Parallel Desire Read Online Free

comrade. "Told you. Told you not to try this alone."  
    Jake laughed up at her, blood gurgling from between his swollen and bruised lips.
    She blotted at his mouth with her sleeve. "This ain't funny. You're in a shit storm now 'cause you didn't listen."
    "You're that pretty little medic with a southern accent," he announced wondrously, both eyes rolling back in his head.
    She just clucked her tongue. "That I am, boy. That I am."
    "He's about to kick my freaking ass." He managed to focus his gaze again, leveling her with his startlingly beautiful green eyes.
    "He's already done that, but I'm getting you out of here before he finishes the job."
    With a one-eyed squint Jake studied his human opponent. "I'm not done with him yet."
    "Jakob," Shelby said with an intense, meaningful glare, "say you're sorry. Just go on, now."
    "All right." Jake wrestled to sit up straight, his legs finding a semblance of the floor, his back pressed up against the wall. "I never called anyone a slav'nrksai "—he kicked Redneck Guy in the shin—"especially not your mother. I don't need that word for someone like your mama."
    Shelby barely heard the roar before she saw the pale human's fist rip into Jake's jaw like a ball-peen hammer bludgeoning a melon. "Oh, no." She ducked out of the way at the very last minute.
    Some aliens just never learned, especially the green-eyed, wickedly handsome kind.
    Jake's head cracked back against the wall, and hard, but not before she managed to half whisper, "Lieutenant, good thing I came after your ass."
    "H oly hell, that hurts." Jake moaned, ducking away from the medic's efforts at working on his bruises. His first thought was that he hadn't managed to get himself killed in that bar, not like he'd wanted to after that pointless call with Hope. Moaning, he tried to force her from his thoughts, glancing about him in an effort to determine where he'd passed out.
    Obviously, he'd slept the damn brawl off, but somehow—some way—he seemed to have wound up in a motel room. Not his own room, in the center of what passed for a town around here, but one off a local highway. He could tell that much because of the occasional sounds of trucks and other vehicles busting past their thin door, the way it rattled with the roadside vibrations. Somewhere else around here he had his own room, a dingy bit of a place where he'd been keeping his pack and measly belongings while he trailed the real Jake Tierny around half of Texas.
    "Holy hell?" Shelby repeated, bending over him until her long blonde hair tickled his throat. "You done become a real Texan, boy. Haven't you?"
    Jake growled up at her, ducking away from the damp cloth she was working over his bruises, and spit at her in low Refarian. If the dainty little medic was going to accuse him of going native, well, by All, he'd fight her fair. He was no more Texan than she was, what with that pretty little accent of hers, fake through and through.
    The both of them had been raised on a planet far, far away—so far away that they'd learned English in their own separate manners. Shelby Tyler had apparently done so right here in Texas a few years back. Jake, on the other hand, had learned the language on the endless transport from Refaria to Earth, the computerized dialect and linguistic files training him. He'd always prided himself on his accentless English, that it could belong only in the United States—not Great Britain or elsewhere on the planet. He and his fellow aliens hadn't made their home in London or Sydney, and his bland accent reflected that fact.
    But not Shelby; no, her version of English, from the very first time he'd met up with her five months ago on the base back in Wyoming, had been heavily infused with a southern accent. Quite Texan, he'd later realized as they kept talking—and that fact had been confirmed once he'd ventured down to this part of the United States. Hers was an authentic drawl bought by time in the trenches. His