Alien Romance: Rusneon Mates Boxed Set: A Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (8 page)

Chapter 4

Andrea had found herself staring at her boss more and more with every passing day. She watched him more, noticed how he stood over his desk, wondered how he could look so athletic despite staying in the office all the time.

He probably doesn’t sleep.
Andrea had wondered to herself, snorting, but found her curiosity continue to skyrocket.

She reached the one-month mark of working for him, and when she did, some of the scientists in Level 2 had thrown her a small party. She had no idea why, but they couldn’t help but laugh at her befuddled expression and the cake sitting on the lounge table.

“You’ve lasted way longer than any other assistant of his,” Terrence, one of Simon’s colleagues and friends.

“That deserves a party.”

“Right…” Andrea said finally, giving them a smile to humor them.

“Thanks, but, where’s Roland? I have a spreadsheet he needs to look over before I get it sent back.”

“Eat some cake, Champ!” Sally exclaimed, pressing a paper plate of vanilla cake into her hands.

“We’ll get Roland in a bit. Tell us, is he as bad as we know he is?”

Andrea shrugged, holding the cake in her hands awkwardly.

“I guess. He’s not so bad once you get to know him, I suppose.”

“Uh oh, she’s falling in love with him,” Simon groaned, shaking his head dramatically. Andrea flushed a bright pink.

“No, I’m not!” She exclaimed, embarrassed. The group laughed.

“Don’t worry, newbie,” Sally giggled, “Simon’s an idiot. Also, none of us can blame you. The Boss may not be Satan himself but he’s sure hot as hell.”

Pouting, Andrea stuffed a slice of cake into her mouth, rolling her eyes and finally allowing herself to chuckle when everyone laughed. Yet the thought didn’t really hit her until she was waiting for Athena to print out some forms for her to send to Mr. Rhys, her feet swinging from a high chair as the black woman worked from the side of an immense and sleek copier.

“What’s eating you?” Athena asked after some time of silence. Andrea glanced up, surprised.

The woman was smiling. “You’re awfully quiet.”

Andrea sighed, “It’s nothing. Just something the guys in Level 2 said.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Athena said, sounding all-knowing when it came to the shenanigans the scientists in the second floor were capable of.

“They talk big but are pretty harmless. The only person down there you shouldn’t mess with is Sally. Everyone else you can push off easy enough.”

“They aren’t being mean or anything,” Andrea admitted, rubbing her arms, wishing she had brought jacket to wear over her sundress. “It’s nothing. Really.”

Athena shrugged, “Alright.”

For a moment, Andrea considered actually speaking to her, telling her about the thing that happened when she worked after hours with her boss. About the small moments where she swore she felt Dom’s eyes on her, or how whenever she dropped off his coffee, he no longer expected her to leave it on his desk but he accepted it into an open palm. Or how whenever their skin brushed or he peered over her shoulder, she felt like she was growing hot, as if he had become the sun and she was scalding beneath him. How sometimes when he was giving her instructions, she couldn’t help but stare at his lips as they curved out the words.

It was almost hypnotic how they did that… how his voice curled and lilt through certain words in an accent that felt foreign but sounded natural to her. Andrea didn’t realize she was daydreaming until Athena was standing before her, clearing her throat. 

“You alright there?” Athena asked, giving her a wry smile.

Andrea flushed pink, nearly stumbling as she slid off the high chair to accept the documents Athena held out to her.

“Yeah,” Andrea muttered. “Thanks.”

“Take it easy, Andrea,” the woman said with a chuckle, and the look she gave her was one of understanding. Andrea frowned, but shrugged it off until she was in the elevator.

The elevator let out a soft
ding
when Andrea realized what the look meant and she felt a wave of mortification rush over her hands that made the documents fall to the ground in a rain of sheets.

“Dammit,” Andrea swore softly, gathering the documents and ignoring odd stares. When she hurried back into the office, Mr. Rhys was waiting for her by her desk.

When she met his gaze, he was taking a sip from a water bottle, and his expression was so unguarded that she paused to stare in surprise. He blinked at her, not with a glare but with equal surprise.

Shaking her head, she approached him, extending the documents toward him.

“Here, Athena says they’re all here.”

Mr. Rhys nodded, accepting the papers. His fingers brushed hers and Andrea jerked her hand away, as though she had been electrocuted. Her reaction was so sudden that she saw him raise a brow at her curiously.

Clearing her throat, she looked away, muttering about schedules before she shuffled away in the direction of the bathroom.

Something was wrong with her.

Chapter 5

“Maybe you like him,” Stephanie’s voice was teasing over the speakerphone of her phone one Saturday evening.

Andrea felt the cap of her nail polish nearly slip from her grip, a thin streak of purple smearing over her thumb. Letting out a sharp hiss, Andrea placed the cap in its place before reaching for a napkin to clean up the mess on the digit.

“I don’t like him,” Andrea insisted.

“He’s my boss.”

“Never stopped people before,” Stephanie giggled. Andrea threw her phone a black glare, as if hoping her friend would receive the full brunt of it.

“Stop frowning, it’ll ruin your face.”

“Shut up,” Andrea muttered.

“So what, he’s attractive. Big deal.”

“Yeah, but you’re also experiencing tingles right?” Andrea bit her lower lip, focusing on reapplying nail polish on her thumbnail.

“No.”

“Any dreams?”
Yes.

“No.”

“Daydreaming in the middle of work?”
All the time.

“Not even.”

“Fantasizing?”
Dom caught her in the middle of a fantasy once. It had been humiliating trying to explain why she looked feverish.

“Nope.”

“What about accidental touches? Any of those?”

It had almost become a norm, how much they exchanged small touches. While most were innocent, simple nudges whenever she was in the wrong place in the office and he needed to pass, others were questionable.

Like the one time Andrea had nearly tripped over a cable in his office and he caught her hand from falling over and instead of letting go, he had sort of brought her close to his chest before meeting her gaze. She could still remember feeling his voice against her chest through his when he said,
“Be careful, before you ruin something.”

The pause made Stephanie giggle.

“Seems like there might be some mutual interest at play.”

“No, there isn’t.” Andrea huffed, but could feel her stomach open up a new can of worms—different and worse than her first day.

“Well, you never know. But, if there is something going on between you two, I hope you don’t run away from it, Andy.” Stephanie’s voice grew somber, “You deserve to be happy.”

Andrea stopped for a moment, picking up her phone and turning off speakerphone to bring the receiver to her ear.

“Thanks, Steph. I appreciate it… but there’s nothing going on.”

“Keep telling yourself that, hon. Break time’s over. I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Bye, Andy. Be naughty.”

“Shut up, Steph.”

Chapter 6

Two months in and Andrea wasn’t exactly sure about her certain statement to Stephanie that night during the phone call. It was as if with every passing day whatever tension was brewing between them was becoming more and more palpable.

While Dom’s attitude didn’t seem to change much throughout their regular interactions, his expressions had. It was a subtle glance that now seemed to sear into her whenever she walked into the room. He stood much closer now, asking her opinion on stuff that she was becoming more and more familiar with.

She had become able to pick up on some patterns in the work they did and while she still didn’t understand a huge part of it, some of it began to make sense and when she pointed stuff out, Dom paused to look at her with a strange look that made her feel warm.

He did not speak a lot, keeping to himself and focusing on his work a lot. Yet those moments where he lowered his guard around her began to appear more and more frequently.

Andrea was surprised one day, three months into working for Dom Rhys when she walked in to the office with his usual morning coffee and found him sitting on his chair, body reclined with an arm over his forehead. She wondered if he was frustrated about something, considering since she had never seen him like that before.

Instead, she was shocked when she heard his breathing, slow and even, as she approached to place his coffee on the desk.

He’s…sleeping?
Caught between wanting to see him a little more closely and between giving him his privacy and allowing him to rest, Andrea stood by the desk staring at him.

Eventually, the more curious side of her mind won and she couldn’t resist inching closer to try to peer at him. The gray lighting was a little poorer that day due to cloudy weather and the promise of rain, yet it painted him in a different view that seemed more… tragic, if that made any sense.

Andrea never considered herself to be creative or artistic in any sense, but seeing him sitting like that, resting, with an arm crossed over his eyes, it reminded her of a traveler who had been away from home for too long.

The edges and lines of his figure looked less rigid, as though slumped with an exhaustion she couldn’t fully understand or come to comprehend. Upon closer inspection, she noticed how as he breathed, he looked younger, softer even.

It wasn’t until she realized this that she understood that she had been intimidated greatly by him for a long time, but now it didn’t seem like she was quite scared… rather she felt entranced by him.

She didn’t know how close she had gotten until he suddenly moved his arm and he was staring at her with those violet eyes. There was no malice nor aggravation for interrupting this moment of respite, rather, there was a curiosity and even something deeper churning within his gaze.

Andrea stiffened, knowing full well she was caught and that he was staring at her now. All that mattered now was whether or not she ran or tried to explain herself.

He beat her to it.

“You know,” he murmured and Andrea swallowed.

“You can always send me a message to wake me up.”

“Ah, right… sorry.” Andrea apologized, straightening and pulling away.

To her immense surprise, she felt his fingers wrap around her wrist, gently, almost imperceptibly.

When she looked back down at him, he was pulling his arm off his head and shifting to straighten in his seat.

“You make me curious,” he mused aloud. Andrea blinked.

“I… I do?”

“Yes,” he said, and his thumb was caressing the inside of her wrist and making her feel strange and hot.

“You’ve been here a lot longer than the other assistants I’ve hired. By all means, you should have quit ages ago. Instead, you’ve stayed. Why?”

She didn’t understand his question, nor why he would ask such a thing. Swallowing, she licked her lips but felt her breath catch when his eyes caught the motion and honed in on her lips.

“Be…because I like working here,” she admitted quietly.

“It’s a good place.”

“You like working here?” he parroted, and she caught a hint of humor in his tone. “That’s interesting.”

“It is?”

He tilted his head, looking at her with a different kind of appraisal. Suddenly, he was standing and she had to crane her neck upwards to follow his eyes. He towered over her, barely a few inches of space between them and her wrist still caught between his fingers.

“I must ask a question you are free to not answer.”

Andrea searched his gaze, feeling her body tense with anticipation the more his eyes fell to her lips.

“It’s very simple. In fact, it’s more a request rather than a question.”

“Yes…?”

She saw his eyes narrow for a moment, the violet in his gaze darkening, as she saw his pupils expand and the touch in his hand become more smoldering.

His voice was low, rumbling and she swore she could feel it in her throat.

“I would like to kiss you, Andrea.”

Andrea’s mind went blank, all rational thought escaping her as she felt herself surrender to the sensations of being caught beneath his gaze, of all the fantasies she had had several times during work and how none of them could ever make her heart race quite like his words did then.

“May I?”

Andrea swallowed hard, feeling her eyelids flutter as he lowered his chin slightly. The air that passed from his mouth ghosted over hers, making her skin feel electrified with every effervescent thrum of energy between them.

Finally, she nodded, small and minute in case a more sure movement discouraged him or made him change his mind.

“Good,” He murmured, and she felt the way his tongue worked over the word. From the back of the throat before sounding that last consonant with a gentle flick over his teeth.

Andrea shuddered, her mind spinning when his lips finally closed over hers, a soft and velvety texture that felt both bizarre and satisfying.

Andrea tilted her chin, turning it slightly to better accommodate an angle for their lips to better press close. His other hand rose to cradle her jaw, his fingers digging past the curve of her neck to grip beneath her head.

He pressed closer and Andrea surrendered to his grasp, nearly falling into his chest as she felt his mouth work against hers in a series of suckles that left her feeling tingling all over.

Andrea parted her lips, taking in his lower lip and sucking it into her teeth and gently nibbling on it. A low rumble passed from his chest and into hers and he was pulling away for a moment—their lips smacked apart deliciously and Andrea gasped—before crushing hers to his mouth once more. This time the second kiss was powerful, and at one point, she felt her tongue meet his past their glued lips.

She felt like she had licked a battery. The flavor of his mouth was strange, sizzling, and completely intoxicating. She didn’t know she had her legs wrapped around his waist and his arms were pulling her flush against him until one of the machines in the room let out a series of beeps and blips that made him pull away.

Andrea panted, her eyelids fluttering lazily as he panted against her. She saw him glancing down at her with a look of torn amusement.

“I’m afraid we’ll need to conclude this another time,” he said, his arms pulling away from her.

Andrea felt extremely reluctant to part from him, but she did so anyway, noting vaguely that her hair was falling from her bun.

Dom pulled away, straightening his clothes before he walked around the desk in the direction of the monitors. Andrea stood against his desk, feeling her legs quiver shakily from the passion surging violently through her system.

“Andrea,” he called.

“Yes?”

“Did you reschedule the meeting with the Executives from Branch H?”

Andrea frowned, “Yes. I even sent out an email to confirm.”

He let out a short sigh of irritation, “Seems like they didn’t get the memo. Go. Settle this with Athena. I’m much too busy to be entertaining them today.”

Andrea nodded, walking out the door and preparing herself to go meet with the woman in question.

“Oh and Andrea?” Andrea paused to look over her shoulder and felt her body grow alight with fire when he gave her a look that was certainly…
seductive.

“I’ll be needing you to stay until 9 tonight.”

“Ah,” Andrea gasped softly before nodding, feeling her body grow increasingly heightened with anticipation.

“Yes, sir.”

“Dom,” he said.

“Call me Dom.”

“Yes… Dom.”

“Shoo.”