by K. Cantrell
But I’m distracted and accidentally cut myself with my shears while I’m giving Mrs. Riley a trim. The sharp pain of the slice immobilizes me for a moment. Dang it, it’s been a really long time since I’ve done that and I forget how much it hurts. Blood wells up and I curse, darting for the sink in the back, where the Band-Aids are. I can’t bleed in front of customers.
I have to pass off my client to Janet who takes over, assuring Mrs. Riley that she’ll never notice the difference between us two. Well, that’s a kick in the pants, but my bruised feelings don’t make it any less true. I only hire technicians who share my philosophies on how to do hair, but I would like to think that my regulars come to me because I bring something special to the chair.
I am stuck at the reception desk until the bleeding stops, which puts me in a not-so-great mood. All of that drains from my mind as Eros appears at the bottom of the stairs, his brow furrowed. The entire salon goes pin-drop silent as he crosses to me. Apparently I should have specified that “see you later” meant after work.
He doesn’t speak, but takes my cut hand gently into his.
“Don’t tell me. You heard me cussing?” I guess as he kisses my knuckles and nods.
“Penelope hurt. Come home. Take care of Penelope.”
That spears me right through the heart. “Thanks, that’s sweet. But I’m okay.”
He shakes his head and points to the cut. “Hurt. Much pain.”
Mystified, I stare at him. “It’s not that bad. I mean, yeah, it hurts, but I’ll live. There’s not really anything you can do about it.” The heated look he gives me makes me smile. “Okay, yeah. That would definitely take my mind off it, but I’m busy.”
I wave around the salon and he seems to notice the fascinated onlookers for the first time.
“Hello,” he says to the room at large and for God knows what reason, that makes me proud. He’s learning.
Clem scoots up to him, clearly intrigued enough to try again with her intro. “Hi, there. We met yesterday.”
Eros holds out his hand the same way she’d done to him and she shakes it. But he doesn’t let go after a couple of beats as is customary, likely because he doesn’t know he’s supposed to. Except his head cocks to the side slightly and all at once, I realize he’s learning Clementine.
Black, greasy jealousy shoots through my stomach and I can’t even care that it looks exactly like that when I reach out to separate them. “That’s enough of that.”
I hustle Eros away from my pretty blonde friend with the knowing smile and take him back upstairs. I shut the door and whirl on him.
“You can’t do that,” I tell him, hands on my hips. “No learning other women.”
Eros completely ignores my tone and pulls me into his arms, kissing my temple. “Penelope wife.”
Yeah, dang it. When did that get to be such a thing? My heart shouldn’t latch on to that phrase so greedily, especially not after I flipped out over a beat-too-long handshake like I’m starring in my own version of The Real Housewives of Olympia.
Eros whispers through my skin, infusing each molecule like dense mist until there’s no way to separate him from my own essence. I don’t try. I let him hold me because it would be stupid to pretend it’s not exactly what I need. He fills me to the brim in the way I’ve come to expect and maybe even anticipate, and the pain from my finger—and my damaged pride—vanishes.
“You’re a handy guy to have around,” I murmur into his shirt and his arms tighten.
“Penelope work?” he asks.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say yes, absolutely, there’s not even a question in my mind about whether I’m going to go back to work when he guides up my head with a gentle hand and spears me with his warm brown gaze.
“Take Penelope date. Spend time.”
Oh, geez. How can I say no to that? Except I have to. Don’t I? “What did you have in mind there, sport?”
I shouldn’t be encouraging him. Except instead of answering, he pulls away from me which is literally the first time I can recall him breaking off contact before I do unless I’ve expressly told him hands off. His heat fades far faster than I would like and a chill drifts through me that makes me wish for a jacket.
Eros grabs a National Geographic magazine from my bookcase. It’s the only one I kept from the subscription my dad gave me for Christmas one year because it had a feature spread of the Olympic National Forest. Clearly he’s been rifling through it, which is fascinating in and of itself since he can’t read it, but it’s mostly pictures anyway. I’m just shocked he found it in the first place.
The page he points to is a gorgeous shot of one of the lakes surrounded by towering trees. “Take Penelope.”
“I think you mean I’ll be taking you,” I correct wryly and he smiles smugly as if he’s caught me in something. “I haven’t said yes yet. Playing hooky is not my normal thing.”
His eyebrows raise. “What is?”
With anyone else, I would be answering that as a question about what my normal thing is but I have introduced him to a slang word he doesn’t know and his curiosity is boundless. “Hooky. It’s when you pretend you can’t do what you’re supposed to, like work, and you go have fun instead.”
“Hooky.”
He tests the word, pursing his mouth and it’s so cute that I can’t help but laugh, which makes him smile too and dang it, I don’t want to go back to work. It will be hard for me to do much of anything at the salon with the slice on my finger, or at least that’s my excuse. “Okay. We can go.”
He lights up and starts to charge out the door, but I make him put on shoes first, which he grumbles about like any good toddler. The big difference here, which I appreciate, is that he’ll likely get the idea about shoes the first time, whereas my nieces and nephews have to be told things over and over.
I drive to the Staircase Campground at the foothills of the Olympic mountain range, which is not close, but has way better scenery than Capital State Forest in my opinion. Camping is not my thing but I’ve been hiking a few times in nearly all the areas around Olympia. But never on a date.
Eros keeps up a stream of chatter as we drive. Mostly questions. His English is improving more by the minute and I’ve often wondered exactly what his translator does since he rarely comes up with complete sentences. It’s like he’s learning everything for the first time. Except kissing. That he seems to know how to do by instinct and I am insanely curious what other skills come naturally.
I have some guesses.
The thoughts I’m having are not all that conducive to being outdoors or in public. Or in a closed in car on an hour-long drive. Eros seems to pick up on this just as I’m having a particularly good fantasy about what it would feel like if Eros went down on me.
His hand slides along my thigh, which is thankfully encased in jeans because his touch is a powerful jolt. If he’d done it to bare skin, I would have driven off the road. “You’re not supposed to touch me when I’m driving, remember?”
He nods and doesn’t remove his hand. “Learning.”
“Learn by asking instead,” I suggest as I get the wheels centered again. Geez, what is there for him to learn about my thigh? It’s shaped like everyone else’s. Mostly. I forcibly remove his palm, settling it into his own lap, and his warmth drains from me instantly.
“Learn Penelope pleasure. Tell,” he commands and my eyelids slam shut. Also not beneficial to driving. What is he looking for, my top five turn-ons?
Because right this second, there is a list of about a hundred things he does that make me hot and wet and crazy, and all of them start with his hands on me. There is not a chance he could do something that wouldn’t be pleasurable.
“Not everything is about doing what feels good,” I say instead. “You should know that. You were in the military. You can’t just jet off to do whatever you want. Sometimes you have to do what you have to.”
He nods. “Take Penelope date first. Sleep in bed.”
I totally dese
rve the reminder that I’m the one who laid down that law and he’s following it. “Yeah, thanks. I appreciate knowing your end goal here.”
Not that it was ever in question. He wants to spend time with me, learn what I like so he can pleasure me later in bed. I really can’t find a downside to that, but I’m sure I will at some point.
I have to. Unless by some miracle I can get him to understand the concept of a fling. Which is not very likely given how he’s latched onto the concept of me being his wife.
Or more to the point, I should steer clear of anything intimate because I’ve latched onto it too.
Seven
It’s the middle of day on a random weekday, so there aren’t many people at the Staircase campground. Tourists pay the twenty-five bucks to hike along the trail, but I’m willing to wager that Eros isn’t dying to see the lake.
He only suggested this outing because I told him he had to spend time with me before I’d even consider letting him out of blow-up mattress jail. He follows instructions well, which is just as much of a turn-on as anything else. How many men let what you say go in one ear and out the other? All of them. Except my alien.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have agreed to this.
I park in a small turnout that I found a while back. There’s a tiny trail through the woods that we use to cut through to the main trail. As a bonus, this part of the national park isn’t heavily traversed, so we’re completely alone. Eros holds my hand as we stroll toward the tree line, and yeah, this is every bit a date, complete with the anticipation of what will likely happen at the tail end of it.
Maybe I should mention that he’s supposed to buy me dinner too.
I kind of laugh at myself because—excuses much? What is wrong with me? I don’t owe Eros anything other than what I discussed with Charmaine. I’m teaching him how to be American and providing a green card marriage in exchange for his agreement to play the part of my lover in front of my family. Except I am avoiding my family like the plague, which tells me I have a little more at stake here than I’m pretending.
A hush swallows us whole as we step into the forest, completely cutting off whatever sounds from the road that might have drifted this far. I have no trouble imagining that we’ve been transported to another world where the only things that exist are the two of us and possibilities.
Eros seems equally affected and for the first time since we left the house, he falls silent, his gaze drinking in the soaring vine-covered trees. His hand tightens around mine, which is unnecessary because I wasn’t going to let him go. Maybe not ever. Eventually we hook up with the main path and by mutual non-verbal agreement, we wander to the left which leads us deeper into the woods.
Sunlight filters through the canopy and dapples the ground. Coupled with the electric connection between me and Eros, it’s flat out magical. I’ve been here before, but the forest never spoke to me like this. I’m full of Eros and heat and bliss and an overwhelming sense of anticipation.
If I’d held the line and refused to let him take me on a date, I would have missed this. If I hadn’t completed that profile the way I did, I would have missed him. That tugs at my heart in a whole new way, and he glances at me as if he hears the shifting beneath my skin.
Maybe he does. Would it be so hard to believe he has some kind of special skill at reading me?
Breathless all at once, I let him capture me in his gaze and a profound heaviness creeps through my blood, freezing me in place. Which is fine, because he’s stopped too, focusing only on me. Drinking me in as thirstily as he had the forest a moment ago.
Eros crowds into my space and my back hits a tree trunk as his brutally hard body fits up against mine, pressing into me in all the right places. The crush of his lips on my mouth makes me whimper. I want more. He gives it to me, sweeping his tongue along mine in an explosion of sensation and fire and it’s all I can do to stay level. His knee slides between my thighs, chafing high and hard against my core, which is frankly the only thing keeping me from falling at his feet.
I want his hands on me more than I want to breathe.
Instantly, he skims under the hem of my blouse, his fingertips trailing heat up my side and back down again, dipping into the waistband of my jeans until he’s cupping my rear. It’s not enough. I strain forward, eager for more, grinding against his thigh, nearly delirious with need as the urgency of our kiss grows impossibly hotter.
I feel my zipper give way and his busy hands peel the rough fabric of my jeans from my body. I should help. But he’s got it well under control and eases his fingers between my legs, teasing me at my crease where I’m already wet and weeping for his touch.
When he circles his index finger over my achy center, I gasp and arch against the tree trunk, grateful for the support when everything solid in my body has been replaced by light and warmth. Eros pushes a finger inside me, setting off an avalanche of sensation and his presence winnows through my blood, seeping into every pore like hot honey. It’s almost more than I can bear and I cry out as he twists another finger inside me to join the first. I ride his hand shamelessly and his tongue laves hard and glorious against mine.
I’m about to come apart and I say his name in a throaty voice I scarcely recognize. He responds in his native language, murmuring pretty syllables to me in his outrageously sexy accent and it doesn’t matter that I don’t know the words. I hear what he’s saying with absolute clarity.
You are mine.
It spirals through my soul as the orgasm breaks over me like a wave, crashing into me with so much force that I cry out against his mouth. He swallows it as he devours me in a hell of a kiss, drawing out my release into something so otherworldly that a galaxy of stars explodes behind my shut eyelids.
When I come back down to Earth, Eros has shifted his hands back to my waist and is holding me gently, still crooning in his alien tongue. I cannot believe how shamelessly wanton it makes me.
“We’ve skipped the date part of this date,” I mutter and his mouth curves up against my cheek.
“Penelope happy.”
“Yeah, that’s no lie.” But it doesn’t excuse the fact that everything is backward and upside down. “We weren’t supposed to do that yet.”
“Penelope want. Learn,” he insists and skims a hand down my arm, snaking beneath my blouse to toy with my bra.
I mean, I can’t argue with that. I burned for him to touch me and he did, learning remarkably fast what gets me hot. It’s almost like he knew before I did how to make me fly, which is saying something considering I have never had an orgasm like that before. Sure a few times during sex I actually come but generally I have to help things along. It’s usually an experience best described as nice. Not cataclysmic. Not to mention that doing it while standing up and fully clothed is a new one on me. I’m an instant fan of it.
“I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” I say half-heartedly because he’s in the process of unhooking my bra with shocking dexterity. He pulls it apart and finds my nipple faster than I can credit. I gasp as he thrums the hard, sensitive peak.
“Penelope wife,” he murmurs in my ear as he starts a whole brand new round of seduction. “Take care of Penelope.”
Which sounds to me like he has the exact right idea. Weakly, I try to remember why I should resist and I can’t. “Can we at least go home first?”
He nods and sweeps me off my feet, rolling me into his arms as he carries me back to the car like he’s found a treasure chest full of gold in the forest. I don’t complain because it’s chivalrous and swoony and I have never been treated so well in my entire life.
Earth men take a lesson.
I drive home—somehow—while Eros keeps up a stream of foreign murmuring while leaning on the center console, totally absorbed with me. He touches whatever he can reach as he tells me things in his native tongue that I can’t conceivably understand, but I do. It all means that he adores me. That I matter to him. I inhale it as if I haven’t been able to breathe for the whole of my li
fe until I married the only person in the galaxy who can unhitch my lungs.
Who in the hell decided he needed to learn English? He communicates just fine in whatever he calls that jumble of sounds. My heart translates it easily without benefit of anything other than the simple connection of our flesh.
And when we get back to the Victorian house where I’ve lived the most lackluster existence imaginable, Eros paints it with vivid color the moment we blow through the door upstairs. He hustles me to the bedroom and I don’t even throw up a token protest as he begins to undress me with urgency. Whatever he reveals, he kisses reverently. First my stomach, then the space between my breasts. A long trail along my collarbone.
His lips are divine as they glide over my skin, as if they were made specifically for this purpose. The ever-present fullness that I experience whenever he touches me grows teeth, swirling inside me with breath-stealing force.
Because this time, I’m not going to make him stop.
My blouse hits the floor and my still-unhooked bra follows it. Eros’s gaze devours me as he takes in my bare torso. I let him look because his expression says more to me than his alien words. He likes what he sees. I have half a moment to wonder if Torvian women resemble Earth women and then it doesn’t even register that there are other people on the planet besides us as he kneels before me to unbutton my jeans.
A being as magnificent as Eros on his knees before me is such a powerful sight that my core catches fire and turns to liquid heat. I’m slick and achy and ready for anything he wants to do next.
He follows the same kissing routine down my abdomen and legs as he peels me out of my clothes. I shiver when he gets to my knees. He doesn’t skip my feet and by the time he’s out of skin, I feel like a goddess being worshiped by her most devoted subject.
I’m naked and he takes full advantage of it, sweeping his hungry gaze over me.
“Beautiful,” he announces in English and that’s just as good as saying it in Torvian.