Chapter 14
I pressed my chest against his abs.
"How do I get you to pick me up?" I asked him, nodding towards the hatch.
Maybe I should lift one leg and move his arm underneath it, or…
He bent down slightly and scooped me up off my feet so quickly I let out a little shriek. I wrapped my arms around him, wiggling and lifting myself up in his grip. He supported me as I moved in his arms, twisting so that I could wrap my legs around his waist as well.
He wrapped his arms around me, his huge hands curling around to my thighs.
A shiver of excitement rushed through me at his touch, at the feeling of his body in between my legs. He was so strong. I bit my lip at the sudden rush of electrifying arousal.
It felt so good to touch this alien man.
He was so alien, but it was hard to think of him as something so nondescript as a male when every part of my body screamed that this rock hard creature pressed against me was a man in every sense of the word.
He made a small hop towards the opening.
My hold on him slipped, and I dropped down his body a few inches. His warm hands tightened against me as he lifted me back up. His other hand curled around to hold onto the small of my back, pressing me tighter against him.
What would it feel like to have those fingers trace along my skin?
That thought was batted away as he suddenly sprung forward, jumping into the circular hatch.
I screamed and laughed as we went flying past Arnina’s Boy Toy. I clung to Zale as he bounced off the platform they were on and immediately sprang down to the next and then the next. I couldn't help but laugh the entire way down.
This was so much fun!
We dropped past several platforms with open archways that led to large rooms I barely caught glimpses of. Then Zale dodged through one and came to an abrupt stop.
He let me go, his arms dropping to his sides.
I was stuck to him like a bur.
It took me a moment, but I reluctantly, very reluctantly, let go and slid down his body to my feet.
He held onto me his grip tightening on my body, gentle even with his strength as he held me from moving, keeping me plastered there against him.
I looked up in his eyes.
He took a sharp inhale of breath and released me, stepping away from me. I felt the absence of his heat for one excruciating moment before I came back to myself. I wanted him to hold onto me. My body screamed for it, demanding it.
I took a deep breath and stepped away from him further into the room.
I did not need to be obsessing about touching him right now.
I did not need to be thinking about how good his body felt.
Or how much I desperately wanted to touch him more.
We were in a cavernous, circular room, larger than most houses I'd ever been in.
I stepped onto a warm marble-feeling tile with edges that were so smooth I couldn’t feel them with my bare feet.
It looked and felt immaculate, without the grit of dirt that falls off of shoes.
Floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side of the room looked out at the sparkling city.
Lines of traffic streamed below us like a river of dark bubbles bobbing in never-stopping patterns, branching through the city like a network of waterways.
We were really high up.
Looking out the massive window wall gave me that tight, primal feeling in my belly of both being far too high off the ground as well as a discordant sensation of everything I was looking at being slightly wrong.
None of it looked like I was used to. Everything was similar, but different, like I was dreaming and the dream had gone off into a strange direction. It was recognizable as a city.
But it was unlike any city I’d ever seen before.
Plus, there were no clouds, either above or below us.
And there was a shimmering hexagonal translucent glow in the sky above.
I looked away from the strangeness back into the room.
The rest of the room was just as weird.
Water shimmered in a roughly ten feet wide bowl-like depression in the center of the room.
I moved closer to realize that there were sizable fish swimming in it.
The bottom of the bowl was transparent, and I could make out rippled outlines of the room on the next floor down.
As I watched, a fish vanished from view.
I noticed small openings leading out of the bowl.
Where they led was likely more visible in the room below us.
Oh, heck yeah.
As soon as I confirmed that those fish weren't going to eat me, I was going to be in that thing.
I looked over to see Arnina had made it into the room.
The guard, Yreta, had something dangling from her hip belt. It was the orb she had placed in the car.
"Get my back if I need it," I called out to Lorelei as I walked towards Yreta.
Just as I reached her, I tripped.
My shoulder knocked into her as I stumbled.
Yreta put her hands on my shoulders to stabilize me.
"Whoa, are you okay?" Arnina called out.
"Perfect," I grinned as I turned away from Yreta, my newly filched car key held tightly in my hand as I headed over towards Arnina.
Now we weren't trapped anymore.
If we had to leave, we could always steal a flying car we had no idea how to drive. That wasn’t that important to me as holding on to the keys. If we needed to get the f out, the only thing holding us back was knowledge, not access or opportunity.
A lack of knowledge could be solved with our own agency.
A lack of access and opportunity meant we were in a cage.
The aliens sang something behind me.
Arnina smiled as her Boy Toy walked over and held out another orb to her. He glanced over at me as he held it out to her, a smile that looked a great deal like a smirk crossing his face.
"Can't get anything past these fools," I sighed.
Arnina took it from him.
"What is this?" she asked.
I held out my hand to show her the key I had stolen.
"The car keys," I said. "Not that we can climb to the roof using that ridiculous monkey shaft."
He put the palms of his hands on both of ours containing the car keys and pushed them towards us. Then he turned and walked over to one of the doors that circled the room. He pointed at it, then at himself. Then he went to the door next to it and pointed to us both and back at the door.
Well, time to check out the new digs.
I headed over to where he pointed.
On the way there, I paused by the giant fishbowl pond. I leaned over and shoved my arm in it, watching both the cat elves. They all looked at me, but no one made any sign of distress at my action nor moved to stop me.
None of the fish came over to bite me, either.
Perfect.
I pulled my arm out, shook it off, and caught up with Arnina in what was clearly our new bedroom.
"Bedroom," Arnina stated the obvious. The bed was similar to the one in the apartment, but much larger and silkier.
"This is quite the upgrade from the previous place.
" I looked around. This was some fancy pants shit compared to the last place.
"It must be crazy expensive to get a window as one solid piece like this and install it at the top of a skyscraper.
I bet we're going to be above the clouds when we wake up in the morning. "
There was a knock on the door, and Arnina walked back to answer it.
When I turned around, I realized she had left the room.
"Ooookay," I said to the empty room. "Good old Irish goodbye."
I shook my head and stared at the door.
I could go back out there.
Zale might still be there, or he might have left.
I had a strong urge to talk to him, to continue to work on our…
body language. But I knew that manic feeling in my chest all too well.
It was the feeling I felt whenever I had a crush on someone that was out of control.
It was the feeling that caused me to stare at my phone for hours, wondering when he was going to text me back.
The feeling that made me think about him all the time, even when all he had done was smile at me.
I hadn't had a crush in a while.
I couldn't go out there.
I had to calm myself down to find my chill before I interacted with him again.
If I let this feeling grow, I'd develop an image of him in my head that was only very loosely based on reality. That parody of him would grow stronger and stronger in my mind until I judged him based on how I wanted him to be, not on who he really was.
My imagination was my superpower, but it was also my greatest weakness.
I'd fallen in love too many times before with men who only existed in my mind. I couldn't do it again.
"First step," I instructed myself out loud. Sometimes, it took spoken words to overpower the jumbly mess of thoughts that shouted in my mind. "Focus on my breath.”
I focused on my breath, noticing how it deepened as I expanded my belly and my lower back, letting it flow into my ribcage and lift and round my shoulders to find the full expansion of my lungs. I held it for a few moments, sitting at the top of the breath and holding it.
Then I let it go.
The breath was where peace lay.
The breath was where I had first started to find mental peace.
The intensity of my life and mental health the last few years had really born down on me relentlessly until I had signed up for a meditation class that taught me that technique. Anytime things got too crazy, in my head or outside of it, I went back to my breath.
"Second step," I reminded myself. "Ground my energy."
I spread my feet hip distance apart, planting them firmly on the ground.
I closed my eyes and imagined my energy running down through the major nerve nodes in my body, running along my spine, down through my gut, down through that seat of pulsing arousal. I imagined reaching down into the Earth.
Well, it wasn't the Earth anymore; I was on some crazy ass alien moon.
Whatever, I would just imagine its energy as different.