Read Rystani Warrior 02 - The Dare for Free Online Page B

Kahn to the interior.
    The Terran’s curiosity brightened her eyes, made her muscles taut with eagerness to explore. Kahn, always cautious and protective around his wife, seemed torn between exploration and keeping Tessa safe. Four years of marriage had taught him to word his concerns with care.
    “Why don’t we come back tomorrow with a team of engineers, scientists, archaeologists, and—”
    “Let them have all the fun?” Tessa slipped around him and entered the cavern. Kahn swore and followed. Zical kept his gaze carefully averted from Tessa. In his highly charged state, he didn’t want Kahn thinking that he was ogling his wife. Zical loved Tessa like a sister, nothing more, but right now he didn’t trust his reactions.
    Tessa hurried forward as if aware Kahn would attempt to stop her progress. “There’s no point in sending in a team until we know if it’s safe.”
    “Specialists should decide,” Kahn argued, but he, too, seemed fascinated by the ancient machines that amazingly still worked. Apparently, one system could turn on the next. Lights blinked. Dials glowed. Crystals flowed like rain across monitors. Deep within Mount Shachauri, engines stirred, their vibrations seeping upward through the stone like a hibernating animal that slowly stretched, yawned, and awakened.
    Zical scowled. “We have no specialists on the Perceptive Ones.”
    “Not true,” Dora piped in. “Several Zenonites are experts.”
    Was Dora trying to make her voice sound even sexier than normal? Or had the golden light altered him in some way to make him more sensitive? Turned on by just the sound of Dora’s voice, Zical tried to keep both desire and irritation from his tone, he also had to stiffen his suit around his tavis to prevent his blood from engorging the sensitive area. “Zenonites rarely leave Zenon. Besides, even if one of them consented to come to Mystique, he would take days to arrive.”
    “These machines have been here for eons. They aren’t going anywhere,” Dora countered, then announced, “I have solved our communication problem. We have contact with my mainframe.”
    “Good.” Zical felt better, knowing Dora’s vast resources could now work on the problem of helping to figure out exactly what they’d found. Part of him throbbed with guilt for being secretive about his unusual thought patterns. Part of him—just throbbed. Despite the suit that prevented his desire from showing, he ached, his balls tingled, and his tavis zinged with intoxicated, unruly desperation.
    “Did you lower the force field?” Kahn asked Dora.
    “I found a back door through the shielding. The field is still intact. In fact, I’m currently using a portion to communicate through a network that’s similar to but much more advanced than my neurotransmitters.”
    Zical stopped short, his thoughts wild and furious. Had the golden light temporarily changed his brain waves? His hormones? Perhaps it had been the knock on the head. Either way, he was having difficulty focusing beyond a driving need for sex, which he ruthlessly squelched. “The system’s alive?”
    “That would depend on how you define life.”
    Kahn, Tessa, and Zical strolled through the corridor. The golden light didn’t reappear. Perhaps only the first person to break the portal’s seal was welcomed or examined or whatever by the golden light.
    Kahn peered at crystals floating along one wall. “Have you anything in your data banks that’s similar to this equipment?”
    “The machines are mostly constructed of bendar . Those monitors are likely used to view data, but of what sort, and whether they still work may take years to discover. The complex is over three miles wide and twenty-five deep. Zical, you stumbled into the apex. There are four other similar portals all at the same altitude.”
    He should speak up and tell them about his sudden, strong, and vivid sexual fixations before some poor other unsuspecting soul strode under another cone of golden light.