Page 33 of Exiles on Earth
She turns to me, eyes swimming with emotion and excitement. “Please,” she says, and I’m utterly undone. I nod sharply, turning back to the rubble, because I don’t trust myself to answer. The only thing I can do now is prove myself throughaction. No more words, no more promises. Only work. Only redemption.
It doesn’t matter that I have no idea where to get half the materials from. I will find a way, for her. For my crew. For the chance to be the leader—and the protector—that I’m meant to be.
“But first,” El-len says, stopping us all mid-rise to begin the replacement operation. “Breakfast.”
ELEVEN
ELLEN
“I can’t believeyou got away with that,” Laura says admiringly, crunching up the gravel toward the hen house, at the far end of the U-shaped courtyard next to the lean-to.
Arabella tosses her red curls. “You don’t ask, you don’t get.”
I gnaw my lip. It seems pointless for the aliens to restore the barn to the half-fallen down state, right? Arabella’s correct, this is an opportunity, even though it feels a little dirty.
I exchange glances with Nicole, who’s also uneasy. “They have no choice but to do what we say because we can threaten to turn them in,” she points out.
“I don’t want to either, I can’t imagine they would be invited to cake and tea at MI5,” I say. Glancing over my shoulder at Ilia and the others following us, I try to quiet my gut. He seemed okay with the new plans for the barn.
When Ilia sees me looking, his scales flash a deep purple-blue like a rare gemstone. He has an interesting intensity to him; he probably throws himself at everything he does with his whole heart and soul.
Arabella slides her arm around my shoulders. “I think the universe literally just dropped the answer to your prayers in yourlap here, and in the most fun way possible. Hot men who work for room and board.”
“And you didn’t even have to put out a ‘Wanted’ ad,” Laura says, a tight smile on her round face.
“Yeah,” I say, wincing. “This is best for everyone, including the aliens.”
The chickens inside the henhouse are absolutely affronted they haven’t been let out at sunrise exactly, a shrill edge to their angry clucking. The aliens fan out to surround the fence festooned with chicken wire, staring at the small shed emitting what are probably strange noises to them. Heck, many people in cities have never seen a live chicken either.
I open the gate so the chickens can roam free and flip the catch of the hen house. Old Mae bursts out first, feathers askew as she leads the way to the lawn, completely ignoring the aliens. The guys bunch together, except for Ilia, who strides toward me.
“Tell me if you need assistance.” He glares at the chickens underfoot.
“I don’t.” I stoop low to get into the hen house. The harsh urea smell bites at my sinuses, and Ilia’s face blanks as he ducks to enter, the scent assaulting his nostrils. I’m used to it, and breathe shallowly as I hunt in the warm straw for my quarry.
“What are you looking for?” He runs his fingers over the prickly straw, his skin worn and scarred, calloused with heavy use, like my own. Like me, he has fingernails, and also like mine, they’re bitten or snapped down to nubs.
I wrap my palm around a toasty nugget. I hold up my prize. “An egg, freshly laid this morning. “
“An egg,” Ilia repeats. I pass it to him, and he cradles it, absorbed. His skin ripples in the dim light, spiderwebs of interconnecting hexagons flashing sapphire. “What’s inside?”
“You’ll find out at breakfast. It’s basically protein and fat.”
He maintains eye contact, and my lips tingle. “That’s translating as…” His eyes widen slightly, nostrils flaring. “Good. Weneed a great deal of fat and, ah, energy. Slow and fast, we need both.”
“Slow energy…” I pick up another egg. “Ah, complex carbohydrates? And sugars for fast energy?”
“Yes, exactly! We need both.”
“Hm, I can do that. Plus, protein can be used for energy too.”
“Protein is to build…” He flexes his arm, the scales on his bicep flaring brilliant orange gold. “Yes?”
I must have forgotten to drink water when I woke up, my mouth as dry as the rustling straw around us. “I, uh, yeah…” A gorgeous vein bumps over his biceps like a river meandering over hills. Rippling rock-hard boulders of, oh, what’s it called? “Muscle!” I blurt. “Muscle, that’s it.”
He lowers his arm, pleased, and gathers other eggs with quick, careful movements, handling them delicately. Watching the big guy pick up handfuls without crushing any makes my breath catch a little. Hell, he’s gorgeous, a walking mountain of a topless man, every chiseled angle mouthwatering. Not only that, but he wants to help me!
But he isn’t a man, is he? He’s an alien. I sweep a gaze across his chest to his wide shoulders, down his stomach where every dip and ab is outlined, tracing the line of his hip to where it disappears into his trousers. Warmth spreads down deep into my core. He looks so similar to a human man, albeit a shining god-like example. What else is similar between our species, and what’s different? And with the rest of him so huge, what other things are in proportion, aka, massive?
