Space Invaders

by Amber Kell

  Chapter Eight

  “Oddly, I don’t feel like goin’ out there right at the moment.” As I watched from the window, fog swirled in from the sea, covering the little garden pavillion so it became as elusive as the island of Avalon.

  “The mist is unnatural. The creature waits for us,” Frey said.

  When he put his arm around me, I was conscious of how cold my feet were, how tired I felt. All this shit had happened in such a short span of time. One day I’d worried about when I’d get time to wash my accumulated dirty socks and cram for finals, the next…

  “You are weary, guide.”

  “I’m not the one who’s hurt.” I pointed out.

  He raised one eyebrow.

  “Wait!” I swung around in his arms, touching his face, his upper chest. “That scratch that ran over your neck. The bite mark…”

  “Gone, yes,” he said. “It is another small talent, the healing, but like the other I will not be able to manifest it for a day and a night.” His eyelids fell heavy over his blue eyes. “And I need a brief time to recover my energy.”

  I felt abruptly protective. Frey was still a mystery to me with his hidden talents married with his vulnerability. He was also slumped against his sword. My Viking was about ready to keel over.

  “You need your long boat in a hurry.”

  He blinked. “Oh. This is humour?”

  “Apparently not. There’s a couch in the prof’s home office,” I said. “Let’s secure the house and then you can rest there while I check through her notes, see if I can find something to help us.”

  Frey’s face was like whitened bone under moonlight. Sweat sheened his forehead. He nodded and slumped at the top of the stairs as I went down and locked the front door, checked the back. I put down some towels in the kitchen, mopped up. I brought more up with me to the bathroom upstairs and took off my socks and shoes, leaving them to dry out while I cleaned up the bathroom.

  “If we reconstruct from the hot pan in the kitchen and the still-steaming coffee in her office, she was cooking dinner and having coffee up here while she went through her notes. She’d probably just got off the phone with me when the, uh, Whisperer came calling.”

  Frey was on the couch now, arms around his knees. He’d stripped out of this clothing again, his beautiful body muscled and distracting with all those yards of silky skin. I wanted to kiss the tiny wisp of white blond hair between his nipples. He nodded, eyes almost closed as he watched me. He looked as if I’d worn him out after a bout of vigorous lovemaking, and how weird, that I’d use that word in my head. ‘Lovemaking’. It wasn’t something I had any experience of, except in the books I read.

  “I guess the healing thing really drains you, huh?”

  Frey nodded. “It could have been worse, but the poisoned blood touched my skin.”

  Touched his skin, because he’d made damn sure it hadn’t touched mine.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I need no thanks.”

  “I disagree.” I cleared my throat. “I’m going to see what I can find out from her notes. She used some kind of shorthand I’m not sure I can decipher, but she left her files open, so I may score there.”

  “I trust you.”

  He trusted me, Bailey, not the guide. It gave me a glow, even when I looked over my shoulder and saw he’d fallen asleep. His sword was beside the couch, there if he needed it, but he was out like a light.

  It was good not to be alone as the fog hugged Professor Dunbar’s town house like felting wool, snug and stifling. A dog snarled just beyond that soup, and I wondered if it had been infected. Would it attack Frey and me if we tried to leave the house?

  And okay, that cheery thought wasn’t getting me anywhere.

  I’d been relying on Professor Dunbar to give me the answers, to get me off the hook. Now I’d have to rely on myself. I might have sloppy housemate skills, I might sleep through first classes in the morning, but I had top grades. I should be able to figure this out.

  If I didn’t, Frey could get hurt again.

  I looked at him, saw he’d curled into the foetal position. His skin was pebbled from the chill encompassing the house. I got up, found a hand-crocheted afghan and tucked it over him. His long hair was wrapped around his forehead, tumbled under one cheek. It was warm from his body when I touched it.

  I grunted in disgust at myself. I was dithering because I was insecure. I wasn’t sure I would find anything.

  The professor’s notes were awash. As I’d told Frey, she’d used some kind of shorthand I couldn’t read, but when I scanned the entry she’d been writing on her computer, I discovered it was a kind of journal. She used shorthand there too, but this I could follow.

  B couldn’t be trusted not to fool around with the symbol I gave him, but I’d anticipated that, of course. He has the arrogance of the young. He had no idea that the door existed, or that because he is a natural guide, he is the only one who can open or close it.

  Now I have what I want. The three are here, and I can use them to solve my little problem of being stuck in a rut. I deserved that promotion, not that fool they passed me over for.

  The guardian won’t be a problem. From what B said, the Viking is focused on him, needs to protect him. I can use that.

  Soon I’ll have exactly what I want.

  I had to read it twice. It was like she’d reached through the screen and slapped me. I was young, arrogant…and easily manipulated.

  She’d planned this, wanted me to fool around with that symbol from the beginning.

  She’d wanted me to open the door.

  “Guide,” Frey called softly. “Bailey, I can sense your distress.”

  I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. I’d thought it was bad that I’d done this by accident, but knowing I’d been used, that I’d just been a tool…

  “She wanted you here,” I told Frey. “She wanted me to open the door.”

  Frey sat up, offered me a broad, scarred hand. “I wondered.”

  I stared at him.

  “Bailey, you are…gentle. You do not expect this kind of betrayal.”

  “You mean I’m an idiot.”

  He tugged my arm. “Do not twist my words.”

  “Did she want to become a monster? Was turning all red-eyed and bitey her ultimate plan?”

  He shook his head. “She must have wanted to control the Whisperer, perhaps all three of us. Something went wrong with her plan.”

  “You suspected she was involved.”

  “You were so unaware when I woke in your bed. All of my other guides summoned me, expected me. At first you were groggy and then you merely thought I was an easy lay.”

  I had to grin when he repeated the easy lay thing. I seemed to remember mumbling that when I’d first woken up. “I thought you’d come home with me from a party and I’d…somehow passed out and forgotten or you were a set up over my birthday.”

  “You couldn’t let yourself see I was real.”

  That was just too close to home.

  “What could she gain if she somehow had control over the Whisperer?” I asked.

  Frey rubbed his right eyebrow, lips pursed. “She could use its energy to influence others, to gain power or wealth. It is not the first time someone has tried.” He gave me a sober look. “There is no saving her, Bailey, not if she invited it.”

  I nodded. “I figured.” I chewed my lip. “I, uh, told her I was going to meet you guys at Bono’s for coffee. That creature intercepting me wasn’t an accident. She sent it.”

  “This knowledge hurts you.”

  I pulled out the flash drive I’d inserted in Professor Dunbar’s computer, stuffed it and some papers into a plastic bag from the kitchen. “It was her Darth Vader moment. She failed.”

  “Darth Vader?”

  “I’ll fill you in later. Look, it’s too dark and spooky to try to get out on that rock right now and retrieve the drawing if she stashed it there, so I vote we head back to my place.”

  Frey
was on his feet. “It would be good to lie there with you.”

  “Just remember, no furs.”

  “You will keep me warm, yes?” I knew he was teasing me to try to help lighten things.

  “I’d be happy to keep you warm. I’m thinking we’ll hit the big sunken tub upstairs. You’ll totally love it.”

  I shut down the desktop and Frey dressed and I picked up my still-wet shoes and socks. We made a dash for the car and Frey didn’t make a big deal of folding back inside it into a cute Viking sandwich. I think he was too relieved we hadn’t been attacked as we made a break for it.

  But I felt something watching us through the swirling fog. And I knew it wasn’t over.

  Frey ran a hand over a cedar pillar as I unlocked the door to my house. “Hey, if you got stranded here, maybe you could build stuff,” I said. “Log cabins, boats.”

  He gave me a startled look. “I like to build.”

  “Yeah, I had that sense. You remind me a bit of my Dad. He had an appreciation for natural materials, wood, stone. You really lit up when you saw my house. Even the carpet is woven sisal.”

  Frey nodded.

  “I’ve missed that about him.” I switched on more lights, not liking the look of the fog that was creeping up from the rocky beach below. “It would be nice seeing you using a hammer instead of that sword.”

  “You would wish me to be other than what I am,” Frey said. “A guardian.”

  Bull’s eye. “Well, it’s kind of a depressing gig.”

  “It is you who is depressed.”

  I headed to the top floor and Frey followed me. He kept glancing out the windows at the fog. It seemed almost to scratch against the glass. “You have many totems here. It will serve as protection.”

  “Totems?” We were in the bathroom, which was about the size of my dorm room. Damn, I missed the place. Usually I was a shower man, but when I had a cold or felt like shit, there was nothing like hot jets.

  “The…” Frey gestured to a framed watercolour of the bay I’d done when I was twelve. “The things made by you and others. They emanate strong protective energy.”

  “Whoa, that’s a really interesting take on art and craft, that it originated like fire, to protect people, to make a circle,” I mused. I loved that idea. I’d have to do a paper on it for Professor Dunbar. She’d be—

  But she wouldn’t be impressed. She was now a monster with a single consonant vocabulary.

  I turned on the hot water and watched it flow out of the fancy waterfall copper tap. “You have to take your clothes off—” But when I turned to look at Frey, he’d already done it. “You know, the stripper thing is an excellent qualification in a boyfriend.”

  He raised his brows and then looked down at his body. “You like to look at my muscles.”

  I laughed. “Oh, yeah. And a lot of other things. Feel free not to wear clothing when we’re alone together.”

  He looked smug but then wary as I led him to the bathtub. “It is a large pond.”

  “Can’t swim?”

  “I can. Why would I do so?”

  “Hey, you were pretty clean when we first, you know, met. So you must bathe.”

  “Of course I bathe.” He looked offended. “I do not overcome other warriors in battle with my smell.”

  “You smelt of campfire and earth.” I tried to loop my arms around him, drag him closer to the tub, but he was as undraggable as a tree stump. I tried another method, nibbling on his earlobe. He sucked in a breath and his big hands tightened on my body.

  “Bailey.” He pushed me back so he could yank at my T-shirt. “When I am unclothed, I want…”

  “Yes?” I kissed his neck.

  “I want you unclothed also.” It wasn’t long before I was naked. I stepped into the water, settled near the jets and let out a long, luxurious sound. Frey’s eyes widened and then he looked put out, probably because the sound I made was like one he could draw from me. He was jealous of the hot swirling water.

  I grinned at him and he plunked in, hissing in a breath. “This!”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”

  He shook his head. “No, Bailey, it is hot.”

  His eyelashes fell and I knew I was in for it. My heartbeat thundered as he climbed over me, took my erection in his grasp.

  I wrapped one leg around his hip while I kissed him. He took both our hard-ons, rubbing them together, killing me slowly.

  “You are so hot,” I muttered against his damp skin. “The way you tower over me, the sword, the calluses on your hands, the way your hair falls around your face. And Jesus, your eyes.”

  They looked at me now, into me, as he kissed me back, rutting with me. God, was there anything more perfect then my prick in his hand, rubbing velvety against his cock?

  “I know we have this thing going on, creatures, darkness, but when you look at me like that, I just want you to fuck me.” I shook my head. “No, that’s not entirely honest. I want you to fuck me all the time.”

  “You are very eager to be a woman for me.”

  I frowned, still thrown by his archaic phrasing. “Um, yeah.”

  “I have never had a boy of my very own.”

  “No?”

  “If I had met you in my time, I would have taken you.”

  “I would have been English, maybe a Celt,” I said, spinning out the fantasy. Hell, I’d read tons of historical romances featuring hot, conquering Vikings. “You take me as your captive. Um…there’d have to be conflict. Oh, I know, your father was betrayed by my father. Well, he wasn’t really, but you don’t know that and they’re both dead. So you capture me to ‘punish’ me by making me your kitchen slave. It’s usually something humiliating so we fight a lot.”

  He stared at me, obviously enraptured as much by my storytelling ability as my hot little body. I grinned, loving being with him. The soothing water, the vivid blue eyes, his complete earnestness.

  “We fight a lot?” he prompted when I lost myself in the feel of him gently thrusting against me, his hand gloving us both so perfectly.

  “Yeah, I drive you crazy. I’m defiant and I keep trying to escape and…you want me. You’re crazy for me, but I’m a virgin and you don’t want to frighten me with your unnatural passions.”

  “I would not care if you were a virgin if you looked at me the way you do, Bailey,” Frey grumbled. “I would tumble you hard.”

  “Ohhhhh.” I bit my lip and arched into him, both the thought of being tumbled hard by my Viking and the feel of what he was doing pushing me to the edge. “Frey!”

  “I will attend you,” he whispered.

  And did he. He moved his hips, rocking with the water, heating me almost lazily but with the intensity of a blowtorch. He was not playful. His hands caged my face and he stared into my eyes, trapping me.

  “Don’t!” I choked.

  He did not relent. He did not let me go.

  “I don’t do it this way. I don’t look in someone’s eyes when I—”

  “Come for me,” he growled. “Burn for me.”

  I couldn’t hold back. I thrust against him, the water churning over the lip of the tub, my eyes wide and naked as I came for him, as he found another way to conquer me.

  Chapter Nine

  This time I had no choice but to let him hold me since I’d basically collapsed against the side of the tub. He was all that was keeping my head above water, though I wasn’t too sure about that in the metaphorical sense.

  I was going under.

  “Nice Viking,” I mumbled. “Sexy Viking.”

  “I will tend you now.”

  “Oh yeah. Except any more tending and you might kill me.” But I’d die with an X-rated smile on my face.

  He manoeuvred me around and picked up some soap, sniffed it and then used it on my back. I let out a long sigh as water continued to pour from the recycling tub Mom had installed after I moved out. It was pretty cool, spilling over the copper edges and down the drain.

  “This is not a very earth-friendly
pool,” he said and I laughed at the unexpectedness of his comment. I looked over my shoulder at him. He was smiling at me so I knew he was teasing.

  “You heard that one from Candy.”

  “She said you were earth-friendly.” His brow furrowed. “I’m still not sure I completely understand that. Why do you have to be friendly with dirt?”

  “Well, um, not to be all literal and boring, but the water in the tub gets recycled into our garden hose so we can use it in the green house and gardens,” I said. “And I’d get real friendly with dirt if you and I ever entered a mud wrestling contest.” I grinned as that fantasy popped into my head. I’d lose of course, but Frey all slick and muddy and naked…

  “Bailey.” He smacked my hip. I guess he’d noticed I was perking up.

  “Hey, young college man here,” I said. “And what’s your excuse?” I could feel his freshly interested cock poking against one ass cheek.

  His eyes were half closed as he thrust against me. “I am a virile warrior.”

  “You’re adorable.”

  He didn’t look as if he cared for that description. He frowned at me thunderously and I laughed. “Sorry, it’s just you’re a bit geeky sometimes. I bet you’d be a hit with a medieval fantasy group.”

  “You have too much energy,” Frey said in a silky voice, so I knew I was in trouble.

  He hefted me from the water and threw me over his shoulder.

  “Uh!” I gripped him, both of us dripping. “Frey, for fuck’s sake…” Another swat on my abused backside. “Hey, ease up, that hurt!”

  “I will tame you in your furs,” Frey said and suddenly I was all for being tamed.

  “First door on the left.” My bedroom looked funny upside down since my Mom had taken to using it as an extra storage room for her crafts. I glimpsed the stacked tins of natural dyes on my old desk and some of the ochres she mixed with fresh soy bean milk, the colours vivid as eye shadow, blues, violets, fern greens.

  And on my bed lay curls of washed wool, sorted and waiting to be spun.

  Frey smirked at me. “You have furs.”

  “I’ll never live it down.” I hit the bed and shoved the clouds of wool off my bedspread with my heels and then Frey was on me, kissing me ardently. I’d never had a lover who was so intent on me. Usually one trip to a bathroom stall or a closet was enough and I’d got too jaded to follow a guy around afterwards, all dopey.