Page 34 of Alien Desire
We are still miles from the station. They must have set out before the storm had finished. My heart swells, and I press down hard on the accelerator, willing the distance to lessen between us.
Time slows. The stretch that separates us refuses to shrink, and I kick at the bike as if it were a horse, geeing it onwards. After an age, I’m close enough to see his face, his stoic look, his determined stride.
He was coming for me. He’s still coming for me.
I jump from the bike and sprint towards him. Fluffy races ahead, leaping up to try to lick my face, and I crouch down and ruffle his head.
Tor stops, waiting his turn, ready to speak, but I don’t wait to hear. I jump up and run to him, flinging my arms around his neck and squeezing him tight. For a fraction of a second he freezes, his arms limp by his sides, and then he wraps them around me and pulls me in close.
Once again, we don’t need words. The strain of his arms, the pressure of his hands, tells me he never wants to let me go.
“I came to find you,” he tells me simply, and I can hear in his voice how tired he is. How long has he been out here searching for me?
“I got trapped by the storm.”
“I was worried you hadn’t made it to the mast. Worried you were lost out here.” There’s more than just exhaustion in his tone, deep relief and desperation too.
“No, I made it, I was safe. I left as soon as the storm passed.”
He cradles my head, pressing it into his chest, and through the layers of clothes I hear that familiar beat of his unloveable heart. “Don’t do that again, Omega. Never again.”
Why does he care? Because I am some precious find he doesn’t want to lose? I step backwards, the warm sensation that had been soaring through my veins cooling rapidly. “Let’s get back,” I tell him.
He insists on driving and, although I can see he is weary, I don’t argue. I think I might lose my mind if he were to encase his hands around my waist. Far better that I hold on to him.
Back at the station, I head straight for the bathroom and lock myself in. I don’t know how to act around him. I know he wants me to sit on his lap and kiss him, but I don’t know if I can, if it is too dangerous.
He has not told me in words that he wishes to own me but his actions, his manner, suggest that he does. Do I want to be owned? I’m so confused and my body is becoming increasingly needy for his touch. It would be easy to succumb to his commands, submit to his will.
So I shower, letting the frigid water race over my body, hoping it will cool my strangely warm body and remove the irritation on my skin. I try, I really do try, not to imagine the water gliding over my skin is his hands, his mouth. But my imagination, my stupid imagination, wants to punish me.
And when I step out in fresh clothes, I can’t help blushing when I see him busy at work on the computer. If he could only see the images flitting through my mind.
I invent jobs to keep myself busy and away from him, cleaning, surveying, logging, rearranging. But I sense his glittering gold gaze on me wherever I go and my own eyes betray me, floating back to him every few minutes.
He is more beautiful than I’d allowed myself to acknowledge when I was stuck out there in the storm. I’d downplayed it in my mind. And my feelings too. Told myself I didn’t feel this pull towards him, that he didn’t make my skin warm in anticipation.
I am a liar though. Because the pull is real, his beauty is real. I am in danger of falling for him. I see it so plainly now. Falling in a way I have never done before.
So I keep my distance. For the rest of the day I avoid him and he seems to know it, not pushing for my company, not demanding to know what’s wrong. He leaves me to my fussing as I tug out the blankets and the pillows in the dormitory and remake the beds, order things differently and more to my liking. He observes me silently, but he doesn’t interrupt.
We circle each other like a planet and its moon, unable to pull too far away, too frightened to come too close, but aware of the other’s existence, of this force that binds us together.
It’s futile though.
Although I succeed in staying away, by nightfall I am back in bed with him, tangled in his arms and lost in his kisses.
Chapter fifteen - Emma
Iwake in the night to a fever. My skin rages with heat and I’m damp with sweat. A powerful pain radiates through my gut and I roll onto my side and groan in misery. I must have caught some unfamiliar illness, brought on by the cold.
Tor rests his hand against my forehead and his eyes are full of concern, the gold irises darting about frantically and his jet pupils dilated.
“I’m sick,” I tell him, kicking off the covers, my teeth rattling like they did after my fall.
“You are going into heat, Omega.”
“Yes, I have a temperature. Can you fetch me the medical pack so I can take some medicine for the fever?” Then I need to find a way to hobble into the medical scanner and work out what’s wrong with me.
