The Alien in My Kitchen Read online

  Chapter Two

  I’m not proud of what I did next. But it was not in any way my fault. The flu, the shock of Jaden’s appearance, the sheer fright factor…

  I fainted.

  When I came to, Jaden was holding me. My head was resting against his chest and I could hear his heart beating. The scientific part of me noted his heart was beating a little too rapidly. I’d have to hook him up to one of my machines and record it. I’d have to take blood samples.

  His heart’s beating at least put an end to my earlier fears that he was a zombie. I mean, zombies didn’t have heartbeats, did they? I didn’t know for sure, since I was more into science fiction than fantasy, but it seemed a logical conclusion.

  My ears were still buzzing with roaring white noise, my face warm and flushed.

  My next jolt came from where we were.

  I took in the giant posters I liked to look at right before I went to sleep every night and squeezed my eyes shut. No, no, no. We couldn’t be in here. My bedroom, the place where my most secret self was on display.

  When I dared to open my eyes and face the music, Jaden wasn’t staring at the illustrations on the walls, but into my eyes, his brow furrowed. “You are not well, Mitchell. It is to be expected after your exposure to the super virus.”

  “Uh-huh. It’s called the flu,” I said. Jaden sounded pedantic…and not like the Jaden I remembered. That Jaden had been more about brooding and writing poetry, not that I’d had the chance to get to know him well.

  “The virus you speak of is a catalyst,” Jaden said. “It brought me here. You must not die, Mitchell.”

  “Not planning on it.” I was blushing. Shit. I just couldn’t get over that he was standing in my most private space, holding me in his arms.

  “Your temperature is fluctuating.” Jaden put me on my bed. When I sat up in an attempt to climb off, he shoved me back into place.

  “Hey!” I croaked.

  He stripped off his jacket, then took his shredded shirt in two fists and tore it from his body.

  I stared. Oh, God, how could I not? I was losing my mind, I knew that, knew this had to be some weird, fever-induced episode. It couldn’t be real. He couldn’t be real.

  But Jaden’s smooth golden skin, now unmarred by any scars from his recent accident, was all too real. As were the black tribal-looking tattoos on the rounded muscles of his upper arms and scrawled over his pecs, emphasising the hard, smooth planes of his body. He didn’t look like Mr Darcy now, but more like Tom Hardy in Warrior.

  I wanted to lick the letters scrolled in elegant writing over his chest. I wanted to suck the ring in his left nipple into my mouth and tug it insistently with my teeth.

  “You are becoming dangerously warm!” Jaden scolded. “If this continues, I’ll take action to lower your temperature.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.” I pictured him shoving me into a cold shower. “It’s not my flu,” I mumbled. I was blushing even harder, if possible. Damn, I hated having such pale skin. It had made me so easy to torment in high school.

  “Something is wrong.”

  “You took off your shirt, all right?” I growled.

  He blinked then looked down at his chest blankly. Okay, there was no way he was Jaden. He looked so completely clueless as to his own attractiveness and I couldn’t see Jaden being so unaware, especially with all that strategically placed ink.

  “I was going to cover you with my jacket,” he said.

  “Very noble, but I have blankets.”

  He looked at the bed as if for the first time. “Your life shelf is very primitive.”

  “My…what?” I shook my head. I was feeling dizzy again. Crappy flu plus bad news about Jaden dying plus Jaden weirdly alive and breaking into my house and then taking off his shirt… I just wasn’t up to this.

  “Lie back,” Jaden said gently. He knelt beside me, prodding me so I was lying flat on my back. Instantly I pictured him on top of me, inside me.

  I jerked my gaze from his.

  He slid a hand under my T-shirt. I gasped at his palm against my naked skin. I couldn’t help how aroused I was. I could see my erection tenting my jeans, needy for his attentions.

  When his hand pressed heavily into my chest, I snapped my gaze back to his face. Jaden had his eyes tightly closed. He was pale, breathing rapidly. What was going on?

  Heat flashed, burning my skin where we touched. I grabbed his wrist—

  “God, oh, my God!” My room lit up like an X-ray.

  My eyelids lifted. I felt sleepy and warm and safe. I didn’t want to move, but a wonderful feeling was edging me awake. I felt myself revolving through space and time, swirling like a dust devil, until I spiralled down into my body.

  Shit. I’d fainted again? I tensed and the arms that had been holding me set me free. I sat up, seeing I was still in my bedroom. I’d been lying against Jaden’s bare chest, plastered over him.

  He looked at me curiously, as if wondering what I’d do next, like I was his entertaining human pet.

  I cleared my throat and then cleared it again. Something was wrong… No, something wasn’t wrong…it was very right.

  I didn’t have the flu anymore.

  I shoved my T-shirt up and looked at the pink handprint burnt into my skin. It was the colour of faint sunburn.

  “It will fade,” Jaden said, as if reassuring me. He looked vaguely uncomfortable, as if embarrassed that I bore any kind of mark.

  “You…healed me,” I said, even as my inner self was whispering, not possible.

  “Of course,” Jaden said. “If you are sick, it will make it difficult to go out.”

  “Go out?” I repeated blankly.

  “With me,” he said.

  Oh. He meant…dating. Which struck me as the weirdest thing yet. He’d come from Goddess knew where to date me?

  I reached out and lifted his hand. I remembered the intense heat as he’d pressed it into my chest, the feeling that he’d made contact with every cell in my body. “Who are you?” I asked.

  His expression remained impassive. After a moment he said, “I am Jaden Ross.”

  “No, you are not.” Of that, I was certain.

  “He is here, parts of him. Without me, there would have been no continuing.”

  “You mean, he really…died,” I croaked.

  Jaden nodded. “In the last moments, he allowed me to take this vessel.”

  “Okay, that sounds monstrously complex and I’m really tempted to dive into your statement except it doesn’t tell me who you are.”

  “I do not have a name, not as you do,” he said, his brow crinkled.

  “You don’t have a name? How can you not have a name? Even a chemical formula has a name.”

  “I do not.” He studied me. “My lack of a name concerns you.”

  “It does bother me,” I said.

  “Do not become emotional, it unsettles your matrix.”

  “I’ll take care of my own matrix!” I yelled. Huffing, I glared at him, then realised I was being stupid. But damn. “Tell me where you come from.”

  “I am from another dimension of space,” Jaden said simply. “I was assigned to you, Mitchell. You are the future hope of my world.”

  I rubbed my forehead. The flu was gone, but he was giving me a headache. “So you’re…an alien.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I figured, with the whole ‘Earthling’ thing. But I guess I needed you to confirm my hypothesis. And FYI—calling me an ‘Earthling’ is a dorky cliché.”

  “I watched your television.” He looked annoyed. “I researched your world. Is this body not appealing to you, not cool?”

  Okay, that I couldn’t deny. But he was so cute. Who was becoming emotional now? “Careful,” I warned. “Your matrix is destabilising.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  I grinned. “All right, of course you watched TV. I think it’s in the ‘Aliens visiting Earth for the first time’ pamphlet.”

  “There is such a pamphle
t?” Now he looked put out that he hadn’t been offered one.

  I laughed. “No. That was a joke.”

  He grunted but he didn’t look amused.

  “Jaden… You’re inside him. So in your real form you’re not corporeal?”

  “I am an energy being, like you,” Jaden said.

  “I’m not a—Oh. You mean…my soul?” I rubbed my chest where he’d zapped me.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It’s not very scientific, but I’ve always felt there was more than my physical body.”

  “You glow, Mitchell. A pure, blinding light.”

  “Uh, thanks.” No one had ever complimented my soul before. “There’s still so much I don’t understand. You’ve come through time and space to…hook up with me?”

  “I am your protector,” Jaden said. “It is imperative for the people of this world and my own that you live.”

  “Uh-huh.” I swallowed. “Am I in some kind of danger?”

  “Yes,” he said flatly. Then he frowned. “Mitchell, your heart rate has sped up.”

  “Yeah, I wonder why.” I pulled my knees against my chest, pressing my head against them. I still felt kind of floaty from whatever he’d done to clear my body of the virus. “It couldn’t possibly have to do with a sexy alien showing up in my kitchen, making my door implode and telling me we had to date because I’m in danger.”

  Jaden tugged a lock of my hair. I peeked up at him. He was looking at me quizzically. I wondered how he saw me, other than as a pretty white light. “I am sexy to you.” There was a touch of smugness in his tone.

  “I thought aliens were supposed to be smart,” I groused. “So, yeah. You’d know I thought Jaden was—” Hot as fuck. “Nice looking.”

  “I am sorry his life path ended,” Jaden said.

  “Me too.”

  “When I mingled my essence with his in the past, I observed how he often thought of you. His energy matrix would become red and his body would hurt.”

  I blushed.

  “I have never experienced such,” Jaden continued. “Trapped inside his body, I wanted…relief.”

  “Yeah, that’s usually what a guy wants,” I muttered.

  Jaden raised his brows. “I have observed lovemaking for many cycles. It looks awkward, flesh writhing against flesh, sweating bodies, hoarse cries, though the soul merging that sometimes occurs during such bonding is…” Jaden’s face lit. “There are not words.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Jaden continued to study me.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend so I have no experience with the, uh, soul merging.” I’d never really minded my lack of boyfriend before, despite EZ’s pushing me. Usually, whenever that empty feeling pawed through my chest, I buried myself in my work.

  “You wish it.”

  “What?”

  “The soul bond.” Now Jaden looked around the room, at the posters made out of book covers for the gay romance novels I illustrated in my spare time. He walked over to a recent one, where the hero, David, a New Yorker, is kidnapped by an alien, taken to his spaceship and just…taken. David’s long blond hair is tangled around his naked body as he lies under a huge domineering alien warrior with purple eyes and braided black hair. The illustration features smoky pink gases that partially conceal the lovers.

  “You painted this. I saw it flash into your mind when you first read the description of the story. I saw you work on it for long hours at your computer.”

  I dropped my gaze from Jaden’s. Hardly anyone knew about my part-time job illustrating romance covers for a small press publisher. The room was covered with sketches of men kissing, touching, making love. Men in historical costumes on the verge of a forbidden embrace, men in jungle surroundings sharing a shower under a waterfall, men in cop uniforms, partially undressed as they make out. Hard bodies, faces strained on the edge of orgasm. Passion as wallpaper.

  “How long have you been watching me?” I whispered.

  “I have slipped into your dreams. You have very intense dreams, Mitchell.”

  In a flash I realised that was why I had accepted him so quickly. I knew him. He’d been inside me already.

  My face heated.

  Inside my mind, I scolded myself, not my body. This wasn’t one of the books I illustrated. This wasn’t some hot fantasy alien who was going to strip me out of my clothes and give me a whole new insight into inter-species relations.

  “Why do you, uh, want to date me?”

  “You have no protector,” Jaden said. “I thought only to observe you, but it’s clear that you need a firm hand.”

  “Sorry, I missed out on a protector when they were handing them out.”

  “Your temperature is fluctuating again, Mitchell.”

  “That’s because you pissed me off. Look, I don’t know how much you understand human beings, but I’m not looking for a ‘protector’. I can protect myself just fine.”

  Jaden frowned. “Many of your needs are neglected. You would work better if you had a caring keeper.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “If you travelled light years to tell me that, you’re in for a disappointment, big guy. I don’t need to be kept or protected.”

  Jaden reached out and touched my forehead, as if to gauge my temperature. I smacked his hand away.

  “The release you give yourself in the shower is not sufficient to balance out your energy matrix. I have applied myself to this problem. I can rework your pattern.”

  I’ll just bet he could, though Goddess knew what form helping me would take. Then I realised what he’d said. “You watched me in the shower?”

  He cocked his head. “I have observed all your rituals in order to understand you.”

  “Spying on me in the john is off limits.”

  “If you wish.” He looked down at the grime on his body but then shrugged.

  “You can use the shower,” I said. “But there’s a lot…” A wave of sleepiness hit me. “We need to talk about.”

  “You are drained from our energy blend.” He guided me back to the bed. “Your matrix is aligning itself to better mingle with mine.”

  “We blended energy, that’s how you healed me? Cool,” I said groggily. I wished I was back in his arms, lying on my bed, listening to his heart pounding, feeling those long fingers stroking my hair, from scalp to ends. Oh, man, that was exactly how I loved my hair to be caressed. He might be from another star system, one I’d have to research, but he knew how to touch me.

  “You have too many thoughts,” Jaden said and his face looked almost indulgent. “As your protector, I will help you with that.”

  “Uh-huh.” Back to the protector thing. I was going to have to give him hell for that. I was going to have to dig more information out of him, even though I felt like I was weighed down with everything that had happened in a very short space of time.

  Jaden didn’t leave me to go take his shower. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against the bare skin of his chest.

  He held me as if he’d die to protect me.

  Chapter Three

  I woke up for the third time, but not in Jaden’s arms. That made me cranky, which was illogical. Best case scenario, this had all been some strange dream brought on by the virus. The one I didn’t have any more.

  I was lying under my blankets, so I shoved them aside, lifting my T-shirt to find that yep, that hand print was still glowing faintly in the centre of my chest. I didn’t have the flu, but I still had the mark Jaden had given me when he’d somehow sucked the sickness from my body.

  I reached for my glasses and put them on. EZ would say I needed to meditate with each chakra—solar plexus, root, throat and third eye—in order to take stock of what was going on with my body… I didn’t meditate, of course, but I did close my eyes and tune in.

  I was fine. I was more than fine. I felt energised, curious about Jaden and completely lit up.

  I wanted Jaden.

  In the scientific sense.

  I w
anted to understand just who and what he was, why he was here and how his so- called powers worked. There was nothing miraculous going on here. I had to strip away all the wonder I felt, all the emotion. Then I’d be in control again. Then this would be a sequence of events I could put into perspective.

  Jaden was not my fate. He was not a sexy alien who would become my lover like in the futuristic gay romances I illustrated. We were not going to have a happy ending, floating through pink clouds and making love.

  Jaden was standing in my hall doorway, looking at me, his shaggy hair rippling around his face like dark water. He looked like a wild selkie, fresh out of the ocean in search of a lover he could lie with. He was naked, body glistening with moisture.

  He was naked.

  Jaden Ross was in my bedroom. Naked.

  Definitely something was wrong with this picture.

  “You have a tat on your stomach,” I heard myself say. “Did that hurt more than getting one on your arm? There are a lot of nerves in that area of the body.”

  Jaden looked down at the sunburst that teased just above where the hair at his crotch started. He ran a finger over the black ink, as if discovering it for the first time himself. “It is newer than the others,” he noted. “I was not there when it was created.”

  “Probably a good thing,” I noted dryly.

  He ran his fingers over his cock, totally unselfconsciously, as if familiarising himself with his newest toy. “I have looked forward to having one of these,” he said.

  I laughed. “I bet.”

  He was frowning. “It is very vulnerable.” His palm flattened protectively over his sex.

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s the second thing you learn as a guy.”

  “Gender. It is an ancient concept for my people.”

  I sat on the side of my bed and he came further into the room, pacing restlessly. I didn’t mind. Watching him was like watching one of my erotic illustrations come to life. Made me feel vaguely like Pygmalion.

  “How do you perpetuate your species? I mean, you have to procreate, right?”

  Jaden didn’t look nonplussed by my question. “We enter the bodies of beings capable of the sexual act; use their bodies to create another of our kind. But it has not happened in a long time. Most of my people are uninterested in such things.” He looked into my eyes. “We have no children, Mitchell. No future.”