V. THE REST OF EARLY MORNING THE NEXT DAY: MEL AND COLE
The scarlet numerals of the digital bedside clock read 4:04 am. Mel raised her head just far enough to register that information, then dropped it back onto her pillow, mumbling "there's no such time as four o'clock in the morning". But as she lay in bed she realized, oddly enough, that she was both wide awake and refreshed, even at that hour. She stared into the brightly moon-lit dark, wondering what had woken her up in the first place and trying to hang on to her now fast-fading dream, trying to remember. Her grandmother had been in it and she'd been telling her something. Something very important ...
Mel could've sworn she'd heard it raining hard before, but the windowpanes were dry. Then the tantalizing aroma of freshly brewed coffee, the blackberry/Kona blend, came to her. There was also movement coming from somewhere in the apartment, then the sound of a chair lightly scrapping on linoleum tiles. The kitchen. Mel raised her head again, seeing the light seeping in under her door.
Cole had finally returned home.
Her head dropped back to the pillow like a lead weight. Now what?
Her grandmother's face swam in the inner vision of her dream as she had looked in her final few days, old and very ill. She was beckoning her over, her lips moving, saying, "Melanie, if you remember nothing else I've ever told you, remember these two things: ..." But the rest of her words were a fading distant echo beyond Mel's ken.
She heard the microwave ding' and could smell the aroma of reheated lasagna. Well, Cole wouldn't be much of a Tracker if he couldn't Track down Lela's lasagna, would he? She had to smile to herself at that thought.
Her grandmother's words echoed again, this time a little clearer: "... First, the things you leave unsaid will haunt you far longer than any of the things you do say, even beyond your grave..." Strain as Mel would, however, the rest of her grandmother's words were not quite audible.
The microwave dinged' again and now she could smell the garlic bread.
The words from her dream echoed a third time, very faint, wavering and distant, but now the last part was starting to come clear: "... Second, when you have enough years behind you to look back on, you'll end up regretting many things. You'll regret things you'd done and you'll regret things you'd not done. Of these last, most of all ..." The echo faded and was gone, but Mel didn't need to hear the rest of it from a dream. She sharply remembered her grandmother telling it to her firsthand: "... you'll regret the things you should've done, the things you could've done, the things you so wanted to do if only you'd been able to gather your courage. And those, my dearest child, are the very bitterest regrets of all."
Mel closed her eyes and silently thanked her grandmother, steeled herself, then got out of bed and pulled on her terry robe. Today was, as the tired feel-good saying went, the first day of the rest of her life. It was long past time she started figuring out what that life was going to be.
Cole caught his breath as Mel unexpectedly walked in on him in the kitchen. Her freshly washed hair was wild and loose, shining in a red-gold aura of curls and bouncing around her head and shoulders as she moved. Her face was free of makeup and still pale from sleep, the freckles on her nose and cheeks adorable, her lips very red and somewhat swollen. He had to look away a moment against the sight of her, caught by the upwelling of his own conflicted emotions, of his near overwhelmingly powerful need not just to touch her, but to completely lose himself in her.
"Cole! Welcome back! Just get in?"
"Good morning, Mel. I got home about an hour ago. You're awake unusually early."
She shrugged and went over to the Mr Coffee to pour herself a mug before Cole drank it all. She loved coffee, but if she drank only a fraction of what he did – he guzzled it by the carafe rather than by the mug – she'd probably be in renal failure. She'd often teased him that it would be more efficient if he dispensed with the mug altogether and just took his coffee intravenously. "Went to bed very early last night. I was probably dead to the world by 7:30 or so. I trust your business trip' was a success?"
Cole blinked at that. Dead to the world'? Obviously Mel wasn't dead, so that had to be yet another of those obtuse human expressions. Her language was maddeningly riddled with them. But that wasn't what was bothering him. Mel always, always ran up to him and gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek when he returned home from a Collection, especially when he'd been gone for a while. He'd come to look forward to it. But this time she hadn't. And was it only his imagination or was she deliberately maintaining her distance? Yes, she was. A great deal of awkwardness had been growing between the two of them, especially since the Seminar. And especially lately. Often, stress and tension virtually poured off of Mel in waves, particularly when they were alone together. It left him feeling abandoned, bereft, even frightened, as if something infinitely precious was slipping away. But he couldn't figure out what to do about it. The closer he tried to get to Mel, the more he tried to talk with her or reassure her, the more she seemed to back away from him. He'd hoped that these few days apart might have given her time to sort out whatever was bothering her – and she did seem to be calmer, albeit much tighter than she'd been lately – but something was still off ... No, not off. Something about her manner had changed.
"It was much more successful than I'd hoped," he reported, trying not to stare at her as he considered what that change might be. "I went after Sydrax, Haag and Bacor and ended up Collecting all three of them plus an additional eleven I hadn't expected. And Sydrax really gave me quite a chase. London, Amsterdam, Bonn, Berlin, Paris. I finally caught him in Munich with his pants down."
"Thank God you managed to snare that child-murdering psychopath! And with his pants down', huh?" Mel smiled faintly at that and leaned back against the kitchen counter, shaking her head with bemusement and sipping her coffee. Cole was usually so literal. Could it be he was finally catching on to human expressions? "You mean Sydrax wasn't expecting you?"
"Oh, he very definitely wasn't expecting me, Mel," Cole affirmed with clear satisfaction in his tone, leaving out what had transpired in Paris. One hand absently pressed and massaged his abdomen. "And his pants certainly were down. I cornered him in the men's room at the airport. He ..."
Mel chuckled at that bit of news and held up a hand. "Whoa! Graphic details really aren't necessary here, Cole. I think I've got a pretty good mental picture of how that Collection must've gone down." She stared at his massaging hand a moment, mesmerized. Didn't the two of them look just like a long-intimate married pair, she thought, he barefoot and wearing nothing but sweatpants and his unbelted terry robe; she also barefoot, her terry robe only loosely belted, and wearing an old knee-length cotton sleepshirt. She gave herself a mental shake to bring herself back to the reality of it. "Um ... And the others?"
"I caught up with Bacor first, in London, later Haag in ..." Cole grinned "... The Haag."
"Well, there is a certain literary justice in that," Mel agreed. "What of the unexpected eleven?"
Cole shook his head in frustration. "Like Haag and some of the others who chased us in London not too long ago: not on my list of escapees. I detoured to hunt them down and Collect them wherever I happened to run into their Tracks while after the others. Six Vardians, three Nodulians and a pair of Orsians. I don't even know who they are but, since some of them I know are wanted, and all are at least guilty of killing humans to obtain their bodies, I took the time. I've been out of contact with Sar-Top and Cirron for far too long now and I'm not certain ..."
Mel refreshed her coffee and enjoyed the last remaining pastry from the other night as Cole ate his early morning lasagna dinner and rambled. She knew he was just using her as a sounding board, considering out loud the various theories he had of who these other aliens were and why and how they came to be here on Earth. Half-thinking that perhaps this might all go above and beyond Zin, he was completely losing her as he threaded his thoughts in with the complicated politics of the various planets and the numerous coalitions and special interest groups within the Miger Alliance and the Assembly of Worlds it was a part of. She didn't understand good old boy' American politics, let alone this complex, multi-dimensional web of alien solar system skullduggery and intrigue he was weaving. Finally, she interrupted, not at all liking what she was seeing about Cole's uncharacteristic massaging behavior or the occasional quick shadow that darkened his features.
"Cole? Why do you keep rubbing your belly? Are you in some sort of pain or discomfort?"
His hand dropped away almost guiltily. "It's ... nothing, Mel. Really. I'm completely healed."
"Healed?" Mel's voice rose to a squeak. "You were injured?"
"I'm able to regenerate small amounts of tissue, Mel." Cole got up to rinse off his plate in the sink, sadly noticing that Mel immediately relinquished the space to move to the opposite side of the kitchen aisle "I told you this once before. It's not a problem."
"Yes. I remember from the two times you tangled with Medoran. And that time with Dunn. But I don't recall you worrying at those wounds. You just healed them and went on as if they'd never happened. But this is different. Those were basically surface wounds. This is ..." Realizing that Cole seemed evasive, Mel suddenly changed tactics. "Exactly what kind of injury was it this time? What happened to you?"
Cole was glad his back was to her. He wasn't sure he'd be able to meet her eyes. Mel had never been aware of how severely Dunn had wounded him, or that the deep ache of it had actually lingered for several days. The only way she'd known he'd been wounded at all was that his sweater had been ruined with a blood-stained hole. She'd never known him to be this badly injured before and at the moment his gut just didn't feel right. "Mel, please. It's nothing to worry about. It's over and done."
"If it's so nothing to worry about' and so over and done', then why won't you tell me?"
"I'm fine, Mel. Really," Cole said as he refilled his coffee mug.
"I'm fine, Mel,'" she parroted with a frustrated groan, beginning to get angry. "You were very badly injured this time, weren't you? Not just some nasty scratches. Right?"
"It was ... somewhat more severe than a scratch, yes," he agreed softly, turning from the coffeemaker to face her and give what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "But I really am fine now. It's not even worth talking about."
"Cole! Please! Don't do this! Talk to me! How somewhat more severe'?"
"Mel ... You shouldn't worry yourself about these things. I'm quite resilient. More than you know. And I really am all healed. See? Not a mark left on ..." Too late, Cole realized that his hand had just traced the full arc of the cut from just above the point of his right hip bone up through the lower third of his left lung.
Mel turned near-white and went very still, covering her mouth with a trembling hand. She hadn't missed the extent of Cole's hand motion. And she knew Sydrax had a sick thing for butchery with big and very ugly knives. She began to shake. "Goddamn you! Some things are a universal constant, aren't they? No matter how evolved the species, a macho gene is always attached to the male chromosome!"
"Mel, I don't understand why you're so ..."
"Upset? Is that what you were about to say? You don't understand why I'm so UPSET?" Her voice began rising to a wail. "You get yourself gutted by a sadistic maniac and you don't understand why I'm so UPSET? You nearly get yourself killed and you don't ..."
"But you are getting upset, Mel. And there's no ..." Cole began reasonably, but the phantom lurking in his belly chose that moment to strike again, this time with raw vengeance. The coffee mug flew from his hands, shattering on the linoleum as he staggered, then doubled over, falling to his knees with a shrieking groan, clutching both arms tightly around his middle. He was reliving the full traumatic agony of it all over again, the sharp stab and vicious twisting of the broad, wickedly snaggle-toothed blade as it gouged deep and shredded its way up and through his body.
"COLE!!!"
As suddenly as it struck, the pain withdrew to the periphery of his awareness, leaving Cole feebly thrashing on the floor, panting and shuddering, his teeth chattering, his senses disorientated.
Mel was by his side in an instant, quickly but closely accessing the extensive area Cole had indicated, hardly believing the undeniable evidence of her own hands and eyes that his flesh was whole, unmarked and unblemished. But Cole wasn't himself and something was very wrong. Trying to stifle her mounting panic, she hastily threw one of his arms over her shoulders and wrapped one of hers around his waist, attempting to pull him up. "Cole? Can you stand? Lean on me as much as you have to but you're a big guy and ... Cole? Can you hear me? Cole! Please! I need you to help me help you!
As if from a great distance he heard, and automatically moved, struggling to comply. Using Mel's strength as a brace, and with his other hand for leverage on a cabinet door, Cole wordlessly managed to get his legs under him and regain his feet, but his legs were too wobbly to fully support him.
"Come on, Cole," she urged, gripping him tightly. "Stay with me just a few seconds. Let's get you laid down." Seeing how far gone he was and knowing she couldn't manage his weight and bulk for long, Mel half-carried, half-dragged him to her bedroom as fast as she could, letting him drop onto the mattress just as her quaking knees were threatening to give out from the strain.
But the ravening phantom wasn't done with him yet. With a keening whine in his throat, Cole drew his legs up to his chest, curling himself into a tight shivering ball as the horrific pain moved in for the assault, repeatedly stabbing and slashing through him. Mel stroked her fingers through his hair a moment, vainly trying to provide comfort, frantically trying to figure out what she could do for him. Abdominal pain. Use either heat or cold. Heating pad? Ice pack? Cole was a heat-loving Cirronian. Yes, a heating pad – like she sometimes used to relieve her menstrual cramps.
Mel raced for her closet. She had two heating pads on the upper shelf, the older of which she'd always meant to throw out but somehow never had. Something was glitchy with the heat regulator in the thermostat, and it's temperature output would quickly climb to a dangerously hot 140-degrees or so no matter what setting it was turned to. It might be exactly what Cole needed. Unless the type of pain he was experiencing actually needed cold ... She couldn't think about that now. She'd know soon enough if he'd need ice, anyway.
Getting Cole to straighten out from his fetal position so she could administer to him wasn't easy. He was resistant to moving or being moved, his features were contorted in a mask of agony, his eyes were glazed over, and he was so out of it he didn't seem to even recognize her or understand English anymore. With gentle but persistent coaxing and petting, however, she finally managed to get him stretched out flat on his back. All his abdominal muscles were spastically writhing beneath her hands like a nest of angry vipers, and there was a buzzing' sensation from deep within that felt like short-circuiting flares of electricity gone haywire. Hoping this was the right thing to do, hoping that she'd correctly guessed this was abdominal pain and heat would help, Mel lay the heating pad in place, prepared to forcefully hold it down on him if necessary, and nervously braced herself on the edge of the bed beside him to wait.
Within a few minutes, although the heating pad had become too hot for her to keep a hand on anymore, Cole's breathing did seem to be easier, the grim mask was slipping from his features, and his complexion appeared less waxy, his normal color beginning to return.
Five minutes later, she heard Cole tell her in a very tired voice: "Feels good, Mel. Exactly what I needed."
Until he spoke, Mel hadn't realized that she had been nearly holding her breath the whole time in anxious dread. She exhaled in a long shudder, almost sobbing with relief. "Good. I'm glad. Is the pain gone now? Can I ... get you anything? Water, maybe?"
"Thank you, Mel." Cole reached up a none too steady hand and caressed her throat, trying to reassure her. "The pain is almost gone. Manageable. Water would be good. Hot water."
She nodded and patted the hand at her throat, giving him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. "Be right back. Just don't move."
He gave her a wane smile in return. Moving wasn't yet a viable option. How did he get here, in Mel's bed? He scarcely remembered. This was certainly not how he'd ever envisioned himself being here. Technically, Mel had forbidden him from ever entering her bedroom without knocking first and receiving permission to do so. But he always checked on her several times throughout the night as she slept (sometimes he even sat cross-legged on the floor beside her bed watching her sleep, needing to be near her for a while), just as he made irregular rounds of the apartment, the bar and the basement, and usually scanned the surrounding neighborhood from the roof as well. He'd never allow a mere technicality to get in the way of his keeping Mel as safe as he possibly could. It felt very strange, all wrong, to be invited here like this.
Abruptly, the last of the pain released him and Cole went limp, drained and exhausted from the ordeal. He hoped that was the last of it – or, if not, he was over the worst of it. Either way, he reminded himself, it was better than the alternative.
"Here you go. Big glass of very hot water." Mel was trying so hard to smile and be cheerily supportive for his sake that she was near to crying. "You're not nauseous or anything, are you?"
"No, Mel. Nothing like that."
"Good to know. But no more heavy foods like lasagna for a while, just in case." Mel sat down beside him and helped him raise his head enough to drink. He downed the entire 16-oz. glass without even coming up for air, but declined her offer of getting more.
As she placed the empty glass on the nightstand, Cole's hand came up again, a little steadier this time, to soothingly caress her throat. "Mel? Did I remember to thank you?"
"Yes. Yes, you did." Mel forced herself to smile and allowed herself to relax into Cole's warm, calming touch, needing it, also knowing that he needed to give it. That was her Cole. He was the one hurt, yet he was more concerned about how she was taking it.
Mel hadn't really figured how things were going to go between them when he got home, but this nothing to worry about' and over and done' thing definitely wasn't on her list of possible scenarios. That had not been just a scratch Cole suffered. It was much worse. And it took a hell of a lot more for him to heal it than regenerating piddling small amounts of tissue'. But if he was healed, why was he still in such pain?"
"It was Sydrax, as I think you've realized," Cole said, guessing some of her thoughts. He continued caressing her throat with soothing energies, sensing both her lingering annoyance at his initial reticence to talk and her tightly reined anxiety. "A few days ago in Paris. I was in such a hurry to get him Collected and get out of the cold that I was careless with my footing on the ice. He came in under my defenses and gutted me, forced me into a deep healing stasis."
"Deep healing stasis?" Mel ran the three words through her mind a moment, both all together and individually, trying to get a feel for the sense of it. "You've never mentioned such a thing before."
"I've never mentioned it because ..." He shrugged. "I just never do, is all. Force of habit, I guess. You might say that it's ..." He hesitated, unsure of how much to tell her, then decided on the usual. "... a genetic anomaly in my line." Not exactly accurate on several counts, but close enough. "Very few are able to do such a thing and almost no one is even aware that I can. It's better that way. Safer. If Sydrax had known, he would've taken the extra time to disembowel and finish me off."
"Finish you ..." Mel went very pale and began to shake. She had to pull back, away from the reach of his overly warm and highly distracting touch, and try to get a grip. Cole had nearly died. Again. Were there still other times she didn't know about? Probably. She took a deep breath. "Okay. Explain this stasis thing to me."
Cole considered a moment. A dry and unemotional textbook recital would likely be best. "At its simplest, stasis is an autonomic systemic response that serves to repair massive internal injuries which would otherwise prove fatal. There are many levels and stages of it, the deepest only marginally above true death. Each time is always somewhat different. There are certain time and temperature constraints, there are limits as to how much organs can be regenerated, each type of cell involved can only be encouraged to knit or multiply just so fast and ..." He shrugged again, not wanting to further upset her by delving too deeply into the details. "It's a complicated process, subject to many inherent internal and external variables, some controllable to one degree or another, but most not."
"Wait a minute. You're not saying you can recover from any ..."
"Nothing corporeal can recover from everything, Mel," he said carefully. He couldn't lie to her about this but, at the same time, he knew it would only be one more thing to worry her. "It's the nature of being corporeal. Stasis is not a cure-all. And not everything can be healed. One can just as easily die when under stasis as come out of it. Especially on the deeper levels."
Mel gnawed at her lower lip and tried to digest the ramifications. Cole had come out of this stasis thing this time. And probably had at least a few other times in his past. Maybe even more than a few. But next time? Or the time after that? Damn their lone-wolf procedures, anyway! No backup! While he'd explained why it had to be so in this prison break Track – and she fully understood the reasons – she still hated it. "No wonder Sydrax wasn't expecting you," she said to derail herself from that familiar but nerve-wrecking train of thought. "He thought he'd killed you. He'll probably tell the other prisoners that you arose from the dead to Collect him."
"I don't doubt it," Cole affirmed with remembered amusement. "It's the type of thing that's contributed to my reputation. Many even believe that I can't be killed, can't be beat. So they fear me. And their fear can give me just the edge I might need. Such things have served to make my Tracking easier."
Cole suddenly winced, but this time the pain was only a fleeting stab, not as deep. "Oh, Cole. No! Are you in pain again?" While Mel fussed over him and tried to erase the lines that had appeared on his brow with her fingertips, Cole realized from the lightness and hesitancy of her fingers that, since the heating pad was driving his body temperature closer to his more normal Cirronian range, he was becoming almost too hot for her to touch.
"I'm fine, Mel," he gently assured her. "It's only the pain of cellular memory. It isn't real, even though it feels so. Like that of a severed limb, I think. It comes and goes, but it will vanish for good shortly. This I know for certain." Just like the ache in the bones of his ribs, back and pelvis, and the pain in his left lung, were already a thing of the past. He reached up to smooth her hair back, unsuccessfully attempting to tuck the tangled curls back of her ears, careful not to touch her skin. "You're too much of a worrier, Mel. I was only trying to spare you additional worry. Was that so wrong of me?"
Mel's soft, quiet laugh was devoid of mirth. She was only a hair's breadth away from sobbing. Or screaming. She wasn't sure which. She'd nearly lost him! "You really don't get it, do you, Cole? I don't just worry. I obsess. About everything. It's my nature to be an uptight obsessive worrywart. It's one of my more lovable and endearing qualities. I don't need wild speculation layered on top of all my normal obsessiveness, but that's all I've got to go by whenever you aren't open about ... things. Can't we at least try to keep all this insanity within the realms of reasonably constructive worrying?"
"Yes, Mel. I'm sorry." Cole gathered his strength and started to get up, uncomfortable about being in Mel's bedroom and in her bed under these circumstances, pained both for being the cause of her stress and anxiety, and because his own heightened body heat was getting in the way of his attempts to comfort her. He was also ashamed at being this vulnerable and weakened from mere phantoms. He knew this last was irrational, but Mel had brought him into her House and given him her help without knowing the full extent of the dangers beforehand and he had to be stronger than this for her sake. Especially now. Her life could well depend on it.
"And just where do you think you're going?" Mel had moved to stand in the way of him getting out of bed. She had her hands on her hips and was looking down at him with exasperation.
"I have work to do, Mel," he explained uncertainly, "Downloads that I have to "
Mel shook her head and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. "You're not going anywhere for a while, Cole. You're going to stay in that bed flat on your back with the heating pad and rest until you've gone without so much as a twinge for at least twelve full hours.
"Mel, it isn't necessary for me to ..."
"Cole, please! Most of your work will keep for another twelve hours, even another seventy-two hours. Even more than that, if need be. The important thing now is that you be fully recovered."
"I'm already healed, Mel, and ..."
"YES! I agree with you. Physically, you're healed. I can see that! But you're not yet fully recovered! You're not Superman, Cole! An assault like you've been through is horrendous. Stasis abilities or not, your body and your mind are still sorting through the trauma of it. That's what phantom pain's largely about: severe trauma. If you allow yourself the extra time, you'll be all the stronger for it as a result."
Of course Mel was right. He knew this. And he had certainly intended on taking it slow and easy over the next few days to give himself that necessary time to fully restore himself. He was just uncomfortable about being in her bed like this. And it simply wasn't right. "I shouldn't be turning you out of your bed, Mel. Humans need their sleep."
"Not a problem, Cole," she said with firm finality. "I'm not using it right now, anyway. And I can always sleep on the sofa for a night or three if I must. I've certainly done it before."
Cole well knew the stubborn, I'll-brook-no-arguments-here-we're-doing-this-my-way attitude of female authority Mel was giving him. "Yes, Mel," he sighed, capitulating. "Thank you."
Mel began going through her closet and drawers, selecting her day's clothing. "Now! I know all that heat probably feels great and it's likely helping, but you'd better turn down that Cirronian thermostat of yours a bit before you, um ..." she reddened slightly, "... scorch my sheets. Meanwhile, I'll begin printing out the downloads for you. Those I think you can read while in bed. Will that work for you? Or would you rather go with the laptop? ... No, forget that. You'd have to sit up for the laptop and I think it best if you remain laying down. Print-outs it is."
"Okay, Mel." Cole watched her bustling about, chattering up a storm as she always did when she was nervous, excited or upset, much as she had done when they first met. But Mel's dizzying whirlwind mode was different this time, more frantic. Then with a "I'll have the first of the print-outs for you within about half an hour or so," she was out the door, leaving him to repair the heating pad's thermostat (and hence lower his own) and contemplate Mel's bed and her bedroom from a new angle as he wondered how he'd be able to read lying flat on his back all day.
Once Mel had closed the bathroom door behind her, she slumped back against it, slowly sliding to the floor like a deflating balloon, her legs no longer able to support her as all her accumulated pains and sorrows, all her many fears and terrors turned liquid and began to release, pouring hotly down her face. She wanted to slither away on her belly like the miserable, disgusting slime she felt she was, hide herself deep in the depths of a dark hole in the ground somewhere and never come out.
In her heart she knew that, stasis or no, Cole had come very close to dying this time in the line of doing his impossibly difficult and dangerous job, even if he hadn't said so. And what was she doing? She was trying to judge his reading of Dr Sullivan's stupid book! What idiocy! What pettiness! Worse, she was trying to pressure this poor man – whose concerns were always first and foremost for her no matter his plans or his pain – into a relationship he'd made it clear he didn't want! So WHAT if she didn't agree with his reasons? They were HIS reasons and he was entitled to them!
Although her heart wanted to believe that she and Cole belonged together, she also realized that she could never even come close to replacing all that he'd lost. She'd sensed the spiritual pain he was in and knew it ate at his soul like corrosive acid, slowly but surely destroying him. Often, she so ached for him that all she wanted to do was cradle him in her arms, give of her strength and comfort, and release him from all that suffering. Yet just the thought of doing so made her stupid human hormones kick in, so she never had. Didn't he already have more than enough life and death problems, worries and complications in his life without adding her stupid hormonal neediness to the mix? The depths of her utter selfishness, her weakness, in the face of so much of his selflessness and strength, mortified her.
Cole was the dearest, most caring and compassionate friend and companion she'd ever known, could ever even imagine knowing. What was wrong with her? They shared so much together, they were so close – or recently had been very close, could easily continue being close – if she'd simply lay the hell off. Why couldn't she just be satisfied with all that they did have and leave it at that? She should consider herself honored, privileged, blessed, to have ever known him at all!
Mel angrily got to her feet and scrubbed both hands over her face, wiping away her streaming tears and forcing the rest back into their bottomless well. Great! Now her eyes are raw, swollen and bloodshot from crying. Time to climb out of your selfish angsty fantasies, Porter. You never were that big a fan of all those sudsy 1940's Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwick tear-jerkers, anyway. (Bogie and Bergman in "Casablanca" are another story). Let's get you with the proper program here. Cole needs your assistance and you WILL assist. He depends on you. She peered in the mirror. Okay. Not too terrible. Nothing that a few drops of Visine and mascara couldn't set to rights.
By the time she'd finished pulling herself together, getting her face on, combing the snarls out her hair and dressing, Mel realized that nearly three quarters of an hour had gone by. Not so good a start to the new you,' Porter. Move it! You promised Cole print-outs within half an hour. And she hadn't cleaned up the spilled coffee and broken mug on the kitchen floor, yet. Get a grip! Focus!
A quick check on Cole assured her that he was comfortable. He was resting in that eerie restorative Cirronian trance state, the one that had so thoroughly spooked her the first time she'd ever seen it. Something indescribably weird – face it, Porter: he's an inhuman alien – about those flickering liquid lights in his half-open eyes ... (Remembered note to self: Never walk in on a Cirronian in a trance state after watching an uninterrupted PBS midnight showing of the original "Night of the Living Dead". It messes with your head). She knew that even in a trance Cole was completely aware of what was going on around him. His face might remain expressionless, and he might not move or speak for the twenty minute to one hour duration of it, but he could both see and hear quite clearly. (And, Mel was sure, his sense of smell was also working just fine). And he could be fully awake, alert and ready for anything in less than a heartbeat if he had to be.
Mel turned and hurried to the War Room.
Cole roused himself from his trance the moment she left, his mind racing. Mel was so attuned to life, having a natural empathy that most lifeforms of his experience seem to have no concept of. It was what had drawn him to her in the first place. But as big as her heart was, it was also very fragile. She had so much grief, pain, doubt and fear in her life, yet she thought nothing of putting herself at risk for those she loved and cared about, for things she believed in. She freely gave of her affections, she gave of her love, she gave of her very soul. Time and again she'd proven herself to be caring, loving, supportive, and fiercely devoted, yet she also had the very human capacity to be selfish, manipulative and even sometimes sneaky – although he knew that she hated herself for these tendencies. From the beginning he'd been able to see all these things shining in her eyes, in her heart and in her manner. Now her eyes showed him something else, something which frightened him to his core for he'd seen the same thing looking back at him in mirrors: deep, fathomless despair. Worse, an inner voice told him that he was at the center of it.
In the War Room, Mel stacked a ream of paper in the printer and checked out Cole's desktop folder. Nearly 450 downloads? In only five days? She was going to be at this forever! Meanwhile, yet another automatic download on another computer screen was in progress from some Oriental site – Korean, Chinese or Japanese, she guessed, not familiar enough with the differences in characters to be certain. Oops! It was a military-based site. Something to do with the communications and spy satellites Cole routinely borrowed' to Track with, she was willing to bet. She'd have to have another talk with him about being more careful with that kind of thing: it wouldn't do to start an international incident, one country huffing and puffing and blaming another for playing with its toys, neither realizing the truth of it.
Programming the automatic printer queue to feed in all downloads in order from first to last received, Mel set the universal matrix to translate everything not in English into Cirronian. Now all she had to do was staple like report pages with like, keep spoon-feeding the printer with paper and ink, plus take care of the inevitable paper jams, plus be running up and down the stairs all day managing the bar. Such FUN this is going ...
She started at the sound of the gentle, concerned voice coming from the doorway. "What's wrong, Mel? Is it something that you humans prefer not to talk about, or one of those things where talking proves helpful?" Cole inquired, worried about her and very much wanting to comfort her if he could.
"Cole ... You should really be staying in bed," she reminded him, suddenly flustered.
"I don't think I'll be having any more phantom attacks, Mel. Raising my body temperature to more normal levels for a short while took care of it."
"But, still ..." she stubbornly insisted.
"Is it your wish I remain in bed?"
Even more flustered by the implications of his softly spoken question, Mel sent a quick prayer of thanks to the printer gods for picking that moment to jam up the paper feed to distract her attentions but, before she'd even gotten to the amen' part, Cole simply reached over and turned off the printer.
"Mel? Please talk to me."
The War Room was suddenly too quiet. The irony of the role reversal, with Cole now being the one asking her to talk, didn't escape her. And she didn't imagine that he'd be willing to let her off the hook any more readily than she had been willing to let him off. And he was much too close, overwhelmingly close. Leaving would be difficult: she'd have to brush right by him just to get to the door. Mel edged toward the back of the room, before he might get any ideas about stroking her throat, knowing she'd likely lose it if he did.
"It's been a rather ... emotional few days for me, Cole. A lot of, um, unexpected things just seemed to come up." She forced a smile, more to hold back the again-threatening tears than anything else. "You know how it is." Please! Let it go at that!
Cole raised a questioning brow but said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
Mel knew she couldn't possibly outwait him. Cole could likely give Job lessons in patience. "... the things you leave unsaid will haunt you far longer than any of the things you do say, even beyond your grave..." (No offense, Grandmother. I know you mean well, but please be quiet). Despite her best efforts, a single tear was leaking it's way out. The floodgates weren't far behind. "It's ... it's really got nothing to do with anything. Just a, um, female type thing, you know?"
Still, he waited. With rising dismay, Mel realized that Cole wasn't buying it. He wasn't anywhere near as naive as he sometimes seemed. She swiped away the single tear as she tried to angle for the door. Another tear was following close behind.
"Not talking about it doesn't seem to be helping, Mel," Cole quietly pointed out, casually settling himself to lean against the edge of one of his work tables with his arms crossed and his long legs stretched out in front of him.
"Yeah, well, um ... Not every problem has a solution, Cole." Damn! He's a Tracker, a highly skilled professional hunter – And he just did that deliberately to cut me off and corner me!
"What problem is this, Mel?"
Cornered! Cole had cornered her! He'd left her no place to go, no way to easily get around him! No way to get away from him! Is this how his quarry felt when they found the Tracker in front of them? She drew in a deep breath, attempting to get a hold of herself. "It's just " She swallowed hard. "Well ... more and more often lately I feel as if the Sword of Damocles is poised above my life ... and the damn thing might drop down at any moment and chop off my head."
"You're worried about a sword chopping off your head? What sword? I don't understand."
"The Sword of Damocles. It's a literary reference from ancient Greek mythology. It's symbolic of, um ... impending danger, extreme peril."
Symbolism. Cole nodded his understanding. "And what are you afraid of, Mel?"
"Oh, just the usual, I guess ..." She tried to be breezy. "Death, taxes, cockroaches, George W. Bush, ... (black widow spiders), alien fugitives ..." Breezy wasn't working. The tears were starting to come steady now and she couldn't stop them. "And ... and no matter how many of them you Collect, there are always more ... always will be more and ..." She bit her lower lip to halt her babbling.
"I know it sometimes may seem that way, Mel, but ..." Cole began reasonably, but Mel shook her head and held up her hand. Cole went silent, again patiently waiting for her to continue.
"... the things you leave unsaid will haunt you ..." (Grandmother!!!). Mel had to turn away and close her eyes, too frightened to face him, only knowing that the next words she said could very well be the most important words of her life. "But what about us, Cole?" she whispered, her back to him.
The five words hung in the air between them, then the rest followed in an unrestrained torrent. "Is there an us? Will there ever be an us beyond us just wanting an us? How long do we remain on hold? When do we get our chance to live? ... Or don't you want that? Please, Cole! You have to tell me! I can't keep going the way things are anymore." (Happy now, Grandmother?).
Cole then knew exactly what had changed about Mel's manner: her acceptance of the uneasy, artificial balance of friends/lovers he'd insisted upon the two of them maintaining since the Marital Bliss Seminar had ended. He tried to formulate an answer, but no words came out. He cleared his throat. His tongue felt strange, much as it had when he first took human form, as if it were suddenly much too big for the confines of his mouth and getting in the way of his teeth. He cleared his throat a second time and managed to choke out: "I want there to be an us', Mel. I have for a long time now."
Through her tears Mel blinked in astonishment, a painful, suffocating weight unburdening her heart and leaving her dizzy, breathless and lightheaded. He wanted her! Cole wanted her! "But if that's so, then why isn't there an us? And please don't say distraction'. It's a stupid excuse and I can't accept it."
It took Cole a few moments to begin to answer, and he had to reach for Mel, to pull her into his arms before he had the courage to do so. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her hair as she clung to him, gratefully accepting the comfort of his arms. He shivered at the feel of her hot breath against his bare skin. "You ... you frightened me when we first met," he tried to honestly explain, verbalizing it for the first time, "Because I felt too much, and felt it all too soon. And I couldn't understand why. Or how. Or even why it was you." He traced the soft plane of her cheek with the back of his hand. "You must realize: I'd become used to not feeling much of anything at all beyond guilt, pain and anger. So much so I had almost disappeared from my world, from my friends ... Even from myself. I sometimes wondered if I would still be there when those emotions were gone, when nothing else remained to hold me together." That was a difficult admission for him to make, to finally give voice to and face. "From the start, you awakened something in me that I thought had died. I never thought that I'd find love again, never thought I could love again. Or even would want to.
"At first I tried to convince myself that I didn't care, that even though it felt so right whenever you touched me, or whenever you were near, it was an illusion, a lie. But I cared from the beginning when your compassion overcame your fears and you welcomed me, first into your car, then into your House and then into your life. I even cared enough to cry after Zin ripped out your life on only the second day I knew you But still I couldn't accept it until I'd nearly lost you to Tev. That was when I couldn't deny my feelings any longer. And only when I was able to care again could I finally do what I'd never been able to do before: start to heal, start to let go of my pain and mourn for my lost family. But though it was you who allowed me to begin healing, night after night you'd retire alone to your bedroom, while I'd be left alone in my War Room. Then we went to the Seminar ... and I By that point it was just easier for me to keep you at the same distance we'd always had, to tell myself it was for your own good, as well as for my own. Then to tell myself that I had to concentrate, then to convince myself that I didn't need any unnecessary distractions', then to once again tell myself that it didn't really matter."
Locked in Cole's warm embrace, Mel slid her hands around his neck, resting her forehead against his. "Is that it? Is that what you're still telling yourself? That it doesn't matter? That you don't matter? Cole, there are other feelings besides grief, besides loneliness and guilt and pain. How long have you been denying yourself what life is all about: love, desire, need, passion? And is denying yourself these distractions' somehow less of a distraction' than giving yourself permission to live them? How long has it been for you?"
"Since ..." There was a catch in Cole's voice. "Almost ten years."
Pained for him, Mel had to close her eyes at that and turn her head away. Ten years is a long time to exile oneself in the depths of mourning. Cole was not only inexperienced with the deepest of human emotions and feelings, on many levels he'd become estranged from knowing how to feel anymore. While virtually empathic to the needs and feelings of others, he had deliberately blinded himself to many of his own. Mel had never thought of Cole as being repressed and inhibited before, but now she realized that he was – far more so than herself, in fact, but in a different, tighter, non-emotional way. By imprisoning himself as a Guard on Sar-Top and burying himself and his needs within the harsh rigors and demands of his work, he'd been heaping blame on and punishing himself for his self-perceived role in causing the death of his family. And by denying the two of them a relationship, he was still doing it. It explained a great deal about him.
"There's only room for one love in your life at a time, Cole, only one love in your arms at a time. But it isn't disloyalty to a loved one's memory when you find there's room for more than one love in your heart, when you find you're able to love again even after crushing loss, when you find you can embrace life again. By remaining so alive it honors that memory and keeps it alive. And we should never reject love when it finds us. My Grandmother once told me that. We ... none of us ... can ever know how long our happiness may last." Mel had to look away again, remembering that it was Cole who had so selflessly helped her find closure to her relationship with Rod, thinking that that was when she had started falling in love with him. "We don't even know how long we may last." She drew back, her fingertips tracing the invisible outline he'd shown her of his near-fatal gutting for emphasis. "Any moment could be the last one we ever have, Cole. Any moment at all."
Cole had to stop her hands by capturing them in his own. Mel wasn't telling him anything that all his friends hadn't repeatedly tried to tell him over the years. Where they had failed, however, Mel was succeeding in getting through.
"Cole?" Mel interrupted his unspoken thoughts. "I don't think either of us has any way of knowing if we can have a future together, but can't we at least have a now?"
Sensing uncertainty, pain and an element of apprehension in his quiet stillness, Mel moved to kiss him. She reclaimed her hands and let her fingers play in the hair at the nape of his neck, her soft touch on the sensitive skin there stirring the hunger he'd been repressing for so long. She danced her tongue over his lower lip, then briefly kissed his mouth; she kissed the hollows under his cheekbones; she trailed kisses in his eyebrows, her lips and the tip of her tongue smoothing down the soft and slightly crooked hairs there. She kissed his closed eyelids, the very tip of his nose, and then she brushed his lips with her own again, taking his lower lip between hers and slowly savoring it, tenderly tracing it's contours with her tongue. Cole's mouth automatically opened slightly at that and her tongue slipped within. He couldn't stifle a groan as Mel's tongue brushed his, wasn't even aware that he had groaned, and her lips increased their pressure against his, encouraging him to accept her deepening kiss. He soon did, and she gently explored his mouth with her tongue. Within a few moments he hesitantly began to do the same in response, then began to grow bolder, the heat and energy she'd experienced with their first kiss beginning to come into play.
Mel drew back enough to break the depth of the kiss, but still spoke against his lips. "I love you, too, Cole. It just took me a while to fully realize and accept it. And I want you. I want to feel you against me, deep inside me. I want to lose myself in you. I want you to lose yourself in me. I want us to disappear in each other. I need this. And I think that you need it, too – maybe even more than I do. Can that be wrong?"
Cole caressed her cheek in wonderment, searching her beloved face for the answer to a question he didn't even know how to ask. He so wanted to learn how to express his love for her in a way she could understand. Mel was right and he knew it. He wanted, he needed to take that final step and taste life again, he needed to relearn how to reach out and seize it with both hands, he needed to bury himself and his ten long years of anguish deep within her cleansing, welcoming warmth. And she was offering it to him. As a gift. "No, Mel. It isn't wrong. I just ..." He gave a rueful shake of his head, thinking of the instructions in Dr Sullivan's long lost driver's manual'. It had all seemed so unnaturally forced and complicated to him. "I ... I know how much importance you humans place on the sex act and I ... I don't want you to be disappointed in me. I never want to disappoint you. I couldn't bear it."
Mel took his hand from her cheek and one by one kissed his fingers, then pressed a single kiss into the palm, placing it over her heart as one of the simplest expressions of love she could think of. "Nothing about you has ever disappointed me, Cole, or ever could. And even Don Juan and Casanova had their first times. We all do. And we go on from there."
"I'm not a child, Mel. My first time was a very long time ago." He stared at his hand on her breast, wondering how that simple enchanting gesture could have made him feel so much and feel it so deeply. It was amazingly, intoxicatingly intimate to have the beat of her heart nestled in his palm.
"Ah!" She gently teased, rubbing noses with him. "But she wasn't a primitive human, was she?"
"No, she wasn't." He had to smile at that. "But neither am I. " He raised her chin with one finger so he was able to look into her beautiful eyes. "I've wanted us to kiss again, Mel. And I've missed holding you and touching you. I've missed you touching me. The only time we've really touched lately is when you were visiting me in the mental hospital and I ... I ..." Words failed him, so he simply pulled her into his arms to demonstrate and kissed her again, deeper than before. By comparison, their earlier kisses had been sweet and warm, gently tentative, but this kiss was one of hunger. His hand tangled in her upswept hair, pulling her head back, and there was no room for anything save the strength of his arms about her and the heat from him that warmed her. Held pressed tight against him, Mel could feel his answering pressure and welcomed that heat, her lips parting, inviting him in for more, tasting his tongue as it gently and then more urgently gave up its innocence and found hers, his tongue probing her deeper still, memorizing the textures and flavors of her mouth, her teeth, her tongue, until she felt as though he was draining her like a fine liquor, leaving only the fires of molten need.
Gasping, she pulled back. As with everything else, Cole was proving a dizzyingly fast learner.
"I like kissing you that new way, Mel," he said, stroking her throat. Having problems again with his tongue, his words were thick.
Mel shook her head to clear it and caressed his face, her fingertips tracing the strong line of his jaw and moving to his lips. "You really don't want us to stop doing this either, do you, Cole?" Her fingers stroked down his strong neck, dallied over the terrain of his broad chest, then moved down to the waistband of his sweatpants. "But you do realize that this can ... No, this will change everything about our relationship, don't you?"
"Yes, Mel, I do know But if you'll have me, if it's what you want, then joining with you is all I would ever want as well. And if the rest of it feels as good and as right as kissing you and holding you, then I know it's something we'll both want to do as often as we can."
Mel's arms tightened around his waist as she whispered only inches from his mouth, "Trust me on this, Cole: if you've enjoyed the introductory hugging and kissing, you're just going to adore the rest."
Cole smiled back at her, continuing to caress her throat. "How could I not? You've been my teacher. You've taught me almost everything I know about being human."
"Yeah, well ... I have to confess to being a little nervous about this, though. The first time with anyone is always kind of awkward anyway, but knowing this would also be your first time as a human, I mean um well, it does put additional pressure on me. I mean, you've told me how you do it on Cirron, but I can tell you right now, a Cirronian mating doesn't sound anything like a human mating, so I'm not exactly sure how you'll respond to all the physical aspects of it."
"Physical? Is there something not right about me, Mel?" Cole asked, a niggling minor concern that he hadn't morphed human male signatures correctly suddenly resurfacing.
"Everything about you couldn't possibly be more right," Mel assured him with a sincere smile, remembering his sensational Full Monty striptease atop the Watchfire's bar in front of a horny, full-house mob of screaming, swooning women. He succeeded in putting the Watchfire squarely on the map with that stunt, and it's been in the black ever since. And he certainly seemed as functional as any fine specimen of masculinity should be. "All I meant is that human sex is a good deal more, um ... physical, more vigorous, than Cirronian sex seems to be."
"I keep myself in very good physical shape, Mel. I have to."
"Oh, I know you do. And you certainly are." Mel's eyes were now clear and sparkling, her face flushed with color, Cole noted, realizing that embarrassment had nothing to do with any of it. Mel grasped both his hands. "Come on, lover man. There's a far more comfortable place than this War Room for the human-style primitiveness I'm planning."
"You don't need a plan," he told her as he followed along. "And you don't have to seduce me. You did a thorough job of that when you first took me in. I've been bonded to you ever since. We just haven't done anything about it."
Mel stopped at her bedroom's doorway and turned to him, wide-eyed. "You mean ... All I ever had to do was lead you in here? Even after you told me you didn't want to have any distractions'?"
"Especially since then, Mel," he ruefully confirmed. "By that point I didn't have any willpower remaining in me at all. I relied on you having enough willpower for the both of us."
She led him the rest of the way into her bedroom and kicked the door closed, taking him over to the bed. "Damn! For once I can honestly and truly say that I'm very sorry I didn't let you down!"
"So am I," Cole admitted, watching Mel's deft fingers untie the drawstring of his sweatpants. He could hardly breathe. He had wanted this very badly for a long time, wanted to know that Mel was his mate, wanted to join with her and share his body as he already shared his soul. Yet now that the reality of it was here, he felt totally unprepared. He must have read Dr Sullivan's book several dozen times, but at the moment he couldn't recall a thing about it beyond basic mechanics. He stopped Mel's hands with a tentative touch just as she got the tie undone. He hadn't felt this nervous, this unsure of himself, since he'd Tracked down his first Eternal, the 28,000-year old lifeforce known as Enocar, one of the immensely powerful free-ranging body-snatchers.
Sensing his anxiety, feeling it in the tremors of his hand, Mel reached up and tenderly caressed his face. "Cole, this isn't an obligation – and it's not supposed to be torture. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Not even this. Especially not this."
He hugged her tightly against his chest, not wanting Mel to change her mind. "I love you, Mel " he whispered hoarsely. "And I do want this. It's just ... I don't know enough to ..."
Mel smiled up at him and returned his embrace. "You don't even have to bother thinking about it. Our bodies already know how to communicate their desires to each other. It becomes intuitive once you start, the voice of instinct spoken through the senses. All we ever have to do is listen." She kissed him on the cheek and pulled back. "Tell you what. Why don't you get completely undressed and warm up the bed while I go let my hair down and, um, get ready. Okay?"
"Completely undressed?"
"Believe me, clothes of any kind will be a distraction you don't want."
"Yes, Mel. That would be good," he agreed. He needed a few moments to collect himself so he'd feel calmer. He knew that by clearing his mind there'd be less of a sense of nerve-taut anxiety.
Back in the bathroom, Mel found herself in a strangely mixed erotic mood as she undressed: deliriously happy, yet serious; playful and eager, yet focused – and only slightly apprehensive over this new responsibility. And so very FREE! Everything was going to be okay! They were going to be okay! Usually she'd feel at least a little self-conscious save with a lover of long standing. But what divine madness was this? she asked her reflection. Now, she was feeling self-conscious over not feeling self-conscious at all! She loosened her hair and shook it out from all the pins of its by now Cole-damaged French twist. Then donning only her terry robe and leaving it unbelted, she made a quick detour to the kitchen to take the day's birth control pill, then headed back to Cole waiting for her in her bedroom.
The erotic mood stayed with Mel as Cole rose up on one elbow to greet her. Without any embarrassment at all, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she simply allowed her robe to slip from her shoulders and drop to the floor as she boldly sauntered over to him, allowing him a good look.
For untold heartbeats Cole felt as though his eyes could drink her in forever. His gaze roamed from her beautiful face down the column of her slim neck to the fine line of her collarbone, further to the delicately carved ridges of her sternum nestled between the full soft roundness of her breasts. Then lower, to the flat plane of her belly and her strong, slender, smoothly-muscled thighs. Then back up to her face. His hands were starting to shake again and he felt dizzy, lightheaded, his chest very tight. "Mel ... You're more beautiful than I ... even imagined." His voice didn't even sound like his own.
She watched Cole's eyes as his gaze flickered down her body and then back up to her face. The mingled love, desire, uncertainty and awed amazement she saw there brought a flush to her cheeks. "I'm glad you approve," she said. "But you're very beautiful, too ... And I want this to be very special for you."
"Anything I ever do with you is very special," he said thickly. Again with his stupid tongue. "Please, Mel. I want to kiss you again. I need to touch you." He reached for her, blindly pulling her into his arms and down on top of him without even thinking about it, his mouth instinctively seeking hers. With Mel's body so yielding and unrestrained against his, her responses so eager and welcoming, this was very different from the kiss they'd shared at the Seminar or even the ones just a short while ago in his War Room, making him yearn for much more. And his imagination had fallen far short of what this would actually feel like, of what Mel would feel like, her bare skin pressed against his own, her silky hair curtained around his face and tumbling down to tickle his chest, his nostrils filling with the familiar mix of herbal shampoo and her female scent. He ran his hands over her back, following the slopes of her shoulders, the curve of her spine, gently cupping the smooth globes of her backside that fit so neatly into his hands, before moving up to delicately trace her smoothly inviting throat with the Cirronian touches of affection he was comfortable with. "Teach me, Mel," he said against her lips. "Show me where and how to please you."
Mel's eyes closed at the familiar warmth of his touch. "We'll both derive pleasure, Cole. I can promise you that. Right now it will give me great pleasure just to kiss you and touch you and feel you here beside me. My other pleasures can keep."
"But ..."
She slienced him with two fingers on his lips. "This is all very new for you, so this time we're going to concentrate on you." She smiled lovingly down at him, surprising him by stroking the length of his throat until he couldn't help but give himself up to it and lift his chin for more. "You're not going to think about anything now," she told him. "This has nothing to do with thinking. You're going to disconnect all four tetraspheres of that overly complicated Cirronian brain of yours and completely stop thinking. You're only going to feel. Understand?"
No longer able to speak Cole mutely nodded, as always trusting Mel completely. Already he was beginning to tremble, the expectation alone so intensely pleasurable in its immediacy it was almost intolerable. Soon his head lolled back and his eyes shuttered closed as he lay himself open and submitted to the intoxicating sensations sent racing through him at her every touch.
Mel was playing him like an instrument of sensation, coaxing rhapsodies with her nimble fingers, moist lips and velvet tongue up and down the length and breadth of him, teasing his flesh, drawing out the primal rhythms. Her hands moved down his chest, her nails rasping lightly in random patterns through the dusting of fine dark hair, across the iron-sculpted lines of his abdomen. "I've been wanting to touch you like this for so long," she murmured. Her name was all he could utter, a bare strangled whisper driven by a deep exhalation.
Not wanting to push him too far or too fast, wanting to give him the time to savor the sensations, Mel went slow, yet the tempo of his pulse rapidly quickened beneath her lips, his uneven breathing coming ever shorter and faster. Several times she paused, concerned that he was so acutely sensitive to touch, some of his responses too intense, but each time she heeded his whimpered "don't stop" plea and continued kindling him near to the point of sensory overload. One long moan after another began rumbling up from low in his chest, until he couldn't form a cohesive thought, couldn't put together a coherent sentence if his very life depended on it. Cole had no idea what Mel was doing to him and he was well beyond caring. He just never wanted her to stop, his shudders became tremors, the tremors escalating to spasms, the entire vortex of the universe centering, contracting, and revolving, poised around the heat of her mouth and the flickering of her tongue. Her own heart hammered with the tidal pull of desire washing through her. She was drowning in him, the feel of him, his amazing warmth, his spicy-musk scent, his taste, all combining to make her intensely aware of herself and her emotions, make her feel so fully free and alive that it was almost frightening. But her concern for him, over his first time, over his need to learn how to feel again, willingly made her subjugate her own desires to concentrate only on his.
Mel slowly took him inside herself and paused for a moment, lost to the glorious feeling of Cole becoming such an intimate part of her, allowing them both to revel in each other's heat, the smooth slide of skin within skin, and the unmistakable sensation of a throbbing pulse that wasn't their own, at one and the same time within and all around. Then she began rhythmically contracting unseen muscles around him. At first his eyes flew wide open in stunned amazement, then they turned to black, wildly dilating in desire before glazing over and drifting shut.
Cole simply forgot how to breathe. Mel's tight warmth directly above him, surrounding him, was exquisitely painful, almost agonizing, more than he could bear. He was both afraid to move and unable not to. Mel felt the building tension humming through him and began moving in gentle undulating rhythm. He instinctively surged upward, conscious only of a driving need for them to join together, to move together, to be together. He cried aloud, desperately grasping her hips, pulling her tighter onto him. Mel couldn't help but give her own cry as she felt the heat of him penetrating deep within her.
"Mel!" Cole was breathing in great ragged, shuddering gasps. "I ... I can't... I ..."
Mel went very still. "Shhh. It's okay, Cole," she gently chided him. This isn't a test." She began stroking his throat again to calm and reassure him, watching the anguished struggle on his face as he tried so hard to hold back, feeling the taut muscles shivering under her hands as his eyes searched hers.
"But you ..."
"Never mind about me. Just let go, my love." She smoothed the tension on his brow away with her fingertips. "The rest isn't important now." She traced his lips with her thumb before softly brushing them with her own, his wide eyes fixed on hers until she firmly caught his mouth and forced them to close again. Trusting her instincts, she rode him down, letting his desires surge unchecked but not uncontrolled, coaxing him to accept what his own body was beginning to incessantly demand.
No word in any language Cole knew of came close to explaining what Mel was doing to him. No definition could possibly describe the searing sensation of blood boiling hotly through his loins demanding release, insisting upon completion. He began to quake uncontrollably as the axis of the world began to tilt, his senses whirling under a kaleidoscope of intensity, then abruptly short-circuiting in an overwhelming blast of vivid blue-hotness that propelled him beyond his body into a realm of pure rapture. The world passed from searing white to echoing black as pleasure and joy consumed him, disintegrating him beneath a thousand sensations until he was no longer aware that he even had a body, unaware that he was crying her name aloud as he clutched her tightly and emptied himself deep within her.
Mel silenced his cries with another, deeper kiss, capturing his surrender.
Cole came back to himself feeling reborn, with the impression of a warm Spring shower sluicing through his every cell. He didn't want to move. He wasn't sure he could move even if he wanted to. Vaguely, he was aware that he was glowing all over.
He blinked and smiled lazily down at Mel laying alongside and half atop his length, one leg up and thrown over his thighs. She was idly curling his chest hairs around her fingers, twirling the short strands into rows of little peaks. Judging from the number of them, her slender fingers had been busy at it for at least a few minutes She smiled a cat that just ate the yellow canary' smile back at him. "Hey, Cole. You still alive?"
He had to think about that one a moment. "Either I'm not ... Or I'm more alive than I've been in a very long time." He drew her up and tightly wrapped his arms around her, tears welling in his eyes. "Thank you, my love. Thank you."
"You're more than welcome." She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. This relaxed, he looked positively boyish. "Amazing, isn't it? What someone can do for you is a whole lot different than what you can do for yourself. Good thing, too. Otherwise, none of us would ever need anyone else and the human race would've probably gone extinct a long time ago."
"Not just someone', Mel. You. What you do for me. You're all I really need."
Mel couldn't seem to keep her hands still, couldn't seem to get enough of touching him. Just feeling the corded muscle beneath his skin made her heart flutter. Her mouth started to wander as her hands again began to work their way down his chest and belly. He felt so good that she just couldn't keep herself still. Cole had never offered any objections to Mel touching him in any way she wanted to, and he wasn't about to start now. Submissively, he left himself open for her to do whatever she wanted.
"Oooo, you're positively shameless, aren't you?" Mel snickered with delight.
"Would it do me any good to resist?" he answered, the contented, unseen smile evident in his tone of voice. He kissed the top of her head, buried his face again in her fragrant hair. This uniquely human experience had been nothing like a Cirronian joining, yet for him it had been every bit as (what was the expression? oh, yes) mind blowing.
"Nope. No good at all." Mel sighed as she closed her eyes, snuggling in his arms and enjoying the warmth of his breath tickling her ear, stroking his soft dark hair. It felt so right, the two of them like this. The heat of his hands caressing her radiated through her skin, and the hollow of his throat, mere inches from her mouth, tempted her to plant a kiss there. She let her hands play on his chest, enjoying the visual contrast between her creamy-pale skin to that of his darker honeyed tone as she massaged her fingers through his furry chest hair like a cat, demolishing the little peaks she'd created. Cole was such a wondrous contrast of textures that she couldn't imagine ever tiring of exploring him. As her fingers moved up to his shoulders, the chest hair gave way to bare skin as smooth and sensual as silk, yet just beneath it lay hard, unyielding muscle, leashed power that she could sense even when he was so still and relaxed. A swell of intense need filled her until she thought she would burst with her love for him. But they had time now. And her time would come. Soon.
"I have no resistance in me anyway. I love how your skin feels without any clothes on, Mel. And I love how your skin feels against mine." Human bodies were capable of far more than he'd ever given them credit for. The intense sensory awareness of skin was amazing, well beyond anything in his experience. Initially, he'd thought that the human preoccupation with clothing was strange for he knew of no other species that so routinely covered up so much of it's body. Experience with cold, however, had taught him that clothing at least served the function of preserving warmth. Now he saw a secondary function: a rein for rampant human sexuality to enable them to accomplish other things beside mating.
Mel was blazing a trail of tiny kisses around his neck as he talked, aiming for the hollow of his throat.
"You bit me!" he cried with mock-horror, failing to sound anywhere near as furious about it as he'd intended. Improvising, he stuck out his lower lip and tried to glare at her, but his eyes were dancing with happy lights, spoiling the effect.
"Awww, I'll just have to kiss it and make it a-l-l better," Mel cooed, glad he remembered their private little Tiffany joke. She snuggled up and gave his throat a long enough lingering kiss that a rising and falling sighing sound began rumbling soft and low deep in his chest. Mel broke out in an amazed grin. Wow! Although hardly audible, and that only when right up against him, it sounded remarkably like the purr of a well-contented cat. A very large and very well-contented cat. Cirronians could purr! She could easily get real used to that. Then, as a matter of verifying something else she'd thought she'd noticed earlier, she teasingly pattered her fingertips down his flank and quickly obtained her verification. He was ticklish, alright. Very much so. Oh, goody!
Rolling around naked in her bed with the big Cirronian was a joy. But rolling around naked in her bed with him when she had him laughing so hard he was nearly helpless was a very special joy. Finally, even though she managed to stay on top of him, Cole had her arms pinned behind her back.
"No fair! You cheated! You used hyperspeed!"
"No, I didn't," he innocently protested, using the opportunity to gently nibble his lips down her deliciously presented throat from chin to collarbone and back again, helping himself to the sweet taste of her. He was just realizing that Mel taking free rein of his body had taught him a great deal. "I was only using my natural Cirronian speed."
"But it's faster than normal human speed," she mumbled, really enjoying his nibbles.
"Yes it is, Mel," he cheerfully agreed, leisurely starting his second nibble trip down her throat.
His lips on her sensitive throat were even more intoxicating than his hands. They were igniting warm little flares tingling along her skin, encouraging her to sink into the sensation. She sighed with contentment and did just that. Who was she to argue? Clearly Cole had already learned that his mouth could do most anything his hands could, and whatever felt good done to him would feel equally good if done to her. And he seemed to be working up an appetite for a big helping of seconds, which she was all for. Jess had been right: a man who could eat with commitment' was sexy.
Before she could even blink, Mel suddenly found herself pinned, flat on her back and nose to nose with the grinning, puppy-eager Cirronian. "Now that time I used hyperspeed!"
She couldn't help but laugh. God, he felt so good on top of her! And he seemed to be accessing the merits of this new position with approval as well. "Um, Cole, I think ..."
"No, Mel," he said teasingly. "You're not going to think about anything now. As you've said, this has nothing to do with thinking. You're going to disconnect both hemispheres of that simplistic, primitive human brain of yours and completely stop thinking. You're only going to feel. Understand?"
Mel rolled her eyes. "I hate it when my own words are thrown back at me," she mock-grumbled, kissing the tip of his nose for emphasis.
"But you're a very good teacher, Mel," he said reasonably. And I have to demonstrate to you that I'm capable of applying what I've learned so far. Wouldn't you agree?"
Mel affected a schoolmarm attitude "While I'll allow that you're usually a very fast learner, in this you're only a lowly student. I therefore must insist you accept any and all of my corrections and follow my guidance. Is that clear?"
"Of course. How else would I know if I've gotten the basics right and my lessons can proceed?"
She gave a wicked chuckle and threw her arms around his neck, her full lips parting in clear invitation as she looked up at this man she loved so much, her slender fingers warm and strong against his scalp, entwining in his hair and toying it into strands. "Okay, student. Whenever you feel you're ready, you may give your teacher some idea how long it's going to take you to get to Carnegie Hall."
He looked at her blankly and Mel couldn't help softly laughing at his oh-so-familiar and wonderfully endearing expression of utter confusion. She loved it! She loved him! "There's only one way anybody can get to Carnegie Hall, Cole, and that's with lots and lots of practice. Lots."
"I understand, Mel," he said, the hungry glow of desire in his eyes belying his solemn tone and telling her that he'd at least gotten the gist of the reference. "I promise to be a very diligent student and practice as much as my teacher thinks I should. Every day, if necessary. Many times a day, if necessary. All day and all night, if necessary. It won't be hard."
"Ahhh. Lesson number one, my dear student: it's supposed to be hard."
Not so innocent that he didn't know exactly what she meant, Cole pressed against her belly and Mel's eyes flew open wide. "Have you no faith in Cirronian physiology, Mel?"
She chuckled again, this time a little shakily. "Um ... Seems I'm going to be learning a lot about that."
For a long moment Cole traced her lips with his thumb, allowing the visual impact of her lovely smiling face to wash over him. The love and adoration he saw reflected in her eyes humbled him for it was exactly as he'd always hoped it would be. He committed every detail to memory to save, to savor, to lose himself in. His fingertips caressed her brows, her cheeks, followed the curve of her jaw to the point of her chin, then he focused his attention on her wonderful mouth, lifting it to his. His Mel tasted so very sweet. And her body was so warm and soft against his. Everything about his Mel was soft and sweet and deliciously inviting.
His Mel. His.
Held close in the warm circle of Cole's strong arms, her lips melded to his, Mel felt that no time, no place, no nothing else existed except this endless moment they were finally sharing, the delirious feeling of Cole kissing her as no one had ever kissed her, of his hands melting into warm continuous motion as they glided over her on an unhindered, unhurried journey of exploration, drawing her into the growing heat of his body. To feel not only his hands but his entire body pulsing out the energies that had once only been given to her throat was magical. He murmured her name as she moved against him, his liquid-soft eyes glowing luminescent with love and tenderness, regarding her as if she were a rare and priceless gift, a treasure meant for him and him alone.
Mel welcomed him with everything she was, pouring herself against him, her voice melting over him, encouraging him to take whatever he wanted, to let her give it all to him. She couldn't remember ever burning like this, not from mere lust or the need for simple release, not to give or receive pleasure, but to find something that a union of bodies alone could only partially fulfill.
Cole needed to fill himself with every inch of every sensation of her. And he had a burning need deep in his soul to make this last as long as he could, to give her as much of himself as he could, to have them both cherish every moment of their joining as long as they possibly could. He ran his hands over her, his senses discovering her, his mouth painting her heating flesh, breathing in the heady female musk scent of her and drowning himself in her. Caressed to a state of mindless delirium, Mel was no longer a being of flesh and blood, but one of total sensation stretching out to forever and unable to hold on.
Cole captured her hand, pressing it over his heart as he entered her, needing to bury himself as deeply into her as he could get so that the lines between them would vanish and they'd meld into one, needing her to somehow feel the depth of his emotions through the imperfect medium of the human body. She clung to him, crying and screaming his name as she dissolved, as all the world stopped, then exploded in blinding hot whiteness with a long, shuddering, undulating orgasm that seared and shattered the length and depth of her from her head to her toes and back again.
He went very still, clinging to her, burying his face in the crook of her neck, desperately trying to bank the raging fires of need and want burning through him that were too soon building to an excruciating boil, trying to find a balance in this sea of pleasure so intense it was almost beyond endurance, trying gain some modicum of control, the struggle playing out in the vibrating tension of his body, in his harsh breath coming in short ragged pants, heating her throat.
Words couldn't possibly convey the full intensity of what Mel was feeling, and the only other way she knew to express them to him was in the language of her body. She cupped his face in her hands to plunder his mouth with her tongue while rocking her hips and grinding them up against him, driving him so deep within her that he was reduced to whimpering down her throat and it was no longer possible for him to remain motionless. All but sobbing, Cole began thrusting again, his strokes now long, slow and deep. Mel wrapped herself around him, her arms embracing his shoulders, her legs encircling his hips, arching tight up against him completely submerged in the sensation of him. She kissed and caressed his face, his neck, his chest, his arms, back and shoulders, wherever she could reach. She couldn't seem to get close enough to him, wanting him all over her, in her, around her.
Mel became possessed by the rising heat of him, the blood set to boiling through her veins, rending her dumb, blind and deaf to everything but their hearts beating in unison, tangling the signatures of their lifeforces together. All sense of time and space disintegrated under the searing iron fire of his driving penetration, all sense of reality and logic vanished, all sense of separation denied. He was scorching her, relentlessly stoking her into a quivering caldron of liquid flame, incinerating her to raw ashes.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN HERE!?!" The indignant bellow from across the room was like the proverbial bucket of ice water, snapping Cole's head up with a startled yelp. Beneath him, Mel let out with a strangled sobbing groan.
Vic was standing in the bedroom's doorway, his white-knuckled hand still braced on the doorknob, his jaw hanging wide open in horrified dismay, his angry, disbelieving face flushing near-purple. "Mel!?!" his voice cracked into a higher register, making him sound like a querulous old woman.
Cursing under her breath, Mel eased Cole off and sat up, yanking at the tangled quilt to cover herself, inadvertently pulling most of it off of Cole in the process.
"Vic!" Mel finally managed with as much dignity as she could muster. "What are you doing here!?!" Cole was mumbling what sounded like some very juicy swear words of his own in what didn't much seem like Cirronian. Whatever the language, he was clearly pissed off. Remembering how he had once thrown a convenience store clerk fifteen feet across a parking lot just for stopping him when he'd shoplifted a candy bar, she quickly put a restraining hand on his arm, just in case.
"I I came over to see you, to ask if you wanted to go out for breakfast, to " Vic colored even deeper as Cole abandoned any pointless attempt at behaving with human modesty with the small bit of quilt available to him and simply sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and glaring at him as he reached for his discarded sweatpants on the floor. "I did ring!" Vic hurriedly added. "I swear I did! But there was no answer!"
"Mel, perhaps I should just " Cole began, his voice so low and tight it was nearly a growl.
"No!" she snapped, throwing him an almost pleading don't you dare do a thing' look. "Just ... just stay here. This is my problem, not yours. I'll take care of it." She groped for her terry robe while trying to keep the quilt tucked under her armpits, all under Vic's embarrassed yet intense scrutiny.
Robe finally on and securely belted, Mel gave Vic a none-too-gentle shove out of her bedroom, marching him down the hall in tense, ominous silence as Cole was left tieing the drawstring of his sweatpants. He indecisively paced around the room for a half minute as two separate instincts warred him in completely opposite directions. The voice of long experience with strong-willed Cirronian females clearly told him to just stay put exactly as ordered and allow Mel to handle this situation her way. But the older, more primitive and most immediately compelling voice was demanding he go out there and bodily escort Vic to the door, ideally kicking him down the stairwell to send him on his merry way. Inasmuch as this entire situation intimately involved him, he compromised by assuming an inconspicuous station in the hallway by the kitchen, bringing him close enough to the living room to overhear the conversation, but allowing him to remain out of sight.
There was a strained and awkward silence between Mel and Vic that was palpable, then
"Well? What have you got to say for yourself?" Vic loudly demanded, assuming the role of the injured party. "Come on! Let's hear it!"
"Me? You're the one who came barging unannounced into my home, into my bedroom, yet! It seems to me you should be the one providing the explanations. And offering up groveling apologies. How dare you!"
"For God's sake, Mel! We're practically engaged, and yet I find you're screwing that that idiot savant! Under my nose, yet! How long have you been lying to me about the two of you?"
"Not that it's any of your business, but this was our first time."
"DAMN! Look, okay. I understand you're nervous at the thought of our getting married. Last fling and all. So I can forgive you for it. But he's got to go and go NOW! I want him out of here, out of our lives and GONE! This can't ever ..."
"No, Vic, it's you who doesn't seem to understand. You and I are not practically engaged'. In fact, you and I will never be engaged, so there's no reason for me to be nervous at the thought of our getting married'. I told you repeatedly: I'm not going to marry you."
"But you promised you'd think about it!"
"And I did think about it, Vic, even though the only reason I promised at all was to get you off my case, because you refused to take a direct no' for an answer, because that was the only answer you'd let me give you, the only one you'd accept."
There was a long silence.
"Sweetheart?" Vic's voice had softened to the point that Cole was straining to hear. "Do you hear yourself? You're not making much sense. You're thinking with your body, not with your brain. I'll concede that the Martian in there might be a good lay – okay, maybe he's even a sensational lay – but that isn't what's important. What is important is that he can't possibly offer you all that I can, he doesn't know you like I do, he will never understand ..."
Cole edged marginally closer, restraining himself from interfering only by exercising considerable self-control as he crossed his arms, gripped his biceps and leaned back against the kitchen's doorjamb, listening intently. He hadn't known of Vic's proposal, but couldn't in any way blame him for loving Mel or wanting to marry her. He didn't harbor any feelings of anger or ill-will toward the Detective at all. His anger, he realized, was entirely directed at himself, at the depth of distraction (that horrible word again!) he'd permitted himself. If anything, he'd badly underestimated how very much of a distraction human intimacy can be. Mel had so fully consumed his senses that he'd never heard the doorbell ring, never even heard or sensed Vic's approach at all.
And this time it had only been Vic, a mere human who had completely surprised him without needing any stealth at all. The next time it could well be one or more of the felons closing in on them with lethal intent. And they knew how to be very stealthy.
Sorrow, pain and regret threatened to overwhelm him as the newly-born promise of a renewed life abruptly died within him. Cole's mind shifted from a brief burst of denial into a state of deep, leaden numbness that cauterized the knowledge that his heart had just been gouged from his chest. For he and Mel, there could never be a next time.
"Please, Vic," Mel's voice was becoming tense. "I don't need your brand of protective nurturing. I need respect. I need to be listened to. I need to know that I'm valued for who and what I am. I need to feel that I'm a part of something, that I well and truly belong. Those are the very things you've always seemed to have trouble providing on my terms. Now, please! Give me back my spare keys and just leave."
"Oh, Mel, sweetheart, come on," Vic wheedled. "You're exaggerating. You know there's always been something very special between the two of us "
"Yes there is, Vic. Very special. Friendship. You and I are not meant for the long haul as anything other than dear friends. As a couple we've only ever worked in spurts. Now, leave. Please."
"Mel, if you would just ..."
"Dammit! Why won't you ever really listen to me? Let go of me "
Cole finally stepped into the living room. "Vic! You're going to have to let her go. You can't force Mel's attentions to be as you wish them to be. And you well know it."
"You!" Vic spun around to fully face Cole, his hands balling into fists.
Cole held up his own hands in a gesture of appeasement. "No, Vic," he said mildly. "You really don't want to fight me. And I certainly will not fight you." For a long moment the two men faced each other across the silence of the living room, Vic struggling with acceptance, Cole waiting patiently for what must be, both drowning in their own internal flood of grief.
Mel looked from one to the other, then stared hard at Cole, reading the despair written in the resignation of his posture, in the unshed pain of hopeless longing swimming in his eyes. She began to tremble as the cold, implacable reality of it settled over her. What a cruel and terrible joke life can be. To know the desire, to experience the love, but to only be permitted to share it for one very brief moment in time. She knew with certainty that the past few hours were all she and Cole would ever have together. And she knew that Vic had shown both of them why it had to be that way.
"Sweetheart, I'm so sorry," Vic was brokenly sobbing. "I love you. But what a selfish, inconsiderate, possessive jerk I've been."
Mel wrapped her arms around him, holding him in a close embrace, soothing him, her own tears spilling in abundance for the three of them. "Shhh! It's okay, Vic. I understand ... And love you, too. You must know that."
Cole caught Mel's eyes a final time and gave her a faint smile, then headed for his War Room, leaving Mel and Vic alone to mend the strained bonds of their friendship.
