The Visitor: Alien Hunger Special Edition (10 page)

The vibration in the vicinity of his
pelvis woke his dick before it woke him. Groggy, disoriented, he
lifted his head, trying to figure out where he was and why he was
shaking. It dawned on him finally that the vibrations seemed to be
centralized in the region of his groin. He felt around until he
found the source—his cell phone. It stopped vibrating before he
could figure out how to get his hand in his pocket.

Dismissing it, he nuzzled his face
against Chelsey’s neck, trying to decide if he could get up the
energy to make love to her again. His phone went off again just
about the time that he admitted, reluctantly, that he was going to
have to rest a while longer before he could manage anything else.
It had been a hell of a long time since he’d had sex twice in such
quick succession.

Leaning away from Chelsey, he felt
around until he finally managed to grab the phone and pull it from
his pocket. Lifting it, he stared at the screen owl eyed, trying to
bring the message into focus. A jolt went through him when he
managed to read the numbers, bringing him to full
alertness.

He struggled to extricate himself from
Chelsey and lost his balance when the edge of the cushions yielded
more than he’d expected. He rolled off and hit the floor, taking
Chelsey with him. She grunted when she landed on his chest, lifting
her head sleepily.

“
Sorry, baby. I got to
go,” he whispered, rolling her off and getting to his feet. She’d
managed to sit up by the time he was on his feet. Reaching down, he
hauled her up, scooped her into his arms and looked around for the
bedroom.

She clung to him when he settled her
on the bed and he felt his chest tighten. Reluctantly, he removed
her arms and flicked the cover over her. Leaning down, he kissed
her soft lips briefly. “I have to go, baby, otherwise I’d take you
up on that.”

She nodded. “There’s a spare key on
the rack by the door. Don’t climb up next time.”

Garryk felt his throat close.
Wondering if he should take her up on it or if she was too sleepy
to realize what she’d said, he leaned down and kissed her a little
more lingeringly. “Baby, if you had any idea what you do to me, I’d
be in serious trouble.”

Her lips curled. He gave them a light
peck and left the bedroom, punching the redial on his phone. “Dr.
Sinclair,” he said when the line opened on the other end. Listening
to the emergency room nurse on the other end, he searched the walls
near the door for the key until he saw the key rack in the shadows.
Unhooking the key, he shoved it into his pocket, instructing the
nurse on what to do until he got there and giving her an ETA on his
arrival as he let himself out, locked the door, and jogged down the
stairs.

Chapter Six

It was the harsh, jangling ring of her
phone that woke Chelsey not the gentle morning sounds programmed
into her alarm. Her head came up off the pillow as if some
invisible hand had jerked it upwards. She blinked, staring with
wide, burning eyes at her headboard, tensed, listening for the
noise that had awakened her. When the phone rang again, she rolled
over to get up, discovered she was perched on the edge of the bed
and hit the floor so hard it rattled her brain in her skull. She
might have lain where she landed, too stunned to move for a while,
but the phone jangled again.

Surging to her feet, she looked around
a little wildly, realized she was in her bedroom and dashed toward
the door. She managed to pick up the receiver just in time to hear
the dial tone. Her jaw went slack with outrage even while her mind
scrambled to identify the caller. It was a short search. Aside from
Marla and the school, nobody had the number, so it was either one
of them or a random wrong number.

Glancing out the window, Chelsey
stared at the light for several moments before it sank in that it
was way too bright outside to be early morning. “Damn it!” She made
a grab for the phone to call the school just as it rang
again.

“
Hello?”

Why wasn’t she at school?

She searched her mind for a lie that
might be believable. “Car trouble.”

Why hadn’t she called to let them
know?

“
Uh … actually that’s
because I didn’t break down until after I’d left the house—flat
tire!” she elaborated on inspiration. “And I was so filthy after
I’d changed it I had to come back to the apartment to clean up. I
was just on my way out. Could you get someone to watch my class
till I get there?”

It occurred to her as soon as she hung
up that she should’ve given herself more time while she was
fabricating excuses! “Shit!”

Dashing through the apartment, she
turned the shower on and grabbed her toothbrush while she was
waiting on the water. Fortunately, she didn’t have to undress.
Garryk had undressed her.

The thought distracted her from her
purpose and she did a brief mental ‘radar’ survey of the apartment.
She didn’t hear him moving around and she hadn’t seen him when
she’d been running around the house. He must have left.

Dismay flickered through
her, but she didn’t have time to examine it. Shoving her hair into
a shower cap, she leapt into the shower, scrubbed frantically, and
leapt out again. She’d already pulled her dress over her head
before she realized she hadn’t grabbed a bra.
That
would go over like a lead
balloon, she thought, racing to her dresser to search for one!
She’d be accused of trying to seduce the high school boys before
she could turn around!

Garryk’s image rose in her
mind.

She resolutely dismissed it. She
hadn’t seduced him! She hadn’t even tried!

She’d wanted to, but
wanting didn’t count, damn it! If it did, ninety percent of the
world’s population would probably be in jail for wanting
something
sometime
that they shouldn’t have—maybe even ninety nine
percent!

Maybe she didn’t deserve
brownie points for behaving herself, regardless of temptation, but
she wasn’t going to beat herself up over something she
hadn’t
done!

She arrived at the school almost
halfway through her second class, completely unprepared since she’d
dashed out and left the papers she’d been grading the night before,
and it went downhill from there. Generally, she spent her lunch
period dividing her time between watching the students and trying
to make friendly with the other teachers. She was so distracted,
however, she didn’t pay attention to the students let alone the
other teachers.

“
You ok, honey?” Emily
Watson asked her sympathetically as they were leaving the lunch
room.

Chelsey stared at her blankly. “Uh …
yeah! Fine!”

It had been an opening and the
possibility of making a friend, she realized later, but she hadn’t
felt up to inventing another lie and she sure as hell couldn’t tell
the truth!

It finally jelled in her mind about
halfway through the afternoon why it was a lie that she was ‘fine’.
Garryk had vanished during the night without a word! She picked
over that and the implications with morbid intensity for a while
before a vague memory surfaced. She’d wondered how she got from the
couch to the bed when the last thing she remembered was conking out
on the couch under Garryk’s dead weight!

They’d fallen off the couch and then
he’d picked her up and carried her to bed.

He hadn’t joined her, though. He’d
said he had to go.

Did that constitute ‘wham bam, thank
you, ma’am’, she wondered? Or was it sort of a good bye? As in,
I’ll see you later?

She focused on it, trying to remember
something that would make her feel more hopeful that he was
planning a return engagement until she had a blinding headache.
She’d almost managed to convince herself that he did when the
school day ended and he didn’t show up. Trying to tell herself that
he’d call her in a day or two, or maybe show up again, she went
home. The papers they’d been grading together were strewn all over
the living room. Glumly, she moved around the room picking them up
and trying to smooth out the wrinkles on the papers that had gotten
crumpled.

When she’d collected them all, she
began sorting those that had been checked from the ones that
hadn’t. Garryk’s bold script leapt out at her and she paused to
read through the paper. Pleased when she saw he’d caught
everything, including a few things she might’ve missed, she checked
several others carefully. Once she was certain she didn’t have to
worry about it, she merely scanned the papers looking for the ones
she hadn’t finished.

She was nearing the bottom of the
stack when she flipped a page and found herself staring at a big
heart. In the middle of it were the letters GS + CL. She stared at
it blankly, mentally reviewing her student’s names until it dawned
on her that the bold drawing was nothing like the writing on the
page. Her heart tripped over itself. Garryk Sinclair plus Chelsey
Ledger? She bit her lip. It was so … sweet! So romantic! Ok, so
maybe just a teensy bit juvenile, too, but the sentiment thrilled
her to her toes. She found herself grinning at it like an idiot
until it abruptly dawned on her that he’d written it on a student’s
paper!

Her smile flat lined. Had he meant for
her to find it?

Surely, he had, she thought
doubtfully. He would’ve expected her to look through the papers,
wouldn’t he?

She was sure he would have, and yet
there was just a niggling of uncomfortable doubt that it was more
in the nature of a prank that could’ve made her extremely
uncomfortable if she hadn’t noticed it.

Maybe he’d just sort of doodled it
without realizing what he was doing?

She shook the thoughts off. It didn’t
matter. She’d found it. She was going to have to ‘lose’ the
student’s paper! There was no way to get it off and leave the paper
intact.

And she didn’t want to give it back,
anyway. It was sort a love note, wasn’t it?

She listened for him until it was so
late she was forced to go to bed or fall asleep on the couch. The
bed dipped sometime in the wee hours, tipping her over and rousing
her. A jolt rippled through her when a man’s arm settled heavily
across her waist. “Sorry, baby. Late night. Go back to
sleep.”

Relaxing when she recognized his
voice, Chelsey snuggled closer and dropped off the edge again.
There was something heavy on her when she surfed toward awareness
the next morning, breathing its hot, moist breath against her neck.
She was still trying to figure out what it was when her alarm went
off. Sighing, she opened her eyes and discovered the ‘heavy’ was
Garryk’s muscular thigh and about half his upper body. A flock of
goose-bumps erupted along her neck and raced down her back as he
shifted.

A search of her mind produced
absolutely no memory of having Garryk over the night before, but
she finally decided she must have let him in. He was sleeping in
her bed.

Or had she left the patio door
unlocked?

Dismissing it after a moment, she
struggled to wiggle out from under him. His arms tightened. “Where
you going?”

“
Work,” she
whispered.

He seemed to wrestle with that for a
moment and finally let go and rolled over. She moved around the bed
to turn off her alarm. It occurred to her as she did that he might
need to get up for work. She realized she had no idea what his work
schedule was like. Did he work all week, or just the weekends? As
reluctant as she was to wake him, she thought she should. “Do you
need me to reset the alarm?”

He lifted one eyelid a fraction,
rolling his eyes around. She bit her lip. “Twelve,” he said
finally.

Weird! Shrugging, she set the alarm
for him and headed in for her bath. He was sprawled on his belly in
the middle of the bed, spread eagle when she came out. She paused
to appreciate the view. He really was a beautiful man and the
beauty didn’t stop at the skin.

She frowned at the thought, abruptly
wondering how well she really knew him. She’d felt like she
understood the boy he once was, but she didn’t even know if that
was true. Part of the reason he’d always seemed so mature to her,
older than he actually was, was the fact that he was so
reticent—surprisingly eloquent for one so young when the mood moved
him—but he kept his cards close to his chest. He’d not only been
extremely selective about the people he let get close, but he’d
been guarded even around them. If he’d been openly hostile or prone
to violence, someone might have noticed sooner that he hailed from
a background he should’ve been removed from, but he’d been able to
project ‘well adjusted’.

Truthfully, she’d thought he was
surprisingly well adjusted, all things considered, but he’d had a
rougher time than any child ought to and it had to have left scars,
even if he hid them well.

“
Is my ass hanging out?”
he growled from the depths of her pillow.

Jolted, Chelsey flicked a look at the
back of his head. Embarrassed that she’d been staring so hard she’d
roused him, it took her a moment to recover. “Unfortunately, no.
I’d take a peak, but I’ve been admiring the scenery too long
already. I need to rush. Sorry I woke you.”