An Erotic Collection Volume 2 Read online

  “I’m locking this door,” she reminded him. “Don’t you try anything crazy. And if you’re going to steal something, make sure you break a lot of stuff, too, so I can prove the break-in for the insurance.”

  “I’m not going to steal anything.”

  She made that noise again, and this time thought she heard a soft chuff of laughter. It warmed her as much as his smile and voice had. As much as the look. He was definitely mind-freaking her, what else could it be?

  * * *

  In the morning, Lilly awoke to the smell of something good. Coffee, eggs. Bagels? She swung her feet out of bed, wincing when her toes touched the cold floor.

  In the kitchen, Zach stood over the stove. He wore the sweatpants she’d given him but nothing else. He was thinner than she remembered, but more muscular. When he turned to face her, in the snow-bright light of day, she wondered how she could ever have thought his face was ordinary.

  “Good morning, Lilly.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “You need to eat when you awake, or else you suffer.”

  She smiled. “You mean everyone around me suffers.”

  Zach inclined his head in the way he had of looking her over. “I don’t wish to suffer.”

  She sat at the table, waiting again for a sense of unreality to wash over her. A sense of something other than perfect normality. It didn’t come. She only felt hungry.

  He set the plate on the table and took the chair across from her. He folded his hands, one over the other. He watched her.

  Lilly paused, fork halfway to her mouth. “You don’t eat?”

  “I don’t need to eat yet.”

  “You drank cocoa last night.”

  “That was for the pleasure of it,” he said. “Not a need for sustenance.”

  “They send you down here with like what, a week’s worth of stored-up energy?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you saying that because it’s true or because you want to agree with me?”

  “It’s true. You know more than you think you could, Lilly.”

  “Mind freak,” she muttered and bit into the fluffy, perfectly cooked eggs. He’d spread her bagel with cream cheese and lox in just the right amounts. She washed down both bites with hot coffee brewed just right.

  Zach sat and watched her. He had thick, dark brows to match his thick, dark hair. Dark eyes. Big, strong hands.

  Lilly put down her fork and licked her lips. “Why me?”

  “Why not you?”

  “That’s no answer.”

  Zach shrugged, never looking away from her eyes. “It’s my answer.”

  Lilly sipped coffee while she thought. She looked out the sliding glass doors. The snow had piled up, drifted, waist-high. Outside she could see more drifts, more snow. She lived in at the end of a cul-de-sac, usually the last street to be plowed. She hadn’t yet heard the plows go by. They were stuck here for hours, if not the entire day.

  “Tell me you know how to play board games, Zach.”

  “I can learn whatever you want to teach me.”

  She smiled. “Is that so?”

  Zach smiled, too. She was prepared for it this time, but it still affected her. “This is so.”

  “All right then,” she said. “Let’s play.”

  * * *

  Seven hours later he’d thoroughly kicked her ass in Scrabble, but she’d wiped him out in Trivial Pursuit. Zach, it seemed, knew a lot of big words but not much about pop culture. He had lit a fire in her never-before-used fireplace, waving a hand over the sodden wood from a pile on the deck Lilly hadn’t even known she had, and coaxing it into flame.

  He hadn’t put on a shirt, which was fine by her. He had a very, very hot body, even with the strange and random sparkling thing his skin did. Not like Edward Cullen, Lilly thought as he got up to poke at the fire. Softer than that, more like ripples of iridescent color.

  He caught her staring. “Would you like another game?”

  “Why do you look like us?”

  “I do not look like you, Lilly Gold.”

  “No.” She scooted closer to study his bare skin. “I mean, like us. Like humans. Like a man.”

  “I am as I was made. How else should I look?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But your skin…glows.”

  He looked down at himself, then at her. “Does it?”

  “Yeah. See?” She ran a fingertip down his arm to his wrist and watched the way the light subtly shifted over his skin. She put her arm next to his, to show him. Skin to skin, heat. Her breath caught.

  Zach caught her wrist, turned her arm, traced a line down the soft inner flesh of her forearm. The faintest blush followed his touch. Lilly shivered, feeling it all over.

  She was getting a pretty good idea, maybe not of what she needed, but what she might want from him. Which was just crazy insane, crazier even than him being from another planet. But was it?

  She’d slept with three guys since she left Danny, and not one of them had she known more about than what she knew about the man in front of her-a first name. She hadn’t spent a day playing board games with any of them, either. She hadn’t done anything with them other than go home and fuck them.

  “At least I know you’re not a vampire,” she whispered as his finger traced more heat over her skin. “You’re not cold.”

  Zach looked surprised. “Would you think I am?”

  Lilly shook her head slowly, aware of how close they were sitting. She could feel heat radiating from him, hotter than the fire. She could see the reflection of flames in his deep brown eyes. “Where did you come from? Does it have a name?”

  “It has many names.”

  She quirked a grin at him. “Could I pronounce any of them?”

  His laugh, low and rumbly, tickled her belly like a sudden, sharp drop. “No. But your people have names for where I’m from.”

  “Mars? Venus? Saturn? No, someplace farther away than that. Right? Has to be.”

  “Both farther away and closer than you could ever think,” Zach said. His fingers traced another pattern on her skin.

  Outside, night had fallen. Lilly got to her feet, a little unsteady in the aftermath of Zach’s tender touch. He looked up at her.

  “The candles,” she said. “It’s time to light the candles.”

  Zach unfolded himself from the floor and followed her to the kitchen. Second night, three candles. Lilly shook them from the box, concentrating on this simple task to keep her mind from going to other strange places. She placed the candles in their holders, lit the shamash and murmured the blessing, suddenly self-conscious until she heard Zach’s deep voice speaking the words along with her.

  “Baruk atta Adonai, Eloheynu Melekh Ha-olom, Asher Kiddeshanu Bo-mitsvoytov viztivanu Lehadlik Ner Shel Hanukkah,” he said. “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us by His commandments, and has commanded us to kindle the lights of Hanukkah.”

  As with everything else that had happened, him knowing the blessing should’ve surprised her, and it didn’t. Together they stared at the candles’ reflection flickering in the window glass. Zach had a way with silence, of making spaces between words that were somehow as meaningful as speech itself.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Lilly said quietly, watching the wax begin to drip.

  Zach, silent, took her hand. Their fingers linked. Palm to palm. Skin to skin again. That was reply enough for her.

  * * *

  Gray skies the next morning forecast more snow. Mid-state was being slammed with severe weather warnings. The plows still hadn’t gone by and a quick call to the local borough office earned Lilly a recorded greeting stating that all crews were working, but there was no guarantee of any service soon. In case of emergency, she was supposed to call the police or fire department, but Lilly had no emergency. Her boss had closed the office in response to the governor’s declaration of a state of emergency. Nobody was going