Prince of Time

Zeke shook his head. His wonder at the volatile local temperament turned to paranoia as he righted the table and searched the floor. His disk had vanished.

* * *

AS CASSIE CRADLED her injured hand in her lap, she swiveled her chair toward the door where she’d entered. It was still wide open. For a wild moment she pictured herself dashing down the tunnel and into the cave of snow. She wanted to get away from this place. More than that, she wanted to get away from the man sleeping on the floor before he woke up and something else happened.

What?

She’d never felt so off balance. Or so open to possibilities. The combination left her feeling breathless. Yet escape was not an option. She’d simply be right back where she’d started a few hours ago. Trapped under an avalanche.

So whether she liked it or not, she was going to have to stay here and cope. With the mysterious environment. With its even more mysterious occupant. Thorn.

Cassie licked her dry lips. Was he the enemy?

All at once she remembered a weird situation she’d walked into back in college. She’d been in the almost-empty library during Christmas vacation because she was trying to get an extra-credit paper finished. Two male students had come up to the soda machine while she was taking a break. One was wearing scruffy jeans and a T-shirt with holes. The other sported an expensive sweater and stone-washed Calvins.

After they left, a guy who’d been watching from the corner sidled up and started asking a bunch of questions about which of the previous pair she thought was more likely to succeed in college.

She’d thought the questions odd and started to leave. He’d begged her to help him out because he was doing an experiment for a psychology class on women’s expectations of men based on their clothing. Cassie had gotten away as quickly as she could.

In a lot of ways, this setup felt similar. She could almost imagine a team of scientists watching the action on television and scoring her responses on a scale from one to ten. How would she react to the naked man? What would she do when she discovered they couldn’t communicate? What about when it looked as if he was dying?

Cassie sat up straighter. “Okay. I’ve figured it out. The experiment’s over,” she said to the room. “You can let me go home.”

No speaker crackled to life. No doors opened, and her mouth firmed in disappointment. It was followed at once by an ironic little laugh. She hadn’t really expected a response, had she? She hoped she wasn’t that far gone.

This wasn’t a case of getting trapped in the college library by a dorky grad student trawling for victims. She’d been caught in an avalanche and almost died. Her guide was probably under a ton of snow.

And there was one more factor she’d been trying not to think about. Her own compulsion to come here. She shivered. She’d pulled strings to get this assignment—fought for it in ways that were completely out of character for her. And ever since she’d arrived, she’d had a sense she was fulfilling a destiny written in the stars long ago.

Nonsense, she told herself.

Standing too quickly, she reached to steady herself against the desk. At the last second she cursed and pulled her hand from harm’s way, taking a step back.

Automatically she glanced at Thorn to see if he’d heard. Then she cursed again at the double stupidity. He was out cold. Even if he could hear, he wouldn’t understand.

She grimaced. Every way she twisted and turned in this bizarre place, she came up against a new problem. She didn’t like having no control. And she didn’t like waiting for someone to wake up and tell her which machines were safe to touch. Particularly a man. Her father had made damn sure of that.

Unable to stand still while her mind spun in circles, Cassie stomped toward the room where Thorn had closeted himself before rushing to grab the medicine bottle. She’d heard water running while he was inside. Odds were it was a kitchen or a bathroom.

But after crossing the threshold, she stopped short. It took a moment to orient herself. There was a funnel-shaped object coming out of the floor. A toilet? She peered into the hole. No water. And no flushing mechanism.

What might be a sink was a shallow trough jutting out of the wall. Then she caught a glance at her reflection in the mirror above it. Instead of being flat, the image was three-dimensional.

She stood very still and pressed her fingers against the surface. It felt hard and flat. Yet the rectangle displayed her head and shoulders as if she were looking at a brilliantly clear holographic image. Eyes wide, she swung from side to side, noting that she could practically see the back of her head—as well as every imperfection in her skin.

Who would go to the trouble of using advanced holographic technology on a bathroom mirror, Cassie wondered as she gazed at the startling image.

With a shrug she looked for water taps. There were none. But when she brought her hand over the trough, water sprayed from hidden nozzles in the wall. It was warm. With a little experimentation, she found that by bringing her hand closer to the wall or moving it farther away, she could adjust the temperature.

What looked like decorative columns above the sink turned out to be two stacks of lightweight tumblers fitted into grooves in the wall. Cassie filled a glass and took a cautious sip. To her pleasure, the water tasted as if it had come from a crystal-clear mountain stream. Well, at least that was something.

“So who designed this place?” she asked her unconscious companion as she emerged again. “Is the Defense Department using it to test advanced technologies? Are you training for an invasion of Mars? Or is this like in World War II when they used Native American languages as a communications code? Is that your background?”

She looked inquiringly at the slant of his closed eyes and the copper color of his skin. “No answers? What a surprise.”

However, he stirred restlessly in his sleep, his mouth drawn as if in pain.

Instantly she was contrite. He wasn’t responsible for what had happened to her. In fact, he’d seemed as confounded by the situation as she. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” Kneeling beside him, she smoothed back the straight black hair that had fallen across his forehead. Not a military haircut, she noted absently as she fingered the strands. They were surprisingly silky.

She should stop touching him. Yet she craved the contact. It was because they were trapped here together, she told herself. Because he was the only other person in this alien place and they needed each other to survive. Yet she knew that didn’t fully explain the tightness in her throat. The worry. The fear of loss. She felt those things for this man called Thorn, whether she admitted it or not.

Her gaze took in more details. His lashes were even darker than his hair. His features spoke of maturity, yet his skin was almost unlined, except around his eyes. Awake, he’d been forceful, antagonistic, even harsh. Sleeping, he looked peaceful. And defenseless. She couldn’t stop herself from gently touching his lips. They moved against her fingers, responding to the intimate contact, and the movement sent a little shiver up her arm.

Cassie pulled her hand away, yet she didn’t want to sever the human contact. Flattening her fingers against his chest, she felt his heartbeat once more. The rhythm was sure and steady. His breathing was normal. Abandoning medical observations, she slipped inside the front closing of his coat and stroked her fingers through the thick hair of his chest.

“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” she whispered. “We’re both in trouble. Are you going to tell me about it?”

Cassie hardly expected an answer. She certainly didn’t expect Thorn’s hand to cover hers. But it did. Her gaze shot to his face. His blue eyes were open, and he was staring at her with a look of mingled wonder and wariness.

* * *

THORN REMEMBERED every detail of the few minutes he’d spent with this woman—starting with the moment he’d stepped out of the delta capsule.

Things had happened quickly. Too quickly. Ending with long, agonizing seconds when he’d known he was going to die, and he’d called out to the two people who mattered most to him. His heart squeezed painfully, and he pushed their images away. If he started thinking about what might have happened to Reah and Januk, he’d go insane.

So he focused every particle of his attention on the woman who crouched over him. She’d saved his life by getting the ribenazine into him.

Why? Had she been acting under Lodar’s instructions to make the captive drop his defenses by saving his life? Perhaps he was being too cynical.

Whatever her goal, he sensed the tension radiating from her in almost palpable waves. Of course, she had good reason to be afraid. Of him. Of this place. Either she was playing a very dangerous game or she’d stumbled into a situation completely beyond her ken.

He sat up and leaned against the supply cabinet, wincing at the stab of pain that felt like a nail being driven into his forehead. When he tried to get to his feet, the woman put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“No.”

It wasn’t difficult to guess the meaning of the short syllable she uttered. It was more than a polite suggestion—it was an order.

With an inward sigh, he conceded the point. Relaxing as best he could, he looked at her inquiringly. She met his gaze steadily, a bold move for a native woman. If that’s what she was.

He studied her face. She was very beautiful, with gently wavy hair the color of warm light cast by an oil lamp. It went well with the alabaster skin that bloomed with a hint of pink over her high cheekbones in response to his scrutiny. His gaze was drawn to her clear emerald eyes that at first glance seemed a little too large. They were just the opposite of her nose. It was small and delicate and entirely feminine. As feminine as the gentle curve of her mouth. He’d never seen anyone like her before. Anywhere.

He took the hand from his shoulder and looked at the back. Her fingers were long, tapered, smooth—and strong, he added, remembering her grip on his jaw when she’d been trying to get the medicine into him. Her nails were rounded and buffed. No, he amended as he smoothed his thumb across their surface. They were coated with a shiny, transparent substance he’d never seen before.

She shivered under his touch, but didn’t draw away or lower her eyes.

“Ah, you are very bold, Cassie,” he said in his own tongue, wishing she could grasp his meaning, wishing he could gauge her reaction.

She responded to her name with a tiny twitch of her lips. He pushed her a little further, shifting his grip to find her pulse. The beats accelerated.