Found (17 page)

“What’s hard to understand is why you would
wish to pollute yourself with my genes—to defile yourself with the
toxins in my blood.”

“It’s not pollution or defilement,” Lauren
argued. “I still don’t understand why you think that about
yourself.”

“Because it’s true,” he said shortly. He
frowned again as he studied himself in the viewer. “There is one
thing I don’t understand—why is my skin lighter than yours?”

Lauren sighed. “Oh, well I’m half white, you
know. I mean, because my mom is,” she said. “It was my dad who was
African American. You know—black.”

“But my skin is not white. It’s a sort
of…tan. And your skin is not black. It’s a beautiful, smooth
brown.”

“Well, we say ‘black’ and ‘white’ on my
planet, but what we really mean is tan and brown.” Lauren shrugged.
“I know, it’s silly isn’t it? But I guess you got DNA from my mom’s
side of the family.”

“Does your mother have eyes this color?” he
asked, looking into his own eyes in the viewer.

Lauren shook her head. “Uh-uh, she has eyes
like mine. But I
do
remember her saying once that my
great-grandfather had eyes that color. Sea colored eyes, she called
them.” Reaching up, she cupped his cheek and turned him to face
her. “They’re beautiful, you know. Not that your other eyes
weren’t—they were very…fierce. But now—”

“Now I conform to your human standards of
beauty,” Xairn finished for her.

She nodded and let her hand drop. “You look
like a model.”

“A model?” His perfect forehead wrinkled.

“Someone who sells products to others just by
looking good. Like if you wanted to sell people a particular brand
of clothes, you’d have someone hot, er, good-looking wear
them.”

He shook his head. “Why?”

“Well…it’s psychological. It gives people the
idea that if they buy and wear those particular clothes, they’ll
look as hot as the model wearing them.”

“Why would they think such an illogical
thing? And why do they care what their clothing looks like,
anyway?” Xairn was clearly confused. “As long as it is adequately
functional and keeps them warm, that is all that should
matter.”

“Oh, Xairn honey…” Lauren laughed
delightedly. He might
look
like he’d just stepped from the
pages of
GQ
but he was obviously still the same old Xairn
underneath. Honestly, it made her feel better about the change he’d
undergone. With his big, muscular frame and those striking eyes, he
looked like a movie-star—almost unapproachable.

So much physical perfection was hard to be
around. It made her feel intimidated in a way she never had even
when she’d first met him and thought he looked like a beast out of
a nightmare.

Of course, it had been a long time since
she’d thought that. Recently she’d really begun to
like
the
way he looked and now…now he was so
different.

“I wish my skin was the same color as yours,”
he said, holding his arm alongside hers to compare. “But I’m glad
you find me easier to look at now.”

“I never found you hard to look at,” Lauren
protested. “In fact…Here, lean down a little.”

Obediently, he crouched down so she could
reach around behind his neck. Lauren felt for the leather thong
that kept his hair tied in the tight club at the back of his neck.
Carefully, she unknotted it and pulled it free.

The effect was dramatic. A thick, glossy
curtain of blue-black hair fell down around Xairn’s muscular
shoulders. It framed his face, softening his stern features, and
making him look more than ever like a model on the front of a
romance novel.

“Wow,” Lauren breathed, stepping back to look
at him. “See, now I’ve been wanting to do that almost from the
first moment I saw you. And that was long before you turned into
Mr.
GQ.”

He frowned and ran a hand over his hair. “Why
should you want to let my hair down?”

“Because I wanted to do this.” Reaching up,
she ran her fingers through his silky black mane. Truly, he looked
magnificent, but what really made him attractive were the traces of
the old Xairn she could see peeking out through his gorgeous new
exterior.

Xairn shivered under her touch like a nervous
animal but didn’t draw away. Instead he held perfectly still as she
caressed him. “Why?” he whispered. “Why would you want to…to touch
me so?”

“Because I like you.” Lauren pulled him
closer and he came to her willingly, his gorgeous, sea-colored eyes
wide and uncertain. “Xairn, I think…I think I might be starting to
love you,” she confessed. “And not because of this…because of how
you look. Because of all we’ve been through together. Everything
you’ve done for me… risked for me… given up for me. You’re the
sweetest, kindest, most noble man I know.”

“You’re wrong,” he whispered hoarsely as she
drew him closer. “I am not any of those things.”

“You’re all that and more,” Lauren insisted.
She put her arms around his neck and stood on her tiptoes. “I
wanted to do this too, you know,” she murmured. Gently, she brushed
his lips with hers.

Xairn’s reaction was immediate and intense.
Arms like warm, flexible steel suddenly crushed her against him and
his mouth covered hers, insistent and demanding.

At first Lauren was a little frightened but
then she relaxed into his grip. She could feel the need in him—need
that had been buried for years and years, desire he’d been too
afraid of to ever let see the light of day.
Can’t let him think
I’m afraid of him. Can’t feed the image he has of himself as some
kind of sexual monster.

Moaning softly, she opened her mouth to him,
inviting him in, trusting him. Xairn hesitated at first but then
she felt his tongue enter her slowly. She caressed it gently with
her own, inviting him to do more, to explore. Xairn took her
invitation eagerly, threading his fingers through her hair and
growling softly deep in his chest as he pulled her even closer.

Lauren was still wearing the fuzzy purple
robe she’d put on the night before and she was bare underneath. As
Xairn pulled her to him, the robe opened up and she moaned
breathlessly to feel her naked breasts rub against his broad, bare
chest.

There was a hard bulge in the black boxer
briefs he was wearing and it pressed insistently against her thigh,
dangerously close to her unprotected pussy. Lauren had a brief
thought about how he’d claimed to have double the usual equipment
down there but from what she could feel, it was perfectly normal.
Well, maybe not completely normal—it
did
feel awfully large.
Maybe she’d get a chance to explore and find out exactly what…

“Stop!” Xairn broke the kiss abruptly.

“What? Why?” Lauren looked up dazedly, trying
to find the reason in his eyes. “Do you want to go to bed? Because
I agree this isn’t the best place for this.” She gestured around
the bathroom with its deep blue fixtures and the bathtub still
filled with congealed pink oatmeal stuff from her abandoned bath of
the night before.

“No, I do not wish to take you on the bed.”
Xairn’s voice was hoarse and the hot, hard ridge Lauren could still
feel against her thigh throbbed as though in denial of his
words.

“Where then?” she asked, frowning.

“Nowhere. I…I do not wish to take you at
all.”

“You’re lying,” Lauren said softly. Reaching
up, she cupped his cheek and looked into those new, beautiful
sea-colored eyes. “You want me, Xairn—I can feel it.” She nudged
him with her thigh and had the satisfaction of seeing him jump.
“And I want you.” She nodded down at herself to where her tight
nipples were still rubbing against the broad, tan planes of his
chest. “We want each other,” she clarified. “We
need
each
other. And I don’t see one good reason we shouldn’t give in to that
need.”

“Because I feel for you as well.” Gently but
firmly he took her hands and put them down by her sides. Then he
stepped back, breaking all physical contact between them. “I don’t
know what to call it but I want…I want to shelter you from pain, to
keep you safe from harm. To comfort you when you’re sad. To put my
body between you and any danger that might befall you.” He shook
his head. “It’s a very strange and confusing emotion.”

“It sounds like love to me,” she said
quietly. “If you love me, why are you pulling away?”

“Because of everything I told you last night.
Because of what I am.” He shook his head and looked away from her
naked body, framed in the fuzzy purple robe. “And it’s because I
care for you that I must leave you. I’ll see you safely home to
your planet but then…then I must go.”

“Go where?” Lauren reached for him but he
ducked away from her touch. “Will you come back and see me?”

“No.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Never.”

“What?” Stung and surprised, Lauren began to
cry. Hot tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks before
she could stop them.

“What did you expect?” he asked roughly. “For
me to stay on Earth with you? Live as a human? Just because I look
like one now doesn’t mean I am one inside, you know.”

“I…I know.” Lauren sniffed and tried to stop
crying. “I don’t know what I expected but I hoped you might stay…at
least awhile.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I must go.”

“Why? Because of what your people do?” Lauren
sniffed again and glared at him fiercely. “I don’t accept that. I
don’t care how the men in your race treat women or what you’ve seen
your father do—you’re not them, Xairn. You’re
you.
And I
know you wouldn’t treat me that way. I know you would never hurt
me.”

“You’re wrong,” he said in a low voice. “More
wrong than you know.”

“Maybe I am at that.” The tears wanted to
come back but Lauren wouldn’t let them. “Because you
have
hurt me—worse than I’ve ever been hurt in my life.”

“What?” He looked startled. “I haven’t laid a
hand on you. Not in the way of my people, anyway.”

“No, but you’re leaving me as soon as we get
back to Earth. Leaving without even trying to explore these
feelings we have for each other.” Lifting her chin, Lauren looked
him in the eye. “And that hurts worse than any rough, kinky
BDSM-type fantasy ever could. You haven’t just wounded my body,
Xairn—you’ve wounded my heart.”

He opened his mouth to reply but Lauren
didn’t want to hear it—didn’t want to hear more excuses.
Straightening her shoulders, she drew the robe close around herself
and stalked out of the bathroom. If that was the way he wanted it,
then so be it. It was clear he was serious about dropping her off
on Earth and leaving her without a backwards glance. Fine then, she
wasn’t going to beg.

But it hurt. Oh God, it hurt much worse than
she ever could have believed possible. And she couldn’t stop
hearing his deep voice in her head saying those sweet words
, I
want to shelter you from pain, to keep you safe from harm. To
comfort you when you’re sad. To put my body between you and any
danger that might befall you.

It was love all right, but it wasn’t enough.
He didn’t care for her enough to stay. To take a chance.
Oh
Xairn,
she thought sorrowfully.
If only you were as willing
to risk your heart for me as you are to risk your body.

If only…

Xairn watched her go with a fierce ache in
his heart he couldn’t explain. Why couldn’t she understand that he
was doing this for her own good? He no more wanted to leave her on
Earth and never see her again than Lauren wanted him to go. But he
couldn’t help himself—if he allowed himself to get close to her,
his true nature would come out.

Briefly, he allowed himself to relive the
sweet moment when she’d pressed her lips to his. That…kiss, yes,
that was what she had called it. That kiss which had started out so
soft and tender and then turned into something else—something more.
Xairn had wanted her then, especially when she parted her lips and
offered him the freedom to explore her, to know her completely.
He’d had dark visions of dropping to his knees and parting her
other lips—her sweet, soft pussy lips with his tongue as well. He
wanted desperately to taste her, to lap open her willing little
cunt and explore her hidden treasures while she moaned and gripped
his hair, begging him to do more, to go farther….

But I can’t. I mustn’t.
For if he
allowed himself to taste and explore her body, other things were
certain to follow. Things his body yearned for but which were
considered perversions by others.

Sighing, he pressed the heels of his hands to
his eyes. There were no tears in him anymore—they had gone after
his pet
urlich,
Sanja, had died. But for some reason his
eyes were burning now and he felt a lump in his throat that
wouldn’t go down no matter how hard he swallowed.

He breathed deeply, trying to push the
unwanted emotions away, and caught a faint fragrance from
somewhere. Her scent, it must be Lauren’s scent. He’d been stroking
her hair as he kissed her—it was all over his hands.

His first impulse was to wash his hands but
he couldn’t bear to do that. Instead he cupped his palms to his
face and inhaled, trying to breathe her in, trying to memorize her
forever. Then he frowned—it was different somehow, her scent.
Essentially the same but slightly changed. She smelled like…

“She smells like me,” he whispered in a rough
voice. It was true—it was as though he’d scent marked her in the
way of the Kindred. But how…? Suddenly he understood. The DNA
exchange. Lauren had wondered what she had gotten from him—this was
it. It wasn’t much—nothing she would ever notice herself. But it
would keep any other male of the Kindred or Scourge race away from
her forever. Her new scent branded her as belonging to another
male—to him—as surely as if he’d laid all the marks of possession
on her.