MY NEW SHEETS WERE RUBBING against me in the most sensuous way. Lightly caressing and molding to my bare legs in a manner that was heavenly. My God, but they were soft. I would have to order another set of these—if I could remember when and where I’d gotten them.
Wait … had I gotten new sheets?
I noticed the room was too bright behind my closed eyes. My bedroom never got this much sunlight in the morning. Then I remembered that I had been staying with Jay. Sleeping on his couch so that we could figure out what to do about me going to Vair’s x-club the next—
Shit!
I jackknifed to a sitting position.
My heart racing, I gaped at my unfamiliar surroundings. I wasn’t at Jay’s. I was in a massive bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows along one whole wall, revealing gorgeous views of clouds and sky. In a mad moment of sleep-deprived idiocy, I feared Vair had abducted me on his alien spaceship.
Then I jumped out of bed and saw the blessedly familiar skyscrapers of NYC below.
Below?
Jesus, I was high up. In a penthouse somewhere.
“Good morning.”
I spun around so fast at the sound of Vair’s voice that I nearly toppled over.
“Hi,” I said automatically, my face flushed and my eyes wary as they met his. He was leaning casually against the wall by the door. I realized that I must be in his bedroom.
Crap. I’d spent the night at Vair’s place?
I glanced down and was relieved to note I wasn’t naked. I was wearing a very soft, very large man’s shirt. Vair’s shirt, no doubt.
Vair was dressed for the day already. Looking polished and elegant—and devastatingly attractive as he stood staring at me with his dark, all-assessing gaze.
“Good morning,” I said, sounding like an imbecile. I was out of sorts; I didn’t know what to say or do.
He smiled. “The bathroom is that way if you need it.” He pointed to my right. “You’ll find towels and whatever toiletries you require.”
“Great!” I practically shouted it as I made a beeline in the direction he’d pointed to, doing my best not to run, and also to mask my freak-out when I noticed that the bed and nightstands were floating above the floor in the same manner the furniture had in Vair’s x-club basement room.
“Oh, and Amy,” he called out just as I reached the open door to his lavish bathroom.
“Yeah?” I jumped and spun around, releasing a startled gasp when I found him standing directly behind me.
He caught me by the shoulders and steadied me on my feet, a frown marring his brow. He looked like he was about to ask me if I was all right in that way that he always did, so I headed him off.
“I really gotta pee!”
“Of course.” He released my shoulders. “I only wanted to tell you that the bathroom, like the rest of the apartment, is intelligent. Equipped with Krinar technology that is programmed to respond to my voice and to my gestures and mental commands. I haven’t programmed it to respond to you yet, so you may need some help getting the shower settings the way you want them if you decide you’d like to shower this morning.”
I’d stopped taking his words seriously after he’d referred to his penthouse as an “apartment.” I shut down and disregarded them completely at the point when he implied he was going to program his shower to respond to my commands—like I’d be here using it so often that’d be necessary.
I shook my head and waved him off with a shaky smile. “I’m just gonna hit the head and be on my way, okay? I’ll just … shower at home.”
I shut myself inside the bathroom and locked it before he could get another word in. Then I forced several calming breaths as I counted to ten.
Vair’s bathroom was, in a word, ridiculous. My eyes feasted on black and white marble, an enormous sunken tub, and a walk-in shower for twenty people with a wall of glass overlooking the city.
I couldn’t deal. And I actually did have to pee.
There was no normal toilet, but there was an upright porcelain hollow cylinder with rounded edges where a toilet should’ve been. It was missing several critical toilet components, though—namely, water and a flushing mechanism.
Oh, what the hell. I sat on it and relieved my bladder anyway. I realized when I was done that there wasn’t any toilet paper in the bathroom either. I cast my eyes to the ceiling. Typical bachelor pad oversights apparently extended to aliens, too.
I was contemplating my options when a warm breeze blasted my ass without warning. I leapt off of the cylinder with a yelp.
Looking down into the white porcelain, I saw no trace of urine, even though there was still no water in the cylinder and there had been no flushing sound. I also felt clean and dry. Well, it was different, but pretty darn handy, I had to admit.
The sink looked slightly more normal, but there were no controls or buttons on the faucets. Assuming it had motion sensors, I waved my hands under it. A soap-like substance came out, followed by water a few seconds later. Huh. Neat.
After washing my face, I stood inspecting it in the mirror, noting that I looked far better than I felt on the inside. My skin was clear and healthy-looking, and I didn’t have terrible dark circles under my eyes, as I would’ve anticipated.
There was a brand-new toothbrush and a travel-sized toothpaste on the counter that I made use of. It’d looked as if they were there just for me, making me wonder what the Krinar did to clean their own teeth.
Despite all of the sweating I’d done the night before, I noted that I didn’t stink. In fact, my hair and body felt freshly washed. Disjointed memories surfaced of Vair bathing me at some point during the night.
And of Shalee coming to check on me.
Even amid my waning bite-induced haze in the early morning hours, I remembered thinking that her methods for “checking my vitals,” as she’d called it, were fairly unorthodox.
My pulse spiked as I recalled her inserting a slim medical device about the size of a tampon inside me. I plopped down onto a marble bench by the shower’s entrance, hiked my feet up, and spread my knees wide.
After the amount of intense, rough sex I’d had with Vair—who was by any human standard, huge—it should’ve been painful merely to pee this morning. But I felt perfectly fine. And I looked perfectly fine down there—just like the first morning after I’d hooked up with Vair at his club. It had puzzled me at that time as well, initially causing me to wonder if I’d only imagined the events of our first club encounter.
It was widely presumed that the Krinar had advanced healing technology, given what humans had been told of their extended lifespans. Was it possible that Vair and Shalee had utilized their Krinar medical technology on me? Just to heal my vajayjay faster?
As crazy as it was, it seemed like the best explanation for how I’d managed to heal so quickly. But why would they do that? And without my consent?
Had they done other things to me?
Stripping off Vair’s shirt, I stood and inspected the rest of my body in the wall mirror, noting that I had none of the marks or bruises that should’ve come with the way that Vair had been holding and touching me the night before at his club—squeezing and gripping my flesh like he couldn’t get enough of it. There were no bite marks on my neck, either.
Nor on my ass.
As I scanned every inch of my person, it dawned on me how well I could view every detail, each tiny pore on my blemish-free skin.
My eyesight!
I wasn’t wearing my blinder glasses. I had no idea where they’d even ended up after Vair had removed them along with my clothes.
Holy shit, had they done something to correct my lifelong vision impairments as well? Was that why I had been seeing better without glasses these past weeks?
But why would they do it? Why me?
I sat back down on the marble bench, rested my elbows on my knees, and dropped my forehead in my hands as Tauce’s awful words about me being Vair’s property swam in my mind. About how Ks take what they want and keep what they claim as theirs.
Oh, God. It was no more than what Vair himself had said as he’d been ramming into me from behind in the x-club basement. He’d said that I belonged to him, that he was keeping me this time, and that he intended to fuck me for all eternity.
“Amy?”
I jumped at the sound of Vair’s voice and his soft knock at the bathroom door.
“Are you finding everything you need in there?”
“Yes!” I called out. “Everything’s fine. I—I’ll be right out.”
I slipped his shirt back on and exited the bathroom. He was standing outside waiting for me, a subdued smile on his lips, his eyes soft. It was almost as if he were trying to appear nonthreatening.
As if the predator that he was had scented my fear and panic.
He held his hand out to me. “Come. I’ll show you around.”
I slipped my hand in his and did my best to keep my cool as he led me through the grand opulence that was his “apartment.”
The place was enormous. It had to have been the entire top three floors of the building.
Sleek and modern, elegant and minimalist, with floor-to-ceiling windows that stretched three stories high, the penthouse was a study in clean lines and architectural symmetry. And Vair’s futuristic furnishings and technologically advanced appliances and equipment somehow complemented rather than clashed with the more conventional marble surfaces and oak herringbone floors throughout that were reminiscent of traditional Park Avenue residences.
As stunning as the space’s interior was, the views from the windows were awe-rendering. We were no longer in the meatpacking district—that much was certain. The view from the main room faced north, and we were high enough up that I could see clear across Central Park to the George Washington Bridge.
There were no words. But I found one.
“Wow,” I breathed, my quiet morning voice lost in the grand space.
Much like me.
“Do you like it?” Vair’s thumb caressed back and forth against the sensitive skin of my wrist.
I nodded. “It’s … breathtaking.”
It was a work of architectural genius. On Park Avenue. A coveted NYC residence that likely traded somewhere near the hundred-million-dollar range. And I was standing in it, looking out across Central Park—holding hands with the alien invader sex-club owner who lived in it.
I needed to leave.
He gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Thank you.”
At his words, I turned away from the view to find him smiling at me as if he was genuinely pleased by my reaction. “I’m glad you approve.”
He didn’t sound the least bit sarcastic.
I swallowed, fighting down the panicked voice inside me that was screaming: Run.
“You hardly need my approval,” I said with an anxious laugh, feeling small standing there in Vair’s oversized shirt—and gargantuan penthouse.
His hand shifted against mine, his fingers repositioning to link between my own.
“You don’t need to be nervous, Amy.” His thumb resumed its idle stroking.
My heart rate spiked. Blood pounded in my ears and my face prickled with heat. My stomach roiled and dark spots began to invade my vision. I suddenly felt more terrified standing there holding Vair’s hand than I had been in the basement of his x-club—surrounded by aroused male Ks and restrained by an animated glass wall.
It was ludicrous. But it was also very real.
I knew Vair sensed it, too. Heard the concern in his voice that sounded so far away through the blood rushing in my ears as he asked me if I was all right.
Sheer will and the greater fear of embarrassing myself kept me from fainting on my feet as I closed my eyes and nodded.
“I’m afraid of heights,” I mumbled, knowing that I had to tell him something. “I shouldn’t have come so close to the window.”
I was off my feet, cradled in his arms, and being carried across the room before I’d taken my next breath. He set me down on a white, floating couch-like surface and said that he’d be back. He returned with a glass of light pink liquid, and I drank it all without even asking what it was.
That was the moment I knew, I was no longer afraid of Vair. It wasn’t the scary Krinar alien in him that I was panicking over—it was the alien feelings and reactions that he was inducing in me.
I needed to get it together and get the hell out of his penthouse.
I felt the weight of his warm palms upon my knees as he knelt in front of me. I met his dark gaze, and immediately regretted it.
It wasn’t the concern that I saw there that unsettled me, nor was it the sincerity. It was the understanding. The quiet knowing in his bottomless eyes that wordlessly projected that he totally got that I was full of shit. And he was okay with it.
“I know you’re afraid of many things, Amy.” His voice was low and gentle. “But I don’t believe fear of heights is among them.”
Neither of us dared speak. You could’ve heard a pin drop. But it wasn’t a pin that I heard; it was the theme song to The X-Files playing quietly in the distance.
My phone!