by Jan Irving
But Jaden’s eyes were narrowed and his hair stirred, even though there was no breeze in the cafe.
“Jaden…” I gripped the back of his hand.
“Mitchell.” I looked up and there was Riley, rubbing the back of his neck, body language awkward. He didn’t meet my gaze, but instead focused on my hand covering Jaden’s. I tried to yank it away, but Jaden snagged it firmly.
Riley flushed, cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you could help me out with an assignment I have in geology,” he said. “I know it’s not precisely your thing, but it’s still science, right?” He gave one of his easy, flirtatious smiles.
“He can’t,” EZ said flatly.
“EZ,” I admonished her. Why did she and Jaden automatically assume I needed protection? I swallowed, looking at Riley. I could still feel his hands tracing my arms, feel his mouth sucking on my nipple.
His eyes flashed with heat and I realised he was remembering the same thing.
“Mitchell will not give you another climax,” Jaden said. “Ever.”
Breath gusted out of Riley’s chest as if Jaden had just hit him in the gut. He’d cut through all the bullshit to the real reason Riley had come to our table.
“What the fuck!” Riley’s face was red and sweating. Not attractive.
Jaden still gripped my hand. His expression was serene.
“So you got a new boyfriend now,” he hissed at me, quietly enough so no one beyond our table—including his girlfriend—could overhear.
“Yes,” Jaden said, at the exact time I said ‘uh’.
“Mitchell is under my protection,” Jaden continued.
“Didn’t know you were into kinky shit,” Riley said, giving me a scathing glance. It was surreal. I was just…Mitchell. Boring, thin-shouldered science nerd. But Jaden and Riley were acting like I was a hot commodity.
“I’m not kinky. I mean…I don’t know if I am.” I was babbling. I sucked in a deep breath. “I’m not into you anymore, Riley.”
“Your loss!” Riley whispered hotly. Then he was striding back to his table and I knew I’d ceased to exist for him.
“What a jerk face,” EZ said. “Like you’re so needy you’d meet him behind his girlfriend’s back.”
“I would never have done that,” I said. And it felt good to recognise that.
“He can’t have your energy matrix,” Jaden said, still glaring after Riley. “It is mine.”
Chapter Six
I paced the science library I staked out every Thursday. It had been built in the early twentieth century, so it was full of fanciful turrets, stained glass windows and even the odd gargoyle. Usually the setting amused me, seemingly so untouched by Darwin, but today I couldn’t settle down to one of my projects. I was restless, jittery. Pissed off.
Hunched over the scarred maple table near the window overlooking campus, Jaden flipped through an old issue of Scientific American.
“How can you be so Zen about everything?” I demanded.
Jaden looked at me. Blinked. “Zen?”
“Yeah, Zen. Like some alien assassin stalking me is no big deal.”
“It is a very big deal, Mitchell, or I would not be with you now, in this body,” Jaden said. But a hint of gold glittered in his eyes. He wasn’t as calm as he seemed.
I gritted my teeth to stop myself from snapping at him.
“I wouldn’t have slept with him again,” I said. “Riley, I mean.”
“No, I wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“No, you mean I wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Your energy matrix is dangerously unstable.”
“My energy matrix, my problem.”
“So it is.” He went back to his magazine.
“Look, I think we need to get a better handle on the problem with Mr X.”
He shoved the magazine aside and crossed his arms. The way he was slouching and the slightly sulky pout to his mouth reminded me that part of him was the poet, the English major. It also made it clear that I wasn’t the only one on edge.
“Are you going to keep taking classes here?” I asked, then looked away, unable to hold his gaze. Boy, what an obvious fishing expedition. I might as well have asked how long he intended to stay with me.
“I…don’t know.” Jaden chewed his lip. “I find the idea strangely appealing. I haven’t had enough time to study your literature. But it is not my primary mission.”
“Yeah, great,” I mumbled. Was that a ‘yes, I’m staying to finish my degree’ or a ‘no, I’ll be gone on the next full moon’? Couldn’t he be clear? And now I was pouting.
“Mitchell, I cannot read your mind unless you allow the soul bond.”
“No way.” It would be just too embarrassing for him to get a look at how pathetic I was feeling.
“Fine. Perhaps I can go back to my reading?” He raised his brows, very cool and polite.
“What’s eating you?”
“Riley is an amusing companion.”
“Excuse me?” I was thrown by this tangent.
“His girlfriend was laughing while they sat together. He is charming.”
I lifted a shoulder. “I guess…”
“You found him charming or you would not have gone out with him.”
“He is very persuasive,” I agreed.
“You thought about him. I saw the red colour of your aura when he spoke to you. You thought about how he touched you.”
“I did?” I remembered that split second of connection Riley and I had shared, when I’d remembered his hands on me, his mouth. “I guess I did. It’s, uh, natural with your first lover.”
Jaden glowered at me, like a gothic hero from one of EZ’s books.
And I got it. “You’ve never been jealous before. Wow.”
“Wow?”
“Wait, don’t get mad. Look, it’s like you visited Jaden’s body briefly and couldn’t interpret sexual frustration so it came across as painful.”
“It is painful!”
“Yeah, I guess it is. Sorry. But jealousy is like your first experience with sex. It’s a powerful emotion. I’m guessing you’re not used to channelling that kind of feeling. Not if your people spend a lot of time floating around debating. So this is all new to you. Overwhelming.”
Jaden’s hands curled into fists. “When I remember that look you exchanged with Riley, I do not feel Zen.” His chest rose and fell sharply. Shit, he was in real distress.
I grabbed the chair next to him and took his arm. “I don’t respect him so there’s no way there could be anything between us.”
“You were still aroused by him.”
I rubbed my forehead. “You know, it occurs to me that most adults deal with their emotions by suppressing them and putting them aside. I didn’t know what I was feeling about him…except maybe exposed. Like he hurt me again.”
“Because you remembered desiring him and that opened you to him again.”
“Yeah.” I squeezed Jaden’s hand. “Thanks. I couldn’t get a handle on my bad mood until you brought it down to basics. When I remembered wanting him, I remembered how he’d hurt me. And it hurt my pride when he dismissed me after I turned down his generous offer to fuck me behind everyone’s back. Stupid…”
“He was your first,” Jaden said. “You are my first. You can hurt me.”
“I don’t want that, but I might do it.” I shrugged. “I’m human.”
He let out a long breath. “I don’t understand the way humans communicate. You say things and sometimes it is sarcasm, but it sounds true to me. And sometimes it is not at all what you feel.” He rubbed his chest.
I gave into impulse and leaned close, pressed my lips to his chest, right over his heart. “I’m sorry I made you feel insecure and angry.”
“Mitchell…” he breathed.
“Tell me what you feel. You don’t have to put it aside. I don’t need you to pretty things up for me or wear a mask. Not ever.”
“I want you to be mine the way he made you his,” Jaden growl
ed. “I want you to need me and to hold onto me, and to dig your hands in my back.”
Sweat broke out on my hairline. I could feel my blood throbbing in my cock.
This part of the library was pretty secluded, but not secluded enough that someone might not come up here. I grabbed his hand. “Come on!”
“Mitchell…”
“It’s okay.” I kissed him again, taking a moment to use my tongue to rub his sulky lower lip. Oh yeah, he liked that. His hair was stirring and his eyes glowing. “I’ll give you what you need.”
“I need you, Mitchell.”
His words wiped away the lingering bruise Riley had left on my psyche. “Follow me.” I pulled him through dusty stacks of books to a door almost hidden by the hulk of shelving. I took out my key chain and opened it, and then we were running up a rusty spiral staircase. When we reached the top, I pushed open the second door and suddenly we were surrounded by the misty day.
“The clock tower,” he said. “I’ve seen it from the walkways on campus, but I didn’t know it was here.”
“No one ever comes up here. I managed to get a key when I started teaching part-time,” I said. I knelt and he mimicked my movement, completely with me. “We can touch…” I ran a finger down his arm. He pulled back, yanked off his T-shirt. “I want your hand on me.” He frowned. “For some reason, I want it on my bare skin. It is imperative.”
I grinned at his confusion. “Probably your reptile brain. Very primal.”
“This touching is what some of my people find degrading.” But he didn’t look like he thought so. His eyes flared as I leaned close and took the nipple with its silver ring into my mouth. “Mitchell!”
“This is like a dream,” I muttered against the taste of him, the feel of him. My hands dug into the hard round shape of his upper arms. I traced the swirls of letters banding his upper chest like a garland. “Between two worlds life hovers like a star.”
He hissed in a breath as I took my time, savouring him. “The words of Lord Byron.”
“Very appropriate for you, Jaden.” I could feel his heart thundering under my lips. As I kissed him, unable to pull myself away even to undress myself, he cupped me, stroking me through my pants. “Ohhhh, Jesus.”
“My scientist,” he whispered. “You are irresistible. You drew me. I had to come to your world. I had to know your mind.”
“You’re…going to know a hell of a lot more than my mind in a moment.”
He smiled. Still rusty, as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing.
“You want charming? Riley has nothing on you. Your smile is charming.”
He fell back at my push, lying on the floorboards that surrounded the sleeping clock works.
“You…respect me, Mitchell?” He was nude. I’d stripped him in record time, the baggy sweats no defence against my ardour. I pushed his thighs open and put my mouth on him.
“Yeah, I’ll respect you in the morning, don’t worry.”
“You are making a joke.”
He moaned and his flesh was suddenly too hot, so I jerked back in surprise.
“What’s happening to you?”
His skin was glowing, translucent. I could see the blue veins like pumping highways. I could see long bones and muscles and the workings of his body as if he were a mechanical device.
“Wow,” I said.
“I am undone.”
I was doing this to him, making him lose control. “You’re a miracle.”
He didn’t look convinced. “I am not pleasing to your eyes this way. I studied Men’s Health.”
I flushed because I regularly flipped through that magazine and not because I was looking for tips on working out. “Hey, to a science nerd like me, you are gorgeous. I can see your heart actually pumping!” I saw the red pulse, the blood shooting, feeding his body with oxygen; I saw the filigree of veins in his lungs, complex as a lace pattern.
He closed his eyes tightly, let his head fall back. “It is hard with you. I ache to merge.”
“I ache to merge too.” I tugged at his hair and he raised his head. I could see parts of his skull through his skin, sparks of the workings of his brain. “Holy shit! You’re so sexy.”
“I am not.”
“You kidding? I never appreciated how a man is put together until you made me see it. Before I met you it was all on the surface.”
His eyes were dilated. He pulled me to him. “Mitchell, come inside me.”
I blinked.
“Inside my matrix. You will not let me into yours, but I need to touch you, to truly make contact with you.”
My heart pounded. “I don’t have the protocol for that kind of…experiment.” “You’re frightened. I have frightened you.”
“You terrify me. This thing with us isn’t like your typical campus romance and anyway, I’ve proven once I suck at those.” I twisted my lips in a dry smile. My skin felt too tight and my breath hitched. “I thought we’d just come up here and fool around.”
“I am not pleasing to you.” He let me go. And I couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand that he would think simply because he was different I’d be repulsed.
Anger burned and I gripped his face, my fingers biting into the flesh.
He panted, staring at me and suddenly I was inside him. I was pulsing with his blood, riding the heat of life through ash coloured tunnels of bone, pitted like craters on the moon. I was a spark sliding silently through his body.
“Mitchell…” I heard him. “Let me in. It can be more than this, more than flesh. Let me show you.”
I was small and frightened but I was contained. I was safe this way, with my walls around me. Even here, surrounded by the magnificent flesh of Jaden’s body, I was still grounded in blood and bone and flesh.
But then I felt a whisper of loneliness. Jaden hadn’t had a name until he’d come here. He hadn’t known he wanted a name. He hadn’t known desire or pain or jealousy or hunger until I’d awakened him.
And then, as if he’d set me free, I was back in my own body again, lying on the floor. My chest expanded like a giant balloon as I sucked in breath. My vision was blurry, my own body feeling oxygen deprived.
“Mitchell, you are in distress!” Jaden touched me. Gold sparks hit my body like tiny meteorites, penetrating my skin.
I twisted under the onslaught, unable to deal with the building energy. I shoved down my pants and took my cock in my hand, stroking my sensitised skin, my balls tight against my body, my thighs trembling as my body bowed off the wooden planks.
Streams of white light burned from my fingertips, poured from the soles of my feet and the centre of my chest and the palms of my hands.
“Jaden…” I croaked.
“Trust me.” He buried his face against my neck and he was the only cool, safe place as my body erupted, as I felt the gentle brush of his energy matrix against mine.
I came, hot and scalding, clawing at his back and then I came again, writhing on the floor. “No, can’t—” I choked. But I spilled again and again, my body jerking.
My hand was fisted tightly in Jaden’s hair. We were tangled together, him on top of me. He pulled away to look at me with soft, concerned and very human eyes.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“I think…” He chewed his lip. “I think that was sex.”
I groaned, shifting free so I could curl into the foetal position. My whole body throbbed, intensely alive. The air felt like hail, hurting my skin. My cock was still erect, covered with spend. I’d come so often that the last couple of times I’d been dry. It had been the most pleasurable agony I’d ever experienced.
It shouldn’t have been possible.
“I will take away your discomfort,” he said and he again put his palm in the centre of my chest. My stressed body soaked in his power until I felt only limp and gloriously relaxed.
Dazed, I could only watch as Jaden slipped down my body and licked me. He was trembling.
“I’m all right,” I mumbled. “Just…wo
w.”
“I did not know it would be like that.”
“Uh-huh.” I could barely think. His licking was beginning to feel good. He held my balls in one hand, gently, while he nuzzled my prick. He explored me, laving the rim of my cock, dipping his tongue into the tiny slit until I gasped.
“I think we need to work on merging.”
“Yeah.” I’d be a car wreck if we made out like that again. But just thinking of the incredible experience made me hard as stone. “Jaden, don’t tease me,” I begged.
So he lifted me onto his lap. I wrapped my legs around him, sagging, still limp. He held his cock against my opening. “Shhhh, I will make you ready,” he comforted me.
I don’t know what he had done, but I was relaxed and slippery inside. It still wasn’t easy to take him, but he didn’t give me a choice. He wanted in. Now.
I moaned as he pressed firmly.
“Some of my people like the idea of taking human pets,” he whispered. “Of pleasuring them and keeping them.”
“Take me,” I whispered, lost to my dark, slutty side. “Keep me.”
Chapter Seven
“Do you really want me to keep you or are your words sarcasm?” Jaden demanded, eyes burning into mine.
“Sarcasm?” I laughed and then my eyes crossed as he did something with his hips. “Can we talk about this…uh…after?”
Jaden smacked my butt. It shouldn’t have felt so good. Maybe I was kinky.
“Jaden, I’ve never been possessed like this. I can’t breathe without feeling you inside me,” I said. Not just my body, but my heart. But that was so unscientific, so…vulnerable. No way could I tell him that.
“You give me more than you did that Riley person.” His hands were firm on my body. “You are mine, Mitchell?”
“Yes,” I whispered. I nipped his ear and he grunted as he pushed me down to take more. I was right on the edge.
“I would keep you like this for a long time.”
“No, please.” I didn’t think I could take that. I was ready to explode like a star.
“I like the way you hold onto me, the way you beg.”
“That’s because you’re a big, bossy alien.”
He lifted me up and we both groaned as I rode him. He was so strong, unnaturally strong, so that I felt the reality of being his pet.
