by K. Cantrell
“Name?” he asks with a furrowed brow that is too cute for words.
“Penelope.”
He repeats it back and holy God. I have the unsexist name on the planet—any planet—and somehow Mr. Smith has turned it into a cross between a lullaby and an aphrodisiac. I have no problem imagining him saying it exactly like that multiple times in a row as he goes down on me.
I am shivery and achy all at once.
“The decision is yours,” Charmaine tells me with a note of finality like I’m not even allowed to sleep on it. I can take him or leave him. My choice.
“Penelope,” he says. “Make you happy.”
“You speak a lot of English for someone who doesn’t speak English,” I shoot back wryly. I can’t turn my back on him. More importantly, I don’t want to. I want him. He’s mine and that was true the moment I saw him. I don’t pretend to understand the enormous pull between us but I can ignore it. Right? I’m still in charge. And I’ll have my fake boyfriend/husband/human to get everyone off my case without having to do anything other than indoctrinate John Smith to the ways of Earth.
This kind of marriage is perfect for me. I can call it quits whenever I want and it’s all fake.
“There’s a manual,” Charmaine tells me and hands me a thick binder of printed pages. “It’s not online for obvious reasons. But please read it at your convenience. It’ll explain everything about the refugee program, how heavily these matches are monitored and what to do if you find yourself in any danger. The people who run this program don’t put up with the slightest infractions on the part of Torvians since the goal is to avoid detection. On that note, there’s a disclosure agreement. We’d prefer to keep the idea of aliens among us a secret. Need to know basis only.”
It seems she’s thought of everything. Before I decide to regret ever opening my big fat mouth at the salon the other day, I nod. “Okay. Let’s do this thing.”
Three
Charmaine breezes through the paperwork and offers to personally take us to the courthouse for the wedding, which I appreciate because then I don’t have to ask anyone else to be a witness to this fiasco waiting to happen. I pick up the phone a dozen times to call this whole thing off, but then I hear John Smith’s voice in my head pleading with me. I don’t dial.
My reasons are altruistic. Or at least that’s the way I’ve been selling it to myself.
Within a week of hearing about Out of This World Matches, I walk through the door of the Olympia Municipal Court, trailed by an alien who has all the stealth of an elephant in a tutu. He draws the attention of everyone in the building the moment he steps inside behind me, and I swear I can hear the females swooning from here.
Yes, my Mr. Smith is a head turner, no doubt, including mine, especially as he takes my hand in his, strolling along beside me as if we are a couple. Well, aren’t we? We’re here to get married for crying out loud. I clutch his hand a little harder with a possessive sense of pride. He’s mine, ladies. I finally have a man. I’m not going to lie. It feels good.
God he’s tall. And gorgeously built, muscular without those unattractive veiny bulges, which is a trick and a half. I wonder if he’s so well defined due to whatever alien bits are underneath his skin. And of course, all I can see are his arms. The rest is a beautiful package just waiting to be unwrapped. By someone else. I will be keeping my hands off him. I can’t imagine a worse scenario than getting involved with an alien I’m planning to ditch at some point and who I’m using besides.
But that’s just window dressing for the real reason I can’t give in.
The way he makes me dizzy just by stroking my hand with his strong thumb is exhibit A. I’d convinced myself over the last week that I’d been mistaken. That I’d imagined the draw between us. But it is still very real and very much a problem if I can’t keep it under control.
All too soon, a clerk ushers us into the judge’s chambers, who says some words and then it’s done. The judge glances at me and then up at John Smith, clearly expecting us to cap off the ceremony with the traditional kiss. I didn’t focus too much on this part, deliberately, because my nerves have been messing with me as it is. We should skip the kiss. It’s too much for something that is supposed to be fake all the way around. Besides, what if I have to instruct him on what to do in front of the judge? Won’t that tip him off that there is nothing ordinary about the man I just married?
But all of that melts from my mind as John Smith’s warm palm swallows my jaw and he tilts up my head. Sensual intent radiates from his expression and I can do nothing but let my heart fall out of rhythm as he bends to claim my lips without an ounce of hesitation.
Oh, God, there is nothing tentative about this kiss as he masters my mouth with his, conforming me to his will. His tongue slides between my lips and I automatically open wider. He takes the invitation to the extreme, exploring as if he has no plans to stop.
He has to stop. Heat sears my insides as he kisses me so thoroughly that my knees turn to Jell-O. His arm steals around my waist, holding me close as if I’m precious and he doesn’t want to break me. Please, God, do not stop.
Except we’re in public. I think.
My hands land on his chest, palms flat, and I’m a millisecond from pushing him away but I’ve finally got him under my fingertips and I cannot stop sliding them along the contours, reveling in the hard planes of his torso beneath his T-shirt. His own fingers dance under the hem of my blouse. Firecrackers detonate along my skin where he’s touching me and I can’t think.
Someone clears their throat and I find the strength to pull away, but not out of John Smith’s grip. I don’t think I could at this point unless I want to end up on the ground.
“Congratulations,” Charmaine says with a pleased smile. “I hope you’ll be very happy.”
John Smith nods enthusiastically as if happiness is actually a goal here, and leads me from the room. Which is fortunate because I’m still dazed. Holy crap can that man kiss. Alien. I shake my head. He’s pretty much all male, regardless of his DNA, and I can recall with perfect clarity the hard press of his erection into my abdomen as he kissed me.
He piles into my car like an overeager Great Dane who can’t wait to feel the wind in his ears, but the moment I slide into the driver’s seat I’m treated to the real reason he’s in a rush.
“Penelope,” he murmurs and leans on the center console to nibble on my lips as if he’s discovered chocolate dusted across my mouth. And then he’s kissing me again like he means to swallow me whole, half dragging me across the console to better access my mouth.
I don’t resist. That would be ridiculous when I want him to kiss me exactly like this, as if I am the greatest temptation in the entire galaxy and he cannot wait to have me. It’s intoxicating.
I have lost control. Again. Somehow I extract his tongue from my mouth, nearly shedding tears over the effort. “I have to go to work.”
Yes. Work. Where there is a measure of sanity and I can breathe.
John Smith’s face falls. “You kiss.”
“Yes, I kissed you back. It’s not a crime,” I say defensively. “But we can’t kiss all the time. Sometimes we have to do other things.”
His face lights up. “We make…babies.”
I roll my eyes because really? Figures. With two planets’ worth of choices, of course I end up married to a typical male with nothing but sex on the brain. “Your translator leaves a lot to be desired. It’s called make love. And that is not the other stuff I meant. There’s a lot about life on Earth you need to learn and spending twenty-four/seven naked is not the way to do it.”
Though I’m having a hard time remembering why that’s a bad plan as something dark and thoroughly wicked blows through his expression. I start the car before he can make good on whatever his translator told him I said.
Driving does not turn out to be the deterrent I hoped for. John Smith recognizes no boundaries and his fingers do a lot of exploring of my neck and collarbone. His touch unleashes a shiv
er that nearly cracks my spine and then he gets serious about it, caressing me with deliberation, as if he knows he’s dissolving me into a puddle of sensation.
The tires thump over the rumble strips on the side of the road, and the reverberation jolts me back to reality. Geez. What is wrong with me?
“Do your people not have bones or something?” I ask him crossly. “My body isn’t that interesting.”
“Penelope beautiful,” he insists. “Feel good.”
Well, there’s no arguing with that logic. “Be that as it may, I’m trying not to kill us both, so hands off while I’m behind the wheel.”
John Smith crosses his arms over his massive chest and stares mutinously out the window. Apparently I can command him to do as I say. That puts me in a much better frame of mind. “What is your real name?”
He quirks an eyebrow at me. “John Smith.”
“That’s the name of a pilgrim, not a man who looks like you.”
Alien. Why is that so hard to remember? He’s not even human, let alone American. We have a lot of work to do to get him acclimated, particularly if he doesn’t understand how dangerous it can be to touch me while I’m operating a moving vehicle.
“John Smith,” he repeats and taps his chest with all five fingers. He’s been well conditioned to say that. Probably because he doesn’t want to live in a hole in the ground.
“Yeah, you don’t pass for a John Smith any more than I do.” And he can’t be John Smith anymore anyway because now all I can picture is a tricorn hat and a beheaded turkey. Plus, my alien is supposed to be Swiss. “What do they call you on Torvis?”
He cocks his head and spits out something garbled that sounds like Eroshegen. I try to say it and he laughs. The sound washes through me with the force of a wave rushing up on the sand and once again, I’m struck mute by the glory of the things this man can do to my insides without conscious effort.
It’s when he puts in the effort that I worry about. “Eros then.”
If I recall my Greek mythology like I think I do, the god who lent his name to the word erotic is pretty fitting for my alien. Eros. I roll it around in my head and it sticks.
“John Smith?” he asks.
“Sure, I guess in public you have to be.” I wrinkle my nose. “But I just can’t call you that. I like Eros.”
He nods. “Eros.”
Great. Things are going to be great.
I convince myself as I work to get him settled in my house upstairs from the salon, clarifying twice that I’ll be right downstairs if he needs anything, but that he should try to not need anything. I still don’t know how to explain his presence to Clem and Janet, but something better come to me quick. The whole reason he’s here is to play the part of my lover. I don’t worry at all whether anyone will buy the idea of us being together, and frankly, given the near visible sparks between me and Eros anytime we’re in the same room, the believability factor is not my biggest problem.
I brought an alien home to live with me.
Never in any of this did I imagine I would be gaining a roommate. When the talk of a fake boyfriend came up, I naturally envisioned he would have his own place. A car. A general understanding of plumbing, microwaves, and shoelaces. Eros has nothing. Except me. I like that way more than I would have expected.
My alien is too big for my house. I don’t just mean physically, though yeah. He barely fits on the couch, his long legs bumping up against the coffee table. When I go to move it, he gets there at the same time, his arms twining around mine in deliberate contact that I feel in places he shouldn’t be able to reach. That’s the problem. It’s his sheer presence that’s too big. It crawls inside me, pushing out everything but him.
Flustered, I release the coffee table and sit back on the couch to give him room to shift the furniture into whatever configuration his little heart desires—and no, it does not escape me that I got him to move stuff after all. Then he wedges in next to me, his big powerful thighs brushing against mine, and I can’t even chastise him because where else is he supposed to sit? My living quarters are pretty small given that the whole bottom floor is taken up with the salon.
I still haven’t made my peace with the fact that there is no way he can sleep on the couch, as I had righteously envisioned. And I don’t have an extra bedroom.
Why did I think this was a good idea again?
“Penelope happy,” he says.
“Sure. I’m thrilled.” The sarcasm goes right over his head. “I have to get to work so I can afford to feed you. Maybe later we can talk about gainful employment. In the meantime, here.”
Remote in hand, I click on the TV that I never watch and only purchased after my nieces and nephews began visiting. Kids are notoriously fidgety and sometimes I have to park them in front of the television when they’re here in order to catch my breath. Sue me.
“Maybe learn some English while you’re at it?” I suggest and try to find something worthwhile for him to watch. As I zoom through the channels, he watches my fingers, more fascinated with the remote than with the TV. But then he curls his hand around mine and he lifts it to his mouth. My eyelids flutter shut as he sucks on my flesh and everything lights up inside.
“You have to stop doing that,” I murmur.
His breath feathers across my knuckles. “Penelope happy.”
“What’s with your obsession with whether I’m happy?”
“No send. Penelope happy.” This is accompanied by a soulful stare through his gorgeous lashes that hooks something inside me.
“I’m not going to send you back,” I tell him softly and the statement writes itself in stone across my heart. If nothing else, I have to find a way to make this work because he’s alone in this world and I’m all he’s got. That’s why I did a crazy thing like marry him in order to get a fake lover. “You don’t have to make me happy to guarantee that.”
He nods and presses my palm to his smooth cheek without another word and geez does he have a way of communicating that requires no words at all. But what he’s saying is the doozy. I can feel him inside me, warming everything so fast that it steals my breath. Too much so.
I duck out of his grip and show him how to open the refrigerator, plus a few other essentials like the bathroom—I do not want to know how that got translated!—then go downstairs where nothing is upside down.
Eros needs to get acclimated to Earth fast. I need to introduce him to my family or there’s no point to any of this. But I can’t fully envision such a scenario, not yet. I sigh and force a smile for the customers waiting at the reception desk. God knows where Clem is. Obviously I pulled myself free from the distraction upstairs in the nick of time.
Once I get the customers into their proper chairs, I focus on my salon. I sweep, then do a couple of easy cuts, approve some ads. The minutia of my business is my favorite. After a couple of hours, I turn my attention to the weekly supply order, automatically running through inventory and the backbar where I display products for resale. Wow, we are dangerously low on the new Brazilian blowout aftercare lotion I started carrying about a month ago, and as I rifle through the drawer where I store samples, I see a bunch of other things that are out of stock. And then I look at my inventory sheet. It’s been nearly two weeks since I ordered anything. Cursing, I start over because now I have to account for my brain freeze that has Eros’s name written all over it.
My mind wanders to the alien on the second floor. I hope he’s getting settled.
The door opens and two policemen walk into my salon in full uniform. One glances around with an all-business face that tells me he’s not here for a haircut.
“Someone dialed 911 from this location and then wouldn’t speak to the operator,” he says, his gaze cutting into me.
Eros. How did he manage to dial the phone? I didn’t even show it to him because I specifically didn’t want to give him the temptation.
I reel back my burst of annoyance. “Everything is fine. Thank you for coming by.”
“D
o you mind if we check around?” the shorter police officer asks but no one could mistake it for an actual question and the answer cannot be yes.
“Of course not.” My nerves do a dance in my stomach as I follow the pair in blue with my gaze, praying they don’t clue in that there’s a second floor they might want to examine. How guilty do I look? I sneak a peek in one of the mirrors. Oh good. On a scale of one to ten, I look like I’m hiding an escaped convict under the reception desk.
Charmaine didn’t cover this sort of crap-storm. Well, I guess that’s not true; she kind of did. Don’t mind him, he’s Swiss. That totally explains why he’s dialing 911 when there’s no emergency like he doesn’t know better. I practice it under my breath so it’ll just roll out of my mouth all casual-like if one of the officers stumbles over the 225 pounds of Torvian upstairs.
After an eternity, they nod and tell me to have a nice day, then stroll from the salon. But they ring the building once, and through the large windows, I can see them craning their necks up at the second floor. My lungs stutter to a halt. The officers speak to each other and wonder of wonders, get back into their squad car to drive away.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I hightail it up to my house to check on Eros. I am instantly sorry I left him alone.
Four
“What the hell is going on here?” Oh, God. I sound like Victoria when she’s mad at one of her kids. Is this how it happens, how you turn into a screechy mom? You come home and find…this?
Two empty ice cream containers lie on their sides with a river of Chunky Monkey and Karamel Sutra streaming out of each one. They have been there awhile as the river ends in a congealed mess on the far corner of my distressed pine coffee table. Empty cracker sleeves dot the floor and one flattened box of premium saltines sticks straight up from between a cushion and the armrest of the recliner on the far end of the living room.
Eros, who has apparently discovered he’s more comfortable with the zipper of his jeans completely undone, glances up from his supine position on the couch, not one trace of remorse marring his perfect features.