Free Parallel Seduction by Deidre Knight

sensual, sexy aspect of his already rugged face. She continued, tracing the outline of his jaw, feeling a tiny scar on the edge there. The flesh was raised, a neat line running parallel with his jaw. "And what about this one? What happened here?"
    He grew pensive; she could feel it. "Jared and I were playing in the palace courtyard and I tripped," he said reflectively. "Years ago … a million lifetimes ago."
    "You knew each other as children?"
    "My parents were friends with his. We lived there at the palace." These were his scientist parents, the ones he'd told her had been working to cure the plague back on Refaria. The ones who had taken human bodies in order to live and solve the virus.
    "Have you forgiven them?"
    "The vlksai who ruined my nose?"
    "You know what I mean, S'Skautsa." She refused to let him sidestep the question about his parents.
    With a soft exhalation, he collapsed backward into the pillow, leaving her hands suspended in the air. For a moment she stayed perfectly still, then carefully closed her fingers, dropping both fists to her sides. This was his greatest pain; she had seen that much when he'd opened up to her about his mixed genetic heritage.
    "They died years ago, killed by their own people—the same ones they'd fought so hard to save. My genetic map is totally fucked. Always has been."
    "Your body is human," she observed in a quiet voice.
    "Even more fucked."
    "Why would you say that? Do you really hate my people that much?"
    Beside her, he jerked slightly, as if the words had hit a painful mark. "I don't hate humans," he said at last. "I hate that I'm part human. And why I am, that's the most atrocious part of all."
    "You're just their son, Scott."
    "The son of parents who seized human bodies, hosts." His voice got louder. "Took two human lives so they could live—"
    "In order to save millions of their people," she finished for him.
    "That wasn't what I was going to say."
    "That's what you told me a few days ago in your hospital room," she reminded him.
    He chuckled low. "You obviously caught me in a moment of weakness."
    "Do you know anything about the two people whose bodies they took?"
    "The two people they murdered, you mean?" Bitter anger edged his words.
    "Who were they?" She refused to fall into his carefully laid verbal trap.
    "I never knew anything about them. They were taken to Refaria after being abducted from Earth. Groups of them were brought for harvesting—that's what they call it, you know. Not murder. Harvesting."
    "How does it work?"
    "My kind can invade a body, the right kind of host—our ability to assume a formless nature allows it. Our match with humans was always perfect, particularly for seizing a new form. My parents grew sick, and rather than succumb to their illness, they stole two human hosts."
    A few days ago he'd told her how so many of his race had been stricken with the plague, had resorted to their formless state rather than die, and then had sought out human bodies rather than remain in their ghost state. Hope shivered; what he described was grotesque, but it wasn't the point of their conversation. As an FBI linguist she was in the business of focusing, not being distracted by off-base issues. "Maybe you're Irish," she said with a quiet laugh.
    "Why do you say that?"
    "Your coloring … you have freckles, too, don't you?"
    "Some. But I thought your Irish were all redheads."
    "Don't tell Colin Farrell that," she said under her breath, then added, "There's a big Spanish influence in parts of Ireland. I was just thinking that's one possibility. Or perhaps German."
    "Then I'm totally screwed."
    "I don't get it."
    "Think about it this way, Hope—since you bring up the Germans. How would you feel if you were descended from the Nazis? Knowing what your people were capable of?"
    He had finally lost her. "I wouldn't care."
    "If your parents were German?"
    "Um, Scott, the Nazis were defeated a long, long time ago."
    He clasped her by both arms,