How to Marry an Alien (7 page)

"Oh, an older woman!" I laughed.

She shrugged. "Yeah, what can I say? Ever
since I saw
The Graduate
I've had a thing for older
women."

"So you'll admit that you are a Dustin
Hoffman fan?" I arched an eyebrow.

Lucy rolled her eyes, stuffing a notebook in
her giant knit bag before putting it over her shoulder. "No matter
how hard you try, I'm not going to succumb to your love of old
Dustin Hoffman movies."

"Come on!" I sighed sarcastically as Lucy
went to the door. "One look at Dustin in drag during
Tootsie
and you will be a changed woman."

"We'll see about that one," she said with one
hand on the doorknob. "See you tonight, Alex."

She smiled and with a small wave was out the
door, giving me enough time to get ready for a visit from my
alien.

Even though I just moved into the dorm, I
still felt the need to clean it again from top to bottom before Ace
came. That literally left me only about thirty minutes to take a
shower and get the smell of sweat and cleaning supplies off my
skin.

I still had my hair wrapped in a towel when
Sinatra's voice started crooning from my phone.
Crap
, was it
already that time?

I picked my phone off the bed, slid it
unlocked, and held it to my ear. "Hullo?"

"You didn't tell me how wonderful the decor
was in the lobby bathrooms in this dorm."

The alien could even make talking about
bathrooms sexy.

"I take it you beamed in alright?" I asked,
quickly trying to comb out my hair. He couldn't have waited a few
more minutes? At first I enjoyed that he could see me whenever with
the beaming technology, but when he could see me even when I looked
my worst, it was hard to enjoy it.

"Yes, I am actually down here waiting near
the front desk. The lovely woman with the pink hair behind the
counter said I need an escort from a resident before I can enter
your domicile." He said it smoothly, but I could hear the hint of
annoyance in his voice. I could also just imagine how the girl at
the front desk was looking at him. If she always looked at me like
I was a pushy idiot, then she probably thought the same about
Ace.

"Alright, hold on, I will be right down."

I panicked. I wanted everything to be
perfect. I finally had Ace alone and it wasn't in a car, or him
beaming into my mom's house late at night. But nothing was ever
perfect when it came to alien and human relationships. I sucked it
up and threw my wet hair into a ponytail before sliding on my
flip-flops and taking the elevator down to the lobby.

As soon as the doors opened Ace was waiting.
He stepped right in before I could even say a word.

"Did you upset the front desk girl that much,
already?" I cocked an eyebrow, looking over at him.

Obviously the Circe doctors did a fine job
healing him. He didn't look like he ever had a scratch on him with
his smooth, porcelain skin and his hair in his usual spikes. I
wanted to pull him close to me and just inhale his clean scent. But
the giant camera facing us from the corner of the elevator made me
think otherwise.

"Can I not just be excited to finally be able
to see my princess?" His warm hands found mine, intertwining our
fingers as he pulled them up to brush his lips against my
knuckles.

"You are a smooth talker, sir."

"Likewise." He put our intertwined hands down
and a smile crept along his statuesque face. Every time he smiled,
it made his dark eyes light up and brought me back to the first
moment I met him the moment he saved my life. If I wasn't already
excited to see him, the smile was all I needed to get him off the
elevator and lead him to my bedroom.

"It's smaller than the rooms at Circe, and
you are to share it with someone else, but it's..." Ace paused,
walking from one end of the room to the other in only a few long
strides. "Nice."

"Well I'm sure you will be able to make
yourself at home." I slid past him and sat down on the bed, patting
the spot next to me.

Ace sat down and then laid down, spreading
his long body across my bed. "Yeah, I can deal with this."

Seeing him stretched across the bed, his
hands behind his head and every muscle rippling through his arm,
made me want him so bad. My V card was still very much intact, but
after all of my run-ins with death and after seeing Ace so close to
it, the fear of losing him forever made me want to give up that
card in a bad way.

I laid down next to him, placing my head on
his chest and trailing my fingers up and down his chiseled
stomach.

"Princess, if you keep touching me like that
I'm not going to be able to stay still for long."

I lifted my head, meeting his dark eyes with
my own. There was nothing more that I wanted to do than to get lost
in them. His hand crept up to the side of my face before he pulled
me down until his mouth was on mine. The sliding of his tongue
between my lips was the go ahead I needed to move from my spot next
to him and climb onto his beautiful body. His hands were on fire,
sending the spark all the way through my back while his fingertips
scaled my bare arms. My body pressed against his cold shell made me
want to cry out with a mixture of fire and ice against my skin.

While his hands were against my shoulders, my
fingers made their way to the buttons on his shirt. He'd become
accustomed to wearing plaid, pearl snap shirts over his temperature
control suit when we were in public. Normally I thought the shirts
looked silly, but with the easy access they provided me, I suddenly
liked them more.

Ace gently pushed my shoulders back, prying
our lips apart until he was looking right at me. "Alex, what are
you doing?"

I widened my eyes, like a kid who just got
caught with their hand in the cookie jar. I kept my fingers on the
last button of his shirt, exploring my mind for anything sexy I
could say to get the mood back.

"I'm thinking of taking a class in
extraterrestrial anatomy and thought you would be the perfect
teacher." I smiled, trying to make it sexy and wiggling my eyebrows
at the same time.

Ace scowled, his nostrils flaring like he
just smelled something terrible. "I have no idea what that is
supposed to mean."

"You know..." I ran my finger down from the
top of his chest to just below his navel. He still had on his
temperature control suit, but I could still feel every bit of his
tight abdominals underneath it. His muscles clenched underneath my
finger. "Just a little something to show you that I love you."

"Alex." Ace grabbed my wrist, moving my hands
up in the air above his chest. "You don't need to do that, or prove
anything to me."

I pouted. "I'm not trying to prove anything.
We've been together for over a year. We are engaged for Pete's
sake!"

I released my wrists from his grip and
snapped my body back up, so that I sat on his lap with my arms
crossed over my chest. "Is there some reason you are resisting me?
Did you find some hot nurse from Venus in the infirmary and now you
want to leave me?"

Ace groaned, pulling himself up so he was
sitting underneath me. "Princess, I can assure you that there is no
one but you." He leaned in, pressing his forehead to mine. "I just
don't think now is the right time."

I let out a deep breath, blowing it out of my
nose and onto his face. He was right, of course, the moment
definitely wasn't there.

"Hello? Oh, God!" Lucy's voice rang through
the door.

I scrambled off Ace and he did his best to
button up his shirt, his fingers struggled at each pearl snap
button.

"Sorry, I should have knocked."

I turned to see Lucy with her hand up to her
face.

"It's alright, um, we were just talking." I
positioned myself so I was sitting on the bed, near the wall and
Ace propped himself into a sitting position next to me.

Lucy dropped her hand down. "Okay, so if you
all were just talking, do you mind if my girlfriend comes in? The
coffee shop was closed so I invited her over to watch some
Rocko's Modern Life
."

"Sure, that's fine." I nodded, smoothing my
hair out, which probably wasn't even that messed up.

"Alright, babe, the coast is clear," Lucy
yelled and opened the door.

There, standing in my bedroom doorway, was
the same girl that turned me in for sneaking out to see Ace. The
same girl who last time I saw her had a gun held to my head. And
now she looked at me like she had absolutely no idea who I was, and
after a memory erase from Circe, she probably didn't. But the very
sight of her sent a chill through every part of my body.

"Hi, you guys, I'm Riley. It's nice to meet
you."

There, in the flesh, was Riley from
Circe.

I couldn't speak. My throat felt like it
closed up. Luckily, Ace was there to save me.

"Hello, Riley, it's good to meet you." Ace
stood up, shaking her hand like she wasn't the spawn of Satan.

"And this must be the infamous Ace." Lucy
smiled as Riley released her hand from Ace's and stood next to
Lucy.

How the heck could this be possible? Last I
saw of Riley was when the Circe guards were taking her to wipe her
memory of her time with aliens. Now she was standing in my dorm
room. Not to mention that she was a grad student at my school and
dating my roommate.

"That would be me, and you must be Alex's
roommate." He peered at Lucy, taking her hand in his to shake it
briefly as if it weren't insane that we were standing there and
facing a crazy person.

I scrambled up from the bed, sliding in my
flip-flops and stood next to Ace. "It's good to see both of you,
but, uh, since you two probably want some alone time, I'll give Ace
a tour of campus."

"You sure?" Lucy arched one of her barely
there eyebrows, tossing her purse on her bag chair.

"Yeah," Riley added. "I've just met you all.
I wouldn't mind getting to know the other women who will be
sleeping with my girlfriend." Riley winked and slid an arm around
Lucy's waist.

This was just too weird. When I interned with
Riley, she wanted nothing to do with me or Ace and now here she was
begging us to stay.

"I'm sure we'll have plenty of time for that
this summer." I forced a smile before dragging Ace out the door and
down the hall to the elevator.

"You did not tell me that Riley was romancing
your roommate," Ace said as we stepped onto the waiting
elevator.

"Obviously I was just as shocked as you were.
I didn't know that Riley was going to school here, let alone that
she played for the other team."

"Play for the other team?" Ace asked.

I shook my head. "It's just an expression,
meaning that she is gay."

"I still don't understand how two humans can
be this gay thing, as you call it. What benefits do they get?"

I rolled my eyes. I had enough to figure out
with Riley, let alone trying to explain homosexuality to Ace. "Can
we talk about that some other time? Right now, I'm trying to wrap
my head around the fact that Riley is even still around."

We stepped off the elevator in silence. There
was no need to let everyone else hear our discussion about
memory-wiped lesbians. Quickly, we walked out the revolving front
doors and into the night.

"She doesn't act like she remembered us at
all," Ace said as soon as we were out of earshot of anyone near the
dorm.

I blew a raspberry through my lips and took
Ace's hand, leading him toward the Union. "Still, how am I supposed
to pretend like I've never seen her before? I did live with her for
a summer that she tried to make a living hell."

Ace shrugged. "I don't know how either. Maybe
you can just pretend she isn't the same person?"

"Ace, that sounds crazy. I just can't pretend
I never met her. Can someone from Circe just wipe away my memory of
her?"

Ace swung our intertwined hands back and
forth. The sun had barely started to set, an orange glow dangling
over the mountaintops in the distance. I used to think all of
Arizona was just a barren dessert, and then I realized that
Flagstaff actually had pine trees and grass. I wasn't really in the
middle of the desert. The temperature even dropped a few degrees at
night so I wasn't terribly uncomfortable in jeans and Ace didn't
look out of place in long sleeves.

Even so, I actually missed the cornfields of
Illinois, but I couldn't deny how good it felt to walk freely
through campus with Ace by my side. We would have never been able
to do that at Columbia. He would have still needed to be hidden and
now we were out for the world to see...just like I guess Riley
was.

"It doesn't work like that, Alex."

I turned my attention back to Ace, who was
shaking his head. "If we erased your memory of Riley, it would
erase your entire internship, your memories of me."

I stopped and turned toward Ace. A gleam of
sweat splayed across his forehead, shining against his pale face. I
could never give up my memories of him. The good or the bad, we
were in it for the long run.

"I would never erase my time with you," I
murmured. I grabbed his other hand, the warmth slowly spreading
through his fingers and up through my hands.

"Neither would I." Ace took a step closer,
minimizing the space between us. "Not for all the diamonds in Calta
would I erase my memory of you. You are still the only one in all
of the galaxies that makes my heart beat faster."

I smiled, leaning in for a kiss. But before
my lips could even touch his, my phone rang between us. Ace jumped
back at the sound, releasing our hands and staring down at my
pocket.

"Sorry!" I pulled the singing phone out my
pocket. The words to
She Blinded Me With Science
sang
through the speakers, and Jen's big lips grinned at me from the
screen.