Mickey Reichert: The beasts of Barakhai

Together, they sank onto her bed.

BENTON Collins lay flopped across Carrie Quinton's bed, basking in the afterglow and the wonder of the whole situation. A smart, beautiful woman wanted me. He stared around the canopy at the painted stars ignited by the faint light the torches provided. Hours ago, he would never have believed such a thing could happen. Now, the whole world seemed to have changed.

Quinton made a sound of contentment, which sent a wave of joy thrilling through Collins. He could count the number of times he had made love, now no longer on just one hand; but he still considered himself inexperienced. He had done his best with Quinton, holding out as long as he could, but the whole session had still lasted less than fifteen minutes. It delighted him to think he had satisfied her, too.

A trickle of guilt disrupted his joy, its source uncertain. Marlys remained far from his thoughts. He had assumed their relationship was over before he had even come to Barakhai. The fact that they had not officially broken up had to do only with his inability to contact her. The true wonder was that the relationship had lasted as long as it did. Once he realized that Marlys had nothing to do with the sensation pressing against his conscience, he puzzled over it. Some frail corner of his mind told him he had found his soul mate, and it was not Carrie Quinton.

The thought seemed madness. He and Quinton had everything in common: background, interests, sexual attraction. It seemed almost as if the world had conspired to bring them together.

Quinton sat up, reaching for her clothes. "Penny for your thoughts."

Collins studied her, the torchlight just right to capture proper details and hide the flaws. Her face held a natural radiance that required no cosmetics. The curls, disheveled from their lovemaking, looked even more attractive tousled. Pale as blue-tinted pearls, her eyes remained striking. Her large breasts, perky with youth, still excited him, even with his manhood freshly spent. Even the antiquated phrasing of her question did not seem strange or nerdish. "You're beautiful," he said.

Quinton pulled on her dresslike undergarments, then the actual dress, smoothing the skirting around her hips and thighs. "I'm intelligent, too."

Collins swallowed, afraid he had just made a fatal mistake. "Well, of course. But that goes without saying." Uncertain whether he had rescued himself yet, he added, "Ol' D-Mark insists on the brightest."

"Including you?"

Choosing humor over modesty, Collins simply said. "Well, of course." Then, finding a way to use both, he added, "Though he couldn't be quite as picky after you disappeared. Everyone thought he'd driven you to run."

"So that's what happened." Quinton laughed. "At least no one's worried about me." She pulled on the gold chain with the dragon stone.

Collins' gaze latched onto the crystal, and sudden shame slapped him. He had allowed a tryst to distract him from his mission. "I'd venture to guess your mother's worried."

Quinton's lips pursed tightly. "I don't have a mother."

The words seemed nonsensical. "Everyone has a mother." Collins reached for his own clothing.

Quinton grunted. "Squeezing a child out the birth canal doesn't make a woman a mother."

Collins pulled on his loose-fitting trousers and tied them without bothering to look at his hands. "My biology training says you're wrong."

"Well my sixteen years in seven foster homes trumps your biology training."

All humor disappeared. "Oh."

"Oh."

"I didn't know." Properly chastised, Collins reached for his tunic. "I'm sorry."

"For the first two years of my life, the woman who claimed to be my mother left me crying in a crib for hours while she went out and parried." A shadow fell over Quinton's face. "They gave her four years to straighten out her life enough to get me back. Four years. An eternity for a kid. By the time they realized she wouldn't, I was too old for an adoptive family. In those days, they only wanted babies."

"I'm sorry," Collins repeated, wishing he had never raised the subject. It clearly hurt her. "You've done amazingly well on your own, given the circumstances you came from." Suddenly, his own problems did not seem significant at all.

"I realized she was rotten by the time I was three, but it took an army of social workers four years to figure out the same thing." Quinton finger-combed her tangled locks. "That convinced me I was smart. I always knew I'd make it through college, though without scholarships, jobs, loans, and lab assistanceships, I'd never have made it."

"You're incredible," Collins said as he put on his glasses, meaning it. "Resourceful, determined, intelligent, and beautiful." He smiled. "And damned good in bed."

Quinton winced. "I don't know why I told you that. Since I got off on my own at eighteen, I've never told anyone."

Her confession made Collins feel even closer than their lovemaking had. "I have a confession to make, too."

Quinton turned him a look of innocent questioning. "What?"

"I can get us home."

"You can?" Quinton's tone sounded guarded, not the pure excitement Collins expected.

Nevertheless, he continued. "All I need is the crystal." He reached out a finger and stroked the smooth stone around her neck.

Quinton did not flinch. "I don't understand."

"What's to understand?" Collins' voice gained all the excitement Quinton's lacked. "With the crystal, I can get us back to our own world."

Quinton shook her head slightly. "Ben, this is my world."

"This…?" Collins' grin vanished. "This-don't be ridiculous. I can get us home. To Earth." Doubting they had actually left the planet, he amended, "Back to civilization."

Quinton clenched her hands in her lap.

Collins studied her in silence for several moments.

Quinton stared at her intertwined hands. "I don't want to leave"

"But, Carrie-"

"I feel more at home here than I ever did there."

Collins wanted to say something, anything, to rouse Quinton. The idea that she would like Barakhai better than home had never occurred to him. "What if you got appendicitis?"

Carrie pointed to her right hip. "Appendectomy. Age nine."

"All right. Needed your tonsils out."

Quinton's hand went to her throat. "Tonsillectomy. Age six."

Frustrated, Collins tried something that could happen more than once. "What if you broke your leg?"

Finally, Quinton looked directly at Collins. "They do have healers here, you know. They handle broken bones all the time."

Collins huffed out a sigh. "Do they handle cancer?"

"No," Quinton admitted. "But I'd rather take my chances raising the dragons until they can heal me than getting poisoned with chemotherapy and radiation."

The dragons. Collins had almost forgotten them. Once the king's adviser/geneticist raised and trained them, King Terrin might as well be invincible.

"Carrie, please. I do want to go home. Can't you just let me have the stone for me?"

The pallid eyes narrowed to slits, then she dropped her head wearily. "Ben, I have another confession."

Collins fell silent, not certain he wanted to hear it.

Quinton's fingers twined like snakes in her lap. "When I first brought you up here, I just wanted to get some information out of you."

Collins closed his eyes, dreading the rest.

"But I found myself really attracted to you. Then, one thing led to another, and I never did ask any questions and…" She broke off suddenly. "Please look at me."

Liking the turn her admission seemed to be taking, Collins obeyed.

"I want you to stay," Quinton said with raw sincerity. "King Terrin wants you to stay and advise him. You'd have a life of luxury, the life of a prince."

Collins shook his head. "I-"