Did the bond I shared with Isabella have something to do with it?
It had to, I reasoned.
After all, Isabella shared an identical bond with Liam/the creature.
It all had to make some kind of logical sense, didn’t it?
“We’re almost there,” Isabella said.
I looked over at her, her seat pushed forward, her legs barely able to reach the pedals.
It was a vehicle designed for bigger people.
Although Isabella was fairly tall, the seat she sat in swamped her.
If she leaned back, she could have used the seat almost as a full-size bed.
I ran an eye over her slim legs and narrow waist, her ample breasts that pressed against her thin top.
She was a gorgeous specimen and I feared how she would react upon learning the truth…
However that ended up happening.
Would she recoil from my touch if it turned out I was from somewhere far away?
Would she look at me differently?
Would she run and hide?
Would I?
We rounded a long corner.
Moonlight flashed off the lake, offering tiny slits of what we had to look forward to on the other side.
The lake.
The drowned ship.
I shivered at what we might learn.
I considered telling Isabella to keep on driving, to turn around, or take another road and get as far from this place as possible…
But she would have questions, and I knew I wouldn’t lie to her.
I couldn’t lie to her.
Running away now from getting the answers we sorely needed wasn’t going to help anybody.
Nobody but the creature on our tail.
He knew far more than I did.
He still had full access to his memories, who he was, and what he was there to accomplish.
To stand a chance against him, I needed to know the same.
And so, I didn’t say a word as Isabella slowed down, hit the signal, and pulled onto the lake’s muddy edge.
Brightly colored police tape held up by sticks demarked the area where the accident had taken place.
A corner had come loose and fluttered in the wind.
Isabella turned the engine off and we sat there for a moment, the metal making soft popping noises as it cooled.
“We’re here,” Isabella said. “What do we do now?”
My stomach churned.
“Now… I swim down to the wreckage.”
Isabella’s neck snapped around.
“You never mentioned having to swim down there!”
“How else do you suggest we bring it up?”
“We can rent a crane or a tractor or something to dredge it up.”
“We don’t have time for that. The longer we take to get it out of the water, the sooner Liam will catch up to us.”
Isabella’s eyes shifted over my shoulder in the direction Liam was coming from and then switched back to mine.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Listen,” I said, “I can’t use the medical equipment without bringing the ship up. And we can’t use any of the other technology onboard either. We have to bring it up.”
I reached for the door handle.
Isabella’s hand rested on my arm.
“Don’t. The last time you were in this lake, you almost drowned and I almost lost you. Don’t tempt fate again.”
“What do you suggest I do?”
Her mouth worked but the words were hard to form.
“We could run.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the same line of thought she was trailing that I had.
And I could virtually taste how hard those words were for her to say.
She wasn’t a runner—never had been—and the thought of doing it now for who knew how long must have been difficult for her to stomach.
“We can’t run forever,” I said. “We don’t know enough about what’s going on here. There’s something much bigger than us happening and we need to know what it is if we want to fight Liam.”
“It’s not Liam I’m worried about.”
She couldn’t say it directly or refer to the creature that either mimicked him or completely subsumed his body, but I knew what she was referring to.
The creature was not of Earth.
How could it be?
Maybe she could lie to herself that it was some kind of weapon created in a lab somewhere on Earth, but that didn’t answer all the questions rushing through both our minds right now.
Like why was it so much more interested in capturing her than me?
If I was the one that escaped a lab somewhere, shouldn’t it be more interested in me?
Then there was its ability to shift shapes and take the form of others…
It was an ability so far beyond the skill of modern-day scientists on this world.
She knew there was more was going on than we were privy to, and she didn’t want to know the truth any more than I did.
But it was the only way to keep her safe.
I had to know what was going on here.
I leaned forward and put my hand to her face and neck and felt her heat beneath my fingertips.
Her brow furrowed with lines.
We shared our breath and gently probed each other’s lips.
She pulled me forward on top of her and widened her legs enough for me to lay with my cock pressed against her.
“Take me,” she said. “Take me now in case… in case anything happens.”
Those were the words I’d been desperate to hear from her ever since I first laid eyes on her.
To join with her and see what would happen to the bond that existed between us, to watch as it expanded and consumed us both…
I would feel her tighten around me at the apex of pleasure and she would stimulate me into pumping my seed inside her…
It was the stuff dreams were made of.
All my recent dreams.
And with her looking so good, so open to me…
My cock hardened and she must have felt it.
“I’m ready,” she said. “I want to know what it’s like to have you inside me.”
I shook my head in an attempt to dispel the red mist that descended over me, the pure hunger to taste her, savor her…
Devour her.
“How far away is he?” I said.
“Don’t worry about him. Worry about me.”
She licked the tip of my nose, catching me by surprise.
I swelled even thicker in the front of my pants.
The hunger was overpowering.
Maybe if we did it quickly, I could still get down to
