Chapter Four: A Different Delta

The drums were throbbing and Charity danced and danced, her body swaying to the sensual beat. The late night shadows made it hard to see what was real and what was not. All at once a phantom seemed to appear before her!

The Horned God was taller than a man, with a stag's antlers growing out of his head. His face was hidden from view, but as he embraced her Charity felt the heat of his skin and the hardness of his chest pressing into her small, firm breasts.

"Yes," the Beta minus whispered, her sleep conditioning battling against the primitive images of her dream. "Oh, yes. Harry. Hug me till you drug me honey. Hug me till you . . ."

"Charity, wake up!" Harry Voltaire shook his shapely young assistant by the shoulder, a scowl on his handsome face. "These sleep teaching records need to be recycled at once."

"Yes, Harry." Charity's flaming cheeks grew bright red as she scrambled to her feet. It was clear that Harry was none too pleased with her for falling asleep during the work day. It was also clear that he was very angry at her refusal to tell him about her secret research with Dr. Edith Beddington.

"Wait just a moment." Harry grabbed her arm as she was heading to the lift, his hypnotic dark blue eyes searching her emerald green ones. "Have anything you'd like to tell me?"

"I'm sorry I fell asleep," the freckle-faced redhead said coldly. "It won't happen again."

Riding down to the basement in the silver-and-chrome, high powered lift, Charity frowned at the way her body had reacted to Harry's firm grip on her flesh. She'd nearly melted! But strangely, her pride had prevented her from giving in to the automatic responses of sleep conditioning. She wanted her rugged, handsome Alpha boss more and more each day. Yet she didn't want to have Harry at all if his body was just a bribe for betraying Dr. Beddington. These feelings of loyalty and pride were hard to understand. They weren't part of her conditioning. They were dangerous, forbidden feelings.

Charity didn't like what was happening to her. She rubbed her eyes, wondering if last night's dancing had simply worn her out or if the strange magic of the Horned God was messing her mind about so she couldn't even think straight.

"Basement level," boomed the Delta girl who ran the lift. Deltas were inferior to Betas, and even to Gammas. They usually just pushed buttons or worked machines that Alphas and Betas didn't have time for. Charity usually couldn't tell one Delta from another. But this friendly, big-boned girl with the wide smile and short brown hair seemed strangely familiar. Charity found herself staring.

"Boom ba-boom," the Delta girl said, with a playful wink, opening the chrome and silver door with the touch of a button.

"Uh . . . thank you." Charity hesitated. "Boom ba-boom!"

There was no question that the Delta running the lift had been one of the girls beating the drums the night before. But since when did Deltas and Betas attend the same rituals and share secret passwords? As she was feeding waste paper into the high-powered incinerator, Charity felt guilty as well as foolish. She should have stared at the girl coldly, and said "I beg your pardon." Better still, she should have kept her big mouth shut!

Yet somehow, the cheerful lift girl had deserved better than that. Charity headed back to the lift area with her empty containers, wondering if she should ask the girl whether she knew Dr. Beddington. Had the batty lady doctor been recruiting Gammas and Deltas and even Epsilons without permission?

Only a few minutes had gone by, but when she pushed the button and the lift door smoothly opened with a whoosh of warm air, a totally different Delta was standing there. This girl was identical to the first one, of course. All Deltas looked like they had been decanted from the very same bottle. Heavy arms, big muscles, very good for lifting. And short brown hair.

But this was a different Delta. And she didn't smile at all.