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  The Alien in my Kitchen ISBN # 978-0-85715-954-0 © Copyright Jan Irving 2012 Cover Art by Posh Gosh © Copyright April 2012 Edited by Laura Hulley

  Total-E-Bound Publishing

  A Total-E-Bound Publication

  www.total-e-bound.com This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2012 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-sizzling and a sexometer of 2.

  This story contains 96 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 7 pages.

  Lightning Strikes

  THE ALIEN IN MY KITCHEN

  Jan Irving

  Book two in the Lightning Strikes series

  Mitchell Blake had given up on romance until a sexy biker shows up in his kitchen, claiming he’s an alien warrior sent to protect Mitchell from an assassin. Mitchell Blake has given up on romance. At least the equations in his scientific experiments add up, unlike his charming, lying jerk of an ex. Nevertheless, he’s saddened when the guy he’s been exchanging glances with over lunch in the university cafe, brooding and darkly gorgeous poet Jaden Ross, is killed in a freak motorcycle crash… Until Jaden shows up in Mitchell’s kitchen and tells him a crazy story—that he’s been assigned as his unearthly protector.

  Jaden is more than human. He’s a warrior from a galaxy far, far away and he’s not, unfortunately, just around to share his out-of-this-world body with Mitchell. Despite Jaden’s fear of appliances—they have moving parts and are very primitive—and his burning curiosity about human mating rituals, he is determined to keep Mitchell safe from the killer stalking him.

  Dedication

  To my Wednesday morning class. Hatha yoga, cookies, meditation and green tea—and you all keep me laughing. Namaste. Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: BlackBerry: Research In Motion

  Warrior: Mimran Schur Pictures, Filmtribe, Solaris Entertainment Carrie: Stephen King, United Artists

  Hapi: Hapitones

  Superman: DC Comics

  Scientific American: Nature Publishing Group

  Men’s Health: Rodale Press

  Honda: Honda Motor Company, Ltd.

  Harley Davidson: Harley Davidson Motor Company The X Files: 20th Century Fox Television, Chris Carter Styrofoam: The Dow Chemical Company

  Pride and Prejudice: Focus Features

  I learn by going where I have to go—Theodore Roethke

  Chapter One

  “What now?” I asked my best friend, Esmeralda Marks, EZ for short. She’d been calling me nonstop all afternoon. You’d think I’d never got the flu before. Okay, not just the flu, but some kind of modified flu-bomb that was genetically engineered to bring me down and make me beg.

  “Mitchell Blake, don’t you dare hang up!” she screeched.

  “Ouch! Don’t yell!” I thrust the BlackBerry away from my face. At her volume, I decided I was safer putting it on speaker and placing it on the kitchen counter of my swanky dirty-dish-buried kitchen.

  “Mitch, I’m serious.”

  Something in her tone caught my muzzy attention. I dumped a load of plates into the soapy water. Since I was stuck missing classes today because I was still sick, I figured I should catch up on the chores my experiments usually eclipsed.

  “You’re serious…” I prompted, my gut twisting when I heard her audible swallow on the phone. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?” She was my best friend, and despite her nickname, EZ, she wasn’t. But her voice was all about bad news.

  “No, I’m not pregnant. Why would you think that?” She sounded cross.

  “I don’t know. But if you were, we could raise the kid together. I could be the gay-bestfriend daddy. It’d be cool. They’d make a movie—you know, showing us struggling with diapers and baby poop and going on dates with the wrong people but then, because it’s Hollywood, I’d suddenly realise I was straight and we’d wind up together.”

  She laughed. “Mitch, you are such a weird guy.”

  “Hey, it’s my pitch for the day.”

  “You haven’t been watching the news?”

  I blinked, washing out a serving bowl. I had no memory of using it to serve anything to company. I probably had it for instant noodles when I’d run out of clean plates. “Nope. News free. I was busy with this new experiment, calculating the velocity of mould growing on rocks when speeding through a vacuum.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her voice said she was already tuning me out. “Okay, this is more important than your nutty inventions. Mitch, Jaden is dead.”

  “Jaden is dead,” I repeated.

  Heavy silence fell like a cloak.

  ‘Uh, who is Jaden?”

  “Mitch! Goddess save me, how can you ask me that?”

  I was chewing my fingernail. When I caught myself, I frowned and stopped. Social interaction often was the stimulus for this kind of reaction. It’s partly why I avoided it.

  “Because I don’t know who he is?”

  “You had a super crush on him, remember?”

  I sneezed and sneezed again. When I’d finished my fit, I tried to bring the sluggish gears in my brain around to Jaden. “I did?”

  “Oh, Goddess help me,” she muttered. “Keep me from being best friends with a geeky super genius who will probably invent hyperspace-capable starships but can’t keep the important stuff in his head.”

  “Hyperspace-capable starships aren’t important?”

  “Jaden Ross, the gorgeous, tall, dark and dangerous guy with the motorcycle and the tats. He was killed swerving to avoid a litter of kittens on the freeway into campus.”

  “Oh.” I decided it was better not to say it seemed like a very worthy way to go. “Are they going to name one of the kittens after him?”

  EZ laughed and then she growled, as if she was pissed at me for making her laugh. I did that often, sometimes for reasons that escaped me. But I was lucky I was entertaining because she was one of my only friends. Being a freak genius inventor was on the isolating side.

  “That’s terrible, Mitch.”

  “I didn’t know this guy, EZ.”

  “You did know him. You stared at him all the time in the cafeteria.”

  “I stare at a lot of people.” Usually while I’m calculating elaborate math problems. It had got me in trouble sometimes. I don’t know why, but people misunderstand. “He was the one who was a ringer for Mr Darcy if he’d lived in modern times.” EZ had a major crush on Mr Darcy.

  “He looked a little like the guy in the most recent Pride and Prejudice movie—Matthew Macfadyen.”

  “I liked Colin Firth’s Darcy.” I tried to picture Jaden. I seemed to remember a tattoo on silky golden skin hinted at thr
ough a white T-shirt. “He wore a lot of black?”

  “Yes. He was a literature major. I think they have to wear black.”

  “Uh-huh…” I shrugged. “I’m really sorry he’s dead.”

  She gusted out a sigh. “Me too. I thought you’d finally met someone special enough to knock you out of your lonely tower.”

  “I use a spare room for my experiments, not a tower,” I said. It’s why I’d rented this dumpy house. It was expensive, but I could manage it with the patents I had so far accumulated. And I needed the room.

  “A spare bedroom with beeping electrodes and a weird light show.”

  I had to admit there was a certain Dr Frankenstein resemblance, but why fight with a classic? And all the equipment served a logical purpose.

  “Well, I’m sorry the guy is dead, but I don’t see why that means you have to call me nonstop,” I grumbled.

  EZ sighed. “Another chance at love bites the dust.”

  “I don’t think I’m meant for love. And anyway, it’s a myth. It’s a molecular reaction stimulated by the impulse to procreate. In my case, that’s a dead-end street.”

  “You could have children.”

  “Yes, I am capable of procreation.”

  “Oh, Mitch…” She sounded so depressed I searched back over the conversation to see why, but I couldn’t discover the reason upon review. EZ was more complex than any equation I’d wrestled with. Most people were.

  Which was why I preferred my lab and experiments. They added up.

  “I have to go now.” I pushed my glasses higher. I had finished washing all the dishes and wiped the counters while I was talking to her. It should be sufficient housekeeping, not counting the laundry. Oh, yeah, the laundry… I looked down at my T-shirt. Was it clean? It was wrinkled. I guess I had to do laundry as well.

  “Mitch.”

  Ignoring EZ’s attempt to continue the fruitless conversation, I cut the call. I caught myself rubbing my jaw only when I heard the rasp of whiskers. Looking out of the window, I caught my reflection in the dusty glass, a slight, hunched figure with lonely grey eyes and rumpled brown hair.

  Lonely! Where did I get that? From talking to EZ.

  I snorted and considered washing those windows, as if I could take away the brief vision of myself. EZ would probably say I’d had a moment with my third-eye chakra, a moment of true seeing.

  I remembered the laundry. I picked up the hamper but was sidetracked when I noticed I’d written an equation on an old pair of jeans in the pile. Probably I hadn’t been able to find paper and so had used the denim. The numbers seemed to blur, time fading away as I slid into the problem…

  And jumped at the pounding on my door.

  “I’m busy, EZ!” I called out. I knew if I let her in there would be more talk about my love life—or lack of one. I hadn’t even remembered this Jaden guy until she’d brought up his death. Now I felt…like I’d missed something. I was genuinely sorry he was dead.

  I growled under my breath, determined to ignore the continuous pounding. But, man, that girl had a good, strong arm.

  I headed into the hallway, laundry basket on my hip.

  Behind me, the front door imploded, settling with a cloud of drywall.

  I dropped the laundry basket. “What the—”

  “Mitchell Blake,” Jaden said.

  “Ah…” The silence seemed to ring, full of the fury of my door hitting the wall. My blood thudded frantically as I stared at the man who had entered my house.

  Dark silky hair fell into one eyebrow. Amber-brown eyes fixed on mine. A chiselled, thin face and a full mouth.

  “Jaden Ross,” I whispered. “Impossible. EZ said you were—”

  He stepped inside, dangerous in black leather pants, tank top and leather biker’s jacket. The silver hoop in his left ear caught the light. His gaze never moved from my face.

  “Mitchell,” he repeated in a weirdly dead-sounding voice.

  Or maybe not so weirdly. The dude was supposed to be dead!

  Then I noticed Jaden’s jacket was torn at the shoulder and, although his T-shirt was black, I could see a stain in the material. Blood?

  Oh, come on, he’s not zombie-Jaden, spared because he saved a litter of kittens.

  But my throat was dry as I swallowed. “Jaden. I heard you were—” Dead. “Uh, that you’d been in an accident.”

  He cocked his head and then lifted his T-shirt. There was a dark pink line on his muscled abdomen, like the seam of a very new scar. “Accident,” he repeated, in that same robo-Jaden voice.

  I laughed. I sounded breathless…weak. “Okay, the door was going a bit far—did you use dynamite or something?” EZ always said it would take something like TNT to get my attention. “You’re here to ask me out, right? This whole thing, her phone call, you showing up, and the zombie act, it’s all an engaging way to get my attention. She knows I’m a huge science fiction geek.”

  Jaden continued to stare at me without speaking, without blinking. A cold chill brushed the base of my spine. And, all right, a stir of interest. He was…beautiful. Like a wild poet with that shaggy hair and those bittersweet eyes.

  “Mitchell, I came for you. I will help you stay alive. Jaden liked you, trusted you.”

  “Enough, Jaden.” His act was beginning to creep me out. Also I couldn’t see any scorch marks on my door. As I knelt beside it, I saw no reason why it had suddenly flown free of its hinges and landed like a flying saucer in my hallway.

  His brow crinkled. He watched me as I lifted the door from against the wall and looked on the other side. Nothing.

  “All right, I’m a scientist, but I can’t see how you did that trick.” And I wanted to know.

  “Trick?” Jaden repeated. “You did not come to the door so I removed the barrier.”

  “You used the power of your mind to fling it inside?” I widened my eyes at him.

  “Yes.”

  I gusted out a sigh. “This is not funny anymore and I felt really bad when I heard you, uh, had an accident.”

  Jaden reached down to his left thigh, where his pants were split and spotted with dust. It looked like he’d had to lay his bike down.

  “I have come for you, Mitchell Blake,” he repeated. He lifted his palm and from closer up I spotted gravel and dried blood encrusted in the skin. Jesus, he’d taken a spill. “I found a form you would not find threatening.” He took a step towards me and I took an automatic one back. “One you find pleasing.”

  “You’re not Jaden.” Even as I heard myself say the words I told myself I was crazy. Of course he was Jaden!

  He blinked. “I can access his memories.” His expression grew wooden. “Accessing…”

  Get the fuck away from him! The voice came from my gut and I obeyed it, picking up the laundry basket as a pathetic weapon as I backed towards the swinging door.

  “Mitchell.” He frowned. “Where are you going?”

  I made it into my kitchen. My BlackBerry was still on the kitchen table. I couldn’t believe EZ was part of this prank. She must have been fooled into cooperating somehow. “Leave now, and I won’t call the police,” I said. Wow, my voice sounded cool and even, not like it wanted to shake.

  Jaden had followed me, walking with a well-oiled grace. He sighed. “You are making this harder, Earthling.”

  Earthling. Okay, that did it. I tossed the laundry at Jaden and grabbed for my phone.

  But Jaden was suddenly there, standing in front of me.

  Impossible.

  I looked over my shoulder to where he’d been a second ago, at the laundry scattered on the floor, then back at Jaden, into his serious brown eyes. He raised his brows, as if curious about what the Earthling would get up to next.

  “I’m totally into science fiction,” I said. “War of the Worlds, all those great black and whites with robots taking Earth women captive.”

  He looked like he was considering my words. “You wish me to take you captive, Mitchell?”

  “What?” I flushed. “
No! I’m trying to say that while calling me an ‘Earthling’ is just the kind of thing to make me want to go out with you, it’s overkill when it comes from a guy who is supposed to be dead, who is wearing shredded clothing, and who talks about himself in the third person. Oh, and also sends my door flying.” I again suppressed the spike of curiosity about how he’d done that.

  Jaden reached out and took my arm. “Going out. That is a human dating ritual. It would be sufficient for my purpose.”

  Jaden had obviously been seriously messed up in his accident. The pink scar seemed to fade, to heal right before my eyes. I shook my head. Not possible. It was a clever trick, like my levitating front door.

  “Let me go,” I rasped.

  He cocked his head and opened his hand, freeing me, but then he moved closer, eyes on my mouth.

  I wet my lips by reflex and then rolled my eyes. Next I’d be playing with my hair in a silent, primitive signal of ‘I find you hot, see how pretty I am?’ Jeez.

  “Will it hurt?” His gaze lifted to capture mine.

  “Hurt?” I leaned against my kitchen island, shaking like loose bones in my clothes. I could smell him, earth and pine, as if he’d caught that scent driving his bike through the morning air.

  He reached out and gently cupped my cheek. His skin was hot, the palm dry and rough. “To kiss you. Will it hurt?”

  “I…” I had absolutely no idea what to say. I felt like I’d been walking down a street and suddenly the pavement had given way and I’d been swallowed into a new reality.

  Jaden’s eyes narrowed. “Jaden thought of kissing you those times he encountered you in the cafeteria and then he hurt.”

  “You…thought of me?”

  “It hurt,” Jaden repeated, sounding vaguely accusing.

  “I’m sorry.” And then I noticed something, something that could not be real. As he pulled back, I saw again the back of Jaden’s hand. The pink mark was now totally gone, the scar completely healed as if it had never been there. “Oh, my God… You’re…” I stared into his eyes, saw an intelligence that was not Jaden, cold and fierce and assessing me. “You’re really not Jaden.”