Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (27 page)

But I had to try, at least.

I needed him to understand how things worked down here, not necessarily for the sex side of things, but just in general. And, okay, maybe some of it was about the sex.

I hadn’t been sleeping all that great, either, since that night.

After five days of us playing avoidance tag, I finally mustered the nerve to corner Nik that morning.

I found him in the kitchen and told him I wanted to have a personal conversation with him, as soon as possible...and that it was important. I meant to stop there, of course, but somehow, I didn’t. I added that I wanted to talk to him today, if possible, and that I was sick of the bullshit with him sleeping on the floor. I told him that I hated that we were avoiding each other. I told him that he needed to grow up, and stop punishing me for being honest.

I also told him I knew he was going somewhere with Gantry, so it could wait until that night, but that if he didn’t show up that night...or only showed up at like three a.m. or whatever, with Gantry and the boys in tow...then I was done. I told Nik if he did that, I was going to move out of Irene’s the next morning, and he could just go ahead and hang out here with her. I added that he could go ahead and fuck her, too, if she was into it...since he seemed to be so anxious to sleep with a human being as long as that human wasn’t me.

Nik, who’d been messing with the coffee pot––probably trying to figure out how to turn it on––just stood there, holding the empty glass container by the plastic handle as I continued to talk. He looked surprised at first, then alarmed when I got to the part about my moving out, then borderline stunned by the time I finished talking.

But, yeah, I could tell he was open to the idea of talking about it.

Mainly I figured that out when he put down the coffee pot and caught hold of my waist. Before I could figure out where he was going with that, he pressed me up against the refrigerator, pinning me there seconds after I finally stopped talking.
 

He kissed me, hard, once he had me there, shirtless and wearing only a pair of Jake’s jeans. I couldn’t exactly pick apart his thoughts, in terms of what I’d said to him and the intensity of his reaction, but I definitely got the sense he’d been waiting for me to come talk to him.

Needless to say, Nik’s, err, enthusiasm caught me off guard.

I hadn’t exactly pushed him away, though.

In fact, my hands, arms and body––along with some less-logical parts of my mind––responded with a fair bit of enthusiasm in return.

Maybe more than I should have, all things considered.

Either way, we were pretty hot and heavy there for a few minutes.

I could tell Nik wanted to do more than kiss. I felt it through the lock, even apart from the fact that certain body parts of his made that abundantly clear while most of him pressed flat against most of me. His frustration interacted with mine in ways that got both of us pretty out of control in just a few minutes of kissing.

By then, he had me pinned against that ancient refrigerator for real, one hand wrapped around my ass and the other gripping the back of my hair. He groaned aloud as he slammed me up against the old appliance again. I had a leg coiled around his waist then, too, and he held it there once he’d slid his hand from my ass to my thigh, pressing against me harder as he groaned again, massaging the muscle of my leg with strong fingers.

Which of course ended up being totally awkward when Irene, Gantry and Jake walked in on us right in the middle of our make-out session a few minutes later.

Nik let go of me right away, but I know how we must have looked.

I also saw more eyes than just my brother’s focused on Nik’s crotch in those jeans.

Jake himself had been delighted, of course.

Irene looked mortified that she’d walked in on us, yet again.

I couldn’t help noticing Gantry looked annoyed, though. He tried to hide it, but for once, he didn’t do a very good job.

Everyone except Jake did the awkward but polite thing and pretended they hadn’t seen anything. As soon as Nik and I parted, one by one, the three of them took over chairs in Irene’s small kitchen. Once they weren’t staring at us outright, Nik leaned close to my ear and let me know via the implant that he wanted to talk, too.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised when Nik appeared at the door of the
Culare Modeling School’s
back room on this particular day, Jessica Rabbit in tow.

I was surprised, though.

I figured he’d be busy with Gantry all day again.
 

The two of them left that morning while I was still on my first cup of coffee, and still pretty warm in the face from me and Nik’s “discussion” by the refrigerator door. Irene, Jake and I hung out through a few more cups of coffee and some toast, while Jake tried to get dirt on me and Nik and Irene expressed worry about our nocturnal visitor from the week before. Nik and I had been sleeping in her room since that night, partly to reassure her and make her feel safe...and partly because Nik wanted to catch whoever it was if they came back.

While we hadn’t seen or heard anything since, I knew Irene had been obsessing about the whole thing in her own quiet way.

She’d also avoided being alone in her house.

Over breakfast, she asked me to not move out with Nik right away, either.

The way she said it made me wonder if she’d overheard me yelling at Nik before we started making out. Which of course made me feel like crap, all things considered, not the least of which being that Irene had been nothing but cool to me. Pretty much always, but especially since I’d gotten back to Earth after being gone all of those months. Given how Jo reacted to my reappearance the other day, I couldn’t help being a lot more grateful for Irene’s calm acceptance, not only of me and what happened to me, but of Nik, too.

I ended up talking to her longer than I normally would have as a result, and didn’t get to the modeling agency until around ten o’clock.

I’d been up pretty late anyway, and was feeling the lack of sleep.

The night before, Gantry was at the house until late with one of his Special Forces pals, talking to Nik. They’d been there already when I got back from the
Culare Modeling School
that day. They worked pretty much all afternoon in the back yard, only coming in at dinner to eat pizza with the rest of us and then going back out there for another few hours.

When it got dark for real outside, Gantry, his Special Ops pal and Nik took over Irene’s living room and continued talking until about two a.m.

I caught enough snippets to know that Gantry might be on the verge of telling a few of his people about the morph thing. Which surprised me, honestly.

For now, both of them treated Nik like some kind of “consultant.”
 

In fact, from the way Gantry talked to the other guy, he’d been implying to his people that Nik worked for the government.

I fell asleep before I could make up my mind what Gantry was doing, exactly...or what Nik was up to with Gantry, for that matter.

I’d woken up about six hours later to find Nik on the floor again, naked and asleep on his back, uncovered by his one and only blanket...and pretty obviously not dreaming about ice cream. And no, I hadn’t bothered to wake him up to tell him that he wasn’t doing much for my ability to get a good night’s sleep at this point, either.

Instead, I looked away, turning my back on Nik and Nik’s erection to burrow back under the covers. I let myself doze off again, deciding to ignore it.

But that might have been what prompted me to confront him this morning, honestly.

When I woke up the second time, maybe an hour later, I forced myself out of bed when I found Nik missing from his spot on the floor. Muttering under my breath about naked morph wandering around the house, I made my way, bleary-eyed, into the shower, where the hot water had been completely gone.

And yeah, I was pretty sure Nik had done that, too.

He still had a bit of a “thing” going with the water pressure and hot water of Seattle.
 

In Nik’s dimension, we mostly washed with a sticky, acidic powder that burned off skin cells and barely verged on satisfactory in terms of a tactile cleaning experience. So yeah, considering that, I couldn’t really blame him for loving the hot showers. I still hadn’t gotten over the novelty of being back in the land of hot showers and warm bagels, either.

Maybe for the same reason, I had to force myself to not get pissy when I realized he’d left me with ice cold nada for the third time that week.

That might have been another thing pushing me to talk to him, however.

Either way, that talk hadn’t been much of a talk, more me venting my frustration at him for a lot of things that had been piling up in my own head...and now, seeing him in the doorway of the modeling agency’s back room, I found myself appraising him, even as I bit my lip in a confused mixture of irritation, anticipation and apprehension that he’d showed up here, unasked.

I wasn’t quite over that kiss, I guess.

I’d thought I’d have more time to think about it, though.

I could see a few leggy women in the hallway and lobby behind him, too, talking amongst themselves and staring in our general direction, which didn’t help.

So yeah, I already knew Nik had clearly been a hit with the young models.

With his symmetrical, too-perfect face with its high cheekbones and prominent jaw, the currently pale green eyes, lean but muscular body and broad shoulders, none of that should have surprised me. It looked like Jake had been dressing him again, too, given the designer jeans, leather belt, rings and leather jacket, which probably didn’t help.

It did surprise me though, if I was being honest.

And irritated me.

Without me even realizing it, I’d gotten pretty weird about Nik, I guess.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him grumpily, ignoring the irritated, scrunchy-faced frown I caught from one of the long-blond-hair types lurking in the lobby area behind him. “Didn’t we talk about this? About the low-profile thing?”

Jessica Rabbit squeezed Nik’s bicep, grinning at me.

She didn’t seem to have heard a word I said, much less caught the underlying tone.

“Where do you find all of these gorgeous men, Ms. Reyes?” Clarice said, smiling wider at me. “You and your male friends are becoming quite the distraction here...and that’s saying something, given our line of work. This one is even yummier than your brother...”

Nik’s relative yumminess aside, she still batted her eyes at me as she said it.

Sighing in resignation, I motioned Nik over with my head, not bothering to get up from the clean spot I’d maintained in the middle of the half-moon of files and stacks of paper spread around me on the black carpet. I wasn’t about to strong-arm him out of there, and Nik was making it pretty clear he didn’t intend to leave, if only by the harder look he aimed in my direction when I considered asking him to.

“Well,” I said, for Jessica Rabbit’s benefit as much as his. “If you’re going to help, then come on and help, Mr. Yummy.”

Nik quirked an eyebrow at that, but didn’t comment.

I didn’t look up again until he knelt down beside me on the patterned carpet, careful not to disturb any of the piles that sat around me in a circle. Hearing the door close behind Ms. Culare’s assistant with a soft snick, I frowned up at Nik only then.

“What are you doing here, Nik?” I said. “Can you even
read
English yet?”

“Not well,” he said.

“Then why are you here?”

Nik looked down at the piles of paperwork, then around at the room, including the cherry-wood conference table ringed by black, leather-padded office chairs. His eyes paused briefly on one of the modeling spreads, a blow-up of a magazine cover that took up most of the far wall. It hung directly over a low counter with an unused coffee pot and an empty, glass water pitcher and several clean glasses.

I watched him case out the space and realized I’d dismissed the same room in mere seconds, categorizing it instantly as “bland corporate conference room.”

Nik didn’t have that particular categorization in his Earth repertoire yet.

“What have you found?” he said, a few beats later, looking back at me.

I saw an added layer of emotion in his eyes, which somehow deflated my aggression, disarming me almost without my willing it. I could see the remnants of that morning in his green eyes, too. When he reached out a hand, pushing my dark hair over one shoulder and then rubbing the back of my neck, a flush crept up my skin from his fingers to my cheeks.