13
JOANNA
I fucked an alien.
Once the fear died down, and the anger and confusion and everything else, only one thought remained in my mind.
I fucked an alien.
It didn't seem real. It hadn't even sunk in, really. The entire thing felt like something I'd just watched on TV, safely at arm's length.
But the more I drove, the more it began to feel real.
It was real.
I couldn't deny it. Not the Jones brothers or what Eric--Arix?--had done afterward. It was too clear in my memory. I wasn't dreaming. I wasn't drunk, or hallucinating, or any other reasonable explanation.
I fucked an alien. And then I tried to kill him.
Not him, a voice in my head said. It.
I didn't know what I was doing right then. Driving to town, where other people were, sure. But then what? Who do you call when a fucking alien shows up and starts doing alien stuff in your cabin? Was there an erotic alien equivalent of the Ghostbusters?
I settled for talking to Leslie, because it was literally the only option that didn't terrify me. I drove through the town, turned down toward her office, and parked out front.
In my hurry to flee, I hadn't even put shoes on. Thankfully I had a spare pair in the bed of my truck. I sat on the gate and pulled them on--without socks, but hey, beggars and choosers--and hopped off.
"Didn't expect to see you today."
Leslie stood in her doorway with a steaming mug of coffee. She smiled warmly at me, and the familiarity of her was an instant calming force on my psyche.
"I need to talk to you."
Her smile disappeared like the plug had been yanked out. "What's wrong?"
"Let's go inside."
I strode past her and into the building. I checked the first two offices, where Sharon sometimes sat when there was administrative work to do. She wasn't there. I checked the single holding cell down the right hallway too, and it was also empty. We were alone.
"Jo, I don't mean to pry, but your face is as white as the snow outside. You look like you've seen a ghost."
Not a ghost. An alien. I almost blurted out the words, but they stuck to my tongue. "Little late to drink coffee, huh?" I said instead.
She looked at her mug, then shrugged. "I've got the night shift. Sun's going down in half an hour and I want to stay awake. Jo, what's wrong?"
We went into her office, and I closed the door, then locked it. The small gesture imbued me with a morsel of security. I sat down in the visitor's chair, and instead of sitting behind her desk Leslie came over and sat next to me.
There's an alien. He's in my cabin. And oh by the way, he made me cum harder than I ever have in my life.
I needed to tell her, but it sounded so stupid. Leslie was my closest friend, and wouldn't laugh in my face if I told her. Yet I couldn't pull the words from my throat.
And I realized that in spite of everything, my desperate flight and shotgun-led reaction to Arix's reveal, I wasn't ready to tell someone. Not yet. My emotions were a confusing bundle, anger and fear and betrayal, betrayal most of all, but somehow I knew I didn't want to spill my guts.
Was it Arix in my head, holding me back? I didn't think so. But then again, I didn't know a whole lot of anything right then.
"The Jones brothers," I found myself saying, and the more I spoke the easier it became. "They were out on my property. I..."
Leslie grabbed my hand and squeezed it. "Good Christ, Jo. You're shaking."
"I almost killed them," I said, and the quiver in my voice was genuine. A part of the entire ordeal I hadn't truly faced yet. "They were snooping around my property, and they had these long devices that looked like guns, at least from a distance, and I grabbed my shotgun and pointed it at them and I almost pulled the trigger."
"Shh," Leslie said, cupping my hands in both of hers. "It's alright."
"I almost killed them." Tears were in my eyes, from Eric and Arix and yes, even the interaction with Max and Liam. "I didn't know it was them. I thought it was someone with harmful intent. Two men, hardly more than boys, and I almost killed them. How could I live with myself?"
"You didn't do it," Leslie whispered. "And even if you had, no one would have blamed you. It's okay. It's okay, Jo."
She embraced me, and I savored the words and friendly touch.
"Okay," I inhaled, pulling away and wiping tears from my eyes. "I needed to confess to someone. It was eating me from the inside and I didn't know what else to do."
She smiled warmly, but then it disappeared. "I'll talk to Max and Liam. They've been warned against trespassing, and I thought they'd learned their lesson after that fiasco at Andy's barn, but I guess that wreckage has 'em all stirred up."
I blew my nose into a tissue. "Wreckage?"
"Something they found in the woods yesterday morning. Harry told me they've been braggin' about it to anyone who'll listen at the bar, a UFO or some such." She snorted. "Nobody's seen the damn thing, though, so I can tell you how much people believe that."
"Oh." I thought about what Arix had said: that he'd returned to his craft, but it had been taken.
I must have looked shell-shocked, because Leslie waved a hand. "Don't worry none about those two. I'll take care of it tomorrow. I'll put the fear of God into them." She gave a sly smile.
They have his craft. Christ, another angle to this I hadn't yet accepted. But I needed to say something, so I said, "Thanks, Leslie."
"In the mean time, don't let them get to you. Honestly, it's best just to humor them. Answer their questions, play along, let them get tired. You know they're harmless. Though obviously if you want to keep them at bay, that's your right."
"Sure," I said.
Leslie's smile changed. "Speaking of privacy, how's that baby bird you're nursing back to health?"
"The who?"
"Oh come on. The guy you hit. When're you gunna bring him around to show him off?" Leslie showed me her palms. "Not that I want to give him a looksie, now. Just to fill in his half of the paperwork you signed. My motivations are purely of the law enforcement variety." A smile threatened to break through the serious facade.
My alien lover is doing just fine, thank you very much. Have you found one of your own, yet?
"He's, uhh, doing alright," I said out loud, feeling my cheeks heat. "Resting a lot. Gathering his strength."
Leslie gave me the look she gave suspects when she knew they were lying. "Uh huh. Sure he is. Just make sure you don't sap too much of his strength." She stood. "And all joking aside, I do need him to fill out this paperwork. I can swing by any time if that'd be easier, but obviously I don't want to intrude. Especially if you're pointing shotguns at your visitors."
I rose with her and smiled politely at the jab. "No, yeah, sure. I'll come by with him tomorrow."
"Interesting choice of words."
"Leslie!" I play slapped her, but my blush deepened. It had been a while since I'd talked sex with anyone. It felt like a prudish teenager. "I'm gunna need three beers before I spill the beans about any of that."
"Three? As in one more than your limit? So what you're saying is I'll never hear the juicy details?"
I hugged Leslie, feeling a thousand times better than ten minutes ago. "For this, I'll make an exception. I promise."
She led me outside, still carrying her mug of half-drunk coffee. "Well would you look at that."
Across the street, double-parked in front of the General Store, was the Jones brothers' truck. Liam sat in the passenger seat talking animatedly on a cell phone. He made karate-chopping motions with his free hand.
Max came out of the store with a case of Bud Lite. He froze when he saw Leslie and me, jaw visibly hanging open, and then he scrambled into the truck. Liam put down his phone long enough to look over at us, and then he stared shouting at his brother, their unintelligible voices carrying across the distance.
Tires spun on the wet road, and then the loud truck rumbled away.
"Looks like you already put the fear of God into them," Leslie said, head turning to watch them disappear.
I frowned after them, a queasy feeling coming to my stomach.
Somehow I doubt that was because of me.
*
I made my own stop by the General Store for liquid courage, drove two miles out of town, and then pulled over to the shoulder. I unscrewed the bottle and drank half the wine before coming up for air, considered how I felt for a few more seconds, and then finished the rest. I burped up the smell of red wine the rest of the way home, but felt marginally more brave.
The trees were dark and ominous behind my headlights as I turned left onto my property. I drove slowly, trying to drag out what would come next, wondering if Eric--Arix, damnit--would even be there.
Not only was he still there, but he was waiting on the porch, shivering in his coat in a rocking chair. I turned off the truck and stared at his shape without moving.
He doesn't look so scary. He looked handsome, the same way he'd looked earlier with his face between my legs.
Yeah, the wine was definitely helping.
I made myself hop out of the truck and stride up to him like I wasn't afraid at all. "What the hell are you doing outside?"
"Waiting for you," he said. Out loud, as opposed to inside my head. Which was a distinction that felt strange to acknowledge.
"You've got idiot rednecks looking for you and you think the best course of action is to prop yourself up where they can spot you? Intelligent life my ass."
I walked past him inside, and felt him follow.
"That sounded like a joke."
I closed the door behind him, making sure to keep a safe distance. It still didn't feel real. Like I'd imagined everything I'd seen before. But the smell of expelled gunpowder still hung in the air, and I noticed the three discharged shotgun shells on the floor up against the wall.
I walked away from Eric--Arix, goddamnit, he's not who you think!--and went behind the couch. As silly as it seemed, having a physical object between us gave me an injection of courage.
"Show me what you are," I commanded. "I need to see it again."
His lips curled in a sexy half-smile. "You're not going to shoot me this time, are you?"
"That's precisely why I'm standing over here, while my shotgun is over there." I nodded toward the door.
He stared at me intently, borderline uncomfortable. And then his body shimmered like heat waves coming off a desert road, and the jigsaw puzzle that was his body fell apart, then coalesced around itself like a tornado of atoms. The colors shifted, faded, were lanced away until everything was only white, as luminous as any other light in my cabin. The particles clumped together until they were solid bars of light, the same shape I'd seen a few hours ago.
This is an alien, my mind screamed. There's an alien in my cabin.
"Okay, that's enough." I closed my eyes against his form, both because it was too bright and too queer to accept. "Turn back. Please turn back."
I was begging him then, my voice practically giving out. The lump in my throat expanded as I waited, and I gripped the couch for stability.
What is wrong with me?
It was obvious when he'd changed back, because even through my eyelids I could see the light fade. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and opened my eyes. Sure enough, Arix's human form now stood before me, a man of thick muscle and beautiful almond eyes.
"You're an alien."
Arix nodded, raven hair swaying from the motion.
"From the planet... Carry?"
"Karak," he said softly. "We are a Dominion of planets."
A Dominion of planets. As if that meant anything to an Elijah, Wyoming woman. Two days ago I'd thought of Uber as a mysterious and foreign phenomenon.
"And you fly around the galaxy doing what, exactly?" I knew there was an edge to my voice, but didn't care to stop it. Or couldn't. "Landing on strange planets? Seducing women out of cruel curiosity? Then leaving them forever?"
Arix smiled sadly. "No."
I threw up my hands and shouted, "What do you mean no? Because it sure as shit seems like that's what's happening here!"
His eyes got a faraway look, and I sensed he was thinking of home. I wondered about the features of his home planet. Did it have oceans, and trees? Wildlife to be hunted in the forest? Did he think humans were cruel and primitive to hunt wild game, eating the meat the way we had for thousands of years?
And then, to my immense surprise, tears shimmered in Arix's eyes.
"I am a Karak scout," he whispered. "By being with you, I have forsaken everything I've worked towards."
"What?"
"We have a directive." He cleared his throat. Was he choking up? "We cannot--nevermind. It does not matter." He shook his head and closed his eyes, and a single human tear ran down his cheek. "I did not come here to seduce you, Joanna of Elijah, Wyoming. I am alone on this planet, and I am scared, and in my vulnerability I turned to you."
The lump in my throat had grown its own lumps, which were now wiggling around. I wanted desperately to go to him, to wrap him in my arms and comfort him. He wasn't a threat, I somehow knew. He was a poor soul who needed my help. The same person I thought he was when I brought him to my cabin in the first place.
The only difference was just how far he'd come.
I yearned to embrace him, and the urge was so strong that I recoiled from it. Suddenly I remembered other details of the past few days, things that hadn't seemed abnormal at the time.
"Are you in my head?" I scrunched up my face. "Can you read my thoughts?"
"Karak have that ability," he admitted. "But--"
"Are you making me feel this way?" I demanded. A wave of hurt washed over me, foolishness and regret. "Bending me to your desire?"
"No!" He strode toward me with one hand out. "Jo, we have this ability. And I admit that I have used it three times since coming here. But never to make you sexually attracted to me."
I wanted to believe him, but again that only made me wary.
"I just..." Arix held his head in both hands. "Sometimes I think it is the other way around, Jo. That you are controlling my thoughts and desires, they are so strong!" The tears flowed freely now, and he pleaded with me with his eyes. "I am a Karak scout, Jo. And yet I have forsaken my vows by being with you."
He stepped forward and gripped me by the arms, putting his face close to mine. He smelled like sweat and musk, and something deeper underneath.
"And the truly incredible thing, Jo? I do not regret it." He shook his head rapidly. "Everything I know I have cast aside in a single day, and I do not regret it one atom. Because being with you, even for so short of a time, has been unlike any experience I have ever had. Fourteen planets in half as many galaxies, and Joanna of earth is the one to have converted me away from my Karak self."
I could feel it. By God, I could. He was telling the truth. Nobody was forcing me to feel that way: my mind gathered the evidence, came to a conclusion, and surrendered to the feeling.
"I don't regret anything either."
I pulled his hands from my arms and then wrapped them around me.
"It's okay," I said into his chest, squeezing him tight. "It's okay, Arix. I don't know how I can help you, or even if I can, but whatever I have is yours. Whatever you want, I'll give you."
"The only thing I want is you, Jo."
My chest swelled.
"Forget my craft. And my planet. And my duties. It's you, Jo. All I want is you."