Nine

The problems with brunch start the moment we walk through the door.

Everyone wants to talk to Eros. And I have to remember to call him John. My dad tries to pull him onto the porch where all five of my brothers-in-law will talk Seahawks and Mariners until they choke on their sports stats.

That will be a disaster that I could have prevented if I’d remembered to throw in a few phrases for Eros to memorize like, “Go Seahawks,” and “The Mariners will make it to the World Series this year for sure,” during our marathon English-slash-ice cream fantasy session. It lasted well into the evening. I’m still walking slow.

I stick to Eros’s side like glue, even when Deanna calls me into the kitchen to help with drinks. Usually that’s her chance to grill me on my love life, the salon, what I’m doing with my life and whatever oldest sister type stuff she can think of. Since odds are good that conversation this morning will instead center around what I’m sure everyone already knows—Eros and I got married without telling anyone—I give her a tight little shake of my head.

Deanna shoots me a scowl and disappears back into the kitchen. Brunch for over thirty people is no easy task and I should help. But I can’t risk someone asking Eros a question he can’t answer. Or worse, one he can answer and does. At this point, it’s a tossup whether he would divulge his alien origins or explain very succinctly to my dad how he’d licked ice cream from my lady parts last night.

Since he couldn’t drag Eros to the porch, my dad has forgone sports jabber to check out my husband. We stand in the living room, which is the least crowded room in the house. There are only two kids in this one, a miracle of the highest order during any family event. Victoria’s two daughters lie on the floor with crayons and giant coloring books the size of beach towels, happily scribbling at pictures of princesses and fairies.

“So, what do you do for a living?” my dad asks Eros and my insides settle. A little. Score one for predictability.

“I’m between jobs,” Eros returns smoothly and my dad’s eyebrows go up.

“You have quite an accent. Where are you from?”

Ugh, I didn’t go over that one, but Eros responds without missing a beat. “Switzerland.”

I smile. My alien is something else. “John is from a small town along the northern border that no one has ever heard of.”

Fortunately, my dad buys that and moves on to the more important stuff. “Well, I don’t mind telling you how happy I am that you’ve married my daughter. We can’t wait for you and Penelope to start your own family.”

Oh, God, not this already. All at once, a pit opens up in my stomach as I realize that my family will be expecting Eros and me to be a couple from now on. They know we’re married. There is no quiet fading away of the relationship like I had envisioned when I agreed to this stupid fake boyfriend idea.

I should hate that realization more.

“Dad, please. We literally just got married. We might wait for years and years to have kids.” Desperately, I cast about for a way to extricate us from the conversation so I can think. “Speaking of which, we need to go congratulate Jenny.”

I yank on Eros’s hand and he dutifully follows me to the solarium where Jenny is chatting with my youngest sister, Alicia, who holds her eight-month-old son. The pang in my chest is unfamiliar and I can’t stop staring at the baby. He’s asleep, his face relaxed in a precious expression and out of nowhere, I envision a dark-haired baby who looks like Eros snuggled at my breast.

“We just wanted to say congrats,” I tell Jenny as I push away all thoughts of babies. Babies are not a thing. Not with me, not for Eros, whose genetics are all messed up.

Jenny glances up and smiles, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear. Our hair is almost the same honey color and of all my sisters, we resemble each other the most.

“Thanks. I guess you’ll be next huh?”

I groan under my breath but Eros nods. “Family.”

“One day maybe.” I laugh and yes, it sounds as nervous to me as it likely does to everyone else. “We’re still in the honeymoon stage.”

That much is at least true. And now it’s time to make an exit from this uncomfortable room before someone asks another question that will make it harder to cut Eros loose at some indeterminate point in the future. I didn’t need another reminder that I can’t give him what he wants.

We pause in the long hallway to the bedrooms. Jenny’s three children run screaming from one bedroom to another, followed by Deanna’s two older boys. Yeah. That’s definitely not the kind of chaos I need in my life right now. I can barely handle Eros.

He’s watching me quietly, his brown eyes totally focused on me as he holds my hand. I love it when he does that, as if I’m the only thing he cares about in the entire galaxy. For God knows what reason, I choke up a little, my throat tight with unshed tears.

Okay, I know the reason. I have a baby—the salon. It’s my life and it’s enough for me, but I mourn the fact that I’m headed toward a big black void when Eros is gone. He deserves to find an Earth woman who is willing to settle down with him and give him babies—adopted ones most likely but something tells me he won’t care about that. He’s got a big heart and slings his love around pretty freely, after all.

“Take care of Penelope,” he mouths in my ear and pulls on my hand, leading me into an empty bedroom. I cannot fathom how he found one, but I don’t care to spend time pondering the miracle. Quickly he shuts the door and pins me against it. My body reacts, turning hot and needy in an instant.

How did he know this is exactly what I needed?

“Make it fast,” I tell him breathlessly. The more mindless I am, the better. “Hard. I want to come all over you.”

He growls against my throat, enunciating some choice words in Torvian that sing through my molten core. Buttons pop as he tears open my shirt and I’m going to have some serious seamstress work ahead of me before I can face my family again. He pushes my brunch skirt up over my hips and frees himself from his jeans, then boosts me up against the door, easily holding me in place.

In less than a second, he sinks into me and I throw my head back as I’m split open with raw, driving need. His hips roll in that ohmygod one-two shimmy that I cannot get enough of. The angle is so intense and his shaft rubs me exactly the right way as he thrusts. Nonsensical blubbering pours from my throat. Eros goes really deep on the next push and I can feel him seeping through my blood. It’s bright and beautiful, like a star shining on the inside.

I need. He gives. It’s as simple as that and something bursts in my chest as our gazes lock because the reverse is true too and what I’m giving him is plastered all over his face. I gasp as his lips form words that I want to reject, but I hear them in my heart. Love Penelope.

I’m flying already, my thighs clenching his waist as I beg for more. His thumb brushes over my butt cheeks and they tighten involuntarily, but he keeps going deeper, fondling me in places I’ve never been touched. It’s cataclysmic and I come with a cry that I muffle against his shirt, nearly biting through the fabric. He’s a little more controlled vocally as he finds his own release, but as he empties himself in me, his pleasure radiates through my entire body with hot, thick pulses. I feel as if it’s my own and that wrings a strong echo orgasm from my core that nearly incinerates me into a pile of ash.

He holds me so fiercely and I cling to him, our torsos heaving together. I think he means to give me time to recover, but there’s no coming back from this. I’m too far gone. He’s taken pieces of me that I can’t retrieve.

I love you too. I can’t say that out loud. It’s not fair.

But he smiles and tilts his forehead until it rests against mine. He’s silent for once but I can feel the beat of his heart thumping out an erratic rhythm and there’s something new and big and special about our connection.

And I start to wonder if somehow I accidentally verbalized the secret that I meant to keep to myself.

Eros learns more English than I can fathom in under a week, which still doesn’t make him proficient but he can string phrases together well enough. My family adores him and Victoria’s husband, Ricky, who owns a car dealership, offers Eros a job doing security for him. There’s not a lot of talking required, apparently, and Eros is so intimidating that he doesn’t have to do much but stand there in the showroom as a deterrent.

My husband loves that he’s being useful and brings home his first pay check with undisguised pride, holding the printed green and white slip with both hands. That gets me right in the heart. The whole reason he’s here is because the Torvian powers that be decided he was useless and for him to find so much meaning in a simple job speaks to his character.

He doesn’t have a bank account, but the next Monday I take him to First National of Olympia and add him to mine. It’s way too permanent of a step but I try to play it off as a necessary evil. It’s easy enough to remove him later, right?

Removing him from the places inside me that he’s scored so deeply will be the real trick.

We settle into a routine and the girls at the salon make jokes about how big my smile is. If they’re feeling particularly brave, they use it to gauge what kind of naked action I got that morning. Super huge smile means I took a shower with Eros and got the hot, soapy treatment—I’m told. Blissful dreamy smile means I woke up with his hands on me and a semi-boner poking me in the butt.

I keep the truth to myself, which is that I mostly get both, pending how hard he rode me the night before. It’s all too good to last but I’m pretending that’s not true because I have finally started to understand what my sisters have been trying to pound into my skull for eons. Being married is amazing. My husband lives to serve me, especially in bed, and I can’t make him stop. I’ve tried. He ignores me, which is fine because they’re all token protests anyway.

This can’t get any better.

And then Eros proves me wrong when I come down with the stomach flu about a month into our fake marriage that has never been all that fake. My husband hustles me to bed and tucks me in, doesn’t even try to climb in with me and rubs my head while making soft crooning noises that soothe me.

He’s taking care of me in yet another way and I can’t ignore the pings in my heart.

But then I have to because five minutes in, my stomach lurches again and I bolt for the bathroom. Maybe it’s not the flu. I generally don’t eat spicy food, but Eros and I tried a new restaurant in Lacey last night. I had chicken and I was too busy whispering dirty suggestions in Eros’s ear to double check whether my food had been cooked to the proper temperature. This stomach thing could very well be food poisoning.

I feel better after losing what little was in my stomach in the first place. But when I come out of the bathroom, Eros is still sitting by the bed, concern splashed across his face, and I can’t help but playact a little. I’m not a saint and I don’t hate being taken care of. Plus, I don’t feel good enough to roll around in the sheets with him, so I lay back down on the cool pillow and tell him he can rub my head some more if he feels like it.

He feels like it. I drift off as he’s rubbing, which tells me I don’t feel as well as I thought. I’ve been tired lately, which is no mystery since Eros keeps me up late and wakes me early. Then I’m on my feet all day…the next time I’m conscious enough to look at the clock on my phone, it’s six a.m. Eros is in the bed next to me, asleep, which is a rarity. I take a few minutes to just look at him because he’s beautiful and I want to.

His eyes blink open. “Good morning.”

I taught him that. It makes me smile. And then my stomach lurches again, which means no pre-work gymnastics since I’m hovering over the toilet instead. This routine goes on for two days and makes me so insane that I mention it to Clem one morning as we’re getting the salon ready to open.

Her eyes go wide. “Wow, that didn’t take long.”

“What didn’t?” I ask absently as I try to remember what I was about to do with the styling brush in my hand. My memory has been crap lately, mostly because I’ve been worried about why I can’t shake this stomach bug or whatever it is.

“You getting pregnant. Though as much as you and Eros do it, I’m frankly not—”

“I’m not pregnant, what the hell are you talking about?” My mind flips over harder than my stomach as I stare at her. A long greasy wave of panic wells in my chest as I realize I haven’t started my period and it’s at least two weeks late.

This is not happening. I am not pregnant. There is literally no conceivable way that I could be pregnant. I haven’t had sex with anyone other than Eros in like a year.

“Oh.” Clem blinks at me in confusion. “Isn’t that what you’re telling me? You’re sick to your stomach and tired. I thought that was your subtle way of announcing it.”

“It’s not, okay?” I snap back, too freaked to be civil. “It’s simply not even possible.”

It’s not, I assure myself even as I’m thinking back through the paperwork Charmaine gave me that I didn’t finish reading. Surely there’s not some nugget buried in there about how Torvians and humans can procreate.

Without bothering to explain myself to Clem, I dash upstairs. Eros works at the car dealership nearly every day, which has left me free to run my salon. It’s working for us and I’m happy that he’s not here to distract me while I sit frozen on the carpet, his instruction manual spread out around me.

I have read this entire thing. Twice. Surely there is nothing new here to learn but I search for it desperately. All at once, when I get to the section on alien biology, I realize two pages are stuck together.

My heart climbs into my throat the instant I flip to this pristine new page I have never read before. And that’s when I see it: Humans and Torvians are compatible in every way, including biologically. Human women may need extra care during pregnancy as Torvian genetics are not fully understood, but the males appear to be extremely virile. If pregnancy is not desired, extra precaution is necessary.

All of the blood rushes from my head and I choke on a breath because I can’t decide if I’m inhaling or exhaling. Not a stomach bug. A baby.

Oh, God. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant with an alien baby. How is that even supposed to work? Does it claw its way out through my stomach? Dizzy and thoroughly turned inside out I curl into a ball. I lose all track of time as my mind spins through the possibilities.

At some point, Eros comes into the room and kneels next to me, his hands soothing along my arms as he pulls me into his embrace. I go because I’m that messed up and I need his strength right now. Clem must have called the dealership and told Ricky to send my husband home.

“You sick?” he asks haltingly. He’s only just started using appropriate pronouns in place of my name but now is not the time to congratulate him.

“You could say.” It’s not his fault that I made a huge assumption that turned into an even bigger mistake. But there are so many things shooting through my head right now that I hardly know where to start—though first on the agenda should be taking a pregnancy test to be sure.

Assuming a Torvian/human mix actually registers in a woman’s body the same way.

“I have to go to the store,” I tell him and dutifully, he rises from the floor and pulls me up with him. He’d probably carry me down the block too if I asked him.

Eros watches the process of me buying a pregnancy test with utter fascination, but since he can’t read, I’m not sure he understands what the purpose of the product is, nor do I want to tell him, especially if it’s a false alarm. He’ll be crushed.

All at once, it hits me that if the test is positive, he’s getting exactly what he wants. What about what I want?