Genesis by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

she was up against some serious heavy weights from what she could tell of the slaver aliens.
    The yellow race--maybe, maybe not. She still hadn’t quite decided whether they were on an intellectual par with humans or not, but Kole seemed to be picking up both English and Spanish faster than either her or Consuelo were picking up each other’s language.
    That didn’t say much for either her or Consuelo.
    Maybe he was exceptionally bright for his race, and maybe not. He didn’t strike her as being the nerd of the pack. If anything she was more inclined to think he might be a leader. He had a way about him.
    In fact, now that she thought about it, he’d stalked over to the side closest to the women and bellowed something at them just as she’d whirled to run for her life.
    Dismissing that for the moment, she focused on the physical threat the women represented.
    Physically, as pathetic as she was, Consuelo was hopeless. The woman probably didn’t weigh ninety pounds soaking wet, and she was barely five feet tall, if that. Short of biting one of those amazons in the groin, Consuelo might as well throw in the towel. Any one of those women could probably snap her in two like a dry twig.
    Her own situation was only marginally better--not enough to give her any confidence that she could hold her own.
    If she could bench press a couple of hundred pounds, maybe.
    Brains, that was all she had.
    She was screwed.
    * * * *
    Kole’s fury and frustration nearly got the best of him when he saw the females who referred to themselves as Earth women had two of the Hirachi infants. He’d thought all of them had died. He’d been too stunned, at first, to accept that the babies really were alive and to grasp that it could only be some of their own--perhaps even his, though his instincts told him that neither was of his blood line--the babies were too young, he thought, to have been born before they left Ach, and, in any case, the Sheloni had never been known to take infants.
    They would die without their mothers--without either parent--slowly from the look of them.
    Were the women too stupid to realize they were only prolonging the inevitable, torturing the innocent by making their death a lingering one? Or was it simply that it didn’t matter to them because the babies were not of their own kind?
    He was tempted to reach across the barrier and throttle the pink one when she refused to give over the baby, enraged as much by her defiance as he was by the way she looked at him--as if he meant the baby harm! As if he was in the wrong!
    The woman’s defiance had nearly overwhelmed his good sense. Coldness washed through him when he realized how closely he’d come to yielding to the impulse to reach across and grab her.
    And he wasn’t completely convinced that impulse was pure anger toward her.
    Truthfully, he’d been itching to get hold of her from the moment she’d finally come close enough for him to see her really well … and throttling her had been the furthest thing from his mind.
    His reaction to her revolted him and thoroughly confused him. The instinct to spawn was supposed to be an urge to propagate his species and line. He wouldn’t have considered accepting an invitation from a Hirachi woman that was inferior in any way, physically or intellectually. He wanted to produce strong, intelligent, young.
    Almost worse, she’d very clearly turned her nose up at him , not issued an invitation. There was nothing wrong with him! He’d proven he was the best of the best or he wouldn’t have been chosen to lead.
    Damn her!
    Was that it what it was? A challenge to his ego?
    Maybe, he thought, that was part of the reason--an urge to prove himself--but that didn’t explain why he got hard all over every time she strolled past him. That was lust, and he, frankly, didn’t think the spawning faze had anything to do with it. Spawning was the last thing on his mind, in fact. He just wanted to fuck her blind and bow legged, and to hell