Alexandre (9 page)
“Lily!”
For a second, she floundered in a panic. She swallowed a mouthful of cold water before realizing the stream was knee-deep and she could stand without aid. She scrambled to her feet and stood wavering like a drunken man in the swift current, her hair and clothes dripping. A shiver worked down her spine as her skin reacted to the cool breeze.
“Lily?”
She looked up at the worry in Alex’s voice. “I’m okay. Just a bit wet,” she said in a wry voice. “Stay there. No point both of us getting soaked.” She took a baby step toward the bank, fighting the current and slippery footing and trying desperately not to fall again. A girl’s pride could only take so much.
But Alex didn’t listen. He waded into the fast-flowing stream and reached her side in seconds, making the whole maneuver appear simple. His hands ran down her body, checking for broken bones or bloody wounds. Lily suspected she might suffer a few bruises, but that was all. The thing that smarted most was her dignity.
Clumsy clot strikes again.
Alex swept her up in his arms with an ease that stole her breath.
“No, don’t lift me.” Lily belatedly struggled against his firm hold. Heedless to her pleas, he splashed through the water, heading for the bank and paying no regard to her strangled protests. “You’ll hurt your back. I’m too heavy. You can’t have sex with a sore back.” She paused to take a breath. “Well, you could but it would hurt.”
“Let me worry about my sexual activities.”
Oh, my stars! Burble alert. She buttoned her lips to a prim line and tried to ignore the silent laughter vibrating through his chest.
Alex clutched her a little tighter and halted her uneasy wriggling. But Lily couldn’t help tensing in preparation for a spill to the ground. He couldn’t carry her all the way to the blanket—not without doing himself an injury.
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” Alex said, as if that explained everything. “Not before I check to make sure you’re okay. I mean if you’re hurt, I’ll have to drive.” A teasing grin flirted with his lips.
Lily’s mouth went dry. Her breath stalled in her throat. He sounded as if he cared even though they’d known each other for a few days. Ambrose would have shouted, and he would never have deigned to touch her when she was sopping wet. “Water stains on the designer clothes,” she imagined him saying with a sniff.
Alex stepped out of the stream and onto the bank without breathing heavily or making a single clumsy stumble. Lily started to relax and since she was so close, she studied his face. She savored the cuddle against his muscular chest. He hadn’t shaved this morning. Exhibit one—his jaw covered with golden stubble. Her fingers itched, desperate to touch, but she kept them under firm control. His brown eyes glowed golden, too. Simply looking made her eyes hurt, and she couldn’t help wondering why he seemed interested in plain old her. She didn’t think she was misreading the signs.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth while she considered. No, with her track record, she’d better read the signs again. And maybe she’d break out the reading glasses.
Scant seconds later they reached the tartan blanket. Alex let Lily slide down his body until her feet touched the ground. She shivered at the erotic sensation—the glide of her soft flesh over iron muscles and hard sinew. She quivered as she traced the sensual line of his mouth with her gaze. Her gaze coasted at will, a sigh of regret building in her. Too bad about the layer of clothes that separated them.
“You’re cold.” Once again, concern shaded his voice, touching Lily and making her feel treasured.
He bent to open the picnic basket and pulled out the pack of paper napkins she’d packed. “Get out of those wet clothes,” he ordered. “If we spread them out in the sun, they should dry before we leave.”
He ripped the plastic covering the napkins before looking up at her in clear impatience. “Lily, are you listening? Use one of these to dry off your face.”
“I can’t take off my clothes. There are other people around. You saw the car in the parking area.”
“They’ve gone. They walked along the track, heading for the car park just before you fell in the stream.”
The flash of yellow that had distracted her enough to fall. “But you’ll see me,” she protested, presenting another very important reason for remaining clothed.
“I’ve seen you before.”
“But…but…it was at night.”
“The light was on.”
Lily felt heat surge to her cheeks. Did he have to remind her? She’d been trying not to think about last night because every time she recalled the feel of hands on her breasts, her mind danced ahead to impossible ideas. Yeah. Totally improbable notions about a future with an alien.
“That was an act of insanity,” she said with quiet dignity. “It’s not going to happen again.”
Alex snorted, his brows rising in challenge. “You don’t have time to get an illness. Strip.” His gaze drifted over her face and then lowered to halt on her breasts.
Lily knew exactly where his thoughts had stepped. To the same past in her mind. Last night. The heat in her face told her she’d blushed even hotter and harder. His sly grin told her he enjoyed her reaction—both the blush and the peaked nipples. In an act of self-preservation, she folded her arms to hide her chest. Then she lifted her chin and met his golden gaze. Unfortunately, she managed negligible nanoseconds before shyness hit and her eyes lowered to focus on the blanket.
“Lily, what are you waiting for?”
“I can’t do it. I can’t take my clothes off—”
“I dare you,” he purred.
Lily’s head jerked up in time to catch a small smile flittering across his mouth and laughter lighting his golden eyes. “Fine.”
Let him face the consequences. Tummy rolls. Drooping boobs. Cellulite. Especially cellulite.
She peeled the wet woolen jumper over her head before she lost her nerve. Once it was off, Lily held it in one hand procrastinating, and frantically wondering what to do next, while trying to hide her scantily covered breasts.
“Don’t stop there.” Alex tugged the dripping garment from her hands and turned to drape it over a scrubby bush. He turned back to her. “Are you still dressed?” Both the challenge and the smirk remained, driving and fuelling her need to best him in this small pissing contest.
She let out an impatient huff. Impossible man. Fine. She’d give him the full show. Her fingers went to the side closure on her skirt. The wet material meant an undignified struggle, but finally the button came free and she unfastened the zipper. The skirt slithered down to sag around her hips. Great. What now?
Lily cast a quick, uncertain look at the alien. Either she lifted the skirt over her head and gave Alex a free dimpled thigh show, or she struggled to get the wretched skirt over her hips and risked losing her panties at the same time. Neither alternative appealed. But at least she’d hunted out a pair of decent panties this morning. They even matched her bra and didn’t come close to the granny category.
“Shut your eyes,” she instructed in a firm voice.
A faint bark sounded in the distance. At least Killer was enjoying herself playing with rabbits. Lily bet the fluffy bunnies were having about the same amount of fun as she.
“My eyes are closed.” Amusement shaded his voice, but she could tell he was determined.
Lily grimaced. “Glad you think it’s funny.” She shimmied her hips until the open zip strained with a slight cracking sound. On the plus side, she had spare clothes in the vehicle should she damage the zipper beyond repair. Sucking in her tummy, she edged the black cotton down her hips a little more and gripped the elastic band of her panties. The seams strained and creaked a protest. Just a little farther, she thought with a silent prayer. Lily tugged harder and suddenly the skirt cleared her butt and hips to drop around her ankles. Her underwear tried to follow, but she kept a firm, one-handed grip on the elastic band.
“There, that wasn’t so difficult.”
Lily gasped. Even though she wore underwear that contained more material than many bikinis, one hand darted up to cover her breasts and the other her pelvic region. She stepped back, away from his grin and tangled her feet in her skirt. Strike two for the clumsy clot.
As usual, Alex moved quickly and caught her before she hit the ground. Their eyes met, gazes held. Messages passed between them but in a foreign language Lily wasn’t fluent in. After all, the man had his hands on her tummy rolls, and she was very conscious of those hands. How was she expected to concentrate? She attempted to wriggle away, but those hands followed like pesky magnets. It took Lily a while to work out he wanted to help her rise.
When they were both standing, Alex frowned at her, his face so serious that she started to shuffle self-consciously. “Are you all right? I mean the way you fall over—”
“I’m clumsy!” she snapped. “Haven’t you—” She broke off as a thought hit. Both Janaya and Hinekiri were elegant and always in total control. She’d picked that up in the short meetings they’d had to date. Alex…well, he was a smooth, well-coordinated cat who prowled everywhere with unconscious grace. That was it! Dalconians had bred the clumsy gene out of their race.
“So you’re not ill?”
“Just fat and clumsy.”
Alex’s frown turned to a scowl. “You keep trying to force me to think in the way you feel I should. I am grown. Capable of making decisions without aid. You are desirable to me.”
His passionate voice snagged her attention. No one spoke like that unless they’d suffered. The thought gave her pause. “Um, should we have something to eat?”
“You change the subject.”
Lily waggled her eyebrows like a comedian attempting to work a crowd. “Yeah!”
Alex steered her to the blanket and pressed on her shoulders in a silent bid to make her sit. “I do not find this laughable. Dry your face while I hang your skirt on the bush to dry.”
Following orders, she dabbed absently at her face and hair with the paper napkins. What had happened to Alex that made him so sensitive and touchy about appearance? None of her guesses made sense so she gave up and relaxed to enjoy the view.
Alex had his back to her as he bent to drape her skirt over the low-growing bush. His trousers cupped his butt, outlining hard gluts. Just as he turned, Killer’s shrill bark rang out. Lily’s faint smile echoed on his face even as he shook his head. Then he prowled toward her, and Lily couldn’t help the sigh that drifted between her parted lips. She really liked watching the alien.
“Will your hair dry like that?”
Lily’s hands rose to touch the sodden ponytail on her nape. Until now, she hadn’t been aware of the steady drips of water falling onto the blanket. She went to tug off the red band that held her hair.
“Let me,” he said, his smoky voice searing right through her.
If she let him touch her, she’d crave more. Lily turned her head slowly and presented her back despite her inner fears. Yep, weak. Definitely feeble. A sad, sad woman.
Alex was a large man, but his hands were infinitely gentle as he worked the fastening from her hair and combed his fingers through the wet locks. He massaged her head, probing, soothing aches and releasing tension until she wanted to puddle into the blanket.
“Feel good?” he whispered next to her ear.
The languor leached from Lily with a jolt. She tensed. He’d see her belly rolls if she wasn’t careful. She straightened so quickly she hit him in the face.
“Careful.” He rubbed his abused nose with a rueful grin.
“I’m sorry,” Lily said, mortified at yet another demonstration of her clumsiness. Good thing it wasn’t contagious. “Do you want coffee? I made a thermos.” If she busied herself with lunch then maybe she’d forget her lack of clothing. Yeah. And as her brother Luke often said, maybe cloven-hoofed animals would fly.
“A coffee sounds good,” Alex murmured lazily. “I have developed a liking for this Earth drink.” He lay back on the blanket, apparently at ease with the world and her tummy rolls. Or perhaps they were so ugly he didn’t like to look. That sounded a more likely scenario.
Lily pulled two orange plastic cups from the picnic basket and balanced them on the ground in convenient small hollows. The rich scent of coffee wafted on the air when she clicked open the black pourer top. Alex had closed his eyes and was so silent, she wondered if she’d bored him to sleep. His soft breathing battled with a noisy tui flying from tree to tree and the faint sound of Killer’s barks.
The golden cat didn’t even snore
. Apart from being distinctly antisocial in the mornings, she hadn’t discovered any flaws.
“Stop looking at me.”
Lily started and righted the wobbling thermos before staring at him in suspicion. Did he have a third eye? That counted as a flaw.
“I’m not looking at you.”
“Yes, you are. I can feel your eyes.”
No answer for that. “Here’s your coffee.”
Alex propped himself up on one elbow and balanced in an elegant pose while he drank his coffee. He took a sip. “Perfect,” he said with a satisfied sigh.
For a moment, there was a contented silence then he said, “Take your underwear off so that will dry, too. No need to feel uncomfortable for the rest of the day.”