Finding the Jewel Read online

  “Wuh-wuh-welcome.” Tark nodded at her, wishing he could say more. Wishing he could tell her that he would never have left her there—it would have been like leaving a gentle bilib alone with a ravenous xenox.

  Her eyes were so lovely—such a deep blue—he found himself bending down to get a closer look. As they locked gazes, he saw a warm pink blush, a few shades darker than her hair stain Chloe’s cheeks. Biting her lip shyly, she looked away.

  “Well…let’s see if we can get you cleaned up,” she said, suddenly businesslike. “How does this sink work?”

  Tark started to reach out to help her but she had already grabbed the spray stick and was fiddling with the handles. Unfortunately, she had the stick pointed right at herself.

  “N—not that wuh-way,” he started to say but before he could get the words out, a strong spray of water shot out of the stick and drenched her completely from neck to heels.

  “Oh!” She gasped and fumbled with the stick, which was on a long, snaky metal hose, trying in vain to shut it off.

  Tark reached over quickly and slapped the water off with his right hand. Then he plucked the still-dribbling spray stick from her grasp and put it back in its stand.

  “Oh my God!” Chloe seemed completely out of breath—and completely mortified. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed and he thought she looked close to tears. “I didn’t mean to…I was just trying to…you must think I’m an idiot.”

  Tark shook his head strongly.

  “N-no,” he managed to get out. “N-n-not an i—i—i—” But his throat locked up, as it did sometimes when he had to get out an especially difficult sound. Tark clenched his jaw in frustration. “N-not,” he finished lamely.

  “Thank you.” She looked down at herself—which made Tark stare at her too. Had he thought the little black garment she had on was see-through before? Well, it was doubly so now. The thin material molded lovingly to her full breasts and her pink nipples were tight and erect from the chilly water. The fabric clung to her lower down too, showing that she was wearing a matching pair of panties which were currently clinging to her plump pussy lips in a most distracting way.

  “Oh…Oh dear, I…” His eyes on her seemed to make Chloe nervous because she took a step back and put her arms around herself uncertainly.

  “S-suh-sorry,” Tark offered, dragging his eyes away by sheer force. He could feel his shaft stiffening in his trousers until it was achingly hard. Goddess, but she was beautiful!

  Beautiful but not for you, he reminded himself sternly. Turning, he went into his room and dug in his clothing storage unit for a clean shirt. When he found one he brought it and a towel out to Chloe who was still standing there, dripping and shivering in front of the sink.

  She was trying to wring the water out of her flimsy top, which left her little black panties completely bare. Trying manfully (and not completely successfully) to keep his eyes away from her crotch, Tark handed her the towel and shirt.

  “Oh, thank you.” She took them but just held the towel uncertainly to her chest. “Um, do you have someplace I can change?”

  Tark nodded his head and pointed at the door to the fresher, which was located down the hall from the food-prep area.

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling and nodding her head.

  He shrugged a welcome and she nodded again and ducked into the fresher.

  Chapter Seven

  God, what an idiot I am! Chloe looked at her dripping visage in the mirror—or the weird 3-D thing that apparently passed for a mirror, anyway. What was wrong with her, fumbling all around and spraying herself like that? She’d wanted to seem cool and collected around the big Kindred. Plus, she’d wanted to help treat the wounds on his hand which he had gotten while protecting her.

  Well, that and she wanted an excuse to get close to him. She had to confess there was something about him that drew her like a magnet. Maybe it was his scent—it was dark and smoky and spicy with a hint of animal musk underneath. Was that some kind of cologne he had on or was it just the natural smell of his skin? Whatever it was, it made her want to climb the big guy like a tree—even though she barely knew him. Which was probably stupid—but not as stupid as the way she had just acted.

  He probably thinks you’re a bumbling idiot, she told herself angrily as she stripped off the soaked black nighty and the panties that went with it. She blotted herself dry with the thick blue towel he had given her—which seemed to soak up moisture like a sponge—and then pulled on the shirt he had given her which was obviously one of his.

  It was made of some soft cottony material and had short sleeves—they would have been short on Tark, anyway. On Chloe, they fell to her elbows. The hem hung down to her knees. All in all, it covered way more than the black nighty she’d been wearing when he rescued her had, so that was good. The only uncomfortable part was that the material seemed to cling to her breasts and outline her nipples, which were still tight from being drenched in cold water.

  But on the whole, Chloe thought it was a big improvement. She even found a type of brush with short, spiky bristles to comb out her long pink hair. She hoped Tark wouldn’t mind her using it—she felt about a thousand percent better once she had straightened herself up.

  “Okay,” she muttered to her reflection in the 3-D viewer. “Now you’re going to go back out there and not act like an idiot this time. He probably already thinks you’re a spaz and a basket case so be cool and calm and professional and try not to embarrass yourself any further.”

  Pep talk over, she hung her wet things over the top of the little shower cube to dry and went back out to face the big Kindred.

  To her surprise, Tark had bandaged his own hand and was in the act of laying some plates out on the small table. Plates heaped high with steaming fresh food— not dry, crumbly protein pellets but real food!

  Her stomach rumbled again but this time she was so hungry she barely noticed.

  “Oh my God, that smells divine!” she exclaimed. “But…when did you have time to make it? Did I spend that long in the bathroom?”

  Tark started to open his mouth, then shook his head. He opened the cabinet and took out a small white cube, the size and shape of a sugar cube. He pointed to a microwave-type machine and mimed putting the cube inside and pushing buttons. Then he pointed at the plates of steaming food on the table.

  “Really? All that from one little cube?” Chloe came forward and took the cube from his hand, examining it. “I heard the Kindred had amazing technology but this is fantastic!”

  He nodded and smiled at her, then motioned for her to have a seat.

  “Okay, but only if you join me,” Chloe told him. “I feel bad enough that you had to bandage your own hand and cook for me. I ought to be the one trying to do things for you—you rescued me from those horrible little blue bastards and that awful tentacle monster!”

  He shrugged and nodded but there was a frustrated look in his golden eyes which told Chloe he wished he could say more. He was really very good at miming things to get his point across but naturally it would be easier to talk.

  “They h-h-hurt you?” he asked at last, raising his eyebrows as he sat across from her. “C-cuh-mmercians?”

  “Hurt me? No, not really I suppose—if you don’t count a month at fat camp as hurting,” Chloe said lightly. She took a bite of her meal which looked like some kind of blue noodles with green sauce and crunchy red things on top. It was a little strange in appearance but it tasted amazing—kind of like lasagna with meat sauce if someone had also added crispy toasted walnuts to it.

  When she looked up, Tark was frowning as though trying to understand her statement.

  “F-fat camp?” he asked, shaking his head.

  “Oh—” Chloe sighed. “Mostly they just wanted me to lose weight so I would fit the ‘ideal’ body image and they could sell me for more. Unfortunately, that’s not how my body works. It doesn’t seem to matter how much lettuce I eat or how many laps in the pool I do—my butt doesn’t get any smaller.” S
he tried to laugh at herself but the sound that came out wasn’t happy at all. Quickly she took another bite of the alien lasagna noodles to try and cover her feelings.

  “Why d-d-did they w-whu-want you t-t-to l-luh-lose w-weight?” Tark asked haltingly. He pointed at her, making a curving motion in the air with one hand. “P-puh-perfect. Elite,” he said and then took a bite of his own.

  “Oh, uh…thank you,” Chloe wasn’t sure what to say to that. Did he mean she was perfect just how she was? Or was he calling her an elite? An elite what?

  Clearly the big Kindred could see her confusion.

  “Elite,” he repeated, not stuttering for once. Putting down his eating utensil—which resembled a miniature long handled pitchfork—he sketched a full hourglass in the air with both hands. “Elite,” he repeated. “C-cuh-curvy.”

  “Are you saying that’s what Kindred call plus-sized girls?” Chloe asked, raising an eyebrow.

  He nodded. “Tw-twin K-k-kindred. Th-they l-like Elites.”

  “Oh…” Chloe tried not to show her disappointment. “But you’re a Beast Kindred, right?”

  A look of frustration came into his golden eyes.

  “R-ruh-raised on Tw-twin M-muh-moons,” he got out at last. “Elites p-puh-perfect.”

  This time she understood him and she felt a flush of pleasure suffusing her cheeks. After weeks of being told how inferior and fat she was, it was nice to hear a compliment—especially one coming from such a huge, gorgeous warrior.

  “Well…thank you,” she murmured, putting one hand to her hot cheek. “But the Commercians sure didn’t think so. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come looking for that jewel.” She took a drink of thick purple juice from the cup he had poured her—noticing in passing that it tasted like milk that had been sitting in a bowl of Lucky Charms breakfast cereal—and leaned forward. “Tell me, what is the jewel you’re looking for anyway? Why do you need it?”

  He frowned, a look of concentration coming over his face again. Raising one finger in a wait a minute gesture, he left the table and returned with a kind of tablet and a stylus. He wrote something on the tablet and held it out to her.

  Chloe took it…but found she couldn’t read a thing. The strange markings on the tablet’s screen looked a little like some kind of Latin with some Chinese characters thrown in but none of it made sense.

  “Sorry,” she said, handing it back to him. “The Commercians told me they had given me a virus to help me understand other languages but apparently it only works for words I hear—not words I read.” She shrugged apologetically. “At the risk of sounding like an Ugly American…can you write it in English?”

  He frowned. “D-duh-don’t speak m-muh-much E-english. N-nuh-not from the M-muh-mother Sh-ship.”

  “Oh, of course,” Chloe said humbly. “I’m sorry. I can’t expect you to just know my native language just like that.”

  He held up a finger in that ‘wait a minute’ gesture again. Then he tapped something into the tablet and waited.

  Chloe ate some more of her excellent meal while she kept an eye on the tablet. Tark appeared to be watching a rapid tutorial—a very rapid tutorial—about writing and reading the English language. It was taught by another warrior—one with spiky blond hair and fangs, so she assumed he was a Blood Kindred. He spoke quickly—too quickly for her to follow—and examples of handwriting flashed on the screen from time to time.

  Does he really think he’s going to learn it that fast? she wondered as she finished her blue noodles and green sauce. How can anybody be expected to absorb that much information so quickly?

  But the big Kindred was rapt, as though he was soaking in every word. At the end of the tutorial he nodded, apparently satisfied, and picked up the stylus again. He wrote for a moment and then showed it to Chloe.

  “Hello, I am Tark of the Beast Kindred but I was raised on Twin Moons among the Twin Kindred,” it read. “Am I right in thinking your name is Chloe?”

  “Wow!” She looked up at him, amazed. “Did you seriously just learn to read and write English in ten minutes?”

  He shrugged and nodded, then tapped the tablet with the stylus. Clearly she hadn’t answered his question.

  “Yes, I’m Chloe,” she said, still feeling dazed. “Your IQ must be off the charts! How did you learn my language so fast?”

  Tark erased the tablet and wrote again.

  “Kindred are naturally good with languages—well, most of us are, anyway.” He shrugged ruefully and tapped his throat, as though to indicate his speech deficit.

  “I can help you with that, you know,” Chloe said tentatively. She didn’t want to offend him or hurt his pride. “I mean, if it bothers you. I’m a Speech Language Pathologist—a Speech Therapist. It’s what I do.”

  He frowned and wrote rapidly.

  “You can help my voice? Help me get the words out?”

  “Well, not immediately,” Chloe clarified quickly. She didn’t want to promise more than she could give. “Therapy takes a long time—many sessions sometimes—to work. But I’d be happy to help you any way that I can.”

  He nodded noncommittally but seemed unsatisfied. He wrote on the tablet again.

  “I thank you for your kind offer but I am on a quest right now to find a jewel that can cure me completely and immediately.”

  “Oh, so that’s what the jewel is for!”

  Suddenly his desperate desire to find the jewel he’d been seeking made sense. He had probably been stuttering all his life—if there was something that could cure him instantly, of course it would be preferable to hours and hours of therapy. Hell, Chloe wished she could find such a jewel herself, for her patients. Think of the endless agony it would save some of the kids she worked with!

  Tark nodded and wrote again.

  “Yes, that’s what it’s for. I was told to seek it through a door between worlds. I thought the Commercians’ space station was it. But…” He shrugged unhappily.

  “But all you found there was me,” Chloe said softly. “I’m so sorry, Tark. I can understand how frustrating that must be for you.”

  He shook his head vigorously and wrote rapidly.

  “Don’t say that. Not sorry I found you. Fucking Commercians had no right to take you or hurt you the way they did. Wish I had stopped to wring all their little blue necks!”

  Wow, he was getting more fluent by the minute! And the protective light burning in his golden eyes sent shivers through Chloe’s entire body.

  “I felt the same way,” she said, nodding. “I wanted to wring all their necks—especially when they were torturing me with those damn protein pellets. Speaking of which…”

  Reaching for the dark green box of Thin Mints, she tore it open and pulled out a sleeve of the thin, chocolaty cookies. Despite all the rough treatment they’d endured, none of them was broken.

  Taking one delicately between thumb and forefinger, Chloe offered it to the big Kindred.

  “Dessert?” she asked when he looked at it uncertainly. “Go on—try it. I ate your blue-noodle lasagna and drank your Lucky Charms juice.”

  Shrugging, he took the cookie, which looked tiny in his big hand. Chloe got out another one and tapped it against the one he held.

  “Cheers.” Grinning at him, she took a bite and closed her eyes in pure rapture as the cookie crunched between her teeth and the minty chocolate melted on her tongue. “Mmmm,” she moaned. “I think my mouth just orgasmed.”

  When she finished chewing and opened her eyes, she saw that Tark was chewing his own cookie and looking at her with a little half-smile on his dark face, as though he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

  “I’m not kidding,” Chloe told him. “You don’t know how badly I’ve been craving chocolate—especially this last week! And that damn scale and pantry and refrigerator all ganged up on me and wouldn’t give me anything but protein pellets and brussel spouts. I mean, fucking brussel sprouts—come on!”

  She pounded on the table vigorously to mak
e her point. Unfortunately, her motion woke up the fitness monitor, which had been surprisingly silent for the past hour. Chloe had forgotten all about it, which was easy to do when it wasn’t yammering. It fit quite comfortably on her wrist except when it was trying to squeeze her arm off.

  “Go Chloe!” it exclaimed excitedly. “Get exercising, girl! Burn off those pounds. You know, there’s a skinny girl inside you trying to get out!”

  “Damn it!” Chloe was equal parts mortified and exasperated. “See what I mean?” she asked, holding out her arm to the big Kindred. “This is what I had to put up with, night and day. And it won’t come off!”

  Without saying a word, Tark pinched the idiotic fitness bracelet between the thumb and finger of his metal-gloved hand and squeezed. With a sharp crack the fitness monitor broke in two and fell from her wrist, its voice dying in mid-cheer.

  Chloe felt like her last chain had been broken—like she was free at last.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped, running her left hand over her right wrist. “Thank you!” She stared at him in admiration. “You’re so strong. And so smart too, learning English in ten minutes like that. You’re like…I don’t know—the perfect mixture of caveman and gentleman! I mean…”

  Suddenly she realized she sounded like a ditzy girl in a sitcom, fawning over the hot boy. Her cheeks got warm at once—what must he think of her, gushing like this? She probably sounded as stupid to him as the damn bracelet he’d freed her from had sounded to her!

  Clearing her throat, she tried to reign herself in.

  “I mean, thank you. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Tark. You’re a really amazing guy.”

  She’d been looking down at her hands when she said this but when she looked up, she saw that he was staring at her intently, his golden eyes half-lidded and filled with some emotion she couldn’t name.