Page 63 of Sky Song
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a closed club. You need a trusted patron to invite you in. Your neighbor was the best choice.”
Cricket went to the couch and flipped on her back, staring at the ceiling. So many questions, they buzzed like bees, ‘round and ‘round.
“Go away, Lyle, and take your lies with you.”
His steps were light for such a heavy male when he approached her bed. “I’m not lying.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, afraid they’d leak. “You only leave huge black holes in the information.”
“Some things you already know. You’ll learn more in time.”
“On second thought, I don’t care to know more. What I want is to get my life back. To keep working at the lab and saving money to bring mama to Meeus. You were never a part of my life’s plan.”
“You need me.” He lowered down to the floor to sit next to the couch.
“Yeah, like a rash.”
He smiled slightly, she sensed it. “You like me.”
“Do I?” She twisted her head to look at him. “I don’t know you, Lyle. Every time I feel like I glimpse the real you, it’s an illusion. You don’t move, yet I can never reach you. You shimmer and change colors and show me facets that you want me to see, and I never know which one is the true Lyle.”
“I can be anything you want me to be.”
She shook her head emphatically. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want pretend. I don’t want perfect. I wantreal.”
He reached for her with a startling speed, an alien male with inner workings that remained murky to her. “I don’t know what real is anymore.”
Slowing his movements, he framed her face in his large hands and then his lips were on hers. He probed the seam of her lips with his tongue, and she let him in.She let him in.First, she had let him into her life, her home. And now, into her body. It was crazy. But he tasted so unbearably sweet, and their kiss was deep and powerful, the ultimate bonding.
“Lyle…”
He pulled her down to the floor with him and slid his hands down her back to her sides, holding her firmly. She placed a hand on his cheek, and, looking into his weird reflective eyes, traced her fingers across the mouth she now knew, touching the wetness of their kiss there, and put her finger on the rough ridge of his scar. She’d wanted to touch it for so long, ever since that first time she caught sight of it. The weird impulse hadembarrassed her but never really went away. And now, running her fingertip up and down, she explored the scar a little before replacing the finger with her tongue, licking the puckered skin. So sweet, just like she liked.
He recaptured her mouth and teased her, sipping and nipping at her lips, tugging at them with gentlest of bites before kissing her deeply again.
The wave of heady pleasure shocked her and wrenched a moan out of her throat. Lyle eased up and they broke apart, then came together again, changing angles. Broke apart and came together. He shifted so that Cricket straddled his lap, and his hands settled firmly on her hips.
“You’re beautiful in your passion.”
She smiled tremulously seeing herself in his hard black eyes. Her breaths were coming out in small fast puffs.
“I can look at you forever, like this.” Bending, he kissed her throat, open-mouthed, the scrape of his teeth hinting at a rougher pleasure. Cricket jolted, electrified. Streaks of heat shot down to her breasts and belly. Her head lolled back for better access.
“Just like this,” he murmured.
Hipper howled like a banshee.
Cricket slowly raised her head, staring at Lyle with unfocused eyes.
“Allow me to kill the animal. I’ll make it quick and he won’t feel a thing, I promise.”
She had half a mind to kill Hipper herself, but at the same time, she was begrudgingly grateful for the interruption.
Blinking the room into focus, she hovered between the pulsing need to keep exploring his lush body and the cold realization that becoming intimate with an alien male who was using her for unknown purposes would be a massive mistake.
In the end, the rational side won, if barely. Fortifying her deflating resolve with a deep breath, Cricket scooted off his lap. “Stop with your killing jokes, Lyle, they got old fast and they weren’t funny to begin with. Hipper can’t help it. But isn’t it strange, since you’re inside?”
