Kwarq (Lyqa Planet Lovers Book 1)

by Clarke, Nikki

  It is this information that gives me hope that she will see that my intentions are pure and honest. That I do not want her for any disingenuous reason.

  Disingenuous. Another great word with a terrible meaning.

  Amina

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Kwarq’s sitting on the bench in front of my work building when I turn the corner from the subway. The moment I see him, my heart pauses and then starts to beat a quick, battering rhythm in my chest.

  He’s wearing the same dark blue jeans as before. He only has on a t-shirt, even though anyone with a lick of sense is wearing at least a jacket. I mentally shake my head. That should have been the first give away. Who the hell walks around in a damn t-shirt in the middle of October in Chicago?

  Forget the fact that his shirt shows all types of ripples and bulges beneath the thin fabric. His large, muscular arms flex as they rest on the back of the bench. I force my eyes away. I will not lust after the fucking alien man. I will not.

  “Jesus Christ, Amina. Get it together,” I tell myself as I walk confidently toward my job.

  When I get close to the entrance of the building where I work, he rises from the bench and starts toward me. I pick up the pace, moving into a group of people going into the building, using my small frame to duck to the middle the crush and out of sight. I stay hidden as long as I can and once I’m well inside the building, I glance back.

  He’s still standing outside on the other side of the glass doors. Even from where I stand, I can see his frown, but there is no mistaking that his eyes are fixed on me. I wait to see if he’s going to follow me in, but he doesn’t. He just stands there with his hands at his waist. His large, booted foot taps against the sidewalk. I pause. Maybe he is a vampire, and he can’t get in without my permission. Some of my tension eases because if that’s the case, he’s gonna be waiting out there forever.

  I’m already late for work, so I force myself to turn away from the sight of his tall, bulky frame lurking at the entrance to the building. I hop through the elevator doors just as they are about to shut, and half expect to see Kwarq speed inside next to me. When the doors shut without any surprises, I breathe a sigh of relief. This alien is not going to get me today.

  Up on the floor where I work, the usual bustle of a busy day crowds out my anxiety. I go to my office and unwrap myself from my layers of outerwear then turn on my computer, settling behind my desk. As soon as the operating system loads, an alert pops up on my screen. I have almost three dozen marketing requests waiting in my inbox. As much as I would like to obsess over the alien who followed me to work, I can’t. Unless he’s going abduct me tomorrow, I need to focus on my job. I set about distributing the requests to the appropriate assistants and push Kwarq out of my mind.

  “Are you okay? You keep rubbing your chest.”

  “Hm?”

  I pause my hand where it’s pushing firm circles into my sternum. There’s nothing wrong with my chest. That is, it doesn’t hurt, but my heart is beating really fucking loud. At first, I thought it was someone thumping on the wall, and then I was sure it was a bucket boy outside, but the sound has been too steady and too persistent. It took me a moment to realize it was a heartbeat, and since I am the only person in my office, it had to me mine. The funny thing about it, though, is that it almost sounds like it is coming from outside my body.

  “You got heartburn? I have some antacids.”

  One of the marketing assistants, Kelly, is standing in my doorway holding a stack of proofs. She reaches into the pocket of her blazer and holds out a roll of the chalky tablets. I shake my head.

  “No, it’s not heartburn. I just feel weird. I think my heart is beating too hard or fast or something. You can’t hear it?”

  Kelly’s mouth turns down and her brows raise.

  “No, I don’t hear anything. Maybe you’re just anxious.”

  I nod and reach for the proofs. She hands them over and leaves, but I see her shaking her head as she goes back to her desk.

  Maybe I’m just anxious. Of course, I’m anxious. I’ve been trying to focus on work, but all I can think about is the fact that there’s probably a stalker alien waiting for me outside my job.

  Lunch time rolls around, and the fact that I didn’t have time to eat breakfast catches up to me. I jump from my desk and head down to the lobby to the little deli where I usually get my lunch. It isn’t until I’m standing in line trying to decide between a tuna melt and a grilled cheese that I remember about Kwarq.

  First, my heart starts to thud, and it’s louder and heavier than it’s been all day. It still has that out of body quality. I thump my fist against my sternum and glance around to see if anyone else is trying to figure out if there’s a damn bass drum in my chest.

  “You do not have to be afraid of me, Amina.”

  I jump and spin around, knocking into the woman in front of me. She sucks her teeth, but merely steps ahead, putting some space between us.

  “Please, lehti, you will harm yourself if you do not calm down.

  You’re an alien!, my brain screams, but my mouth can’t work to say it. The thudding gets faster, and I dip out of line and to the side as Kwarq looms in front of me, matching my movements.

  “Dude, get away from me.”

  My voice is low and even I’m surprised at how scared I sound. In fact, the terror ripping through me is almost disabling. My heart feels like it is about to burst from my chest, and I realize now that this only happens when Kwarq is near me. I try to move away, but my feet feel numb and struggle to carry me to the door like I want them to.

  Kwarq stops moving toward me and raises his hands up in front of him.

  “Lehti, please. I promise I will not harm you. I am here for you. You do not have to fear me. I would like to explain what you saw last night. I will not lie to you.”

  I’m shaking my head before he finishes. The urge to run away, to just get away makes me take another step toward the exit. He takes an answering step with me, and I throw my hands up. My tiny palms make a pathetic shield against the width of his broad chest.

  “I’m serious, get the hell away from me.”

  Kwarq’s face shifts a bit, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was sad. I don’t care. This sad alien isn’t going to get me today.

  “If that is what you wish, I will leave you alone.”

  I nod.

  “Yup, that’s what I wish.”

  He sighs and takes a step back. I resist the insane urge to close the distance back up. I don’t want to be close to him. I’m supposed to be trying to get away.

  “Then I will bother you no longer, my lehti.”

  Just like that, he turns and stalks away. The other patrons of the deli part with startled movements as he moves to the door that exits onto the street and disappears around the corner.

  I exhale and it’s loud and shaky. A few people stare at me. Some with concern. Others with annoyance. We didn’t necessarily cause a scene, but I’m sure people could tell something was up. I look out to the street again just to make sure he isn’t still lurking around. When a few minutes pass, I get back in line. By the time my turn to order comes, I’ve lost whatever little appetite I had. I walk away and go back to my office.

  I don’t see Kwarq again after that. He isn’t waiting for me when I leave work. When I go to the movies later in the evening to clear my mind, he isn’t sitting across from me as usual. As I look at the empty seat he usually occupies, I feel a little shitty. Almost like I miss him a bit, which is stupid because he’s an alien.

  Kwarq

  Amina isn’t as open to the unknown as I thought. In fact, the last time she saw me at the deli, she nearly fainted in her fear of me. That was a difficult moment for me, knowing that I inspired that much fear in her.

  Later, I reminded myself that she is human, after all, and if I have learned anything about humans, it is that they are ridiculously paranoid when it comes to others. At times, rightfully so, but most times, i
t is merely enough to be different than what they are expecting to inspire fear. I know it is this paranoia that fuels my lehti’s aversion to me. Before she knew what I was, she was open, even eager to know me. Now I have been forced, once again, to retreat to the shadows and watch her from a distance.

  She’s more nervous than ever, but she is also a little sad. I watch her from the back of the theater. She turns her head to where I normally sit over and over again. When I feel out to her, it isn’t fear or anxiety I scent. It’s longing. Maybe there’s a chance to gain her trust once she has had an opportunity to reason with herself. Even if it is a small chance, I will be patient and wait to approach her again. I hope that when I do, she will be open to listening to me, and her fear will not keep us apart.

  “What the hell do you keep sighing about, Mina?”

  We’re on the subway train. Amina is in the car behind me with a woman who shares enough of her phenotypical features that she can only be her sister. The woman’s slightly lighter brown skin shimmers under the yellow train lights. She’s taller and thinner than Amina, who is several inches shorter and more roundly built. Amina’s sister is also beautiful, but not nearly as arresting as my lehti.

  Their backs are to me, but I have no trouble hearing them through the rumble of the train or the metal of the cars.

  “Nothing. Just something happened, and it’s messing with me.”

  Amina sounds weary. She tilts her head to side and lets it rest on her sister’s shoulder.

  “Aw, what is it, sis. You get rejected by Movie Bae?”

  Amina lifts her head and turns to glare at her sister.

  “What, no! And he’s not my bae.”

  “Mm hm. That’s not what you said before. I thought he was fine and all that? Did you talk to him?”

  “I sure did, and if I told you what happened, you wouldn’t even believe me.”

  “Yeah, you’re talking to the woman whose baby’s father got deployed overseas for the last year of his military contract, decided me and his kid weren’t worth the trouble, and never came back once he got out. This dude is chilling in Japan right now, speaking full ass sentences of Japanese on social media and hasn’t said ‘boo’ to us three years. Try me.”

  Amina puts her head back down, and releases a deep sigh.

  “It’s not that serious. He seemed cool at first. He’s just not my type.”

  Her sister’s shoulders shrug up then drop back down.

  “If you say so.”

  They’re silent after this. I keep my ears on them but turn my face to the front to watch the passing tunnel. My lehti’s words were a lie. Even as she said them, her heart sped up in excitement. She may not like it, but she feels the leht just as I do. I am even more determined now to find a way to get her to see that we are meant to be together.

  I follow them to Amina’s house once they’re off the train. I stay on the platform while they go above to the street and catch a bus that will take them to our neighborhood. Once there is no risk of me being seen, I jog at an easy pace behind the bus, stopping a block from Amina’s exit and then watch them from afar as they walk the rest of the way. Amina glances to her left and right as she goes. I know she is looking for me. I told her I would leave her alone, and I have, but that doesn’t mean I won't still make sure she is safe. I have to. There is no part of me that can turn away from her.

  Chapter 7

  Amina

  “Oh, fuck.”

  I feel him before I see him. My heart does that funky little skip again, which I’ve come to associate with his presence, and then ratchets up to a nearly scary level. Over the past few days, I’ve found myself looking for him in the faces around me. I’ve expected to see his tall, golden face watching me over the crowds I pass every day. A part of me wants to see him. A part of me misses him. But now that I know he’s near, I have tell myself not to panic. I’m safe. There are probably fifty people in this train car, and unless this dude is about to expose the existence of aliens to all of Chicago rush hour, then I shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

  But still, I feel him. It’s not just my heart. It’s like my entire body is in tune to his. He’s not in my head, but it’s almost like he’s in my cells, or something. I inhale sharply at the thought, my eyes going wide. What if he’s been sneaking into my apartment when I’m asleep and doing things to me? Creepy, TV abduction things. It’s clear now he’s been following me. All that stuff about seeing me in the neighborhood was crap. What if he’s been visiting me when I don’t know it. What if he’s trying to stick me into some alien version of the Sunken Place?

  I feel hysteria start to set in, and my chest collapses with the short, quick breaths of a panic attack. I press my hand between my breasts and try to take a deep breath, but it’s the Red Line right after work. Every side of me has a person pressed against it. It almost feels like the air is being sucked out of me. I attempt to turn around, anything to find some space, but I end up stepping on the toes of the man behind me. He scowls and shoves me back.

  “Watch where the fuck you’re stepping!”

  His voice is sharp and hostile, but I’m too busy looking for an exit. I can still feel Kwarq somewhere on the train. That echoing thud outside of me is getting louder or closer, I can’t tell which. I look down at my chest to make sure my heart is still where it should be.

  “What are you doing? Wait until the damn stop. There’s no place to go!”

  Train guy stands as a barrier between me and escape. I lower my head and try to duck beneath his arm where he’s holding onto the rail, but he shifts, blocking me in. The people around me go blurry. I suddenly want to tear at my skin, to get out whatever Kwarq may have put inside of me.

  “Please, I need to get off. I’m going to be sick,” I mumble out, still trying to get around him. I tilt back, and the person sitting behind me braces me with their hands and tries to right me, but the train is jerky and I only end up pitching forward into train guy again.

  “What the fuck!”

  I flinch. A few other passengers stare at me, but I can’t seem to get my brain to work right. It’s like everything is going very quickly and I can’t catch up. I focus on standing still. When I feel a hand at my arm, I look down. An older woman sitting behind me smiles and squeezes my arm reassuringly. I focus on it, letting her steady me for a moment. I inhale until my lungs start to burn. With each breath, the car comes back into focus, my chest loosens, and my brain starts to work again.

  The first thing I see is train guy glaring at me. Once he catches on that I’ve gotten myself together, he raises his hand to point his finger into my face.

  “You need to learn to say excuse me. That’s how people get hurt.”

  I blink. My head is still a little muddled, but not so much that I’m going to let him talk to me this way.

  “First of all, get your fucking finger out of my face. Second, I wasn’t feeling good. It was obviously an accident. You don’t have to be an asshole about it. Why would I just step on your foot for no reason?”

  “I don’t give a shit if you were about to die. Learn some fucking manners.”

  “Wow.”

  I want to be surprised, but I’ve had worse said to me. I wish I could show him the kind of manners I have, but I’m not stupid. A quick glance around the train car, and the rapid succession of heads that shift away when they see me looking, tells me that I’m on my own if this goes too far. I sigh and turn my back to the man.

  “Yeah, you better shut the fuck—argh!”

  I whip around, my fist up ready to defend myself, and I’m met by train guy’s bulging blue eyes. His face is no longer a mottled angry red, but an unnatural shade of purple. His mouth hangs open. I can see his tongue, filmed over with thick, white saliva, jerking around against his teeth. Around his neck is a large, golden hand. The veins on the back of it stand out beneath the skin. My eyes travel up, past the straining forearm and the bulging bicep, until they come to rest on Kwarq’s face.

  The first
thing I notice is that his skin looks like it’s vibrating. It’s like the cartoons when music is played too loud and frequency lines appear on all the surfaces. It’s almost like he’s about to jump out of his body.

  The next thing I notice is his eyes. They’re glowing. Glinting, glinting is a better word. The yellow looks like it’s turned solid. His eyes are little, hard jewels in their sockets, and these little jewels are fixed on train guy.

  His expression is blank. He barely looks like he’s moving aside from that rippling beneath his skin. Even when train guy struggles against his hand, the man’s fingers slipping and scratching against his golden skin, Kwarq doesn’t flinch. It doesn’t take long before train guy starts to go limp, and his protruding blue eyes roll back in his head. His hands fall away from where they were trying in vain to free his neck and hang limply at his side.

  I’ve been standing in a stunned catatonia. I want to tell Kwarq that he’s going to kill this man on the Red Line in Chicago in the middle of rush hour. Already, I see people scrambling to angle their cellphones at the scene. I can imagine the headlines, “Crazy, might be black alien attacks man on train.”

  I shake out of my shocked trance and reach forward taking hold of Kwarq’s arm with both hands. I yank around his elbow, trying to collapse the rigidity of his hold. Kwarq doesn’t so much a glance my way. He’s like a statue. I pull again, letting my legs collapse so I’m hanging off of his arm like it’s a jungle gym. Still nothing.