Alien's Concubine, The (16 page)

“
You were revolted when I
brought the one whose life force had left him,” he said, his voice
tight with temper he was struggling to control.

But it wasn’t just that. Gaby sensed
frustration, disappointment … and confusion in him, as
well.

She shook her head. Before she could
even try to explain her feelings on the subject, though, or
complain about him eavesdropping in her mind again, she heard the
doorbell.

It was almost a relief. “That’ll be
the pizza,” she said, rinsing quickly and grabbing her robe on the
way out of the bathroom.

The pizza restored Anka’s good humor …
somewhat. Obviously, he thoroughly enjoyed the things sensory
perception allowed him to feel, and taste was high on his list of
things to explore.

Diet soda didn’t meet his standards.
His expression once he’d taken a long draught was almost
comical.

“
You get used to it,” Gaby
said, amused.

“
Why would one wish to,
that is the question?”

She glanced down at her pizza, feeling
her belly knot with anxiety, choking off her appetite when she’d
hardly eaten more than a few bites. “Eating too many good tasting,
high calorie things, can make you unhealthy and unattractive. I cut
calories where I can so I can have some of the things I really
like. This doesn’t have real sugar in it, but it still tastes a lot
like the regular cola does.”

He lifted the can and studied it
thoughtfully and she knew suddenly, without any abilities for mind
reading at all, that he’d grasped the correlation.

“
It just takes a little
time to get used to,” she added after a moment.

He nodded. He didn’t seem as angry as
before, but she could see he was still wrestling with something
that bothered him.

* * * *

Gaby didn’t know whether to be more
amused or more annoyed that Anka seemed to take it as a matter of
course that he was completely welcome to move in with her. He
didn’t ask. He simply made himself at home.

It was disconcerting to come home when
she’d lived alone her entire adult life to discover a man lounging
on her couch, the TV scepter in his hand—watching soaps.

He found the high drama of those
fascinating for some reason that escaped her, but, to her surprise,
he didn’t seem to have had any difficulty grasping right away that
it was play acting. He didn’t have any trouble determining which
programs were ‘real’ and which were plays, which actually didn’t
surprise her until it occurred to her that he’d never seen anything
like it at all.

It wasn’t just the TV itself that was
technology he couldn’t have been familiar with. Acting and
storytelling went back a very, very long time in human history, but
it seemed doubtful his culture would have done such things. Rituals
would’ve been the central focus of both entertainment and religion
and probably the only way the people had escaped from the day to
day drudgery of survival.

She hadn’t thought that she thought of
him as having a primitive mind—she knew he was intelligent even if
he was ignorant of the hundreds of years of knowledge that had been
accumulated since his time--but obviously she’d expected just that
or she wouldn’t have been surprised that he could soak up knowledge
so easily.

He amazed her with how quickly he
absorbed the knowledge available to him, which was a lot more than
even she’d realized.

The third day after he’d shown up at
her door in his newest persona, she came home to discover that,
instead of lounging on the couch, he was in her kitchen. The sounds
and smells of cooking food accompanied by a disembodied voice drew
her. When she’d peered around the kitchen door, she discovered a
disaster area. A small, portable TV sat on the counter. Anka was
standing near the stove with a pan in one hand, watching the TV
chef intently.

The counters were littered with
ingredients and all sorts of prepared dishes, many of them burned,
but some giving off fairly appetizing smells.

Anka, Gaby realized with a sinking
heart, had discovered the cooking channel.

They were in serious trouble if he
decided to watch the home improvement channel! Her landlord would
shit a squealing worm a mile long if Anka took it into his head to
‘improve’!

Deciding she wasn’t currently in the
mood to deal with the disaster area or the fact that Anka had,
apparently, emptied both her refrigerator and her cabinets in his
quest to become a cooking aficionado, Gaby whirled away without a
word and headed for her bathroom.

She wasn’t ordinarily impatient of
others. She didn’t know why she felt ‘invaded’.

She supposed it was because she just
wasn’t used to sharing her space with anyone. More precisely, she’d
gotten unused to it. She hadn’t had her own space when she’d been
growing up. Not only had she had to share it with a succession of
strangers as the other kids made the rounds from group home to
foster home and back again, but she’d never been able to feel like
she belonged there or that the place was ‘hers’. Because even
though she couldn’t remember ever living anywhere else, it was
still an institution—not a real home, something she was always
keenly aware of.

Anka was right, she thought wryly as
she adjusted the shower and finally stepped inside. She was hard to
please.

And, truthfully, she couldn’t figure
out what her problem was. She enjoyed Anka’s company. His presence,
even when he was watching TV while she did something else, or when
he slept beside her at night, knowing he was close even when he
wasn’t actually inside the apartment with her, was
comforting.

The sex between them was mind
blowing!

And she could not complain that he
actually crowded her. He seemed to know when she didn’t want to
talk and when she wanted to be alone to read or work.

It was fear, she finally realized. She
was afraid she would get used to it, and then he would be gone and
she’d have to get used to being alone again.

It was typical of her, Gaby thought
disgustedly. She had never been able to enjoy anything without
worrying about the consequences or worrying about when it was gone
or over. She wondered if everyone else was as prone to leavening
their life with fears of the future, or if it was just her. She
couldn’t help being that way, and at the same time it was something
about herself that she hated. She felt like she’d missed out on so
much in life because she wasn’t a ‘seize the day’ sort of
person.

Or maybe she was just greedy? Refusing
to take a nibble here, a bite there, just because she couldn’t have
the whole pie?

Whatever it was, this thing with
Anka—whatever that was—was working against her nature big time. She
was so on edge, expecting the bubble to burst, she couldn’t even
properly enjoy the bubble!

Dragging in a deep, cleansing breath,
she resolved to try. If she had to meditate, or practice a little
self-hypnosis, or just give herself pep talks, she wanted to make
the most of her time with Anka.

She’d just soaped her hair when Anka
joined her in the shower. She felt his hand slide over her buttocks
as she stepped into the spray to rinse the soap from her
face.

Chapter Nine

“
Have you mastered cooking
yet?” Gaby asked teasingly as she turned to look at him, tipping
her head back beneath the spray to rinse the soap from
it.

His gaze was on the sudsy bubbles
gliding over her breasts. “I believe this is a skill that takes
much practice,” he murmured absently, lifting his hands to cup her
breasts and then rubbing his thumbs over her nipples until they
were tight and hard.

Warmth stirred in her belly as he
moved closer, bending to match his lips to hers. Closing her eyes,
she rose up on her toes to meet him readily, opening her mouth to
him in welcome. The touch of his mouth as his lips met hers, the
thrust of his tongue, was possessive and yet persuasive rather than
hungrily demanding as he usually was.

A little surprised, Gaby felt the
warmth blossom into heat nevertheless as they moved together and he
deepened the kiss, exploring her mouth in a thorough, leisurely
manner that set her heart to thrumming just a little faster.
Sighing into his mouth with pleasure, she settled her hands at his
waist as he reached around her to cup her buttocks and lift her up
and toward him, penning his erection between them. She curled her
hips against him rhythmically, rubbing her breasts against his
chest very deliberately and feeling her desire climb as her
sensitive nipples brushed back and forth across his male
breasts.

When he broke the kiss, she lifted her
eyelids with an effort to look up at him. His gaze was as
slumberous with desire as hers, filled with expectancy. She settled
flat on her feet and began to explore her way downward from his
neck and across his chest with her lips until, at last, she settled
on her knees and took his cock into her hands, teasing the head
with her lips and tongue. He made a sound of pleasure deep in his
chest, spearing his fingers into her hair and cupping the base of
her skull as she stroked and sucked him, traced the sensitive ridge
around the head of his cock with her tongue.

The impulse came over her as she
finessed his engorged flesh with her mouth to bring him off with
the play of her mouth and tongue. The thought aroused her more and
she began to stroke his cock more feverishly with her mouth and
hands, sucking hard each time she pushed him deeply into her mouth
and holding him tightly as she allowed his flesh to slip out again.
Cupping his testicles gently in one hand, she caressed them, as
well, alternating between stroking his cock and his testes and
finally moving downward to suck his balls into her mouth. He
shuddered, his hands kneading her scalp. His breathing became
harsh, labored, as his own desires escalated.

She was disappointed when he broke
away from her abruptly, pulling her to her feet, but the discontent
was brief. As he pulled her upward, he pressed her back against the
shower wall and kissed her with fierce hunger, running his hands
over her body with feverish need.

She felt weak and heavy with her own
needs. She could barely stand as he drew away at last, shut the
shower off and stepped out, pulling her behind him. Handing her a
towel, he took one for himself, dried cursorily and then swept her
off her feet. They were both damp still when they tumbled onto the
bed. Gaby reached for him as he settled half atop her, stroking her
hands over his muscular body encouragingly as he worshipped her
body with his hands and mouth and tongue, with exquisite care to
leave no sensitive patch of flesh wanting for attention.

“
Now, please,” she gasped
when he’d teased her until she felt as if she would orgasm without
him ever having entered her at all. “I want you inside of
me.”

He ignored the plea, moving downward
from her breasts to her belly and then lower, nibbling along the
inside of first one thigh and then the other. She knew where he was
going and struggled against it half heartedly, wanting to feel his
mouth on her there and at the same time unwilling to give up the
chance to cum with him deeply inside of her.

He didn’t give her the choice. He
pushed her thighs apart and covered her nether lips with his mouth,
parting them with his tongue and dragging it along her cleft in a
way that left fire in its wake. Electric tremors went through her
when he found her clit at last and tugged at it with his lips,
strummed it with the tip of his tongue until she thought she would
lose her mind.

She arched against him, writhed
beneath him with the fires burning her up from the inside out,
gasping for breath. Her body burgeoned, tightening until she ached
all over. From one moment to the next she struggled against the
release she could feel building, and struggled toward it. She
wanted it, needed it. She wanted him inside of her more.

He ceased abruptly, shifting over her
and aligning his cock with her opening with a feverish haste that
spoke of his own imminent release. She groaned as she felt him
ramming his engorged flesh inside of her in a series of short
incursions and retreats that drove her over the edge almost the
instant he filled her completely. She dug her nails into his arms
as the first convulsion hit her, uttering a high pitched cry of
rapture.

She heard his teeth grinding together
as if he was struggling for control, felt tremors begin to run
through him as he sought the pace and rhythm he needed. A groan
that sounded almost more agonized than filled with pleasure escaped
him. He shuddered, drove deeply inside of her and she felt his cock
jerk inside of her with his own spasms of release.

Satisfaction filled her as her own
climax reached its crescendo and began to dissipate in warm shivery
waves of repletion. She clung to him as the tension abandoned her
body along with her strength, gasping for breath.

She felt the tension go out of him, as
well, felt him begin to sag more and more heavily against her.
Finally, he rolled off of her and dragged in a deep, shuddering
breath. Deprived abruptly of his heat and nearness, she rolled
toward him to drape herself limply across him.