Page 3

I always have such weird dreams when I drink too much. It's rare that I surpass the limits of what I know my body can handle, but that asshole I went out with last night definitely made it necessary. How is it that I can still be mad about his attitude and his behavior the next day when I'm nowhere near him?

Today's the day I'm going get my life in order. It has to be. No more dating idiots who don't deserve me, no more wasting my time on dates with people that can't be bothered to ask me the most basic things about myself. Time for a new era. I’ll be career focused. Adopt half a dozen cats.

“How's your head then, love?”

What is that voice? It's like an earworm, soothing my soul. I swear if they spoke long enough, the vibrations would probably get me pretty damn close to orgasm. “I thought I was awake,” I say in exasperation. “That would have been such a pleasant way to wake up, too. Far better than my neighbor yelling at the trashy daytime tv shows they never turn off.”

The hairs on my arm prickle as I come to realize I'm not actually alone. Do I risk opening my eyes? Please tell me I didn't go home with Calvin last night.

There's a low hum that I can't place surrounding me, an almost whirring noise and a gentle rocking motion. “What on earth?”

“Away from Earth, actually,” the voice says.

Open eyes it is. “Um, who are you? Why are you in my room?”

The pretty face attached to the pretty voice smirks at me, his strange features telling me to look around me.

“Fuck. I'm in your room, I take it? Look, this is new for me. I don't normally wake up in strange people's beds. I'm not quite sure about the etiquette here.”

“Are we so forgettable then?”

I try to recall any events from last night that I might be missing, but aside from my strange dreams, I'm not coming up with much. “Any chance you could uh, enlighten me, maybe? Out of the kindness of your heart?”

He slides to the bed in a fluid motion, shoulder length dark hair wrapped around equally black horns with a ribbed design going halfway back on his head. If I was less hungover, I might have been alarmed by the fact that his skin is a purplish magenta color, and that his eyes are nearly glowing. Instead, I'm focused on the ring on his septum, on the long pointy ears that I'm just itching to drag my thumbs over.

Without saying a word, he hovers over me, making me inch back to the bed until I'm staring up at him from my back. His hair becomes a sort of curtain around us, and the odd texture of the blanket over my hips is further confirmation that I'm definitely not in my room.

“Your ours, love. You signed a contract last night with our people, binding yourself to us.”

I would laugh if he didn't look so damn serious about the words he's saying.

Other parts of the night come back and I feel myself flush from them; remarks my server at dinner made about the boxes in the park, the exasperation with dating as I interviewed people on my way home, deciding, quite spontaneously I might add, to stop by the communication box between the restaurant and my home and check it out.

I bring my hands to cover my face up, mortified. But not for the fact that you’d think. I’m not horrified or regretful that I apparently got engaged to an alien, but I'm pretty sure I tried to show off my non-existent baton skills. “I embarrassed the fuck out of myself, didn't I?”

I can feel his strange glowy eyes staring at me, even through my hands, and if I look at him, I'll have to face up to all the stupid shit I decided to do last night. I'd rather put that off for a moment, if possible.

“Embarrass yourself? No, I wouldn't say that.” He’s totally smirking at me.

“Uh-huh. Not buying it.”

“Lucky for us, it does not matter if you buy it. You were charming.”

A strange sound escapes my throat, halfway between a laugh and a snort. “Nobody's ever called me charming before. In fact, I believe my date last night told me I was the least charming woman he's ever met. And that was after he basically admitted to not eating— you know what? We don't need to talk about that. You're totally laughing at me right now, aren't you?”

“Won’t you look at me then, love?”

“I'm good here, thanks.”

I can feel the air between us diminish, and then his nose is skimming the sides of my neck as he inhales.

“Old gods, you smell divine.”

“She's awake?”

“Of course. There was more than one of you last night speaking through the screen, wasn't there? Alright then, might as well get this over with.” I drop my hands away from my face and look around, my blood heating instantly at the look of absolute adoration painted on not one, not two, but three different aliens’ faces.

Fuck.

“Before you panic, may we introduce ourselves to you? Maybe we can… how do you put this, assuage your fears about us?”

I really put my foot in it this time. On the bright side, this is going to make last year's Christmas fiasco look pretty damn good.

I sit up in the bed, take time to rub the sleep out of my eyes and comb my hair at least a little bit, and then blindly reach out for the glasses I'm really hoping are nearby.

“You are looking for your spectacles? They’re here,” the man that's still mostly on top of me says.

Man? No, no, no. Alien .

Yep, there's an alien on top of me.

“Thank you.”

“You were inebriated last night, weren't you? You didn't truly mean to choose us?”

The crestfallen look on his face, on all of theirs, when I make myself gaze upon their beauty once more, is painful to witness. “I—"

“You don't have to tell us,” the one with the darker skin says. His voice is gruff, and he storms out, making me feel like I'm the worst person to ever exist.

“Part of me clearly knew what was happening,” I start to explain to the two still in the room, but they’re looking out to the hallway where the other alien disappeared to, clearly worried about him. “But I remember, now that I’m awake, most of what happened. I remember going to the box, I remember contacting you. Remember talking to you, and hearing your voices...” I look around at them, trying to line up what I heard last night with what's in front of me now.

“You don't wish to be mated?”

Honestly, the guy with the lights in his skin and his hair is too beautiful to look at. It actually kind of hurts my eyes, but I have this indescribable urge to touch him. I crawl out of bed, approaching him carefully so I don't scare him off. Who knows if he's skittish at all, I just feel like I put myself in their life, so I’ve got to find a way to fix this. “Can I touch you?”

He blinks down at me, assessing, and then nods. I wrap my arms carefully around his waist, trying not to feel self-conscious that he's so much thinner than I am. “You smell like grape popsicles.”

“Grape pop… what is grape popsicles?”

“My favorite thing to eat when it's hot out. I hope you're not offended that I'm smelling you.” Then I go right back to it. He does smell like grape popsicles and it's weird, but I don't think it's a cologne. It seems to be coming from his skin itself.

It takes a moment, but soon his hands drift to my hair, playing with the loose curls there and combing through them. “You're even more beautiful in person,” he says softly.

I smile up at him, feeling at ease. “Thank you. I didn't mean to offend you guys. It's just—”

“We get it,” he says succinctly. “We're aliens. Very different to you, and not very desirable.”

“ No, ” I say vehemently. “That's not it at all. It's more like, I'm really good at getting myself in situations inexplicably. It’s just taking me a moment here to come to grips with what's happening. I feel as if I... was disrespectful contacting you the way I did. And I mean, come on, are there no safeguards on those machines? How many people have approached them drunk and woken up on a spaceship instead of their ex's bed?”

He gives me a little bit of a smile, but it's still sad. “Not too many, but it has happened.”

“Well,” I say as I give him his personal space back, “I was quite sick of attempting to find a serious partner on Earth.”

“Is that what you're looking for?” the alien on the bed asks.

I find myself nodding, realizing that's exactly what I've been wanting. “I've been looking for years now. Maybe I wasn't taking it seriously enough, because dating is just something you're supposed to do on Earth. You're supposed to go out with people and try to make a connection. I like hanging out with friends, but it's just not the same as having somebody there to come home to at the end of the day. I've had a couple good relationships, nothing traumatic or anything, but nothing lasting either.”

“Human dating mystifies us,” the glowy man says. “We are given references when we sign up to be part of this exchange, and we have to study your mating habits. We watch footage and observe the sites that you use to find partners, and it's all so casual that it makes no sense to us. Every once in a while, something will surprise us and the match is made and two people connect instantly, but more often than not, it just seems that one or the other of the partners are only there for free meal, or to relieve physical needs.”

“How do you do it then? If you don't casually date?”

“Well,” the guy from the bed says, “for starters, we do everything with our triads.”

“That's the three of you?”

The guy on the bed nods. “Yes. We’re matched to triads based on compatibility tests as juveniles. Then we undergo trial periods to see if it's something we want to make permanent. If no changes need to be made, we continue forward with formalizing the triad. Once we get to that stage, we settle in and start to decide if we want to put our names in for a mate or not.”

“What if we hate each other?” I ask. “There weren’t any compatibility tests given that I remember on that machine. I could have been matched to anybody, and I'd be in the same spot I am now. So how do I know this is even going to work? What if I drive you crazy, and you're ready to kick me out the first chance you can?”

“This is going to be complicated, or maybe hard to explain to you, because our cultures are so different,” the glowy man says. “I'm Kass, by the way. That is my name.”

“Adeema,” the guy on the bed says. “And the grump that stormed out is Owiin. He's likely down the hall listening in, you may call out a greeting if you'd like.”

“You can come back in, Owiin,” I call out, feeling a bit silly. But he does, and for some reason, I feel like I need to touch him, too.

Sidling up to him, I look way up and hold out a hand. “I'm , it's nice to meet you. I'm sorry for the way everything just came out.”

“We should have known it wouldn't have worked out when you appeared on camera as inebriated as you were. It is our fault for hoping and for willingly collecting you knowing you likely didn't mean it.”

My hand is just hanging out there between us, awkwardly. “Can I touch you?”

He raises one of his eyebrows. Well, where eyebrows would be if he had them, and then shrugs. He's harder to wrap my arms around because he's more barrel chested, but touch feels important.

His hands rest on my shoulders tentatively and then snake their way across them, enveloping me in a hug. “You smell like a cherry slushy,” I inform him. “My favorite drink when I need something sugary.”

“Touch is very important to us,” he informs me. “My skin works differently than yours, we're able to pick up lots of information that your human skin can't. Is that why you wished to hug me?”

“I didn't know that, actually. Just felt like something that needed to be done.” I shrug and go back on to the bed to sit next to Adeema. I sit right next to him and hold up my hand, suppressing a shiver when he interlaces his with it.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

“You were going to tell me why it would be difficult to explain to me, about our compatibility?”

Adeema nods, his eyes still closed. “Our race is very... adaptive. It is imperative for the survival of our species that we make lasting bonds, because it is a dying race. We have evolved ways of altering our identities subconsciously, to become something of ideal partners. We’re given the basic courtesy classes of course, on how to treat our partners, but the way we work is that we get to know you, and as we do, our personalities will start to fully develop based on input from you. We become the best versions of ourselves while becoming ideal partners for you, so anybody we would match with could potentially be the perfect match for us.”

I frown. “That sounds disheartening. And it makes me feel very not special. You literally could have picked up any other woman out there, and you'd be just as happy with them as you are with me? I mean, I'm getting ahead of myself, there're a lot of assumptions happening up here,” I say as I tap my head, “but there's no magic there. No romance.”

“You misunderstand it,” Owiin says as he comes to sit on the bed as well. Mr. touch-is-important-to-us doesn't give me any space. Instead, he pins me to the bed and hovers over me. “You are the only woman on earth that could make us happy, because you chose us.”

“By that logic, if somebody else would have been there instead of me, they would have made you the happiest people in the galaxy.”

He narrows his eyes at me then shakes his head. “No.”

“No? That's all you have to say? I could have been paired with anybody else and lived a fulfilled life with them, too.”

“No,” he says again.

I throw my hands up, exasperated. “Whatever. What's next? I know there are no return to earth options, but I actually sort of feel like I might be where I'm supposed to be.”

“There, you see? It is working already.”

I look up an Owiin in confusion. “What? How do you figure?”

“A key part of our culture,” Adeema tries to explain, sneakily getting very close, “is our belief in the universe. On Earth, many people worship a god of some sort in the heavens, correct? Our culture, we believe in the power of the universe. We believe we are given exactly what we need and accept that sometimes it takes time to understand why. For example, you.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“Everything was set into motion when you went on your date,” he says as he makes a raspy sound from the back of his throat, making me think of disgust or some such similar emotion. “Choosing to go on that date, getting matched with somebody so ill-suited to you, being where you were—"

“Did I tell you the server at the restaurant brought up the idea of considering the communication boxes? He has a cousin that happily mated through the program, and he knew I've been struggling in the dating department because apparently, I'm bad at choosing new restaurants to have failed dates at.”

“Even better,” Owiin says, his eyes lighting up a bit. “Maybe you don't see the pattern here, but we do. Clearly. You were always going to be ours. Maybe we could have picked up any woman, yes. But we didn't. We picked up you , which means you were the only one that could make us happy.” He looks so happy by the circular logic that I can't even fault him. It's all very clear to him and maybe for once in my life, I just need to trust in that.

What would it be like, if for once in my life, I just accepted where I was, and went with it? What if I bought into the idea that some greater power put me on this ship, got me here in the way that they did, and united me with these men because they're my best chance at happiness?

“You are thinking about it,” Adeema confirms. “This is good. When you open yourself to the universe, their energy can soak into you better. It is rare that these matches do not end up in a good mating,” he goes on to explain. “Because of our species, and because we believe the universe puts the exact person we need in our life, most stories are happy ones.”

“Am I right in assuming there is a trial period of sorts with mates, like there is when you form a triad?”

Kass steps closer, standing at the edge of where we all are, looking a little shy. “There is,” he tells me in his soft, lyrical voice. “There will be signs fairly quickly we are biologically compatible.”

“It's already started,” Owiin comments. “You like our scents. This is a big signal that we are good mates for you, because if we smelled unappealing to you, we would not be well compatible. You know what else? Your body, it will begin to prepare itself for us if you spend time with us.”

I look up at Owiin, wondering what he's getting at, and the thought hits me. My eyes trace the line of down his body, linger on his hips, stopping at the sizable bulge that fills his pants. Does that mean what I think it does?

It twitches. For fuck’s sake, how big is that thing?

Clearing his throat, Kass gets us back on track. “In the trial period, you will have to take some classes and undergo training before we'd be able to consummate anything, lest we risk tearing you. We are told that human women are small, but pliable.”

“If that isn't the most flattering description I've ever heard, then I’m a zebra.”

“I do not understand this phrase,” Owiin tells me. “But the classes are part of the trial period.”

I'm trying to read between the lines here, but I don't have a whole lot to go off of. “Just to be clear, we're talking about sex, yes? You're saying I must train my body before I can fit you? That seems like it might be unnecessary. I've been with some big men before, and all it took was a good amount of foreplay.”

The three of them make scary noises of irritation, making me realize that they're much less human than I'm assuming they are. “Okay, don't talk about other guys around you, got it.”

“If you are ours, you are only ours. Mating is very different than marriage. It is very... consuming. Simply having you here, knowing you agreed to be ours, even if that's not true necessarily, it's changing our behavior. Makes us possessive of you, territorial maybe, to think of you touching somebody else.” The look in Adeema’s eyes does more to get this through to me than anything, because he looks wild and ready to fight someone for me.

Normally I find possessiveness to be a bit cringey, but this is actually working for me quite well. “I can respect that boundary. How does the trial period work?”

“For starters…” Owiin explains, looking at me intently. I don't know if he has some sort of odd magical power that keeps my eyes locked on him, because suddenly it's as if I cannot look away even if I wanted to. But it's intimate, holding eye contact with somebody for so long, feeling as if you're measuring their very soul. Especially when he's so near to me, and I can feel his warm breath bending over my face and the heat of his body hovering just above mine.

I'm waiting for him to finish his sentence, but he doesn't. At least not in the way that I would assume would be a logical way to finish that sentence. He moves slowly, maybe so he doesn't startle me, and his nose drops to my neck. He's definitely sniffing me. He runs his face along the side of my neck, making my back arch and goosebumps rise all over my body. Images flash in my head of us being in this position, no clothing on, hot and sweaty as he makes deep noises while thrusting in and out of me.

The vision is so clear it feels like I've already done it, like it's a memory instead of a daydream.

But it's not half as good as the way it feels when his mouth descends on mine.

One of my favorite things to do actually, is kiss people I don't know very well. I know some people need to feel more comfortable with a partner before they want to do that, but I've always thought you can get to know a lot about somebody by the way they kiss. About the chemistry you have with that person and how inspired you’ll be together. If a spark happens once, then I know I can get it to happen again and again. Explosions get bigger when they’re fed more heat, so I know that if a first kiss is a killer, then I need to sit up and pay attention.

With him? The chemistry is off the charts. I might even entertain the idea of calling it incendiary.

Every thought in my head ceases to exist as I give myself over to the movements of my mouth. Lights are flashing behind my eyes; my blood is racing.

And then he pushes his hips into me and I'm ready to sign my life over to them. Again. I suddenly understand exactly why I need to train myself before attempting this, because it doesn't seem physically possible that this would even work.

“You are kissing me like your mouth was made for me. I cannot wait to taste all of you.”

There's literally nothing I can say to that, so I cling to him like we’re leashed together, trying not to gyrate my damn hips into him. It takes an immense amount of self-control not to just throw everything out the window and grind against him until I come.

“You're holding back, my mate. Why do you hold yourself back from me?”

“It's a bit fast, no?”

“Maybe for you, not for us. We will likely only attempt mating once, so don’t hold back while I’m trying to convince you that you should be ours.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. What do you mean you’ll only do this once?”

“If our trial fails, it is seen as a failing on our part, and we'll have to lobby ourselves for a chance to try again. But not before we wait ten years, during which we will be assigned to jobs somewhere heavy on manual labor. Is meant to temper us, to give us something to focus on while our bodies rewire themselves.”

“Well shit, that's a lot of pressure. Why is it considered your fault If we don't jive?”

“You'll see soon enough that we're not human. You will spend time around people more like us than you and will understand why the failing will fall on us. Some things are simple, like the way our bodies react to each other, but some things are not. There are two very different cultures between us, as well as nuances you’ll pick up as we sequester ourselves.” Kass pushes Owiin off of me, then reaches out a hand to pull me up.