Diana pulled back. She must exert force. “Hold on,” she said with an unsteady laugh. “I need to come up for air.”
“Oh, my beautiful!” His weight thrust her downward on the sofa where they sat.
She resisted. A gentle judo break, decisive since unawaited, freed her. She sprang from him and stood breathing hard, flushed and atremble but back in charge of herself.
“Easy, there,” she said, smiling, because warmth still pulsed. She found occupation in pushing back her tousled locks. “Let’s not get carried away.”
He rose, too, himself apparently unoffended, though ardency throbbed in his tone: “Why not? What harm? What except love and joy?”
He refrained from advancing, so she stayed where she was, and wondered if she could really resist the handsomeness that confronted her. “Well, I—Oh, Kukulkan, it’s been wonderful.” And it had been, culminating in this night’s flight above the Hellenes to a lake where they swam while the reflection of the sun-ring flashed everywhere around them, as if they swam in pure light; and ate pheasant and drank champagne ashore; and danced on a boat dock to music from the car’s player, music and a dance she had never known before, a waltz by somebody named Strauss; and finally came back to his place, where one thing led to another. “I thank you, I do, I do. But soon I’ll be gone.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll see to that. You’ll stay as long as you want. And I’ll take you all over this planet, and eventually beyond, to the stars.”
Did he mean it? Suppose he did!
She had no intention of remaining a virgin for life, or until any particular age. Pride, if nothing else, forbade becoming somebody’s plaything or, for that matter, making a toy of a man. But she liked Kukulkan Zachary—more than liked him—and she must be a little special to him, or why would he have squired her around as he did? What an ingrate she was, not to trust him.
If only she’d had a reversible shot. She wanted neither a baby in the near future nor an abortion ever; but living hand-to-mouth on Imhotep, as often as not among the Tigeries, she just hadn’t gotten around to the precaution. She thought this week was safe for her—
“I’d better go,” she forced herself to say. “Let me think things over. Please don’t rush me.”
“At least let me kiss you goodbye until later,” he replied in that melodious voice of his. “A few hours later, no more, I beg you.”
She couldn’t refuse him so small a favor, could she, in common courtesy?
He gathered her in. She responded. Resolution wobbled.
Whether or not it would have stood fast, she never knew. The front door, unlocked on the crimeless island, opened. Targovi came in. Behind him reared the dragon head of Axor.
Diana and Kukulkan recoiled apart. “What the flickerin’ hell!” ripped from her. He snarled and tensed.
Targovi leveled the blaster he carried. “Don’t,” he said.
“Have you two jumped your orbits?” Diana yelled, and knew freezingly that they had not.
Kukulkan straightened. His features stiffened. “Drop that thing,” he said as if giving a routine order to a servant. “Do you want the girl killed in a firefight?”
“Who is to start one?” Targovi retorted. He gestured at a window. Leafage turned young daylight to gold-spattered green. Like most local homes, this was tucked into its garden, well back from the street, screened by trees and hedges. It was obvious that the intruders had entered unseen.
Axor crowded in. He went to Diana, laid his enormous arms about her, drew her to his plated breast, as tenderly as her mother. “My dear, my dear, I am sorry,” he boomed low. “Horror is upon us. Would that you could be spared.”
For a minute she clung tight. It was as though strength and calm flowed out of him, into her. She stepped back. Her gaze winged around the scene and came to rest on Targovi. “Explain,” she said.
His scarlet eyes smoldered back at her. “The spoor I followed proved true,” he answered. “I followed it into the lair of the beast. Axor, show her what I brought back.”