by Ashley West
She bit her bottom lip and fidgeted before setting her book aside. "You'll be going home, won't you? Back to Horu."
Kal blinked at her. Oh. Right. If there was nothing more to be done here, then... "I...suppose so. I came here with a mission, and if that mission is done, then...yes. I suppose I should go home." His heart felt heavy as he said it. He’d known it ever since the night he’d been attacked and had to drag himself, bleeding, back to his home. His time here was drawing to a close.
Haven glanced away from him, a sad smile on her face. "Well. I guess I didn't really need to worry about an alien messing up my plans, did I? Not for long anyway. Still time to pull things back on track." She spoke lightly, but he could hear the disappointment in her voice. Kal didn't think she was going to say it, but she wanted him to stay.
That made him feel warm inside. Looking back, his dreams about temptresses was silly. Why would he want something like that, when he had Haven right there. Sure, she was prickly sometimes, and when she was in planning mode, it was hard to talk to her. But Kal was learning. He was learning that the best time to talk to her was before bed and that it was easy to make her smile if he brought her a cup of tea when she was busy. If he came into the coffee shop while she was working, he always gave him a tiny smile, and her friends seemed to like him well enough.
He didn't try to change her because that was foolish. Instead, he worked with her, he let her be herself, and waited for her to come to him when she wanted to. It worked out best for both of them that way.
If he went back home, he would miss that. He would miss her. Nothing on Horu would ever compare to this here on Earth. It would be all cold and wind and gems and standing on the wall waiting for something exciting to happen.
Nothing exciting ever happened.
If he stayed here... If he stayed here, he couldn't say what would happen, but that big unknown space was exciting. Anything could happen.
"What if I don't go back?" he said, not letting himself second guess the decision.
Haven's eyes snapped to his. "What are you talking about?" she said. "You have to go back. Your friends and family are there. You're a warrior of the Hakkan. That means something to you."
Kal smiled, pleased that she'd been listening when he spoke. "It does. But I've done my duty to my people. I've protected them, and then I came here because someone needed to protect your people. It was a smaller job than I was expecting, but...it's done. Being a warrior of the Hakkan on Horu means being tied to Horu. It was always my intention to stop being tied to Horu forever. My family will understand." He thought back to the conversation he'd had with his mother before he'd come to Earth. "I don't even think they'll be surprised."
"And you'd really want to stay here?" Haven asked. "I mean...I know you say Horu is dull and cold and dreary, but Earth's not that much better. It's warm here, but..."
"It's warm and there's a lot to see," Kal pointed out. "And you're here."
"Me?"
"You."
"Kal...I don't want to step on your moment because I know this is the part where I'm supposed to throw my arms around you and be overjoyed that you want to stay for me, but..."
"But?"
She took a deep breath and then let it out in a rush. "But if you stay here and decide you hate it or don't want to be with me anymore, I don't want to be the one you resent for it."
Kal shook his head, and kissed her stomach again. "That's not how it would be, Haven. If I wanted to go home, I can. My shuttle is still here. I can leave whenever I want. And it's not entirely for you that I'd stay. There's more to see here than there ever has been on Horu. You have so much on Earth. So many different countries and each country has its own culture, and that's like a lot of different worlds on the same planet. It's exciting. I want to see what there is to see."
From idea to execution, Haven could usually put a plan together in a matter of minutes. She was methodical and organized, and she had a habit of discarding things that seemed unworkable or unpredictable from the get go, so that her plans had a better chance of success.
It was pretty fair to say that this was the most outlandish plan she'd ever conceived of.
"I can't believe you're doing this," Darren said for what had to be the tenth time in five minutes. "I mean...you of all people. Doing this."
Haven rolled her eyes and kept packing. Kal was putting the finishing touches on their transportation, making sure that everything was in order and stocked for their trip, which left Haven to finish packing things up and deal with Darren's incredulity.
"You've made that known already," she replied, amused.
"But. I just. It's you! You never do things like this."
"You said that already, too," Haven said. "I'm still doing it, though."
Darren shook his head and sighed, flopping down in the chair in the corner, eyes never leaving her as she made progress through a pile of clothes. "I just...never expected this from you. I'm still not convinced it's not a joke, actually."
"It's not a joke, Darren."
"You and Kal are taking a shuttle from outer space on a cross country trip," Darren said. "You don't know when you'll be back, except for 'sometime before you start grad school', and you don't even know where you're going."
"Well, when you say it like that, it sounds stupid," she said, smiling at him.
"It's not stupid, it's spontaneous. You don't do spontaneous."
Haven shook her head, pushing a lock of hair out of her face. "It's not spontaneous," she said. "I've planned this out fairly well, actually. It's...compromise. Kal wants the freedom to roam and explore without a set itinerary, and I want to make sure we're not going to break down in Arkansas or something. It's...structured spontaneity if it's anything."
"Leave it to you to come up with a term like that," Darren replied. "You...you actually care about this guy, don't you? Even though he's an alien."
"I do," she said. It had been a surprise to her, as well, if she was honest. The last thing she had expected was to be so attached to Kal, or to have him getting her excited for road trips, but when he'd posed the idea, she'd gotten on board fairly quickly. It wasn't like she always wanted to be stuck here in Chesley, and she had always wanted to see things that she couldn't see here. Taking the summer to really let loose and have fun while she had the time seemed like a good idea. She could get it out of her system before she went to grad school and had to get back down to business.
Kal was the one who had suggested using his shuttle to get around in. It was faster than driving, cheaper than flying in an airplane, and it was already fueled up.
"How do we refuel it?" Haven had asked him.
He'd just laughed and took her hand to kiss it. "There's enough fuel left to get me all the way back to Horu and then some. Through space. I think we'll be fine to get around one country for a month or so."
That hadn't been good enough for Haven, so they'd sat down and calculated the mileage they could actually go (which was close to twenty thousand). With that certainty in mind, she'd been much more comfortable with letting Kal have the freedom to decide where they would stop on the fly.
All that was left to do now was finish packing and say their goodbyes and then they could be off.
When she thought about the trip, she got that nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach that spread out to her fingers and made her practically vibrate with the energy of it. It was an anxiety that reminded her of being a teenager and hoping a boy would ask her out.
So many times it had been on the tip of her tongue to say no, to call this off while there was still time, but she didn't. She kept it inside. Sometimes, she had to step out of her comfort zone. There was value in that, too.
Three weeks and four states later, and Kal and Haven were lying on a blanket in a field. The air was warm and thick with the scent of honeysuckle and wheat. The south was hotter than she was used to, but Kal seemed to be loving it, arms pillowed behind his head, shirtless, looking up at the stars.
; "It's a different view from here," he'd told her the first time they'd gone stargazing together. "Everything's different from here."
There was a bottle of wine and a cooler full of sandwiches off to the side of them, but for the moment they just laid there, not talking, not moving. It was mostly quiet, but for the drone of crickets and cicadas, and Haven could almost tune it out.
They'd seen a lot since they'd left Chesley. Traveling by shuttle meant traveling fast, so there was plenty to see. They stopped in various places and saw the sights, tried the food, and took a lot of pictures. Once Kal had worked out how to send the pictures to his family, he'd wanted pictures of everything. The food, the flowers, the people. Especially the people. Something about the diversity of humans made him happy, and Haven was just amused as he took picture after picture of random passerby.
And of her. He took a lot of pictures of her.
"I want them to see you," he'd said to her when he'd started it. "I want them to understand."
Haven didn't know what that meant, really, but she knew that he got replies back from his mother and brother that made him smile for the rest of the day, and that was good enough for her.
Her own mother was overjoyed with this trip. Unlike Darren, she'd gotten over the disbelief fairly quickly and had just been glad that she was going places and seeing things. It was what she'd always wanted for her daughter, apparently, and Haven was happy that her mother didn't have to worry about her anymore.
It was working out better than she had expected, and now they were lying on their backs in a field, watching the stars and listening to the insects and other sounds of the night. They were a good distance from the highway, and a good distance from most other signs of civilization as well.
"I love this," Kal said softly, speaking for the first time in long minutes.
"Which part?" Haven murmured back. "The field or the sky?"
"All of it. The stars, the field, the company." He looked over and smiled at her. "You know my people and most others in our quadrant believe the stars are sentient. And omnipotent."
"Like gods?" Haven asked.
He nodded. "Something like that, yes. Old spirits go to the stars when they pass on from our world. They collect out there." Kal lifted a hand and gestured to the vastness of space. "And they watch us."
"That's..." She didn't really know how to finish that sentence. She had never been particularly religious, but there was something awe inspiring about the night sky in a place like this. A place where there wasn't too much light pollution and you could see everything. The cosmos was incredible, and to think she was a part of it...
Her head threatened to spin.
Instead of staring up at that sky, she turned her head to look at Kal. He was looking right back at her, and she smiled at him. When he rolled towards her and cupped her face, she leaned in, and their lips met.
They'd shared many kisses before that one, and she still remembered their first kiss, in her driveway while she had still been afraid and wary.
She wasn't afraid anymore. Whatever her plans were, Kal was definitely a part of them. That much was certain.
They kissed and kissed, lips meeting and melding, soft breaths mingling between them as they took their time. There was nowhere for them to be any time soon, no one to see them, except for the great echoing space above, and that seemed fitting.
When Kal slid a hand up into her shirt, she smiled against his mouth and then gasped softly when he teased her nipples with his fingers. He still knew which places would make her squirm, and he used that to his advantage more times than not.
"You're a tease," she whispered.
He shook his head slowly, nose rubbing against hers. "I am not teasing."
Everything in that tone was pure promise, and Haven licked her lips, eager to see him follow through on them. They were already half clothed, him in just his pants, and her in a shirt and skirt that she'd neglected to put underwear on under. Earlier that day they had gone skinny dipping in a warm lake they'd stumbled onto in their adventuring.
Kal had laughed and called her a temptress, beckoning her closer to him before he'd splashed water in her face.
They'd been breathless with laughter when they made it back to the bank and their clothes, and Haven hadn't bothered to get fully dressed after that.
As such, Kal had good access to her body, and when he slipped his hand down and then under his skirt, his eyebrows shot up in surprise when he felt her warm skin and not the usual layer of cotton.
Haven just smirked at him.
"Now who's being a tease?" he asked, sounding incredulous and amused all at once. "At least I have on all my clothes."
"Oh sure," she murmured back. "You're just lounging around without a shirt, all those rippling muscles on display. Nothing teasing about that."
Apparently he didn't have an argument for that because he just kissed her quiet, laughing softly into it. His hand kept moving between her legs though, fingers nudging her legs open wider as he moved to hover over her and then one long finger dipping inside of her.
Haven moaned softly and arched her back a bit. She drew her knees up so her feet were flat on the blanket, the prickly grass and straw tickling the soles of her feet through the fabric. It gave her better leverage, though, and she bit her lip to keep her noises soft and muffled as Kal fingered her slowly.
After a few moments, he pushed himself up enough that he could work himself out of his pants and underwear, that hard, thick cock on display. It bobbed in the night air, and she licked her lips, toes curling slightly in anticipation.
It was always a stretch to begin with, the thick head of him pushing against her entrance. The slightest flare of pain and then he was sliding inside of her, the soft, slick walls parting to make room for him inside.
It felt good. It always did. He pushed himself in until there was no space between them, both of them panting hard as they adjusted. And then slowly, so slowly, Kal drew himself back, sliding out of her almost all the way before he pushed back in deep.
She felt it all the way to her core, each hard, deep stroke sending those little frissons of pleasure through her. Her fingers curled around his shoulders, and she held onto him as he moved inside of her.
His mouth had taken up residence at the crook of her neck, and he kissed and nipped at the skin there, leaving his mark on her. She didn't mind one bit.
She especially didn't mind when his lips found their way to her ear and he whispered breathless words about how lovely she was, how tight, how wet, how good. How nothing was as good as this. Haven was inclined to agree.
Everywhere they went together, they did this, they had each other, and it only seemed to get better every time. She always opened right up for him, desperate and eager, and he always filled her right up, her body so used to stretching to accommodate him that it wasn't even work anymore.
Together they moved, under all that sky, with the song of insects and the distant hum of the highway somewhere off in the night. The food they had brought was forgotten as they sated themselves in each other, trading moans and whimpers, whispers of each other's name half lost in gasps and kisses.
It built around them, gathering sharp and almost agonizing, until it broke, covering them both in the heat and fullness of pleasure.
Anyone who happened to be close by would have heard them find completion in each other, but they weren't even close to thinking about that. They were kissing and catching their breaths, stroking hair out of each other's faces and marveling at the way a plan, or the lack thereof, could come together so perfectly.
About the Author
Ashley West was raised in a small Midwest town. She has always been a big fan of science fiction and paranormal books and movies. Her all- time favorite movies are the first three Star Wars movies. She started writing at a young age and has not looked back since. Ashley brings her worlds to life with vivid details and likeable characters.
In her spare time, she enjoys painting, jogging, and c
urling up next to her favorite books. If you enjoy Ashley’s titles and wish to receive a free paranormal romance, stay updated on all her new releases and book giveaways, please visit her website and submit your email.
Ashleywest.net
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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