The Visitor: Alien Hunger Special Edition (23 page)

He snatched the bag out of the can.
“Yeah, but we don’t want it to start stinking up the
place!”

He felt her gaze on him as he headed
to the door and wondered if she was going to watch him all the way
to the dumpster. He relaxed when he realized the community dump
wasn’t in view of the kitchen window. Setting the bag down when he
reached it, he glanced around a little self-consciously, and opened
it up to look for the test kit. A grin curled his lips when he
spotted it. Snatching it up, he stared at the window and felt a
dizzying wave of triumph shoot through.

He might have crouched staring at it
longer, but a hollow metallic sound distracted him. Dropping the
test guiltily, he jerked his head up just in time to see a man
clambering out of the dumpster.

The other man halted half in and half
out, staring back at him while his face slowly turned a deep red.
He cleared his throat, seemed to wrestle with something, and
finally shrugged. “My fiancée threw her ring in the dumpster. I
thought there might be a chance of finding it.”

Garryk blinked at him, feeling
coldness waft through him. “No shit?”

The guy climbed out, brushing at his
clothes. “No shit,” he confirmed tightly.

“
You pissed her off, huh?”
he asked uneasily, wondering if he didn’t understand Earth people
in general, and Earth women in particular, nearly as well as he’d
thought he did.

“
You could say that, I
guess,” he retorted dryly. “If you happen to spot it while you’re
looking for whatever your girlfriend pitched out …?”

Abruptly conscious of the stickiness
on his hand, Garryk surreptitiously wiped his hand on his jeans
before he thought better of it. “I was just looking for some
instructions I lost. I just remembered I stuffed them in a
drawer.”

The other man frowned. “Is there
another dumpster?”

“
I think there’s one at
the other end of the complex.”

Nodding, the man left.

Garryk frowned as he watched the man
walk off. Shrugging after a moment, he tossed the bag in and headed
back to the apartment.

“
You were gone a while,”
Chelsey commented as soon as he came in.

He glanced at her sharply. “There was
a guy going through the dumpster looking for a ring,” he responded
a little absently, glad for an excuse. Not that he’d needed
one!

“
A ring?” Chelsey
echoed.

“
Yeah, weird, huh? I guess
they had a fight.”

“
They? So it wasn’t his
ring? It was his girlfriend’s? You mean she threw it away on
purpose?”

He was actually pretty relieved that
she sounded so shocked and outraged. “He seemed to think so—said
they’d had a fight.”

“
Poor man!”

“
Yeah, poor bastard—had
shit all over him from dumpster diving. I’m glad you aren’t like
that,” he said, studying her intently.

She shook her head and then looked a
little self-conscious. “I flushed mine down the toilet when I broke
up with Lawrence.”

Garryk frowned at the plate she set in
front of him, thinking about the money he’d sunk into the ring he’d
picked out and decided it was just as well he’d just put a third
down to hold it. Maybe it would be better to wait a little longer
to pick it up?

She hadn’t thrown anything at him when
she’d gotten the test results—not even harsh words—but she’d been
in shock. She was still acting strange, if it came to that. He
studied the food a little more closely and sniffed it, trying to
remember if there were any odorless, tasteless poisons in the
house, and finally dug into his eggs and cautiously took a bite,
rolling it around in his mouth a moment to test it before he
swallowed.

* * * *

It was a damned good thing she’d
thought to take care of most of her chores on Friday, Chelsey
reflected angrily. If she hadn’t she couldn’t have wasted most of
the day Saturday driving back and forth to Lawrence’s house in an
attempt to collect her child!

Staring at the empty house angrily,
she tried to decide if they’d left for the weekend or if she just
kept missing them. It was hard to avoid the fact that the notes
she’d left at the front and the back were still there, though.
Lawrence might have ignored them, but she didn’t think he would’ve
left them.

Collecting the notes after a moment,
she went back to the car and searched her purse for a pen. After
scribbling out what she’d written before, she turned the paper over
and wrote Lawrence a new note, informing him that she fully
intended to talk to her attorney about getting a hearing to see
what the judge thought about him ignoring the court order about her
visitation rights.

She sat staring at what
she’d written, going back over it several times and wondered
abruptly if it was really a good idea to warn him of her plans
after her temper had cooled a little. Lawrence would already have
thought of it himself, she decided. It was what
he
would do, after all!

And maybe the threat would be enough,
she thought a little hopefully? She wasn’t going to let him get
away with his damned highhanded tactics—ever again! But she’d just
gotten her sister paid back from the last loan! Her lawyer would
want another retainer. There wasn’t any point in even scheduling an
appointment if she didn’t have the money in hand, and she
didn’t.

She paid her child support
religiously—making sure it was delivered by registered mail—and
that didn’t leave her much after her living expenses. It was a good
thing Marla had suggested it, too, when she’d told her Lawrence
made it a point to avoid her when it was time to pay.

“
The bastard!” she’d
growled. “He’s trying to get you on non-payment! Don’t think for a
moment he ‘accidentally’ isn’t there every time you go over to pay.
Or that he’s taken pity and doesn’t want it because the bastard
doesn’t need it and knows you do! Send it to him by certified mail
or delivery confirmation if he won’t sign for it. You need to make
sure you keep the receipts, too, as proof! It actually wouldn’t be
a bad idea to get a money order. It would have his name stamped on
it and you’d have a receipt for that, too.”

There was that not too
subtle threat he’d had Larry deliver to consider, she realized. She
was damned if she could see why it would create problems for her,
though! What if Garryk
was
an exotic dancer? He didn’t have a record—that
she knew of.

She considered that and dismissed it.
Garryk had been a troubled kid, but he’d outgrown it. She knew
damned well he wasn’t a habitual offender and there was nothing
about him to suggest ‘jailbird’—that he’d ever spent a day in
prison.

She didn’t see how Lawrence could
suggest Garryk was a bad influence on their son. Well, she could.
He could make up a pack of outrageous lies, but he couldn’t provide
any kind of proof to back them up and she didn’t think the judge
would listen.

Unless she ended up with the same
bastard that had screwed her over so badly in the divorce and
custody issue to start with?

She shrugged it off after
a moment. She was either going to have to fight or to give up and
let Lawrence have his way. The temptation to simply give up was
strong. Fighting with Lawrence always left her the loser and made
her so sick with frustrated rage she felt physically ill and she
didn’t know
how
to fight for Larry. It seemed to her that the harder she
tried the more hostile he was. Maybe she needed to change tactics
in spite of what the psychologist she’d consulted had suggested? It
sure as hell wasn’t doing any good to ‘reassure him’ of her
affection. His typical response was ‘yeah’ or
‘whatever’.

She dismissed the thought. That was
the pessimist in her talking. The psychologist must know what he
was talking about. She just had to hang in until he got over being
angry about the divorce and was willing to listen to her
side.

Getting out of the car, she strode
decisively to the mailbox and opened it. The note she’d left there
was buried under another mound of mail, making it clear there
hadn’t been anyone home to collect it. Removing her previous note,
she resolutely shoved the new one in and shut the box.

Chapter Thirteen

Waking up with an erection
wasn’t all that uncommon for Garryk, particularly since he’d taken
to sleeping in Chelsey’s bed. It hadn’t taken long to discover
Chelsey not only wasn’t a morning person, however, but she was
opposed to being woken up for sex at any time and that was
especially the case in the early morning … and that was
before
she got pregnant
and began to have morning sickness. He usually ignored it and it
went away—eventually.

It was a combination of things—not
really well thought out—that prompted him to make an exception when
he roused Sunday morning and discovered Chelsey was still nestled
warm, soft, enticing, and, even more importantly, dead to the world
in his embrace. The first was the erection itself. His cock had
somehow managed to work its way between her thighs and was nestled
in such close proximity to where he really wanted it that his
barely functioning brain suggested it might actually be possible to
angle it just a hair and get it in without waking her until he’d
had the chance to convince her it was a good idea. The realization
that it wasn’t just a piss hard but a product of abstinence due to
a number of factors—including his thoughtfulness in being less
demanding because she didn’t seem to be weathering her pregnancy
all that well—was the second ill-conceived prompt. The third was
the fact that she didn’t pop him or move away when he began
fondling her breasts, further convincing him that he stood a good
chance of planting himself successfully before she thought to
object.

By the time his slumberous brain had
worked through that much, he was alert enough that he should have
been capable of detecting the flaws in his reasoning, but he was
also fully aroused by that time, which deprived him of a number of
IQ points, resulting in something of a stalemate. He was awake
enough to recall he was on shaky ground at the moment due to the
fact that Chelsey had yet to express her joy that he’d planted a
bun in her oven, but deficient just enough intelligence to begin to
feel a little resentful and a lot abused.

He knew she’d had a lot on
her mind lately, but he wanted
her
when he was half dead from working twelve or
fourteen hours! The very least she could’ve done was to try to
convince him she wasn’t pissed off with him!

He tried to dismiss that on the
grounds of being completely illogical even to him even in his
current state, but he knew immediately why the thought had occurred
to him. He needed proof she didn’t hate him. He wanted to catch her
off guard and see if she responded to him as she always had
before.

That worked!

Allowing one hand to drift from her
breast after a moment, he glided it lightly over her belly and
cupped her mound. Pausing for a moment when she shifted, he held
his breath and then decided to tease her clit before he ‘tested’
the waters. She began to shift lightly against him after a moment,
restlessly, but her breath had begun to catch slightly—enough to
convince him she was aroused.

He slipped one finger
along her cleft and checked the temperature. Hot and wet! That
discovery was almost enough to make him blow his load right then
and there, but he wasn’t wasting it even if he
had
already successfully completed
his mission!

He nudged her hair out of the way and
sucked lightly on the crook between her neck and shoulder. Rear
entrance? Or full frontal? He could get more depth with the frontal
and that cinched the matter. Rolling her onto her back, he planted
his mouth firmly over hers to stifle any objections she might think
to make, sliding smoothly into position between her thighs at the
same time. He’d managed to get the head of his cock firmly wedged
before she came around enough to fully realize she’d been nailed.
He was aroused enough by that time for both of them, however, and
refused to be dissuaded by her sluggish reaction to his heated
kiss, persevering until she kissed him back. By that time, he’d
managed full penetration in a series of determined thrusts—because
she was fully relaxed—mostly.

He had to break the kiss to suck in a
lungful of air or pass out as the pleasure reached fever pitch and
he began struggling to slow down enough for her to catch up. She
gasped when he lifted his lips from hers. The sound threatened to
push him over the edge. He gritted his teeth, struggling to think
of something else, anything beyond the fact that his testicles felt
like they were going to explode.

“
Garryk!”

Thank god! Grinding his teeth, he
managed to hold out when she bucked against him a couple of times
and then drove deeply inside her and released the floodgate before
the dam could burst. The release was pure, agonizing bliss. He
hadn’t realized four days of abstinence when he’d grown accustomed
to having sex at least every other day would result in such a
mind-blowing, gut wrenching experience!