by E. A. James
“Call me later”, I urged, but he didn't. I got in my car and drove away without looking back.
I managed to keep my mind off Mick and away from the fact that there was someone else for two days. I tried not to think about the woman, specifically, because I imagined her to be blond and skinny and beautiful - in short, everything I wasn't. Why else would he be cheating on me? I was under no illusion that I was a bombshell. Hell, maybe I was the one that he was cheating with on someone else.
By day three I was driving myself crazy. I couldn't concentrate on work and the more I tried not to think about it, the more I thought about it until my mind was filled with images of a woman that was so perfect she couldn't exist in real life. I couldn't do it. I needed to find some kind of proof of something happening - or not happening, God willing - so that I could know where I stood, at least.
I drove to his cottage. I knew Mick was out of town. I told myself that if I found him there the lie would be complete and I would leave him on the spot. I told myself it was something I would be able to do.
When I pulled up in front of his cottage the rain started to fall. I ran to the trunk of my car and found my windbreaker, something that would help me keep out the rain of not the sudden cold. I pulled up the hood and ran toward the house.
The sound of raindrops on the corrugated iron porch roof was like an applause and I felt like I had center stage. I tried the front door and it was locked. Great. Mick was trying to hide something if he was locking up. No one around here locked up. Ever.
I walked around to the bedroom and tried every window I came across. The bedroom window opened. It was a big window, but still, when I tried to squeeze into it I felt like I was making a mistake.
I pushed the thought away. Someone like me should not be messed around on by a man just because I wasn't the kind of woman you saw on the cover of Elle Magazine.
I managed to get inside. I stood in the middle of the room and breathed in. I smelled rain and cologne and... nothing else. I was expecting the waft of perfume that didn't belong to me.
The closet only had male clothes in it, clothes I knew. There was nothing under the bed like a foreign bra or pair of panties. Of course, someone like Mick was too organized to make mistakes like that. I rummaged through the drawers. I wanted a note, a letter, something - anything - that would prove me right. I didn't find anything. There were documents with photos that I couldn't pace and symbols I didn't understand but it wasn't what I was looking for so I paid no attention.
If he was into sci-fi, that was his problem. If he was into another woman it was mine.
After spending almost an hour going through every inch of his house I still had nothing to show and I was starting to feel like a fool. I was stupid for breaking into his house. I was ridiculous for thinking that I would find something. I was an idiot for thinking he would betray me that way.
I ended up back in the bedroom. The bathroom door was still closed. I pushed it open. I wanted to check for lotions and soaps and make-ups that didn't belong. I didn't get around to it.
A big contraption stood in the bath in an inch of water. It was strange, smooth with edges that didn't line up and lights blinked all over it. Lightning flashed around the cottage and a few counts later thunder rumbled in the distance.
I heard a noise in the house. I froze and listened. For a moment it had sounded like someone was in the house, but then another round of thunder and the sound of branches scraping on the roof in the bedroom and I was sure it was just the weather. I took one step closer to whatever it was that stood in the bath.
The bathroom door banged and shock traveled through my body. I spun around. Lightning flashed at the same time I did and a dark shadow stood in the door with a club raised over his head. Thunder rumbled and then he stepped into the bathroom light and I saw Mick's face. The club came down and struck me on the head. It felt like an electric shock through my system and then my body gave way and I crumpled to the ground. I felt arms around me, easing me to the ground. My vision darkened.
Mick had just hit me over the head. It swirled around my head, a thought that seemed important but I couldn't grab hold of it properly. Mick. I'd been sneaking around his house and he hit me over the head.
I should have been more panicked about it. I should have been upset or angry or scared. Instead, warmth washed over me and the blackness became like a blanket that I swaddled myself in. I gave myself over to it.
CHAPTER THREE
I opened my eyes and everything around me was white. A smell in the room pinched my nose - it reminded me of a hospital but something was off about it.
I lifted my head and everything spun so I put it back down again. I blinked and tried to focus on what I could see. The ceiling, the walls - I was willing to bet the floor as well - was white, so bright and clean it was clinical. A nurse appeared out of nowhere. She had a mask over her mouth like she didn't want to breathe on me. The mask and her clothes were white, too. Her hair was a brown so dark it was almost black and it was in stark contrast to the rest of the room.
"Where am I?"
She glanced at me, her eyes sliding to mine and away again. Her eyes were evergreen, the color of a forest. I hadn't seen eyes like that, ever.
"Where am I?" I sounded a little pleading the second time. She still didn't answer me. She checked my vitals, shone a light into my eyes that felt like knives into my temples and made a note on a clipboard before she disappeared again.
I tried sitting up another time. This time, I managed but it wasn't a pleasant feeling. I felt like I was going to throw up. My head throbbed madly like I had the worst headache and at the same time, it felt like my brain was cotton wool and I couldn't feel my scalp at all. I wasn't sure if my balance was up to me trying to stand.
Why did my head hurt so much? I lifted my hand to my head. A bandage was wrapped all the way around and my head was tender at the front when I probed it with my fingers. That explained at least why I felt the way I did. It didn't tell me what happened or where I was.
I closed my eyes. It helped with the headache. I'd been hit on the head, hard. I could tell by how it felt. It was a concussion. But how..
It came back to me in a crash of memories. Mick. I'd been in his bathroom and I'd seen some kind of contraption and the last thing I remembered was him clubbing me over the head.
Fear replaced the panic in a smooth wave and I was suddenly terrified. Where had he taken me? Why the hell was I here? Who was he? I felt like everything I knew was a lie.
A door to the side slid open with a swishing sound and Mick - the devil himself - stood in the doorway. Where I'd seen him as an Adonis before I saw him as a threat now, and instead of dribbling over him I found I curled away in fear. My head hurt more when I did.
Mick wore a suit with strange stitching in red and a black leather coat like something straight out of the Matrix. He looked hot. Hot and deadly.
For the first time since I'd met him, I didn't see his difference from the people I knew as a fresh change but as a threat.
"Get away from me," I said. I tried to sound commanding. Instead, I sounded small and scared.
"Angie, don't." His voice was soft and gentle, the voice I knew. Something inside me relaxed a little.
"You hurt me."
He nodded and looked at his hands. He genuinely looked sorry. I wasn't so sure what was genuine about him anymore, though. It was a word I'd attributed to him and I was starting to think I'd been wrong.
"I know this is all very confusing but you found the device. Your knowledge can get you killed."
Killed? How had we gone from a possible cheating bastard for a boyfriend to a situation of life and death?
"I don't understand."
Mick sighed. "What were you looking for at my place?"
I swallowed. "Evidence."
"Of what?"
I looked up at him. His eyes were so light they looked like a cloudy sky. He looked different to me now. I wondered if I still looked the
same to him.
"Of you cheating on me."
He looked confused and it was a cute look on him. I shook off the thought. I had to keep my head straight if I wanted to get to the bottom of this. My head hurt so much it was a challenge already, without me trying to figure things out.
"Why would I cheat on you?"
God, I could give him so many reasons. I didn't do that. I didn't want to put thoughts in his head if he wasn't thinking them.
"You're not?" That was a safer response. He shook his head slowly back and forth, disbelief etched on his face in a way that made me feel like I'd just been an idiot.
"There's no way I would choose someone else over you. I brought you here to keep you safe. I want you to survive the attack, not to throw you away because I've found something better. There's nothing better for me."
I tried to sift through all the information that he'd thrown at me now and found the sentence that had set alarm bells off in my head.
"The attack?"
He stilled as if he'd said too much and it was unfortunate that I'd picked up on it. I took in his whole image again, his suit, the look on his face that I didn't know, and I realized that he was a complete stranger. It didn't matter how much time we'd spent together before, he was someone I just didn't know.
"Angie, baby, there is so much more you don't understand."
He'd distracted me so many times by calling me baby and beautiful. I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to be treated as a human being that deserved to know.
"Then explain it to me, Mick. I'm not stupid, I'm sure I can understand." I sounded as irritated as I felt. Good. I was tired of being pushed around and treated like I didn't have the right to know what the hell was going on all around me. Mick sighed and nodded.
"You're right." I wasn't sure what he was agreeing with me about - my intelligence or the fact that I had the right to know. I didn't ask. I didn't want to look like I didn't know what was going on. "This is all very classified but I'll tell you what I can."
Classified? Who was he?
"Humanity’s space travel is dismal compared to what's really out there. Humans are only scraping the surface of what other species have mastered eons ago."
I frowned. "Other species? As in aliens?"
Mick nodded. "I know it's difficult to imagine but humans aren't alone in the universe."
There were so many questions out there about whether we were alone or not, and I could understand that. Fine. So we weren't alone.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
Mick took a deep breath. "The device you found at my place is a tracking system. There are species out there that aren't peaceful. We are trying to prevent an attack on the Earth."
I frowned.
"So you're... what? Working with Area fifty-one or something? Why haven't you told me this before?"
He opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it again and nodded. "Something like that," he finally said. "And I haven't told you because it's mostly classified like I said before."
"Okay." I looked at him, his clothes. "'So you're some bad ass alien fighter?"
He grinned. "I knew you would get it."
And there it was, the part where he made me feel wonderful again. In one sentence he made me feel clever and beautiful again, brilliant, in short. I could almost forgive him for hitting me on the head. Almost.
"Why did you attack me when we were at your place?"
His face sobered. He looked guilty for a second and his eyes darkened to a stormy gray. "I didn't realize it was you until after I hit you. I thought it was one of them coming to take away the one thing we have to track them."
I nodded. It made sense, and he looked so sorry. What could I do? I could hold it against him but in the end, where would that get us?
"So now what?"
He looked me up and down. I looked down at my own body. I was dressed in a hospital gown that was as white as everything else and very unflattering.
"Oh, God. I look terrible."
When I looked up at Mick there was hunger on his face.
"You look great, actually."
I rolled my eyes. "You're just being nice. I look like an Oompa Loompa."
Mick shifted closer, so close that I could see the flecks of silver in his eyes, floating around in his stormy irises. His pupils were dilated and it wasn't hard to know what he wanted. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against mine.
"We'll just have to get you out of it, then."
I giggled, blushing so hard I could feel my own cheeks burn.
"We can't do it here. What if the nurse comes back."
Mick shook his head. "She won't." And then he kissed me so that I couldn't argue with him anymore. And really, why would I when there was something like this to be had? He peeled the hospital gown off me and I was naked. He looked at me, eyes sliding over my body. He pushed my shoulders gently until I lay back on the pillows, and then he opened my legs with his hand and lowered himself between them. I gasped when his tongue touched my sex and closed my eyes.
He licked me and sucked me, making me forget where I was, how I'd gotten here, and made me question my own name. When I was on the edge of an orgasm he stopped. I moaned but he was on top of me then. It turned out his one piece suit was really a two piece and the pants were far enough down to release him.
He towered over me and then he placed himself between my legs and finished what he'd started with his mouth. I should have been nervous about where I was, the fact that he'd told me things that were impossible. I should have felt awkward, doing something so inappropriate in a hospital. I should have felt a lot of things. Instead, I just felt ecstasy. I let it consume me until it washed through every inch of my being. And then it was over and Mick was zipping up his fancy pants again. He handed me the gown and I pulled it on.
My fingers were still shaking.
"Where are you going?" I asked when it became apparent he wasn't going to get on the bed and cuddle with me. We always cuddled. I wanted to feel his body against mine.
"I have to take care of a couple of things, but I'll be back. In the meantime, you have to recover so that I can do that again, but harder” he said with a grin.
I shivered. The door swished open again and Mick was gone. I stayed behind in the white hospital room, feeling empty and forgotten. This was why I didn't want to have quickie sex with Mick. This was why we'd always cuddled. It was another part of him that didn't fit his bad ass I-don't-care image.
The nurse reappeared. She looked as dull and unfeeling as before.
"You can get dressed now and move to the mess hall. Your clothes are over there."
She pointed at a pile of clothes on a chair in the corner that I hadn't seen before. She walked out again. The mess hall? What? Where the hell was I?
CHAPTER FOUR
I got dressed. The moment I stepped through the sliding doors that led to the room I'd been kept in I realized I wasn't in the hospital in Fredericksburg as I thought I was. There were signs on the walls pointing to different places and I followed them until I reached the mess hall.
The hall was a large oval-shaped chamber, the corners all tilted up and meeting with the ceiling that tilted down. I stood inside a giant egg. The one side of it was occupied but a buffet-like table and people standing in a queue like this was normal for them. Let's all have lunch inside the giant egg.
I stood in the queue. Every now and then one of them glanced at me. I realized I looked different than they did. They were all tall and very slim, easily a head or more taller than I was. They wore suits the same as Mick's minus the coat in different colors and they looked... well, they looked like my family would approve of them. I felt short and fat and very much like I didn't fit in. What a way to boost a girl's self-esteem.
I sat down at an empty table and looked at the plate I'd been handed. A pile of veggies that didn't look familiar skirted a piece of meat the size of my face. I poked at it. It was rare enough that it might still be alive
. A small pile of white little balls reminded me of rice, except rice didn't look like that. I eyed the food and wondered if it was safer to stay without. Everything here just seemed a little off. The people, the food, the hall...
An alarm started whining and red lights flashed. I dropped my fork and looked around.
Everyone froze until the alarm stopped, and then there was chaos. Trays were dumped wherever there was a space. The diners all ran out wide doors that slid the same way my hospital room door did. I walked toward the door. People bumped me, trying to get past.