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  Clearing her throat, she searched her mind for a topic of conversation. Not that they seemed to feel any need to talk, even between themselves, but she wasn’t comfortable. “What did Gabriel mean when he said you were all his brothers?” she finally asked curiously.

  Eli and John both sent her looks of surprise. She couldn’t help but notice there was also a touch of wariness.

  “We are brothers,” Eli answered.

  Marlee frowned, but she wasn’t comfortable bringing up the fact that Eli, Joshua, Luke, and Aaron all looked pure Native American and neither Gabriel or John looked like they had so much as a drop of the same blood. “Uh … you must be really close in age,” she said tentatively.

  John snorted. “You could say that.”

  Eli finished browning the chicken pieces and dropped the last into a large baking pan.

  When he’d shoved the monster into the over, he washed his hands and turned to study her as he dried them. “Gabriel was first. He’s three or four hours older than me—give or take. John …,” he hesitated for a fraction of a second, “popped out about an hour behind me. The others, Joshua, Luke, and Aaron, in that order, hatched the next day.”

  Marlee felt her jaw slacken with stunned surprise. “You’re saying …. You’re … uh … sextuplets?”

  John had sent Eli a sharp look. At that, he seemed to relax. He grinned at her. “Guess so.”

  “That poor woman!” Marlee gasped, her mind instantly leaping to their mother. “Six at one time! That must have been …. I can’t imagine what that must have been like!”

  She didn’t want to! In some ways, she thought it must be a tremendous thrill to have a multiple birth—but twins she could see being thrilled about. Maybe even triplets. Six? And it had taken her two days to deliver? What kind of medical facility would let a woman labor that long?

  “We didn’t get the chance to ask her,” Eli said tightly. “She died.”

  Marlee felt her stomach tighten as if she’d been punched. The shock wave left pity behind it. “I’m … so sorry to hear that.”

  He shrugged. Turning, he tossed the dishrag down that he’d used to dry his hands.

  “We’re sorry, too.”

  Dismay filled her as he left the kitchen and mounted the stairs, disappearing as Gabriel had. She bit her lip as she studied John’s back, struggling with her discomfort. “I’m sorry I brought it up. It must have been … really hard. It’s nothing short of amazing that you all survived.”

  “I’m not sure we would have if not for our fathers … father’s care.”

  “He must be an amazing man to raise six boys at one time.”

  “He was.”

  Was. They were orphans? Questions immediately cluttered her mind, but she tamped the urge to ask anything else. She hadn’t been in their home five minutes and she’d already brought up too many things that were obviously painful. As curious as she was, that didn’t give her the right to indulge her curiosity when it meant opening old wounds.

  Thankfully, the other brothers arrived before the silence got too uncomfortable and they completely diverted her when they came in carrying her belongings from the cabin she’d rented.

  “You got my things?” she asked blankly, trying to mentally calculate how long it would’ve taken them to make the round trip.

  Joshua glanced at her somewhat warily and flicked a look at John.

  “We got them when we were out looking for you earlier. It didn’t seem like a good idea to go back for them later when the feds were looking for you,” John responded coolly.

  Marlee turned to stare at him in disbelief and dawning anger. “You assumed I wouldn’t object to being … abducted?” she asked tightly.

  John’s eyes narrowed. “We figured it would be better for you to be pissed off than shipped off, lady. I don’t think you realize just how close you were to disappearing in a very unpleasant way. I’m guessing here, but I think it’s safe to say that either your buddies at the park, or the cops you talked to last night, had already notified the feds. We were still there when the feds arrived … and hadn’t cleared your things out much more than five minutes ahead of them.”

  Chapter Seven

  Marlee felt cold all over every time she thought about how close she’d come to being caught. It did cross her mind that John might have made up the entire story, but somehow she didn’t think so. For that matter, the flyer she’d been shown might have been—except there was too much information there that they would’ve had no way of knowing. And if she accepted that the flyer was genuine, then she thought she also had to accept that what John had told her was true.

  And if she accepted both, then she thought she had to accept that the lab had found something really strange in her tests. That frightened her a whole lot more than the near miss.

  She’d escaped capture. She wasn’t going to escape whatever it was inside of her.

  She lay awake most of the night thinking about it. Gabriel had given her his room. She was certain of it when he’d brought out a spare pillow and blankets and made up a bed for himself on one of the long couches in the great room. It had been politeness that had prompted her to take the couch and not put him out of his room, but she discovered very quickly that it hadn’t actually been offered because she was a guest.

  They didn’t trust her not to take off during the night.

  The lack of trust angered her, increasing the sense that she was more a prisoner than a guest even if they were taking a risk in sheltering her. As much as she resented the insult to her integrity, however, she could see their point.

  It wasn’t those thoughts that kept her awake, though. She was too early along in her pregnancy to have fully accepted the fact that she had a being growing inside of her. Even if not for the fact that she hadn’t even known it was there a matter of weeks ago, her own plight had taken precedence and the baby had held a distant second place—more because the baby itself was the threat in a way.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, she realized she had not only accepted it, she felt deeply possessive and protective of it. That was almost a surprise in and of itself. She hadn’t given much thought to having a baby—ever. She’d been completely focused on and dedicated to her career in law enforcement. There’d been no wistful dreams of marrying, having children, and giving up that career.

  She didn’t know how or when or why she’d changed so radically, but it was a significant enough shift to add to her uneasiness.

  The government seemed so convinced that she was carrying something really strange and out-of-this-world, that she thought it was irrational of her to want to hold on to it. She should be considering aborting, not considering what it might look like or how she was going to take care of it!

  She tried to consider it dispassionately but discovered she couldn’t. It was almost as if the baby itself was speaking to her, demanding to be born, but then that was almost as unnerving a thought as the possibility of producing a little green alien. What if she was being controlled and manipulated by the baby?

  It seemed like something out of a horror/sci-fi flick and yet it would’ve been a lot easier to dismiss if the government hadn’t seemed so hot to get hold of her.

  What had they found in those tests, she wondered? Maybe more importantly, was it something that would show up if she went to another doctor?

  What the hell was she going to do about that? Even if she dismissed the thought of aborting, she would have to be under a doctor’s care, wouldn’t she? She sure as hell had no intention of trying to deliver a baby without medical help!

  She finally reached a state of exhaustion that overcame her fears. When she woke, the light streaming into the room was a sure sign that she’d slept well past the time she usually got up. She was still tired, for all that. Her morning wake up routine didn’t exactly pep her up all that much either.

  She discovered when she finally made it downstairs that everyone had disappeared except for Eli. He was standing on the wide porch along
the back of the house when she reached the great room, but he turned almost as if he’d heard her and entered through the double glass doors when she neared the foot of the stairs.

  “Hungry?”

  Marlee sighed. “Not really … but thanks.”

  “You should make the effort anyway. You’re breeding,” he said coolly, heading toward the kitchen.

  Marlee followed him. “Breeding?”

  He flicked a glance at her as he removed eggs and bacon from the refrigerator. “You are.”

  “It’s just a strange way to put it,” Marlee said and then frowned. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Eli set the things on the counter and turned to study her. “Meaning?”

  She looked at him a little resentfully, but she’d spent most of the night scaring the hell out of herself and she was still afraid! She met his gaze. “I’m scared to death,” she admitted, struggling abruptly with the urge to burst into tears. “There must be some reason they think it’s not human!”

  Eli’s lips tightened, but he moved across the kitchen. To her surprise, he gathered her in his arms, molding her tightly against his length. “You don’t need to be afraid, Marlee. The babies are fine.”

  Marlee felt her heart skip a beat as she digested that. She pulled away and looked at him.

  “Babies?” she repeated.

  He scanned her face and seemed to struggle with something. “Shit!” he growled.

  Releasing her, he put some distance between them. Instead of focusing on cooking, however, he turned to face her. Leaning back against the counter, he folded his arms. “You ever heard of the Native American practice of dream walking?”

  Marlee frowned, searching her memory. It wasn’t a long search. It was a fairly wide custom among the Native Americans to use certain drugs found in local plants—hallucinogens—to perform certain rituals. She wasn’t actually a history buff, but she was pretty well versed in drug abuse.

  Apparently, he saw when that connected in her mind. “What if I told you that John and I were dream walking when we heard you? That it was us.”

  Marlee stared at him as that slowly sank in and threw her into a complete state of turmoil.

  Fletcher had suggested that it might have been Native Americans, though.

  She felt her face heating with a mixture of anger, embarrassment and, loathe though she was to acknowledge it, heat. “You’re saying …? You’re suggesting …?”

  “They’re ours, Marlee, and there’s no way in hell any of us are going to stand by and let you abort them. Given the circumstances, I can see where you might not want the babies, but we do.”

  Babies. It was the second time it had been suggested that she might be carrying more than one. Given the fact that they were sextuplets, maybe that explained it—and oh god! They could be right! That was almost more terrifying than the idea of having alien babies had been!

  “You’re saying …? It was you and John? You think you got me pregnant?”

  “I know,” he said grimly.

  Marlee looked around for a place to sit down as a wave of faintness rolled over her.

  “You knew, but you weren’t going to tell me?”

  His lips tightened. “We didn’t know until you came back.”

  She blinked at him. “How the hell did you know?”

  “You told Gabriel—remember?” he said after a prolonged pause.

  Marlee frowned. Something didn’t click with that. She was in no state of mind to figure it out at the moment, but it just didn’t ring true somehow. “So you decided to help me seeing as how you got me in this mess to start with?” she said angrily.

  “Something like that,” he growled. “You complaining?”

  “Hell yes, I’m complaining, god damn it! You and John dragged me off and raped me! Why the hell wouldn’t I complain?”

  He surged toward her so fast she barely had time to blink before he’d dragged her hard against him. “It wasn’t rape. You know damned well it wasn’t.”

  Marlee swallowed with an effort, recalling the memory with far too much clarity for her comfort. “You drugged me with something! That isn’t consent!”

  He studied her for a long moment. Spearing his fingers in her hair, he held her while he dipped his head and fitted his mouth to hers. She struggled, clamped her lips tightly together and tried to turn her head, but the frantic pumping of blood through her wasn’t fear and she knew it.

  His mouth was ruthless, punishing, demanding. She yielded abruptly, telling herself that it was useless to fight his far superior strength but the moment he invaded her mouth she knew it was a lie—all of it.

  The only drug he’d used to drain of her any will of her own was essence of Eli. It invaded her just as it had then, crumbling every barrier she’d tried to throw up in a matter of seconds. Heat surged between them. She gave up the effort to elude him and clung to him instead, feeling the strange fever of before consume her until she couldn’t think beyond absorbing him.

  He lifted her. She didn’t know or care where he was taking her as long as it involved stripping off the clothes that separated them and connecting their bodies. He sprawled on the couch with her, breaking the kiss long enough to shove her blouse up and scoop one breast from her bra cup. The jolt that went through her as his mouth settled over the tip of her breast nearly made her pass out. She clutched at his head for a moment and then arched her back, struggling to reach the fastener of her bra and unhook it.

  He shoved her bra out of the way the moment she did, shifting his attention to her other breast and thwarting her attempts to rid herself of the blouse and the bra for several moments.

  Abruptly, he released her breast, sucking in a harsh breath. For a moment, the fear seized her that he would stop when he reared up on his knees, but he merely stripped his own shirt off and reached for the fastener of her jeans.

  He dragged her toward him as he yanked at her jeans and panties and peeled them down her hips. She ‘swam’ backwards using her elbows and wiggled out of the jeans as he finally managed to get them past her knees. Dropping them to the floor beside the couch, he settled over her again, arching rhythmically against her as he covered her mouth once more and drove her to distraction with the thrust and retreat of his tongue and the movement of his hips that was almost more frustrating than fulfilling. She ached with need. The rough brush of his jeans only seemed to make her body throb worse in complaint.

  She began a frantic search for the opening of his jeans. Finding the hard evidence of his arousal first, she paused to stroke it. He broke the kiss with a hiss and wrenched his jeans open, shoving them down his hips.

  She sucked in a sharp breath as she felt his flesh probing her and then sinking slowly into the mouth of her sex. Her desperation increased. She grasped his lower back, unable to reach his buttocks, and pulled at him when he ceased to thrust and allowed the muscles along her channel to squeeze him nearly all the way out. Curling his arms around her, he tightened his hold and thrust again, sinking deeper, sending out currents of pleasure.

  “Eli!” she gasped mindlessly. “God! That feels good!”

  He released a pent up breath. She heard his teeth grinding as he curled his hips and drove deeper. She could feel her body soaring toward its peak even as he finally achieved full penetration and set a feverish pace, driving her ever closer to the top with each thrust until her climax abruptly burst upon her. She arched against him, stiffening with the force of the spasm.

  Sucking in a keen breath as the first convulsion of pleasure eased, she struggled to match his rhythm as wave after wave followed the first. She’d reached fever pitch when she felt his cock buck inside of her as he reached his own crisis, felt the scalding heat of his seed bathing her channel.

  Sanity was slow to return, but it did. Despite the delightful afterglow, Marlee had begun to feel the discomfort of having encouraged him every step of the way by the time Eli managed to catch his breath. He pushed himself up on his arms and studied her face for a lo
ng moment.

  His expression hardened at the look of wariness she sent him. “I suppose that was rape, too, but that isn’t the way I remember it. You were just as eager then as you were just now.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, struggling with the urge to smack him. “You started it! Both times! Just because I enjoyed it doesn’t mean I wanted it to happen and I sure as hell didn’t invite you! I was horny and you were handy!”

  He pulled free of her and got off the couch. “If you think I wanted it to happen any more than you did, you’re mistaken! You’re a ….” He stopped abruptly. “Not the woman I would’ve picked to mother my child!”

  That stung! Marlee sat up abruptly and looked around for her clothes. “Well you aren’t the man I would’ve picked to father any child of mine!” she snapped. “So I guess we’re both unhappy about the situation!”

  Eli had snatched up his jeans angrily to jerk them back on, but when Marlee jerked her own clothing up and stalked up the stairs, he dropped to the couch and slung them down again.

  “Fuck! That went well!”

  ———

  “Marlee’s all sunshine,” Gabriel said tightly, sending Eli an accusing look.

  Eli rolled his shoulders, trying to shrug off the dark mood that had hung over him ever since they’d enjoyed some of the best sex in his memory and then promptly disintegrated into snapping at each other.

  Not that that had lasted long! She’d treated him to the cold shoulder most of the day!

  Not that it wasn’t his own damned fault! It had thoroughly pissed him off to be accused of raping her, though! Granted, he’d been in a fever, but it was her fever that had touched it off, not the other damned way around! He didn’t fucking believe she didn’t know it either!

  “I told her,” he growled.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” Gabriel demanded angrily.