Catch the Lightning by Catherine Asaro Read Free Book Online Page A

their virginity to an Imperial Jagernaut.
    When I pushed his shoulders, he hesitated, confusion sparking around him like fireflies in the dusky night. Then he figured out what I wanted and sat up on his heels. I also sat up, too embarrassed to look at him. I took the packet and opened it. “Put this on.”
    “On?”
    I touched him. “There.”
    “Ah. I see.” He spoke softly. “You do it.”
    Somehow I managed it. It was nice. Sexy. We lay down again, embracing each other. Being with him didn’t feel anything like I had always imagined, though. In fact, it wouldn’t even work. Finally he. guided himself with his hand—and it hurt. I tensed and he slowed down, moving gently, in an easy rhythm. Although I was nervous, I liked that, the way he moved, steady and strong.
    The sparks created by his mood intensified, glitters of red, orange, gold, small fires darting against my thoughts. It was disorienting. Although I had always experienced the emotions of others through my senses, it had just been something that happened. Althor directed those sparks as if they were soldiers under his command.
    “Tina.” His voice Was husky against my ear. “Let me in.”
    Let him in? Hadn’t I already done that?
    His sparks intensified—
    10 path established . The words flashed in my mind. Upload commenced .
    I jerked, stifling a cry. He kissed me, soothing my reaction, and murmured in a language I didn’t understand.
    Download . The word flashed by. He had “let me in” as well, to experience his sensations as if they were mine. His peak swelled like a Baja wave during a storm, higher and fuller, until finally he jerked and pushed me down into the mattress with his hips, driving out my breath. The wave broke, hitting us both with the same force, and the sparks around us blended into a blur.
    After a while I became aware of the room again. Sparks were winking out one by one, fireflies leaving the beach after the wave receded. Althor lay breathing deeply, thoughts quiet, Baja drowsing in the moonlight.
    Eventually he said, “Am I too heavy?”
    “It’s fine, Thor.” I felt ultrasensitive then, like an instrument that had been tuned and then not played.
    “Thor?” He smiled drowsily. “No one ever said my name that way before.”
    “Thor was the god of thunder. He had a magic hammer and he threw thunderbolts at the Earth.”
    Althor rolled onto his side, fitting my curves into his angles. “I promise not to throw thunderbolts at you.”
    I smiled. “You just did.”
    “So do I become frog now?”
    “That’s okay. You can stay a prince.”
    He laughed. “You refresh me.”
    “I do? ¿Por qué? ”
    “Most people fawn all over me.”
    I could see why. A lot about him still made no sense, though. I slid my hand around his waist, touching the hole in his spine. “It’s a psiphon socket,” he said. “It’s how I am installed in the Jag”
    “Installed?” You installed parts. Not people.
    “The socket connects to the biomech web in my body,” Althor said. “I have them in my neck, wrists, and ankles too. They link me into the Jag and, through its Evolving Intelligence brain, into the psibernet.”
    I had no idea how to respond. “Not many people can do that.”
    “This is why Jags pilots are so few.” He yawned. “You know.”
    “Know what?”
    “Like you.” He closed his eyes. “Like me. Not many like us to study it…”
    Study? I wasn’t sure what he meant. “I’m not in school now. But I’m saving for Cal State.”
    Althor opened his eyes. “You are not in school?”
    “Not now.”
    “No neurotraining?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    He stared at me, wide awake now. “Who taught you to control your neural functions so well? Or to manipulate neural webs the way you did mine, on the street last night and here tonight?”
    “No one taught me anything.”
    “You teach yourself?”
    “Yeah, I teach myself.” I thought he was about to do the “sweet, stupid Tina” bit I often heard