Return to Eden (6 page)

He eyed her speculatively. “Fk r slf.
Fkd ard.”

Uh oh! He might be catching on. She
hadn’t counted on him being intelligent enough to begin figuring
out the language that fast!

Aidan studied her reaction and decided
that whatever it was that she’d said it wasn’t anything flattering.
Shrugging off his impatience, he dug into the pocket of his suit
for the emergency rations it should be equipped with. He wasn’t
disappointed. His hand touched a metallic pouch and he grasped it
and withdrew it. He curled his lip unconsciously as he read the
label. The colonists often referred to the emergency rations as
shit bars and he had a feeling that meant it wasn’t exactly
palatable, but then again it was more in the nature of medicine
since it had been designed to supply all nutritional and caloric
needs to insure survival, not for enjoyment. Unwrapping it, he
sniffed it, tried to hide the distaste he felt at the smell and
carefully broke it in half, offering her the other
piece.

She eyed it distrustfully and slowly
shook her head.

Since she’d seemed to nod in agreement
previously, he decided the shake meant negative. Still holding out
the piece, he took a bite of his own to show her it was safe to
eat.

It tasted like shit, though, and it was
all he could do to prevent a shudder.

She watched him swallow and finally
held out her hand.

When she took it, she lifted it to her
nose, sniffed it, and made a face.

He looked away, trying to pretend he
hadn’t noticed her reaction and been amused by it since he was
afraid she’d interpret his amusement as an attempt at
deception.

“
It smells like shit and
if the look on your face is any indication, I bet it takes like it,
too,” Anya said dryly.

She supposed it must be something like
military rations, though, designed for survival. Holding her
breath, she took a tiny bite, chewed it a couple of times and
swallowed. If was unfortunate that she’d already swallowed before
it occurred to her that ‘good for him’ might be poison for
her—because that bite was gone.

She placed a hand over her racing
heart, trying to decide whether she should wait to see if there
were any ill effects to the food or run her finger down her throat
and try to bring that bite back up. Surely one bite wouldn’t kill
her, though?

“
Thirsty?”

Anya looked up at the alien—Aidan—when
he spoke, wondering if he’d said something like ‘gotcha!’. She saw
he’d either eaten his piece already, though … or he’d tossed it
away while she wasn’t looking.

He began digging in the
pockets of his pants again and pulled something else out. It didn’t
look a lot different from the thing he’d pulled out before. When
he’d taken the end off, though, he put it to his mouth, tipped it
back and swallowed. Her throat closed instantly. She could almost
have sworn she
smelled
water, liquid anyway. She didn’t hesitate that time when he
offered it. She grabbed it with both hands. Unfortunately, it was
malleable and when she did, she squeezed some of the contents
out.

Consternation filled her when she saw
it was water she’d spilled, but there was still some left in it and
she turned it up and drank.

It tasted like water, which was to say
not terribly good. She’d never liked plain water, but it felt good
going down.

He wrestled it away from her after a
few gulps and she eyed him resentfully when he closed it again and
shoved it back in his pocket, watching every move he made like a
hawk and wondering if she could get it away from him
again.

“
You might be dehydrated.
It’ll just make you sick if you drink too much at the time. I’ll
give you more in a little bit.”

She didn’t know what he said but after
studying her while she licked the water off her fingers he began
tugging at the top of his suit. Anya’s heart skipped a beat and she
jerked her gaze from the closure he was slowly opening to his face.
He seemed intent on what he was doing.

She wasn’t
about
to wait around to
see what he had in mind! Deciding that was as good a chance as she
was likely to get, she took to her heels. If she could just get a
little bit of a head start, she thought, she could hide in the
woods ….

He caught her before she’d managed to
do much more than launch herself into a run.

“
No! I told you I wouldn’t
harm you.”

Gritting her teeth, Anya
struggled for several moments to free herself and finally gave up.
As soon as she did, he released his hold on her. She eyed him with
misgiving. He frowned at her.
“Don’t
move!”
Since he emphasized whatever it was
he said with a stern shake of his head, she decided he was telling
her he wasn’t about to let her escape.

Well, he had to sleep
sometime!

She didn’t know what he had in mind,
but he’d proven he was faster than she was and stronger. The only
way she was going to escape was to wait until he had his guard
down. Maybe he’d fall asleep and she could find a rock and bash his
head in? She smiled at him at the thought.

He studied her uneasily for a moment
and finally smiled back.

Two things happened when he did that.
Her heart quickened and an oddly weak sensation flowed through her
behind it. And guilt smote her.

She ignored the first, unwilling to
analyze it, and chastised herself for the second. She had no reason
to feel guilt just because she’d succeeded in deceiving him! Was it
her fault he was dumb enough to think she was that
stupid?

To her relief, although he continued to
unfasten his suit once he’d assured himself she wouldn’t run, he
stopped when he reached the waist, shrugged out of the top and
began to work on the seam there. Her curiosity was snagged then and
she watched him until he’d removed the top part of his suit. To her
surprise, he handed it to her.

Studiously ignoring his bare upper
torso, she looked at the ‘jacket’ and then looked at his face. He
shook the jacket at her and finally, deciding he was offering it as
he had the food and water, she took it and slipped her arms into
it, wondering if it was yet another attempt to win her over or if
he just didn’t want to have to look at her.

She was still searching for a way to
fasten it when he grasped the sides and pressed them together from
throat to the bottom, which ended just below the tops of her
thighs. Thankfully he was enough bigger than her that it was almost
decent. Unfortunately, he wasn’t tall enough that the damned thing
covered her ass. She could feel that the bottom of her butt was
still exposed.

It was still far better than being
completely naked and she looked up at him and smiled with real
appreciation for the first time. “Thank you!”

He seemed to freeze for a
long moment, staring back at her, and then frowned, stepping away.
“
Don’t thank me,”
Aidan said wryly
. “I can’t think
straight with all that jiggling, bare flesh to look at.”
He looked around, wondering where he’d lost his
suit helmet. No doubt, he’d lost it when he’d slipped and rolled to
the bottom of the hill and he didn’t suppose he needed it or he’d
already be dead, but he’d lost the damned communicator built into
it.

Briefly, he debated whether to spare
the time to look for it, but he’d already lost a lot of time
dealing with the alien female. He needed to get to that
satellite—if there was anything left to collect between the impact
with his ship, the fiery entry into the atmosphere, and the
crash.

He checked his wrist computer and that
settled the matter. That was still functioning alright as far as he
could see. He had a map to the satellite crash site and the onboard
computer’s calculation of his ship’s probable location.

And he had the woman as proof of his
theory even if he couldn’t find the satellite.

If he could hang on to her.

Not that he thought it
would be easy to convince them that she was an intelligent
life-form, but she was
clearly
a higher life-form!

Grasping her arm at the elbow, he
studied the map and turned until he was lined up with the
directional finder on his screen and then tugged at her arm to get
her going.

Dismay flickered through
Anya, but she’d told herself she needed to cooperate until he let
his guard down if she was going to have any hope of escaping and
she didn’t resist his urging. The problem was, even when she’d told
herself that she hadn’t been completely convinced that she was his
captive. She didn’t know what she
had
been thinking, but he hadn’t
really been threatening beyond refusing to let her go.

She supposed she hadn’t been thinking
beyond the moment.

Maybe he was just worried that she’d
sound the alarm if she got away?

That didn’t actually make much sense,
though. She was pretty sure the obelisks had alerted everybody to
the invasion already.

* * * *

As focused as Aidan was on trying to
reach the satellite and gather the evidence he needed, and
distracted, although he hated to admit it, by Anya, it dawned on
him after they’d gone only a short distance that he needed to
analyze the native language and see if he could pick up enough to
truly communicate.

Actually, it was
probably
mostly
because of his preoccupation with Anya that he thought about
the necessity of communications.

She was afraid and rightfully so given
the fact that he was not only a stranger to her but an alien
species. She seemed fairly intelligent, though, and that meant she
had reasoning capabilities … that he couldn’t actually tap into
without some means of communication. He might be able to convince
her he didn’t have evil intentions if he could actually talk to
her. He didn’t think he’d made much headway with the
gestures.

Her continued attempts to escape seemed
a pretty good indication that he’d failed in that respect, he
thought wryly.

Releasing his grip on her
arm, he warned her,
“Don’t move!”
and then focused on his wrist computer,
programming it to record and analyze the sounds so that it could
begin breaking down speech patterns. He looked at her again when
he’d finished programming it and discovered she’d been watching
him. “Computer.”

She stared at him blankly.

Impatience flickered
through him.
“Aidan,”
he said, pointing to himself then to her and finally to the
wrist computer.
“Anya.
Computer.”

He saw something flicker in her eyes
and the suspicion arose that she understood exactly what he was
trying to do, but she didn’t say anything. Deciding not to allow
her to see how annoyed he was that she refused to cooperate, he
urged her to walk again and continued to point at things and assign
the names of them in his own language.

“
Fucktard,” Anya muttered
after a little while.

Aidan frowned, more
convinced than before that that word, whatever it was, was
something insulting. He glanced down at his wrist computer to make
sure it had recorded the word. Satisfied when he saw it had, he
went back to pointing things out, trying to convince himself that
she just hadn’t grasped the ‘game’ yet and would jump in after a
while and give him what he needed.
“Grass,
shrub, cloud … oh my fucking gods! Run!”

* * * *

Anya didn’t know why the
stupid bastard was trying to teach her his language, but she had no
interest in trying to learn it. She didn’t mean to hang around long
enough to learn it
or
use it. The sound of alarm in his voice was, apparently,
universal, however. She didn’t need to know his language to
understand they were in deep shit. She glanced up instinctively at
the sound of warning and froze.

Through the tops of the trees, she
could see the shadow of the biggest damned bird she’d ever seen in
her life and it was diving!

Uttering a scream, Anya jerked free of
Aidan’s hold and tore off through the trees.

Aidan caught up to her, grabbed her arm
and kept going, pulling her behind him so that she had to take
great leaps to keep up. She landed wrong on one leap and sprawled
out.

Aidan whipped a look back at her,
flicked a glance upward that made the hair on the back of her neck
stand on end, hesitated, and then bent down, grabbed her arm and
yanked her to her feet again. Grabbing her, he leapt behind the
trunk of a tree.

The thing wasn’t a bird, Anya
discovered as it swept past the tree they were hiding behind. It
looked … well, it looked an awful lot like the pictures she’d seen
of pterodactyls. Either the pictures weren’t entirely accurate,
though, or this was something else—far more colorful than the
pictures she’d seen—a bright, sky blue rather than the dull brown
she remembered.

She could see it bank to land as it
swept past and her heart fell to her toes.