CHAPTER 11
ELLIE
There’s an unwritten rule about professionalism and interpersonal relationships on digs. Technically, I’m no longer on a dig.
See, this is why I don’t do relationships.
Not romantic ones, not sexual ones, not barely platonic ones. I don’t even call my own mother more than once a month.
Relationships have expectations and nuances and hidden meanings I never have the patience to understand. People say things they don’t mean, or say two things that mean completely different things, and I’m just supposed to understand through the power of affection.
I am, admittedly, bad with people. But maybe that’s what makes this so easy. Zarek isn’t people.
Obviously, he’s objectively attractive, both in his human disguise and his sapphiro form.
I might even admit I’m attracted to him.
The way I reacted to that kiss sure makes it hard to deny.
A pretty significant part of me wants to turn to him in the back of this cab and kiss him again, just to make sure.
But something keeps my lips pressed closed and my hands to myself as we exit the taxi and make our way into the hotel. It’s late enough that the lobby is quiet, and the interaction with the receptionist goes smoothly, despite my broken French.
I’m distracted the whole time. I keep feeling the heat of Zarek’s lips against mine. The way all his bumbling awkwardness slipped away for just a moment when he placed his hand on my hip. How the most at ease he’s seemed since the moment I met him was when he pulled my body against his.
Fuck, I think I really am into him.
Which is so typical of me. Despite the fact that I have never been attracted to someone I’ve known for less than three months, I’d of course start falling for an actual alien from another fucking planet.
Nothing can come of this, and yet my brain isn’t working at the same speed that it usually does, imagining how much warmer his hands would feel if we didn’t have layers of clothing between us.
Maybe I’m skipping all the getting to know you parts because Zarek feels familiar. When we talk it’s easy, and when we don’t talk it’s even easier. In this very short amount of time, I’ve learned to exist next to him, when usually being around others feels like I’m…
Well, an alien.
“You are thinking very loudly,” Zarek mutters as we wait for the elevator. I feel a little sticky with the sweat of the day, and buzzy with the sensation of my heart beating just a little too fast. I avoid brushing my skin against his, afraid he’ll be able to tell how I feel with his sixth sense.
“I am not,” I argue, not convincing him or myself. The metal doors slide open, and while Zarek stands in a very normal spot, I basically crowd myself against the wall.
I’m turning this over at every angle in my mind, practically humming with the need to get out a legal pad and start jotting down notes. I’m so in my own head, that I almost don’t notice the glaring problem the moment we open the door to the room.
“Of fucking course.”
A bed. Singular. In a room almost mockingly large enough for two beds to fit comfortably. Instead, a chaise sits along one wall, and a coffee bar is tucked into the corner.
I drop my bags right inside the entry, feeling Zarek’s body heat next to me, but refusing to look at him.
“I’ll go downstairs and ask if they have another option,” I sigh, slipping my phone out of my pocket as I turn.
Zarek’s palm on my arm stops me.
“Ellie, did I make you uncomfortable?”
When I look up at him, he almost looks scared, with a deep furrow between his brows. And it doesn’t seem fair, making him feel like he’s the bad guy in this, when as per the usual, I’m the one who is impossible to be around.
“No, that’s not…” I sigh, slumping back against the door. Zarek drags his hand down my arm, tangling our fingers together, almost playing with mine nervously. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But you are upset.” It’s an observation, not a question.
“At myself, not at you,” I admit, watching the place where our fingers are interlocked, wondering how the electrical pulses of my heartbeat feel to him. “I just…want you.”
It’s one of those half-truths I hate. Because after a few short days, I want Zarek in more ways than I usually even tolerate others.
I want him as a friend, and as a research partner, and as a lover.
I want to ask about his family, and learn about his best friend, and go look at all the plants he wants to see.
I have a fucking crush. On a fucking alien.
“This is a problem?” Zarek asks, sounding far less confident than he did in the caves. When I tear my eyes from our hands, he’s looking right at me. Nervous.
“It’s complicated,” I admit, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth, which Zarek tracks. “I don’t usually…it’s complicated.”
“A complicated problem?”
I trace my eyes down every inch of Zarek’s disguised face. The slightly off-putting contacts, the dark hair falling into his eyes, the smooth, tan skin and pretty cupid’s bow of his mouth.
“Can you look like you?”
Almost instantly, Zarek begins to shift. Slower than I’ve ever seen him do it before, like he’s afraid of startling me. The blue tones spread from the spot where our hands are connected, and climb up his arm, across his frame, until he looks like the Zarek I know. Almost.
“Your eyes, too,” I request, starting to pull away my hand so he can go take them out. But he grips my fingers tighter. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how strong Zarek is before. He’s lean, but hidden beneath that frame is muscle that I imagine we can put to very good use.
“I do not want to let go,” he says, so quietly it feels like a confession. “I like feeling your heartbeat.”
It’s so intimate, the way he can feel every change in my heartbeat, and I can’t tell if I hate it or hate that I love it. He can understand me without words, read me without me having to share anything but skin on skin, and some part of me wants that—to be understood without having to try.
“Okay,” I breathe, tugging him along with me to the bathroom. In front of the mirror he removes each of the contacts with one hand, the other still wrapped in mine. And then I can see his eyes again, sparkling like galaxies.
“When you kissed me before, it wasn’t you,” I say under my breath, the harsh bathroom lighting somehow just making Zarek look brighter.
Everything about him shines, like a beacon of light just for me.
It’s almost unfair, since I’m certain I just look sticky and flushed in comparison, but I can’t focus on that with the way Zarek is looking at me.
“I’m me now,” he says, like a promise, and I take a step closer to him.
“I know.”
He brings our interlinked hands up to rest on his chest, and threads his other hand through the hair at the nape of my neck. I expect him to tug me up to meet his towering height, but he hesitates. Not nervous, but allowing me the chance to close that final gap between us.
So I push myself up on my toes and kiss him.
It’s even better than the first one. Zarek pulls at my hair just a little tighter, yanking me up so I’m barely standing on my own weight. I gasp at the feeling of his strength, sinking into him like I know he’ll catch me.
My heart skips way too many beats as I feel his tongue slip inside my mouth, and his teeth graze against my bottom lip.
I want more of him, less space between us, more touch, less clothing.
My skin feels electrified, sparking with every heartbeat as I grasp his shoulder and pull myself impossibly closer to him.
“Ellie,” he breathes against my lips, even though there’s no real room for the words. I chase his mouth, and he doesn’t seem to be able to deny me, leaning back in and gripping my hips so tight I should be afraid they’ll bruise.
With a burst of confidence that I’m sure would embarrass me if I wasn’t overwhelmed with lust, I walk backward into the main room, one of my hands still tucked against his chest as I pull us toward the bed.
I’m convinced that speaking would shatter this bubble Zarek and I have created, so I let my body tell him what I want, what I need at this point.
With my thighs pressed against the side of the mattress, I drop my hand from Zarek’s shoulder and trace it down his side, until my fingertips drag at the hem of his shirt.
The moment my skin touches his, I feel Zarek’s body shudder, and I bet if he were human there would be goosebumps in the wake of my touch.
It’s intoxicating, this feeling of undiluted want, especially when it’s so obviously reciprocated. I’m getting a glimpse into why people enjoy sex so much—it’s like my whole world has been narrowed down to the places where our bodies are connected.
I press my palm flat against his abdomen, feeling the muscles there contract as Zarek groans into my mouth, pulling just a little harder at the hair at the base of my scalp.
Every one of his reactions just makes me want more, and I start to push my hand further up his chest, needing to see more of him.
“Ellie…” he repeats, this time more of a plea than a whisper. I use the momentary break in our kiss to tug his shirt upward, and he takes the hint, releasing me so he can reach behind his back and pull it off in one swift movement.
He stares at me, his chest heaving with labored breaths as his eyes roam my face, reading my expression in tandem with my heartbeat.
“Are you sure?” he asks, maybe just as incapable as I am of naming what we’re about to do. But I’ve maybe never been so sure of a decision in my entire life. That’s probably the adrenaline and dopamine talking, but I’m going to ride this wave to its inevitable crash.
“Please, Zarek,” I reply, unbuttoning the front of my own, very unsexy, shirt as smoothly as I can. I didn’t dress to feel attractive—my bra and underwear definitely do not match—but I’m fairly certain Zarek doesn’t give a fuck. His gaze is snared by my newly exposed skin.