by Rosette Lex
Her stomach snarled and she pressed a hand over it. He had warned her that healing would leave her hungry and weak, and though the mechanism by which she had been healed was still totally foreign to her, she knew what the munchies felt like. Time to find the kitchen.
There were sandals to go with the gowns, and she padded out in a pair of them after a minute, looking around. Her room was off the great room, like all the other doors, arranged along the back curve of the house, facing the door. She checked the others, but their smooth white doors were mostly shut and locked. She found the bathroom again...and then next to it, a room that looked like a kitchen except for its lack of a stove. She recognized the refrigerator at least, and hurried over to it as best she could given her wobbly legs.
She was just opening it up when a hand shot out over her shoulder and pressed the door firmly closed. She turned around--and Corin was right there, standing almost chest to chest with her. “What do you need?” he asked in a calm, businesslike tone.
“I’m really hungry. Anything, really. Eggs, bacon, cereal, whatever you’ve got.” She looked up into his face, which seemed a touch less impassive than before. There was a tiny edge of concern in his expression, as if she’d almost seen something she shouldn’t. She wondered how often he cleaned out his fridge.
“Understood. I will operate the canteen unit. Please await your meal in the other room.” He didn’t move, though, just lingered a moment with his hand on the fridge above her shoulder and his chest barely a hands-breadth from hers. He seemed reluctant to shift away from her, and she thought a moment...then moved forward slightly, so that her silk-clad breasts just brushed against the front of his gray uniform sweater. His eyes hooded slightly, and that heat rose in the backs of them.
“Sure,” she murmured, feeling a completely unaccustomed surge of power as she sensed a tremor go through him. He blinked rapidly--and then stepped back, letting her go.
What’s the matter, soldier, she thought with a little glee. Trapped in unknown territory? Poor thing. As weird as everything is around here...at least he’s kind of fun to tease.
It didn’t take more than five minutes, and she had no idea how he accomplished it, but suddenly the smell of cooked food wafted from the kitchen, and he came out carrying a plate of bacon and eggs with sliced tomatoes. “This should be sufficient for your nutritional needs. Eat.” He pushed it at her along with a fork, and she blinked up at him, then shrugged and took them both.
She ate, balancing the plate on one hand, and he stood watching her...then slowly sat on the other end of the couch, eyes locked on her. It was almost unnerving. He didn’t blink enough. His scrutiny was too frank and cool to be considered flirtatious. She got self-conscious as soon as the edge was off her hunger, and set her plate aside. “You know, I could help you,” she ventured.
“Help me?”
She turned toward him, moving a little closer. He stiffened, as if startled, and she paused...then scooted closer still. She looked him right back in the eye, trying to pretend that she wasn’t intimidated. “I was a waitress at that place you saw. Most of the men there are drunk, and they always saw me as about as human as furniture. I heard a lot of secrets. If there’s something in particular you are monitoring for...I might be able to supply it.”
His manner grew less stiff as he considered this. “Supply….” And then he did something strange. His eyes tracked over her, over her body, from head to toe, and then back to her eyes. “Perhaps there is a way in which you can assist me. But it is not what you would think.”
“Need someone to pretend to be your girlfriend?” she asked directly.
He paused, then blinked several times. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?” Damn, maybe he’s gay or something. He did say he had never touched a woman. Maybe it’s by choice. That would be a terrible shame, though. Or at least, her body thought so. She had started thinking very hard about showing him what touching a woman could be like.
“Stop attempting to manipulate me with your appearance,” he replied, a warning growl at the bottom of his tone that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. In a good way.
“Huh?” Oh crap, of course a covert agent would have trust issues. But he also seemed strangely naive, so she tried explaining herself. “I’m not. I’m hitting on you.”
“‘Hitting on’ me?”
May looked at him, and leaned forward slightly in his direction. “I’m showing interest. In you.”
He glanced away. “I am unable to divulge much in the way of personal information without compromising myself. I apologize for this.”
“Okay, fine, mystery man,” she said, relaxing a little now that pain and terror and humiliation were a solid day in the past, and she was warm and comfortable and fed. “I’m not asking you to screw up your mission. I’m interested in you sexually.”
That rapid blinking again. “I…” his voice had deepened, and he coughed into his fist, then recovered, lifting his chin firmly. “I am not certain that that would be appropriate,” he finally stated, not unkindly but with the businesslike tone held up in it like a shield. “You are very attractive, but there are very likely compatibility...issues.”
“Compatibility issues? Oh man. You are gay.”
“Homosexual? No. Some of my brothers-in-arms, and I suppose they are fortunate, given our circumstances. But not I. I am merely...oath-bound.”
“You took a purity oath?” She moved closer along the couch, intrigued, and this time he didn’t tense.
“In a sense, yes. I have a very sensitive and important position, and I cannot allow it to be compromised by sexual entanglement with someone incompatible. To do so, you see, would be painful or dangerous to both parties. I am always a single communicator call from being back on duty, and should I become incapacitated it could cause problems for my cohort.”
“So...you’re basically the anti-James Bond, then. No sleeping with the enemy.” And her mind meanwhile was rolling a query around inside it: What if we weren’t incompatible?
“It is not so much a matter of enemies, so much as a relationship between two who are harmful to each other, which can produce nothing for the future.” That was so vague and metaphorical that she squinted at him, and he coughed again. “It is a long and complex story. Suffice it to say that I could not consider a sexual liaison at this point in time.”
Could not consider. Not did not want to consider. “Okay. I can accept that.”
He looked down, then back at her. “May I ask why?”
“Why the interest?” Oh. Well, this was a little awkward, but she went with it. “You’re not the most demonstrative guy, but you did get me out of there when no one else would, and you’re not one bit afraid of those bastards. And you’re careful with me. And I have to admit that I...when I heard you’d never had sex with a woman, I started thinking about what it would be like to be your first.” She had trouble keeping eye contact, especially when the heat rose in the backs of his eyes again.
“I see.” His voice had gone a little hoarse, and he stood abruptly. “Please, eat. I will consider your offer of assistance. I may find uses for it.”
He strode away, back rigid, and disappeared through one of the doors she hadn’t been able to get into. She ate her breakfast alone, in silence, and tingling from scalp to feet.
After eating, she was starting to feel claustrophobic, and stepped out the front door to get some air. Her legs were still wobbly, but she hung onto a pine beside the short stone porch and stepped off into the yard.
They were still in the middle of the woods, the Jeep parked a ways off at the end of a gravel driveway. Rain dripped from the pines, and blew onto her as the wind shook the branches. She tilted her face toward the gray sky above, eyes squeezed closed and hands out. He ran when I told him I wanted to teach him about sex. He wasn’t offended. He would have damn well said something if he was offended, he’s not the sort to run from confrontation. But unfamiliar feelings? Really powerful ones? That must
have frightened him a little. I think he got turned on by the whole idea.
She was certainly turned on by the whole idea. Literal first times were often quick and awkward affairs, but...first evenings? First weekends? Those could be pure magic, if handled right. It was the best distraction ever from what had happened to her. She was free now, and she wanted to celebrate….
Except...what had he meant about “compatibility”? Was he talking about relationship drama? Or something else entirely?
She turned around, looking at the low, dark, round-roofed building set back into the hill. The cottage was a little bizarre, but then again most earth sheltered buildings were. The construction at least made all those rounded shapes inside make sense. She wondered if the military had built it, or if they had taken over a survivalist compound.
As she turned to go back inside, she froze. A massive timber rattler had slithered onto the walk, which was warm and dry in the dripping rain, and coiled now just a few feet from her toes. “Oh crap--” she whispered in a choked voice, and tried to edge backward away from it. It as between her and the door--and as she moved it contracted its body threateningly and started to rattle.
“Crap...crap…” she stumbled back away from it, damning how weak her legs where. “Corin!” she called in desperation.
He was suddenly there, crouched in the doorway, his hand slamming the snake to the stone and then gripping it around the neck. His expression had contorted in a snarl of rage; his yellow eyes blazed. She didn’t know if he squeezed it, or snapped its bones, but suddenly the snake went limp, and actually seemed to shrivel a little bit.
He hastily tossed the corpse across the yard, then went to her, gripping her by the shoulders firmly. “Are you all right? Did it bite you?”
“It didn’t get the chance.”
He stared into her eyes, his jaw tight--then took her hand and led her inside. “Come. You are too weak yet to venture far. I will attempt a nutrient infusion to help you regain some strength.”
She blinked at him as she walked beside him. “A nutrient infusion?”
“Yes, we use them regularly to enhance our cellular regeneration protocols.” He led her toward the door he had vanished through before...and she found herself in a small laboratory. Flat-screen monitors of unfamiliar design covered one wall above a long workbench lined with what she supposed were medical instruments of various types. She at least could pick out the one with the eyepieces as a microscope.
“Whoa. What is this?”
“It’s for biological analysis.” He brought her to a chair and she sat, looking at a rack of pen-like instruments.
“...you’re with the EPA?”
“No. We are instead seeking to avert an ecological disaster.” He unlocked a glass-fronted case in front of him and pulled out a slim silver wand with a glassy-looking tab sticking out of the top. “Hold still, please.”
He pressed the tab against her bare arm; she felt a faint sting and saw a bit of her blood get sucked between the glass slides that made up the paddle. “Ow. Oh, okay. Blood test. Wait, you’re randomly testing locals’ blood?”
“Yes, that is part of the process of detection.” The device beeped, and he lifted it to examine a readout on the side. And then--his eyes widened. A look of absolute amazement filled his features for just a few moments; his jaw even dropped. “I--” He stood up again. “Excuse me, I need to make a phone call.”
“Wait--is there something wrong with my blood?”
He turned back--and there was the faintest smile on his face. “No...no...not a thing, May. Now please excuse me.” He ducked out, leaving her alone in the laboratory with the instrument lying on the counter in front of her. She picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy for its size, and had two lights on it--one red, one green. The green one glowed steadily. The readout beneath it repeated the same phrase in no language or alphabet she had ever seen before.
She set it down, her brow furrowing. Weird behavior. Weird architecture. Weird use of language. Weird customs. Unfamiliar devices and languages. That strange, scintillating tattoo. It was all painting a picture that she didn’t want to look too closely at, because it seemed completely impossible. But the stranger her stay with Corin got, and the more she recovered to examine the goings-on more closely, the more she started to wonder. If he was a secret military operant, seeking to avoid some kind of ecological disaster...which military did he actually belong to?
She stood suddenly, and carefully hobbled out, leaving the device behind. She could hear his voice from behind one of the doors, talking excitedly--for him, anyway--in an unknown language with a lot of vowels to it. She eavesdropped for a moment, couldn’t make out a word, and moved on, back to the kitchen. Now, now that he was distracted.
She headed straight for the fridge, which he had tried to keep her from opening before, and grabbed the handle, pulling the door open. Sapphire blue light spilled out, and she gasped, stumbling backward. Inside, an eye-dazzling array of nozzles and probes on retractable arms centered around a small platform bathed in blue light. A transparent touchscreen swung forward at chest level, covered in more of that strange looking language. A soft male voice spoke unknown words, then went quiet.
She stared at the device, completely frozen, forgetting to blink, forgetting to breathe. And the pieces in her head started falling into place, one by one. Suddenly, staring at this bizarre piece of hyper-tech, she knew that Corin was from no military organization on this planet.
Chapter 4: Alien
She took a deep breath, and then closed the “refrigerator”, her heart pounding in his ears. Blinking at the device’s brushed metal front, she took quick inventory. Corin. Saved her, had no idea how to act, did the right thing anyway. A million bizarre traits and coincidences. That trick he did with his hands. The hyper-tech here and in the lab. He kept confusing her, shocking her, mystifying her. It was all very, very...alien. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized...even that didn’t kill her interest.
I guess the whole “saved me” thing is one hell of an aphrodisiac. Either that or all this crap with Tom has kind of driven me over the edge. But finding out aliens are real is kind of exciting in itself. I just didn’t expect to meet one who is so sexy.
And the worst part of it that she had the feeling Corin had no idea of his own appeal. It wasn’t just his beauty and power; not his competence, not his intellect, not even the sensual heat in those healing hands. The guy seemed to hide behind a foot of cool, professional emotional shielding, but she had glimpsed under it. He wasn’t cold and abrupt because he disregarded others. He was simply buried so deep in whatever his mission was that he didn’t allow himself room for anything else.
I want to change that. I don’t know what to think about the idea that the only guy I’ve ever met who is the whole package isn’t from this planet.
She stepped back...and knew he was behind her. “I wish you had not done that,” he said with quiet regret in his voice. She turned, and looked him in the face--and his eyes widened slightly.
“You’re an extraterrestrial.” Her tone was intrigued.
“You aren’t frightened.” His tone was astonished...and a touch hopeful.
She took a step toward him, and he held his ground in the doorway, gaze flicking over her face. She smiled. “You saved my life twice. That doesn’t go away because I find out that you’re from another planet. It makes things kind of ironic, since I didn’t see any human guys ever willing to step in, but...that’s okay.” She laid a hand on his chest and he shivered, his eyes hooding.
“Corin, I want the truth. If you want me to cooperate with you and stay here a month, I need to know what to expect.” She rubbed his chest gently, feeling his heartbeat pick up under her hand. He seemed so human, except for his behavior and words sometimes. She wondered if the rest of him was familiarly put together. Especially the parts under his clothes. Her hand slid down toward his belly and he swallowed, drawing a shuddering breath.
“I am
an operative of my society’s military, I am here on a covert mission to prevent an ecological disaster,” he rasped out as she ran her hand up and down his belly. Sweat gathered on his brow--and then he caught her hand. “Stop it. My mission--”
“Your mission requires my cooperation for a month, which I agreed to. As for keeping your secret beyond that...this is Earth. People who believe in aliens are considered crackpots. And who would I tell? I couldn’t even get anyone to believe my stepbrother was abusing me, remember? Except you.” She ran her thumb over the back of his hand, and he stared at her and then let her hand go, moving away, turning his back to her.
