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  “Negative.” He hissed again. “The Earthlings have extremely primitive technology but they are able to detect foreign ships entering their atmosphere and they have the weapons to blast them out of their sky. Why do you think we have hidden our station amongst their space junk? We cannot allow you to risk our commercial operation by exposing our position.”

  “You don’t own this planet,” I pointed out. “You’re just harvesting the females. Which I don’t fucking approve of, by the way. Females should be protected and cared for—not sold like chattel.”

  “We have first rights to this planet.” Char’noth was getting really upset now. “And we have every right to harvest it. Though it was locked by the Ancient Ones, the inhabitants of Earth foolishly dissolved the protective barrier left in place, tearing a hole in their own ozone layer. Thus legally opening themselves to outside contact with other species.”

  Okay, this was getting us nowhere. Clearly I couldn’t fly down to the planet in my ship—the Earthlings would detect it and might shoot me out of the sky. But I was also not going to be cramming the memory cubes—and everything else I needed to bring, including clothing—up my ass just to bring it with me through the Commercians’ transport.

  “Try this,” I said to Char’noth, whose little blue back was still up. “Can you send living and non-living things separately? Could you send the cubes and my other equipment down in one shipment and me in another?”

  He paused, apparently deep in thought.

  “You ask the same question the Grubbian merchant did.”

  “And what was your answer?” I growled impatiently.

  “That it is possible,” he squeaked reluctantly. “Though the transporter must be reconfigured between each transport. Do you wish to send your possessions down first and then go yourself, or go first and wait for us to send your possessions.”

  “Seeing as how a naked blue alien appearing out of nowhere might startle the Earthlings, I prefer to send the fuckin’ things down first and follow after,” I said. “That way I can get myself together as soon as I’m down there instead of waiting naked in the bushes. Or whatever kind of vegetative cover they have on Earth.”

  “Very well.” He nodded. “We shall reconfigure. But it will take some time.”

  “Reconfigure away,” I said, making a sweeping gesture with one hand. “I got time.”

  He made a motion as though to dismiss the light screen with the two girls but I stopped him.

  “No—leave it. At least, leave the one with the morada—the long haired female,” I said. “I’ll watch while you work.”

  “As you wish, Lord Grav.” Char’noth bowed stiffly and turned to go, but I called him back.

  “What poor female did you end up selling to that Grubbian merchant, anyway?” I felt sorry for her, whoever she was.

  He shook his wormy head. “None. He wanted no females if he could not have the two you came to watch over. He did, however, order a male.”

  “A male?” I frowned. “But they can’t be La-ti-zals, can they?”

  “Assuredly not,” Char’noth said. “But he requested a male anyway. A powerful, rich male with all of his personal accoutrements, actually. Though I do not know why he wished such a thing.”

  “And you found him one?” I asked.

  Char’noth nodded. “We found a rich and well recognized one—though I am not certain how respected he is. The Grubbian left most pleased and said he might be back for a female later.”

  “Let me know if he returns.” Of course the Commercians had no chairs that would hold my weight, but it didn’t matter. I settled myself on the floor in front of the light-screen, watching Leah as she worked with the little ones. I was used to waiting patiently when I warded females. And watching Leah was a pure pleasure, though I knew well enough she wasn’t for the likes of me.

  I wondered what I would say to her when I brought down the cube—or if I would speak at all. It might just be best to leave it in a place where she would find it. I didn’t want to scare her, after all. Even with the saphor juice to change the color of my skin and the smart-fabric mask which would make me appear more or less human, I wouldn’t be able to disguise my size or musculature.

  Well, time enough to decide the details. In the meantime, I watched the sway of her hips and the way her long, silky hair fell around her shoulders and dreamed.

  Chapter Two

  Leah

  It had happened twice before, but this time was the worst.

  I could tell by the look in Gerald’s eyes when he came in the door that a storm was brewing. He’d been gone on a business trip for the past few days and he often came home in a bad mood whenever he had to leave me for an extended period of time. I don’t know why—he said it was because he loved me so much he couldn’t stand it when we were apart.

  But that wasn’t it.

  I think it was because he didn’t like the idea of me being on my own—of me having a life without him to control every aspect of it, not even for the length of time it took to go on a short trip.

  Never should have married him, I thought as I took his coat and kissed his cheek, waiting for the storm to break. Never should have let him talk me into moving so far from my family.

  But I had, and now I was stuck.

  I think I let Gerald talk me into getting married and moving because of what happened to my best friend, Zoe. Around six months ago, she had disappeared. Literally vanished into thin air.

  My other best friend, Charlotte and I, were on the phone with her when it happened. One minute she was complaining about her horrible boss and the next we heard some strange, blaring trumpet music and then her voice cut off and she was gone.

  Just gone.

  Of course, we went to the police and they investigated. They couldn’t find a trace of her anywhere.

  Her awful boss was a suspect at first—he had, after all, thrown a stapler at her head just before she vanished. But a secretary at the law firm where Zoe had worked confirmed that he was in his office at the time of her disappearance. In fact, everyone in the place was where they were supposed to be, as the security cameras her firm had had installed clearly showed.

  The only place they didn’t have a camera was where they really needed one—in the bathroom. That was where Zoe had disappeared from and she hadn’t been seen since.

  Zoe didn’t have any parents or family to fight for her but Charlotte and I tried everything—petitions to the police, calls to the FBI, picketing her law firm…we even hired a private investigator neither of us could really afford.

  We came up empty handed with every effort. Zoe was simply gone—vanished from the face of the Earth as though she’d never been there in the first place. As though she’d never called me and sung me silly songs to cheer me up when I was blue or hosted Girl’s Night at her apartment with never-ending margaritas and chick-flicks. As though we’d never shared the cherry chocolate cheesecake at Ivarones and told each other every single secret and loved each other like sisters since we met in college.

  Just gone.

  Her disappearance tore out a piece of my heart—and Charlotte’s too. My other best friend hid her grief as she always does—in work. She was already a physician’s assistant to one of the most prestigious orthopedic doctors in Tampa, but she decided to go back to medical school and get an MD herself. I knew it was her way of grieving but it felt like another loss, especially since she had to move to Gainesville to attend med school.

  That left me all alone in Tampa with my family and my fiancée, Gerald. And somehow I let him convince me to get married and move to another state away from my mom and sister. A fresh start, he said, and it was.

  The start of a nightmare.

  Don’t think that way, I told myself as I tried to smile at him. Maybe it won’t be like that this time. But there was something about the set of his shoulders and the look in his sharp gray eyes that put me on edge.

  “How was your trip?”
I asked, trying to sound casual as I stowed his coat in the closet. Gerald had moved us to Virginia, a state much further north than my native Florida. It was March and though the weather was already too warm for a coat down in the sunshine state, here in Virginia you still needed one to go out. I missed the warm weather but it wasn’t just the chilly wind blowing outside that made me feel cold. It was the way Gerald was looking at me.

  “Just fine.” He smiled at me tightly—an expression that didn’t reach his eyes.

  Gerald had a very handsome face—other women were always jealous of me because of his good looks. “He looks just like a movie star,” one of my old coworkers used to sigh whenever he dropped by to visit me at work.

  But those classically handsome features could be colder than ice when he was upset.

  “And how was your time here alone?” he asked.

  I didn’t like the way he emphasized the word “alone.”

  “Fine,” I said, trying to sound casual. What was he implying? What was he thinking? “I mean, I just went to work and then came home.”

  Back in Tampa, I’d worked for a daycare that specialized in mildly Autistic children. I hadn’t been able to find anything like that in Virginia but I did find a family who needed an aide to be with their Autistic son during his school hours. It was a gay couple—Emilio and Jackson—who had adopted the little boy even though they’d been warned that he might have problems. They had taken him anyway and two more loving and concerned parents couldn’t be found anywhere.

  My employers were both professionals—a lawyer and a dentist—so I picked up their adopted son, Taggard, in the morning, took him to school and stayed with him through the school day, then drove him back to their house (it was more of a mansion) in the afternoons.

  For some reason, my husband, Gerald, didn’t like my job. Come to think of it, he hadn’t liked the job I had left back in Tampa either. I think he would have preferred for me to stay home completely, locked inside the house with no outside contact but him. But we couldn’t afford that and Emilio and Jackson paid me well, leaving him little choice other than to let me keep working.

  Not that it’s his choice, I told myself fiercely. It’s mine—I run my own life.

  Then why did I feel a tremble of fear rush through me when I saw Gerald’s gray eyes narrow and his thin lips turn down in a frown?

  “Is that right?” he said in a tight, clipped voice. “You just spent time alone?”

  “Well, other than taking Taggard to school and back,” I said, trying to make my voice light. “I see people there—I can’t help it. It’s part of my job.”

  “You see people,” he sneered, his handsome face turning ugly. “Don’t you mean you see men?”

  “What are you talking about?” I looked at him, honestly mystified. “What men? The teachers at Taggard’s school are all female. Even the gym teacher.”

  “That’s not who I’m talking about and you know it,” he snapped. “I’m talking about who you’ve been seeing after you take that little brat home from school.”

  “Taggard isn’t a brat,” I said, frowning. “He’s a very sweet little boy. And I still don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do—don’t lie to me.” He took a step forward and though I wanted desperately to hold my ground, I couldn’t help it—I stepped back, putting some space between us.

  It’s happening again, whispered a panicked little voice in my brain. He promised it never would but you knew it was a lie. He brought you flowers and cried and said he didn’t know why he did it. You forgave him—or said you did—but you knew he would do it again. The only question is, how far will he go this time?

  “I…I’m not lying,” I said, willing my voice not to tremble. Gerald was a big guy—six foot three—much bigger than my own five foot seven. Plus he had a good seventy-five pounds on me, most of it muscle. He liked to work out, though he didn’t want me going out for exercise unless it was to an all female gym.

  “You are lying,” he insisted. “I know because I came back from my trip early. I saw you Leah! I saw you go in the house with that little brat’s dad and you stayed there for fucking hours.”

  I stared at him blankly, almost unable to comprehend what he was accusing me of.

  Both of my employers were professionals, as I said. But Jackson, the dentist, was able to work his schedule to be home every day when Taggard got back from school. He usually had a fun sensory activity planned like digging in the sandbox or kneading dough for homemade bread. Sometimes I stayed and played with them, wishing I had such a happy home life myself. Taggard loved me and called me Miss Leah and Jackson and Emilio treated me like part of the family. It was like I was a sister to the two of them and an aunt to Taggard—but that was all. Absolutely all.

  “You’re talking about me staying at Taggard’s house a little while after school?” I said at last. “You’re upset about that?”

  “You’re damn right, I’m upset!” Gerald moved towards me threateningly and once more I found myself retreating. “You were in the house alone with that…that Jackson.” He spat the name like a curse. “I know what you were doing!”

  “What I was doing was finger-painting,” I flared back at him. “It’s part of Taggard’s sensory diet—it helps integrate his nerves and senses. Jackson was finger-painting too. But that was all we were doing.”

  “Bullshit!” Gerald stormed. He was red in the face now—a sure sign that he was about to explode. “You can’t tell me you spent over an hour in a house with a strange man and all you did was finger-paint.”

  “Yes I can because that’s all that happened,” I insisted, taking another step back. My heart was beating like a drum by now and I felt sick to my stomach. How had it come to this? What had happened to the sweet and caring man I had married to turn him into a monster? “Gerald, Jackson is gay,” I reminded him. “He would never be interested in me that way.”

  “Bullshit!” he shouted again, getting right in my face. He had managed to back me into a corner and his spittle flecked my cheeks as he screamed, his normally handsome features distorted with rage.

  “Gerald, please—listen to yourself!” I couldn’t understand how my husband could be so willfully blind. How he could get so enraged over a scenario that wasn’t even remotely plausible.

  “He was fucking you! I know he was! Did you give it up for him, Leah? Did you react with him like you never do for me? Tell the truth—you gave it up like a whore! You actually liked it for once!”

  I flinched at his ugly words and nasty tone. But the worst thing was the seed of truth in his awful accusation. Not that I had been with Jackson—that was ridiculous. But it was true I felt almost nothing when Gerald and I made love, though I tried to pretend—God knows I tried. Was that the reason he was so jealous? Did the fact that he was unable to make my body react, make him think I was seeking out some other man who could?

  I couldn’t get into this now. Deciding to ignore his oblique allegation, I confronted the direct one instead.

  “Jackson lives with another man—his husband!” I pointed out. “They’re gay. Exclusively and monogamously gay.”

  “He was fucking you! He was fucking you! He was fucking you!”

  He screamed it over and over and then the hitting started.

  In the past—well, the two times this had happened in the past I should say—Gerald had been careful to “punish” me, as he called it, in places no one could see. My upper arms, my stomach, my thighs—these were spots that could easily be covered so no one would see what he had done to me.

  This time he completely lost control.

  His fist looped into my vision like a runaway moon and slammed into my eye. Another punch plowed into my cheekbone, slamming my head against the wall so that I saw stars exploding in my vision. A third split my lip and I tasted blood, as salty as tears.

  I cried out, cowering against the wall, trying to shield my face from his rain of blows.
Though he had hit me twice before, he’d never gone crazy like this. I was unprepared for this level of savagery, this outpouring of physical hatred.

  He’ll kill me, I thought, as I tried and failed to fend him off. My God, he’s going to kill me this time…

  And then a huge man with a strangely distorted face appeared behind my husband and dragged him off me.

  Grav

  I knew there was going to be trouble from the minute her mate got home. I can read the signs of an abusive male—one who likes to beat and intimidate his female. I’ve known them since childhood and I learned them the fucking hard way.

  “Char’noth,” I yelled, rising to my feet as I kept my eyes on the light-screen where the scene was playing out. “Have you sent my things through yet?”

  I’d given him a spare set of clothes, the crystal cubes, and the smart-fabric mask I’d synthesized to look like the features of a normal Earth male. Well, I hoped it did, anyway—I did my best to input the necessary images into my synthesizer but it’s not always the best. And my ship doesn’t have an A. L.—an Artificial Lifeform—to help the process along.

  “We found a reflective surface for the transport inside her dwelling,” the Commercian said, appearing at my side.

  “Inside her dwelling?” I demanded, glaring at him. “That’s going to freak her right the fuck out, having a stranger just appear in her domicile. You know that, right?”

  He shrugged, his wormy body rippling. “You said to get as close to her as possible in an area that you could be concealed in order to dress in your ridiculous outer coverings.” He eyed my black trousers and white sleeveless shirt contemptuously. Commercians don’t wear clothing but then again, they don’t have much to hide—all their sex organs are internal.

  “All right, never mind. Just get the damn transport beam reconfigured. I need to go through.”

  On the light-screen, Leah’s mate was advancing on her menacingly and speaking in a threatening tone. I could feel my protective instincts come to full, screaming alert. As a Protector, I can’t fucking stand to see a female mistreated or hurt. But it isn’t just the training I underwent or the vow I took that makes me like that. I’ve seen some shit—things I won’t repeat here. Things that come back to me in dreams.