Any delusion he’d allowed himself that he’d completely forgotten her, completely and totally buried his youthful infatuation, had vanished the moment he saw her, though. Everything he’d worked so hard to convince himself of had fallen by the wayside. He’d felt as hungry, and as unworthy, as he had when he was a stupid kid … and he’d behaved as badly.
His stomach churned as he recalled what he’d said to her, the way he’d said it, and the look in her eyes. His throat closed. “Jod, mabay! I didn’t mean it!”
But he had, he realized. He’d felt like dirt when she’d looked him afterwards and made the damned comment about the fucking condom! As if he was some fucking disease ridden piece of trash! He wasn’t a … fucking man whore! He used protection on the rare occasions when he indulged!
He just hadn’t seen any need to protect himself from her—when mating was the objective—and he’d been too stupid to realize she would be upset by it.
And he hadn’t taken anything with him and there was no fucking way he could stop himself once he saw the possibility! He hadn’t even thought about a damned condom until she’d brought it up!
Hell! He hadn’t even gotten her damned number!
He’d screwed things up about as badly as he possibly could! She wasn’t going to give him the time of day even if he could wrangle the number from her sister!
He should’ve written her off a long time ago, he realized angrily. He’d thought he had. He’d damned sure worked hard enough to get her out of his system that he shouldn’t be lying awake now trying to think of some way to figure out how to get a second chance when he hadn’t even expected to get a first chance.
He shouldn’t have allowed her to get under his skin like he had! He wasn’t a damned kid anymore—unnerved about living among aliens and the constant threat/possibility of getting caught in alien—likely hostile—territory! Scared enough to lash out at anyone that threatened his cover. He was a full grown man and he had a lot to offer a woman—even a woman like Chelsey.
Even if it wasn’t here.
All he needed was a chance to convince her.
* * * *
Chelsey didn’t know how she’d made it through the rest of the party. She didn’t know whether to be glad everything that came after having sex with Garryk was just a blur or worry about how much she’d given away because she was too distracted to focus on anything. She was so relieved to get back to her apartment, though, she felt like crying.
Well, not just with relief. She was relieved. It was the realization that she finally had a little privacy to fall apart, though, that made her feel like giving in to it.
Garryk! She couldn’t believe she’d had sex with a former student—with Garryk Sinclair of all people—the ‘bad boy’ that had haunted her first years of teaching. The ‘pretty boy’ that had so tempted her with his ‘I could eat you alive’ looks that she’d been terrified he was going to be the death of her career before she even got started good!
Or ruin her marriage, which had already been rocky barely two years into it.
Dropping onto her couch the moment she’d locked the door behind her, she covered her face with her hands, struggling with the images that had played over and over in her mind all night.
She hadn’t recognized him immediately. It had been nearly ten years, after all, and he wasn’t a pretty boy anymore. He was a man—a drop dead gorgeous man!
And she’d been too busy staring at his body and that stunning cock to look at his face—until he’d walked right up to her and leaned down over her so that they were practically nose to nose. Recognition had hit her with the force of a sledge hammer then, bowling her over and completing her descent into total madness!
Because it was insane! It was probably the most insane thing she’d ever done in her life—yielding to that devil’s wiles—when she knew, knew that he’d painted crosshairs on her almost from the day he’d first entered her classroom.
She was probably the only female Garryk Sinclair had ever met in his life that he hadn’t gotten into his bed within five minutes—until tonight.
How absolutely stupid was it to succumb when she knew the only reason he had any interest in her was because she was the ‘one that got away’? Especially now! She’d just thought she was in a precarious position before when she’d known him! It had been her very first year teaching and she was under heavy scrutiny and knew it, but her situation was so much worse now it didn’t bear thinking on!
She hadn’t taught in years and it had taken all she could do to get accredited again and find a job when she’d let Lawrence manipulate her in to quitting to be a full time mother and wife—and it hadn’t looked good that her son didn’t want anything to do with her. The very fact that Lawrence had gotten custody had made everyone look at her as if she was some sort of monster, unfit to be around children.
Lawrence would have a field day when … if he discovered she’d slept with an exotic dancer! As if that wasn’t bad enough, she knew the probability was high, given the boy he’d been back then, that Garryk probably had a record, as well. She wouldn’t even get visitation rights!
Not that she did very often anyway, regardless of the court orders. There was always some reason why it wasn’t convenient for Larry to spend the weekend with her like he was supposed to. But she couldn’t lose her son completely! She wasn’t going to give up without a fight! She loved him too much and she was sure if she just hung in there sooner or later he’d see that none of the lies his father had told were true and he’d come around.
Unless she got involved with a man like Garryk!
She dropped her hands and scrubbed them along the legs of her jeans in agitation.
Who was she kidding? She wasn’t involved! He wasn’t interested in getting involved. She’d let him count coup and fuck her!
No! It was worse than that. She’d been all over him! The only thing that had prevented her from begging him was the fact that she’d been too mindless to think in English! She’d been babbling in tongues!
Well—he had for that matter!
She’d thought her mind was just too overheated to translate—at first.
A shiver skated through her as the memory instantly flooded her mind. Garryk Sinclair was a man who knew how to please a woman! He’d set her on fire, turned her mind to sludge. If ever she’d needed proof that it wasn’t pure imagination that women fell all over themselves to spread their legs for him, she certainly had it! She’d gloried in her downfall!
She almost thought the worst part of it was that no man had ever made her feel like that before, because she knew now what it was supposed to feel like and she was never going to get to experience anything like that again—ever!
She could still smell him on her skin and it was driving her nuts! She felt like a junky in need of a fix!
Surging to her feet abruptly, she headed into her bathroom to bathe. She needed to try to put it out of her mind, needed to get him out of her head. She wasn’t going to see him again. There was no reason in the world for him to have any interest in it now that he’d finally scored with ‘teach’.
Even if he was interested in toying with her, she couldn’t allow it!
God, she wanted to! She almost thought it would be worth it to be left in ruins when he dumped her and moved on just to experience what it felt like for a little while!
He wasn’t a kid anymore. It wasn’t wrong to think of him as a desirable man—because he was! Truthfully, she’d never been able to see him any other way, though god knew she’d tried! He hadn’t behaved like a kid and he sure as hell hadn’t looked like one. Fresh out of college with the ink barely dry on her teaching certificate, she’d still been too close to her own school years to consider him as forbidden fruit—at first—not until her curiosity had led her to look up his records and she’d discovered he wasn’t even eighteen.
Not that she thought he’d ever really been a kid in the truest sense of the word—innocent. He hadn’t gotten the chance. He’d grown up i
n the school of hard knocks and he’d been light years more experienced in the ways of the world than she was even back then, regardless of his chronological age or hers.
She’d deeply regretted, even then, that he was completely forbidden to her—because of her marriage, because of her career, and because of his age. There was just something about him beyond his good looks that had tempted her to ignore her conscience, throw everything away, and give in to the promise in his eyes.
It wasn’t worth it, though. It really wasn’t! She couldn’t let the hunger he’d planted in her to flourish, to make her start rethinking things—like she’d lost her son and she was never going to get him back no matter how hard she tried. There was still hope. She had to believe that. She couldn’t move on with her life. She didn’t want to give up even if there was just a slim chance she might yet salvage some kind of relationship with her son.
Because there sure as hell wasn’t any future with Garryk!
* * * *
“Hi. This is Garryk Sinclair ….”
“Who?”
Garryk’s lips tightened. “Diablo?” he said uncomfortably.
“Oh!”
“I’m trying to reach Marla Parks.”
There was hesitation on the line. “Was there a mistake in the payment?”
This time Garryk hesitated. “Actually, there was, but that isn’t what I was calling about. You overpaid me by a hundred.”
“Oh! No! That was a tip.”
Garryk wrestled with his temper for a moment. “If that was for the private lap dance—it wasn’t necessary.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“Look … forget it. The reason I called is because I lost your sister’s phone number and I was wondering if I could get it from you.”
There was a long pause and he’d begun to think she’d hung up. “She gave you her phone number?”
Garryk felt his face heating, but only part of it was due to his rise in temper. “You’ve got a problem with that?”
“Not if she actually gave it to you.”
Which she didn’t fucking believe for a minute! He could tell that just by her voice. If he hadn’t wanted it so badly he would’ve hung up himself. A check of the phone book had turned up empty, though. Unless she’d changed her name …. “She gave it to me,” he replied tightly, maintaining his lie with grim determination.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll check with her and it she’s ok with it, I’ll call you back and give it to you. What’s your number?”
Garryk ground his teeth. “Forget it!” he snapped and hung up. He slammed his fist into the wall next to the payphone in frustration. Disconcerted when the wood panel cracked, he glanced around to see if anybody had observed him and strode away from the phone.
“You’re up next, Diablo! You need to hump it!”
Lifting a hand in acknowledgement, Garryk kept going until he reached the dressing room. It took longer to oil up and apply the grease paint they used to keep their faces from looking like a blank white mask in the harsh glare of the spotlights than it did to change into his costume. Carrying the mask since the son-of-a-bitch was hot and made him sweat profusely, he took his place just off stage to wait for the performer before him to finish.
He was still royally pissed off, though, and he didn’t make any attempt to peer through the curtains to check the crowd to see if they had a good showing for the night like he usually did. He’d been kicking himself ever since the disaster with Chelsey—It was hard to look at it any other way despite the fact that he’d gotten exactly what he wanted when it seemed like it had ended up costing him way more than he’d wanted or expected.
He’d tried to convince himself it wasn’t a total disaster. He’d just give her a few days to stew over it and patch things up, but it didn’t look like that was going to fucking happen when he didn’t know where she lived and he couldn’t get his hands on her phone number.
He was so deep in thought that he almost missed his cue. Pushing his thoughts to the back of his mind, he snapped the mask in place and double timed it onto the stage to catch his next cue. The glaring spotlights made it impossible to catch more than a glimpse of the audience from time to time, but he’d ceased to either worry about the crowd or play to them long ago.
Just as he was finishing up his grand finale, however, he caught a glimpse of a woman near the back of the club that damned near made him trip over his own feet. He caught himself with an effort and, he thought, carried it off well enough, but he was rattled enough he hesitated longer to clear the stage than he should have. The dancer poised to go on behind him glared at him when he’d finally collected his clothes and exited.
“You made me miss my cue, damn it!”
“Sorry, man,” Garryk muttered, striding to his locker to shove his clothes in without a backward glance.
It was a hell of a lot harder to see over the tables filled with screaming women from the ground level than it had been from the stage, Garryk discovered. Trying to decide whether he really had seen Chelsey or if it was pure imagination, he hesitated, craning to see if he could spot her again.
He was just on the point of giving up when he saw her. She wasn’t sitting at the table where he’d spotted her before. She was heading for the door. Almost as if she felt his gaze, she turned and looked straight at him. Her eyes widened. Whirling, she took off, battering her way through the crowd.
Fuck! And he wasn’t wearing anything but his fucking thong!
Whirling around abruptly himself, he charged backstage to his locker, grabbed his jeans and pulled them on and then took off toward the exit barefoot and shirtless. Whipping his head around in search of her, he finally spied her rushing directly toward him.
Smiling grimly to himself, he stepped back into the shadows. He’d thought she’d hidden in the back of the club to avoid him, but if she’d parked in the back it was most likely because she’d only just arrived.
Of course, that didn’t explain why she’d took off when she saw him, but he was about to find out.
Chapter Four
Chelsey didn’t know what she’d been thinking! She supposed she wasn’t thinking at all!
Because what she’d been thinking with didn’t have a brain!
From the moment she’d thought about going to the club to see Garryk perform, though, she hadn’t been able to let go of the idea.
She’d told herself she needed to go to get him out of her head! She needed to see him for what he really was—a womanizer of the worst kind. She needed to see it with her own eyes so she couldn’t lie to herself.
Because that was what she’d been doing. She’d gone over and over their night together, remembered everything he’d said, every touch, and she’d almost managed to convince herself that she’d been wrong about him. He hadn’t seduced her just to add her scalp lock to his bedpost. He’d remembered her and he’d still been attracted to her.
He’d said those hurtful things because she’d hurt him. It had always been his way, to strike out with the most cutting remarks he could think of whenever anyone wounded him. It was his defense mechanism against a cruel world.
She’d wanted to believe that because it kept her from feeling so crushed, but could she allow herself to believe it?
She’d always refused to see him for what he really was, she finally realized. Even when everyone around her had been convinced he was trouble with a capital T and destined for a life of crime she’d insisted that he was too smart and had too much goodness in him to end up living the life of a common criminal. He had potential. He just needed someone to believe in him, someone to appeal to the good in him.
She’d tried. She was just a school teacher. She hadn’t been trained in dealing with problem kids. Needless to say the attempt to reach him had been an abysmal failure, because she hadn’t known how to break through the stone wall he’d built between him and the rest of the world.
Or she’d been wrong about him all along. She’d never accepted that. It was easier to a
ccept her failings in counseling than to accept the possibility that so charming a young man, with so much potential could’ve just plain been bad.
She was still making excuses for him, but she’d finally admitted that it wasn’t just for him. It was for herself.
Well! It certainly hadn’t been a total loss! It had been an eye opening experience, alright! She’d listened to women of all ages screaming ‘Diablo’ until she was nearly deaf and watched the way he played to the crowd.
She was just surprised the man still had a dick and hadn’t worn it down to a nub!
It totally sucked that she hadn’t been able to get in, see what she’d gone to see, and get out without being spotted! She’d been convinced she could and it was really unsettling that he’d spotted her, but irrelevant, she was sure.
She nearly had heart failure when she rounded the corner of the club and a man stepped out of the shadows. She’d already sucked in a breath to scream when she recognized him.
“Did you see what you came to see?” he asked grimly.
Chelsey stared at Garryk, trying to wrap her mind around the fact that he’d caught up to her when she’d been sure there was no way in hell he could even if he’d wanted to. The urge to pretend she not only didn’t have a clue of what he was talking about, but she’d had no idea he would be in the club, was so strong she didn’t even examine it for flaws. “Uh … you work here?”
He grabbed her arm, glanced around the parking lot, and then dragged her through a door she hadn’t even seen. She saw a narrow hallway and then he dragged her through another door and into what was clearly a storage room. Without pausing, he led her down a narrow aisle to the back side of the room before he released her. “You want to tell me why you came if you were only going to dash out the door the minute I saw you?”
Resentment flickered through her. “You saw me?”
His expression hardened. “You bet your ass I did,” he growled, shifting closer, “or we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? What’s going on, Chelsey?”
She blinked at him, swallowing convulsively a few times. “I’m not one of your … groupies, if that’s what you’re thinking!” she said tightly. “I didn’t even know you worked here! I just came with some friends to watch the show.”
The Visitor: Alien Hunger Special Edition Page 4
