Chapter Five

"Lieutenant Dillon discharged himself an hour ago." Disapproval was evident in the medic's voice.

Hope glanced toward Anna, who leaned on the counter with what seemed to be a disturbed expression on her face. "Let me get this straight," Anna asked. "Dillon is no longer a patient here?"

"We couldn't exactly prevent him from leaving," the woman told them, tapping data into some kind of device, although Hope couldn't see what it was.

"Well, did you try to stop him?" Anna insisted, obviously upset by this news. As was Hope—from what she'd seen, Scott had no business being out of the medical complex so soon. He'd been drugged up and delirious as recently as last night.

The nurse sighed, and Hope gathered that she looked up at them both. "He's a mind of his own, the lieutenant. We did everything in our power to get him to stay, but there was no convincing him."

"Was he even able to walk out of his own volition?" Hope asked worriedly. "His legs … how could he leave unless in a wheelchair? On a stretcher?"

A beeping noise interrupted them—some patient calling for the nurse—and she moved around the desk. "The healers visited him. He felt better, and we tried to explain that the relief might only be temporary. He ignored us, grabbed a pair of crutches, a packet of pain pills, and hobbled his way back toward base. Wouldn't let a single medic escort him to quarters, either."

"Stupid, stubborn man," Anna muttered under her breath.

Hope pretty much had to agree with that assessment. A lifetime of dealing with doctors and her diabetes was enough to convince her that he'd made a ridiculous choice. "What was he thinking?" she wondered aloud.

Anna turned to her, slumping against the counter. "That he'd have a better shot of seeing you outside the medical wing, that's what."

Hope frowned. "You can't be serious."

"Oh, trust me. I've known the lieutenant for a long, long time. Determination is his default operating mode."

"I was coming back—"

Anna patted her on the arm. "Not enough. Not nearly enough for a warrior like Dillon. He couldn't stand you seeing him laid out like that."

Hope's thoughts whirled; from all indications, Scott cared for her as much as she did for him, which was a ridiculous thought, at least on the surface. They barely knew each other, only … that wasn't nearly the full truth.

And she had a feeling that the "truth" was about to confront her, full on, back at the main cabin.

"I wondered when you'd come to see me." It was Scott's voice in the half darkness of Hope's new quarters. She and Anna were just inside the door, not completely in the room, but not quite in the hallway either. They stood, frozen, as Anna quickly interpreted the layout of events for her.

"He's lying there in your bunk. Quite at home, I must say, spread out on your pillow and blankets like he owns the place."

"Heard that," he rumbled, and there was the sound of him stirring.

"Indeed, sir," Anna chirped, then added, "I'm gone, then," and her booted footsteps immediately retreated down the hallway.

We're alone now, away from the hospital …  and we have some privacy, finally. That was Hope's first thought, and then a second chased right on the heels of that one. What will happen between us now—now that those dreams can become actual reality? The worst part? She knew exactly what an expert he was in bed, and how fine his chiseled body felt beneath her fingertips, all glistening with sweaty sex. And what a great fucking cock the alien possessed, including what he'd apparently done with it inside of her on many an occasion. Great fucking cock, indeed, she thought, stifling a nervous giggle.

"Come closer," he invited hoarsely, patting the bed beside him.

"Shouldn't you be in a hospital bed—not my bed?"

Pushing the door shut with her back, she stood in what was now, at least for her, complete darkness. The late-day sun had slipped low enough that this lower-level room received almost no light, and without the additional hallway illumination, she was marooned.

"You got a problem with me being in your bed, Harper?"

"Call me Hope." Damn it, she kept telling people—all kinds of people, all over the base—just to call her by her first name.

"Hope," he ventured silkily, "I thought you'd like having me here. In your bed. Between your sheets." He paused significantly, then added in a low voice, "Between your legs."

"I can't believe you just said that."

"Yeah? Well, you don't know me very well yet."

"I know you're used to getting what you want—and whenever you want it," she told him, tilting her chin upward proudly. And I'm not easy. I shouldn't be easy, not for you.

His next words came in Refarian, slippery smooth; perhaps he thought she wouldn't translate them fast enough to understand their meaning. "I can't help what you've been doing to me, Hope. I pray that All will save you from my scoundrel's soul."

"S'Skautsa, you're no scoundrel," she answered back in his own language, taking a tentative step into the darkness, following the sound of his slightly erratic breathing. "But you don't belong here."

"You don't want me in your bed?"

"I didn't say that."

He laughed, a throaty rumble of a sound. His raspy voice had done things to her from the very first time she'd heard it on the FBI intercepts she'd been charged with translating. But here with him now? Right here, alone with him in her room, reclining on her lower bunk as he apparently was? Well, it did insane things to her libido.

"So you do want me," came his reply. And it definitely wasn't a question.

"You were crazy to leave the medical area so soon."

"Again—you don't know me very well. Not yet, in this time. Crazy's my middle name. How else could I lead these rebels like I do? It's an insane career, an insane motivation. Jared should've locked me up years ago."

"Maybe the hospital is his big chance," she volunteered.

She doubted his entire depiction of himself. Clearly he was a man of intense discipline and honor; the soldiers she'd met on the base all seemed to revere him totally.

"Jared knows I can't be stopped when I want something, and I definitely want something, Hope," he whispered suggestively, causing goose bumps to form along her arms. The idea that he needed her as much as she needed him caused her to tremble all over. So she focused on the darkness that stood between them. Had Anna left a discarded boot on the floor? Or a strange alien weapon or anything else that might trip her up? Patting her back pocket, she felt the outline of the small folded cane that the medics had given her, at the same time they'd offhandedly mentioned genetic therapy.

How the hell am I supposed to get from here to there without appearing like a freaking invalid?

"There's nothing in the way, Hope. You're safe," he told her gently, all his innuendo and sexual tussling gone. Suddenly he was her rescuer all over again, as he had been at the base. "You can walk straight to me."

It was as if he'd read her mind. Maybe he did, she thought, taking a first tentative step.

"You're safe," he repeated. "I won't let you get hurt."

"That's not a promise anyone can make."

She knew as much, after believing the doctors thought it was "unlikely" she would lose her eyesight and "likely" she'd be able to one day have a child. Some promises should never be made—not the kind that could easily get broken.

"I meant that I wouldn't let you get hurt walking over here," he said awkwardly, as if covering his tracks. But she knew better. She heard him patting the place on the bed beside himself again.

"What about here, at your compound?" She took another step toward the gravelly, deep voice. "Can you protect me here, too?"

His breath seemed to catch in his throat. "I won't let you get hurt, Hope," he repeated. "I mean it. Didn't I prove that back at Warren?"

She stood still, hesitating. He had saved her life—there was absolutely no question about that fact—and been horribly injured in the process. "I don't want anything to happen to you, not because of"—she hesitated, taking several determined steps toward the bed—"my limitations. Not again."

"You're here," he said softly, and suddenly the strong grip of his hand encircled her forearm. Without another word he pulled her down beside him, practically atop him, with a rough, awkward tumble, and she found her mouth mere inches from his own, her palm splayed against a hard, muscular chest. Beneath her hand his heartbeat was strong and quick. She could feel the heat of his breath against her face, could smell the masculine scent of his body, different from other men, unique to him. Perhaps alien, she couldn't say for sure.

Hip to hip they lay, she half on her side, he flat on his back and definitely staring at her. It wasn't fair, this advantage he had over her—that he could see everything she was doing when she felt so powerless. Helpless. Captivated by everything about him. And in that moment he kissed her. No warning or notice, just his warm, full mouth crushing against hers, urging her to open to him. So she did, without holding back at all, wrapping both arms about him, burrowing closer. She curled her fingers through the dark hair at his nape; it was a little bit curly and wiry-thick. As their kiss deepened, she rubbed at the base of his neck, feeling cordons of muscle that led to his powerful shoulders.

After several moments he pulled back from the kiss, panting against her face. Their mingled breath was the only sound in the darkness that surrounded her, until he did the strangest thing: He began to sniff her face, in long and short bursts, pressing his face into her neck and shoulder. Then her hair, dragging in long inhalations of breath. Sniffing? This was a totally new one on her. Granted, she hadn't had a ton of dates lately, but as far as she remembered, that had never part of the dating or sexual code.

Maybe it was an alien thing. She could see the bumper sticker now: Aliens sniff it better. She began to giggle, and that caused Scott to take hold of her harder, working her up underneath him—at least, as best he could, given that he was still undoubtedly in pain from his injuries. At last he had her pinned beneath one thigh, and again found her mouth, hungry and demanding. Skimming his hand along her hip, he slowly ventured his touch inward, slipping one hand between her legs; nothing but her blue jeans separated the friction of his fingers from the warm, wet place between her thighs. And that place was getting a whole lot wetter as he rubbed and felt her, gripping her. Rough. Needy. Insistent.

Scott Dillon is definitely no time waster, she thought hazily, feeling him work the snap of her jeans with deft precision. Especially when he knows what he wants. And he wants me.

He gave her zipper a firm tug, and her pants spread open. Sliding his fingers inside, he dipped them within her panties, feeling her silky hairs, caressing her intimately without request or apology. What happened to kissing? Feeling her breasts? He was an all-or-nothing kind of guy, obviously, and she was usually a pause-at-second-base kind of girl. But Scott Dillon already had hold of her heart; she knew she'd let him go wherever he wanted, all the way home even.

As he captured her mouth with a rough, angled kiss again, she murmured against his lips, "How do you feel about walls?"

"Walls?" he repeated curiously.

She shook her head. You're going as crazy as he is, Harper. Surely he wasn't having the same erotic, frenzied dreams she was, no matter what she'd witnessed earlier in the hospital. Then again, this moment felt remarkably similar to every dream she'd been having about the guy.

He worked her pants lower, and with surprising gentleness he slid rough, warm fingers within her panties. Then he moved those same fingers up inside her, gasping as he made contact with her. She gasped, loudly, and rolled her head back into the pillow. Cascades of immediate sensation unleashed within her body. Then, rough and low, he whispered in her ear, "I'll take you against any wall you want, Harper."

"You've got a real way with women, Dillon," she countered dazedly, wrapping her arms about his neck again, and he gave her jeans a fierce tug, pulling them all the way down along her hips.

"You've got a real way with me," he whispered against her cheek, licking her face with the tip of his tongue.

Scott was making her feel things that no human man had ever done before; he even reacted to her differently in bed, with his aggression and his blatant needs. It was hard to say where his alien nature began and his warrior self ended. It all mixed together, making him an unstoppably aggressive lover. Lover, Hope thought, sliding her palms up underneath his soft T-shirt, feeling the warmth of his masculine skin, the play and pull of his muscled back. He has always been my lover.

"In that dream," he purred against her lips, "we were strangers. But you're no stranger to me, Hope."

With his fingers he rubbed her between the legs again, alternating between stroking her slick wetness and thrusting inside of her. With one hand she stilled him, drawing in ragged breaths. "Scott, please."

"You bet!" he cried, and rolled atop of her almost completely. But then he groaned, and not from arousal.

"Damn my legs. Damn it all to hell!"

She gave his chest a light shove, pushing him back off of her. "It's okay to go slow here, you know." Still holding her, he kept one hard leg between both of hers, collapsing onto his side again.

"Slow doesn't work for me. Not how I operate."

She laughed. "I can pretty much see that."

"It feels like we need to rush. Anything can happen here, Hope. Between us, in this war. I don't want to hesitate or poke around."

"Um, seems you love to poke around."

He snickered. "You're a very bad girl."

"With a taste for very bad boys, quite obviously." She felt him shift on the bed, and their shared pillow pushed down. He was leaning on his elbow, studying her, she could tell. "Look, I want you," he said. "Not a little bit, and not later. It's intense and it's now. We've got to fucking seize this thing, Harper. Just go for it, and not think why."

Her heart rate gyrated insanely, causing her to struggle for breath. Light-headed, she wondered if getting hot and bothered was threatening her insulin levels. Despite what he was saying, she knew she had to slow down, absolutely had to. Besides, there were things she wanted to know about him. She zipped up her pants and turned toward him, trying desperately to see his features, but it was impossible. Only the dimmest, vague outlines of his face were visible to her: the dark head of hair, the much lighter skin. A wave of melancholy crested over her; she'd finally found him. All these years of mediocre love and mediocre relationships and she'd found her guy, but she'd never gotten to truly see him.

"I need to see you," she blurted in frustration. "You know everything about me, and I can't see worth shit."

Gently he took hold of both her hands and drew them to his face. "Then see me. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

With her fingertips she outlined his full lips, feeling the way they turned up at the corners in a slight smile. Working outward in a circular pattern, she took in every line of his face, every detail—the rough beard growth, the weathered feel of his skin. His nose was long and straight, but had a bit of a bump in its bridge.

"You broke your nose," she observed, rubbing her finger back and forth over the slight ridge in his bone structure.

"Some Antousian bastard slammed me in the face with his K-12 a few years back."

She cocked her head, exploring other planes of his face. Thick eyebrows—she'd seen those during his captivity, when the lighting had been better—and seen them even closer in her visions of him. They arched elegantly and were surprisingly soft, and she ran her fingertips back and forth, playing with the silky hairs. Then, feeling downward, she rubbed the bridge of his nose again.

"Why didn't you let the healers fix this?" she asked.

He snorted. "They did. You're feeling the result."

"Not bad, Dillon. I kinda like it." It was a sensual, sexy aspect of his already rugged face. She continued, tracing the outline of his jaw, feeling a tiny scar on the edge there. The flesh was raised, a neat line running parallel with his jaw. "And what about this one? What happened here?"

He grew pensive; she could feel it. "Jared and I were playing in the palace courtyard and I tripped," he said reflectively. "Years ago … a million lifetimes ago."

"You knew each other as children?"

"My parents were friends with his. We lived there at the palace." These were his scientist parents, the ones he'd told her had been working to cure the plague back on Refaria. The ones who had taken human bodies in order to live and solve the virus.

"Have you forgiven them?"

"The vlksai who ruined my nose?"

"You know what I mean, S'Skautsa." She refused to let him sidestep the question about his parents.

With a soft exhalation, he collapsed backward into the pillow, leaving her hands suspended in the air. For a moment she stayed perfectly still, then carefully closed her fingers, dropping both fists to her sides. This was his greatest pain; she had seen that much when he'd opened up to her about his mixed genetic heritage.

"They died years ago, killed by their own people—the same ones they'd fought so hard to save. My genetic map is totally fucked. Always has been."

"Your body is human," she observed in a quiet voice.

"Even more fucked."

"Why would you say that? Do you really hate my people that much?"

Beside her, he jerked slightly, as if the words had hit a painful mark. "I don't hate humans," he said at last. "I hate that I'm part human. And why I am, that's the most atrocious part of all."

"You're just their son, Scott."

"The son of parents who seized human bodies, hosts." His voice got louder. "Took two human lives so they could live—"

"In order to save millions of their people," she finished for him.

"That wasn't what I was going to say."

"That's what you told me a few days ago in your hospital room," she reminded him.

He chuckled low. "You obviously caught me in a moment of weakness."

"Do you know anything about the two people whose bodies they took?"

"The two people they murdered, you mean?" Bitter anger edged his words.

"Who were they?" She refused to fall into his carefully laid verbal trap.

"I never knew anything about them. They were taken to Refaria after being abducted from Earth. Groups of them were brought for harvesting—that's what they call it, you know. Not murder. Harvesting."

"How does it work?"

"My kind can invade a body, the right kind of host—our ability to assume a formless nature allows it. Our match with humans was always perfect, particularly for seizing a new form. My parents grew sick, and rather than succumb to their illness, they stole two human hosts."

A few days ago he'd told her how so many of his race had been stricken with the plague, had resorted to their formless state rather than die, and then had sought out human bodies rather than remain in their ghost state. Hope shivered; what he described was grotesque, but it wasn't the point of their conversation. As an FBI linguist she was in the business of focusing, not being distracted by off-base issues. "Maybe you're Irish," she said with a quiet laugh.

"Why do you say that?"

"Your coloring … you have freckles, too, don't you?"

"Some. But I thought your Irish were all redheads."

"Don't tell Colin Farrell that," she said under her breath, then added, "There's a big Spanish influence in parts of Ireland. I was just thinking that's one possibility. Or perhaps German."

"Then I'm totally screwed."

"I don't get it."

"Think about it this way, Hope—since you bring up the Germans. How would you feel if you were descended from the Nazis? Knowing what your people were capable of?"

He had finally lost her. "I wouldn't care."

"If your parents were German?"

"Um, Scott, the Nazis were defeated a long, long time ago."

He clasped her by both arms, holding on hard. "But my people, the vlksai, haven't ever been stopped. That's what I live with, Harper. Every day."

"But you're Refarian in your heart; that's what you've said. So why not be proud of your human heritage? Why not embrace that and your ties to the Refarian people, and forget the rest?"

He was holding on to her still, and she felt slight tremors in both his hands. His breathing was staggered, rough. But he said nothing: not another word, not for a very long time, and it occurred to her that this man of hers, the one from her dreams, was more haunted than she might have possibly imagined. And he'd let her in on that secret, something she suspected he very rarely did with anyone. Now if only she could help him heal—really heal, in his heart, which had suddenly become far more important to her than the physical injuries in his body.

He said, "You haven't told me anything about your family."

She chuckled. "Yeah, and you're just changing the subject."

He took her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and dragged a slow kiss across her knuckles. "I want to know you—everything about you. Your future, your past. I'm not a wait around kind of guy, like I said. So start talking, Harper."

She stroked his face. "Good grief, you're sexy."

"Now look who's getting all distracting on me." She could hear the catlike satisfaction in his voice. The man knew how impossibly hot he was; she'd be willing to bank on his having worked it on plenty of occasions before, too. He'd admitted his much while in the medical center.

"But you are sexy." She leaned forward until her lips met his softly. "And beautiful, and you shouldn't always be in so much pain."

He stiffened, pulling back from her. "No more about my people or my parents."

"My dad's a lieutenant general in the army," she blurted. "And my brother? My twin brother, Chris? He's a special agent with the FBI. You should know that. Know that I am attached to important people, and maybe they can help all of you. At least eventually. Besides that fact, my dad will start demanding answers very soon, too."

"Where do they think you are? Dead?"

Hope flinched. She'd wanted to avoid this part of things, but she knew she had no choice. "Chris and I are extremely close. Extremely."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She almost thought he sounded jealous.

"We're connected. We've always just had this … well, you of all people will get it. An ability. An ability to talk inside each other's minds. To communicate. It's not usually a human thing, but I can assure you that he knows I didn't die at Warren."

"You talk across distances?" He was slightly breathless, amazed-sounding.

"Short-ish ones. It's bizarre, I know. It's not par for the human course."

"Define a short-ish distance."

"Oh, like Colorado to here."

"Hope, this is serious." He jolted upward in bed. "Does your brother know that you're here? That you've joined with us?"

She shook her head adamantly. "I haven't told him anything. But he feels that I'm alive and safe—I let him feel that. Nothing more."

"Damn it all to hell! I don't like this connection, not one bit."

"You're jealous of my brother?" It was truly a first, to have another man care about how close she and Chris had always been.

But it was clearly very serious business for Scott. He gripped her by the upper arm, his voice low and intense. "It's a connection that I hope to share with you one day—and I want to be the only one."

She sucked in a breath. "Do your people do that? Connect that deeply?"

"It's a Refarian gift, but my closeness to Refarian ways, to the spiritual gifts, their God, All … has led me to believe I will be able to bond."

Without meaning to, she'd placed a hand over her heart. "I want that, too."

He bent over her, buried his face against her chest, right where her heart was thundering crazily. "Please don't betray me to him," he whispered. "Don't let him know where we are based. Protect me—all of us, Hope."

She ran her fingers through his wiry, slightly curling hair. "How could I ever betray you?"

"I don't know." His voice was riddled with deep emotion. "I don't know, but then why am I suddenly so afraid of it?"

"Because you've finally let yourself care for someone. And it just so happens to be me."

He lifted off of her, sitting on the side of the bed, and she had the sense that her words had staked him in the heart, had pierced some kind of outer layer of protection that he always kept secured around himself.

"Eventually I'm going to have to call Chris." She drew in a breath. "Let him know that I'm all right. I can't stay here indefinitely without contacting my family."

Scott groaned. "Not advisable."

"It's even less advisable for some kind of APB to go out on me. Think about it, Scott: I work for the FBI. People aren't just going to let me drop out."

"My people should never have let you on that transport."

She scowled at him. "You wish I hadn't come?"

"Any one of those soldiers should have calculated your personal connections and booted you off that craft."

She sat forward, sidling next to him. "I had to know you'd be all right, Scott. I couldn't just let you lift away, never being sure. You could have sent me away at any point before now. But you didn't. Just like I couldn't stay behind on that base without you."

He cupped her face within his hand. "Then be with me, here, now. Understand why I can't let you contact your people. At least not yet."

"I guess this means you won't be giving me back my cell phone."

He kissed her heatedly, letting his mouth answer everything. After a long, languid stroke of his tongue against hers, he whispered, "If I gave it back to you, would you use it?"

"I would want to, but I know the GPS would enable them to track me."

"We have a security perimeter that would prevent that for up to three minutes. After that, they could triangulate your position. Scott slipped his arm around her, studying her; she could sense it. "See Anna," he whispered at last. "She's got your phone, but if you talk more than two minutes? We're all as good as dead."