Sex, Love, and Aliens, Volume 1 (25 page)

Chapter 6

Bree awoke as the sun crested over the horizon. She stretched and yawned, wincing slightly at the slight sting of her wound. She couldn’t believe how refreshed she felt. In fact, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so awake.

“Bree,” Niah said.

“Morning, Niah.” She turned to greet him, smiling.

He smiled back at her and held up a food bar.

“For me? Thank you. Yes, I’m a little hungry, although I wonder where you got these obviously factory made bars. And the blanket you let me borrow last night. I’m not stupid, Niah. You retrieved your bag, didn’t you? From your patrol or your group, or…whatever.”

She opened the wrapping and munched on the bar. Whatever they were made from it was enough to satisfy the rumbling in her belly. She finished the food and grabbed the canteen for a long drink of water, and that’s when she saw that all her possessions had been laid out to dry from her unexpected fall into the river, including her back-up undies. With wide eyes she hurriedly grabbed them and stuffed them back into her bag. She felt heat steal into her cheeks as she glanced at him. He stared at her as he munched on his own bar.

“Thanks for, ah, letting my things dry,” she said. “I would’ve hated for mildew to set in since I’ve only got one other change of clothing. Oh, my book!”

She grabbed her most prized possession, a book of poetry wrapped in a plastic bag. Niah had laid it out, and she opened the bag to make sure the pages had stayed dry.

“This is the only thing I have left of my parents,” she continued, flipping through the pages. “My father would read these poems to my mother at night and I would listen, sitting at his knee.”

She opened to the first page and lovingly touched the printed words.

“Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone, for the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, but has trouble enough of its own.’’ She looked at him. “It was written by a woman named Ella Wheeler Wilcox a very long time ago. Apropos, isn’t it?”

He didn’t say anything, and her melancholy mood stretched over the fact that he didn’t, couldn’t, answer her. She closed the book and put it back in her plastic bag and stood. She folded the blanket before handing it to him. She repacked her bag and slid it onto her back.

“Bree,” Niah said. “Stay.”

“I can’t stay, Niah. I’m heading up the mountain. Oh, crap. I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“Bree. Niah. Stay.” And then he joined his hands together.

“You want us to stay together?”

“Stay,” he repeated.

Somehow it didn’t seem like a good idea and yet…yet she liked the idea. Still, what was he doing? Was he defecting?

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she whispered. “I don’t…I don’t know what I want from you. I’m human. You’re…you know, I don’t even know what your race is called. But yours kills mine. I don’t see that as a very good start to any relationship.”

As if he hadn’t heard her, he simply packed up his own kit and slung it over his shoulder. He lifted a brow, waiting for her to do something, but she didn’t know what to do. He didn’t understand anything she said.

So she turned and began walking, heading north, up the river, like she did last time, only now there was a giant invader trailing her. For the most part, he kept his distance, although she was very aware of him behind her. Bree realized they were on the opposite shore of where she had been when she encountered the bear cub, so this time she kept the river to her left as she made her way north, up the face of the mountain.

“I need to find someplace to hunker down for the winter,” she said, needing to break the silence. Knowing he was behind her was eating into her psyche. “I’m looking for a cave. Someplace I can clear out and make into a comfy home, where I can build a fire without it being seen. The plan is to keep the fire burning all winter long, which means I need to gather wood and store it. I’ll need to hunt as well. Gather nuts or berries. Edible plants. So somewhere along the way you’re going to have to figure out where you want to go. I don’t think you want to bunk down with me during the long, cold winter.”

He said something in his language, but she didn’t bother trying to comprehend. She just continued walking, and he kept following. It felt odd to have someone on her heels. It felt even odder to have that someone be an invader who wasn’t trying to kill her. Maybe they all weren’t bad aliens. Maybe there were some good ones, ones who didn’t like hurting humans. Her father had once said that every person had a different personality, and it was up to them to decide to be either an asshole or a nice guy. Maybe these invaders were the same way.

“Did your people leave you behind because they knew you’d heal quickly or because you didn’t want to stay with them anymore?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him. He just met her stare, doing that unblinking thing he always did. “You see, I’m having this problem relating you to what I know of the invaders. You’ve saved my life once and spared it once, which no alien would ever do. They left you behind, bleeding, with a broken leg. I thought you’d gone to rejoin them when you left me, but you didn’t take that opportunity. So, there’s something missing, and I wish I knew what it was because I’m thinking it’s a good tale.”

She sighed. She had to admit, he fascinated her. How crazy that when she finally found a traveling companion he wasn’t the same species. Was she that desperate for companionship?

Possibly.

They walked until the sun was directly overhead and her belly began to growl. She made an eating gesture with her hands and he nodded. They set up a mini camp, and while Niah made a fire to cook, she used her net to do more fishing. She also found a few wild onions around the muddy riverbank and pulled them. They’d add a lot more flavoring to the fish.

When she walked back to the camp, a nice fire was burning. She pulled out her skillet and used her knife to cut up the onions before peppering them around and on top of the fillets.

The food was filling, and as she washed everything up in the river, Niah appeared next to her and handed her some wildflowers. For a second, she didn’t know what he was trying to do so she stared at the flowers in confusion.

“Bree,” he said, and pushed the bouquet toward her.

“Oh,” she said as she realized he was giving her a present. Just like that, her emotions went off the chart. Her eyes welled with tears, her hands began to shake, and her heart simply melted.

She took the flowers from him and buried her nose in their scented petals. It didn’t matter that they still had roots or that one had a bug in the center. And it wasn’t the fact that no one had ever given her flowers before, it was that she never thought a man would give them to her.

Without thinking, she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. He stiffened in her arms and, pressed against him, she felt every hard, rippling muscle, and it ignited a fire in her blood. All of a sudden, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t human. Niah chose to be there, with her, and it made her so incredibly happy.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Bree thanks Niah.”

Slowly, very slowly, he relaxed. His arms returned her hug, and then the hug turned from heartfelt to intimate in a heartbeat. She felt the manly part of his anatomy stiffen against her belly, and she knew what it meant. He wanted her. Sexually, he wanted her.

She gasped and pulled back, searching his eyes for some other hidden meaning. His big hands cupped her face, one sliding to the back of her neck to bring her up to meet his mouth. His head dipped, and then he was kissing her. And it wasn’t just an innocent kiss, Niah claimed her mouth like he was in a desert searching for water. There was a desperate quality that made her heart pound like crazy. All the while, she kept thinking that this was her first kiss, the first time a man touched her lips with his. This was the first time his tongue swept inside to possess her completely, even tilting her head to deepen it further. There wasn’t one part of her that was safe, and it scared the hell out of her.

She couldn’t feel this overwhelming feeling for an
invader
! It was wrong, on so many levels. Morally, ethically, personally…she couldn’t do this knowing that human blood was on his hands. She’d be betraying everything and everyone. Her mother, her brother, her father, even that settlement.

She pulled back, and he growled deep in his throat, a protest that echoed within her own body. But she pressed her hands against his chest, halting him when he would’ve swept her back into his arms.

“I can’t, Niah,” she whispered brokenly. Her lips felt bruised and swollen and it was hard to articulate around them. “I can’t do this to my people, no matter how good this feels. It’s wrong of me to kiss you, to want you. Thank you for the flowers, but I can’t kiss you anymore.”

She broke out of his arms and took a step back from his warm, hard body. She knew she’d be dreaming of him tonight.

“Bree,” he said in a thick voice, which showed her that he was just as affected by her as she was by him. She wished she knew what force drew them together. “Stay. Bree stay.”

She nodded. “I’ll stay with you. But no more kissing.

Chapter 7

They traveled through the day and made camp as twilight fell. Niah went out hunting and came back with a skinned rabbit. She could only assume he had the knife in his pack, which disturbed her since she could’ve been the one skinned. Bree found some berries, and they had a nice dinner. He banked the fire as they settled down to sleep and she dreamt of Niah kissing her.

When she woke, he wasn’t there, although his backpack was still next to hers. Perplexed, she stood and went looking for him, and much to her surprise, found him washing in the river.

She stood transfixed, staring at how the water hugged his muscular body like diamond tears reflecting the morning sun. His black hair looked like ink as he shook his head, scattering droplets everywhere. Bree felt light-headed, panting slightly as her body flushed with heat. Was this…desire? Her mother had warned her desire would be insane, but this…this was impossible.

Her palms itched to touch him. Her lips yearned to kiss him. Her heart thundered for him. And yet he was everything she shouldn’t want. But as she watched him leave the river, his sculptured body a thing of beauty, all the reasons why she shouldn’t want him evaporated. His buttocks were firm, his thighs were thick with muscles, and dear Lord, he was big
everywhere
! She stared at his shaft in awe. Although it was limp from the cold water, it was still a sight to behold.

She wasn’t dumb. She knew about the birds and the bees, had seen animals mating, but she trembled a little at the thought of lying in his arms. Imagination, however, could only take her so far, especially when she was ignorant of what truly transpired when a woman lay with a man. Her mother had never fully explained it, and she hadn’t felt comfortable talking to her father about such things. She didn’t even tell him when she was on her monthly courses, so how could she possibly ask him about sex?

Niah made her think of sex.

As he pulled his pants up over his hips, she took a step back, meaning to return to camp and try to erase the exhilarating picture of him naked from her memory bank. When a twig broke under her foot, Niah looked around in her direction and their eyes met.

Gone was the unblinking stare he always had around her. Instead, his green eyes were turbulent pools of lust, all directed at her. She wondered if her own eyes mirrored what was so blatant in his, and as she flicked a glance downward, she saw his shaft was no longer flaccid. Now his pants tented with his need for her, and her heart thundered so loudly that it practically drowned out everything else. Her body was hot, her clothes felt tight, and all she wanted to do was press herself against him, let him ease her ache.

Niah raised his hand toward her, but that was one step she couldn’t take. As much as she wanted to, she just…couldn’t. So she turned and ran, away from him and away from temptation.

He didn’t talk to her as they headed out. The terrain was beginning to get a little rockier as they began their ascent up the mountain, so they had to focus a little more on where they stepped. Bree wondered what he was thinking, if he understood why she’d turned from him. She couldn’t even fathom how to tell him the reasons in their extremely limited sign language.

The tension was giving her a headache, and she absently touched the bandage on her forehead when her foot slipped out from under her. She slid and would’ve toppled backward if he hadn’t grabbed her arm, steadying her.

“Thank you,” she said, a bit breathless. “Wow, that could’ve been painful. And now I’ve got an adrenaline spike. I can’t imagine what you’re thinking about me, but I swear I’m usually not this incompetent. I’m pretty good at navigating, even through miles and miles of wilderness. I’m heading up this mountain simply because my father once told me about it. It took me a while to want to deal after he…died, but as soon as I find whatever it was he was talking about I think I can finally lay him to rest.”

He grunted at her, but she ignored him. She found her footing again and resumed their pace up the incline.

“I figured he found one helluva shelter. At least, that’s what I’m assuming. You know, some of this looks familiar, and I keep racking my brain to try to remember if I’ve been here or not. Ten years can change a lot of things.”

She snuck a quick glimpse of him over her shoulder. Niah stared at the path, placing one foot carefully in front of the other. Images of him naked in the river kept flashing through her brain, and like a ninny, she kept stealing glances at him. Why did she feel this pull toward him? It was like the more she was with him the more she
wanted
to be with him.

At mid-day the sky began to darken as thunderclouds rolled in. Bree began to scout for shelter when Niah tapped her shoulder and pointed to a rock outcropping not far away. She nodded her agreement and they altered course. They hadn’t made it yet when the heavens opened up and rain poured on them. By the time they found a large rock awning, they were both soaked to the bone.