Chapter Five
Brooklyn
It had been exactly one week since our dinner date, and I had seen Korus five times since then. Despite how little time we’d actually known each other, we seemed incapable of leaving each other’s side unless we absolutely had to.
I was spending all my time not working thinking about him. I felt like a teenager, wondering what he was doing and if he was thinking of me.
At one point, I actually started humming in the lunchroom.
Humming.
Korus had planned a late, late date for this night and so I made sure I wouldn’t be on call. I’d met him at a clearing called Gazers Field. A large clearing in the woods that stargazers and photographers often came at to look at the shooting stars.
We walked out into the valley with the stars overhead, and the ridiculous romance of it all made me smile. I looked over at the mysterious man who had suddenly come into my life.
Everything with Korus felt new again. I hadn’t felt this alive since…
Well, since before Alexandra was taken.
Korus reached out and grabbed my hand, walking me barefooted into a clearing. The grass below us was wet and cold, but waiting for us steps away was a thick, splayed-out blanket next to a roaring fire.
“What’s this?” I said with surprise, and he stopped me in my tracks, grabbing my chin with his fingers and kissing me.
“We’re camping out tonight,” he said evenly.
“Yes,” I giggled. “I see that.”
“What, you have a complaint?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He narrowed his eyes playfully and tapped my nose. “What I’ve learned about you, my Brooklyn, is that you always have a complaint.”
“That’s a horrible thing to think about me!” I laughed.
“So, out with it,” he said, rolling his wrist. “What is it?”
I bit my lip and couldn’t help but grin at him. I pulled him closer, kissing him again. When I pulled away, I admitted, “It’s pretty cold.”
“And there she goes,” he said, pressing his eyes shut. “Well guess what, princess?” He pointed towards the crackling fire and hurried me forward. “That’s why we have the fire.”
“Is this legal?” I chittered nervously, giggling as I walked toward the blanket. We laid down on it, just close enough to the fire to get some real heat without roasting.
“Complaint number two!” he teased and sat down next to me.
“That’s not a complaint!” I laughed. “That’s me not wanting us to get arrested.”
The moon rose over the trees, and it lit up the sky as I’d never seen it before. He pulled me down to the blanket and pointed up toward the first shooting star of the night.
We watched as the blaze of light shot across the sky, and I smiled over at him, snuggling in closer.
“You certainly picked the most romantic event possible,” I said with affection. “See? No teasing in there! No complains or hidden meanings!”
“Wow,” he mocked. “I’m impressed.”
I looked him over, studying his perfectly square jaw and clean face. I ran a hand through his mane of dark hair and said, “So am I.”
“I love this place,” he said, almost out of nowhere. “It’s so…lonely.”
“And you like being alone?” I laughed into my hands.
He gave an unenthusiastic shrug. “Sometimes…you need to be alone.”
I nodded. I knew the feeling. After Alexandra was taken, I would often head out to Central Park and just…wander. I liked the feeling of being completely alone with my thoughts. I could run, think, not think, people watch. I could wallow in peace instead of feeling obligated to fix everything—my parents, my life, my grades.
“But now that I met you…” he shrugged bashfully. “I’m not sure if I want to be alone anymore.”
“Well, that’s good,” I announced. “Fast, but good.”
He shook his head and then set his jaw, suddenly serious. “Talk to me,” he said slowly.
“Okay,” came my excited response. I slapped my hands on my legs and exclaimed, “About what?”
“Why do you hate the media so much?” he asked, swallowing hard.
“You brought me here to ask about that?” I asked, trying not to get offended. “There are a lot of people who hate the media.”
“Not as much as you,” he said slowly.
“My…” I inhaled, unsure if I wanted to share something so personal with someone so new in my life, “sister,” I managed to force the word out, letter by letter. “She was taken by the…”
He looked sullen, stiff. He swallowed hard and looked intensely at me.
Wisely, he let the silence linger without saying anything. We listened as the crickets chirped and grew louder, as the fire crackled and the sounds of the night filled our little clearing. Then I leaned on my side to face him, and he did the same.
“Okay, don’t think this is weird. Please.”
He nodded. “I promise.”
“Remember the raid of the Parduss? The L7 war?”
“How could I forget?” he said sharply, holding my hands.
“She…” I corrected, “Alexandra, was taken. By them.”
His eyes darkened at that, and he gave my hand a squeeze.
“I know that sounds strange,” I said quickly, trying to hold back my emotions. The truth was, I didn’t really talk about this with people. In fact, the only ones I had ever talked about it with were my boyfriend of the time and Maddie.
Maybe this was just a pattern with me. Maybe every couple of years all of my emotions were bubbling forward, and it just had to come out.
“No, no,” he said, hushing me. “It’s not strange.”
I raised a brow at him.
“Alright, well, it’s not something you hear all the time but…I think that is more common than you think.” He paused, stroking his thumb over my hand and propping his head up on his free arm. “What happened?”
“They took her along with some other girls. They were all part of a terraforming project happening on one of the new colonies near the L7 cluster. The Parduss attacked their base on Earth before they ever had the chance to leave.”
“That’s what the war was named after,” he nodded, probably already knowing the historical tale.
“Anyway, after she was taken there were all these reporters hounding my family and me. Even now, just when I think I’m finally getting on with my life, one pops up! Or, calls my house asking for some kind of comment or asking how I feel about the case never gaining any traction.”
“The Parduss were defeated,” he said slowly. “Isn’t that traction?”
“Yeah, but they never found Alexandra, or any of the other girls who were taken.”
He looked down at my hands and then back up at me, our faces laying sideways, so close to each other I could feel his breath ghosting over mine.
“Have they gotten close?” Korus asked with interest.
“To finding their planet?” I clarified. “Nah. Not that I know of. There are some independent factions looking into it, but if they know anything they’re certainly not telling me.”
A silence lulled over us once more, and I swallowed down a thick, winding ball of emotion.
I was waiting for his apology or his pity. Him to ask about her funeral or what my relationship was like. But instead, his eyes glazed over and he looked just as lost as I had been all these years. Then his pale blue eyes met mine once more, and he said,
“I wish I could find her for you.”
It was one of the single most important things anyone had ever said to me.
For the past ten years I’d heard ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I can’t imagine’ and plenty of ‘My sympathies’—but I’d never heard someone say they wanted to find her. To take it all back so completely. After all, nobody else believed she was still alive except for me.
I smiled at him and let my finger trail down his thick arm and watched as his skin lit up with goosebumps. When I was finished, I looked up at him, watching as he took my hand back into his. They were large and warm and my face flushed as I realized I wished he was touching more of me than just my hands.
“I…like you,” I announced quietly, surprising even myself.
He smirked. “Just deciding that now, are we?”
“I guess I’m slow on the draw.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry. I forgive you.”
At that, I moved in, pressing my lips against his, and he instantly followed suit. He ran his hands up my breasts and then through my hair, kissing me passionately and dipping his tongue into my mouth.
Within an instant I was on top of him, pulling his shirt off and throwing it down beside us. His hands raced to my breasts, which were spilling out over my bra. His hands shook as he gently massaged them. I reached behind and unhooked it, slowly slipping it off and watching with delight as his eyes glazed over with lust.
I could feel him getting hard underneath me, and it made me smile triumphantly. I leaned back down, kissing him and running my hand through his wild mane of thick locks. I had never gone this far with someone so quickly, but I couldn’t find any other way to express what I was feeling. I wanted him. I wanted to connect with him the way my mind already had.
With just a few simple words, he’d needled his way into my soul, and I couldn’t shake the need for him.
I ground against him as he kissed, exciting myself with his body and feeling my heart race and pound.
I unzipped his pants and pulled them down, watching with a smile as he kicked them off and repeated the same on me. I sat between his legs, rubbing my hands up his thighs and got ready to greet his thick penis with my mouth, but he grabbed my hand, pulling me back up to his face. The gesture made me like him even more.
My legs straddled either side of him as I slipped Korus inside of me. He grabbed my hips, one in each hand, and we both breathed out a groan of ecstasy at the sudden connection, the slippery feeling of one another’s most intimate embraces.
He pulled me down to his face and kissed me, rocking my hips against him. I writhed and moaned on top of him, already feeling my orgasm building. “You feel amazing,” he said with a startled breath, looking up at me.
“And look,” I said breathlessly as our bodies moved in a passionate, desperate rhythm. “No complaints.”
He smirked at that, cocky and sexy as pulled me close, kissing me as I trembled with a full body orgasm. He held my breast in his hand, squeezing it tightly as he came shortly after.
We stayed frozen in position when it was over, unsure what to do.
It was that magical moment after being with someone for the first time. Wondering what the other person was like after sex, what the connection would be like, how things would change, whether they like to kiss or shower or hell, even smoke. To my delight, Korus simply pulled me close to his body so that my head was resting against his racing heart.
“That’s not why I brought you here, I hope you know,” he said with a startled laugh.
“Funny, because that’s why I showed up,” I teased, crawling my fingers across his chest like a little bug.
“What we have here is special, isn’t it?”
He asked his question so genuinely, so innocently that it sent butterflies through my entire body.
I giggled at the sentiment. “It is for me.”
“I’ve never felt like this before,” he said. It was a line that guys said. I knew that, and I would have rolled my eyes if I didn’t feel the same way.
“Me neither,” I mused with a laugh.
“Look…Brooklyn,” he breathed. “I have to tell you something.”
My heart sank at the sentiment, a sudden rush of blood crashing in waves through my head. I knew it. I knew it had to be something.
What…was he married?
A secret spy?
On the run?
I had horrible, horrible luck with men. My last boyfriend turned out to be in love with his best friend. His male best friend. The one before that was constantly trying to get me to drop out of med-school and become his little pregnant wifey. And the one before that…well…he was my boyfriend when Alexandra went missing, and I really put him through the wringer.
Put us through the wringer.
I forced myself to pull away from my thoughts, and I looked over at the beautiful man before me. The one who had just swept me off my feet and so naturally had to rip my heart out now.
“What?” I said, shaking my head and pressing my eyes shut. “I’m sorry. What did you say, Korus?”
My heart was beating so fast I could barely hear what Korus was saying.
By the time my eyes had focused on his, he was bringing his finger to his mouth, his expression pale and stoic and frightened as he said: “Get down and don’t make a move.”
Then I heard the sound of wind whipping wildly, like a confined tornado, it sounded like something massive hurtling toward us. Then I heard a loud crash, like steel on steel, and the sounds of the Earth aching below the wreck.
I swallowed hard and pressed myself low to the ground, feeling the dewy blanket cold against my breasts. My palms were flat on the ground, and my body shook at the sudden vibration I felt across the field.
Looking up ever so slightly, I could see the plumes of smoke coming from the crash site. Another ship that had plummeted into our world.
My eyes darted up to Korus, and he stood erect, too shocked to move, his eyes scanning the field. Suddenly, amidst the crickets and night birds and the crackling fire, we heard an intense, hollow, guttural roar that whipped across the valley.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, trembling. “Korus, what is that?”
He crouched quickly, lowering himself to the ground and covering my body with his.
“Holy shit,” he whispered out, and we heard an unearthy, rumbling bellow sound through the field again.
“It’s them,” I said to myself. I knew it. It was the Parduss.
Korus’ body went cold, and I could feel his fear radiating. “It’s them,” he nodded, “Stay quiet. They’re coming.”