Bad Boy Romance: Nick (Romantic Suspense Alpha Male Romance) (New Adult Rock Star Contemporary Short Stories) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 2) (36 page)

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Adriana felt as though someone
was watching her; she couldn’t put her finger on where the gaze was coming
from, but nonetheless the sensation of being watched—and even more, of being
followed—stayed with her from the moment she had gotten onto the first train of
her trek until the moment she sat down on the second one. It was not precisely
a creepy feeling; she couldn’t sense any kind of malice from the source, or
anything that raised more of a red flag in her mind than the pure sensation of
being watched.
I have a can of mace, and I have those silly self-defense
classes. If that’s not enough to protect me, then I’m doomed.
She was
traveling to visit a cousin; Susannah, who lived in a town so small that the
nearest airport was more than a hundred miles away, was having a difficult
pregnancy with her third child, and Adriana had volunteered to take some of the
pressure off of her by cooking and babysitting the older two children while
Susannah worked.

A man sat down a few seats away
from her on the train, and Adriana glanced at him curiously. He was tall, with
a lean muscular build that seemed a little too perfect, clothed in the most
nondescript outfit she could imagine: jeans that bore no particular brand, a
tee shirt that just fit him without being either baggy or tight, and a pair of
sunglasses. His skin seemed somehow strange in her cursory glance; it was
somewhere between brown and gray, not sickly looking but not quite what she was
used to seeing. His hair was thick, cut close to his skull, and an inky black
that didn’t look exactly like it was natural to his skin tone. Adriana thought
idly that he might have been the source of the sensation she was feeling; but
he sat easily, not fidgeting or anything. He certainly didn’t look like the
kind of man who would just grab her, try to attack her. In fact, somehow in
spite of her sudden conviction that he had followed her—she thought she might
have seen him in the corner of her eye on the last train—she didn’t have any
sense of danger from the man.

She turned away, looking out
through the window as the train pulled away from the station. This leg of her
journey would be longer than the first; she had packed a lunch for herself
along with the changes of clothes in her backpack. Adriana watched the scenery
flow past her and considered taking her food out. She was more bored than
hungry, she knew; but something about realizing that she was, in fact, being
watched made her want to do something, just for the sake of activity.

It’s not being
watched,
she thought after a moment’s reflection.
It’s like I’m being
observed.
She felt less as though some creepy guy was staring at her from behind dark
sunglasses and more like the subject of some kind of anthropologist; or some
kind of science experiment. Adriana couldn’t quite think of how she had arrived
at that conclusion—how it was that she could decipher intent from a guy who
hadn’t spoken to her, who she didn’t even actually know was watching her—but
there it was.

Before Adriana could decide how
she had arrived at the conclusion, her thoughts were interrupted by someone
close by clearing their throat. She turned her head, and the man from before
was standing in the aisle, his attention obviously on her. “I’m sorry if I have
upset you,” the man said, “but I saw that you were traveling alone, and thought
perhaps you wouldn’t mind company for a little while.” Adriana frowned
slightly; the man had a strange, almost guttural accent—combined with an even
stranger precision in his enunciation.
Where in the world is he from?
Up
close, he was even taller than he had seemed; Adriana thought that if she
stood, she would at best reach his chest.

“I guess that would be okay,”
she said cautiously. Adriana worried at her lower lip, and somehow felt rather
than saw the man’s gaze shift from her eyes to her mouth. There was something
compelling about the man; in spite of her surprise, she still didn’t feel even
a trace of danger from him. “Have a seat,” she suggested, pointing to the empty
one next to her.

“Thank you very much,” the man
said, sitting down. Adriana felt dwarfed by his size, and shifted instinctively
closer to the window—but the man didn’t sprawl or try to invade her space.
“Where are you headed?”

Adriana smiled in spite of
herself, shrugging. “I’m going to visit a cousin who lives in the middle of
nowhere,” she explained. “She’s having trouble with her third pregnancy and
needs someone to lend a helping hand.”

“That is very kind of you,” the
man replied. He paused, and Adriana intuited that he was mentally translating
something—his accent and his speech told her that he was definitely foreign,
though it was not an accent that she could place. “Oh! I almost forgot, I
should ask your name.”

Adriana stifled a laugh at the
odd syntax; he was definitely strange, but it was obvious that he was making an
effort to speak well, to be polite. “I’m Adriana,” she said. “And you?”

The man’s lips curved in a slow
smile. “I am Joran,” he told her with an odd kind of firmness. Adriana watched
him, waiting for his explanation of where he was going, and why he was
traveling there. He simply watched her from behind the dark glasses, and Adriana
started to feel—for the first time—slightly uncomfortable as the silence
stretched out.

“So, Joran—pleased to meet you.
By the way, where are you headed?”

Joran shrugged. “The middle of
nowhere, like you,” he said. “I am to perform research.”

“Oh? What kind of research?”
Adriana glanced around the train compartment; there were only a few other
people in the car with her, and she hoped that at one of the next stops, there
would be more. If it turned out that this Joran was creepier than he seemed,
she wanted to be able to make a getaway, or at least get someone else’s
attention.

“Genetics research,” Joran
said, that faint almost-smile curving his lips again. “Actually, I am
recruiting volunteers—and I had thought that you would be a good candidate.”

Adriana felt her cheeks
warming; that was one of the stranger come-ons she had ever received from a man
in her life, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “Oh really?” she asked. She
struggled to keep her voice level.

“I have offended you,” Joran
said, pulling away from her slightly. “I apologize. I did not mean to do so.”
Adriana stared at him in confusion. “It is just that I became excited when I
saw you, because I am supposed to recruit—if I have overstepped a social
boundary…”

Adriana shook her head, licking
her lips as she tried to work out what was happening to her. “Why don’t you
tell me about this research,” she said slowly. “And why you think I would be
such a good candidate?”

The smile returned to Joran’s
face. “My fellow scientists and I are looking for healthy h—women, of
childbearing age, to study genetic fertility.” Adriana felt her blush deepening
and wasn’t quite sure why. “You look very healthy to me, and I estimate your
age to be somewhere between twenty and thirty years?”

Adriana shrugged, still bemused
by the man’s strange demeanor and words. “I’m twenty-four,” she admitted.
“What—what exactly would this entail?” She frowned in thought.

“There are some tests that we
would run; none of it would be painful. We are interested in the genetic diversity
of humans.”

Something about the statement
sounded an alarm in Adriana’s head, but she pushed it aside. He was clearly
foreign; he was also—she thought wryly—very clearly a scientist. “How do I sign
up?”

Joran’s shoulders moved in what
might have been a shrug. “You would provide me with your contact details, and I
would invite you to the laboratory I have set up. There are many of us, in many
different locations around the planet; we are performing research
independently, but all of our findings are combined in one final report.”

“And it won’t hurt?” Adriana
confirmed.

Joran hesitated—as if not sure
he understood the question—and then shook his head. “I promise you that it will
not.”

Adriana glanced out through the
window, considering. “As long as it won’t interfere with my life too much, then
sure,” she said finally. It occurred to her to wonder just why she had agreed
to the proposition so readily; but Adriana thought to herself that Joran seemed
mostly harmless, and at the worst case, she could probably investigate in some
way, to find out more about his research.

“I will leave you to your
thoughts,” Joran said with another strange smile. “But I will ask you before
you depart the train for your contact information.”

“Okay. Could you—do you think
you could send me some references?”

“Any security you need.”

Adriana watched as the man
stood and gave her a final smile before going back to his seat.

****

The building at the address
that Joran had directed her to seemed oddly out of place to Adriana as she
approached it.
Well, if it’s a new lab, then it would look different,
Adriana told herself. Joran had sent her reams of documentation, all of which
pointed to a perfectly legitimate study: abstracts and proposals, information
about the study. She had read through the forms he had sent her along with it,
perusing the information while she was watching her young cousins playing in
the sprinklers. All in all, she had been reassured. Why Joran had recruited her
for the study, Adriana couldn’t fathom; but she was apparently going to receive
a small sum of money for participating in the project, which was always
helpful.

As she stepped into the small,
nondescript building, punching in the code that Joran had given her in one of
the emails he had sent, Adriana worried her bottom lip. There was terminology
in the forms she had read that had seemed innocent to her when she had first
read it—but now that she was entering Joran’s lab, something about the wording
gave her pause.
“Subject agrees to submit to testing, including non-harmful
probes, blood tests, and sexual function examination…”
The last bit—sexual
function examination—had seemed straightforward at first, but as Adriana
wandered through the hallways to the room number Joran gave her, she began to
wonder how exactly a person’s sexual function would be tested.

A door opened in silky near
silence, startling Adriana out of her thoughts. The paperwork in her
hands—which she had printed on her cousin’s printer and signed—rustled and
rattled. A second later, Joran appeared; he was not wearing the sunglasses from
before, and Adriana stepped back, her heart beating faster in her chest.
“Joran!” Adriana clutched the paperwork to her chest, taking a deep breath to
try and calm her reaction.

“Hello, Adriana,” Joran said,
smiling slightly. As her initial startled reaction began to face, Adriana
noticed that without the sunglasses, she could see his eyes; they were a
strange, aquamarine blue—which didn’t seem to fit with his grayish-dark
complexion and dark hair. She wondered idly if they were contact lenses of some
kind.

“You startled me,” she said,
smiling nervously.

“My apologies,” Joran replied.
He extended a hand towards the paperwork. “Are these your forms?” he asked.
Adriana nodded.

“Yes…yes they are. I—I feel like
I signed them without actually knowing what you intend to do.”

Joran’s eyes widened slightly
and he took a step back. “Come into the lab,” he suggested. “We can discuss
things better there.” Adriana hesitated for only a moment before walking
through the door.

The lab was not what she was
expecting; as the door closed behind her, she looked around, spotting something
that looked like a bed, screens that looked like they belonged to some kind of
very advanced computer system, and medical equipment both familiar and
completely foreign. “What the hell is all this?” Adriana said, turning towards
Joran with more than a little alarm. “Why is there a bed here?” Joran winced—or
at least, it appeared to Adriana’s eyes that he had winced—and sat down.

“Please have a seat,” Joran
said, fixing his gaze on her. In spite of her fear, Adriana had to admit that
there was nothing precisely intimidating about the man; she realized that he
was in some strange kind of coverall—not the scrubs and jacket that she would
have assumed a scientist would wear. There were markings that meant nothing at
all to her splattered across it.

Glancing once more around the
room, unable to fight the sense of having been maneuvered into what could very
well be a dangerous situation, Adriana sat in the only other chair, holding
Joran’s gaze levelly. “Are you going to explain what the hell all this is?” she
asked him.

“I will,” he said slowly. “But
I do not think that you will find it easy to believe.”

“Try me.”

Joran took a deep breath and
exhaled, setting her paperwork aside. He leaned forward, folding his hands in
front of him. “I am researching female humans,” he said. “Specifically…your
reproductive capabilities and genetics.”

“My…our…reproductive
capabilities?”

Joran nodded. “You have likely
realized that I am not… from here.”

Adriana raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she admitted cautiously.

“I am not…from this planet; I
am from
Khatanar
.”

Adriana stared at Joran in
shock. “You…are not…from this…planet,” she said slowly. Her heart raced in her
chest.

“I am not.”

“You’re from…another planet.”
Joran nodded.
Oh good God, I’m with a crazy man. He’s probably…schizophrenic
or something, or has some kind of multiple personality disorder. Oh, God—is he
even a scientist?
Adriana’s thoughts whirled in tight, panicked circles.

“I need to leave. This
is—you—I—I need to go.”

Joran stood quickly, and
Adriana realized that in her panic she had gotten out of her chair. “You need
proof that I am who and what I say I am,” Joran suggested.

“Mostly I need to not be in a
small laboratory with a bed in it with a crazy person,” Adriana countered.

“I am not a crazy person,”
Joran said firmly. “I will show you.”

Adriana staggered backwards,
her heart pounding in her chest, her mind spinning. Joran stood straighter, his
gaze steady on her. He closed his eyes and Adriana bit her bottom lip, feeling
a mixture of confusion and concern. Joran ran his hands over his face, rubbing
slightly. Adriana gasped as some kind of paint came away from his skin,
revealing streaks of slightly purplish-gray underneath. She stared in unabashed
shock as Joran wiped away at his skin some more, doing something to his eyes.
The face that emerged from beneath his hands still looked human—but also
utterly and completely foreign and strange.

He had dark blue eyes, slightly
larger than any human’s, with flecks of what looked like slowly whirling gold
inside of the irises. Joran’s purplish-gray skin was not a tone that any human
being possessed. Adriana saw that he had absolutely no facial hair, not even
real eyebrows. “You…are definitely not a normal human,” Adriana said slowly,
swallowing against the tightening of her throat. She wasn’t sure if she was
relieved or even more frightened. “You—you’re—you are definitely an alien. What
the hell! You’re an alien!” Somehow the fact of his existence made her angry.

“I am. And my existence here on
this planet is a closely guarded secret.” Joran held her gaze and Adriana found
herself staring into his unearthly eyes, trying to make sense of what she was
seeing.

“But—how is it possible?”

Joran shrugged, smiling
slightly. “Our ship is very advanced,” Joran said. “Your detection capabilities
are…limited.” Joran smiled again.

Adriana took a deep breath and
exhaled slowly. “So, why exactly are you—experimenting on humans?” she asked.
She remembered the wording of the forms she had signed. “Oh God! Probes!
You—are you even serious? You’re going to
probe
me?”

Joran made a sound that was
somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “I must admit,” Joran said, moving
closer to her; up close, Adriana noticed that he smelled faintly lemony. She
wondered how it had managed to escape her notice that he was so utterly
foreign. She had known he had an accent, and his skin tone was strange, but the
idea of him being an alien was impossible to believe, even with the proof in
front of her. “I must admit that there is a certain kind of probing I would
like to do with you. I must test your sexual function.” Adriana’s mouth fell
open, and she stared at him in a mixture of shock and amusement.

“You—that’s—what kind of line
is
that
?” Adriana laughed, shaking her head.

“Is it a good line?” Joran
asked her, a faintly vulnerable tone coming into his voice. Adriana sat down
heavily.

“Just…how much do you know
about humans?” she looked up to look at Joran, who was watching her intently.

“I know that the female must
reach climax for reproductive viability,” he said. Adriana coughed.

“That’s not—what I meant,” her
voice left her throat in a squeak. “Also, that’s…” she blushed from the roots
of her hair down to her chest and took a deep breath.
Do I really want to
tell him that women can get pregnant without climaxing?
She swallowed
against the tightness in her throat. “What exactly were you going to do with
me?”

“I was going to put you at
ease, and then take some blood samples to examine your genetics, and then…”
Joran smiled slowly. “I would have attempted to determine your level of sexual
functioning.”

“How exactly were you going to
do that?”

“I would have offered you any
number of what you call sex toys with which to masturbate… or I would have
offered you myself.”

“You want me to have sex with
you.”

Joran considered the
almost-question and nodded. “I must tell you a thing, Adriana,” Joran said,
moving slightly closer to her. “I am sexually attracted to you.”

“That’s rather a frank way of
phrasing it,” Adriana said.

Joran shrugged, smiling
slightly. “I realized it after I left you,” he told her. “On the train. My
response to you was not simply curiosity—I felt the way a male of my species is
said to feel when he mates with a female.”

“So you have—I mean…” Adriana
shook her head, trying to clear it. “I have a lot of questions, but I feel like
probably we should deal with you wanting to have sex with me, first.” She let
her gaze travel down over Joran’s body, even as she felt warmth stirring inside
of her at the implication that Joran wanted her. There was something about his
long, lean frame that appealed to her—and his eyes, when she got over their
strangeness, were very nice. She wondered irrelevantly whether he didn’t have
body hair at all—and then blushed a deep red, thinking that she didn’t even
know if he had a penis.

“Would you like to compare
anatomy?” Joran’s eyes seemed to glimmer with amusement.

“Okay—important question, and
this is above and beyond the sex thing,” Adriana said. “How do you know what
I’m thinking?” Joran laughed.

“We have studied your body
language extensively,” Joran explained. He moved closer to her, his hands
reaching out to touch her lightly; at first Adriana began to flinch—but then
she found herself relaxing. “There is also a sort of—latent capability that we
have, to read…” Joran frowned. “It is like…we can know emotions, in sentient
creatures.”

“Oh, so humans qualify as
sentient. Good to know.” Joran smiled.

“You are very sentient,” he
said. “So did you want to compare anatomy?”

Adriana laughed, shaking her
head not in rejection but in disbelief. “Okay, sure,” she said, chuckling in
spite of herself. The situation was so extraordinary—so far out of her range of
experience—that it seemed like all she could do was go along with it.

Joran’s fingers—surprisingly
deft, Adriana thought—moved over the front of his jumpsuit, quickly opening the
strange fastenings. “You should strip, too,” Joran suggested, his gold-flecked
eyes glittering with amusement and something that Adriana recognized as desire.
She hesitated for only a moment before beginning to unbutton her blouse, her
fingers fumbling from her uncertainty and—to her surprise—her rising arousal.

Am I actually attracted to
an alien? Whoa, girl. You don’t even know what kind of equipment he has…
She blushed as she freed the last button, tugging her blouse down over her arms
and letting it fall to the ground. “I think this is probably the kinkiest thing
I’ve ever done in my life,” she said in disbelief, reaching down to push the
waistband of her skirt down over her hips. “Playing doctor with an alien.”
Joran laughed, and Adriana looked up.

She stopped in her efforts to
undress as the alien kicked the fabric of his coverall off at his feet. He
stood before her, completely naked; he hadn’t applied whatever cosmetic that
was on his face to the rest of his skin, Adriana noticed. Her gaze traveled
down along his lean, muscular body, taking in the fact that he did not have any
hair on his chest or arms. Her gaze moved down to his hips, and then below, and
almost stuttered as it came to a stop. “That…is…interesting,” Adriana said, her
mouth drying. In spite of her shock, she felt a hot jolt of arousal at the
sight of what appeared to be Joran’s penis. It was, to her eyes, enormous; and
more alarming still, instead of a smooth shaft, it was ridged—almost
bumpy-looking. She noticed the fact that he didn’t seem to have testicles
almost as an afterthought.

“You have not finished
undressing,” Joran said quietly. “Do you require me to help you? I understand
that is sometimes part of your mating ritual.” Adriana continued to stare at
the alien’s almost comically large and utterly strange genitals—were they his
genitals? She wondered.

“I didn’t exactly agree
to—mate—with you,” Adriana said absently.

“You did not answer the
question,” Joran said with slight amusement in his voice. Adriana gave herself
a shake. In spite of the strangeness of the alien’s erection, she was surprised
to find herself intrigued.
What would that feel like inside of me?
She
thought. She remembered his comment that he knew human women needed to achieve
orgasm in order to conceive and felt the heat rising in her face.

“I can undress myself,” she
said briskly. She stepped out of the pool of fabric that her skirt had become,
standing before the alien in nothing more than her bra and panties. Joran’s
gaze on her was intent as Adriana reached around to her back, unclasping her
bra. She let the garment slide away from her skin, guiding the straps along her
arms.

Adriana heard a sharp intake of
breath as she dropped her bra to the floor, her breasts bouncing slightly as
the fabric came away. She met Joran’s gaze; his expression was definitely one
of desire rather than scientific interest, and Adriana felt herself smiling,
amused at his reaction. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties
and tugged them down over her hips, pushing the thin lace down over her legs
and then letting the fabric fall to the floor.