Chapter Eleven

Either Anya missed both of them, or they were too intent on their explorations to notice anything shy of a cannon blast. She made a sound of complaint in her throat, which also went unnoticed, and gave up trying to fight them off.

Despite the fact that she’d just had three climaxes in a row when she’d rarely even experienced one in the course of intercourse, her body responded readily to their touch, eagerly. Heat spiraled inside of her again. The tension climbed until she thought their nibbling kisses alone would make her come again.

She didn’t get the chance to find out.

Legion dragged one of her legs across his hip and pushed inside of her, stroking her slowly.

Zavier, after stroking her rectum, entered her from behind.

Expecting pain the moment she felt the pressure, surprise flickered through her when she felt no more than a slight twinge of discomfort that was almost immediately supplanted by pleasure.

It flickered through her mind, briefly, that he’d, somehow, done something to prevent the pain she should have felt at being penetrated by a cock the size of his, but desire arced inside of her like lightning as the two began to move rhythmically, thrusting in and out of her in tandem, driving deeper and harder with each thrust until she could barely catch her breath for the glorious pleasure pounding through her.

She came, gasping at the force of the convulsions and then was swept upward again, rocked over and over by spasms of ecstasy until she lost count of how many times she came, began to think her heart and lungs would give out before they did.

She felt more relief than anything else when they abruptly stiffened, almost in the same moment, and bathed her inside with the hot fountain of their seed.

She passed beyond conscious before they’d even stopped shuddering with their own releases.

She wasn’t certain how long she was out, but it was either dark when she roused again, or she’d gone blind.

She hadn’t lost sensation. She felt their hands stroking her.

“I swear to god I’ll cut both of those things off if you try to stick them in me again!” she growled, fighting them off and pushing herself upright with an effort.

Moonlight limned them when she turned to glare at them after she’d finally managed to get to her feet. She plunked her hands on her hips at their continued silence. “I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it. I did. Now I’m going to enjoy sleeping.”

Her legs felt like they didn’t belong to her when she found her bearings and headed across the pasture toward the house. She hadn’t gotten far when someone—Legion she thought—came up behind her and swept her off her feet. She sucked in a quick breath of surprise and then found herself inside the house.

Disoriented, she gazed around the darkened room in confusion and finally wiggled until he set her on her feet. Thoroughly awake after the unexpected transport from pasture to house, Anya decided that a bath should definitely be the first order of business after rolling around in the pasture and headed toward the bathroom, flicking on the living room light as she left. She’d dropped her tote just inside the door of her childhood bedroom and stopped there to collect clean clothes on the way.

Zavier was in the bathroom when she arrived, surveying the fixtures with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. She gave him an irritated look. “It’s old fashioned,” she said defensively. “The house was built at least fifty years ago … maybe more.”

Reaching into the shower, she turned the water on, and then turned and placed her palms on Zavier’s chest and pushed him toward the door. When she’d closed the door in his face, she headed back to check the water temperature. The water, solar heated, was scalding and she took a few moments to adjust the flow of cold to balance it at a comfortable temperature before she stepped inside.

She’d just put her head under the shower spray when she felt two hands settle at her waist. She jumped, nearly strangling on the water, spluttering and coughing as she jerked her head from beneath the spray and swiped a hand over her face.

Legion was standing behind her, she discovered with a good bit of irritation. “Do you mind?” she snapped.

“I do not.” He frowned. “Mind what?”

“I’m bathing!”

“Yes. This seems … primitive. The facilities on the space platform were different.”

“Because water was an issue,” Anya pointed out. “We mostly used particle cleansers—effective but not actually fun. I enjoy bathing with water when I get the chance.”

Legion lifted her bodily, set her behind him, and ducked beneath the spray.

Anya glared at him.

He glared at the shower head. “It is not high enough.”

“It’s high enough for me and it’s my shower!”

He tilted his head, studying her. “You are angry?”

Anya rolled her eyes. Uttering a huff of annoyance, she turned and grabbed the soap, resisting the urge to inform him that she actually preferred bathing alone—which was why she’d shown Zavier the door.

“You are still angry about the disagreement with my brother?”

Disagreement? “It’s not something I’m going to get over any time soon,” she said, flicking a pointed look at him.

He took the soap from her, sniffed it and, apparently deciding he liked it, began to smear it around on his chest. Shaking her head at him, she took the soap, rubbed it on her wash cloth until it was well soaped and began to scrub his chest. Despite her irritation with him, it was impossible to ignore the beauty of his physique, but she did try, focusing on washing his torso and then his arms, hands, and shoulders.

“We repaired all that was damaged.”

She flicked a quick look at his face. “Sometimes that isn’t enough.”

He frowned. “If it is as it was, why is that not sufficient?”

She paused, looking up at him. “They’ll remember the pain and fear even after it’s gone—long after it’s gone.”

She pulled at his arm until he obeyed her unspoken command and turned to face the water. Pushing his long hair over his shoulders, she began to scrub his back. “Zavier showed me … I guess it was a memory from when the two of you were little.”

He twisted his head to look back at her over his shoulder. “When I was little? Young?”

“A small child. You looked to be around five years old.”

He seemed to scan his memories. “This means nothing to me. We do not measure age as you do.”

She thought he was evading and briefly debated whether to pursue it or not. “You’d broken your arm.”

Something flickered in his eyes. He looked away, lifting his hands to the water and turning them, watching as the water pelted the soap from them.

“You don’t remember?”

He was silent for several moments. “I recall everything from the moment I first became aware of life.”

Anya frowned that time, curious at the way he’d phrased the comment. “From when you were very young, you mean? Everything?”

“From first awareness in my mother’s womb.”

Anya stopped, staring at his back. “You couldn’t possibly ….”

“I am not the same as you, Anya.”

She began scrubbing his back again, kneading his shoulders and then lower until she reached his buttocks. “You feel the same,” she said finally.

He turned to face her. Taking the cloth from her, he rinsed it and scrubbed the soap over it as she had. “But you know I am not,” he said, bathing her as she’d bathed him.

She scanned his face. “But you were hurt, and you were afraid … and you missed your mother.”

He nodded. “Just as you were when you were very young and fell from the tree that you had climbed.”

Anya stared at him in surprise, feeling her stomach twist a little sickeningly. “You took that from my memory!” she said accusingly.

He flicked a gaze at her and looked away. “I explored your mind as I have explored your body. Every morsel of you intrigues me.”

Anya swallowed with an effort. “That wasn’t right! They’re mine! My memories. It should be my decision whether to share them or not!”

His lips tightened. “You see. You smell. You taste. You feel. You hear. Your senses test your surroundings and tell you about them. Mine do also.”

“It’s not the same!”

“Because we are not the same!”

“But … this wasn’t an involuntary thing! You chose to look into my memories!”

“Just as you choose to look, or not to look,” he said implacably. “I wanted to see. I looked.”

She still felt ill-used. He shouldn’t have looked just because he could. It wasn’t … polite, any more than it was polite to stare at someone. “Then show me your memories!”

He lifted a hand to caress her cheek. “You do not want to see them, beloved.”

“How do you know?” she demanded angrily.

He touched a finger to her temple. “Because there is no ugliness here … sorrow, yes, but far more happiness than sadness and no terrible things to give you nightmares. I will not put them there.”

She shook her head at him. “You don’t think what happened in the city was terrible? I have that in my memory. I’m sure I’ve never been so frightened in my life.”

He studied her thoughtfully. “Which part frightened you?”

Anya blinked at him in disbelief. “All of it!”

He caught her shoulders and turned her so that he could wash her back. “Your people are also violent. I have seen this in the minds of the others. This ... Captain Laine,” he said derisively, “was most fond of brawling.”

Anya pursed her lips. “I don’t doubt it, but then I’ve never had a high opinion of him. Anyway, what you and Zavier were doing was a little more than ‘brawling’.”

“It is a part of who and what we are. We think no more of using it than you would think of using your hands.”

Anya made a sound of irritation. “But that’s just the point! We can’t do those things so it’s frightening to see it! Besides, mature adults are supposed to work things out in a reasonable manner—not with violence.”

“You do not have disagreements with your sister?”

“You know I do,” she said irritably, turning to face him, “if you’ve seen my memories. We’ve never really gotten along well, but we don’t fight—physically—even when we disagree on things.”

“You avoid contact with her.”

“Sometimes that’s better than being around her and arguing. At least when we’re not together we can enjoy talking to one another occasionally.”

Taking the cloth from him she finished bathing her lower body, handed the cloth back to him, and got out of the shower. “If you’d stayed on your own world, you wouldn’t have been allowed to do those things, would you?”

“If we had stayed on our world we would have perished with everyone else.”

Anya sent him a sharp look. “How do you know they perished? You were sent away.”

“I know,” he said grimly.

“But how do you know?”

He slid a hard look at her. “Because my mother would not have left us to spend our childhood on that vile world if she had survived. And because we searched for them when we had achieved the skills to do so,” he said with controlled violence.

Anya felt her throat close with empathy. “Your world was … just gone?”

He looked away, twisting the knobs on the shower until the water ceased to flow. “The entire solar system was gone … sucked into a black hole.”

He took the towel she offered him without looking at her. “They believed they could prevent it. Collectively, they believed they had the power to move the world beyond danger. My parents were considered traitors for sending us a way … even though they stayed and perished with all the others.”

* * * *

Neither Zavier nor Legion was particularly pleased when they discovered she expected them to sleep in her brothers’ room. They informed her that they had no real need to sleep. They had gathered sufficient energy to sustain them. After informing them that she not only required sleep, regularly, but that she was particularly tired from their romp in the pasture, she left them to entertain themselves, or sleep, and went to her old room.

She needed sustenance herself, if it came to that, not just sleep, but decided she was too weary to feel up to going back into the little town nearby to buy food and she, unfortunately, had been too distressed on the trip to the farm to consider stopping for supplies along the way.

Despite the unfamiliarity of sleeping in a room that hadn’t been hers since she was a child, she was exhausted enough to drop to sleep without any trouble whatsoever. Staying asleep was a little more difficult.

She woke to find herself sandwiched between Zavier and Legion. Too tired to protest, she decided she could wait until the morning to vent her displeasure and rolled over and went to sleep again.

It nagged at the back of her mind that something about the sleeping arrangements, beyond the fact that she had unexpected bed partners, wasn’t quite right, but she was in no condition to examine it.

They were gone when she woke the following morning. She lay puzzling over it for a time and finally decided that she must have dreamed they’d joined her. The bed was far too narrow to accommodate three, particularly when two of them were big enough they would’ve overflowed the small bed if they hadn’t shared it with anyone else.

Unless they’d been levitating?

When she’d finished her morning ritual and dressed, she went in search of them, half hoping, half fearing, they’d gone and finally spied them in the distance beneath the tree where the three of them had explored the limits of her endurance the day before, standing almost nose to nose and bristling at one another like two cur dogs.

Plunking her hands on her hips, she studied them for several moments and finally went back inside, slamming the back door loudly. She should’ve known, she told herself, that peace wouldn’t reign for long between the two, regardless of Legion’s promise!

Finding her purse, she strode out the front door and got into her car. They ‘appeared’ in the seat behind her before she’d warmed the engine, nearly giving her heart failure.

“I don’t know how you do that, but I do wish you’d stop it!” she said irritably, turning in her seat to look back at them when she’d managed to get her heart rate more or less under control. “I’m going into town for food—which I need even if you don’t. Wouldn’t you rather stay here? I mean, it’s bound to be boring,” she finished hopefully.

“We cannot learn the customs of your world if we do not observe,” Legion pointed out coolly.

Anya stared at him for a long moment and finally straightened in her seat instead of asking him why he thought there was any point in learning the customs. They couldn’t stay on Earth, not after what had happened in the city. Obviously, this wasn’t something they’d come to accept, however.

With the reflection that they were at least out of harm’s way and everyone else was out of their harm’s way, she throttled up, lifted to hover just above the road way and headed into town. It hadn’t been much more than a village in her youth and, if anything, it was smaller now. There had been no survivors at ground zero, of course. She and her sister and youngest brother were only alive because they’d been away at school in the city when the war broke out, but the countryside had been reopened to habitation two years before. It seemed to her that more people would have taken advantage and returned to area.

There was a government supply store, however, which was all that really mattered at the moment. In fact, the more she thought about it, the better that there weren’t many people around. Legion wasn’t going to ‘blend in’ with the natives terribly well, despite the fact that he’d adopted ‘native’ dress. He was just too exceptional to manage to go unnoticed.

Zavier was even less likely to go unnoticed.

Wryly, she admitted that, even if he hadn’t somehow changed his skin tones to something that more nearly resembled metal than skin, he wouldn’t have avoided notice, because then he would’ve looked identical to Legion.

She parked her car on the outskirts of town and resolutely turned to face them. “I’ve been thinking and I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go in with me. It would be better if you’d stay here.”

Zavier studied her thoughtfully. “We have given our word that we will not endanger the beings here.”

Anya wrestled with diplomacy versus bluntness and finally gave up on the possibility of handling the situation with tact. “The government will have issued an alert. I’m sure, even as remote as this area is, they will have heard, and they’ll recognize both of you immediately. The ‘beings’ will be endangered, because they’ll notify the authorities and the authorities will swoop down upon us all with the intention of annihilating you two.”

Legion and Zavier exchanged a look and almost seemed to shrug.

Relieved, she got out of the car.

After a momentary delay while they figured out how to open the doors, which cemented her belief that they were actually willing to be reasonable, they got out of the car.

Anya lost her patience. “Look! You can’t ….”

Legion closed his eyes, frowned faintly as if concentrating, and then began to glow … and blur. Anya blinked to clear her vision and, when she did, discovered that Captain Laine was standing where Legion had been seconds before.

“Laine?” Anya asked uneasily.

He looked at her and a shiver skated through her. After a moment, she dragged her gaze from him and looked at Zavier and discovered that he’d taken on the form of a complete stranger—no doubt someone he’d seen in the city. Unnerved, she studied them for several moments, but she couldn’t think of any reason why they would be noticed as they were now beyond being strangers and she was a stranger if it came to that. She looked at Legion again. “Say something.”

He looked surprised. “What would you have me say?”

Anya sucked in a steadying breath. “Don’t talk. You don’t sound human,” she added at his look of confusion.”

Trying to shrug off her uneasiness, she turned and headed into town. They fell into step on either side of her, studying everything they passed with a keen interest that was almost as unnerving as her thoughts because she realized they were recording everything.

The more she discovered that they were capable of doing the more uneasy they made her. Despite their strange voices and ‘foreign’ mannerisms and speech patterns, it was easy to fall into thinking that they were just as human as she was when they didn’t show her just how un-human they actually were by doing something no human was capable of. They looked human—or at least Legion did. If they’d only displayed the minor capabilities of telepathy, telekinesis and so forth that some humans had, it would’ve been easier to accept. No doubt it would still have taken some getting used to when she didn’t know any paranormals personally, but the capabilities of even the strongest of human paranormals was negligible enough that, when they used their abilities, it was merely a little startling.

She didn’t know of any who had the ability to morph into something, or someone, else entirely, though.

Although she’d struggled to suppress it, the memory of Legion’s offer to change his appearance so that he looked like Jeremy returned to haunt her. She supposed she’d believed then that he could do it or she wouldn’t have been so upset. At the time, she’d been too devastated about the entire suggestion to think much beyond the way it had made her feel.

She wondered now why he’d offered. He’d asked if it would make him more acceptable to her if he looked like Jeremy. Why would he be willing to do that, she wondered? She might have thought it didn’t particularly matter to him what he looked like, but she’d come to realize that he was as linked to his physical appearance as anyone else—maybe more so than a lot of people. Despite the apparent stigma of his childhood because of his appearance, he’d clung to it as an integral part of his identity. Even Zavier had. He’d changed the color of his skin and hair, but he hadn’t changed anything else and it was obvious now that he could have.

There was only one explanation that came to mind and Anya found she wasn’t willing to accept it. She just couldn’t believe she mattered that much to him. He had attached himself to her with grim determination almost from the first, informing her he’d chosen her as his mate, but she hadn’t put a lot stock in that. As flattering as it was to be singled out by a being so obviously superior in every way, she couldn’t see that she was exceptional enough to warrant it. She wasn’t even particularly exceptional among her own kind.

She thought she was generally considered ‘pretty’ but she certainly wasn’t beautiful. She was smart. She’d done well, graduated high in her class, but she was a long way from being a genius. She’d always thought her figure was probably her best asset and thought it was a little above ‘ordinary’, but she knew there were plenty of women who had as good a figure as she did.

Why her? And why was it important enough to him that he was willing to adopt the form of her late husband only to please her? Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose if he wanted her to care about him? Or did that not actually enter his mind? Was that unimportant to him as long as she accepted him?

She realized he’d been right to accuse her of arrogance when she’d decided he just didn’t feel what she considered ‘human’ emotions. He wasn’t insensitive or unfeeling, despite the fact that his superiority made him oblivious to the needs and suffering of the ‘lesser beings’ he’d come to live among. Maybe he had shut himself off from a lot of his emotions, but then he could hardly be despised for it considering what he must have endured.

Was that what made her important to him? Not love as she thought of it, but a need he hadn’t realized he had until she’d somehow triggered the urge?

Not very flattering. Not that it mattered. He couldn’t stay—neither of them could.

Zavier’s motivations were even more confusing that Legion’s. She thought she could understand both the conflict between them and the fact that, despite the constant irritant, they also couldn’t bring them themselves to stay away from one another. They were brothers, twins, and the only two, as far as they knew, of their race left. Those were all very strong reasons to pull them together and, of course, almost the same things kept them at odds.

She didn’t know why Zavier had chosen to show her what he had, maybe so that she’d understand them a little better, though she suspected he’d thought the memory would turn her away from Legion. His perception of the event, no doubt, was that he’d been brave and strong and Legion, by comparison, had been weak. Legion had also been hurt pretty badly, though, and her perception was that he’d been very manful considering how young he was.

Truthfully, although at the time she’d been too eaten up with the green monster to focus that much on the plight of the children, the memory of it made her hurt for both of them. Obviously their unique abilities had ensured their survival, but they still hadn’t been much more than babies. They’d needed nurturing, guidance they hadn’t gotten, the sense of security any child needs from the belief that they have someone watching over them.

Their parents hadn’t been there to deal with the inevitable sibling rivalry, which seemed worse to her in their case because they’d also resented the stigma apparently attached in their society to the birth of twins, and the confusion of individuality. They were completely different, regardless of their physical appearance, but it was obvious most of the infighting was because they despised the fact that someone else had their face. They hadn’t been able to accept and enjoy it as so many human twins did, or at least seemed to. On the other hand, she’d seen as many who behaved much like Legion and Zavier did, striving to be as different from their twin as they possibly could and resenting anyone remarking on similarities.

In their case, though, there’d been nothing and no one to referee and help them try to work out their resentment of one another, which seemed to have been compounded by a fear in both of them that their mother loved one more than the other—and she hadn’t been there to offer the reassurance they needed.

Given their history, though, it was even more incomprehensible to her that Zavier had not only decided to stay but had willingly agreed to ‘share’ her—or that Legion had agreed to it.

What was that all about?

She could grasp that Zavier had decided she must be the ‘best’ if Legion had settled his sights on her. She could even have understood it if they’d decided to fight to the death over the same ‘territory’ given their history, and realized it wasn’t really personal, or anything to preen over. It would’ve seemed logical, though, if Zavier had looked around for ‘better’ so that he could lord it over Legion that he’d found a better mate.

The arrogant assholes! Not that she hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed their vying for her attentions the night before, but the nerve of both of them to think that they only had to make up their own minds and it was a done deal!

She’d told Legion she wasn’t interested in being his mate!

And now both of them had moved in on her as happily as if they’d been invited!

She supposed it was completely incomprehensible to them that she, a far lesser being, might not appreciate being the ‘chosen one’ of two such marvelous creatures as they were!

She’d managed to work her anger up fairly well until she abruptly recalled the conversation with Legion the night before and empathy instantly deflated the bubble of resentment. Oddly enough, his anger hadn’t unnerved her. She wasn’t certain if that was because she’d come to trust, however stupid that might be, that he would never harm her no matter how angry he might be, or if it was because she’d realized at the time that it wasn’t really anger but pain.

Regardless of the fact that both of them seemed supremely self-confident—to the point of often seeming more like arrogant assholes!—there was a lot of bottled up anguish in both of them. Which was worse? Losing their parents at a time in their lives when they’d still desperately needed them? Or losing their home world, everything familiar, and any hope of a future among their own kind? It was hard to say, but she thought, given time, they would’ve been able to cope with the loss of their parents if they could have had the home familiar to them and found a mate among their own kind. Having a family of their own, she thought, and familiar surroundings, would have made it possible to set aside a lot of the hurt and focus on the future instead of the past.

Maybe that was the driving need behind their determination to mate with her? It was the only option open to them, to find a new home and settle among beings that at least had a physical similarity. It was the closest they could come to ‘normal’.

But why her?

Because there was something about her that seemed to remind them of their mother?

Also not flattering, but it was actually a well established scientific fact that humans tended to look for traits in a mate that reminded them of the primary nurturer in their life—sometimes in appearance, but most often temperament or personality traits, because to them that made them ‘right’ as a partner for their own children. She supposed she couldn’t quibble with that, but she also thought they could probably find a mate fairly easily that had some of the same traits, or maybe even more—a paranormal would be closer, she was sure. She was hardly that unique, regardless of what Zavier had said.

She realized with a touch dismay that she didn’t actually like the idea that they might. She would certainly be better off if they did. She couldn’t really handle one alien. She certainly couldn’t handle both—not for any length of time.

They would screw her to death in nothing else!

Besides, regardless of how wonderful they were as lovers, and they were, she couldn’t settle for just sex—however fabulous. If she’d been willing to, she could’ve done that long ago. She needed more.

Truthfully, although she wouldn’t have admitted it under torture before, it was Jeremy’s companionship she missed more than anything else. The sex between them hadn’t been fabulous except in the sense that it fulfilled her need for closeness to him. She’d loved him, desperately. She hadn’t actually needed to come when they had sex to feel complete. It had thrilled her just to give him pleasure.

Maybe, she admitted reluctantly, if they’d had more time together that would have changed. Maybe she’d idealized their short marriage and it would’ve fallen apart in time. She didn’t know. She would never know now but, whether that was true or not, it had spoiled her. She wanted to love and be loved. She wanted companionship. She couldn’t see any reason to settle for less. She could have sex without any sort of commitment at all.

She wasn’t happy when it dawned on her that, for the first time since his death, she was picking apart her relationship with Jeremy and examining it in a way she never had before, but since they arrived at their destination she was able to put it from her mind.

Legion and Zavier surprised her by not speaking. Ordinarily, they were so indifferent to, or oblivious of, other beings that they did pretty much as they pleased—not surprising since there didn’t actually seem to be any consequences, to them, for doing just as they pleased at all times. She was relieved and gratified that they’d considered her feelings on the matter, though.

She was still uneasy. Their interest in examining everything, it seemed to her, drew more attention than she liked. She wasn’t certain if it was paranoia or not, but she hurried to fill the mental list she’d compiled, paid for her purchases, and headed back.

Legion and Zavier obligingly took her packages and carried them, although they looked torn between disapproval and confusion over the entire thing. The moment they settled in the back seat of her car, they dropped their ‘disguises’ and began to unload the packages and examine everything. They didn’t ask what they were or what they were for, which surprised her until it dawned on her they’d probably ‘filched’ the information from her memory.

“Yes, I know—primitive,” she muttered when she caught Legion’s gaze in her rearview mirror. “I have to wonder if you compare everything to your own world or the others you’ve visited.”

“Our world,” Zavier responded promptly. “The others were more primitive even than this one.”

“Well it’s a damned shame you have to settle for so much less than you’re used to!” Anya snapped irritably.

Zavier met her glare with a look of amusement. “We are accustomed to settling for less,” he murmured provokingly.

She returned her attention to the roadway, folding her arms irritably since she’d programmed the computer and didn’t actually have to guide the car. She heard the rattle of the package and a moment later, he slid his arms over the seat and around her. “This world has one definite asset the others lacked, though,” he murmured against her ear, closing his lips around the sensitive shell and prompting the eruption of a frantic herd of goose bumps all over her. Heat blossomed inside of her despite her residual annoyance.

She pushed his arms away. “I’m really not interested in sex. I had enough yesterday to satisfy me for a while,” she lied, although, ordinarily, that would’ve been a statement of fact. She didn’t have a particularly strong libido, at least she’d never thought she did.

He ignored the rejection, cupping one breast and unerringly capturing the nipple between his thumb and forefinger—not that difficult since it had stood erect the moment he nuzzled her ear. “But we have not completed the mating rite.”