Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) (48 page)

She stood up carefully, closing the book and placing it on the chair as she walked over to one of the windows of the room, which were covered by plush red curtains tied together by a thick golden rope. They were heavy and soft, crinkling like crushed velvet under her fingers. As Jen gripped them, a scent came wafting out of the material—lavender and vanilla, with a hint of something sharper.

   “Talk about ostentatious,” she muttered under her breath as her fingers gracefully untied the knot bunching the curtains together. Her nimble fingers made quick work of the fat knot, and a moment later, she was slowly spreading the fabric apart to let in the light from outside.

   At first, Jen thought she was looking at some sort of wallpaper, and then at some sort of digital screen. Instead of the gaudy yard and the shining sun, she was looking at a stretch of inky blackness interrupted only by twinkling pinpoints of light in pink, blue, and white hues. After a second, she saw that the twinkles were moving around the black space, zipping by the window as though they were sailing past them. What the hell is this? Why is it dark? Have I been drugged? And are those…No. They can’t be.

   Her heart thudding in her chest, Jen turned on her heel and hurried to the door, seizing the handle with both hands and pulling the way she remembered seeing Oliver do. It didn’t budge, not even when she leaned back with the full force of her weight and jerked her body back like a man being hung. When the door still didn’t move, she let out a panicked yelped and spun around—only to have her breath frozen in her throat.

   A huge wheat-orange planet was looming ever larger in the window, and as they passed it, Jen could clearly see a large, burnt sienna spot swirling on its face. Its body was striped in greyish whites and tawny, and it resemble a great marble, especially as it sank out of sight and shrank smaller and smaller in a distance. The huge planet receded, but stayed visible for far longer than any of the other stars. She was looking at Jupiter.

   I’m in space.

   She collapsed to the floor suddenly, and she was grateful for the extra cushioning on her backside. Panic was washing over her, turning her blood into ice as her heart tried frantically to push her cold blood through her veins. I can’t be seeing this; I’m hallucinating. I really am being drugged. It’s the only option.

   Footsteps came down the hall behind the door, and Jen was so scared and bewildered that she couldn’t even move to see who was going to open the door. She heard the lock slide open, followed by the twist of the door handle, and then the door closed again. She drew a deep breath, let it out, then drew another, and finally tried speaking.

   “Oliver?”

   A man’s voice laughed, and the sound rolled over her skin like a gentle massage. “Not who I wanted you to expect first…but I am happy you seem to have warmed to your driver.”

   Jen scrambled to her feet and spun around to finally face Owen James, the six-and-a-half foot owner of the traveling manor she was standing in. He was a little more tan than he looked when she last chatted with him on webcam, but everything else was the same: soft, wavy brown hair that fell just around his ears; incredibly broad shoulders and a barrel chest Jen only saw on modern strongmen and in cartoons; long legs sprouting from slim hips, the whole package clad in dark slacks and a true-blue button down that brought out the cobalt blue of his eyes. He was smiling, and it had the same disarming quality as Oliver; she wondered if, somehow, they were related. Then a heat passed briefly over his gaze—a look that, however brief and unfamiliar, made her shiver down to her bones.

   Jen felt a confusing mixture of joy and rage when her eyes locked with his, and the hope in his eyes turned to fear. She was a full foot shorter than him, but she felt him shrink back when she squared her shoulders and began to shout.

   “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

   “Pardon?” Owen asked hesitantly. He took a step back as Jen rushed forward and pressed her face as close to his as it would get.

   “What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing. With. Me?” she reiterated through gritted teeth. “I look out the window, and it looks like we’re flying through space. What did you do to me?” she gasped. “What did you have your driver do to me?”

   “Nothing!” Owen said, throwing his hands up in defense and Jen tries to push even closer to him. Her chest brushed against him as she backed him against a bookcase, unable to contain her rage and terror.  “Oliver didn’t do anything! Nothing besides follow my orders!”

   “And what were your orders?” Jen shot back. “To lull me into a false sense of security and then make me think I’m going crazy?”

   “You’re not—“

   “Let me leave,” she cut in. “Just let me go. I won’t call the cops, I won’t sue you, I won’t see you again—just let me go, please. I’m not interested in any mind games. I’ll even get my own ticket back.” I knew this was too good to be true.

   “Jennifer, please!” Owen said, his voice taking on a note of panic. “Please, just listen. I asked Oliver not to say anything, in case it alarmed you, but I see maybe I shouldn’t have told him that.     You trust him more than me, it seems.”

   Jen scoffed at the miserable tone of his voice. “You’re trying to make think this house is a spaceship.”

   Owen shook his head. “Not the whole house; just the study and one of the kitchens.”

   When she saw that he was serious, she burst out laughing. “Okay, now I see what’s going on.”

   He brightened, and it made his sharp features even more handsome. “You do?”    

   Jen nodded, feeling her full lips curve upward in a stiff smile. “You’re…eccentric. Maybe you’re legitimately mentally ill, maybe you just like fucking with people…but you must have lots of family money and a very loving family member to help humor you.” She gestured toward the window, where Saturn’s rings were starting to take shape in the distance. “What is that, a projector screen? Did Uncle Oliver help you set it up? Is that why he asked me to humor you?”

   Owen frowned, and he seemed angry now. “Humor me? Is that what he told you?”

   Jen paused, realizing too late  that this was a misstep. What if Oliver really is just a semi-willing captive in this situation? “No, he didn’t say that,” she remedied. “He said…to consider what you said before I made any…rash decisions.”

   “Like demanding to be taken back?” Owen said dryly.

   Jen shot him a glare. Then a thought crossed her mind: why was she not angrier? Her temper could be legendary when it came to being toyed with; why had she not already laid this man flat on his back with her astoundingly strong sucker punch? Then she remembered the odd smell of the curtains, and how still the confusion and awe inside her felt—almost like they were in the process of being frozen immobile.

   “You did drug me!”

   “Only a little,” he said quickly. “Just enough to keep you calm during the flight. But not anything to influence your choices, and nothing to knock you out. Just enough so your body wouldn’t stress about the flight. ”

   “So you’re still going with the spaceship story?” Jen asked.

   Owen looked at a loss for words, and it scared her. It scared her even more that he didn’t appear to look guilty, only angry and afraid. She looked back out the window at Saturn, whose rings were wide and thin like halos on an angel. It floated past—or rather, they floated past it—and something snapped like a dry twig in her mind. She couldn’t find much specific about him online, and he didn’t have any family in the country. The vibration of the house made much more sense as a side effect of takeoff, and even the eccentric coloring make more sense.

   Her eyes settled on the twinkles between the velvety blackness of space, and she realized her body wasn’t even registering the motion of the ship any longer. A soon as she had the thought, Jen felt the rest of the floor drop out from the bottom of her comfortable, complacent universe: she was in a spaceship with her new husband, who was very likely not human. She was in a spaceship with her alien fiancé hurtling toward an unknown and most likely far away destination. She was on a spaceship.

   “I’m on a spaceship,” she said quietly.

   “You’re on a spaceship,” Owen confirmed. He waited for her to say something else, but when nothing came, he motioned to the chair she was sitting in. “Shall we? I’d love to explain before you demand to go home again. At least a little.”

   Jen moved over to the chair, partially because she felt her legs were going to give out anyway. “I can’t make any promises,” she grumbled. Her eyes kept darting between the windows and Owen, whose face was breathtaking even when he was worried. Why do I want to kiss you so badly?

   “That’s fair,” he said. “I don’t expect you to after how poorly I’ve handled this. I’m sorry.” He bit his lip and seemed to want to say more, but he changed his mind.

   Jen ignored his apology. “So you’re an alien?”    

   Owen’s eyes widened in surprise. “Uh…yes. I assumed you would think I was just a human with a spaceship, but I’m glad I don’t have to explain that part.”

   “Why do you look so human?” Jen asked.

   “I believe your planet’s Darwin called it convergent evolution,” he said matter-of-factly. “Our two species developed similar traits and appearances because of similar environments and needs.”

   Jen blinked. “I didn’t know it was that simple.”

   “It is. And we’ve been studying and working with your people for a long time—even learned a great deal from them.”

   “Like what?”

   Owen’s face grew pensive. “About your cultures, mainly, but you also taught us more than a few neat tips and tricks. We started to more efficiently harness the wind on our planet shortly after we studied your wind energy, for example. It’s increased efficiency by eighty percent globally.”

   Jen frowned in confusion. “You guys run on mostly clean energy? I think we probably have more to learn from you.”

   “Each of us could still stand to learn from the other,” Owen said. “And that is where you come in.” He smiled, and the intensity sent a tingle down her spine.

   She sat up straighter in the soft leather chair. “What do you mean?”

   The alien sighed and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Our people, the Karifans, have been keeping a brittle peace with our neighboring planet, Tryllmod, for hundreds of years now. Recently, our neighbors decided they wanted to renegotiate their terms of the peace settlement.” He looked her in the eye, and his gaze was sorrowful. “They let us know this by launching weapons into our atmosphere that killed thousands of our people at a time.”

   Jen gasped and clapped her hand to her chest. “Someone is trying to wipe out your species?”

   “Not wipe it out,” Owen said bitterly. “That would call too much attention to us from the intergalactic council. They just want to make us hurt until we have to give in.”    

   Despite her anger, Jen was leaning forward in her seat, trying to hear Owen’s soothing voice better, and catch a whiff of the maddening scent he was giving off. “And what do they want?”

   “A crop of ours,” he answered, clasping his large, somewhat tanned hands together in front of him. “It’s called the Ula. It resembles corn here on Earth, but golden and silver, like chunks of the precious metal themselves. It sustains our bodies for extraordinarily long times, gives us minor healing powers, and contributes to your longevity.”

   “How long do you live?” she asked curiously.

   Owen looked uncomfortable. “About six hundred years.”

   Jen snorted, then realized he was serious. “Oh, shit.”

   “Yeah,” he said, and his eyes were looking everywhere but at her.

   Anger started to build in her chest again. “So…we get married and then after eighty years I just die? What is it I’m supposed to be doing for you anyway?”

   “I’m getting to that,” he snapped, then immediately sighed and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m a little antsy because I’m hoping you’ll say yes.”

   Jen laughed bitterly, and it stirred pain in the alien’s features. “In case you haven’t noticed, you have me flying through space on a fucking spaceship, Owen. I can’t exactly go anywhere.”

   “But if you wanted to leave I wouldn’t stop you, and I’d turn the ship around,” he said fervently. “And I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, physically or emotionally. If you decide to just tell me to fuck off, I’ll still help you with your clothing company.”

   Jen stared at him for a long while, looking into his cobalt eyes suspiciously. He was gazing back at her calmly, his beautiful features so well composed that she almost had the urge to hit him. His earnestness bothered her even more than his placidity; he seemed to want to make her happy so genuinely and at the expense of anything else that it was almost suspicious. She wanted him to show emotion as badly as she herself wanted to be furious, hysterical, violent—but she couldn’t find any cause to.

Jen assumed it was because of the drugs, but she couldn’t discount the chemistry she knew as between them. Her hands still wanted very badly to touch him,  but she couldn’t allow herself to give in while she still didn’t know what was going on. Jen glared at him, but she couldn’t find a trace of deceit, and it frightened her that he was being so open and vulnerable to her. Had he always been this way? He always seemed honest and eager, sure, but now he was looking at her as though she was their only hope. His people must really need my help, she realized.