Now, snuggled down underneath my blanket, replaying the words Kyle said to me when he asked me to move to Texas with him, I try to fall asleep. My mind is moving so fast. In three weeks, all things will change. A month from now my life will not even be recognizable.
CHAPTER 4
EDEN
I’m driving across the country to get Alyssa. The plan was for me to fly out in our private jet, take her to Maine for dinner after her parents told her of our destiny, then take her back to New Orleans with me.
All her school work is completed. She’s eligible to graduate a couple of weeks early. So that fact, along with the knowledge of her loving another, had me changing the initial plan. I’ll feel better if we can spend a few days together before I take her away from all she’s ever known.
Turning her world upside down is not a thing I want to do, but the time is almost here. Her world will be completely different and only I can help her through the transition.
Which reminds me, I need to call her parents to let them know the change of plans. I hit their number and wait to see which one answers. “Hello,” a feminine voice says.
“Toni, good afternoon.”
“Eden, so nice to hear from you.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow instead of next week. I’ve changed my mind about a few things, like driving up, instead of flying. The jet will come when I call Jeffrey. A few days together with Alyssa before she’s told everything might help her adjust better.”
The hesitation in Toni’s voice is clear. “Eden, it’s okay. You can do everything the same as you planned. She’ll be fine, I assure you.”
It sounds as if she cares more about my wants than Alyssa’s feelings!
“With the addition of a boyfriend who it’s clear she loves, I think it’s best to bring her into this in a gentler manner. Her heart will be broken when she has to give him up. The thought of bringing her pain, then making her come with me is too horrible. I want to win her affection and trust. I want her to choose me over him.”
There’s a pregnant pause before Toni speaks again. “She is yours, Eden. I’ll explain things to her, make her understand. This is our fault for not being more protective. You shouldn’t be dealing with this at all. We can make her understand.”
“Look, I appreciate you taking the responsibility for this situation,” I say. “But this is my fault. Letting you give her the first years of her life to be normal was a mistake. My mother told me to take her when she turned thirteen, but I refused. I wanted her to have a traditional life as much as you did. The hard fact is that leading a typical life means having relationships. Alyssa is completely average in that aspect.”
“Eden, this is not your doing. We had a job to do and we didn’t do it well enough. I can handle her. Don’t let this change anything you’ve planned. You’ve been planning this for years.”
“I have, but SHE is what matters to me. Not my damn plans. Her heart is more important than anything else. I can make her love me on my own. That’s what I want to do before you tell her what she is.”
“Of course, Eden. We’ll do as you ask. So what time can we expect you tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there around six tomorrow evening.”
“We’ll make dinner then. I guess we can say you’re one of our old friend’s sons on his way to Los Angeles to go to college. And you’ll be staying a week with us to visit. How about that, Eden?”
“That should work. So I’ll see you then, Toni. Goodbye.”
Lies! I hate them. To begin our life on them is nothing I ever intended to do. A necessary evil they are, though. I’m almost to Dallas, where I’m staying the night. One night in a lonely hotel room. After that, I’ll never have to be alone again.
All those nights I stayed at home while my classmates went on dates, doing normal things, I played video games alone. Watched movies alone. Laid awake at night, looking at the picture of my mate, and wishing I could call her.
To hear her voice would’ve been enough to get me to sleep. Those lonely days are almost over.
Too bad she’s fallen in love with someone else. Damn, this would have been so much easier. I’ll never understand all the things Our Creator makes us go through.
Not for me to know, I guess. I’ll make her love me. Perhaps the moment she sees me it will all fall into place. Our betrothal before birth was by The Creator, no less. Maybe I’m worried for nothing.
I hope so anyway.
CHAPTER 5
ALYSSA
English class was a snore today. I’ve finished all my work in every class. No finals for me as I’ve kept my grades up the whole year, leaving me exempt from them. Yet I still must go to every class with nothing to do. So I read books. I’ve read so many books in the last week.
I forgot to go to the library and pick up a new book yesterday. So I grabbed the one Mom’s been reading off her chair this morning—the one with the shirtless guy.
Crap, it is racy. What my mother reads makes me blush. The love scenes are quite graphic. The bell rings and I’m subsequently free to go home.
I let the crowd rush out before me. The kids who ride the bus need to hurry. I have my jeep. I can afford to lag.
On my own today—Scotty has a baseball game to attend—I climb into my bright yellow Jeep. When I turn the key in the ignition nothing happens. Then I see I left the lights on this morning.
Oh great, the battery’s dead!
I’ll go find Kyle in the gym. He can give me a ride home and Dad can come jump my car later. It’s a short walk. I can hear the boys shouting as I open the door.
The smell of the dank gymnasium makes me wrinkle my nose. Kyle’s helping a few junior high kids shoot baskets.
He’s so damn sweet.
“Hey, hero,” I call out to him.
He high fives a kid who just made a basket before he jogs over to me, placing a kiss on my cheek. “You need a hero, doll?”
He’s too precious!
“I do. I left my lights on in the Jeep. It seems I’m a damsel in distress.”
The dance his eyebrows do makes me laugh. “I’ll be your hero, baby,” he says as he picks me up, carrying me out of the gym.
“Kyle, while this is sweet, you can put me down,” I say with a giggle.
“The truck’s right here, baby. Let me do this hero thing right,” he says, smiling that big smile down at me. The memory of the sexed-up love story fills my head as he holds me tight.
He lifts me up into the tall truck. I scoot over so he can climb in beside me. I slide to the passenger seat, simply to have him slide me right back to sit next to him.
“You sit by me, Al. I can’t have you all the way over there,” he says as he hands me the seatbelt.
He’s warm beside me, with a slight sheen of sweat on his face from playing in the gym. I drop my book and purse on the seat next to me and he spies my naughty novel. His eyes widen as he looks at me.
“I know. Don’t make fun of me. I ran out of reading material this morning. It was all I could find,” I explain.
As he pulls onto the road, he says, “Read some of the juicy stuff to me while I drive out to Trixie’s. I need a burger and you need a chocolate milkshake.”
“I’m not reading to you. The words in that book made me blush when I read them. I can’t conceivably say them out loud, Kyle.” I play with the radio like I usually do, finding the station I like instead of the country music he listens to.
A devilish grin forms on his plump lips. “That bad, huh? Now I have to hear some. Come on, baby, make your man happy.” His hand runs down my leg to squeeze my knee, leaving it there.
“Neanderthal, telling me to make my man happy. Welcome to the new age, Kyle. Women don’t do that anymore,” I say as I find a song I like on the radio and turn it up.
“Women’s lib, who needs it? You know you all want men to take care of you. And all of you want to take care of us. Your secret is out. You like making your man happy. I know you do, baby,” Kyle shouts over the loud music.
&
nbsp; I do like to make him happy, but I’m not reading those words to him. He’d get too excited and I’d get too embarrassed. Instead, I place a sweet kiss on his cheek. “There, that should keep you happy for the next thirty minutes or so.”
Trixie’s parking lot is full. Kyle pulls to the back where the employees park. His friend Cody works here. We park next to his beat up, old truck.
Kyle unhooks his seatbelt while I unhook mine. Turning swiftly, he has me on my back before I know he’s done it. I laugh as his face is close to mine.
“Kiss me, baby. You know you want to,” he says with a smile.
I do want to, but …
“Kyle, people will see us.”
“Not through these tinted windows, they won’t, Ally. Kiss me.”
Playfulness pushed aside, his eyes get darker blue with that lusty look he’s come to have at times. My hand moves to his neck and I pull his face to mine. The moment our lips touch warmth spreads through me.
The words from the book creep into my head, making me hunger for him to fill me like the shirtless guy did to the damsel. His kiss is hungry as he nips at my bottom lip. My lips ache when he leaves them, trailing kisses and nibbles down my neck.
Crap, that makes me so hot for him. His hand runs over my stomach, up to just beneath my breast. He wants to touch it, but won’t until I allow it.
The tremble of his hand, holding himself back until I say he can, excites the hell out of me. I sit up, but his mouth finds mine again, trying to push me back down. Upright I stay, placing my hands between us.
“No, please, baby, don’t stop,” he murmurs against my lips.
I’m not stopping him, though. Just unbuttoning my shirt, exposing the lacy, dark blue bra I put on this morning. I take his hand in mine, then place it on my breast. He stops the kiss, pulling his head back as he looks at his hand then back at me.
“Wow! You’re letting me do this?”
I nod and bite my bottom lip as he looks at my chest.
“So pretty.” His head drops to kiss the top of the one I put his hand on.
Two kisses later, he moves his hand away, taking me by the waist as he pulls me to him, peppering kisses on top of both of them. I tangle my hands in his curls, holding him to my chest.
A low growl comes from his throat, then I’m on my back again. My legs apart, and he’s in between them, pressing his body onto mine.
The hardness of him pulses against me. As if it’s crucial, his mouth finds mine, thrusting his tongue into my mouth as one of his hands squeezes my breast and the other pulls at my hair. His body grinds against mine.
The bulge grows. A need to feel it in my hands arises. Slipping my hand between us, I touch it through his jeans. Its long, wide, and hard. I move my hand up and down the length of it.
Kyle groans and kisses me even harder. So it must work for him. I want to find out what it feels like to be filled with it, just like the book said.
The woman screamed in ecstasy when the shirtless man filled her. I wonder if I will.
The button to his jeans proves hard to pop open. My struggles with it must have brought what I’m doing to Kyle’s attention, as his kisses soften. His hand grabs mine, tugging it away from the button up to his lips.
I blink up at him. The lusty darkness gone, his eyes are back to sky blue. But he’s smiling.
“You want to stop?” I ask, rather confused.
Isn’t this what all guys want?
“We have to, Ally,” he says as he pulls me up with him. “I got carried away and you did too. We have to wait to do more.”
My hair must be a mess because he’s running his hands through it. His face is so damn close to mine that I could fall back on those kiss-swollen lips of his and make him forget we can’t do more.
“We don’t have to wait,” I say as I lean closer.
The smile he gives me is so damn sweet that it’s apparent in an instant he’s doing this for me. “Yes, we do,” he says, his hands buttoning my shirt back up. Stopping just before he covers my breasts up, he takes one more look. “So beautiful.” He sighs and buttons the last two buttons.
“Kyle, I want to do this,” I protest, taking his hands in mine.
The twinkle in his eyes makes me want to grab him and pull him to me. “Not like this, Al. Not in my truck outside Trixie’s bar and grill. That’s not the memory I want for you to have of our first time. Plus, precautions have to be taken and we’ve taken none. That’s something we need to talk about.”
“What types of precautions?”
The slight smile on his gorgeous face makes me a little peeved. “Birth control, baby.”
My eyes close and I shake my head. I’m so stupid. “I forgot all about that. Kind of dumb of me. Damn romance novel.”
Kyle picks the book up off the floorboard. It must’ve gotten knocked off, along with my purse. “No more of this. I’ll keep it so it can’t tempt you to read it anymore.”
I blush crazy hard. “Come on, Romeo, buy me a chocolate shake,” I say as I push at his chest.
We walk into the dark café from the back entrance. Cody spots us. “Hey, Kyle,” he says.
They do a fist bump as he smiles cunningly at Kyle. “You pulled up twenty minutes ago. Are you two having a lover’s quarrel or something a little more romantic than that?”
Kyle tussles his shaggy brown hair. “Mind your business, boy.” Throwing his arm around my neck, he pulls me close, kissing the side of my head. “Hey, guys, I play the winner,” he says to one of the guys playing pool.
I frown at him as he lifts me to sit on a stool at the bar. “Kyle, I can’t stay away from the house much longer.”
He grins at me and hands me his cell phone. “Give your parents a call. Tell them about your battery and that I’m taking care of it. But we’ll have to drive down to Alamogordo to pick up a new one and won’t be back until later on tonight.”
This will never work, but I take it and make the call. Mom answers, but speedily puts my father on.
“I’ll take care of it, Alyssa.” Dad’s fast to respond. “It’s not Kyle’s responsibility.”
Kyle overhears my father. “I want to do it, Mr. Devlin. I want to show you I’m capable of taking care of your daughter,” he says. Then he takes a big bite of the burger that the plump, red-headed waitress placed in front of him.
“Tell him it won’t be necessary,” Dad says.
“Just let him do it, Dad,” I say, getting a little sick of this back and forth crap.
“No, ma’am. I’ll jump start your jeep, and you’re coming home. I’ll be at the school parking lot in fifteen minutes. Be there!”
I hand the phone back to Kyle with a smirk on my face. “Told you.”
“It was worth a try. I’m done anyway. Come on, let’s go,” he says as he lifts me off the bar stool. I grab my shake, taking it with me. A guy at the pool table gives him a gesture, seemingly asking, what’s up. “I’ll be back later, dude. My girl needs my help.”
His girl! How cute that sounds.
With his muscled arm thrown around my shoulders, Kyle pulls me close to his side. The sun as we walk out practically blinds me. It was dark in there.
Up in his truck again, I sit next to him, my head on his shoulder, holding his hand in my lap as he takes me back to the school. Daddy’s already there with the hood up on the jeep and the cables connected to my battery and his.
As he looks up at the truck and sees us so close, he frowns and looks away. How I wish he would just let me grow up without all the theatrics. There should be no reason my loving Kyle should affect him. Yet it does.
Kyle pulls up on the other side of my jeep. He jumps out and helps me down. My body grazes his as he places me on the ground. He gives me a wink and I give him a smile. Before he lets me go, he reaches in, grabbing the romance novel.
“I’ll read some tonight, then give you a call and we can discuss it,” he says, making me blush.
Dad yells, “If you can drag yourself away from him for
a minute, Ally, I need you to try to start the jeep.”
Ducking my head so he won’t see my pink cheeks, I sit in my jeep. It starts right up. Dad closes the hood, cables in his hand. “Get going, girl. I’ll be right behind you.”
Kyle moves promptly to my door. “Bye, baby. I’ll call you in a little while,” he says, just before he drops a kiss on my lips. I freeze with this.
My father’s glare could melt ice. Hastily, he retreats to his truck, not saying a word.
“Bye. I’ll talk to you later, Kyle. Thanks for the shake,” I say, before I pull away with my father right behind me.
I’m not even out of the car fully when Dad pulls up next to me. He’s out of his truck and clutching me by my arm, dragging me into the house. “Did you do that on purpose? Did you leave your lights on so you could go on a date with him?”
Mom looks up at us from her place on the sofa, yet another romance novel in her hands. This one has a man with long black hair riding a horse towards a red-headed damsel in distress.
So many damsels with problems in the old days.
My mother’s voice shrill, she asks, “What’s happened, David?”
Shaking me as he talks, he says, “This one here went out with Kyle. On a date!”
I wiggle against his grip, trying to get him to let me go, but he hangs on.
“Dad, that was no date. He was going to bring me home. We just stopped and got something to eat and drink, then we were coming straight back, unless you were going to let us go get a battery in Alamogordo.”
Finally, he lets my arm go. Crap, that hurt. I hope he didn’t leave a bruise.
I look it over as my mother comes to my side. She looks at the place on my arm he was holding so tight. It’s red, but I don’t think I’ll bruise.
I swear she looks worried.
“David, you didn’t need to handle her so roughly. You could’ve left marks on her. Then what would you have done?”
My father runs his hand over his face. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about that. The only thought in my mind was about her going against our rules, yet again. This has to stop, Alyssa. You’ve never done this. You’ve always followed the rules we’ve set. It’s so close and now you decide to go hog wild.”
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