Susan Kearney Beyond Limits

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cat?"
He laughed, happy that she was asking questions. He considered curiosity a very good
sign that she was coming to accept him, what she could be, and that they were meant
to be together. "I've studied everything I could learn about you for a year. If you
hadn't kept yourself behind locked doors, I would have found a more casual approach
for us to meet."
She kept stroking his fur. "But you could have impersonated anyone and walked right
into my meetings."
"We don't use our skills unless we are certain the outside world won't learn of them."
She seemed to accept his explanation. "Can you do feathers?"
"Sure." He altered the fur, changing it to feathers. "And goose down." He changed
again.
"Wow. That's awesome."
He knew better than to think that she was speaking directly about him. He'd thought
she was talking about his shape-shifting abilities, but she'd stopped walking to take in
the sunset. Magnificent slashes of orange and spears of pink streaked across the sky.
The sun, a fiery red ball, appeared to sink into the sea.
He spoke with pride and longing. He ached to share his home with her, to show her
how he lived. "On New Atlantis my home is at the foot of a mountain and overlooks
the beach. I watch the sunset almost every night. And it's always different."
"I need to travel more. I've allowed work to take up too much of my time." She turned
to him, her tone scolding, her eyes dilated, her nostrils flaring. "But that doesn't mean
I'm interested in your offer."
Her words said one thing, her body told him another, yet, he didn't push what he
sensed was her feminine interest in him not yet.
When they returned to the spot she'd left her water bottles and Powerbars, he stacked
the wood. She gathered dry grasses, stuffed it between the driftwood, and she started a
fire with a pack of matches she must have scavenged from the plane before the
landing.
With the fire crackling, the scene was almost cozy. She broke open a water bottle and
helped herself to a Powerbar. Hesitating for a moment, she offered him a bar but he
shook his head. "I ate while I swam in the sea."
Taking tiny bites, she made the food last a long time. Staring into the fire, she grew
silent and the physical tension between them grew. When she finished her food, he
knew it was time.
"I have more shapes to show you." His serious tone must have alerted her. She jerked
her head up, caught his eyes and he swallowed down a gasp at the longing he saw
there. And he prayed that longing was for him. "Look what I can do."
He changed into a marble rock, shaped like Michelangelo's David, and his shorts fell
by the wayside in the sand. Clothing was such a bother to a shape-shifter, since the
only form that required clothing was the human one.
She leaned over to touch his rocky surface, her hand gentle, her strokes almost erotic.
"Watching you change shape is better than television."
"And after your caresses, I'm so hot for you, I need to cool down." He morphed into a
giant ice cube, but didn't allow himself to melt.
She chuckled. "If you're hoping I'm thirsty enough to lick you, you're wasting your
time."
He compacted his cells down tight. And changed into a diamond. Leaning over, she
picked him up and peered at his tiny, perfect lines. "What happened to your weight?"
He rolled from her palm, dropped into his shorts and changed back into human form.
"When I don't need all my mass, I shove it into Inf space."
"Inf?"
"Short for infinity. Your scientists call Inf the fourth dimension."
"I thought the fourth dimension was time."
"It is." He thought she was going to ask him more about Inf, but her curiosity turned
in a different direction.
She fed a stick into the fire, her face thoughtful, her hands shaking. "So size is limited
to your mass. You can't become a whale?"
"I can do a small whale. Although I can't grow more cells, I can expand the ones I
have."
"And what would have happened to you in ice cube form if you'd begun to melt?"
"As long as the water pooled around me, I would have been fine. If, however, you had
decided to lick me" at his reminder of her words, her face reddened, or perhaps it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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