by Jan Irving
“Don’t ever stop…”
He pressed his lips to mine, still clumsy, but warm. “I never knew flesh could feel so…” He leaned his forehead against mine. We shared breath, panting hotly. Every pulse of his hips took him deeper. My body was screaming to come, but I didn’t want it to be over.
“Jaden.” I pressed a kiss against the letters on his chest.
“Come for me, pet,” he ordered.
It should have been eclipsed by the previous merging. This was just him and me. His hand knotting itself to mine. His eyes holding mine. His lips brushing mine, whispering encouragement so I fell, coming for him, holding on to him.
His body arched, my palm against the thunder of his heart. He cried out, the almostpain of orgasm knotting his brow, twisting his face.
I fell against him and we were wrecked together.
“Mitchell.” “Uh.” I cracked open my eyes to see the light had silvered to the colour of driftwood. It was only around three-thirty, but it was dusk already.
The parts of me not covered by Jaden’s bigger body were chilled. I curled my feet and hooked them under his calves. He grunted in response, lifted himself up so he could look down at my face.
“You’re squishing the Earthling,” I said.
“By my calculations the clock will begin to gong soon,” Jaden said.
“Um, yeah.” I licked my lips but couldn’t get too worked up by the idea. What had he said? Something about the clock…
And then it was ringing and the sound was like the end of the world. I shouted and covered my ears and Jaden’s lips curved as he pulled me close as if to protect me. The clock tower had been revamped in the seventies. It was as musical as a blast from a car horn.
“We survived,” I said, reaching for my cold, damp, crumpled sweats. Jaden had his Tshirt back on and was searching for his own workout pants, his taut, flexing rear end facing me so enticingly I had to give it a squeeze. He raised his brows over his shoulder at me.
“Sorry. It was just asking me to pinch it.”
“I am a cute guy with a cute butt.”
“Yeah!” I laughed. “You learn fast.”
He smirked at me and I liked the confidence our lovemaking had given him. Well, not just him if I were honest about it. The thing with Riley had convinced me to put sex aside, but Jaden had changed that.
“Your energy matrix is sleepy.”
“Yeah.” Sleepy and pretty damn content. “I have to check on one of my experiments.” “I will wait. EZ gave me one of her books to read.”
“Really?” I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. My best girl wrote some pretty stimulating love scenes.
We clanged down the steps and skulked back into the main library. Jaden didn’t want to leave me alone in my lab so he came with me and read while I carefully checked the progress in my mould and budding crystals.
“Nothing,” I told him when I’d recorded everything. “I think this one is another dead end.”
“Not everything blooms at the same time.”
“I know. It’s just that I have some ideas that might have meant I’d make a little extra money this semester, but it doesn’t look like that will pan out.” We left the lab and headed for the parking lot. “Are you sure I’m this legendary scientist your people think I am? I feel like a hack.”
“You’re frustrated,” Jaden said. He reached out and awkwardly put an arm around me.
“Let’s have pizza tonight. Comfort food.”
“I want to text EZ. There are things in her book I don’t understand.”
“I think you’ve got the basics down.”
He smiled shyly at me, but when we walked into the parking lot, he stiffened. “Mitchell, we are watched.”
I only saw the frost covered cars and trees moving wildly in the stiff breeze off the ocean. Shadows sprang like dark cats and then retreated in the wind. I closed my eyes, trying to feel something of what was working on Jaden.
“Hey, I caught you!” EZ waved from where she was leaning against my rusty Honda.
“Shit, EZ, you gave me a scare.”
Jaden didn’t take his gaze off our surroundings.
“Sorry. I wanted to catch you before you left. I spent some time pumping Riley’s girlfriend and made up a list of possibles for our bad guy,” EZ said. She took a small flash drive out of her bag. “Voilà.”
I took it from her. “You’re my girl.”
“Yep.” She looked at Jaden, frowning a little. “You okay?”
He glanced at her. “I am not.”
“Oh.” She chewed her lip. “Maybe I can help. There’s a yoga nidra class in the morning.”
“Yoga nidra?” Jaden obviously couldn’t help himself.
“Yeah, it’s all about tuning into our vibrational self.”
I sighed in resignation. “I’ll bring him. We better get going. Want me to drop you somewhere?”
“No, I’m good.”
I felt uneasiness shift through me at Jaden’s continued hyper-alertness. “EZ, we’ll walk you to your next class.”
“Mitchell!”
“Just let us do it. Jaden thinks someone’s watching us.”
“Really?” EZ looked intrigued rather than alarmed. “Maybe I can get my own sexy alien.”
“You would not like him,” Jaden said. “He would not appreciate your vibrational self.”
EZ laughed but then sobered after another glance at Jaden. “Hey, you’re really worried.”
“How could I not worry? You are Mitchell’s.”
EZ’s eyes filled. She scrubbed them briskly. “All right. Damn. I have women’s philosophy in A building. That should be enough to kill my tender emotions.”
I slung an arm around her and Jaden walked beside us, guarding us. Nothing he’d done had made me like him more than the way he took care of my best friend.
“You know, yoga can be very erotic with a partner,” she told me. “It lights up the chakras.”
I didn’t say anything, but I think my blush gave me away.
“Ohhhh. You two have done it. I knew it!”
“Shut up,” I muttered, but of course she steamrolled over me, just like always.
“It was on campus. A broom closet? That’s a classic.”
“Not a broom closet,” Jaden said helpfully. “It was th—” I covered his mouth.
“Hey!” EZ complained. “I was getting my vicarious thrills here.”
“You’ll have to get them somewhere else.” I gave Jaden a death stare. “Discretion.”
“We’ll carve out a little time at yoga tomorrow,” EZ told Jaden. “You can be the nice naïve alien and tell me all about having sex with Mitchell.” She was laughing as she headed up the stone steps under the brick archway to her classroom.
My gut clenched, watching her. Love…and fear. “I can’t let anything happen to her, ever,” I told Jaden. “We have to keep her safe.”
“I know.” Of course he did, since he’d been watching me. “She’s your family.”
“That means our enemy might strike at me through her.”
Jaden nodded. “He’s been watching you as long as I have, Mitchell. He’d see her as a weakness.”
It gave me a creepy feeling. “And how would he see what you and I shared in the clock tower?”
“He would see it as me making you my pet,” Jaden said. “He would not see how you ensnared me.”
“Ensnared you, huh?” I liked that idea. Made me feel more empowered. “I’d like to do it again—after I get some more work done.” I’d lost a lot of time on my current experiments because of being so run-down. Now I felt energised. Apparently the strange sex with my alien lover had a side benefit.
I reached for Jaden’s hand just as the windows in EZ’s class room imploded.
Jaden shoved me to the grass. “Energy blast!”
Heat rolled out in an angry cloud above us, but Jaden protected me with his body.
“Let go!” I pushed him, freeing myself. The air tas
ted like burnt lint. I ran up the stone steps I’d seen EZ take just minutes ago. I smashed through the door, flying down the hallway. Ash and sparks and smoke were snowing down through silty hot air. I screamed EZ’s name, grabbing the doorknob to her classroom. With a hiss, I jerked my hand back.
I tore at my T-shirt, yanking it off to wrap it protectively around my hand.
Jaden hit the door with his shoulder and it crashed open.
Inside it glowed with the embers of hell, crouched students in silhouette, moans.
“EZ!” I yelled. “Goddamnit, EZ!”
Jaden grabbed a young woman as she staggered, then pushed her towards the door. She clutched her arm, eyes dazed.
“Have you seen EZ?” I asked two guys further down the stairs. The first one shook his head, then knelt beside his friend, murmuring to him.
I stumbled where the wood had buckled on the steps. Hands reached for me, but they weren’t EZ’s hands. I tugged another young woman from where she’d been crouched. Her face was smeared with soot, but otherwise she looked okay. “Get out,” I croaked, throat caked from the smoke. “Get out now.”
I reached podium level. Jaden was helping the professor to her feet, checking her out. My eyes streamed from the heat, but I couldn’t find my friend. I couldn’t find her.
“Mitch!”
I crushed EZ in my arms, then pulled back to look her over frantically. “You’re not hurt!”
“I was in the woman’s john.” She was trembling. “There’s this cute guy in class and I wanted to refresh my lipstick. Stupid and female of me.”
“Thank Christ for stupid and female!”
“I heard you screaming my name.”
Fire alarms belatedly shrilled and water poured down in wet, charcoal streams. Security arrived while Jaden and I and EZ helped two more young women from the classroom and then the firemen barrelled in, assisting more dazed students outside.
We walked slowly to the Student Union building. EZ slid down to the hallway floor outside the cafeteria, pushing her hair back. “Mom. Oh, shit, I need to call her, but I lost my bag. I think it’s back in the bathroom.” She got up as if to return, but I grabbed her arm.
“I’ll contact her.” I did, and then showed EZ the text.
“She’s already on her way.” EZ’s eyes welled again. “I can’t believe no one was killed. But what caused that explosion?”
I looked at Jaden. His face had hardened, all prominent narrow bones. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Take care of your friend, Mitchell.”
“Jaden!” But he was already striding away and I didn’t want to leave EZ.
“I was so scared, Mitch,” EZ said, leaning against me.
“I know. Me too.” I pressed her head against my shoulder. I could have lost her. This whole thing had been so unreal, even thrilling, but what had happened in that classroom had brought it home. People had been hurt and I could have lost my best friend. “Mitch, that guy is staring at you,” EZ whispered.
I tensed, looking down the hallway. There were so many students and faculty milling around I couldn’t see whom she meant.
“The redhead. I think he’s in Riley’s fraternity, but I don’t remember his name. He’s studying engineering.”
I spotted him, let my gaze flick past his grey eyes. “He might be staring at you.”
“Yeah, right, like I’d go out with an engineer,” EZ sneered.
“They aren’t all sexist.” But I remembered him dimly. From the Halloween party? When I looked for him again, he’d faded into the crowd.
EZ’s mother bolted down the hallway and hugged EZ and then hugged me. She had a lot of power in her hugs, probably all that yoga.
“I’m okay, Mom.”
“You need to meditate immediately as a catharsis.”
“Mom!”
“After a hot bath. Are you sure you’re okay?”
EZ nodded. “Mitchell found me.”
“Of course he did.” EZ’s mom hugged me again and I tried not to wince in an unmanly fashion. “Mitchell, you should come home with us.”
Whoa, no way. I’d be in for some kind of aura healing as well as a bubble bath. “I’m waiting for Jaden.”
“Jaden’s Mitchell’s new boyfriend,” EZ said.
“I know,” EZ’s mom said, pushing back her short, salt-and-pepper-blonde hair.
Of course she knew. She’d seen us together at her cafe and had obviously drawn the correct conclusion.
Before EZ could leave with her mom for a hearty vegetarian dinner and a ritual cleansing, I pulled her aside. “Don’t go anywhere alone.”
“Mitchell!”
“Promise me, EZ. I think there was more to what happened than a damaged vent or whatever.” From the mutterings of the students, that was what was going around, that the electrical system had somehow malfunctioned.
She chewed her lip. “All right.”
I slouched against the wall after she left, feeling depressed. Should I leave or wait for Jaden? I didn’t even have his phone number, if he even had a phone.
I slid down until I was sitting against the wall and put my head on my knees, closing my eyes. Earlier I’d felt great, but now too many thoughts whirled around in my head, colliding like crashed cars. I had to figure out a way to keep EZ safe, to keep her from getting killed by a powerful assassin who could wear any face.
Jaden’s hand on my shoulder woke me. “You fell asleep.”
I stretched. “I figured I was better off staying here and waiting for you with so many people around.”
He nodded, but his face was tight.
“Did you find out what happened?”
“There was an energy signature to the blast,” Jaden said. “But to mundane eyes, the explosion seems to have been some foul-up in the heating system.”
“Yeah, I’d heard that. That would suit Mr X, since you said he had to be discreet.” I took the flash drive EZ had given me out of my pocket. “We have to find out who he is and stop him.”
Jaden hesitated.
“What?”
“From the resonance I caught in the classroom debris, he is stronger than I am, ancient and powerful. I am only a young warrior, Mitchell.”
I swallowed tightly. “So we’ll just have to be smarter.”
Chapter Eight
It was when I was locking my front door that it hit me. I turned to glare at Jaden. “It didn’t occur to you that it was important to tell me earlier that our enemy might be more formidable than you are?”
“I didn’t know.” He looked annoyed, not apologetic. Typical alien alpha male. The books I illustrated were plastered with them. Just my bad luck he was the real thing.
“But you suspected…” I rubbed my bottom lip, studying the dishevelled dark beauty of him standing with his hands on his hips, his hair falling out of his makeshift ponytail. His olive skin had the sheen of youth in the starlight, giving him a vulnerability that was not remotely comforting after tonight’s attack.
He sighed. “Yes, I suspected I was outmatched. It is why I did not reveal myself to you until your illness forced my hand.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“You will have to make do with me as your protector.” He was clearly still pissed off.
“Yeah, guess so.”
My flippancy obviously grated on him. He tapped one finger on his hip, a nervous tell I remember the real Jaden using sometimes.
“Why did Mr X go after EZ tonight?”
“To draw you into the building. If you’d somehow been killed while trying to rescue her…”
“Bingo, an accident. Poor, heroic, conveniently dead me. But he could have hit the building again. Brought it down with another energy blast.”
“Then it would have been clear it wasn’t an accident.”
“So he’ll try again.”
“Yes,” Jaden said, looking suddenly colourless under the grey light. “I must replenish myself.”
“Eat?”
He staggered and I grabbed his ar
m. “Hey!”
“I must consume material and then rest.” His tone made it imperative. I didn’t argue with him, since my knowledge of human-alien hybrid health was zilch. And I was also tired and hungry and depressed and pissed off.
We made a gloomy pair as we entered the kitchen.
Jaden sat down at the kitchen table, watching me expectantly.
“What, you think I’m going to cook you dinner?”
“I do not know how to cook,” Jaden said stiffly.
“Oh, no. We’re not starting this…relationship off on the wrong foot. I barely leave my laboratory when I’m involved with my work, so if you don’t cook, you don’t eat.”
“But you had sex with me,” Jaden blurted. He snapped his mouth shut a second later when I seared him with a look. “That is…I have heard commercials on television say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
“What makes you think I’m interested in your heart?” I drawled.
He looked uncomfortable. “EZ says you need to be romanced.”
“And it’s so romantic cooking for a guy in my half-clean kitchen?”
“No. Yes.” He shoved his hair out of his eyes. “There is no good answer to that question, Mitchell.”
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said since we got home.”
He stared at me and I realised I’d called it home, as in the plural, as in his and my home. Shit. “On your feet, soldier,” I growled.
Jaden groaned but did as I ordered. He did still look pale, so his freckles stood out. I decided not to make tonight’s lesson too harsh. “You can gather the ingredients for an exotic, fun-filled night of pasta.”
“Pasta. I have wanted to eat it. You have it nearly every night, so it must be good,” he said wistfully.
“Yeah, except when I’m flush and can order pizza.” EZ’s mom despaired over my diet. But hey, it was vegetarian. Meat was just too expensive.
“Start with two pans, the really big one in the pull-out drawer first. Fill it up with water and then add some salt and oil.”
Jaden had to be directed to where things were and he appeared to have an odd fear of appliances, something about them being very primitive. Despite that, his help meant that we had the pot bubbling in record time. I dropped pasta stuffed with ricotta and spinach into the water, deciding I might as well make a meal he’d really enjoy, since it was his first time having my favourite staple.