by Carly Fall
Beverly shifted in her bar stool and stared at the shiny wood of the bar. She
thought of the life she imagined—a doctor, a husband, a kid or two was what she had dreamt, but she was a rehabbed drug addict without a career or any direction in her life.
How had she allowed her life to get to this point was beyond her, but one thing
was for sure...it all led back to her mother. Her life had been on the right course until her mother’s suicide.
As a young girl, Beverly had wanted to be a cheerleader when she grew up. When
that phase passed, she began to watch doctor shows on TV and developed a crush on Doogie Howser, and loved E.R. and Chicago Hope. The excitement and drama seemed to be right up her alley, as well as the secret hope that one day she would be able to cure cancer, and she would be able to make sure that there would never be another little girl or boy growing up without a father. When she announced her plans to her mom, her mom had smiled and told her to go for it.
So she had. Beverly later learned that when her grandfather had died, her mother
had put away all of her inheritance so that Beverly didn't have to take out any loans for medical school. With hard work and a lot of determination, she had excelled in college and medical school.
And now, all of her hard work had been for naught.
She cursed in a low voice, took a sip of wine, and looked around the bar for a
distraction to her memories.
The bar was decorated in old southwest style with rich reds and greens, and the
old oak bar had a huge mirror framed in leafy gold behind it. Running her hand over the slab of wood, she noticed it was so shiny she could almost make out her reflection in it.
The bar began filling up with other patrons, all dressed in casual business wear, and Beverly guessed that they were part of some convention or training group that had gathered at the hotel. She noticed two women in a booth at the far end of the room chatting happily, each enjoying their glass of red wine. One had short, brown hair; the other had long, blonde hair. She watched as they talked, taking notice of their body language. When one tucked her hair behind her ear, the other did as well. Both sat back in the booth, then sat forward, then sipped their glasses at the same time. As she watched the two women, she realized they were close friends. A true friendship… that was something she hadn’t had in a long time. She had pushed away all friends and colleagues once the drugs had taken over her life, and now she was utterly alone. She tried to remember the last time she had sat down with a girlfriend and talked. In just under a year’s time, she had buried her mom, become a drug addict, lost her medical license, gone to rehab, and was now trying to figure out how to piece the devastation of her life back together.
Suddenly, she felt eyes on her, and she turned toward the door.
It was the man she had run into last night, and again at the spa this morning. His gaze made her skin burn as his eyes raked her over from head to toe, making her feel as though she had forgotten to put her clothes on and sat naked on the barstool. She looked at him, and the word beautiful went through her mind. He was simply the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on.
Unable to stop herself, she let her gaze travel down his body. She let her eyes
roam down the massive wall of a chest covered in a dark brown silk shirt and long, thick, strong legs covered in jeans. Good God, the guy was built like nothing she had ever seen before.
Their eyes locked for a brief moment, and she felt her body warm, her belly coil
in an excitement she had never felt. He gave her the same small smile from the night before, and then looked away. She watched as he glanced around the bar, his eyes landing on the two women she had been watching.
She went back to her drink and decided that she needed some food. In the mirror
behind the bar, she saw the big guy approach the table with the two women. He obviously said something funny as both burst out laughing, and the brunette patted the seat next to her. He slid into the booth, ordered more wine for the women and a scotch for himself.
Beverly ordered a steak and fries and watched the trio in the mirror above the bar.
The guy oozed raw, unrelenting sex. There was no other way to describe him.
Sure, he had it going on in the looks department and he carried himself with the
confidence of someone who knew it, but there was also an undercurrent about him that made her knees weak. He just gave off a vibe that said, “Fuck me,” and judging by the way the two women were eyeing him, they would be obliging him.
Her sexual experiences were so limited. She had lost her virginity at seventeen to the high school’s captain of the baseball team. Once she got into college, there had been very little time for anything, except school. However, she did go out and get drunk one night while clubbing with some friends and had a one-night stand. After college came her residency, where she didn’t have the time or energy to even think about sex, let alone participate in it. Before her mom’s suicide, she dated every now and then, bringing the total number of men she had slept with to a resounding four.
She found herself analyzing the way the big guy had looked at her. That small
smile let her know that yes, he did find her attractive. The pain in his eyes, no matter how hard he tried to fight it, was there, which made her think of lost puppies. She thought back to the time she had toured a children’s cancer ward while in medical school. It had been beyond difficult to see those kids. They all had the look of pain on their faces as through they were hurting from the inside out trying to fight their terrible disease, yet their eyes showed the glow of a fighter. She had admired those kids so much, and she realized that was what she saw in this man. Pain, but beyond that, the glow that let her know he was fighting whatever was bringing on his pain.
All of a sudden, his eyes met hers in the mirror. She told herself to look away, but she couldn’t. That black stare seemed to make promises of unrelenting passion and unbridled ecstasy. The depth of his stare seemed to tilt her world on its axis, making her wonder what exactly she had been missing all these years in the bedroom, and she
wondered why in the world she was thinking about sex with a complete stranger.
He smiled at her, and she realized she was staring. Quickly pulling her eyes away from him and making a promise to herself that she simply would not look at him, she eyed the massive, butt-exploding, stomach-expanding meal the bartender placed in front of her. She looked at the slab of meat and her mouth instantly got wet with anticipation.
During her addiction and convalescence, she had lost a lot of weight and was happy that she needed to put some back on. She took a bite of steak and again glanced into the mirror. He was still staring at her, a small grin on his face. She stopped chewing and met his eyes. This time, she refused to give way. Their stare locked what seemed like hours, and finally, she won. His attention turned to the small brunette to his right, who seemed to talk at about a million words per minute.
Beverly turned back to her steak and took another huge bite. Instead of thinking
about the big man in the mirror, she concentrated on how good it felt to eat and thought about when she would be leaving for California.
Chapter 7
Hudson watched the woman sitting at the bar. He had barely been able to tear his
eyes away when their stares locked in the mirror. She had the most beautiful green eyes he had ever seen. Hell, everything about her was beautiful. She was a little too thin for him—he liked his women with a little meat on their bones, and for some reason he felt happy as she chowed down and enjoyed her steak as if it were the first meal she’d had in weeks.
And he’d been thinking about her all afternoon after seeing her at the spa that
morning.
Walking into the bar this evening, Hudson knew what he wanted. He figured he
would kill himself in the morning, so he wanted his last night to be something that he would enjoy. After
catching an early dinner at the hotel’s four-star steak house, he decided that he was ready to drink some scotch, have some sex, and then he would put himself out of his misery tomorrow. He had been up most of the night cleaning his gun, thinking about Heaven, Hell, and whether taking a trip to those places was an option for his kind. He had been on Earth for a long time, but never had he aligned himself with one religion, yet he had studied all of them. Except for the ones that were a little out there, none of them said anything about God accepting an alien into His realm.
So what would happen to him? He didn’t really have a spirit as a human did. He
had his SR44 form in this huge body, and that form had a spirit, but where would it go once his human body was dead?
Hudson kind of hoped for blackness. He was just plain tired of this whole ride
called life, and he was ready to get off.
When he had walked into the bar, he had noticed the woman right away. Honestly,
how could he not? Those big, green eyes, her clear, porcelain skin, her pretty, blonde hair that swirled around her shoulders. He looked over her jeans, red silk tank top, and sandals. Even in something so simple, she radiated elegance. He thought for a moment about making her his last conquest on Earth, and images swirled through his mind of her long legs wrapped around his waist as he pounded into her. A small smile crept to his lips, and he actually took a step toward her, but then her eyes met his in the mirror in the back of the bar. He stopped, and a voice within him said, She deserves better than you.
Yes.
Yes, she did. She was a high-class lady, and he was some shmuck who would be
dead by this time tomorrow. As she looked away, he was certain she deserved better than him.
He turned and looked at the other patrons in the bar. He saw two women—a
brunette and a woman with blonde hair drinking red wine and chatting.
One of them, or maybe both if they swung that way, would be his last conquest.
They were nice looking, but had a bit of an edge about them. They weren’t refined and upscale as the beauty at the bar. They were more on his level.
As he chatted with the two women, he knew that the little brunette was going to
drive him crazy if he didn’t make his move quickly. She must have been from the East Coast, as she talked a mile a minute with a grating accent and pitch in her voice that reminded him of cats fighting. He easily tuned her out and hoped he was nodding or smiling in all the right places, and found his eyes wandering to the woman at the bar again. Once more, their eyes locked in the mirror. The air in the room seemed to get really thin, and there wasn’t enough of it because he felt like his lungs were collapsing.
His chest got tight, and his stomach curled. The green stare made him physically
uncomfortable, but yet he found it hard to look away.
And dammit, she seemed determined to stare him down. A fucking game of
chicken. Which of course, reminded him that next month was Chicken Month, and he
wondered what Faith would come up with.
His next response startled him.
The front of his pants began to get tight.
Frankly, even though he had a lot of sex, getting himself riled up for it took some work. Yet this woman was accomplishing that with a simple look, and the eye contact wasn’t even face-to-face. Yes, he had looked at her when he bumped into her on the path, but there hadn’t been this type of eye contact. He would probably be destroyed if he met her gaze for any amount of time face-to-face.
Who was this woman, and what the hell was she doing to him? And why wouldn’t
she look away?
He knew that if the connection were broken, he would be able to breathe and
wouldn’t feel as though he had a semi resting on his chest. He could also then go about his business of getting laid and killing himself.
“Whatchya lookin’ at, Hudson?” the little brunette asked.
The grating voice was just what he needed to disengage. You win, sweetheart, he thought. Gobble, gobble.
Shit.
That was a turkey.
He couldn’t even get a chicken sound right.
He looked down at the brunette beside him and smiled. “Nothing, honey. I just
thought I knew someone at the bar.”
Chapter 8
Beverly stepped out of the ladies room and took a brief glimpse at where the big
guy had been sitting with the two women. She felt a flash of disappointment when she saw the table was empty.
She charged the meal to her room, then went outside. In August, the nighttime air was still hot in Phoenix, and she guessed it was around ninety-five degrees. Even though it was warm and muggy, Beverly wasn’t quite ready to head back to her room. She
decided to take a stroll around the grounds, thinking that she would leave tomorrow afternoon for California.
Her and her mom had rarely traveled. They had been to Disneyland once and to
New Orleans once. She had always wanted to explore the west coast, and maybe she
would find a nice, little town and settle down and get a job. What type of job, she had no idea. What type of job would an ex-doctor get? She doubted there would be a
pharmaceutical company that would hire her—they’d probably be afraid she would
consume the samples, and it was also a bad environment for an ex-junkie. Maybe she could find work with a private firm, or find someone looking for a personal physician.
But then again, she didn’t have the MD behind her name any longer; she had Ex-MD. So what did an ex-doctor junkie do for a living?
Realizing she was almost back at her room, she happened to glance in the room to
her left. She stopped cold in her tracks as something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.
She gasped.
The curtains were parted just about a foot. The dim light inside revealed the big man from the bar and the brunette.
The brunette was laid out on the bedspread, her hands cuffed to the bedposts in
furry, black clasps. Beverly always thought that people who used things like handcuffs engaged in rough sex, but not in this case. The woman was panting as the man lifted his face from in between her legs.
He traveled up her body, his movements smooth, like a jungle cat. His tendons
and muscles rippled beneath his skin as his tongue explored the woman’s stomach, her hip, and then his mouth latched on to a breast, his long, thick sex jutting out from his hips. The woman began pulling at the cuffs, swinging her head from right to left, her eyes screwed tightly shut.
Beverly felt her hand travel to her neck as she watched, her breath coming in short spurts. The big man let go of the nipple, poised himself between the woman’s legs, and slowly pushed his hips forward. The woman pulled harder on the cuffs as her back
bowed. His hips retreated, and he pushed again, this time with a little more force. He reached up to the cuffs, flicked a switch, and the woman took the opportunity of freedom to grab onto his chiseled arms.
Feeling heat pool between her legs, Beverly knew she should just start moving.
She had no business watching these two people have sex, but she was transfixed, unable to put one foot in front of the other. She wrapped her other hand around her waist, as if she had a stomachache, while the other remained at her neck.
If she thought he was beautiful before, she now stood in stunned silence as she
watched him. She felt as if she were watching some sort of erotic dance, not two people having sex. Actually, she couldn’t have cared less about the woman—she wasn’t what held Beverly’s attention. As his hips thrust and retreated, the muscles and tendons beneath his skin rolled. A shimmer of sweat covered his body, and her mouth went dry.
She heard the muffled cries as the woman’s body contracted and writhed in pleasure.
Suddenly, he turned his gaze to the window. She felt a flush come over her as
their eyes locked. She wanted to move so badly, to get away from this terribly
embarrassing situation, but she was transfixed, barely able to breathe let alone walk. After a long moment, he turned his head and closed his eyes. His hips began to move faster in long, confident strokes. A moment later, he threw his head back, gritting his teeth. He opened his eyes and looked at the brunette below him. Then his head slowly turned to the window, their eyes locking again. The expression on his face showed no emotion; it was as still as the air on a windless afternoon. The brunette said something, and he stared at Beverly for a heartbeat longer, then turned his attention to the woman. He got up from the bed and moved toward the window. Beverly inhaled sharply as he approached. As he
stood at the window, gloriously naked, his sex still hard, his black hair streaming around his shoulders, he stared at her. He gave her a small smile, then shut the curtains all the way.
Beverly inhaled a deep breath and ran to her room.
Chapter 9
Hudson awoke the next morning feeling like a pile of dog shit scraped on the
sidewalk. He had drank too much scotch and stayed up too late with the brunette. What was her name? Hell, who cared at this point. They had some good sex, and she left at the crack of dawn with promises of seeking him out later. Even if was going to be alive later, he would’ve changed rooms—no, hotels—so that later never happened. Her voice was
enough to make him want to jam a screwdriver into his ears.
And the familiar pain that ravaged his body was present, which did nothing but
exacerbate his hangover.
As he stared at the ceiling, he thought of the weird and erotic situation of last night. He had never been blatantly aware of someone watching him have sex, but with all the women he had bedded, in all the different places, he imagined he had been observed more than once. Movie theaters. Lots of clubs. Back alleys.
Hudson remembered the moment he knew he was being watched, and he