“This is Ares,” Charmaine says. “Ares, meet Clementine.”
“It is a pleasure,” he rumbles and my eyebrows shoot up.
“You speak English.” It’s a statement and a question all rolled up into one. Eros didn’t speak more than monosyllables when he met Penelope. I was expecting this guy…alien…to be the same.
“Well enough,” he acknowledges. “I have been on Earth almost a cycle. A year. I also speak German and Italian.”
Totally thrown, I gape at him. His accent sounds nothing like Eros. The first little frisson of unease trickles down my spine. If he’s been here so long, why is he suddenly keen to get married? A hundred other questions flood my mind.
“Oh,” I respond brilliantly. “Okay. Ares, is it? Like the Greek god of war?”
He nods. “It is my Torvian name in short form. Appropriate for Mount Olympus, non pensi?”
“Are you going to veer between languages like that a lot?”
“Yes.” His eyebrows come together. “Often without realizing it. It is how my brain functions.”
That’s…dizzying. But he scarcely notices that I’m being borderline rude, so there’s that.
Charmaine swoops in and ushers us into the living area, chattering about the deal, which I already know from Penelope. We have to get married so Ares can apply for a green card in order to stay in America, and there’s a marriage license process that takes about a week. There are a lot of other hoops and legalese that goes in one ear and out the other. Penelope and Eros had to go through all of this too and they’ll help us stay on the right track, I’m sure.
I’m more interested in the nitty gritty of the union. Perching on Charmaine’s couch, I ask her, “Do we get to go on dates or does he move right in until the wedding?”
Charmaine hands me a manual that’s the size of Utah. I can’t hold it with one arm and almost drop it until I manage to get a grip, hefting the binder into my lap. It’s heavy enough to cut off my circulation. Great. As long as I don’t have any need for my extremities, I’m all set.
“This has all the most pertinent information,” she tells me. “But Ares is slightly different than the other matches I’ve handled since he’s been learning our language and culture for quite some time now. Most of what you need to know you can ask him.”
I glance up at the imposing Torvian with his arms crossed over his massive chest. He didn’t take a seat when we moved from the hall and I get the sense he doesn’t do a lot of sitting around. He couldn’t possibly, not judging by the muscles upon muscles bulging under his skin. I hope he wears short sleeved T-shirts all year round because I do enjoy looking at him.
No time like the present to dive right in then. “Will you take a walk with me?”
His granite features don’t budge. “For what purpose?”
Okay, yeah. Walked into that one. Just because he looks human and has been here on Earth doesn’t mean he cares anything about social customs like getting to know the person you’re going to marry. “So we can be alone, of course.”
Intrigue darts through his silvery gaze as it wanders down my body with a decided measure of heat. “I agree to walk.”
Suddenly I wonder what I’m opening myself up for. I’m completely off balance since everything I thought I knew about how this match would go has been wrong. Did I screw up by specifying that I wanted to be matched with a certain Torvian? Maybe I should have just answered the match profile questions and let the chips fall.
Ares opens Charmaine’s door and calls out, “Ciao” then shakes his head and says goodbye instead. It’s kind of cute that he gets the languages mixed up.
“You must be really smart if you know three languages,” I say as I step through the door ahead of him.
Most of the time I can hold my own intellectually but I definitely do not watch the Science Channel for fun. It’s a bit unnerving to think about being with someone who is leagues above me in the IQ department.
“Four,” he corrects immediately. “I am fluent in my native language.”
Duh. I roll my eyes at myself but he’s not being a smart ass or anything so I don’t shoot back a cutting reply like I normally would. He probably wouldn’t get my sarcasm anyway. We walk along a lighted path toward the road, which is the only place to walk around here. The hushed darkness of the forest increases the further from the house we go.
The silence stretches and I struggle with how to navigate this conversation. “I have to ask. You remember me, right? From when Penelope went to get Eros in Switzerland?”
“I do.”
His voice floats to me through the black and his accent is still pretty sexy even though he doesn’t sound like the only other Torvian I know. Maybe they have different regions like they do here. Someone from South Carolina sounds nothing like someone from the Bronx.
Since he clearly isn’t one to elaborate, I prod him again. “And was that the reason you said yes to the match?”
“It is.”
Arg. Did I get the only Torvian on the planet who knows multiple languages but doesn’t talk in any of them? I was expecting a little more along the lines of flowery speeches at this point, like how he can’t live without me and I’m the one he crossed a thousand galaxies to reach. I mean, I’m not a relationship expert even when both parties are human, but this is way beyond me.
“Took you long enough to get here then,” I mumble.
He pauses so I do too. A smattering of stars spread out over the tops of the trees behind him. It’s a lovely panorama, or it would be if this wasn’t topping the list as the most awkward date I’ve been on in a long time. Which is saying something considering I walked out on Nick at Hibiscus for this.
“I did not come to Earth to be a match,” he tells me.
Yet he became one anyway? Now we’re talking. “Why did you change your mind?”
“You,” he says with the most color in his voice that I’ve heard thus far. “You… Mi affascina.”
The words wash over me and okay, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being talked to in a foreign language by a guy with a sexy accent, especially when he’s basically saying that one glimpse of me changed his life goal. “I don’t know what that means but I like it.”
His brows come together as if he’s wracking his brain. “Fascinate. You…pick me. Why?”
Oh, so he was swayed by the fact that I specified him? That warms me up fast. “You know why. When you look at me, I feel it. Here.”
I take his hand and flatten it against my stomach, fully aware that I’m pushing a couple of boundaries since he hasn’t made a move to touch me in any way, shape or form. His fingers spread over my abdomen, and Holy God. Lightning forks through me, heating me with sharp, fast tugs between my legs that radiate until my whole body is weeping for more of his touch.
I stare up at him and the atmosphere grows thick with awareness, the kind that springs up almost instantly every time his gaze lands on me. Like I told him. It happened in Switzerland and again when Charmaine opened the door earlier. And now. In spades. Probably it’s heightened by the fact that he’s touching me.
The heaviness of his palm presses against my skin, turning me molten and I wonder what he would do if I kissed him. Which is a purely academic question because he’s a head taller than me so he’d have to be on board or else I’d look pretty silly jumping two feet in the air to play pin the tail on the donkey with my lips.
“I feel it too,” he murmurs and the question of kissing gets a lot less academic and a whole lot more viable as he closes the distance between us, sliding his palm around my waist, drawing me into his body.
The hard planes of his thighs and torso have no give, but somehow we align and it’s the most delicious thing that’s ever happened to me. My body electrifies as he tips up my chin and feathers a thumb across my cheek. Our gazes lock and all at once, he’s communicating in yet another way.
He wants me. Not like the normal run of the mill you’re hot and I’d like to boink like bunnies. But at a bone deep level, he wants me to be his. Since that kind of amazing is exactly what I’m looking for, I lap it up.
Did I say this was awkward? I lied. All of that vanishes as his lips brush mine and the world melts away. The kiss gets intense faster than I can handle, his tongue licking into my mouth in search of more and he finds it. I meet him eagerly, falling into the experience of being kissed by someone who knows how to do it.
How’s that for a kick? Thank God Earth men are bland and insipid because I would have missed out on this perfection in the form of Ares. The kiss rearranges my insides, makes me yearn for unnamable things that I have heard of but never had. Ares can give them to me and I want that—want him—with ferocity I scarcely recognize.
He pulls back far too soon, his gaze enigmatic and unreadable. My knees buckle and only his strong arm at my waist keeps me off the ground. Obviously we’re compatible and the match process didn’t matter. I can’t wait to find out how much better sex will be with a Torvian than with human men, though I plan to be a lot more careful than Penelope. Eros knocked her up pretty much the first time they did it.
“We will marry,” he says and it’s not a question, but that’s okay. Marriage was a given since I knew about the whole green card requirement and how Torvians come here to escape bad stuff on their planet.
A down-on-one-knee proposal would have been nice. I guess that’s a little much to ask given the unromantic circumstances so I’m mostly over it.
What I’m not sure of is why he didn’t just find a nice Swiss girl to marry. Obviously he doesn’t need the acclimation assistance like Eros did, plus there are a few other things that don’t add up. Penelope didn’t ask enough questions in the beginning. I’m not making that mistake.
“If we get married, you have to come here to live.” I gesture to the forest at large. “You won’t miss Switzerland?”
He shakes his head, his expression stoic. “It is not Torvis. Nothing is.”
My heart flattens. So basically he’s saying he doesn’t care where he lives because it’s not home. I want him to have a home. Everyone should. We can make one together. “I get it. You’ll like Olympia. It’s a great place to live. We can go hiking and to Rialto beach. Maybe you can get a job doing whatever you were doing in Switzerland this whole time.”
That gets a reaction and it’s not a positive one. “I wish to start over. Not to continue as I was.”
The sheer lack of emotion in his voice cuts through me. I bawl through Subaru commercials, so for him to be this tightly controlled over his reasons for leaving Switzerland—that slays me. It must be a big deal for him to be so stoic with a stiff upper lip and all.
Ares is definitely not what I expected but in a lot of ways, he’s more. I’m pretty much a goner. I want to help him have that fresh start. God knows I’ve needed enough of those in my day.
I nod. “If marrying me is a step forward for you, I’m good with that.”
Examining my sudden burst of altruism doesn’t sound like fun, so I sweep it away in favor of linking hands with my alien and strolling with him farther down the unlighted road from Charmaine’s house. I have no fear generally but even less so with Ares by my side. Who would voluntarily tangle with someone the size of a grizzly bear? I’m totally safe with him and I know the rules already. I’m in charge of what happens between us—a failsafe the agency puts in place since I physically couldn’t stop a Torvian from doing whatever he wants to me. The rules are for the human women’s safety. If I don’t want to be married anymore, Charmaine helps me untangle everything. He goes back to Switzerland. No questions asked.
Of course, I’m not going to ditch him. I don’t think so anyway. Penelope did that with her alien and regretted it almost immediately. Ares seems pretty transparent and I can definitely talk to him a lot easier than Penelope can communicate with Eros, but they’re always too busy making out to care how much English Eros knows. Maybe that will be true with me and my match too.
A girl can hope. “You’re a pretty good kisser, by the way. Where did you learn that?”
Ares glances at me. “Torvian females resemble humans and they derive pleasure in the same fashion.”
Splendid. This gets better and better. “So have you dated any other human women or am I the first?”
“You are special,” he tells me and yeah, that accent isn’t getting any less sexy, especially not when he’s saying pretty things like that.
This is going way better than I would have dreamed. Clearly my alien and I are meant to be, written in the stars or whatever mystical swirly reason for being you wanna label it. It’s so nice to finally have something go right, for solid proof that I’m not broken or incapable of having a relationship. I was just looking for love in all the wrong species.