I Married An Alien (11 page)

“
This is part of our custom,” he explained as he fed me a ripe, plump strawberry. Well, it looked like a strawberry, but it tasted more like a juicy lolly.

“
So when is it my turn to feed you?” I asked as I licked my lips, conscious of Jordan watching me intently, despite the dim light. The sun had just set, and stars were starting to speckle the sky like a child’s paint dot picture, and the first of the planet’s three moons was rising in the eastern sky. The other two, when they appeared, reminded me of that Dr Who episode when Earth had been dragged from its orbit and repositioned in a sky bristling with planets and moons. It was an eerie sight to someone who had looked up at the same night sky all their lives.

“
You don’t. I feed you, even when we are back at the farm, I will cook for you and serve your meals, and whenever possible, feed you from my own hand… Yes I know your world does it the other way round, but you are in my world now, and that is one custom I will not have it altered no matter how much you protest.”

“
Was I protesting?” I asked, knowing full well he’d seen my startled expression. But I’d never heard of men doing the cooking in any culture, or any period of time. The only men I knew who cooked got paid handsomely for it.

Jordan nodded as he picked up another slice of fruit that looked like mango, but tasted even better when he slid it into my mouth. Leaning closer, he followed it with his tongue, licking the excess juices from my lips. I shivered, not from cold, but delight. It was probably the sweetest most sensitive thing I had ever experienced. Just why was this beautiful man I barely knew being so nice to me?

I shifted in my chair, and sat back, so that he was compelled to break what had been very quickly turning into a very passionate kiss.

“
What’s wrong?” he asked, still with his face close to mine. “Do I not please you?”

“
You please me way too much…" I trailed off, rubbing my hands over my face.

“
Then what’s the problem? You keep drawing back. Am I moving too fast for you?”

“
I think we’ve already done just about everything imaginable, haven’t we?” I said with a shaky laugh.

Jordan shook his head. ‘We haven’t even begun. We start by exploring each other’s bodies. Then explore one another’s minds. We learn to live together–"

“
Oh, dear Jordan, if only I could,” I said sadly, the whole scenario was so appealing, I really wished it would go on forever. I really did, but I still had no idea when Professor Jackson would get his act together and pull me out of Anita’s mind!

Jordan placed both his hands against my thighs, forcing me to meet his silvery-blue eyes. They looked so beautiful in the half light. Due to the three moons, night time on Terron rarely grew darker than a badly overcast day on Earth. The second moon had risen and was casting Jordan’s handsome face into stark relief. He looked even more gorgeous in the double light. I could fall in love with this man in an instant, I realized. I would return back to my cumbersome, middle-aged body with a broken heart if I didn’t put some distance between us. And to do this I had to tell him who I really was.

“
Look Jordan, I tried to explain this to you once before, but can you please hear me out now?” I tried to pry his big hands free of my legs.

Sensing that I needed some space, he withdrew them, and sat back in his own chair, crossing his arms over his brawny chest. “All right, tell me what you must.”

“
I’m not really Anita. My real name is Ruth Clarke, and I’m forty-nine years old.” Of course he had to raise his brows at that, but I soldiered on regardless. “I’m from the year 2012, and I answered an ad in a science magazine to catch a glimpse of the future. I took part in an experiment which went wrong, because I was only meant to
see
the future, not end up in it. The professor put tinted goggles on me, and told he’d upped the power on his machine, or some such thing.” I took a breath, well aware that Jordan still wore that disbelieving look on his face. “Well, I caught a glimpse of a space port, only I didn’t know what it was then, not until I ended up sprawled on my back in said space port, with all those other young women staring around me, looking worried.

“
I think Anita must have tripped and hit her head. That was when I somehow ended up with my whole mind catapulted into her body, instead of just seeing what was going on through the goggles. I’m sure the professor is trying to work out how to get me back right now… because I don’t belong here.” I spread my hands. “I’ve taken over someone else’s body, and I have no idea what’s happened to the poor girl’s mind, if she’s somehow stuck in here with me, trying to get out, or if–“

“
Good Lord, that must be
the
craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jordan exclaimed. “Taking over someone’s mind! Time traveling from the past! Such things simply aren’t possible.”

“
I didn’t think so either, until it actually happened. Why won’t you believe me, Jordan? I would love nothing more than to stay here with you forever. You’re probably the nicest person I’ve ever met, but I don’t belong here, and any day now I might have to leave you, and I just don’t want to–“

“
What are you hiding, Anita? Who are you protecting?” he demanded, suddenly back in my face, his hands gripping mine tightly.

“
Nothing. No-one,” I protested. Why wouldn’t he believe me? He was an alien from the future, damn it! His race had invented space ships and wormhole travel! Why should
time-travel
be so much of a further stretch? Hell, I’d heard somewhere that wormholes could be
used
for time-travel!

Suddenly he sprung to his feet, taking me with him. “Where’s your com-tab? I want to know who your family is - who you associate with. Who would have come up with such an insane story?”

“
I-in my bag… but all you’ll find out is who Anita is, not who I am,” I mumbled as he pulled me back into the sitting room.

“
Go, get it,” he ordered, once again looking grim and tough, the gentle sweet man vanishing in an eye-blink. Well, I only had myself to blame for that. I’d cooled his ardor with my stupid blabbermouth, hadn’t I? Heavens, if all this hadn’t actually happened to me, I would have thought it crazy too. Well, he’d know for sure once I disappeared and Anita had her body back, both of them wondering what the heck had happened.

I simply couldn’t cling to the hope that this was permanent. Somewhere in the bowels of the university in 2012 my body lay minus a brain, and if Professor Jackson didn’t want to try and explain that to the authorities, he’d be trying his darnedest to get me back, wouldn’t he?

Even darker thoughts of ending up without a body because he’d tried to hide the evidence did register briefly, but I pushed them aside. The Prof had been too keen to get somewhere with his invention. He’d be wanting to fix what had gone wrong, and trying to make it right. Right?

I found the tablet, along with Anita's passport and returned to the sitting room with it, where Jordan was sitting on the lounge, one ankle crossed over his knee, both brawny arms draped along the back of the seat. God, he looked magnificent. So much muscle and power writhed beneath that flawless tanned skin. If he wanted to, he really could break my neck with those strong hands. He had said he’d bested five guys in a fight. Riling him any further probably wasn’t a good idea. But what did I know about the young woman whose body I wore? Pity little. What would Jordan unearth once he fired up the tablet? That Anita was a serial killer? I hardly thought so.

Swallowing, I held both items out to him, Dropping one arm he patted the seat beside him, which I took and perched on the very edge of. Jordan frowned at my action, but took the tablet from my hands. He shook his head at the passport.

“
Don’t you need a password?” I asked as his brow furrowed in concentration and his big fingers brushed over the device, activating different windows of information.

“
I used to help design things like this,” he muttered under his breath. “I don’t need a… what did you call it? Password? That’s a rather old-fashioned expression.”

“
Well, that’s what we call it in my time.”

Jordan glanced up briefly with narrowed eyes, before returning his attention to the tablet. Of course he still didn’t believe me. “Besides, this is a public network.” He tapped the device with a long dexterous index finger. “If you want to communicate privately I’m certain there are a whole host of other devices at your disposal on Earth. That’s why we do such rigorous luggage and body searches at the spaceports.”

I shuddered, recalling the rather undignified patting down I’d received on arrival. Even my ears and the inside of my mouth had been closely examined. Luckily the official had been a fellow female Human. The officials had used detecting wands to search for hidden devices, fortunately eliminating the need for that most humiliating of procedures, the full cavity search.

I watched Jordan studying the device, a frown steadily deepening on his patrician brow. After what he’d said about designing the tablets, I realized he was more than just a pretty face. Last night, when he’d been at the mercy of his body, I’d wrongly assumed he was just some lusty Neanderthal with only one thing on his mind. He was obviously more intelligent than I had given him credit for, probably even smarter than I was. So why couldn’t I get him to believe the truth of what had happened to me?

“
Well, well, well, Miss DeBugh,” Jordan snorted, his tone growing hard. “Your father is a Liberal minister in the Senate, and you were engaged to be married to Oliver Rembrandt, son of Ian Rembrandt, pioneer of Rembrandt Industries, the biggest damn
Hytana
refinery in the southern hemisphere! Judging by this, I wouldn’t hazard a guess your father tried very hard to get you out of your tour of duty.”

“
What?”
I sidled closer, but Jordan held the tablet further away from me so I still couldn’t see anything on it.

“
I think you just might have started a God-damned diplomatic incident, Anita DeBurgh,” Jordan declared grimly. I stared at him in shock. Not only did he look angry, but a sliver of fear flashed in his eyes. Slowly, disbelievingly, he shook his head.

“
Wh – what do you mean?” I asked in a small tight voice.

“
In coming here, you’ve turned your back on what was probably the biggest oil cartel merger in Australia’s history. Your father just announced an increase in oil production by sending Earthlings to open up new farms in the northern districts of Terron-Tentonia… But of course you already know all this.” He raked his fingers through his long bangs in frustration. “Oh yes, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be tied down to the likes of Rembrandt,” he continued, more to himself than me. “He’s a nasty piece of work, and I would hazard a guess his son is just as mean…” He looked at me. “But Hell, Anita! They’re going to come here guns blazing, tearing the place apart looking for you so that Rembrandt and your father can get what they want… I should hand you over to the Administration right now and accept The Aging.”

“
But I thought we arrested The Aging?” I asked helplessly.

Jordan scowled at me. “Only as long as you remain by my side. Leave me for any length of time and it happens. If you die, it happens. If I die, you will age, although it wouldn’t make any difference to you right now since our mating only just took place. We’re linked, Anita, for better or worse, remember?”

“
Then you can’t hand me over to Anita’s father!” I shuddered as Jordan at last laid the tablet down and I caught sight of a sleazy-looking middle-aged man with slicked back hair. I didn’t know if he was Rembrandt or Anita’s father, but he had evil slits for eyes, and a hard slash of a mouth, with receding black hair that had been combed to one side Adolf Hitler style. He had a dark bushy mono-brow and ruddy, fleshy jowls, seeming to suggest he wasn’t a small or slender man.

A younger version of this unpleasant-looking individual appeared on the screen as I studied it - obviously Rembrandt Junior. He looked just as sleazy, but more muscular; a tough thug. On him, the mean, narrow eyes and mono-brow looked even more intimidating. He was wearing a leather jacket and his black hair buzz-cut short. His face was long and lean, but I could see that he’d probably end up looking very much like his father as he grew older.

“
Good God, I have no idea what I’m going to do.” Jordan tore at his hair again. Suddenly he sprung to his feet. “I need to get out of here for a while.”

I watched him go, my heart knotted tight with anxiety and confusion. Suddenly I longed for the safety of my dark silent house, now more convinced than ever it would be a long time, if ever, before I saw it again.

Chapter
Nine

Jordan shrugged on the loose shirt he’d fished off the edge of the bed, and began pacing the corridor outside the hotel room, his nimble mind racing through scenarios and possible solutions the way it had when he’d worked in Terron’s main Technology Centre. Unfortunately they all led to the same conclusion; take Anita to the Administration building, and accept his fate. Surely enduring the Ageing was better than being executed by those oil-tycoon thugs?

When he’d teased her about thwarted exes, never in his wildest imaginings would he have thought up something like this. But her crazy tale about time travelling here from the past… Jordan could only shake his head. That was as big a lie as her demure and innocent act. Heavens, the woman had behaved as though she’d never had a lover in her life, until he’d filled her up. Then the truth had come out. She knew men. She knew them well enough to spin him a tale of science fiction proportions.