by K. Cantrell
He extends a hand, beckoning me to his side. “Penelope watch.”
A purple dinosaur lumbers across the TV screen singing. Great. Now I will have Barney’s theme song stuck in my head all freaking day. Not even gorging my eyeballs on the bare slice of Eros’s flat abdomen peeking out below the hem of his T-shirt will get it out now.
I shake my head. “Oh, no. And zip up your pants.”
Right now. He needs to slide that zipper north before something I can’t unsee happens. At the moment, I can claim complete ignorance when I imagine what he looks like naked but if I’ve got the actual goods stored in my memory bank, I can’t be held responsible for whatever wickedness unfolds.
He cocks his head and doesn’t reach for anything. “I love you, you love me. We’re a happy family.”
Dear God. I am married to the world’s biggest toddler. “We’re not in love. We’re not even in like right now. Did you call 911?”
“Call.” He nods toward the end of the couch where the phone receiver lays face up under his calves, barely visible between him and the cushion. “No beep.”
Pinching my nose between my fingers, I rein in my temper because shouting is not going to fix his cluelessness. Only I can do that and that appears to be what I’ve signed up for.
“You can’t sit on the phone to stop it from beeping.” Only an alien could invent a new way to butt dial and still manage to call the cops at the same time. “Give it to me.”
I cross the room to yank the phone out from beneath his legs, completely missing that it’s a trap. As my fingers close around the receiver, his arm shoots out and snags me, pulling me down onto the couch. Onto him. My body collides with his, and he shuffles until we’re nested tight.
One of his knees comes up between my legs, snug against my core, which I can’t pretend isn’t instantly thrilling. His big palms frame my face and he blinks those ridiculous eyelashes at me as his entire expression melts into something carnal and heavy with intent.
“Penelope kiss,” he murmurs and I have no time to resist because he makes good on that promise, fusing his mouth to mine in nothing short of a drugging claim that sets me on fire.
My body goes taut and slick with need even as his presence winnows beneath my skin in that wholly encompassing fullness that feels so familiar. As if he’s always been inside me. As if we’re truly one, connected by some greater cosmic energy and we’ve been forced apart for a millennia. There’s this initial sigh of relief, and then my soul cries out there you are over and over again.
It’s entirely too bizarre. Not to mention silly. And uncontrollable. I wrench my mouth from his, panting from the exertion of simply being in his arms, but he doesn’t release me like he should.
“No,” he murmurs. “No go.”
“Yes,” I tell him firmly and try to extricate my arm from his fingers. “I have a job downstairs and…”
I forget how to talk as he feathers a thumb across my lips, watching me with this glint in his big brown eyes that I could easily fall into and never surface. He knows nothing of dating games and his desire for me radiates from his expression. Not that the big hard length poking me in the stomach didn’t already give that away, but a stiffy is just biology. Alienology. Whatever. Emotion puts a whole different spin on it, and he’s got that locked.
Speechless, I stare at him. Does he sense a connection to me in the same way I do to him? Surely not. Besides, it’s not real. I’m just being overly fanciful because he’s so hot and has a talented mouth.
“Feel,” he says and does a lot of that, sliding his fingers over my face, through my hair and back again, as if memorizing my shape. I should stop him. But my eyelids flutter closed as he continues his exploration because well…I do feel things. Inside. Where it really counts. So many things, and it’s hard to process.
“Eros—”
I bite that off as his fingertip catches on my bottom lip and pauses. The tip of my tongue automatically rises to meet it, skating over the pad. He groans. Shifts his hips, levering them higher into the recesses of my body and I’m lost again in him, in the sensations of what he does to me from the inside out.
I want him naked.
I want to hear him groan as I’m dragging out his pleasure. That’s a first for me, to yearn for a man’s voice while I’m doing things to him that he likes. That I like. It would be mutually amazing and I can visualize every bit of the scene with wicked clarity.
It’s not a shock to me how powerful this draw is between us, what’s shocking is that it’s only partially physical. I can’t explain how there’s something inside me that reaches for him, that wants to meld until we are inseparable.
That’s what jolts me out of this miasma that he’s dropped me into. I push on his chest for leverage, trying to get free and like always, he doesn’t release me.
“Let go,” I demand. “You can’t hold me down like this. There are rules about this sort of thing.”
“Hold,” he agrees and his hands skim down my back, tightening around me in an embrace that’s so warm, I can’t help but revel in it for a half second. You wouldn’t think someone with such a finely honed body would be comfortable to lay on, but he’s rolled me into a position that is so right I can’t fathom how well we fit together.
At least he’s not kissing me anymore. I lose my mind when he does that and I like having my mind functioning. “I have to go back to work. You clean up.”
“Kiss.”
“No more kissing.” The noise I make in my throat gets his attention and his gaze shifts down to my neck, then back up again in question. “Yes, I’m frustrated. I can’t spend all day lying around on the couch with you. You can’t spend all day eating ice cream and watching Barney.”
Barney. Of all things for him to pick out of the row of DVDs on the shelf next to the TV. If anything, he should be watching Wallykazam so he can learn English. Inspired, I push on his chest again and this time, he releases me, apparently motivated by my speech. I pull the Wallykazam DVD from its slot at the end—yes I alphabetize my DVDs and it’s not a crime—and hold up the brightly colored case. “You should watch this and learn something.”
“Kiss?” he asks hopefully and I make the mistake of glancing back at him decked out on the couch like a carnal fantasy, complete with a healthy triangle of abdomen visible where he’s unzipped his jeans. If only he knew that he should have saved the ice cream. I could effortlessly lick great big mouthfuls of it from that one exposed spot on his body and honestly, he’d have no trouble persuading me to move south if Chunky Monkey got involved.
That visual is not going away soon and I flush with heat as I think about how he would fill my mouth, how he would look at me with his soul in his eyes, half delirious with pleasure as I suck on him. As if he can read my mind, his hips shift toward me, rolling with the motion, and I’m riveted to the floor, desperate for something to ease the ache at my core.
Then why am I so resistant to what Eros is so clearly offering?
I know why. It feels squicky to be so attracted to someone who can so easily snap my control. Ha. I lost control of this situation the moment he appeared in Charmaine’s living room. That’s gotta be fixed.
“Here’s the deal, sport.” I shove the DVD into his hand and back the hell off before he can grab me again. “Clean up the living room and learn some English. Then we’ll talk.”
We wouldn’t. I didn’t want to talk to him, I wanted to strip him down and use his body to make mine sing until I am too sore to walk. I want to feel things while I’m doing it, a fullness in my chest that has Eros written all over it.
This drive to fill myself with him is not who I am. Sure I enjoy sex. Mostly. The few times I’ve dated someone long enough to get to that point.
All at once, I realize that’s the reason I should stay dressed. Eros will be vastly disappointed in his first experience with a human if I’m the other half of the equation. What do I know about how to pleasure a partner like him? Nothing.
I flee to
the salon and revise my game plan. Acclimation to Earth needs to happen sooner rather than later. I need him out of my house. Somehow I had envisioned our relationship being a lot different, with a lot less touching. And kissing. No ice cream. Thank God I hadn’t bought the Cherry Garcia too, because if a pint of that waited for me in the freezer upstairs, I would not handle it well.
Clem stands at the reception desk tapping at her phone and glances at me as I clear the back staircase. “Where have you been?”
I wasn’t gone that long. Was I? “I had to…go home for a minute.”
“Are you okay? You never disappear in the middle of the day.” Her brow furrows. “But that’s like the fourth time in a week.”
Because I was filling out paperwork for Eros and then, you know, getting married. Funny how much of a time suck a fake lover turned out to be. “I’m fine.”
Clem’s eyes widen as she zeroes in on something behind me and I don’t have to glace over my shoulder to know that Eros followed me down the stairs. Please God, let him have zipped up his pants. And be wearing a shirt.
“I see how fine you are,” she mutters and smirks at Eros as she holds out her hand to shake his. “You must be the reason Penelope is distracted lately. I’m Clementine.”
A dressed Eros crowds in next to me, one possessive arm stealing around my waist as he stares at Clem without taking her hand. “Penelope.”
There is no question what he means—he’s claiming me in front of my people. What am I, his little wife? But I don’t think he could possibly begin to understand American sexual politics and thus the concept of being “claimed” isn’t as off-putting as it should be. Neither should it be so affecting.
I am his and he is mine. The thought lives inside me as absolute truth, and I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. I can’t push it away.
“This is…John,” I tell her hastily, not at all sure why I think of him as Eros in my head but can’t fathom sharing that with anyone, not even Clem. That’s what I call him. No one else gets to. “He’s not from around here.”
“I gathered.” Clem’s hand drops to her side as she takes his measure.
“He’s…Swiss.” I almost said alien. Ugh. If I can’t easily tell the one lie I’ve practiced, what else am I in danger of blurting out? Eros has me all discombobulated. “And just temporary. He’s my fake boyfriend. Remember the customer who gave me her card?”
“Yeah, I see how fake he is,” she says, the sarcasm clinging to each word, and her point is not lost on me since Eros has nearly buried me against his side.
I marvel at how well I fit up against him. That shouldn’t be true. He’s not even from this planet and his DNA must be at the polar end of the spectrum from mine. We shouldn’t go so seamlessly together. But we do. In more ways than one. I understand him more easily than I would have envisioned even with his one word responses.
All at once, the reality of this situation crashes down on me. Clem is not wrong.
This is so far from the fake boyfriend scenario I was looking for that I can’t process it. At the very least, this little intro to Clem has shown me that Eros cannot meet my family yet. He has way too much work to do to before I can consider that and not for the reasons I would have thought. I have no doubt they’ll buy that we’re involved; in fact, I have zero qualms about whether it’s going to come across as faked because it’s not. We’re married and it’s clear he’s hot for me.
No, my problem is quickly becoming whether or not he can pass as human and that’s on me. Charmaine made it clear that I have a responsibility toward Eros. I can’t cut him loose until I know he can take care of himself. So far, that’s been a bust. He needs some of my undivided attention, when I’m not split between taking care of him and work. But that would mean taking time off.
That puts a weird hollow in my stomach. I can’t do that. This salon is my life.
But as Clem’s gaze cuts between the two of us, I realize my life has become something more than what it had been. Temporarily, of course. But it’s still valid to claim my alien in kind.
“I have to take John back upstairs,” I tell her and yank on Eros to get him to follow me to the stairs. He doesn’t bother following, opting to stay glued to my side as we navigate the stairs like a two-headed spastic newborn calf who can’t find its legs.
It’s kind of cute, I have to admit. I love that he’s so enthusiastic about me. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen or experienced or heard of before.
“Okay. You’ve got my undivided attention,” I say and shut the door behind us.
That’s when he turns into me, pressing me up against the door and this time, I have no shot at escaping as his big, hard body becomes very intimate with mine.
Five
“Make love,” he purrs into my ear and captures my earlobe with his teeth.
I feel the bite in my core as sharply as if he’d touched me there and I gasp. How is he so good at knowing what I’ll like? “Did they give you a class or something on Earth women?”
He doesn’t answer as he’s too busy working his lips down the column of my throat. Somehow my hands have wandered around his waist and found the hem of his shirt. I slide underneath it and fill my palms with his smooth, heated flesh. He makes a noise in his chest and it thrills me. I push upward, seeking more. I find it.
Eros’s body does not quit. It’s lean and taut under my fingertips. I want to see it, to order him to strip so I can satisfy my imagination. To discover what else he can do to me that will make my insides hum.
I do none of those things. “Eros, we have to talk.”
He is remarkably adept at ignoring me when he puts his mind to it. He tilts my head back with two fingers to my chin and captures my mouth in a searing kiss.
I fall into him instantly, into the thick, dense sensation of being transported to another time, another place, where we exist together as one. He infuses me with his essence the moment our lips touch and I can think of nothing but the next bit of sensation, the next slide of his lips on my skin.
His tongue finds mine, weaving back and forth against it in a sensual dance that enlivens my whole body. I moan and change the angle, desperate for more of him inside me.
He boosts me up against the door, effortlessly pinning me, one hand under my bottom and the other buried in my hair as he levers my head back to take me deeper still. The kiss explodes with urgency. I whimper and wrap my legs around his waist, grinding myself against the steel in his pants. My aching core weeps in frustration at the layers of clothing between us and then it doesn’t matter as he expertly rolls his hips to increase the friction.
My God, can he light me up.
Whose bright idea was it for him to zip up his pants?
I want him inside me, now. I shut my eyes as the sense of fullness increases until I can feel nothing but Eros bursting through me. My bones have vanished, to be replaced with lovely, liquid sensation.
Holy hell, if he doesn’t stop, we will be making love in under a minute. I have no condoms, no clue if Earth condoms will even fit him—and judging by the size of what I can feel through my soaked panties, that’s a very real concern. Not to mention he might be carrying any number of alien diseases that will ravage my body in an entirely different way.
“Waitwaitwait,” I spit out and he nuzzles my jaw.
“Make love,” he murmurs.
“I got that part. Please,” I plead, sorry I ever taught him that phrase. “Let me think for a minute.”
He lets me slide to the ground but true to form, does not stop touching me. His fingers linger at my waist as if he cannot get enough and since I know the feeling, I can’t chastise him.
Manual. Charmaine gave me paperwork and a thick binder. If there is a God, something in that stack of words will tell me what I need to know about whether I can actually go through with the consummation part of this deal. Doesn’t mean I will, just that I have options if I choose to throw caution to the wind. I wiggle free from the iron mountain crushi
ng me to the door, and it’s to his credit that he allows it. I couldn’t get loose otherwise.
Sweet sanity rushes back into me the second he lets go. I cannot understand why my brain melts when he’s touching me. It’s like something outside of myself takes over and I can’t control it. It’s baffling and so not what I need right now.
My coffee table is notably absent of ice cream containers. There’s still a sticky film in the upper corner, but I ignore that for now. He tried. I appreciate that. “Thank you for cleaning up.”
He nods and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning against the door with his enormous erection on flagrant display beneath his jeans. No reason not to be proud of it, I guess.
The manual is right where I left it, on my bedside table. I glanced at the first page earlier, but now I dive in with renewed interest, opening the binder and settling it in my lap as I perch on the bed. Maybe there are some tips on how to manage an alien who wants to mate with me twenty-four/seven.
Of course, it occurs to me that there are very few Earth women who would be saying no at this point. Perhaps the advice I really need is stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. But I’m not a throw caution to the wind kind of girl, not normally, and Eros comes with a whole set of unusual complications, not the least of which is that I have no idea what I’m doing with him.
Eros follows me to the bedroom, his gaze taking in my bed with a long measured glance that I have no trouble interpreting. And predictably, he takes the opportunity to sit next to me. The mattress dips and I slide right into him, which seems to be what he was going for since he slings an arm around me.
Great. So we’re going to cuddle apparently. If it didn’t feel so perfect, I would definitely say something. I glance over at Eros who’s reading over my shoulder with a furrowed brow. Okay, probably not reading, but at least absorbing that printed words march across the page.
“It’s your instruction manual,” I tell him. “Maybe there’s an off-switch somewhere in your brain that will allow you to stop thinking about sex all the time.”
