Chapter Thirteen
Disorientation swept over Annika the moment she woke and opened her eyes.
She was instantly aware, for instance, that she was stark naked because she could feel the hair of the animal skin she was wrapped in prickling her bare skin and making her itch.
And sleeping naked wasn’t a habit.
Beyond that the walls, floor, and ceiling of the place where she found herself bore no resemblance to a cave—any cave that she had ever seen—certainly not the one she’d grown used to in the past weeks since Zhor had rescued her.
Very little light reached to the place where she lay on the floor and she lay wondering for a few moments if that was because it was way too early to consider getting up or if the light simply couldn’t make its way inside because of the narrowness of the opening—or if the weather was inclement.
Her mind discarded that speculation fairly quickly, though, and gathered the memories from the night before.
Which she discovered she wasn’t entirely ready to examine.
And then the memories that preceded those flooded her mind and went into a replay loop.
It was as she was reliving the horror of their flight for perhaps the dozenth time that she recalled something that had been teasing her but that hadn’t managed to form completely until that moment.
She’d heard the sound of machines as Zhor dove from the mouth of the cave with her!
She tried her best to dismiss it—because by her best guess nothing should have arrived yet—unless maybe they’d sent a rescue party to search for the downed ship—but the longer she puzzled over the sounds she hadn’t even attempted to identify at the time the more certain she was that that was exactly what she’d heard!
It made complete sense from the standpoint of motivation for Zhor’s sudden desire to leave the area even if it made no sense at all from the standpoint of company procedure!
Hard upon that certainty was the realization that she now strongly suspected this was not a righteous find—that it was going to become a political nightmare—and she was going to end up losing her job because the company was going to lose their ass!
Which meant the circumstances of dismissal would destroy any chance of getting another position like it.
It wasn’t as if Mertz Inc. was the only company actively and aggressively searching for new resources, but they damned sure weren’t going to give her a good recommendation if this enterprise was a bust—which meant she had just shit-canned her entire career, not just this job!
They weren’t going tocarethat she hadn’t been able to contact them and give them a heads up before they invested millions! The bottom line was all that mattered to them.
Oh my god she was so screwed if she couldn’t figure out some way to fix things!
* * * *
Zhor did not know what he had expected of their lovemaking the previous night but having Ah-na give him suspicious, speculative looks as if she was accusing him of something was certainly not it!
He had not touched her since that first time, gods damn it! He had waited for her to come to him, to show him that she was willing to accept him!
And it had been no easy task, gods damn it!
Granted they had been chased by a conkerrie who had spotted them almost the moment he had left therookeand he supposed that she was somewhat shaken up by that narrow escape. But he had lain with her until she had recovered from that fright! He had kept her warm, soothed her, and done his best to convey that he would protect her to the best of his ability. There had been no sexual overtures on his part until she had begun to move against him sensuously, until she had lifted her face in offering.
She could not claim that she was too distraught to trust her judgment!
But then, of course, it occurred to him that his dim memories of females did not lead him to expect reasonable behavior from females!
And his Ah-nawasa female even if she was an alien female!
* * * *
It was barely dawn when they left what Annika discovered was a hollow in one of the giant trees that dominated the forests on this world—or at least what she’d seen of the forests—a people sized woodpecker hole, she thought, and then hoped like hell that wasn’t what it actually was.
Therewasthe possibility of giant animals—and/or insects, though, she realized. There had been giants more than once in Earth history and she had no idea what stage of development this world was in or how the environment might affect developing species. The focus of the probes that had been sent was to search for valuable resources—this was a commercial enterprise not a scientific expedition.
But unless Zhor was unique among his people, he was significantly larger than the average human male—which pointed to larger ‘things’ in general, particularly since, from what she could tell of the other dominate race on the planet, thezorphwere also a larger species than humans.
