probably be in the same alien script she’d seen on the containers on the fridge, Liv reasoned, so it was pretty much a moot point. Deciding she would just have to take a chance, she reached up and pressed a button at random.

  The effects on the mat were instantaneous but not exactly what Liv had hoped for. Instead of slowing down or stopping the massage, the button she’d pressed seemed to make it harder and faster.

  “Ouch!” she yelled as a probing finger poked her in a very sensitive area. She had to stop the mat before it got any worse. At this rate her ass would be black and blue for a month. There was one button on the bottom row that seemed to be bigger than all the rest. Praying it was the stop button, Liv reached up and pressed it as hard as she could.

  The mat went wild.

  Grabbing fingers pulled her down until she was flat on her back. She struggled to get up but the mat wouldn’t allow it. Bucking underneath her like a wild horse it pinned her arms and legs to its dark surface with loops of its weird, malleable substance and began ripping off her clothes.

  “Oh my God! Help!” Liv yelled as the massage mat tore the black lace nighty away from her breasts and began to fondle her with two dark pseudo pod-like appendages. It was like being groped by a huge and very lively amoeba. An amoeba that wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Stop it! Get off me!” she shrieked as the mat molested her with increasing enthusiasm.

  The mat’s response was to twist her nipples—hard. To Liv it felt like it was trying to twist them off. What the hell was wrong with the damn thing? And what kind of people would make a massage mat that did date rape? But worse things were to come.

  Liv moaned as the mat pushed up the lacy hem of her nighty and wrapped firm, cool loops of itself around her legs. Then it began to part her thighs.

  “No!” Liv redoubled her efforts to get away, trying to raise her hand from the mat’s coils to press another one of the buttons. But every time she got her hand to almost the right height, the mat jerked again, pulling her back down. What the hell was she going to do? Was she really going to be violated by an oversexed home health appliance? Liv struggled again, trying to reach the buttons. Almost there…just one more inch…

  But the mat dragged her down again and spread her thighs even wider. “Oh my God! No! No—stop right now!” she yelled, knowing it would do no good.

  Suddenly there was a flare of brilliant light shining in her eyes and a deep male voice roared, “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Help me!” Liv gasped as her eyes adjusted to the bright overhead lights. “It’s got me and I can’t get out!”

  To her relief Baird didn’t waste any time asking questions. Instead he reached over and slapped one of the buttons on the wall above her head. Immediately the mat released her arms and legs and went limp beneath her.

  With a gasping sob, Liv scrambled out of the recessed alcove and launched herself at his broad chest. Baird caught her without a word and held her close, stroking her trembling back with big warm hands. Liv didn’t want to cry but somehow she couldn’t quite hold back. The fear and stress of wandering alone in the dark apartment, being menaced by the weird bear creature with knife-like teeth, and molested by the mat was just too much. To her embarrassment hot tears filled her eyes despite all she could do to stop them.

  “It’s all right, Lilenta,” Baird whispered soothingly in her ear. “All right now. Nothing’s gonna hurt you. I’ve got you.”

  Liv clung to him and buried her face in his muscular shoulder. Forgetting she was supposed to be mad at him, she lost herself in the comforting feel of his arms around her and the hard planes of his chest pressed against her breasts. His warm, spicy scent filled her senses and all she could think was that she was safe now, finally safe. Some deep part of her knew that Baird would defend and protect her no matter what the danger, that he would put himself between her and any threat and keep her safe as long as she was with him. How do you know that? whispered a little voice in her brain. You just met him today. Except that wasn’t exactly true, was it? She’d met him six months ago in her dreams. The strange, frightening dreams where she’d seen him chained to a wall and longing for her. Longing to touch her, to hold her as he was now.

  Part of her wanted to be suspicious about how good it felt to let him hold her, to wonder why she felt so inexplicably safe in his arms. But Liv didn’t want to think about those things at the moment. Didn’t want to question the warm, comforted feeling she got from being close to him. For the moment, she wanted to just let things be.

  “Okay, Olivia,” he rumbled softly when her tears had tapered off to sniffles. “You wanna tell me why I came home to find you in the dark strapped in the Touch-U set on high and my best fireflower juice in a puddle all over the food-prep area floor?”

  His voice was gently amused but Liv stiffened anyway. Suddenly she remembered she was supposed to be mad at him. And not only that, now that her nerves were more settled she was realizing that they were a little too close for comfort. Or maybe a lot too close was more like it. There was a gaping rip in the black silk fabric of her nighty where the massage mat had gotten frisky and her bare breasts were pressed against the material of the dark blue shirt he was wearing. Pushing away from his broad chest, she hastily pulled the ragged sides of black fabric together to cover herself and glared up at him.

  “First of all you left me here in the dark and there are no freaking light switches anywhere in this damn apartment. Or suite, or whatever you call it.”

  Baird frowned. “Switches? For lights?”

  “Wall panels, damn it! You flip the switch and the light comes on.” Liv pointed to the perfectly smooth wall. “Where are they? How can you control the lights without them?”

  “Like this. Lights off,” he said in an authoritative tone. At once the bathroom was plunged into darkness with only the faint, diffuse glow that Liv had been stumbling around in before he came back. “Lights on,” Baird said and the room was suddenly awash with warm, golden illumination. “I had them configured for your voice too, before I came to claim you,” he told Liv. “Try it.”

  Scowling, Liv did as he asked. “Lights off,” she muttered and sure enough, the room was doused in darkness. “Lights on,” and the warm golden glow was back.

  “See?” Baird shrugged. “That was all you had to do.”

  “Well you could have told me.” Liv crossed her arms over her chest, still frowning. “Back home on Earth we s
till flip a switch to make the lights go off and on.”

  “I’m sorry.” He spread his hands wide. “I should have thought to tell you. I guess I left in kind of a hurry and didn’t get around to it.” He cleared his throat. “But that still doesn’t explain why you had the Touch-U turned up on high like that.”

  “Is that what you call that perverted thing?” Liv shivered as she gave the black massage mat a disgusted look. “It practically attacked me.”

  He frowned. “It wouldn’t have if you hadn’t set it to the highest massage setting and then pressed the eroticize control. Even I would’ve been scared to get on it set to those levels.”

  “Well how did I know what buttons to push? I was in the dark, remember?” Liv flared at him. And anyway, I wouldn’t have gotten on it at all if the weird teddy bear thing hadn’t been chasing me.”

  Baird’s brow furrowed. “What did you say was chasing you?”

  Liz sighed in frustration. Apparently the Kindred weren’t big into stuffed animals. “It was this little fuzzy blue thing that came at me when I was in the kitchen—what you called the food-prep area,” she clarified, seeing his confusion. “At first I thought it was cute and tried to pet it. But then it opened its mouth and it had these long, sharp—Omigod! There it is!” She pointed behind Baird where the bright blue teddy bear had suddenly appeared.

  “Where?” He turned at once, putting himself between her and the perceived threat. Liv couldn’t help noticing he moved with incredible speed for such a large man. She waited breathlessly for the murderous teddy bear to attack but nothing happened. Then, to her dismay, Baird began to laugh. It was a deep, rumbling noise that came from the bottom of his chest and it might have been nice to hear if it wasn’t so obviously directed at her.

  “What?” Liv glared at him. “Would you mind telling me what’s so damn funny?”

  “I’m sorry, Olivia. It’s just…I can’t believe you were scared of Bebo.” Baird laughed again.