by Tasha Black
“When we found out you weren’t writing about the guys,” Addy said.
“But I was writing about them at first,” Nikki admitted, feeling miserable, but not willing to lie to these women anymore.
“But you weren’t going to keep writing about them,” Honey said. “At least not unless you were going to do it underwater.”
“How did you know?” Nikki asked, astonished.
“What? You think I can’t teach conga and see someone launching a perfectly good laptop into the lake at the same time?” Honey winked at her.
So Honey had seen her from the pavilion.
“You aren’t going to write about us?” Indiana’s voice came through the trees.
Nikki spun to face him, her heart threatening to leap right out of her chest.
He was so handsome. The moonlight played on his cheekbones, danced in his eyes.
“Of course not,” she said. “Not once I got to know you. And I’m sorry I thought about it in the first place.”
He smiled at her and she felt it in her bones.
“And you didn’t tell Honey and Addy about me,” she said.
“Of course not,” he replied. “I would never betray you, Nikki.”
Although it was hours until dawn, she felt as if the morning sunshine were warming her heart.
Then she remembered the day he had come to see her, after Honey and Addy had kicked her out.
“I’m so sorry I pushed you away,” she whispered. “I thought you told them.”
“It’s okay,” Indiana said. “Everything is okay.”
And then he was walking toward her, and the world dropped away. There were no friends, no trees, no cottage, no island.
Only the man she loved taking her in his arms, and a sense of relief washing over her like the tide.
Indiana
Indiana rowed the boat across the lake, pulling the oars so hard his arms ached.
Nikki sat facing him, her back to the mainland as they approached.
Though the moonlight sparkled over the water and the trees danced in the summer breeze like a painting, Nikki ignored their surroundings, holding Indiana in her gaze as if she wanted to be sure of him.
He knew how she felt. Though he knew they had the rest of their lives, he felt a desperate urgency to claim her. It wasn’t just the ache in his loins. This was his very spirit calling out to be joined with hers.
At last they reached the bank, and she helped him to pull the canoe onto the grass.
She took his hand and headed toward the house upon whose lawn they had just arrived.
It was an enormous white house.
But when they had nearly reached it, Nikki pulled him away from it and toward the house for cars.
That seemed odd, but he did not want to question her and risk awakening the proprietor of this hotel for people and cars.
To his surprise, there was a metal staircase on the outside of the garage. They followed it up to a door, which Nikki opened with a key she fished out of her pocket.
“I was going to stay here tonight to catch an early bus back to the city in the morning,” she explained. “But I think my plans just changed.”
She turned on a switch and illuminated the small space. Someone had turned the attic of the garage into an apartment. The ceiling was quite high, though it sloped down on the sides.
The room was lit by a chandelier that threw facets of light that looked almost like stars onto the ceiling above.
A simple wooden table and chairs sat just inside the door, as well as a bookshelf and two easy chairs.
The far side of the room held only a canopied bed.
Indiana looked over at Nikki.
Nikki was looking at the bed.
He found it hard to read her expression. Was it excitement or trepidation?
“Are you hungry?” he asked, offering her an out, in case she was not ready. He had been taught that the women of Earth placed a heavy burden on readiness for physical mating, the rules of which Indiana could not pretend to understand, but he wished to honor them if they were important to her.
She looked over at him, then shook her head slowly.
“Tired?” he tried.
“No,” she murmured, smiling.
Her smile was like sunlight. He moved toward her without thinking.
Then she was in his arms again and he was kissing her, lost in the sensations brought on by such intimate contact with her soft skin, her fragrant hair.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed.
When he placed her down again, she slid her hands up his chest and swiftly slipped his t-shirt over his head.
“You’re so smooth,” he whispered to her and gave her a wink to let her know he liked it.
She giggled and didn’t object when he removed her shirt and unhooked her bra with a snap of his fingers.
“You’re pretty smooth too,” she observed.
“But you knew that already,” he told her.
She blushed prettily and some caveman instinct inside him was gratified.
He knelt before her and slid her jeans and panties down to her ankles.
She stepped out and he looked up at her naked figure, all softness and curves, so different from the hard angled bodies of his brothers. A man could get lost in so much sweetness.
Nikki whimpered.
Like Pavlov’s dog, his mouth began to water at that sound. He pressed her thighs and she widened her stance, allowing him access.
He moved his face to her sex, inhaling her intoxicating scent.
She made a small sound of excitement.
The responding surge in his cock left him nearly breathless.
Overcome with desire, he licked her, sliding a finger between her folds to feel her heat, and add to the sensations he wanted to stoke in her.
Nikki moaned pitifully, running her fingers through his hair.
Delighted at her responsiveness, he applied his tongue directly to her little pyramid of pleasure as he slid his finger deeper.
But instead of tilting her hips to him as she had the last time, Nikki tugged at his hair and tried to retreat from him, even as he felt her sex tighten around his finger.
“Please, not this way,” she begged, her voice husky with need.
Oh.
“Lie down, Nikki,” he told her with a cool authority he did not really feel with his heart pounding out of his chest.
She scrambled onto the bed obediently and he slid off the rest of his clothes.
He was going to make love to her.
The idea of actually entering her body filled him with a reverence that bordered on religion.
But when he crawled into the bed, covering her body with his own, Nikki pushed him off.
He lay beside her, wondering what he had done wrong.
“Not yet,” she whispered, a look of pure mischief on her face. “We need to make up for last time.”
Before he could figure out what she was talking about Nikki was hovering over him, her nipples skimming his chest in a tantalizing way.
She lowered herself to kiss his neck, her warm mouth sucking, teeth grazing until he felt his cock pound with need.
He moved to wrap his arms around her but she smacked him back playfully.
“Indiana, lie down,” she whispered.
He froze and she took advantage of his stillness to kiss her way down his chest, and lick a path down his abs to where his cock throbbed helplessly.
Nikki’s hair brushed his hips and then he felt the heat of her tongue, caressing him softly, up and down his shaft.
He closed his eyes and fisted the sheets in his effort to keep control.
But when she wrapped her lips around the tip of his cock and swirled her tongue around him he cried out.
Emboldened, she slid her velvet mouth further, taking more and more of him in.
Indiana held his breath and tried to calm the sea of desire she was stoking in him. His poor organ was ready to burst with excitement.
Seemingly oblivious to his urgency, Nikki continued to draw him in and out of her mouth slowly, her tongue exploring him as she moved.
When she began to make small sounds of satisfaction in her throat Indiana could take no more.
“Stop, love,” he groaned, lifting her off him.
He opened his eyes in time to see her slide her swollen lips over him one last time and then he sprung out of her mouth, his penis pumping in the air as if searching for her tongue.
“Lie down, my angel,” he whispered to her.
She crawled up to the head of the bed with him, rested her head on a pillow.
He bent to kiss her, cupping her cheek.
She kissed him back with such passion.
“Are you ready?” he asked her.
She smiled up at him and nodded.
Overcome with emotion, he covered her face with kisses - her cheeks, her forehead, her chin, her eyelids.
When he took her mouth again she twined her arms around his neck, lifting her breasts to press them against his chest.
His body told him again that it was time.
Though he would have liked to kiss and tease her all night, he also wanted to belong to her, needed her to belong to him.
Nikki
Nikki trembled in Indy’s arms. She needed him so much, needed for them to belong to each other.
“Will you accept me as your mate?” His voice was so deep it was almost a growl.
“Yes,” she told him, happy tears prickling her eyes.
He guided himself against her, pressing slowly inside her, filling her until she thought she couldn’t take anymore and then pressing onward until she was stuffed so full it hurt.
He paused, waiting as she throbbed around him, until she let him know she was okay by sinking her nails into his shoulders and lifting her hips to him to ask for more.
He eased himself out.
“Nikki, I love you,” he whispered as he pressed inside her a second time.
She cried out at the intensity of the pleasure coupled with his words.
“I love you,” he told her again as he thrust inside her.
Nikki felt her orgasm building inside her, rocketing toward her like a train on the tracks.
She whimpered, jogging her hips.
Indiana answered with another firm thrust.
“Nikki,” he groaned, the tension in his voice telling her that his own climax was near.
“I love you,” she managed to tell him.
Nikki wailed with pleasure as she felt herself clamp down on him in endless waves of ecstasy.
Indiana cried out and then she felt him throb and jet inside her.
A feeling of awakening came over Nikki, as if she had thrown off a veil. She could see every detail of the room as if her eyes were focusing on them all at once - the vines in the wallpaper, the crack in the ceiling that looked like the Nile, the covers of the National Geographic magazines on the bedside table.
“Nikki,” Indiana whispered.
That was when she realized her eyes were still closed.
She opened them, unsure if she might be hallucinating.
Everything was just as it had been with her eyes closed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her, a concerned look on his face.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I… I was looking at the room even though my eyes were shut.”
A slow smile spread across his face.
“What?” she asked.
“Nikki,” he said. “We just clicked.”
“Oh,” she said, momentarily distracted by the happy idea.
“And I think you just got my gift.”
“You mean…” she found herself unable to continue.
“I mean, I think your memory has been enhanced,” he said. “Sit up.”
She sat and he handed her a magazine.
“Open it up,” he said. “Glance at a page and then put it down.”
She did as he said.
It was an ordinary page of a magazine - a photo of the Hubble Space telescope and a long article.
“Close it,” he said.
Nikki closed the magazine and set it down.
“Read it,” he told her.
“I can’t…” she began. But she trailed off as she realized that she could, and easily. The article appeared before her eyes as if she were holding it, facts about the telescope and its images filling her mind.
“You can,” he whispered to her.
“This is crazy,” she murmured, flipping through the magazine again, then closing her eyes.
Indiana stroked her hair gently.
She opened her eyes again and looked into his.
He winked.
And she closed her eyes and watched him do it again.
And again.
“Oh, wow,” she said.
He chuckled, so she opened her eyes again.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“It’s a heck of an engagement gift,” she said.
“It may make your life more complicated,” he told her. She sensed how carefully he was choosing his words.
She thought about what it would be like, having the ability to replay her memories over and over.
“Is it complicated for you?” she asked.
“It can be,” he admitted. “My advice is not to dwell on mistakes and affronts.”
“That makes sense,” Nikki said. “It would be awful to replay my mistakes again and again. I’ll try to focus on happy memories.”
“I find it best to concentrate on the present moment,” Indy told her, a playful expression on his handsome face.
The next thing Nikki knew, she was pinned to the bed, her gorgeous lover thrusting his hips suggestively against hers.
Nikki
Two Months Later
Nikki glanced across the lawn, filled with giddy wonder just knowing that all the happy faces would be etched in her memory forever.
Her friends and co-workers were all seated on rows of folding chairs under snowy white canopies that covered the lawn at Maxwell’s.
The music began to play and Nikki stepped forward in time with it.
On the bank of the lake, with the island as his backdrop, stood the most beautiful man she had ever seen. She felt her face light up at the sight of him.
Indiana winked at her and her heart did a little skip, like it always did.
He was flanked by his brothers.
And Nikki was followed in the procession by Addy and Honey.
The knowledge that she was sharing this day with her two best friends added so much emotion that Nikki wasn’t sure she could bear it.
And getting married here at Maxwell’s was the icing on the cake.
Kitt, Remington and Indiana had stopped by the little jewelry store in town to choose engagement rings. While they were there, they’d bumped into Mr. Abrams.
Indiana told her that the owner of Maxwell’s had congratulated them and insisted that they hold the wedding and reception at Maxwell’s, his treat.
The men had argued that it was too generous. But Mr. Abrams insisted that since they had raised eighty-two thousand dollars in the name of saving the resort, saved the gas pipe line and spared him the headache of having the Feds raid Maxwell’s to bust up an insider trading ring, the least he could do was throw them a little party.
Wade’s alien video had never really taken off, which meant no snooping reporters, and no need for Abrams’ nephew, Jonah, to step up and pretend to be an alien. In his book, Mr. Abrams was still indebted to them. And he was a man that liked to pay his debts. The wedding would make it even.
And besides, there was no place but Maxwell’s they would have wanted to be married.
The birds were singing and the sun was high in the sky when Nikki reached her place at Indiana’s side.
She turned to see Addy, looking emotional yet resplendent in her white sequined gown, join Remington to her left.
At last Honey went to Kitt. She was a visi
on in ivory satin with a smile bright enough to light up a stadium.
Marshall, the guitar instructor, and his students finished their acoustic version of Pachabel’s Canon in D.
Then the minister began the ceremony.
Two by two they repeated their vows, beginning with Honey and Kitt. Then Addy and Remington.
They had talked about writing their own vows, but the idea made Honey so nervous that she nearly threw up, so they had all agreed that the standard vows were just fine. It was all about who was saying them anyway.
At last it was Nikki and Indiana’s turn.
The whole thing seemed to pass as if in a dream. Indiana took her hands in his, spoke his words softly and listened carefully as she spoke hers.
And then he was kissing her with a passion that made her toes curl in her fancy shoes as everyone laughed and cheered.
Nikki looked up to see Kitt dipping Honey low to the ground for their kiss and then lifting her over his head when it was done as if they were in some kind of dance competition.
Nikki smiled. Those two planned to open a dance studio and she knew they would be a success whether the world found out Kitt was an alien or not.
Walking back down the aisle, she caught Nala’s eye. Her illustrious mentor was wearing a gorgeous blue dress and a hat with a peacock feather that was probably older than Nikki.
Nala smiled at her and then winked at Indiana.
Indy squeezed Nikki’s hand and winked back at Nala delightedly.
The older woman arched a delicate eyebrow at Nikki as if to express her admiration of Indiana’s physical appearance.
Nikki couldn’t wait for Nala to get to know Indy’s many other charms. Especially the gift she now shared.
They continued down the aisle, following Kitt and Honey up to the pavilion where they would have a few photos taken before greeting their friends again.
The guests were out of their seats and mingling already on the grass below, spreading across the lawn in a rainbow of colorful dresses and ties.
And one group was climbing up the steps of the pavilion.
Honey squealed and launched herself at one of the women.
Something about her was familiar.