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  Lauren could hardly believe it. Her heart started pounding like crazy with a dizzying mixture of hope and fear. “You…you mean it? Xairn do you really mean it? You’ll stay with me on Earth? You won’t leave?” She got on her knees in front of him and cupped his face in both hands. “Look in my eyes and tell me again,” she begged. “Please, I need to hear it again.”

  He looked at her, his blue-green eyes filled with pain. “I am completely serious—I will stay with you. But…”

  “But what?” Lauren looked at him anxiously. “I thought I owned you—there are conditions?”

  “Not conditions so much as requests.” Xairn still looked pained. “I will stay with you for as long as you want me but I would ask that we limit our physical contact. And that there should be nothing…” he swallowed. “Nothing sexual between us.”

  “What?” Lauren shook her head. “Xairn, honey, we can’t be in a relationship with no touching. I don’t know if you noticed but I’m a really touchy person.” She ran her hands down the smooth column of his neck and over his broad shoulders to illustrate her point. “I mean, I just can’t help myself—I need contact. And I bet you do too. Don’t you like it when I touch you?”

  “I do.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple moving convulsively. “Much more than I should. Please, Lauren, this request is for your own safety.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” she said, squeezing his shoulders. “Not a bit. I feel safer with you than I ever have with anyone else in my whole life.”

  “Well you shouldn’t.” He looked frustrated. “Don’t you know by now what your touch does to me? How even the lightest brush of your fingertips across my skin makes me react? I can’t trust myself with you, Lauren. And you…you shouldn’t trust me either.”

  Lauren let out a surprised burst of laughter. “Xairn, be serious! You don’t honestly think you’re going to snap and rape me, do you?”

  He closed his eyes tightly and pulled away from her hands. “That is exactly what I fear,” he whispered.

  Lauren was a little taken aback. “Xairn, honey, you would never…”

  “How do you know what I would or wouldn’t do?” he demanded, his eyes flashing briefly red-on-black. “When I don’t even know myself? I only know the ways of my people, Lauren, and they are savage and sadistic.” He ran a hand through his thick black hair distractedly. “I don’t even know how to touch you, how to bring you pleasure instead of pain. I don’t know how to let you touch me without wanting to do things…things I do not even wish to think about.”

  “Then let me teach you.”

  “What?”

  Lauren reached out to cup his face again and was relieved when he didn’t pull away. “Of course you don’t know how to touch or be touched,” she said softly, looking into his eyes. “Not after the way you were raised. So I’m going to teach you.” She stroked his cheek. “And I promise you, baby, we can go as slow as you want.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “But what if I lose control? If I hurt you, I could never forgive myself. I would want to die.”

  “You’re not going to hurt me,” Lauren insisted. “You keep talking about the ways of your people but you’ve got some of me in you now, too. Look at yourself, Xairn—you don’t have to be afraid. Surely the human DNA you got from me will help control your Scourge impulses—don’t you think?”

  He opened his eyes and frowned. “I hadn’t considered that. Maybe…maybe you’re right.” He looked so hopeful and uncertain that Lauren wanted to hug him and hold him close but somehow she restrained herself.

  “Of course I’m right,” she said firmly. “For now, lets just get home and everything will be fine.”

  “I hope so.” He shook his head. “I truly do, though I’m afraid this will end badly. I know I should have the strength to leave you—”

  “Don’t you dare!” Lauren glared at him. “Don’t even think about it.”

  A small, sad smile crossed his lips. “Let me finish my thought, please. I was going to say that I know I should leave you but I can’t.” He gave her a piercing look. “I can’t.”

  “Good.” Lauren stroked his cheek. “And don’t worry, Xairn, whatever issues you have, we’ll work through them together. I promise.”

  Xairn nodded and sighed. Hesitantly, he reached up to brush his hand over her shoulder. “Thank you, Lauren. For accepting me as I am.”

  “Thank you for protecting me,” she said quietly. “For taking the pain that should have been mine. For leaving your home and everything you’ve ever known to come with me.” Leaning forward, she pressed her mouth to his in a careful, chaste kiss. “I love you,” she whispered against his lips.

  She felt his big frame tremble and then he returned her kiss tentatively, his mouth moving over hers with a shy uncertainty that nearly broke her heart. “I…I love you as well, Lauren.” His voice was hoarse with emotion and she wondered if she was the only woman he had ever said those words to. Almost certainly she was. God how she wanted to pull him close and comfort him, to show him that everything was going to be all right! To prove to him that he could trust himself as she trusted him. But she sensed now wasn’t the time for that.

  “Good,” she said lightly, pulling away with a smile. “Then let’s go home.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The AllFather tapped his skeletal fingers against the arm of his black metal throne. It was etched in burning lines of poisonous green, made of the same tainted metal he employed in his nutrient slime. Much of his power was derived from this small reminder of his home world but most of it was inside him, gathered in the empty barren wasteland that should have held his heart.

  Where can they be? Where will he take her? He frowned. Why, to her home of course—to that insignificant planet of hers, that is where she will wish to go. But how can I find them in their altered genetic states? How? What weakness can I exploit to bring them back?

  Then again, why should he bother? His peak was past and would not return again for many years. He couldn’t breed the girl as he had originally intended. The prophesy was voided—all hope for the regeneration of the Scourge race was lost.

  May you be damned, my son. I will bring you back if only for revenge.

  But when he considered it, he realized that revenge was not the only reason he had to call his errant son back to the Fathership. He had felt…changes in Xairn during their last encounter. His son was maturing—coming into his own sexually as a Scourge male at last. For years the AllFather had doubted it would ever happen, but the human female had acted as a trigger, undoing years of repression and releasing the beast within.

  And with the advent of his growing sexual energy, Xairn’s personal power would grow as well. He might even come to rival the AllFather himself, in time. Power like that could not be ignored. It must be dealt with and soon. But how?

  The altered DNA would keep him from finding and linking to Xairn—if the alteration held. But Scourge genes were strong—as virulent as weeds in a garden which grew high and fast, choking the other plants and flowers around them. Such genes might be masked for a little while but violent emotions should bring them forth again. But how to evoke those emotions when he didn’t know exactly where his son was and couldn’t get through the Kindred’s security net around the planet to search for him?

  For security measures around Earth had been tightened considerably—not even a small transport pod containing an urlich could get through. And only Kindred ships were allowed in and out of the net—a fact that Xairn had no doubt considered when taking one of those, instead of a Scourge ship, when he’d left the home world with Lauren in the first place.

  “Even if I found him, I could not get to him,” the AllFather muttered, frowning with his lipless mouth. “I mussst draw him out—bring him to me. But how? How?” Suddenly it came to him—a solution so obvious he began to laugh—a high, hissing sound that made his personal guards turn their heads warily in his direction. “What need have I to draw him out? To evoke emoti