'Oh please,' she gasped drunkenly, 'let me die in peace!'

He uttered a choked laugh, but fell to seeking his own release. She was amazed he found it with her lying beneath him like a dead thing, but she discovered an unexpected bonus to her exhaustion. For once she got to feel what it was like when he came without being so absorbed in her own heat that she could barely take it in.

And she discovered that it was more rewarding in some ways than climaxing herself. She was just regretful that she'd been too focused on reaching climax that first time herself to feel his release with anything but disappointment.

Closing her mind to the dark thoughts fluttering just beyond her reach, she cuddled against him when he rolled the two of them onto their sides and sought oblivion. * * * *

Sybil wasn't sorry she'd spent the entire night with Anka. She did regret the morning return to her quarters, however. As luck would have it, Lt. Brant was on duty. Bracing herself, she entered the foyer, prepared to make an apology to the man after the scene she'd inadvertently embroiled him in the night before.

'That worked almost too well. I thought for a little bit there that I was going to have to kick his alien a.s.s.'

Enlighten crashed over Sybil so abruptly at Brant's comment that she was too stunned to a.s.similate it all at once. She'd suspected something was up and it still outraged her to realize that the entire cozy flirtation the night before had been a setup job. There was no denying it also stung her ego, but then she didn't really give a d.a.m.n about the b.a.s.t.a.r.d! 'He would've broken you in half,' she responded coldly. 'Be glad you didn't get the chance to find out.'

Anger glittered in his eyes, but he merely shrugged. 'All's well that ends well-mission accomplished. I don't suppose you got anything?'

She felt like punching him. 'I should've smelled the stench of Meachum on you right off. You'll have to tell your lover lover I was too busy f.u.c.king to chat.' I was too busy f.u.c.king to chat.'

Brant caught her arm as she moved to pa.s.s him, gripping it tightly enough Sybil had to struggle to keep from flinching. 'Oh, I like p.u.s.s.y same as the next man. I just don't like the idea of taking alien leavings, if you get my drift.'

'Afraid you couldn't match up? You should be. You aren't half the man he is.' Sybil jerked her arm free. 'Touch me again and I'll file charges. I'm still an officer, a.s.shole.'

'Meachum isn't going to be happy,' he called after her as she marched past him.

She barely made it to her private bath before she threw up. She leaned weakly against the wall when her stomach stopped heaving, wondering if it was her pregnancy or just revulsion that had made her puke. She hadn't been sick before, though. She'd felt twinges of nausea from time to time, but nothing like this.

Shuddering, she flushed the toilet and moved to the shower to wash the feeling of disgust off. She discovered she couldn't scour it from herself, though, because it went well beyond skin deep.

Between throwing up and the hot shower afterward Sybil felt weak almost to the point of fainting. It took all she could do to drag herself to her bunk when she emerged. She sat down, thought about it a moment, and finally just lay back, trying to collect herself.

She should've been better prepared, she told herself angrily. She'd worked for Meachum long enough to know how the man operated. There no was getting around the fact that Brant had taken her almost completely by surprise, though.

She supposed that was his specialty and the reason he'd been a.s.signed to keep an eye on her.

She didn't know what made her angrier-the fact that he'd played her or the fact that he'd used her to play Anka.

She was angrier on Anka's behalf, she decided. G.o.d only knew what sort of repercussions there might be for him. It made it worse that she was almost certain she finally understood their situation and the motivation behind their willingness to consider a peace treaty.

A sense of pride flitted through her that Anka had so neatly outwitted them at their game. They'd seriously underestimated him.

She wanted to keep it that way, but she knew she wasn't nearly as good at deception or manipulation or even reading people as any of the other players. The only thing that had become clear to her was just how important it was that Meachum never get any clue of the Sumpturians' situation-not before they had time to grow stronger. Anka had been right not to trust them. One whiff of weakness and the government would've been all over them.

She thought the American people would've tried to help if they knew. Despite all of the hardships they'd endured, they still struggled to help their neighbors, anyone in need, and she felt that they would have empathized with the tragedy that had befallen Sumpturians. The government was a whole other breed.

The problem was, she had no clue of how long it might take and she didn't have a lot of time that she could devote to trying help them. She still had the baby to consider and she had her doubts that it would be something she could hide many more weeks.

She shouldn't have had to concern herself about it. The Emba.s.sy was officially American soil now and the Sumpturians had agreed that it was sovereign territory. Unfortunately, she already knew that Anka would do whatever he pleased, regardless of the circ.u.mstances or the restrictions. He had to have known even before she'd told him that the base was a restricted area and off limits to the Sumpturians and he'd come to her quarters anyway. He would come to the Emba.s.sy if he felt like it. She knew it and, unfortunately, Meachum knew it.

There probably wasn't a square inch of her quarters that wasn't covered by vid and sound devices.

Lifting an arm, she draped it across her eyes. She'd thought she might be able to escape once she reached Venus. Right up until she'd realized what their situation was, she'd thought she could appeal to Anka for asylum. Now she realized that he couldn't afford to offer it even if he wanted to.

And she couldn't ask it of him.

She was just going to have to try to beat Meachum at his game if Anka came to her, she realized. She couldn't even send him away without creating problems. If she refused to cooperate, Meachum would just have her shipped back home for trial and there was no telling what would happen to the baby.

Stripped to the waist to catch whatever cooling breezes happened along, Anka paused to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his face with the dangling sleeve of the top of his uniform, staring at the great machines the Earth people had unloaded that were crawling back and forth across the plain where their base would soon sit. The machines were antiquated to his eyes and they belched stinking fumes into the atmosphere that was still too thick for comfort, but he felt a flicker of envy that they had nothing to compare to them. They could've used something like that-something to cut the amount of physical labor necessary and the building time.

Expelling a heavy breath, he scanned the distant horizon a little further until he spied the tiny habitat that temporarily housed the Emba.s.sy-where Sybil's quarters lay. There was activity there, as well. No doubt they had something grand in mind, he thought wryly. The Earth people did love ostentation.

For all the faults he knew they had, however, a lack of industry didn't seem to be one of them. They'd set to work with a will from the time they'd landed. Already there were signs of progress well beyond the leveling efforts.

His thoughts leapt from the construction to Sybil after a moment. He decided he was too tired at the moment, however, to struggle with the tangle. He had to make a decision about her, and soon, but he'd discovered it was easier said than done, especially since it wasn't merely a personal decision but one that appeared to be everyone's business.

He uttered a humorless snort. He'd been too preoccupied most of the day after the festival to pay much attention to what was going on around him. Myune had jolted him out of it when she'd finally managed to waylay him on his way back to his quarters that evening.

Anger flickered through him at the memory. The only reason her a.s.s wasn't sitting in the brig even now was due entirely to his realization that his own behavior had left a lot to be desired. He was well aware that he'd snubbed her publicly, but it certainly hadn't been his intention, and it was only the fact that more people were interested in his personal life than their own that it had been so widely witnessed.

It if had been anyone else, very likely no one at all would have noticed that he'd already signaled his interest before he abruptly dismissed her to chase Sybil down.

Regardless, a flirtation during the dance wasn't a G.o.ds d.a.m.ned commitment-not of any kind!-and he was still her commanding officer. He was willing to allow her to express her anger and her disappointment, but striking him was out of bounds, particularly for what amounted to no more than poor judgment and poor manners.

It was a sign of the times, he feared. Their culture, what was left of it, was crumbling under the stress. It wasn't that jealousy and fights didn't occasionally break out between disappointed suitors or slighted females and the object of their interest, but in the times before that was rare. Mating was the joy of life and everyone worked hard to keep it that way. It was one of the main reasons they didn't live with their lovers but rather their own blood. They toiled beside their blood kin in the day to day stress and boredom of survival. Familiarity and routine had its place there, where they had no one to impress. They preserved a little mystery and a lot of the excitement of their liaisons by endless courtship.

The disaster on their home world had severely upset the foundations of their culture along with everything else, wiping out most of the family units and making orphans of most of them with no harbor to anchor in. And, just as they'd been left with great gaps in skills, they'd also found a serious imbalance in mating partners. There was no stigmata attached to women in the military. The custom was that the eldest in every family served and quite often the eldest was a daughter. Regardless, only about a quarter of their entire forces had been female and when they'd lost ninety percent of their forces that imbalance had increased not decreased. It was the same with the scientific community, the second largest segment of survivors and the end result was that one of the most important resources they were deficient in was women.

That being the case, it made Myune's behavior all the more incomprehensible to him. She was young and beautiful and had endless choices among the men. Why she'd singled him out when he wasn't even young young anymore was beyond him! anymore was beyond him!

Not that he considered himself old-although he was beginning to feel far older than his solars-but he was five and thirty solars!-nigh old enough to have fathered fathered the spoiled, evil tempered b.i.t.c.h! He'd had a daughter barely five solars younger the spoiled, evil tempered b.i.t.c.h! He'd had a daughter barely five solars younger Pain pierced his irritation at the wayward thought but, to his relief, it was a milder pain than he usually felt whenever he inadvertently allowed the past to slip the frantic rein he held on it. The sense of loss followed as it always had but that, too, was more bearable.

Sucking in a deep breath past the constriction of his chest he turned away from his memories both figuratively and literally to stare at the progress of their current project. The engineers, he saw, were still scratching their heads over the force field. It had been the first order of business when they'd returned from the peace talks-erecting a protective shield. In part it was to protect their future colony from the forces of nature. Mostly, it was to protect their people from the Earth people building a military base within sight of their colony.

It still still wasn't f.u.c.king working properly and he'd begun to wonder if it ever would! wasn't f.u.c.king working properly and he'd begun to wonder if it ever would!

The soil and water purification units, fortunately, were were doing their job, but they were going to have to scale up production by a hundred percent if they were ever going to reach a point of doing their job, but they were going to have to scale up production by a hundred percent if they were ever going to reach a point of not not living on the verge of disaster. In time, nature would take care of purification. Already they'd discovered signs of indigenous plant life. Water had begun to collect on the ground and stay and brought dormant life out to feed, and those simple, primitive organisms were cleansing Venus to make way for more complex life, but they didn't have the time to spare to wait. living on the verge of disaster. In time, nature would take care of purification. Already they'd discovered signs of indigenous plant life. Water had begun to collect on the ground and stay and brought dormant life out to feed, and those simple, primitive organisms were cleansing Venus to make way for more complex life, but they didn't have the time to spare to wait.

Processed soil already filled the containers inside the greenhouses they'd built and purified water snaked along the planting beds to nurture the seeds they hoped would flourish-if they'd balanced everything as carefully as they thought they had.

On that thought, he left the men he'd been working with abruptly and strode to the nearest of the growing houses, moving slowly along the walk between the beds and bending to peer at the dirt for any sign of fresh sprouts. He'd more than half expected to discover that the seeds the Americans had brought with them would either be no good or simply couldn't be cultivated on Venus. To his relief, he'd discovered he was wrong on both counts. Many of the seeds began to sprout within a couple of days and he discovered as he walked along examining the troughs of dirt that there were new ones today, tiny sprouts with nearly microscopic leaves, but life. Hope and pleasure filled him.

He tried to subdue the first. It was early days. They had yet to see if any of it would flourish and bear fruit but, like everyone else, the budding life gave him badly needed hope for a future. It worried him that everyone who could find an excuse to be there spent much of their free time hovering anxiously over the plants. In the first place, he was worried they might inadvertently sabotage their efforts by over-attentiveness. In the second, just as the plants boosted morale because of the future they represented, they could wither and die and take morale and hopefulness with them.

Deciding he was going to have to place tighter security on the growing houses and limit access until the plants were big enough to actually be considered a garden, he left the greenhouse and returned to the labor pool.

The arrival of the colonists from Pluto had increased their labor pool considerably, but it had also increased the strain on their resources. They were going to have to work hard to balance the two.

Despite his reminder, he discovered when he returned to work on processing building materials for their construction efforts that his spirits were much higher than they had been in a while. It wasn't until he ended his work shift that he realized it was because he'd made up his mind about Sybil.

It had been a week. That was as much as he could stand, knowing that she was so close. He was tired of waiting for her to come to him, sick of sleeping alone when he could be sleeping in her arms.

They would probably be waiting for him. He knew they would be expecting him to come and they knew by now that their security measures were useless when it came to preventing him from getting to Sybil.

Chapter Fifteen.

Sybil had spent a solid week wavering between hope and despair-hope that Anka would come to her; hope that he wouldn't, fear that he'd taken that woman to his bed and didn't want her anymore; fear that he would come and Meachum's dog would have him arrested for trespa.s.sing on American soil.

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry when he materialized in her quarters, but when she met his questioning gaze, she did both, uttering a sound about halfway between a chuckle and a sob.

He tilted his head questioningly. 'Does that mean that I'm welcome to stay? Or should I leave before you find something to throw at me?'

Sybil sniffed, struggling with tears. 'You're always welcome.' She surged toward him then, flinging herself into his arms.

He gathered her tightly to him, filling her with warmth, and then found her lips, filling her with heat. She linked her fingers behind his head and dragged him down to nuzzle his ear when he broke the kiss. 'They're watching,' she warned against his ear on a breath of sound, hoping he could hear her and the watchers couldn't.

She leaned away after a moment to search his face for understanding.

His gaze was thoughtful, almost puzzled and she feared for several moments she'd failed to warn him.

Anka lifted one hand and lightly stroked Sybil's cheek, struggling with the truth that had been staring him in the face all along. Sybil had never deserved the lack of trust or the suspicions that he'd harbored about her. She'd been honest and faithful from the very beginning, even when she'd told him she was afraid. Despite the fact that he'd learned she had good reason to be uneasy, he'd still thought it went beyond that, that at least part of her fear stemmed from a plot to use him or to learn what she could about them to take the information to her own people.

He'd clung to that willful misunderstanding to protect himself, he realized, not because she had ever done or said anything to warrant it.

He swallowed the words that clogged his throat with an effort. They were for her. He'd had to share virtually every moment they were together with the watchers. He wouldn't share his feelings for her with them, as well.

Resisting the urge to let them know that he knew they were watching and f.u.c.king well didn't care by flicking an obscene gesture at them, he smiled at her with an effort. 'We must stop meeting this way,' he said teasingly. 'I am too hungry when I see you to properly appreciate the meals.'

Sybil chuckled huskily, relieved that he seemed to have caught the warning after all and aroused by his suggestive comment. 'I haven't noticed any lack of appreciation.'

He gathered her close in an embrace again and then led her to her bed, pushed his boots off, and lay down with her. 'Not even the last time?'

'Especially not the last time.'

'Now I know you're only trying to flatter me,' he retorted teasingly.

Hurt flickered in her eyes briefly, but not so briefly that he didn't see it and feel guilt make his chest tight from the realization that he'd seen it many times, put put that look in her eyes many times. 'I don't know why you put up with me,' he muttered. that look in her eyes many times. 'I don't know why you put up with me,' he muttered.

'It's a job, but somebody has to do it.'

He chuckled, struggling for something to say that wouldn't put her in an uncomfortable position when he'd had no trouble doing so before. There was so much he wanted to talk to her about, though, that he's never dared ask. 'You're wearing far too many clothes to suit me,' he murmured.

She lifted her brows at him. 'I thought you wanted to savor your dinner for a change?'

He grinned at her. 'By playing with my *food', nodia nodia,' he said chidingly. 'I can't play when you're so bundled up.'

'Maybe I'd like to play, too?'

He promptly released her and rolled onto his back, folding his arms behind his head. 'Play all you like, nodia nodia. I'm all yours.'

Sybil stared at him wide eyed for a moment, completely disconcerted by the invitation. She had no idea what he might like or how she was to go about pleasing him. She'd always let him take his pleasure as he would. She did like like the comment that he was all hers, though, even if he was teasing. 'A challenge?' the comment that he was all hers, though, even if he was teasing. 'A challenge?'

He chuckled. 'Now that sounds interesting.'

It did to her. It also made her uneasy, but she thought he must like much the same things as she did. Otherwise, how would he know so well where and how to touch her?

Practice, she thought dryly, but that didn't mean she couldn't light him up like he did her.

Shifting up onto one arm, she scanned his length. 'Am I going to have to work with barriers?'

'You don't want to unwrap your gift?' he murmured, his voice shaky with suppressed laughter.

She surged upward and straddled his waist when he tensed to get up. 'You don't think I know how to turn you on, do you?'

'I know you do. I was hoping for a test of my stamina.'

'That's a challenge if I ever heard one,' Sybil said with a chuckled, reaching for the b.u.t.tons on her blouse. He watched with interest while she opened it from the neck to the hem and then shrugged out of it. She discarded the bra next.

His arms came from beneath his head immediately and he reached to cup her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his palms. 'No,' Sybil said, catching his wrists and guiding his arms back to where they'd been. 'You get to look, not touch. It's my turn to touch.'

She saw his Adam's apple bob when he swallowed. 'Can I at least taste?'

She tilted her head, considering it. 'Maybe just a little taste.' Leaning forward, she placed a palm on the mattress on either side of his head and presented him with one breast. She didn't miss the gleam of triumph in his eyes as he opened his mouth and flicked at the tip with his tongue until it stood tightly erect and then sucked it into his mouth. The heat that traveled from her breast to her womb scorched her. She wanted to linger, to allow the heat that blossomed in her lower belly to grow higher, but she pulled away after only a moment. After a moment's thought, she nudged his lips with the other nipple, demanding he even up the heat.

The desire flowing through her blood stream like warm mola.s.ses increased her eagerness to explore him and quashed her doubts. Pushing herself back along his body, she explored his face, his ears, his throat, teasing him by kissing all around his mouth without touching her mouth to his. He surged upward abruptly, cupped a hand along the back of her head to trap her and kissed her deeply, building the heat within her.

'That's cheating,' she said disapprovingly when he released her and fell back.

He waggled his brows at her.

She couldn't help but chuckle, but she turned her attention immediately to parting the front of his uniform from the neck to the waist, roughly, in playful mastery. He frowned at her, but his lips curled upward at one corner. The smile died as she leaned down to nibble a path along his throat to his chest. She sat up again, stroking the sculpted muscles of his chest and finally wiggled further back to reach him better.

His c.o.c.k was rock hard. He winced when she landed on it. Giving him an apologetic look, she reached down to adjust it. She discovered when she settled again that it fit very nicely along her cleft. On inspiration, she rocked back and forth a few times, watching his face for his reaction. It felt good to her, not nearly as good as she thought it would've felt if they'd had no clothes between them, but nice in a teasing sort of way.

He caught her hips, stilling her movements.