Unworldly Encounter Complete Series (9 page)

“How much longer do you have?

“That is complicated,” Jan’s lips twisted into something like a grimace. “I have decided that I cannot bring a woman and fulfill my quota. This is a problem.”
 

Andrea smiled slightly, brushing her hair from her face. “So you decided that outright? You didn’t seem quite so certain the last time we talked about it.”

Jan looked into her eyes. “I told you before that it would be in bad taste. I am more certain of it now.” He shifted on the bed, pulling Andrea around on top of him. “I cannot subject another woman to what I know would be… unpleasant. Not when I know you.”
 

Andrea swallowed. Part of her was flattered at the fact that she had managed to effect such a change in the alien’s mind. Another part of her worried about what the consequences of that would be—not only for Jan, but for her. “So you can’t bring yourself to do that… yeah, it would make things complicated for you.”

“I cannot go back, I think.” He shook his head, giving another one of his shrugs. “Later today they will be—I think you say, checking in? Checking in on me. Seeing if I have found a suitable woman.” Jan let out a slow, deep breath, “When last I spoke, they informed me that I was one of only two of my kind who had not reported back.”

“So you’re holding them up already?” Andrea felt her heart beating faster in instinctive fear.
Would they come looking for him? If they found him with her—would they just decide that she was his contribution to the study?

“Yes. I told them that it is difficult making contact with human women.” Jan smirked as Andrea laughed at his comment. “They had given me a recipe. A way to—how is it you say it? Hide in plain sight? It changes the appearance so that I can look human.”
 

Andrea stared at him in surprise, “There’s a way for you to do that?”

“It isn’t perfect, but there are things—plants and minerals—that can give the illusion, for a time. Apparently I am not the only one to have this trouble.” He smiled slightly. “I am thinking a thing.” Jan’s expression turned serious. Andrea pressed her lips together, willing herself to wait, to see what it was that he was going to say. “How do you feel about me, Andrea?”
 

Andrea’s mouth fell open slightly, and she sat up in the bed. She wasn’t anticipating that question. “I think I need coffee—we both do. And I think we need to eat something, and then we can tackle this.”
 

Jan’s yellow-gold eyes were thoughtful. “I like your coffee, and I think you are correct. Coffee would help.” Andrea slipped out of the bed unsteadily, rising to her feet and looking around for her robe. She draped it around herself, remembering belatedly that the sash was somewhere unknown—that it had been used in a previous training session and then promptly forgotten.

Jan made the strange sound that was an almost-laugh. “Why must you wear clothes?” He sat up in one lithe, confident movement and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“It’s…” she shook her head, chuckling. “It’s a human thing. I can think better if I’m dressed. At least if I’m a little dressed.”

Jan climbed out of the bed and retrieved the sash from her robe, “I have seen you naked. I know what you look like, every inch of you. Why would you hide?”

Andrea rubbed her chin, “Do you go around naked around your people?”

Jan considered the question, “Among strangers, no. But when mates are together, there is no reason to be clothed. Their bodies belong to each other.” Andrea smiled, it was a lovely sentiment. There was something about the way he was likening their situation to mates—the way that he had done, repeatedly—that almost troubled her.
Coffee. Drink some coffee and then figure out what the hell is going on here.

Jan followed her into the kitchen and watched as Andrea loaded up the coffee pot, as if he were studying her movements, trying to understand the significance of them. “What do you want to eat?” she asked.
 

Jan moved his broad shoulders, “I do not know your foods very much. What do you normally eat at this time of day?”

“Well, normally I am at work by now with my stomach growling for lunch.” She opened the fridge. Jan couldn’t tolerate grains, but he had shown an appreciation for meat, eggs, milk, cheese, and fruits and vegetables. She looked at what she had on hand and decided that at some point in the near future, she would absolutely have to get to the store.
Nothing like an alien almost-abduction to throw off the routine,
she thought dryly, remembering that Sundays were her usual grocery shopping day.
 

While the coffee brewed, she scrambled eggs, adding vegetables into the mix along with some leftover cheese. Andrea loaded up their plates as Jan watched, toasting some bread for herself and getting more food out of the fridge for him. Andrea was pleased to notice that Jan seemed to have gotten the coffee routine down completely; he poured two mugs, added milk to both and sugar to hers, and stirred with the exact mannerism she used before handing off her mug.
 

They ate and drank in silence, and Andrea mulled over the question he had asked.
How did she feel about him? What did she think about him?
Well, for starters he’s the best lay you’ve ever had,
she thought wryly.
The being an alien thing is a little strange, but he’s… sweet. Smart. Apart from the coming here to abduct women for genetic and scientific experimentation, he’s pretty much the best guy you’ve ever been with.
She reflected on the weekend they had been together—the fact that Jan was willing to stop whenever she used her safe word, the fact that he had changed his mind so entirely about the wisdom—the ethics—of abducting human women simply from having interacted with her. Did he have feelings towards her? His interest in becoming her “mate” seemed to point to that. The fact that he accepted it as a foregone conclusion was a little strange.
 

She cleared her throat, taking a sip of her coffee. “You keep mentioning that you’re engaging in a mating ritual with me,” she said slowly. “How does mating happen among your people?” Jan brought a forkful of scrambled eggs to his mouth and chewed it in silence, his honey-gold eyes looking off into the distance.

“Mating is… a little different, for my people.” He set his fork down. “There is the reproduction of children, which requires much preparation and many people.” Andrea’s eyes widened. “But there are—you would call them marriages. Between families. They are arranged shortly after birth; the two children must be born within three months of each other, and each family arranges certain benefits.”

Andrea pondered that. “So then you’re married?”
The fly in the ointment. I’m the other woman. Or does it not count if it’s a human?

Jan smiled slowly, “I have not gone through with my marriage yet. When I am sufficiently established, my career firmly in place, then I would complete the ceremony and unite my family with another.” He took the last bite of his food and pushed his plate aside. “You have not answered my question from before.”

“I was getting to that,” she said. She picked at the remnants of her toast, thinking. “I really, really like you,” Andrea said, biting her bottom lip as soon as the words were out. “I didn’t expect to—I really didn’t expect to, especially when you came on so strong the first night we met.” She took a deep breath. “I find myself…” she took another breath, licking her lips, trying to think of how to say what she was thinking. “How important is your marriage?”

“If I had not met you,” he said, smiling slightly, “I would have eventually had to go through with it. There would be no way to continue delaying it.” He chuckled, picking up his mug and taking a sip of his coffee. “In fact, part of my reason for joining this voyage was to further delay the inevitable.”

“So you don’t love her?” Andrea wondered, with rising fear, if love was an emotion that Jan’s race experienced.
 

“I do not. But I do find that I love you,” he said.

Andrea had brought her mug to her lips to take a sip; she nearly choked at the matter-of-fact way that he said it. “You love me?”

Jan nodded. “At first I merely felt the strong desire to mate with you. To… feel your body. I was curious about human mating, and wanted to see what it was like. The reproduction—the way it happens with my people, it is not… emotional, the way that it is here.” Andrea absorbed that without comment. “But you were so…” Jan frowned, his mouth moving slightly as if he were sampling words mentally, tasting them, almost. “You were different. Special. From the first time you submitted to me, I felt the bonding. I felt that you must be my mate.”

Andrea felt her heart beating faster, felt her cheeks warming up. It was the most flattering compliment any man had ever given her—and it came from an alien. “You want…” she hesitated. “Do your people mate for life?”

Jan nodded, his face serious. “It is a lifelong commitment. Dissolving unions between two families is permitted in only very particular circumstances. I understand that mating among humans is not always so permanent…” he stared into his coffee cup. “It is a risk that I am willing to take.”

Andrea laughed out loud, shaking her head. “So in a matter of days, you have decided that you want to be with me for the rest of your life?”

“You forget, little one; someone made the decision for me when I was a child. How much harder can it be to stay with someone by choice than by force?” He stood and collected the plates, carrying them into the kitchen, and Andrea felt as if the world had shifted underneath her. Jan was absolutely—without question—the Master in their relationship. He had pushed her boundaries and made it clear that he intended to continue to do so. But then he would do something like this, something that was not in keeping with a picture of her as a servant—which she had thought was his understanding of the relationship.
 

“But you have to go back to your ship, don’t you? You have to go back to your people?” She followed him into the kitchen and saw, to her astonishment, that he was putting the plates into the sink, mimicking the movements she had made the night before as she washed the dishes from their late dinner, down to the superfluous flourish as he poured detergent into the water.
 

“I am thinking I do not go back,” Jan said meditatively. “I am thinking that Jnkrishnk has an accident that kills him, and Jan stays behind.”

Andrea stared at him in unabashed shock. “You could do that? But how would you live here? As far as the government is concerned, you don’t exist. You couldn’t have a job, or do anything, you could not even leave the house, at least not…wait…there’s a recipe, you said?”

Jan turned to face her with a broad smile, “I am able to exist to your government, just how I would like. Your technology is very simple. It is simple to say that I am a foreigner who came here as a child, I think. I will not expect you to support me. I am your Master, it is for me to support you.” Andrea held back a retort that she had been supporting herself for years. “We will find the ingredients I need to make the recipe, and I will look… mostly like one of you. A little strange, but not so unusual as I am now.”

“You’ve really given this a lot of thought,” Andrea said, leaning against the counter to support herself in her shock.
 

“I have told you. You are my mate. My little one. I cannot leave you—and when I want something, I find the means to get it.” Jan finished scrubbing the plates and left them to dry on the drainer. “I had not known whether you had accepted me as your Master, in your mind. Now I know.”
 

Before she could react, Jan had moved away from the sink, closing the distance between them and gathering Andrea into his arms. He held her body tightly against his, and she could feel the hardening of his member, pressing against her through her robe. “You will be my little one, my Drea, and we will be happy,” he said lowly. “You will give yourself into my keeping, and I will punish you and train you, and when you are ready you will be entirely mine.” Jan pressed his lips to hers, sealing out any response that Andrea might have made. His hands tugged at the sash of her robe, and in a matter of moments she felt it sliding down over her body, falling to the floor at her feet.
 

Andrea moaned as she felt Jan’s hands moving over her bare skin, teasing her nipples, reaching down between her legs to stroke her sex. She realized that she was somehow already—or maybe still—soaking wet, her body hot with ready desire, her inner muscles flexing with the need to feel Jan inside of her once more. One of Jan’s thick, long fingers swiped at her pleasure center before moving down along her folds, sliding inside of her slowly. Andrea moaned, pushing her hips down, arching into the touch, ready and eager for more.

Jan lifted her quickly onto the countertop, dropping his head down to her breasts to suck and lick at each of her nipples in turn. Andrea shivered at the feeling of the forked ends of his tongue swirling in independent circles around the firm, delicate nubs, at the feeling of his teeth grazing her. Jan slid another finger inside her, and Andrea moaned out, throwing her head back, squirming on the hard, cold countertop to try and get better contact, to take the invading digits deeper inside of her body. She loved the heat of him, the way he felt against her, the slither of his almost-reptilian tongue. “I will taste you,” Jan said lowly. “I love to taste you. My sweet little one.” He dropped down onto his knees in front of the counter, spreading her legs wide, and Andrea reached down, gripping his shoulders, able to feel his hot breath tracing along her inner thighs.
 

Jan buried his face against her, and Andrea cried out in pleasure as he felt his tongue sliding, slipping, the ends of it squirming against the bead of nerves above her entrance that had somehow become the center of the universe. She pushed her hips down as Jan worked his tongue up and down, tasting her thoroughly, his fingers retreating as she became more and more turned on, as her fluids began to flow more freely. He sucked all of her into his mouth, sending a jolt of pleasure through her body so intense that for a moment Andrea could not even think. His forked tongue plunged deep inside of her, wriggling and writhing, making her body tingle everywhere. She thought she could feel the ends of it against her inner walls in particular, as impossible as that seemed.