My jovial mood disperses as easily as the morning mist. It is replaced by irritation. I am lost in angry thoughts when the door opens and in comes Erien. His hair is tied in a tight pony, his face glistening with joy, and his brawny torso is bare. He is only clad in shorts. My heart skips a beat. He has the appearance of a gorgeous sea god. Even though I am breath taken by his beauty, an ugly voice still whispers at the back of my head and I speak it out loud.
“Where did you go?” I ask without kindness.
He knits his brows, the way he is accustomed to doing whenever I ask him a question he doesn’t want to answer. Or perhaps he just doesn’t like to see me, the nagging voice in my head tells me.
“Oh Alice, good morning to you too!” The joy leaves his face in a flash. I scowl and draw the sheets up to my naked body. He should know that he can’t just up and leave our bed after a night of great sex. I am not his whore whom he can just use and leave anytime he feels like. I intend to be treated with greater respect.
“You left?”
“I went for a morning run at the beach. I didn’t want to wake you,” he says.
“You mean you went out with Jamie and those friends of yours again, didn’t you?” The accusation is clear in my tone of voice.
Erien’s patience runs out. “They’d be your friends too if you cared to hang out with us.”
“Hang out huh, that’s all you ever do! Can’t you get a life?”
“What else is there to do? You won’t fuck me all day!”
I can tell that I have affected Erien with my sour mood. Goodness, I know I am being unfair to him but I woke up on the left side of the bed because Erien wasn’t there next to me. He should know it is his fault I am like this. Still, I will tell him exactly what I think.
“How can I fuck someone I barely know?”
His silver eyes light up. “It’s been a year and you don’t know me?”
I get up out of the bed, letting the sheets slither off my body. I walk to the window and turn my back on him. I can feel his eyes burning my backside but I dare not look at him. It is only at that moment that I realize what has made me so cranky of late. Of course, my moods, his playfulness, and our stupid arguments but none of that has made me angrier but what I have just come to realize.
“I knew the man I agreed to marry, Erien, but I don’t know you,” I say quietly.
“What are you talking about?” I can feel the pain in my voice.
I turn to face him. If I am going to tell him the truth, I will have to look him square in the face. He deserves at least that. I stare him up and down. His skin is very smooth and pale. I gulp. His skin was never that smooth. He used to have minuscule scales on his pores that my fingers used to play with. They used to tantalize me but now they are no more. He got rid of them.
“What am I talking about?” I echo him. “Look at you Erien. You are ridding yourself of who you are. Your skin darling. How could you get rid of your scales? Your eyebrows, why have you suddenly dyed them a darker shade? Even the way you talk is different. You were stubborn before but now all that’s left of your nature is arrogance and entitlement.”
He is quiet for a moment before responding, “It is my life Alice, my skin, and my damn attitude-”
“And how does that make you any different from your mother?” I shout before I can stop myself.
I know I’ve hit a chord with him; a terrible chord. Erien blinks at me in sheer disbelief, and though he appears calm, his eyes are ablaze with fury from the accusation. His mother had abandoned him twice in his life. First, she left him when he was a young age when she pretended to have died when in fact she had only self-exiled herself to Earth. Second, after reuniting with her a decade later, she hadn’t welcomed him with the love of a mother. She’d left shortly after to return to the planet Solasis. It is almost as if she can’t stand to be on the same planet with her son for any given time. Erien’s mother, Indigo Elertria Heluka, had completely removed her natural scales in a bid to get rid of her true nature and appear completely human.
“I can’t believe you just said that.” His voice is weak with anguish.
I can’t believe I said that either. Yet, it is the truth. It is creeping me out that Erien is trying to change himself, doing everything to rid himself of his nature. I know he may never want to go back to Solasis but he is still the alien prince I fell in love with. I don’t want him to change.
“Erien…”
“Excuse me.” He turns on his heels to leave the room. When he reaches the door, he pauses and turns to look at me. I hold my breath when he giggles nervously. He then tells me, “You know. Yester night, the ring was stuck in your hair the whole time. Don’t bother checking… it is not there anymore.”
“Erien, darling. I just want you to stay who you are.”
“That ring.” He ignores me. “I wonder if it’s lost for a reason.”
The remark jabs my heart though I can’t help but think it is the truth. When I left my mother’s home, I left in order to find myself. Instead, I found Erien. It is a beautiful thing so why do I still feel lost.
“I wonder,” I answer his question from the prior night. It seems the perfect time to tell him. “I wonder because I never meant to go to your planet with you. Erien, I refuse to go to Solasis.”
My heart breaks. Are those tears in Erien’s eyes? I don’t get to see because he bolts out of the door at the speed of lighting. I am baffled because I made the comment out of spite. I did not reckon Erien ever meant to return to Solasis. He said so himself. I instantly regret my words. Even so, he must understand. How can I ever leave my home planet Earth, even if it is to follow the one I love?
I never knew love could be so hard.
Chapter 27
Alice
There comes a time in a person’s life when everything stops. Like the clear blue cloudless sky above me, it is as though that moment is eternal. These are moments of exuberant joy or agonizing pain, moments that feel like they will never end and yet are only last a second, moments something in us dies or, as we ever hope, something is born. At such moment, you think of the past, present and anticipated future. This is my moment. I, Alice Poacher, still betrothed to Erien Heluka Prince of the alien planet Solasis. This is the moment I die.
My lithe body floats alone over the clear blue waters of the private island north of Hawaii. The bright sun kisses my sunscreen covered pale skin. My big blue doe-eyes are hooded behind the kiss of my long brown eyelashes to ward off the sun’s vicious glare.
The warmth of the midday sun conflicts with the coolness of the water my body floats on. It gives me a warm feeling; a feeling of calmness that I had never known in my entire life. My long auburn hair swooshes around me like a net of fire in the water. It welcomes me like a creature of the sea but does not consume me. I am used to being consumed these days.
The white Lily flower perched on my ear is almost symbolic to what I used to be; the white of pure innocence and the yellowness of sheer hope. I haven’t completely lost either though it feels that way after having voracious sexual intercourse with a hot bodied male who feeds off the galaxies energy for strength. Sometimes I feel like I cannot satisfy him. He is used to taking and taking alone. And alas, I am used to giving and giving alone. He will be my husband and I will be his wife, yet we can’t be from more distant worlds.
‘Be careful what you wish for, for you will get it!’ my mother, Kristina’s voice, rings in my inner ear. It is a raspy voice tainted by the weight of alcohol and chain-smoking. I can almost see her tartar-stained teeth, feel her cigarette-burned fingers poke my young self in the chest and those blue eyes that are so much like mine yet lost, forever lost in alcohol. I snap my eyes open and the sun’s glare punishes me for it.
“What has passed is past,” I say to myself.
I fear that I have been out in the water too long. I worry about Erien. I haven’t seen him since morning. I decide that maybe a little time without him will set my mind straight. All my life, I ha
d to please someone. Before my father left my mother for another woman, I did my best to please him. I wanted him to stay with us – to stay with my mother. I failed. He left. Then I had to please mother. I wanted her to see me for who I was. She rejected me. She chose alcohol. I left her and met my prince. And now I have to please him. I feel like I am failing horribly and from time to time I catch myself wondering how long it will last.
Every night, he grabs my thighs. Erien has strong hands and he knows how to use them. He slithers his fingers along my calves to the back of my knees. He’s studied me. He knows that’s my weak spot. I am also a sucker for him. Whenever he touches me, I curl my toes and dig my manicured nails into the forest of his long white hair. And when I tease his ear with my tongue, he rewards me with a strong thrust of his hip until I feel his appendage hitting my stomach. He is certainly bigger than any man I have seen, yet he has made me his perfect fit. I cannot imagine any other man satisfying me like he does. Then why do I feel so sad?
Another downside is that I get no rest. Erien is not like human men. He is adamant to take me even when the moon calls me to bleed. I love him for it. He is not disgusted with me like my mother and father were. Maybe it is because he is not human that he loves me even at my worst. He’d hate to know that I think that he is a ten, and I am a mere four. In all the right laws, I shouldn’t be with him and he shouldn’t be with me. And that’s why, after he’s spent his seed inside me, I find myself asking one question; ‘who will leave first?’
The sound of a receding yacht snaps me back to my senses. I notice belatedly that the current has changed and I am drifting further away from the beach. Panic sets in. I turn to swim back. Only then do I see that it is getting dark. I have been floating on the sea and in my thoughts since the argument in the morning. It is crucial that I get back to shore because the full moon is causing the tides to rise. I am not an excellent swimmer.
I start to swim when a wave hits me. My nose and mouth intake salt water as I am submerged beneath a strong wave. I flap my hands desperately in need of a grip. There is nothing to hold on to. The salt water burns my throats and eyes. It is impossible to breathe with all the waves crashing in on every side.
I channel my inner strength and push against the waves. Water attacks me on all sides. I swallow some involuntarily and my ears feel pressure from the water. It is at such a moment that I wish that Erien was looking out for me. I suppose he would have been if he wasn’t too distracted by his new friends.
Erien’s level of power and wealth certainly came along with a stream of friends – superficial mostly. And it’s the models that got to me most. I don’t know where they come from. This is a private island and yet they are everywhere. If anything, I must reach to land so that they are reminded again that he is happily engaged; at least he seemed happy until this morning. I can see it in their eyes - they wonder what a god would be doing with a peasant. He is the god. I am the peasant.
My looks are not exactly below par though admittedly my actions are those of a small town girl. And he loves me for it. I am glad he still loves me even after all the changes in his life. It would be a blow if he ditched me. I’ve spent the better part of my independent year grooming him to Earth. He loves it here. I like to think it is because of my effort though I can’t entirely put claim to it.
The waves have finally set me free. The shore is only a few miles away from me. The glinting lights from the mansion call to me against the fading light of the sun. I am home. I am safe. And just when I relax with certainty that I will not drown, something pulls my leg. I presume that my foot is stuck in some unseen seaweed but when I’m forcefully yanked back, I know I am in trouble.
I thrash about in the water. It is hopeless. The grip on my leg is unrelenting. I fear that a shark is upon me when I reckon that sharks do not swim in the sea. Besides, the grip on my foot feels human.
“Help!” I scream.
It is a mistake to have screamed because my lungs intake water instead of air. I cough desperately. That is another mistake as my nostrils breath in water. The force yanks at me again and this time, I have no strength to fight back.
My body is pulled beneath the waters. My hands stretch out to Erien, wishing he could be there to save me. He is not. He is too busy entertaining superficial guests. And like the setting sun, I am swallowed beneath the waters, and fate is my anchor.
Chapter 28
Erien
The furious wind rackets my long silver hair into a furious mess. My hands are on the steering wheel though I can hardly see because of the hair in my eyes. I should have worn a helmet but I reckon I am indestructible. In fact, I am counting on getting hurt if it will make me forget my morning argument with Alice. She accused me of being like my mother. I laugh out loud though not for the thrill. The wind livens my hair. The adrenaline pumps in me as I step harder on the accelerator of the Maserati sports car. The engine roars in a beautiful noise. It drowns out all the cheer of the dozen spectators who are cheering for me to win. Or maybe it is for her that they are cheering.
I check my rearview mirror and see a hot babe with thick black hair blasting from her red helmet. Her tall lean body is perched in a seductive way over the Ducati motorcycle. Beneath that helmet, she is a dark beauty with smooth creamy skin, black eyes and eyebrows contrasted with blood red lipstick. Her name is Sandra, and maybe she can make me forget Alice for a while. Too bad they don’t have the same eyes… or style. It won’t work.
My thoughts may have distracted me. Sandra jests me with a hand gesture when she drives past me. I am furious because I saw her coming. My ego won’t allow me to lose. How the hell can I lose in my own playground? How can I lose two battles in one day? A narrow curve appears, and my mistake is I twist the steering too hard. It’s not like I’m accustomed to driving a car. On my home planet, Solasis, I didn’t need that sort of transport.
The Maserati turns too late. The front tire smashes into the tarred corner and sends the car spinning out of control. That would have been a good time to have a helmet on though my seatbelt restrains me while the car flips in the air. A resounding crash follows. It sounds like a bomb has gone off. An inferno of orange and blue flames follows when the engine explodes. I should be toast for sure.
Sandra screeches to a halt just safely out of harm’s way. She is shocked and so are the spectators. The only sound to be heard is the hiss of the fire engulfing the car. It is uncomfortably hot for me, so I step out of the burning vehicle. My shirt is burned, and my trousers barely made it, so little of it left that it only covers my crotch. I can’t be certain what surprised them more – that I got out of the vehicle unscathed or the magnificence of my half-nude tall masculine pale body.
“I’m going to need someone to trim the edges of my hair.” I laugh.
I hear the cheers from afar. Only the edges of my long hair had been singed, though only they’d been trapped with the burning clothes. Sandra turns her motorcycle and rides to me. She jumps off to hugs me. I love the feel of her ample breasts against my chest. All this play has left me hungry for a woman’s body. She lets go of me to stare into my silver gaze. I panic.
“Are my eyebrows burnt?” I ask.
She laughs. Her voice is as smooth as her skin. “Erien, you are a daredevil.”
I touch my eyebrows. They are intact. “That’s a relief.”
Without asking, I hop onto her motorcycle. It is technically mine because I own it. Sandra climbs behind me. I give no preamble before furiously riding it back to the start point of the race track. Sandra hugs me tight as though her life depended on it. Speed has never bothered me. I stop short of a dozen spectators. They were cowering, afraid that I will cause another freak accident. They cheer at me when I stop.
“How about a celebration for the winner?” Jamie, a young aristocrat who is now my friend, says.
“No, I won,” Sandra argues.
“I’ll give it to you this time,” I say, “Re-match tomorrow?”
“As long as you
don’t let me win by default again,” she purrs and then goes to talk to a baby-faced boy she has had her eye on. I don’t know his name. He’s one of Jamie’s entourage.
I discard the motorcycle and turn to see my Maserati still aflame. Jamie pats me on the back with his small soft hand.
“Your private fire department is fatally slow,” he drawls. “They should be fired. Pun intended.”
Jamie laughs. I grin though I do not understand the joke nor do I care to. Of late, people have been lingering around me like lice in a head full of hair; all of them Jamie’s people. As long as Jamie is there, they will be there. And Jamie never leaves. He tells me that’s what friends do – linger, though ‘hang out’ is the term he prefers. Of course, he has taught me how to have fun like no one ever could, though sometimes I wish for privacy.
“We can deal with this later,” I say.
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