it was simultaneously one of the most erotic things she'd ever felt, and it wasn't appreciation of masculine beauty or awe of his brilliant intellect. He wasn't all that handsome, and while for all she knew he might well be brilliant, she'd scarcely even spoken to him, so he certainly hadn't had much of an opportunity to impress her with his intellectual accomplishments! It was just . . . nice, although that was a ridiculously anemic word for what she was feeling. It was as if she'd found something she hadn't realized she'd lost, encountered an old friend she'd never known she knew. As if she'd finally discovered what she needed to complete herself. The sheer intensity of it, for all its warmth and gentleness, would have been almost enough to frighten her all by itself. She would have wondered how much of that she was imagining, how much she was making up out of whole cloth, and how long anything so ephemeral, so impossible for her to define even to herself, could possibly endure.
But it wasn't alone, and that was what truly frightened her. There was that darkness, that sense of pain, like a promise of anguish—or anger—hidden just beyond the horizon. It was like a brooding shadow looming over everything else, and she didn't know what it was or where it had come from or what it might mean. Was it something coming from him, something inside him, hidden under everything else like poison at the heart of some delectable confection? Or was it something inside her, something she'd never realized was there which roused itself when he was near? Or some sort of premonition, some subliminal warning she was sending to herself on the basis of clues her conscious mind hadn't grasped yet? Or was it even real at all? Something she was simply imagining, just as she was imagining all the rest of it? And what right did a young man whom she didn't even know, someone from an entirely different star nation, have turning her calm, orderly life topsy-turvy without even so much as looking in her direction?
She sighed, shook herself, and made herself focus once again on the display. She was behind on her assigned reading, and Doctor McLeish wasn't going to take “I was mooning over a young man I don't even know” as an excuse.
* * *
Alfred Harrington never even glanced in the gazebo's direction, but he knew she was there. He always knew where she was—or in what direction, anyway—and that worried him. It worried him a lot.
He continued on his way, never breaking stride, never hesitating, never indicating any awareness of her presence at all, yet it was as if he could feel her inside his own skin with him. The strength of the attraction was astounding, and it frightened him, because he couldn't explain it.
Or is it really because you think you've actually seen something like it before?
Nonsense! He snorted dismissively, but the thought wouldn't quite go away, however hard he tried to banish it, for he'd grown up on Sphinx, and he was a Harrington.
Maybe you're a Harrington, boy-oh, but you're no frigging treecat! And neither is she. And you've got no business at all thinking this way about a woman you don't even know!
All of which was perfectly true . . . and didn't do one damned thing about his problem.
He reached his dormitory, rode the grav shaft to his floor, let himself into his apartment, and crossed to the balcony. He picked up the compact electronic binoculars and looked through them, and his mouth tightened as he saw her sitting in the gazebo, still studying her computer display.
He set the binoculars down, feeling as if he'd become some sort of Peeping Tom or voyeur, and dropped into a chair. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, and scrubbed his face with both hands before he straightened up and inhaled deeply.
This was ridiculous. Unfortunately, being ridiculous didn't seem to be keeping it from happening, and he had no damned idea what to do about it. He'd been strongly attracted to a few women in his time, but never like this. Never with the sense that he was looking at the person who was meant to be his other half. The person without whom he could never quite be whole. It was like some incredibly sappy, turgidly written, really bad romance novel—the sort his sister Clarissa had loved to read when she was thirteen. “His other