* * * *
Kate was a nervous wreck by the time she and Sissy arrived at the night spot. Fortunately, Sissy seemed to interpret her anxiety as nervous anticipation rather than pure old fashioned terror.
It wasn't altogether fear-just most of it. Kate had tried very hard to reassure herself. After all, she'd not only spent a year studying them and never seen, let alone experienced, the destruction the Sirians were capable of, she'd spent the night with them with no more ill effects than a few muscles twinges from ….
She preferred not to think about that, actually. Even allowing those thoughts to dance around the periphery of her conscious mind made her stomach feel strange.
It disturbed her that it wasn't nausea from disgust. She thought it should be. They were an intelligent species. She knew that, but they weren't the same species as she was. It should make her flesh crawl to think about the fact that they'd not only been all over her, they'd been inside of her!
It disturbed her a lot that the jitteriness in her belly at those memories seemed a good deal more like pleasure than revulsion.
She didn't want to think about it, but she couldn't avoid acknowledging, in the most dissociated way she could manage, that she was probably going to have to experience that and a good deal more to get the Sirians back to their home world. She was the bait, after all-at least, she hoped/feared she was-and when all was said and done, romping in the bed with them beat the hell out of being eaten … up.
She wished that thought hadn't popped into her mind because she could distinctly recall that Jarek and Dax's attentions to her sex had been mind-blowing!
It occurred to her for the first time as she stood in line with Sissy waiting to get into the club-because she hadn't allowed herself to dwell on it before-to wonder how the Sirians had come to know and understand so much about human sexuality, let alone physiology. They'd not only hit every erogenous zone she possessed with deadly accuracy, they'd found spots she hadn't even known about herself!
How would they know what to do?
Instinct?
They had some instincts going for them if that was the case!
She didn't believe that. She supposed it was possible, but she thought it was unlikely and, unless they'd somehow picked the knowledge up from the humans around them, it couldn't be anything else. The one thing she was almost positive about was that the Sirians had hatched from those eggs she'd had collected and that meant that they'd had no chance to interact with their own species and 'learn'.
So, did that mean some of the people on the space station had sneaked into the habitat to screw?
That seemed wildly improbable. Not that she would put it past some of the personnel to indulge if the opportunity presented itself, but in the habitat? She didn't think so. With the exception of her and Sissy, pretty much everyone else on the space station had considered the Sirians a dangerous species almost from the first.
They'd certainly been unnerved by them once they'd begun to mature and had grown so big everyone began to refer to them as sasquatches.
They couldn't have seen humans interacting, she decided, so where did that leave her?
Instincts.
She still couldn't digest that, but since she and Sissy finally reached the door at that moment, her thoughts were redirected toward the hope/fear that she was going to find the Sirians inside. She was too paralyzed, she discovered, by the thought that they might be to formulate any kind of plan other than to look for them, but then she had been since she'd hatched the insane plot that had brought her here. She discovered why the club was so packed before she even got inside. There was a popular band entertaining.
Her disappointment seemed way out of proportion to the situation, but she told herself she was relieved.
"I think I need a double," she muttered, heading toward the bar for a drink as soon as she and Sissy got inside.
Sissy sent her a speculative look. "Rough week?"
"Mmmm," Kate responded non-commitally.
"So … how did your night turn out?"
Kate felt heat light up her face and then her entire body. She cleared her throat, trying to think up a response.
Sissy laughed. "That good, huh?"
Kate squirmed inwardly. She didn't actually want to admit that it had been a mind-blowing experience
… in several ways. "I … uh … he was nice. His brothers, too."
Sissy gaped at her. "You're not saying …? You are! You dog! Now I'm jealous! I ended up with dregs and you got … caviar?"
Kate could've kicked herself. "I didn't say …."
"Don't even try that! You just said they were all nice!"
"Yes … but nice."
Sissy studied her in patent disbelief. "I do not believe you had a foursome and it was just 'nice'!"
"I never said I had a foursome!" Kate said uncomfortably.
Sissy's eyes widened. "But you did, didn't you! Oh! You dog!"
"Can we talk about something else?" Kate said irritably as she took her drink and took a big enough sip to choke.
"But I want to talk about this!" Sissy said plaintively, taking her own drink and following Kate as she made an attempt to escape. "I can't believe you didn't call me the very next day and give me all the dirty little details!"
"Uh … you know I don't remember it all that well," Kate hedged.
Sissy snorted, choking on her drink, and cough-laughed for several moments. By the time she'd recovered, Kate had spied a small table near the back of the club. She made a bee-line for it, hoping something would distract Sissy before they managed to get seated. Something did-briefly.
"Why are we sitting way back here?" Sissy demanded as she settled on a stool.
"I don't want to have permanent hearing loss," Kate muttered. It was true. The music was deafening.
Mostly, though, she'd lost her nerve and she wanted to hide. The back corner seemed the place for it since the club was so crowded.
She told herself that it would give her a good vantage point to spy out the land and see if the Sirians had returned to look for another 'victim'.
That thought dismayed her. She told herself that was only because it would make it hard, or impossible, to carry her plan through, but the jab that went through her felt an awful lot like jealousy.
"I don't think you're going to escape that anywhere in the club," Sissy responded dryly. "So … have they called?"
"Who?" Kate asked, trying to pretend she had no idea what Sissy was talking about.
Sissy rolled her eyes. "Lame! You know who-Those hunks that picked you up last time we were here and gave you a night to remember!"
Oh it was a night to remember alright! "Oh them! No. Haven't heard from them since."
Sissy patted her hand in commiseration. "It's only been a few days. That doesn't mean they won't."
Kate didn't know if she'd looked and sounded disappointed and that was what had elicited Sissy's sympathy or if Sissy had merely assumed she was, but she realized she was actually a little miffed that they hadn't tried to contact her since.
Not that she could see them calling now that she was pretty sure she knew who and what they were!
She pretended indifference, waving her hand dismissively. "Oh, it was just a … thing, you know? I didn't expect anything to come of it besides a good time." She considered a moment and then added hurriedly,
"or want it. I mean, really, you know I'm scheduled to leave for the new colony. What could possibly come of it?"
Sissy lifted her brows. "So you are going? I thought, maybe, after that little incident on the space station that you might have changed your mind."
Kate shook her head. "No. That little incident only made me more determined to go. I've been getting everything in order all week."
Sissy chewed her lip. "In that case, I'm going, too," she said decisively.
Kate looked at her in surprise. "Seriously? I thought you'd decided to stay here?"
"Yes, well I figured if people were leaving in droves it would make things better here, you know? Thin the population so we could catch our breath. I think that's what the government thought, too. And it might …
eventually, but people aren't exactly signing up to go in droves, if you know what I mean-despite the propaganda the government's been pelting everybody with. From what I heard, the next transport is only a little more than half full now, and scheduled to leave next week! And they've barely begun to fill the one after that.
There are rumors that the government is going to start 'drafting' colonists."
Kate blinked at her. "Are you serious?"
"I'm serious I've heard rumors. I don't know how true it is. It could just be more bullshit from the groups against colonization." She shrugged.
They would really be uneasy if they knew what she suspected! Guilt flickered through Kate again, but she shrugged it off. She was going. She would be in a position to study the Sirians and make a more knowledgeable determination as to whether they were dangerous or not and, when she had that information, she would share it. It wasn't as if anyone with half a brain wasn't expecting to encounter some danger and a lot of discomfort and inconvenience in colonization, regardless of all of the efforts that had been made to make things go as smoothly as possible.
For that matter, it wasn't as if that wasn't already a fact of life on earth with the population explosion.
There were just too many people now for the eco-system or the economy to comfortably support anyone!
Colonization at least offered jobs and those were damned hard to get and even harder to keep!
"Do you think you have time to put your affairs in order before the ship leaves?" she asked a little doubtfully.
Sissy shrugged. "It isn't like I've got that much-or that they'll let anybody take a lot of stuff, for that matter. If I hump it, I think I can manage it."
Kate smiled at her friend. "I didn't want to try to talk you in to it when I thought you might regret going, but I'm glad you decided to go. It'll be nice to have a friend when I get there. At least there'll be one familiar face!"
Sissy grinned back at her, but Kate could see that she was still wavering on her decision and more uneasy at the prospect of becoming a colonist than thrilled about the idea. "Ditto-but maybe your hunks are going, too? Wouldn't that be cool?"
Kate's smile was forced that time. "Oh, it would be super cool, but what are the odds?" Unless she could stack them in her favor.
"Stranger things have happened," Sissy said lightly.
Kate couldn't agree more-like discovering she'd had a wild night of sex with her three 'subjects'!
"Hey! I think I see them! Isn't that the guys you picked up the other night?"
Kate felt a cold sweat break out. "Where?"
"Over there near the dance floor. They're looking this way."
Kate stared at the men, hard, when she spied them. It was them! She knew it was, and a mixture of sheer terror and relief filled her. As she watched them plow through the crowd and straight toward her, she tried to banish the image of herself as a lamb tied to the stake as bait for hungry predators.
She was stunned, to say the very least, when the men finally got close enough for her to see them well.
"That isn't them. I don't recognize them."
When the men finally paused beside the table she was sharing with Sissy, however, she discovered it actually was them-Ronan, Dax, and Jarek. They just weren't 'wearing' the same faces they'd been wearing the first-no make that the second-time she'd met them!
Despite the fact that it seemed unlikely, to say the least, that another trio would single her out and that the three men were the same heights and builds as the Sirians, as far as she could see, a good bit of doubt lingered in her mind that they actually were the Sirians-until they started dancing.
That was not only a dead giveaway, it was embarrassing as hell! She hadn't drunk nearly enough of her drink to prevent a painful blush from climbing all the way up to her hairline and all the way down to her toes.
"Oh my god!" she muttered, wishing she could escape, struggling with the urge to leap to her feet and dash off or slide under the table and hide.
She might have tried if they hadn't surrounded her, making escape impossible and she wasn't too paralyzed with discomfort to duck under the table.
Clearly we failed to breed her, Ronan said with a mixture of anger and disgust. She has come back to this mating place to look for another.
I was not in favor of leaving before we had accomplished it, Dax pointed out angrily.
Ronan glared at him in tightlipped silence.
No. You would have died in the attempt if she had decided to alarm the others because you had no sense of the potential danger! Jarek paused, considering the situation. Not that I would not have been willing to stay and try a few more times before withdrawing. Now she will pick another and we will have to find another mate, he added glumly, and I do not want to pick another mate!
I am not going to pick another mate, gods damn it! Ronan growled. I chose Kate and I am going to breed her.
How will we do that when it is obvious she has come to find another mate? Dax demanded angrily.
Ronan frowned, too angry for many moments to consider possibilities. It occurred to him after a little thought, however, that the situation might be a blessing in disguise. We will make ourselves look different and then she will not know us. Then we will be able to stay as long as it takes to breed her without concern that she will raise the alarm. I am not convinced that she knew that it was us, but this will be far safer if she was suspicious as I believe.
Dax looked startled and then thoughtful.
Jarek discovered he was not at all pleased with the notion but it took him several moments to realize why he was not pleased. Then she will mate with three males she believes are not us!
What is the difference as long as she does, Dax demanded testily?
I want her to accept me, Jarek said indignantly!
She will be, stupid. She just will not know it.
Jarek glared at him. I will punch you in the face if you call me stupid again! I know she will not know the difference. That is why I do not like it.
You cannot fight here, Ronan growled. They will attempt to throw us out again like they did earlier!
And then we will have to change our faces again and I like the one I have now!
I do not know why, Dax muttered. It is a very unremarkable face. Mine is much more handsome.
Ronan glared at him. What is wrong with it?
Nothing except that the females are looking at me and smiling and not you. I do not think they consider it a handsome face.
Maybe they are smiling because you have a stupid face, Jarek suggested smugly, and it makes them want to laugh?
Dax slammed his elbow into Jarek's belly.
If you two get thrown out, I am not going, Ronan said coolly. I will stay here and court Kate.
I will beat the snot out of you later, Jarek growled, stalking off as Ronan left the two of them and headed toward the table where Kate sat with her friend from the space station. He glanced at Ronan uneasily as he caught up with him. What are we to say? I am not completely comfortable that I understand the mating practices of the humans.
Ronan was not confident that he did either, but he was loath to say so when he was the alpha and expected to lead. I will tell her I have decided that she will suit me as a mate.
The uneasiness on Jarek's face deepened.
I have not heard any of the others say that, Dax volunteered as he fell into step beside them.
Then what do you suggest, Ronan asked sarcastically?
Dax shrugged. The mating dance, he said doubtfully?
Ronan frowned. He was not convinced that she was favorably impressed the first time they had performed the mating dance for her.
Jarek echoed his own doubts. She did not look terribly pleased the time before, he said slowly. In fact, it seemed to me that she was more uncomfortable than aroused.
She accepted us, didn't she? Dax pointed out testily.
Jarek and Ronan exchanged a questioningly look. Ronan finally shrugged. Perhaps she was uncomfortable before because she had already accepted and taken us to her nesting place? This is the mating place where the dance is performed.
I had not thought of that! Jarek exclaimed, relieved.
You are right, Dax agreed. I had not thought about that either.
Ronan still felt a niggling of doubt that he completely understood the human mating practices-or at least the choosing part-but the fact that Dax and Jarek had agreed with his assessment soothed the bulk of his anxieties. The important thing, to his mind, was that she had agreed. They must have done it right or she would not have. As soon as they had reached her, therefore, and caught her attention, he began to imitate the dance that he recalled that had won her favor before.
She gave him the same glassy eyed stare as before, a myriad of emotions flickering across her features and began to flash color in her face. Relieved that she had reacted the same as before, he straddled her lap as he had seen the other males do and imitated the sex act to be sure she completely grasped his intent. He would have performed the sex act except that he discovered very quickly that the position not only did not allow him to align their genitalia, but the clothing she was wearing also prevented an actual connection.
He discovered that she was staring at his chest and he could not read her expression to judge whether he had convinced her to accept him or not. "We go to your place and fuck?"
She made a strange sound. Her friend, behind him, made an even stranger sound.
Kate cleared her throat, fighting down the urge to giggle hysterically. Either she as mad as a hatter for feeling the urge to laugh when she could well be in extreme, deadly peril, or she'd had just enough alcohol to impair her judgment. She cleared her throat and struggled to steady her voice while she searched for a response.
"I … uh …."
"You aren't seriously considering going off with this Neanderthal, are you?"
Ronan dismounted from Kate's lap and sent a confused look at her companion. Her tone was negative.
He had no idea what a Neanderthal was, but he was certain he would not find the reference flattering if he did.
The only thing he was sure of, and that was a relief, was that she did not seem to know that he was not human.
"You don't even know his name!"
Anger flickered through Ronan at that because he had been in such a rush to claim Kate before any of the other males could that he had not considered that he would need a name. He could not very well use the one that he had before when he had a different face. He searched the minds around him a little frantically for a name and finally smiled at Kate. "Shirley."
Kate looked like she had tried to swallow something and it had stuck in her throat.
Sissy uttered a choked sound that he strongly suspected was laughter.
"Charlie?" Kate asked in a strange voice.
"He said Shirley!" Sissy piped up, snickering.
Kate frowned at her friend. "You must have misunderstood him. Shirley is a woman's name," she said, emphasizing the word in warning. "He said Charlie, didn't you? Or did you say surely?"
Ronan frowned, trying to detect the subtle difference in pronunciation, but he was in no mood to sort through the problem at the moment. "Charlie."
"And your two … uh … friends?"
Ronan glanced at Dax and Jarek. She wants names. It must be part of the mating ritual, he prompted them.
Dax and Jarek stared at him blankly.
Say something, you idiots! She's waiting!
"Jar …. Ugn," Jarek began only to have Dax knock the breath from his lungs with the point of his elbow to his ribs.
"Jared?"
Relieved when Kate supplied a possibility, Jarek nodded, ignoring the urge to rub his throbbing rib.
"And your name?" Kate asked, staring at the last man.
Dax grinned at her a little woodenly, struggling to pick up a name from the people around them. There was such a cacophony of thoughts, however, that he could not single out any sounds that he thought were name sounds. "Da …vi," he said finally.
Kate beamed at him approvingly. They were actually getting very good at mimicking the sounds of humans, she thought absently. It was the Sirians. She had no doubt about that despite the fact that they'd changed the appearance of their faces-and she didn't want to think about that particular trick of theirs at the moment! "I'm Kate-should have been Kathryn, I guess, but I ended up with just Kate and this is my friend, Terry, but everybody calls her Sissy."
The Sirians looked confused, as well they might. She had a feeling that it was hard enough for them to grasp one name without the confusion of nicknames.
Ronan-she was almost certain just by his behavior that the one who'd picked the name Shirley was Ronan-grinned at her. It was a surprisingly sexy smile. "We go fuck now?"
Kate compressed her lips, struggling with the odd mixture of amusement and fear-and anticipation, as much as she hated to admit it-that she'd felt from the moment the Sirians approached her. "Why don't we do that?" she managed to say shakily.
"You aren't serious?" Sissy objected.
Kate gave her a look and then smiled tightly. "Sorry. They look like the pick of the litter, though. I don't see that I'm likely to do better by hanging around longer."
Sissy gaped at her. "But …."
Kate got up. "Sorry," she said again. "I'm going with them."
"All of them?" Sissy gasped after staring at her speechlessly for several moments.
Kate looked at the men questioningly. "We're all going to my place, right?"
The Sirians all nodded.
Kate felt her belly clench. A tingling mixture of heat and cold washed over her from the combination of dread and anticipation. She felt weak, as if adrenaline had rushed through her and then abandoned her.
Did she really want to do this, she wondered?
Did she actually have a choice if she wanted to prevent bloodshed?
"We're going to take the party to my place," she said decisively, suggesting she would explain all later.
"I'll give you a call tomorrow."
Sissy stared at her blankly but finally nodded at the silent communication.
Kate had no idea what sort of explanation she was going to concoct, but she figured she had time to consider it and come up with something that sounded fairly reasonable.
Maybe she could just tell Sissy that she'd discovered she had a 'thing' for multiple partners? Of course, from what Sissy knew of her, her current behavior bordered on the bizarre. It had been excusable the first time since neither of them were aware that all three 'men' intended to follow her off and both of them had been flying high from way too much booze, but then maybe Sissy would imbibe enough that she wouldn't be very clear on what had happened by tomorrow?
Dismissing that problem for the moment, gathering her courage with an effort, Kate led the way out of the club and summoned a taxi. All sorts of thoughts and emotions pelted her as she waited for the shuttle to arrive. Foremost, however, was jitters over her decision to play bait-most specifically the part where she had accepted that she would use sex to lure them onto the ship.
She realized that she hadn't actually accepted that that was what it was going to take and that her decision to act as lure really left her no choice at this point. She'd carefully shuttled specifics to the back of her mind and focused on the main objective. Finding herself standing among them now, though, images of their first time kept pelting her. Interspersed with those memories were images of the Sirians as she had known them-as beasts.
She couldn't reconcile the two, she discovered. She couldn't conjure images of having sex with the beasts. She remembered fairly vividly having had sex with Ronan, Dax, and Jarek, but her mind neatly divided the two into imagination and reality. She knew it was the same. Regardless of their form at the time, she had had sex with the Sirians, but although her mind accepted that on one level, on another it was fixated on the human forms she'd seen and interacted with as if that was their true form and the other was merely a disguise.
For all she knew, she still hadn't seen their true form, she realized abruptly.
What were the odds, now that she'd begun to realize their abilities, that the form she'd considered their true form actually was? Would they have had the ability to change their form so drastically from birth? Or hatching, as the case was?
Assuming they had, why would they have appeared to them as they did?
Had they sensed that form would be more acceptable? Less threatening?
Before she could follow those thoughts off and analyze them, the shuttle arrived and she was completely diverted. The fear that she would have the long ride to her place to dread what was coming dissolved upon the discovery that they had no intention of waiting. She'd barely had time to instruct the robotic driver when Ronan hauled her across his lap.
"Dis work," he muttered, planting a hand along the back of her neck and dragging her close to plant his mouth firmly over hers.
Work how, she wondered briefly?
Logistically according to their anatomy!
She barely managed that coherent thought, however. She had expected to be repulsed now that she knew what they were. It didn't happen that way. Her mind sent up warning flags, flashed a brief image of the Sirians through her mind, and then the image of the Ronan she'd accepted, and that was the end of even token resistance. She experienced spontaneous combustion almost as quickly as her mind registered the feel of his mouth on hers and his taste invaded her. It was like combining the key ingredients of TNT. She struggled against the heated tide of desire that enveloped her almost instantaneously, but the fight was woefully brief. Her body knew his chemical signature and remembered the pleasure he'd given her before and responded with keen anticipation. He didn't feel or taste alien. His touch, his scent, his taste registered in her mind and body as human animal, as a perfect match for her own physiology.