Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) (51 page)

   Amanda’s eyes were so fixated on the twinkling stars that she almost didn’t notice a section of the sky above her being slowly eradicated by a dark cloud. The weather didn’t forecast any rain, she thought in a panic; I didn’t even bring anything waterproof! Her lack of foresight triggered a disappointment so enormous that she decided to just lie on the grass in defeat as the first drops of rain started to fall from the cloud. Why hadn’t she checked more than one forecast when she came up here? Flash storms weren’t that uncommon this time of year. In any case, stargazing in the rain alone didn’t sound as fun as it might have with someone to help distract her from being the wrong kind of wet. It looks like it’ll be a good one, she mused; that cloud is getting pretty huge…

   It’s getting huge really fast, she thought a moment later, watching the blotch in the sky fatten and swallow more stars in the process. It’s also kind of round for a cloud…do clouds normally form this way? Her brow knit together in concern as she watched the dark spot grow larger by the second. It was distinctly oblong now, she realized, and not a cloud at all; the thing looked solid, besides being somewhat football shaped. In fact, if it weren’t completely silent and smooth, Amanda might have assumed there was a slightly flattened blimp descending on her hilltop by mistake. But the shape grew larger and wider still, and Amanda thought, panicked, that it had to be a drone—or some other war vehicle, perhaps. It was massive, as long as two or three city buses and nearly as wide. Her heart was suddenly hammering in her chest, but it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation.

It has to be some kind of weird chopper, she thought, as a brilliant light flipped on and concentrated its beam on her point on the hill. It was brighter than anything she’d ever seen.

    Or I’m going crazy, she thought desperately. A curious tingling sensation shot through her entire body, and she could swear she was being lifted from the ground. Something slid from her jacket pocket, and when she didn’t hear it crash to the earth, she knew she was right. My flask! Her legs were rigid, and her arms were locked in place, but her hair was streaming behind her as she was carried away—which was odd because she could feel no wind on her scalp. It was the only proof she had that she was moving at all; all she could see in any direction was pure, searing white light; until heartbeat became audible to her own ears, Amanda thought she had gone deaf as well. Is this what death is like?

   The next moment her feet were crashing against something thick and pliant; Amanda fell on her bottom, hard, and at that moment she was thankful her butt was as well cushioned as the floor. Her throbbing eyes were still adjusting to the room, but as she turned, she could just make out a wall a few feet behind her, and the shape of a door just to the right of that. She scrambled backwards until her shoulders pressed against the cool surface and stopped, her breath coming heavy and fast in what she could tell from the echo was a huge, empty room. Her legs were trembling, and she was thankful she had been doing so much meditation lately, because getting her breath under control was far easier than trying to resist the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She was aware that her eyes were open as wide as they would go because they were starting to dry out, and her neck was aching from rotating like an oscillating fan, but finally her vision returned to normal and she could see where she was.

Amanda could tell that there was a depression in the middle of the room, a deep dip in the dark gray floor that was covered by a round pane of thick glass about twenty feet in diameter. The room below looked like one of those fancy private steering cabins on a luxury yacht; she could see a plush red chair, a pronged wheel, and a slim black panel of illegible controls, but the rest was angled from view. The door to her right was a brilliant white, she noticed, and on the other side of it was an empty glass cube that filled the rest of the room. On the opposite end of the room stood another cube, filled with a twinkling, mint-green mist that was constantly stretching, swirling and shrinking in the structure as though it were alive. The walls surrounding her were as dark gray as the floor, and they stretched about thirty feet upward before curving into a perfectly transparent ceiling that finally showed her what her gut suspected she would see: the inky blackness of space, uninterrupted for uncomfortably long stretches of time, until a twirling gas giant or rocky planet zipped by in the distance— or briefly loomed in the foreground to eclipse the view.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “I’m on a fucking spaceship.”

A soft whoosh told her the door to her right had just opened, and she stood and turned so quickly that she almost fell on her ass again. Her breathing hitched and quickened as her eyes tried to make sense of what she was seeing: a man, six feet tall at least, with wavy black hair falling to his broad shoulders, sinewy muscles, and a slim waist. He was smiling warmly at her, regarding her in a manner that she could only call friendly. His body, though distractingly beautiful, was human enough, and even the subtle glow of his golden brown skin could be written off as a gift of genetics—but his eyes were far too alien to fool anyone on earth. She was unable to look away from him, and after a moment, she realized she was moving steadily toward him with one hand outstretched. It didn’t mark her as strange, because the pull of his gaze was undeniable, and she felt the need to touch him burning in every cell in her body. This must be what lust should really feel like, she thought, and tried to remember the last time she felt such fervor.

Amanda loved going to the observatory for the cheerful atmosphere and informational exhibits as much as her sister did, but the main draw was always the incredible planetarium, with its ability to show every star you could imagine in one concentrated stretch of velvety black screen. Earlier that evening on the hill, seeing hundreds of stars twinkle to life above the city had been the closest she’d gotten in her adult life to matching the awe she used to feel while gazing at the projections on the screen; now, mesmerized by the pinpricks of light filling the alien’s eyes, she had the strange thought that if she could gaze into them forever, she could unlock every secret the stars could possibly hold.

What?

Amanda was a foot away from him now, and he was staring down at her with mingled confusion and a growing desire; she was trying to count the bright dots in his eyes, but she realized too late that each glowing point of light was rotating slowly in his sockets, so that the two onyx spheres looked like they were constantly crawling with real stars.

“Are you okay?” the alien asked, and the concern in his voice was palpable. He looked at the hand Amanda was stretching toward him as it hovered next to his cheek. After a moment, he turned and hesitantly pressed his jaw against her palm.

He was warm, which surprised her; she pressed her thumb into the flesh of his face, and it felt just like human skin. His beautiful eyes were almost completely unreadable now, but the hitch in his breath wasn’t—her touch had startled him. She drew back, surprised at the shame she felt at making him uncomfortable, and even more surprised at the relief she felt when he caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing the tips of her fingers and gazing back at her with unmistakable heat,

She shivered violently, then remembered he had asked her a question the moment before. “I’m fine,” she said softly. I’m more than fine, she wanted to say as her eyes briefly traveled down his chiseled torso, but she wasn’t sure if the implication would translate. Did aliens understand suggestive language? This one spoke English, after all, and he was looking at her with more than a little interest, but that didn’t mean he had the full grasp of irony.

What are you doing? A voice shouted in her head. You’re on an alien ship! Find out what the fuck is going on!

She shook her head roughly and took a step away from him, pulling her hand back and slipping it into her jacket pocket. Amanda thought she read confusion in the alien’s face, and another pang of regret lanced her heart—to her dismay. This can’t be happening, she thought angrily. He’s using some kind of manipulative love gas or something—maybe I hit my head. Brain damage, that’s it!

“Do I have brain damage?” she heard herself say aloud. Her voice was softer than she meant it to be, but it still seemed to startle him.

He was gazing intently at her with his luminous eyes as he spoke. “No,” he said slowly. “You didn’t strike your head—just now, or on the hilltop. You’re not hallucinating, either; you  didn’t drink enough.”

Amanda felt herself nod, but she was too busy studying the fullness of his lips to feel her shock register for more than a second. “How did you know I was drinking?”

“Your flask,” he answered, and held the item in question out to her with one large hand—pulled from nowhere, as far as Amanda could see. He wore black pants that clung to his muscular thighs, but they didn’t have any pockets or folds. She felt a stir of fear (how did he do that?) but she plucked the flask from his fingers and examined it between her hands.

“I thought it fell from my pocket.” Her tone reflected the awe she felt; it was perfectly clean, not a scratch or a dent on it. How had he retrieved it from the ground?

“It did,” the alien said, and he sounded amused. “But it got caught in my ship’s beam. Don’t you know how abductions work?”

Amanda raised her eyes sharply, ready to throw an attitude back, but the curve of his golden-brown cheeks told her he was joking. “I’m a little rusty on the science,” she said dryly, and the laugh that bubbled from his lips warmed her like a hot drink on a freezing  day.

He gave her a real smile after he stopped laughing. “You’ll have to get up to speed, you know,” he said. “If you’re going to be coming.”

She felt her head bob again, then she froze. Wait, what?

But he was already moving away from here, stepping over to the wall on the opposite side of the door. He walked over the glass of the cockpit in his bare feet and tapped a spot on the wall seemingly at random; a second later, a ten-by-ten space blinked and lightened until it resembled a glossy classroom whiteboard.

“Coming where?” Amanda asked nervously, fingering the flask in her right pocket. It was far from the last question she wanted to ask—who are you? was probably at the top. But right now, moving through space in a huge ship at an unknown speed, a destination seemed like a good thing to have in mind.

The alien turned his handsome face toward Amanda and frowned, and the constellations in his eyes swirled a little faster. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, with more than a little anxiety lacing his tone. “You must think I’m terribly rude. I’m Lee, Amanda; my job is mainly research and protection of human artifacts around this star system and a handful of others, for the moment. I know it’s not as exciting as what my brother does—“

His words cut off when he realized how confused Amanda was. “She didn’t tell you about me or the Star System League, did she?”

Amanda shook her head numbly, trying to search the recesses of her mind for any mention of aliens her sister might have made over the past few years. “No, she never mentioned anything about…interplanetary travel.”

“What?” he exclaimed, and his disbelief was almost comical. “She didn’t prep you for my arrival?”

“She didn’t prep me for anything,” Amanda said, feeling bewildered. “She didn’t even explicitly tell me to go to that hill. Just…” she struggled to remember her sister’s words. “…to go looking, but not for something specific. We both love stars, so I guess the hill was sort of inspired by her.”

Lee tittered and shook his head. “What did she say to you, then? What did she tell you when she directed you to high ground? Just that you’d find a surprise?”

Something stirred in her mind, and she smiled. “That I’d find the truth,” Amanda said softly. “If I opened myself up to the stars.” She laughed, and Lee didn’t seem to understand why. “You don’t get the X-Files out here?”

He smiled, and Amanda felt giddy being the cause. “I’m familiar with Scully and Mulder, I’m just annoyed that you haven’t been debriefed. I must seem terribly rude, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to lay a lot of information on you in a short amount of time.” His face knotted together in apprehension, and Amanda felt guilty. Don’t feel guilty, she chided herself. This isn’t your fault.

“This isn’t your fault,” Lee assured her then, echoing her thoughts when he saw the guilt written in her features. “I’ve met Liz; I’m sure she thought she was sparing you anxiety.”

“That sounds like her,” Amanda admitted. “You’ve met my sister?”

“My brother was her partner for two years,” Lee explained, and colorful map of a system of galaxies appeared on the whiteboard behind him. “He catalogued parts of many of the same planets we’ve been assigned.”

“Liz traveled space too?” Amanda exclaimed. “How is it that she never told me?”

“She was sworn to secrecy,” Lee said, and something about his tone suggested he didn’t agree with the practice. “She was only to tell you a few months before your orientation, to give you time to think about it and ask questions.” He sighed heavily and tapped the wall again, and a high-backed purple couch descended from the ceiling and landed between them. “Please, sit. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Amanda felt dread start to gather in a hot ball in her stomach, but she walked over to the couch and sat, gazing uneasily at Lee as he sat down. He pressed his long fingers to his brow and sighed again, seemingly gathering his thoughts before he spoke.

“A few years ago, your family was chosen to participate in our research, rescue, and renewal program, along with hundreds of others in each country around the world. Our job is to partner with humans and other species to catalogue as much data as we can while also preserving natural wonders, repairing ecosystems, and cleaning and rehabilitating habitats and wildlife.”