When his tongue stroked her lips to request entrance, everything changed.
Fire ignited over her face, only to drop in molten, liquid need down through her throat and chest. The desire to taste of him overwhelmed her and she forgot everything about everything. Nothing could possibly matter. Not in the face of this amazing sensation. She opened her mouth and with a quick winding of her arms behind his neck she surged up into him. She sank her tongue between his lips and tasted him long and deep and aggressively until she could feel his hands sweeping around to her back and gripping her so tightly she could barely draw breath.
Asia was no stranger to sex or any of its components. She used it in short, sharp bursts to take off edginess or when batteries and a vibrator just couldn’t cut it. It was, to her, a perfunctory and often dissatisfying act that she had learned to go longer and longer without. Whether it was her coldness or poor choices of partners that made it that way, she had never bothered to examine.
But this was a completely different level of physical intimacy, and she knew it right away. The scorch marks across her soul were telling enough on their own, but there was the sheer physical heat that really burned her to awareness. Everything, from the touch of his hands to the tangle of his tongue, was like wrestling with pure fire. Her back abruptly hit a wall as his hands slid over silver silky fabric and the eager, begging skin and nerves beneath. She cried out in relief and pleasure when he finally cupped her breasts in his large, hot hands. He ground his hips forward against her, introducing her to the huge and solid bulge behind his zipper, and she was wildly overcome with the urge to scramble up his body, spread her legs around him, and beg him to do her.
But before she could follow the madcap impulse, he jerked away from her, ripping his mouth from the kiss and dropping his hands from her breasts. He took two steps back, each one jolting over her like rejecting slaps. She fought the rushing surge of desolate tears that welled into her eyes, and confusion beat through her. Half of her wanted to know why he had left and longed for him to return; the other half wanted to know what in hell had just happened to her.
“There will always be a you and me,” he rasped, his voice gravelly with his caged need as his hands fisted again. Numbly, Asia realized he was gripping himself to keep from grabbing her again. “Understand that, if nothing else.” He paused to take a steadying breath, giving her the time to blink dazedly at the way every man in the room seemed to be withdrawn into himself and most had turned away to afford what little privacy there could be. “Listen carefully,” Julian warned her. “We are not human. Though we are corporeal and as you see us now, the central core of our existence is in the pure energy we gather and harvest to nourish our life-forces. Our young, especially, are in need of this energy and feed from the elders of us like babes nursing at a mother’s breast. But we are weak. Starving. Colony after colony of us.”
As if he couldn’t help himself, he stepped close to her again and reached to stroke warm knuckles over her cheek, then turned his hand to run slow fingertips down her throat. His gaze seemed riveted to his own actions.
“Several decades ago a terrible plague ripped through this world. All were touched by it, but because it fed on the hormone estrogen, our men were best able to fight it off and recover. Our women were decimated by it. Then it came again a few decades later. And then again, until we are as you see us now.” He lifted a hand to indicate the room filled with grim male visages who listened to him explain all of this to her. “But it is worse than what you suppose, Asia. Far worse than just a matter of being unable to breed more children. You see, our women were, like the women of your own world, the more vibrant and positively emotional sex. They stimulated us in ways that produce things like passion, love, enjoyment, frustration, determination…the list goes on and on. These emotional energies are what recycle the energy of this plane so it can be fed into us full of nutrition and vitality once more.”
Julian drifted his warm touch across her bare shoulder and she was shocked to find how quickly her pulse shifted in excitement. The reaction confused her as well. She was starting to believe he wasn’t an axe murderer, but she shouldn’t be standing there literally panting for him when he was no better than some kind of kidnapping sex slaver.
“Yes, I suppose that is as good a description as any for what I do,” he agreed stiffly, making her gasp aloud.
Can he read my mind? Is he reading my every thought?
“No, zini. You are speaking out to us. Your energy is so profound that we can hear you well, even though you don’t yet know how to hear us. The louder the emotion in your thoughts, the better we can hear you. It radiates all down your body”—he paused to drop slow, hot eyes down the front of her figure until she imagined she could feel them burning into her skin—“and emanates out to us like an animated conversation. Soon you will learn how to hear us in this way.” He took hold of her wrist where she held it guardedly across her chest, a way of shielding her sudden sense of exposure. “But let’s return to my duties to these colonies and on Earth. You wanted to know what happened to those women? Why I chose them and not any of the others?”
Asia nodded, unable to make herself engage in the conversation in any other way. She was already feeling cornered and overloaded with information and input. She was the center of so much attention, and while she was used to that as an instructor, it was a very different feeling when she thought that what they wanted from her was quite a bit more intimate than jujitsu lessons. Worse, she was trapped by her lack of knowledge of where she was and a healthy dose of respectful fear for navigating a world that was alien to her.
She watched Julian turn his head to look back at the others in the tavern. After a moment, they all broke apart and returned to their tables and meals, but Asia was still very aware of their focus on her and Julian. Still, it was better now that they weren’t a wall of intensity crowded around her.
“I am a Gatherer,” he began abruptly as he turned back to catch her gaze with his own. “Gatherers were created a long time ago to hunt for energy resources needed to feed us regularly. It was a temporary solution, and one that had to be handled very carefully. You see, the most powerful resources of convertible energy are things like…like birth or death, joy and faith, war and…sex. Especially the sexual climax of a woman. Orgasm is harder and more complex for your sex to achieve, but it has a dynamic outburst of power that can energize hundreds of us at a time.
“Think of Gatherers as conductors. We…channel all of this from your world to ours. Unfortunately, the process of creating, and then what it takes in order to conduct it, is draining and sometimes even debilitating to the host. Just like rage or passion or any powerful emotion is draining. But because we then conduct it away from the human host it becomes even more exhaustive. Because of this, each human woman can only be a host once. To use her more than that will burn her out. It will make her ill and weak, perhaps even put her in a coma. If I choose improperly, it could even kill her.”
“That’s what you were doing? When you brought home those girls every night? You were…conducting their energy to here?”
He nodded. “They were volunteering, although they didn’t know exactly what for. Each came to me seeking an experience of pleasure, and I gave that to them in trade for the energy outburst that, if I didn’t guide it to here, would simply have been wasted. As long as I choose the right women, no harm comes to anyone and it is a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I can buy that. But what about those fourteen? The ones like me you brought here.”
That earned her a vague little smile. “Those thirteen women,” he said distinctively, clearly omitting her from the pack, “are the Chosen. You see, every so often there is a human female who has such a powerfully energetic psyche and such an overabundance of psychic energy and an insatiable sensuality that she could withstand conduction repetitively and hardly feel the difference in herself. Your sister, for example. She has such a vibrant life-for
ce that it is quite blinding. She was the most brilliant example of psychic plentitude that I had ever seen…until I saw you. I am not surprised you are related to Kenya. It shows in the strength of your auras.
“When I discover a woman capable of being Chosen, I take her for several nights. I carefully test her strength and ability to make repetitive donations of power. Then, once she falls asleep, I make her dream of this world. I include everything. The beauty, the dangers, the needs, and the hard, harsh realities we live with. This is what I wanted to do with you, as well. It is an informative introduction. Then I make a proposal. I make sure they realize that once they come here they can never come back. If they come here, they will be needed for their energy and, if they so choose, their fertility. But that last is a personal choice, Asia. None here are forced to breed any more than they would be in American society.”
“And you are trying to tell me my sister agreed to this? A life of…of fornicating for a society of energy parasites?”
The look that billowed across his features was dark and quite dangerous. Asia had to admit it probably hadn’t been wise to describe his people in such an unflattering manner, but she couldn’t believe her sister would willingly whore for a bunch of aliens!
“Your sister,” he hissed softly into her face, “is a generous and beautiful soul. In this trait, clearly you differ.” It was meant harshly, and Asia didn’t want it to sting as badly as it did, but it smarted fiercely just the same. Why would she care what his opinion of her was?
“Go to hell,” she spat back at him.
“Already there,” he rebounded, reaching to grasp her by an arm. He jerked her roughly away from the door, and then opened it with his free hand. Asia couldn’t help but envy the easy strength he did it with. She was no weakling, but it took the entire weight and momentum of her body to open or close one of those heavy doors.
When her feet were once again rushing over the unguarded walkways, she stopped struggling against his grip and quickly grew grateful for it. It still shattered her nerves to be so close to the edges of the paths. One almost deadly fall was enough to last her the rest of her life. Repeats weren’t necessary.
“I’m trying very hard to remember that you have had no exposure to this culture like you should have,” Julian growled, obviously angered by her remarks still.
“Don’t do me any favors,” she snapped.
His response was to speed up his steps and jerk her along. He was incredibly surefooted, she had to admit, as he walked the paths as if he were striding down the center of a six-lane highway. They abruptly stopped at another hut and he disengaged the heavy door and locks. He shoved her in ahead of himself and she stumbled over the saddle of the door. Catching herself quickly, she went to blast him for his rough handling. She was sick of it and refused to allow it for another second.
But before she could do that, she realized almost instantly that this place was somehow very different from a home or a pub. It took only a moment of her attention for the smell of the place and the racks of the beds to sink into her awareness. She covered her mouth in horror as she took in the sight of dozens of sick and obviously dying people. Mostly men, as expected, but there were women and a frightening number of children as well. The smell of decay and infection surrounded her, chased by the aroma of antiseptics trying to keep up with what was demanded of them.
“Oh my God…. Is this…that plague?”
“No!” he said roughly, his green eyes turning dim with pain. “I would never expose you to something like that.”
The queer thing was that his intensity and fear for her safety in his response were so believable. Why did he care so much about what happened to her?
Because he needed a woman, she recalled. They all did. She was like some kind of precious commodity, like a rare diamond, that needed to be guarded and protected at all costs. Only to them, she was far more fragile than a diamond.
“This,” he said with a sigh, “is starvation. Energy starvation. Energy is everything, Asia. It powers every single function of every living thing, and when the resource wanes or disappears, there is no longer any force there to propel things like…immune systems. Nervous systems. Respiratory, circulatory, ambulatory. It goes on, starting with one and cascading to all of the rest. Those hardest hit are the children who don’t know yet or have not the strength to steal their power from others.” He walked over to a bunk about chest high, and that buzzing sound filled her head again as he stroked back the hair of the pale-skinned little boy lying there. That was when she realized that buzz was the energy field they were using to communicate. Asia comprehended she could even determine that she was very aware of the power of Julian’s field, and the whimpering weakness of the boy who tried to respond. She suddenly wished she could understand what he was saying to the child. Did he know the boy personally? Watching small fingers curl around Julian’s branded wrist made him seem so damn tiny compared to the large, vital male standing over him.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered softly. “You are in perfect health, Julian. I saw many others who looked robust and fit enough. If you can conduct energy between worlds, why can’t you perform the simple act of feeding these children?”
“I am in perfect health because I need to be to do my work. I also get the first taste and blush of every ounce of energy I conduct. If I allowed myself to give away my strength and energy, I would fall as weak as these, and then who would give them what little they get now? Energy is shared out in a very specific order. Our leaders, the Ampliphi, and Gatherers are at the top of the chain. Then come the soldiers and the laborers who keep the colony secure, sound, and safe. By now, what remains is not very much, but it must go first to any natural-born females if the village has them. They are our future. Without them we may as well starve.” The point was hard and cold and left weighted on Asia as he turned to look at the boy. “By now all that is left is residue. Energy comes in grades, Asia. The beautiful flush of a woman in pleasure or in joy feeds pleasure and joy into those who drink of it. When that is used up, what is left behind is all those little taints that so many of your Earth females cling to even in the best of moments. Insecurity. Anger or vengeance against someone. Dark emotions and darker motivations. It hurts to feast on these things all of the time, but we do it or we starve. But it affects them, Asia. The elderly, the young boys, the infirm or handicapped, and of course, those who are criminal among us. These are fed this last residue in hopes it will be enough, but as you see, it never is.”
“But…you just need…” Asia swallowed down her abject horror. “You need more Gatherers. Or…or you should move your people to Earth!”
He laughed at that, but it wasn’t a kind or humorous sound. “Yes, because humans would be so welcoming of anyone or anything that was different than they were,” he retorted derisively. “All it would take is one child getting cut on a playground and it would be over. And do you not understand how selective Gatherers must be? If all we needed was any human or emotional energy, we could walk around all day funneling it at the rate your race pisses it away! But you are so volatile and violent, shifting from one emotion to the next in such rapid order it can hardly be followed. If I were a cruel man I would show you what the smallest residue of that filth can accomplish, never mind explosions of it. But still we take what we can of it because we have no choice. It must be pure and it must be powerful and it must have the right motives. We have been through every experimentation and option, and this was the only one that was safe and sound enough to leave no host harmed and feed the greatest number of our people the best level of energy available. Every colony has a Gatherer. Every Gatherer hunts for energy for their village in their own way with their own expertise. That energy is fed to the Ampliphi and they distribute it to everyone else in even and fair shares. And now, because of you, this village has lost its Gatherer.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “But you’re right here!”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” He turned to face her, h
is features cut like stone. “Right here. And do you think this is where I ought to be? Do you think me standing here arguing with you is how to best serve my kin?”
“I’m not the one forcing you to be here!” she cried.
“Don’t you think we know we cross the line when we steal away women like you? Look at him, Asia, and tell me you blame me for the affront! Better still, tell me you would prefer that I had been the serial murderer you suspected me to be and would rather your sister had died in torture and violence instead of living in a place where she is lushly craved and worshipped. The human women who agree to come here are like angels to us. Saviors. They don’t just have free will and the rights they’ve always known, but they have the adoration of a starving people and the desire of hundreds of men who need them. They have their pick among them, or none of them at all if it suits them. As for breeding, we would prefer that be put off a while, actually. Pregnant women have a much distorted sex drive, and the sharing of energy from them must cease at the end of the first trimester to protect the growing child and the mother it will make demands on. As much as it is a gain to bring new life to us, it is also a hard deprivation to lose that resource.
“As for more Gatherers…each colony can only have one at maximum. It is a hard duty and requires a certain level of strength, power, training, and—”
“Hotness?” she filled in for him, raising a brow as she slid her eyes over him in pointed appraisal.
“Yes. Sometimes it takes a measure of personable ability,” he argued, although with a small smile. He gave the boy a friendly nudge against his nose and turned away from the bunk. “Not everyone here can pass for human. Not every man here can train to fight to the point where they can completely protect themselves against discovery. We must always be anonymous and avoid detection at all costs. That’s why I move constantly through a country I have chosen. And we can’t stay more than an Earth year. It starts to affect us. Some Gatherers have become…sociopaths. Some become like you. Hard, harsh, and jaded to a point of dysfunction.”