Eros (Olympia Alien Mail Order Brides Book 1)

by K. Cantrell

  I’m only half kidding. There’s no off-switch in my head, that’s for sure.

  “No off,” he says and shakes his head. “Penelope wife. Happy.”

  My heart twists. How can he be so sweet in the midst of being such a hardhead? “Yes, I’m happy that I’m your wife, okay?”

  He captures my hand and brings it to his mouth in a long kiss. “Eros happy.”

  I groan. “What am I going to do with you?”

  The look on his face is priceless and I laugh. It’s a cross between duh and really? which amazes me considering we don’t speak the same language. How can his translator be good enough to allow for joking around but so bad at other interpretations?

  “I bet you have a really great personality at home,” I tell him. The smile he blasts me with could light up New York, so it’s no wonder my entire body warms.

  So far, the relationship part of being with an alien is pretty straightforward. I show up and it’s all good. We don’t fight and I don’t have an annoying mother-in-law who hates me. Victoria’s is a beast who doesn’t think my sister is good enough for her son and tells her so often.

  It dawns on me that the number one thing I hoped for when I filled out the dating profile was a guy with a sense of humor. Maybe we are a good match. The slightest bit of hope unfurls that this could turn out to be something instead of nothing.

  The manual is heavy on my lap but I need to understand better what I’m dealing with here. Facts warm me in a whole different way than the heavy presence of Eros, whose thigh rubs against mine constantly as he watches me read.

  Wonder of wonders, there is a whole bio section on my alien. I should have read this long ago. “Says here that you were in the military on Torvis.”

  Yeah, that gels. He has that honed, attentive vibe about him, not to mention I could envision him parachuting out of a helicopter quite easily.

  He nods. “Soldier.”

  But not anymore apparently. Charmaine said he was banished and now I’m insanely curious if it might have been more of a dishonorable discharge. But as I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, I think there’s no way. Along with his solidness, he has a sense of honor that I appreciate. Sure he’s handsy but he always does what I tell him when I really mean it. It’s only when I waffle that he picks up on that as if he has some kind of sixth sense.

  He wasn’t kicked out because he did something wrong. He said he’d become “useless,” which really makes no sense unless the Torvian military decided soldiers with perfect bodies are so yesterday. Wan, pasty-faced weaklings are the new black, people of Torvis.

  I crack myself up and that makes Eros smile too, and suddenly there’s not a whole lot about a four million page binder that can hold my attention. I stare at him as his big brown eyes grow vibrant, and before I can blink, his fingers skate up my arm.

  “You have got to be the most tactile person I’ve ever met in my life,” I say, my mock frustration cut by another breathless laugh. He makes me feel beautiful and desirable without saying a word—what’s to hate?

  “Learn,” he says and presses his fingertips into my flesh by way of explanation.

  “That’s how you learn? Through touch?”

  He nods. Nothing to hate, but a lot to take in. I mean, I guess all of us learn things through touch too, but it’s definitely one of my underused senses when it comes to new data. As his fingers explore me, I become convinced I’ve been doing it wrong all along.

  I reach out and rest my palm on his pectoral. Eros blinks and glances down at my hand, a small smile of approval gracing his lips. But I’m not Torvian and no earthshaking revelations flood me. Just the ones I’m coming to accept as normal—I am his and he is mine. He fills me up to the brim and my need for him is strong.

  But I want to know him better.

  “Why did they banish you?” I murmur. He cocks his head in question. Stupid translator. He’s had very little trouble understanding me thus far until I ask one of the most important questions of all. I wave my hand, encompassing the room. “Send away. Why did they send you to Earth?”

  “Useless,” he says and shakes his head. “No need.”

  “You already said that.” Clearly his translator is fizzling out. “Did they disband the military? Decide they needed to make love not war?”

  He scowls, the first real negative emotion I’ve seen on his face. He’s frowned a couple of times but that’s mostly in frustration. This is different. I don’t like it. As much as he checks in with me about whether I’m happy, I rarely do the same for him and my selfishness convicts me.

  “Bad subject?” I ask and he twines his fingers with mine.

  “Make love.” He lifts my fingers and kisses them. “Not war.”

  I roll my eyes. Now he’s just repeating what he’s heard like earlier, when he echoed the line from Barney. “Fine, don’t tell me. You keep your secrets. Let’s see what else it says in here about you.”

  I scan the rest of the bio, partially distracted by the fact that he’s nibbling on my fingers. His lips are plump and beautiful, and as he laves his tongue across the tip of my index finger, I feel it in my gut.

  I almost miss the smoking gun smack in the center of his bio. But as my gaze skids over the words, it’s drawn back instantly. Failed genetic experiment.

  “Oh, my God.”

  Eros pauses, brows raised. I shut my eyes because the words are too horrible. But it’s emblazoned across my consciousness and the facts I so naively sought aren’t so warm anymore.

  They experimented on him.

  There isn’t much here but it’s enough. Apparently, the Torvian military tried to build some kind of super soldier and the genetic material mutated or some crap. In other words, it got away from them. And Eros suffered through it until they decided the experiment had failed. He was useless to them.

  They did unspeakable, horrific things to my sweet alien—my imagination might be adding some things here but I don’t care—and then sent him away when they messed up. No wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it. My heart squeezes as I peer at him, and I can’t help that a few tears leak out. He watches one fall and then brushes the rest away.

  “Make love,” he says quietly and pushes his cheek into my palm. “Not war.”

  “Yeah,” I whisper back. “I’m pretty much in that boat myself right now. I’m sorry for whatever happened to you. But you’re safe now. I won’t hurt you.”

  He nods his understanding and kisses my cheek, which is powerful in a whole different way than when he’s trying to melt my clothes off. But no less affecting. God, he’s something else. I feel incredibly lucky all at once. If nothing else, I have one of the least chatty men on the planet. That’s gotta count for something.

  I go back to my paperwork reluctantly, turning the pages despite my distraction. My gaze catches on the part I was looking for. Fully tested and carries no diseases.

  Well, then. Looks like I have a green light for the sex part of this marriage, if I can trust these faceless people who are holding my life in their hands. I can’t quite forget how little information about Charmaine and her match agency I could find. But then again, when you’re peddling aliens, that’s not so much of a mystery, right?

  I’m done researching how Eros ended up sitting in my bedroom on Earth. He hasn’t tried to hurt me and he’s pretty much as advertised. What else do I need to know? And then I stumble over the last line of his bio.

  Everything freezes inside, even the fullness that I’ve come to associate with being physically connected with the alien I married. This part can’t be right. I read the words again. They’re plain English and I’ve been fluent in my language for a long time, but they make no sense.

  “What does this mean?” I demand and point at the printed words, too flustered to remember he can’t read. He glances at the manual and brings my palm to his mouth. Automatically, my fingers spread across his jaw but it does not provide the insight I need.

  “Stop that,” I order and like mag
ic, he releases me. So yeah, like any man, his hearing is selective. “This bio says you came to Earth to have a family. Like you’re expecting a wife and kids.”

  He nods. “We’re a happy family.”

  “That’s a Barney song,” I shoot back. “Not real life. They told you this was all fake, right? That I’m teaching you to be human so you can live on your own. This is not permanent.”

  Besides, it’s not like he can breed with humans. The whole idea is ridiculous. His genetics aren’t even right for his own kind, let alone mine, or they wouldn’t have sent him away.

  His eyes shutter and when he opens them, I can see the military bits floating around inside because he’s flinty and harsh all at once. “Penelope wife. Family.”

  “No,” I say desperately. “Well, I mean yes, for now. But not forever.”

  He nods craftily this time. “Always. Make love. Not war.”

  Fantastic. I married the one alien in the entire Torvian army who wants to be a flower child instead of a soldier. “That’s not going to happen, sport. We’re faking this until I’m confident you’re able to get along on your own and then we’re over. You find someplace else to live.”

  I have a job, a life. I can’t be a Torvian babysitter for the next month let alone forever. This was supposed to be a fake relationship. So yeah, the matchmaking process has a few flaws, obviously. And then I remember how flippant I got there toward the end of the questionnaire. My blood runs cold.

  What have I really signed up for here?

  Doesn’t matter. As soon as I’m done, I can call Charmaine to come pick him up. She said that, plain as day. There are rules. Standards of behavior that Torvians have to follow, particularly the part where I have all the control. It’s all here in the heavy manual that has turned into a ton of bricks on my lap.

  I let it fall to the carpet. It hits with a thunk and falls open to a page listing emergency contact numbers to call if your alien is incarcerated or hospitalized for any reason. That must be when the men in black show up, I think somewhat hysterically. Then they bleep your memories away so you don’t recall precisely what happened.

  I agreed to teach him to be human in exchange for acting the part of my fake lover in front of my family. That’s it. I can’t be swayed by the fact that he’s here because of fascist military scientists on his home planet who have fewer ethics than a grapefruit. No wonder he wants someone to love and care for. He was kicked off his planet because they had no need for a failed genetic experiment. But as he blinks his ridiculously sexy lashes at me, I can’t help but wonder what a success looked like. How could this be anything less than the definition of perfection?

  Except for the part where he wants a family. That’s not something I can give him. Hell, that’s probably something no one in the galaxy can give him.

  And that’s when my heart really breaks for Eros.

  Six

  “Okay,” I say to Eros at midnight, which is when I hit my hard limit. I have to be able to function at work the next day and at least seven hours of shut-eye is mandatory. “It’s past my bedtime. You sleep here, okay?”

  I ran out earlier and bought a king-sized blowup mattress for him, which barely fits in between the table in the breakfast nook and the couch, but it works a lot better here than in my bedroom.

  He quirks an eyebrow at me from his spot on the couch where we’ve been watching hours of kids’ videos in an English language super-cram session.

  “Bed,” he says.

  “Floor.” I point to it. “We’re still getting to know each other and you haven’t even taken me on a date yet.”

  That’s a flimsy excuse but he doesn’t pick up on it.

  “What is?”

  Ugh. He’s insatiable with the questions and if I had a dollar for every time he’s asked that in the last few hours, I would never have to work again. Simple words like tree and cup he gets fine from the videos, especially when there’s a corresponding picture, but nebulous Earth customs are a whole different story.

  “A date is something people do when they like each other and want to spend time together. Couples do a lot of that until they decide they like each other enough to…do other things. Take their relationship to the next level. Sleep in the same bed,” I stress so he’s clear that’s not up for debate.

  “Penelope wife,” he said firmly.

  I sigh. His logic is as annoying as his persistence sometimes. “Yeah, we kind of skipped a few things. Doesn’t mean we’re skipping everything else and going straight to the good stuff.”

  I still haven’t figured out how to handle all the revelations of earlier.

  Wonder of wonders, he doesn’t argue and settles onto the blow up mattress to sleep. I steal into my bedroom and shut the door, but don’t lock it. He might need something in the middle of the night and plus, it feels unnecessary. I told him to sleep on the mattress and he will.

  He does. All night. Not once does my doorknob rattle, as if he truly took my words to heart and doesn’t even think about sneaking in here to crawl into bed with me while I’m asleep. I’m the one who lays awake staring at the ceiling wondering whether it would be hypocritical to pretend I had a nightmare and need a big strong man to hold my hand.

  I don’t need that. I don’t have nightmares. What I have is an insatiable ache for someone to hold me, because he wants to and can’t stand to be separated. And by someone, of course I mean Eros. There’s no faceless guy out there in the world—I want the one I married. What kind of monster am I that I can still dream of using him after finding out that I messed up the dating profile and the permanence he seeks is not something I’m willing to give him?

  If I’m being honest, I’ve always wanted something more. I just shove it away under the premise of being too busy with work to find time to date. In reality, men as a whole suck and not in a good way. You get to a point where it’s easier—and saner—to go without. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have pounced on the fake boyfriend idea in the first place.

  In the morning, I exit my bedroom showered and fully dressed. Eros is still asleep, covers half thrown off and tangled around his bare body. Shamelessly, I soak in the visual gift of my alien’s torso, which is indeed as glorious to look at as it is to touch. Scars mar his skin, which shouldn’t be such a surprise given his military background, but it seems like such a human thing that I can’t help but wonder if his insides are more like mine than I would have supposed. Did he bleed? Did he have to get stitches or do Torvians have some kind of special technology to heal wounds?

  Fascinated and totally unable to help myself, I tiptoe across the living room to get a closer look. But it’s his face that draws my gaze. Holy God. He is literally breathtaking and his cheekbones alone make me swoon. As I’m brazenly ogling him, he blinks open his gorgeous brown eyes. Of course. Now I’m caught, in more ways than one because I cannot look away.

  Frozen in a half crouch at the edge of the mattress, I take the high road.

  “Good morning,” I say as if it’s perfectly reasonable for him to expect his wife to be drooling over him when he wakes up.

  “Good morning,” he repeats.

  Somehow I have forgotten that his accent gets me hot and bothered and it doesn’t help that I imagine him saying that to me as we wake up together after a night of soaring, mutual pleasure. I would play the part of the sheets in this scenario, tangling myself around his limbs and draping myself over his delicious body.

  “I have to go to work. You stay here and learn more English.”

  I have a plan to check on the requirements to get Eros a job with the Olympia police force. He’s got forged papers and a marriage certificate, as well as the kind of authoritative command of himself that would likely cause a criminal to give up without a fight. I mean, who would argue with a guy the size of a moose when he says, “You’re under arrest?”

  “Penelope.” He holds out his hand and without thinking of the many reasons it’s a stupid idea, I clasp it.

  I’m flooded instantl
y with his presence. My eyelids flutter closed as I let the warmth and amazing sensations course through me. But now I’m missing the visual snack bar of my half-bare husband, which is not going to work, so I pry my lids open. He’s watching me with his head cocked, as if he’s studying me.

  “More learning?” I ask wryly and he nods.

  It occurs to me that I might need to have my head examined if I’m passing up the opportunity to strip down right this second and crawl underneath those sheets with him. He learns by touching and my body would be his classroom. My core heats and goes tight, begging me to let him learn whatever the hell he wants until I explode from pleasure.

  I don’t because I have to open the salon. I have customers with appointments and my name is on the deed to this house. I have bills, I have responsibilities. And that’s an awful lot of “have tos.”

  Eros smiles and releases my hand, which saves me from my indecision. “Penelope work.”

  It’s almost as if he read my mind, somehow figuring out that I’m conflicted but work is the more important thing to focus on here. Thank God one of us has a functional brain.

  I scramble backward, taking the out with far more desperation than I would have hoped for. “I’ll see you later.”

  The salon welcomes me as it has done for years, but something feels wrong because my mind lingers upstairs with Eros. I hate leaving him by himself and I try to pass it off as apprehension that I’ll return to chocolate syrup all over my couch. But mostly I worry that he’s going to be lonely.

  That stupid bio is doing a number on me. Because of course I assume that he specified he’s looking for a family due to earthly motivations such as a strong desire to not be alone. For all I know, he wants a family so it’s harder for him to be sent back to Switzerland. That would be more likely, especially given the climate with immigration these days.

  Customers drift in and I bury myself in my calling. I have always loved doing hair from the time I was little. All five of my sisters indulged me over the years and by the time I started cosmetology school, I had amassed hundreds of hours of practice.