Page 9

After coming down from the euphoria of post-orgasm contentment, Kroven asked me if I was hungry. He had removed himself from my lap, allowing both of us to redress and attempt to find some calm.

“Famished,” I told him with a laugh, realizing just how true it was.

“I don’t have anything here, but I could order you a pizza.” Kroven crooned. He closed the space between us to playfully trace a line down my arm from where I stood in the living room. “I’ve always wanted to experience the inspiration behind the pizza delivery fantasy.”

“Oh, so you’re a stickler for the classics, huh?” Amusement flashed across my face. “I gotta admit, I didn’t expect you to be into a vintage porn trope.”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? You need to learn more about me.”

I chuckled as he found his phone on the kitchen bar and initiated the call to order the pizza. He wasn’t wrong. Sure, we’d just swapped fluids, but we hardly knew each other. I wanted to spend time with him and really get to know him, to truly find out what made Kroven laugh, what made him cry, what life had been like for him living longer than a human ever could.

It dawned on me his exact word choice when he had brought up the pizza.

“Wait, do you not eat?”

Kroven smiled, shaking his head. “I don’t have to, but I can.” He jerked his head to the side as someone must have answered on the other end of his cell. “Yes, I’d like to order one of your classic pizzas, please.”

I rolled my eyes at him with a laugh because he had wagged his eyebrows at me when he uttered the word classic. He went back to delivering pleasantries to the pizza place before he turned back to me again. “What kind?”

“Pepperoni and green peppers, please.”

Kroven’s face tilted at my request. “Anything else?”

“A large lemonade, if they have it.”

Snickering, he repeated my order and thanked them before ending the phone call. While we waited for the pizza to arrive, Kroven decided to give me a tour of his home. It was a quaint little place, and everything had it’s perfect place. We went down the hall that was adjacent to the kitchen, which produced four doors to choose from. He explained that the first door on the left was a half-bathroom, and that it was accessible both here and within the office, which was the second door on the left. The door that was directly in front of us lead outside, and the door on the right lead to his laundry and storage room. Kroven told me that the half-bathroom originally didn’t exist in the house when he’d gotten it, but that a home with three potential bedrooms needed another bathroom.

The laundry and storage room was shorter than I had been expecting, learning that it used to be bigger, but Kroven had taken up some space in his renovation to make the closet in his bedroom bigger. He apparently had a thing for walk-in closets and just had to have one. The office was more of a library than an office, housing books from floor to ceiling on either side of the walls when one walked inside. Kroven had some really comfortable looking furniture placed at the end of the room, perfect for lounging up with a good book at the end of a long day. Or at least that’s exactly what I thought of when I saw it, making sure to say as such so that it would be known that we shared a love of books.

Kroven walked us back down through the kitchen, turning left at the living room hallway, which I had to assume lead to some bedrooms. The first door on the right was the full bathroom, decorated in white tile with purple grout. It looked like the same exact shade of purple of Kroven’s tongue. My dick twinged with the memory that it was also the same shade of purple of the head of his cock. The final two doors stood exactly opposite each other. The one on the right was a fairly small guest bedroom that was done in pink. The bedroom on the left was Kroven’s, and it was massive.

He told me that the original floor plans revealed that it had once been two small rooms that the original owners had converted into one big room. It was so big that Kroven had a little couch and TV area on one side of the room while the other side housed his massive king sized bed.

The entire room was wrapped in red and white, clearly the colors that Kroven tended to favor. The couch in the sitting area was pure white, looking like it was made out of imitation leather, adorned with red throw pillows similar to the ones in the living room. Kroven’s open walk in closet revealed more red and whites in his wardrobe. The true centerpiece was that massive bed, a deep red comforter with thorny roses detailing an even darker shade of red.

“Wow,” I said incredulously. “You really enjoy red, huh?”

“What gave you that impression?” He chuckled, shrugging. “I don’t know if it’s the blood dependency, but I’ve always gravitated to red. The color of passion, the color of unbridled emotion.”

“The color of great sex.” I nodded, without even thinking about it.

“Is that so?”

I blushed, adding another hue of red to the room. “Sorry, I was just—”

Kroven waved it off with a smile. “No, I like it. And I don’t disagree. There’s something undeniably….seductive about red, as well.”

We shared a gaze, one that had my dick hoping we were about to engage in a Round Two romp. Kroven must have thought better of it, because then he was leading me back to the living room, telling me to make myself comfortable. I resisted the urge to say his dick in my ass would make me the most comfortable and took a seat on the white couch.

I decided to distract myself by asking him questions.

“How'd you get this place?” I prompted as we waited for the pizza to arrive.

Kroven sat down on the couch with me, his eyes flicking to the fireplace opposite us with a warm smile. He scooted closer to me, and my stomach writhed in giddiness. God, one sexual encounter and I was completely at his mercy. I inhaled a clean breath to ease my body from potential reactions to him.

“I was friends with the last owner.” Kroven explained with ease. “A human. He'd wanted to renovate the place for years, but was never able to do so. He left it to me upon his passing.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“It's alright. Grey was a fierce friend, like family. He was the only human I would have done anything for.” He paused to award me with an obvious smirk plastered along his lips. “I fear that sentiment could be changing as we speak.”

My lips curved at his comment. I wanted desperately to ask him what was brewing between us. Were we fuck buddies? Just getting each other off because we were so ridiculously attracted to each other? Or was there more here that had yet to be explored?

What did I even want? If Kroven were up for it, could I have an Orb boyfriend? A human and Orb romantic relationship was unheard of, but that didn't mean it had never occurred. It wasn't impossible. Was it?

I was about to say fuck it and blurt it out to ask, but a series of soft knocks on the door kept me from potentially making a fool of myself. Three cheers for the quickest pizza delivery ever, I guessed.

Kroven tipped the delivery driver from his, of course, maroon colored wallet from the back pocket of his pants. He closed the door, coming back to the couch as he sat the pizza box down on the coffee table. With his lips upturned, he handed me the large lemonade I'd requested. A smile slid across my face, and I must have looked fairly goofy because Kroven just shook his head.

“I’ve never encountered a human so taken by lemonade.”

Guffawing, I tilted my head back and forth happily. “It's my favorite. Always has been.”

“Any particular reason?”

I took a sip of the lemony sugar goodness, my thoughts souring. I didn't like some of the memories this question often queued in my head. Looking at Kroven's genuine curiosity, I pushed forward to answer.

“Aside from being a tasty drink,” I made sure to grin wide as a prelude to the eventual sadness that usually followed this story or anything like this about my past. “I grew up with it.” I cleared my throat. “My parents used to make it for me. It started as a treat for when I wasn't feeling well.” I laughed, taking a quick sip. “Until they realized I was faking sick most of the time to get lemonade.”

“That's adorable.” Kroven snickered, his light laughter filling my ears and warming me from the inside out.

I could really get used to that sound.

“Thanks,” I gave him a feeble smile. “Once my parents died, the only thing my grandma could do to stop my crying was letting me have lemonade.”

One of Kroven's hands politely settled on top of my free one on my thigh. “I’m so sorry.”

Absorbing the comfort from his hand, I swirled my thumb over his pale palm. “It was a long time ago.” I held up my lemonade. “Now I feel like they're with me whenever I'm enjoying my favorite beverage.”

I moved to pry a piece of pizza from the box, feeling a little disappointed when the movement caused Kroven to retreat his touch.

“Tell me about you, though.” I managed to say in between savoring the slice and sipping my lemonade. “Tell me all about the sangamar.” When he chortled, I persisted. “Seriously! What was it like when the Orbs came out of the shadows?”

A mixture of sorrow and what appeared to be relief shone through Kroven's features.

“It wasn't much of a choice,” Kroven laughed in small bursts, folding his pale hands over one another in his lap.

I stirred thinking about the unnecessary jealousy to be his hands, my dick jolting at the thought.

“There's places all around the world that have perfect conditions to house certain species. An unfortunate group of humans stumbled upon a sangamar community in Romania. There was enough witnesses to make it irrefutable proof that other creatures existed, thanks to you lovely humans deciding to invent cell phones.”

“The sangamar were the first ones discovered?”

This was news to me, and I was pretty sure most humans didn't know either. If people knew the first otherworldly creatures uncovered were yearning for human blood, there'd be a heavier prejudice against them.

“Indeed,” Kroven told me. “There was a big uproar among all the species on what to do. We came to a consensus that we needed to stop living in obscurity, and hoped the humans wouldn't resist our urge to assimilate into this shared world of ours.” He paused, eyeing me knowingly. “As I'm sure you know, things did not go well at first.”

The weight of his words hit me like someone had shot an anvil out of a cannon. I knew the way humans had first reacted to the news that we had never been alone on Earth, because my parents had fought against the Orbs during the initial outbreak of violence. Humans hadn't wanted to share something they felt was theirs, and even when Orbs reminded humanity that if they wanted humans gone, they could have done so over the course of centuries, but hadn't. A brief war had occurred, lasting only a year. It became quite clear that nothing manmade would rival some of the abilities that creatures possessed.

I thought about sharing this with Kroven, but something made me falter. I wanted to keep connecting with him, but I didn't want to tarnish what might have been a hard time for him by telling him that my parents had rebelled against the notion of sharing the world with them.

Instead, I decided to keep things more about him. “How was it for you when everything first happened?”

Kroven looked comforted by my inquisitiveness, his lips upturning briefly. “Honestly, it's all very hazy for me. It was quite a long time ago.” Something that looked a lot like sadness swelled within his eyes, like a painful memory was screaming at him. If that was the case, he lifted it from shining through his features and kept talking instead. “But after the first year of turmoil, an agreement was struck between the humans and the creatures. Or Orbs as you all have so decided to call us.”

I cringed inwardly. “Do you hate being called an Orb? ”

“It doesn't bother me,” Kroven smirked. “I just find it odd. I understand that it stands for Other Realm Beings and yet, we are from Earth, not a different planet or realm.” Kroven waved his hand. “But as long as I'm treated with respect, I could give a shit what humans refer to us as.”

Smiling, I took another bite of my pizza. I quite liked a Kroven that cussed, because he was so often portraying himself as such a Victorian era God.

I so looked forward to chiseling away the fortified exterior of this man of pale perfection.

We spent the evening swapping stories of our lives, getting to know each other on a deeper level without the confines of my job getting between us. As the night went on, I couldn’t help but wonder if Kroven was changing his temporary tent in my mind to a permanent place.