Unworldly Encounter Complete Series (2 page)

Andrea bit her bottom lip. He was strange—but if he was actually interested in helping her she wasn’t about to turn him down. If she could trust that he was interested in helping her, and not in something else.

“I’m not—I don’t actually know what’s wrong with the car,” Andrea admitted. “I…” she took a deep breath;
how much English did the man even know?
“I hit this tree,” she patted the rough bark. “And then—my car stopped working.”
 

“May I look?” The man’s lips curved in what Andrea thought was one of the strangest smiles she had ever seen.

Andrea took several steps away from the front of her car gesturing for the man to do as he liked. Her skin felt as if a million ants were crawling underneath it. The man stood over the car’s engine, and Andrea reasoning that fear wasn’t a good enough reason to hinder anyone’s attempt to help her, shone the flashlight into the front compartment. The man was silent for a long time and Andrea’s heart fluttered away in her chest.
If he makes a move towards me…
she gripped the flashlight tighter.
 

“Can you see anything?” She asked, looking around anxiously. There was no one else on the road. If he attacked her she could try and get into the car and lock the door—but she didn’t think even the tempered glass windows had much of a chance against the guy, if he was determined to bust through them.
Why the hell is his skin purple? Does he just…drink insane amounts of grape juice? Is it paint? It doesn’t look like paint. Dye?
 

“It is here,” the man said, pointing to something in the snarled depths of her car’s front end. “Is…loose. Connection, you understand?” Andrea nodded. The man reached in and she watched his surprisingly deft fingers go to work. In spite of her fear she couldn’t help but admire the quick way he moved. The almost magical touch he applied to whatever it was he was working on in her car.
If I hadn’t met him on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere after midnight…and if his skin wasn’t that bizarre shade of purple…I might flirt with him.
Andrea felt a flash of heat through her body, thinking of just what those hands could do if they were on a human body instead of buried in the bowels of a car.
 

The man looked up expectantly and Andrea stirred herself back into the present. “Oh—is…I…” she took a deep breath. “Are you done?” An expression—not quite a smile though it looked somewhat like one—flickered across the man’s face.

“It is fixed. You’re lucky, little one.” Andrea balked at the endearment. She hadn’t been a ‘little one’ since she had hit puberty, shooting up to 5’10” tall in the course of a few short years while her breasts went from mosquito bites to the ample F-cups that had forced her to buy her first custom bra at the age of 16.
 

“I’m certainly lucky you were around,” Andrea said nervously, her gaze taking in the man’s height and heavy build. “Is there—can I do anything for you? You’ve been so kind to help me.”
 

The man glanced towards the woods and then towards her car. “I will help you get back onto the road. You will give me a ride, a place to sleep?”
 

Andrea’s mouth fell open and then she closed it again, unable to form words.
A place to sleep. A ride.
The man had helped her but if he was homeless, was it really wise to let him into her house?
 

“I don’t bite,” he said.

“I could let you sleep on the couch…” Andrea swallowed. “I don’t have a very big place…and only one bed.” She shrugged, smiling nervously.
 

“I am—stranded also. No car. I need to get in touch with my…people.”

The man was watching her with a gaze that she couldn’t read—he looked at her from the top of her head to her feet lingering at her full breasts and hips, but not as much as most men did. Andrea considered it for a long moment. It was a scenario out of a dozen horror movies and out of terrible stories that got shown on the news.
Have there been any stories about a purple-skinned serial killer on the news lately?
The more she looked at him the stranger he appeared; and yet, at the same time, she couldn’t detect any actual menace from the man. And he had helped her. In a certain way he even looked—she had to admit—gorgeous. Certainly better than any of the men at the bar had looked. Andrea took a deep breath.

“Okay. I’ll give you a ride to my place. You can stay the night there…and I guess find a way to get in touch with your friends or family or whoever in the morning. But I swear to God: If you try to attack me, I will do my best to kill you.”

“I have no interest in attacking you, little one.” The man made a sound that was somewhere between a cough, a laugh, and a hiccup.

Andrea instinctively took a step back, still a little frightened of the semi-giant man in spite of her brave words.
 

He leaned down and pushed her car backwards up the embankment and onto the surface of the road. Andrea’s instinctive fear of him deepened. If he was able to push a car around without breaking a sweat, it didn’t seem like any effort she could make in the event of an attack would be worth it.
Conk him on the head if it comes to it, everyone is weak there.
Andrea swallowed against the rising sense that she was making a very big mistake, and stepped onto the road edging towards the driver’s side.

The stranger hovered close to the passenger side and Andrea gestured for him to get in.
 

“What’s your name by the way?” she asked. She should know the name of anyone she was going to let into her house, shouldn’t she? The man settled in the passenger seat and glanced at her. Up close, she could see that his eyes were a strange honey-gold brown, a color she’d never seen on a person before short of contact lenses.
A homeless guy with purple skin and cosmetic contact lenses.
It didn’t add up.
 

“Call me Jan, you could not pronounce my true name.” The man’s low, rough-accented voice said with pride.
 

“I’m Andrea,” she replied. “Most of my friends call me Drea.”

Andrea inserted her key in the ignition and turned it; the car choked then started. She felt a release of tension wash through her. At least one problem of the night was solved.

The man remained silent though as she started down the road. Andrea could feel him watching her intently from the passenger seat. The fact that he could fit into the seat was a little surprising to her. She would have put good money on a bet that the man’s size would have made the car tilt. Maybe he just looked larger because it was dark and late, and because she was still more than a little apprehensive about him.
 

“So,” she said, making her voice as determinedly chipper as possible, “Tell me about yourself, Jan. Where are you from? What do you like doing?” The man shifted in the seat and glanced out through the window before turning his attention back onto her.

“I come from far away,” he said finally. “For my work I am an… engineer, a scientist.” He struggled with the words and Andrea struggled to figure out where his accent could possibly have come from. It sounded harsh—almost German-like, but with weird nasal Russian emphasis and underneath an almost Italian lilt.
 

“How did you end up in the woods?” Andrea saw the turn for the street her house was on and looked around to make sure that there were no animals attempting to cross the street—once bitten, twice shy—before she pulled onto the block.
 

“I am with a group of fellow… researchers. We are conducting experiments. I must contact them soon to let them know that I have—that all is well.”
 

“Pretty spread-out group? What are you experimenting to find out?” The man shifted in the seat again and Andrea heard the chair’s support structures groaning slightly.

“I am restricted from saying,” he said, his voice devoid of any emotion, the accent harsher. “It’s—what is the word you use here? Top secret.” Andrea pressed her lips together. A foreigner in the US with purple skin of all things conducting top-secret experiments. She shrugged; it was as good a cover story as any she supposed.

She pulled into the driveway and the security light mounted over her garage flicked on. “You live alone?” Jan asked her. Andrea glanced at him askance but nodded.
 

“I did tell you I only have one bed,” she pointed out. The man shrugged.

“Many people have only one bed. Doesn’t always mean you live alone.” Andrea felt her cheeks warming up with a blush and didn’t quite know why.
 

“Yes, well, I do live alone. But that doesn’t mean I’m helpless—I have…I can defend myself.” Jan looked at her and she could see something in his strange honey-gold eyes that she couldn’t quite read; it might be amusement or something else.

“I told you I am not interested in attacking you, little one.” Andrea frowned.

“Could you stop calling me ‘little one’? I’m a grown woman! And a pretty large one at that!” Andrea crossed her arms over her chest, her face burning with a mixture of embarrassment and attraction. Jan made the strange noise again—she had to assume it was his version of a laugh—and shook his head.

“You are a little one, compared to me. I could pick you up, carry you away—no problem.” Andrea’s initial fear-tinged thought was that he was probably right, but her pride was insulted nonetheless.

“No, it would be a big problem if you tried to pick me up and carry me away,” she said, trying to pin him down with her gaze; Jan seemed completely and totally unafraid of her anger—almost amused. “So don’t try it, okay?” The man’s shoulders lifted in an approximation of a shrug that didn’t quite look the same as when anyone else did it.

“Some women like to be carried,” Jan said mildly. “I think you would like it, too. Not many men here carry their women.” Andrea took a deep breath.
God, of course the only gorgeous guy I see all night talks about picking me up and carrying me away.
She exhaled slowly.

“You don’t try it, or I’ll—I’ll hurt you. I’m mean.” She opened the car door and unbuckled her seat belt, ignoring the shoes she had taken off after the accident.
 

Jan climbed out of the passenger side and Andrea was once more stricken by the sheer size of him. He was at least a good half-foot taller than her, maybe more. Underneath the coverall he wore it was easy to see he was plenty strong—as if the way he’d casually pushed her car off of the embankment by the road hadn’t demonstrated it to her already.
Why the hell am I inviting this guy into my house?
She remembered that he’d also fixed her car.
If he kills me, I hope he at least doesn’t leave me in a humiliating position. No one needs to see that shit.

Andrea unlocked her front door and opened it, turning back to look over her shoulder as the man slipped into the house behind her in near-total silence. “Home sweet home,” she said, smiling nervously. “I’ll just… get you some linens from my bedroom, you can sleep on the couch…” she gestured to it; when she had been moving the behemoth into her home, she had had serious doubts about the utility of it—but now that she had a huge man in her house it suddenly seemed much more practical.
 

She scurried towards her bedroom while Jan looked around her suddenly much smaller living room. Away from his oddly prying eyes Andrea felt her heartbeat starting to slow. She took a deep breath. “Do you know how you can get in touch with your—colleagues?” Andrea stepped into the bathroom and grabbed a package of makeup remover cloths; she was not going to let this man, strange and good-looking as he was, interrupt her routine.
 

The answer came from so close behind her that Andrea dropped the plastic pouch. “I will contact them easily in the morning from here.” Andrea turned on her heel to see Jan only a few feet away from her, staring at her through the doorway to her bathroom, looking as confident and uncaring as anyone on the planet.
 

“Excuse me,” she said, shaken, embarrassed and irritated. “I didn’t say you could follow me in here.” The man’s lips curved upward.

“You did not say I could not.” He moved closer to her and Andrea stepped back, her heart beating faster. The backs of her knees collided with the sink and she fumbled for the counter top with her hands.
 

“I told you if you try and attack me—” Jan stepped into the bathroom and in an instant he was only inches away from her, looming over her looking down with his bizarre eyes. Andrea realized with a shock that they were his real eyes—that he wasn’t wearing contacts. Up close the purplish cast of his skin was more pronounced and obvious. The man reached out and rested his hands on either side of her body on the counter top, trapping her.

“I am not attacking you,” the man said, his voice a slightly rasping, almost a lisping whisper. “I am curious. I have never had a—American woman.” Andrea’s knees felt as if they were made of jelly. The man was only two inches away from her; so close she could smell the slightly lemony, sharp-sweet scent of his body. In spite of her fear, she could feel her whole body warming up, a buzzing hum of desire creeping through her veins, a tight feeling of something between her hips tensing.
 

“What—what makes you think you’re going to—to have an American woman now?” Andrea tried to think of what she had at hand, what she could use to attack this behemoth. Somehow, her hair dryer, brush, or perfume bottle didn’t seem like it would make any difference.
 

“You want me,” the man said, looking down into her eyes. “I know. I can see.” His hand closed on one of hers and Andrea started, a low half-whimper leaving her throat. “I do not hurt you, Drea.”

“You’re—kind of scaring me right now. If you don’t want to hurt me… you shouldn’t… you shouldn’t scare me.” Jan smiled; at least that was the way the expression read to Andrea.
 

“I will not hurt you. But I am curious about you. I want…I want to feel you.” Jan’s mouth was only a few inches away from her face, and Andrea felt a sudden sharp jolt of intrigue and revulsion as she realized that his tongue was forked—she caught just a momentary glimpse of it as he spoke.