The Visitor: Alien Hunger Special Edition (18 page)

“
I’m going to need a
shower,” she said ruefully.

“
Not with the
bandages—you’ll have to settle for a tongue bath.”

Chelsey felt butterflies take flight
in her belly. “I thought they called those sponge
baths.”

He sent her a heated look. “Not when
they use the tongue.”

Chapter Ten

Despite the ‘wounds’, which were
actually minor even though she thought it was really sweet that
Garryk had been so concerned about them, Chelsey was glad she’d
managed to convince Garryk to stay in rather than go out—until the
she woke the following morning. She wasn’t nearly as happy about it
then, because she felt vaguely nauseated as soon as she woke.
Breathing slowly and shallowly, she tried to subdue the queasiness
by force of will. She’d just decided that she had conquered it when
Garryk rolled over. As faint as the shift was, it was enough to
overset her attempt to calm her stomach.

Leaping from the bed, she raced to the
bathroom. She barely managed to make it to the toilet, drop to her
knees, and get the seat up.

She didn’t have
time
to lock the damned
door! She’d slammed it, though, and if Garryk had had any damned
consideration for her feelings, he wouldn’t have followed her to
watch while she puked her guts out. He caught her hair and held it
back, which she was mildly grateful for, but it didn’t make up for
her humiliation!

“
You alright?” he asked,
concern in his voice when she finally stopped gagging and sat back,
heaving for breath and trying to decide if she was done or she was
going to start puking again.

“
Go away!” she said
miserably.

He closed the toilet lid and flushed,
but he didn’t leave.

“
I mean it, Garryk! Let me
die in peace.”

He made a sound that could’ve been
amusement or disgust. “For god’s sake, baby! You’re
sick.”

“
You think?” she asked
weakly, fighting tears as she struggled to her feet.

He caught her around the waist, trying
to lead her back to the bedroom.

“
No! I need to brush my
teeth and get this taste out of my mouth!”

“
Don’t use the toothpaste.
It might make you gag again,” he advised.

“
Are you going to go
away?”

“
No,” he said grimly. “You
might faint.”

She wanted to argue with him, but she
just wasn’t up to it. Deciding to ignore him, she put a tiny bit of
toothpaste on the brush and carefully cleaned her mouth. He was
right, damn him! The toothpaste made her queasy all over again but
water wasn’t enough!

“
You going to be alright
now or do you need to throw up again?”

Chelsey thought about it, mentally
evaluating the state of her stomach. “I think so.” He braced her
when she headed back to the bed. She was sort of grateful for it
since she felt weak all over from her bout, but she still felt like
crying from embarrassment. Thank god she hadn’t had diarrhea to go
with it!

“
How about your bowels?”
Garryk asked when he’d helped her into the bed.

Chelsey squeezed her eyes
closed. “I am
not
going to discuss …
that
with you!”

“
You think I don’t know
you’re human?” Garryk growled testily.

“
I think I’m going to
brain you with something if you don’t shut up!”

“
Diarrhea?” he
demanded.

“
No!” she snarled at him
instead of demanding to know how he could possibly have missed it
if she had when he had his nose up her ass the entire time she was
puking her guts out!

He lifted her arm and pressed his
fingertips to her wrist. Confusion flickered through her but she
still felt too bad to pursue it. He lowered her arm after a minute
and pried her eyelids up. She glared at him, but he seemed
oblivious.

He cupped her breasts, squeezing them.
Chelsey was on the point of informing him that she wasn’t currently
in the ‘mood’ when he asked, “Any tenderness in the
nipples?”

“
You mean aside from the
tenderness from having you gnaw on them half the night?” she asked
cattily. She discovered he was glaring at her. “Not that I noticed,
but now that you mention it they do feel a little sore.”

He ran his hands over her sides and
then lightly pressed on her belly, as if he was feeling around for
something. “Any tenderness here?”

“
I don’t have an
appendix!” she responded irritably. “Seriously, Garryk, I don’t
feel like playing doctor right now.”

“
Still nauseated?” he
asked, focusing on the middle of her belly and digging his fingers
into the soft flesh.

Chelsey considered it. “A little,” she
said finally. “I must have had something that disagreed with
me.”

He grunted, but she couldn’t decide
whether he was agreeing or not. “Just lie still, baby. I’ll get
something to help that.”

“
I need to call the school
and tell them I’m going to be late,” she muttered.

“
What’s the number? I’ll
call them.”

Reluctance fluttered through her, but
she thought if she could just lie perfectly still for a little bit
the nausea would go away. She gave him the number. He disappeared
and she could hear him on the phone. Relieved, she drifted toward
sleep, drowsing.

* * * *

Garryk was so shaken when the woman at
the other end of the line picked up, it took him a moment to focus
on what she said. “This is Doctor Sinclair at Parker Memorial—I’m
calling for Chelsey Ledger. She came in a little bit ago
complaining of nausea. I’m sending her home to rest for the
day.”

He could tell he’d thrown the woman
for a loop since doctors didn’t usually do such a thing, but he
hadn’t thought Chelsey would want him to tell them it was her
boyfriend calling. “Dr. Who?”

“
Sinclair.” He spelled it.
“I’m on the emergency room staff—Parker Memorial.”

Bitch, he thought when he hung up. She
was bound to check. He just hoped she was satisfied when she
discovered he was on staff and didn’t ask about Chelsey. Shrugging
it off, he headed into the kitchen to search the cabinets for
saltines. He found those but he discovered without much surprise
that she didn’t have any ginger ale. She didn’t have an alternative
that would do either.

He debated whether to leave her long
enough to go after some or not and finally decided he needed to.
Nausea was one thing, the vomiting …. They’d eaten too late, he
decided.

He hoped that was it, anyway. She was
going to be so pissed off she was going to be ready to choke him if
this turned out to be a daily thing.

He grinned abruptly, allowing the
sense of excitement and triumph he’d been holding onto to rush
through him. He felt downright lightheaded. Discovering his hands
were shaking, he shook his head at himself and went to the door of
the bedroom to tell her he needed to go out for ginger
ale.

She was asleep. Again, he debated,
wondering if she would get up and head to work if he wasn’t there
to keep her in bed. Deciding on a compromise after a moment, he
scribbled a note, threatening to beat her ass if she wasn’t in the
bed when he got back, and placed it beside her with the saltines
and instructions to nibble on them.

Euphoria filled him as he
jogged down the stairs to his bike. Unless he was very much
mistaken his baby had a bun in the oven! Now all he had to do was
figure out whether it would be better to wait until she figured it
out herself and offer to marry her or try to keep her distracted
until it was too late for her to do anything about it, and
then
offer to marry
her.

It was underhanded. He
knew it, but he couldn’t think of anything else that would more
swiftly or surely sweep aside any objections or excuses she might
think of, and he was tired of waiting,
Jods
damn it! He wouldn’t have
minded courting her a while if it wasn’t for that son-of-a-bitch
she
was
married
to, but he could see the bastard had royally fucked things up for
him—and would try to get in his way.

That might have amounted to little
more than an annoyance if he’d been a native. Under the
circumstances he had to consider that it might lead to complete
disaster.

The spy the bastard had hired hadn’t
done a thing for his nerves! He’d thought for a little while—until
he’d tracked the man back to his lair and seen he was reporting to
her ex—that government men had somehow managed to track him
down.

He thought it would’ve
been hard enough to convince Chelsey if it had only been the
nightmare of a marriage she’d just ended. The bastard just couldn’t
be satisfied, though! He was using her son to make her afraid to
even try a new relationship and
he
sure as hell wasn’t in any position to do
anything about it—not until he had Chelsey shackled
anyway.

He had her now, though, he thought
with a shaky, but pleased, grin as he pulled into the parking lot
of the nearest convenience store! It was a lucky thing that he’d
already switched the engine off and kicked the stand down before
the other side of the coin fully sank in. It abruptly hit him right
in the gut, though, and a wave of dizziness washed over
him.

His baby had his baby in
her belly, he thought, suddenly nearly as terrified as he was awed
at the thought of a son. “
Gezis
,” he muttered, wondering if
he’d been suffering from temporary insanity. Maybe he should ask
her before she found out? She might shoot him first and ask
questions later when she found out—
if
she found out—what he’d
done!

He wished abruptly that he was more
certain. He’d been pushing it to examine her like he had, though.
He was pretty sure she’d be suspicious if he tried a more thorough
pelvic exam. In any case, as early as it was, a blood or urine test
was the only way to be a hundred percent and he sure as hell
couldn’t think of any way to manage that!

‘
Piss in the cup for me,
baby! Yeah! That really turns me on!’

He shook his head. No way he could
slip that one past her, he thought wryly.

* * * *

“
Good to see you back,”
the secretary in the office said pleasantly when she saw
Chelsey.

Chelsey smiled her appreciation. “It’s
good to be back—better yet, good to be past that flu.”

The secretary gave her a commiserating
look. “God! I hope it doesn’t go around! Dr. Sinclair must be a
friend?”

Chelsey felt the blood drain from her
face. She stared at the woman in horror for a split second before
she thought to paste a brittle smile on her lips. “Yeah—we go way
back—gotta go!”

A cold sweat broke from
her pores as she scurried down the hall to her classroom. What had
Garryk been
thinking
to tell them he was a doctor? She hoped to
god
that nosey old bitch
in the office hadn’t decided to call the hospital and check up on
him,
and
her
excuse! She was going to be trouble if the woman had!

She managed to get a grip
by sheer determination of will as she reached her classroom, but
she was a long way from calm! She was more focused on trying to
decide if the woman seemed to have been baiting her—or if she
hadn’t actually checked and had just
decided
the excuse was fiction—than
she was on preparing for class.

Maybe that was what the remark about
Garryk being a friend had been about? A play for more
dirt?

She realized after a
moment that there really hadn’t been anything Garryk could’ve said
that wouldn’t have aroused suspicion. Well, if he’d said he was her
friend, or boyfriend, they probably wouldn’t have even entertained
the possibility that she really was sick! Still …!
Doctor?

Reflecting that her life had begun to
seem like a series of nightmares interspersed with almost
hysterical highs, she began to wonder if she was developing some
kind of mental disorder or if her life really was seesawing out of
control. She didn’t think it was pure overactive imagination,
though.

The fight with Marla had taken her to
an all time low and then, when it had seemed like she was facing
complete disaster and utter ruin, Garryk made everything wonderful
again. They’d had fun! They’d followed it with great sex—and then
she’d woken up the next morning with stomach flu!

Weird stomach flu! She’d
felt vaguely nauseated half the day after worshipping at the
porcelain altar and then perfectly fine until the next morning when
it had hit her almost as bad as the day before. By day three, she’d
been ready to head for the hospital even though she really hated
hospitals and she hated what they cost even more! Fortunately,
Garryk had come to her rescue, again—by way of a friend who had had
some of his medication for nausea left over after his own bout with
the flu—
Not
something she would ordinarily have considered! But she’d
already missed three days of work!