…
God, Dawson had never felt this way before. Every part of his body burned as he tasted her kiss and familiarized himself with the way she felt beneath him. Intense white light seared his eyes. The breathy, little feminine sounds she was making were music to his ears, a beautiful melody of sighs.
And then his song stopped.
Beth’s hand jerked off his shoulder, and she gasped against his mouth. “Oh my God…”
He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Oh, hell… All he saw was white glow that bathed Beth’s face, reflected off the walls, covered the entire bed…
Oh, holy shit.
Dawson sprang off the bed, but his feet never touched the floor beside it. He hovered, staring down at himself. He was glowing.
Like in full motherfreaking alien mode up in her house, in her bedroom.
Bethany skittered across the bed and pressed against the headboard. Her eyes were wide as she stared at him, her mouth working but no words coming out.
Shock suspended time. Everything seemed surreal to him. He wasn’t in Bethany’s bedroom. He hadn’t exposed what he truly was. And this girl — this beautiful human he was falling for wasn’t staring at him like he was king freak.
Grasping the edge of her comforter, she shook her head back and forth. Like she was having trouble processing what she was seeing, which was understandable.
Dawson was glowing like a star.
His heart was racing so fast he could feel it in his fingertips. Partly due to the whole kissing thing and partly because he was still in his true form. And she was glowing faintly, like someone had dipped a paintbrush into white paint and shaded her edges. Of course, Bethany couldn’t see it. No human could. The trace surrounding her was a reaction of the high EMF surrounding him when he was in his real skin.
Crap — she wasglowing.
Bethany blinked slowly, her fingers easing off the blanket. “Dawson?”
Do something, he ordered himself. But his control had slipped, and he couldn’t pull it back. Light radiated from him, filling every inch of the room.
She rose to her knees little by little. He was certain he could see her heart pounding through her sweater, could smell her fear. She was seconds from bolting from the room, screaming. Bethany inched across the bed, making her way toward him.
Dawson drifted back, wanting to say something, but in his true form, he didn’t speak like a human. Luxen used…different paths.
At the edge of the bed, she peered up at him. In her brown eyes, he could see his reflection, and he hated what he saw.
“Dawson,” she whispered, clasping her hands under her chin. “Is that you?”
Yes, he said. But she couldn’t hear him.
When the silence stretched, became unbearable, she swung her legs off the bed and stood. Instead of running for the door like any sane person would, she reached out, bringing her fingers within inches of touching his light.
Dawson jerked back.
Bethany yanked her hand to her chest. “What…what are you?”
God, wasn’t that a loaded question? The whole telling part seemed a moot point now, but how could he explain what happened? Hey, honey, I’m an alien and apparently I just doused you with some radioactive loving! Wanna catch a movie? Yeah, not cool.
So many things were rushing through his thoughts. He’d exposed his kind — his family, putting them in danger, risking Beth. There was no stopping her if she decided to scream alienor giant light bug.
But he needed to rein it in. Her parents were downstairs, and he had a feeling the longer he stayed in this form, the stronger her trace would be.
Moving to the far side of the room, away from Beth, he willed his out-of-control emotions to stabilize. It was hard as hell, but eventually he managed to take his human form, and the room was cast in shadows again.
Everything except Beth — there was a soft halo around her.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked.
Bethany’s legs seemed to collapse beneath her. She plopped down on the bed, shaking her head again. “What are you?”
Leaning against the wall, he closed his eyes. There was no point in lying now or keeping secrets. The damage was done. All he could hope was that he could convince her not to go public with this.
“I’m an alien.” The words sounded thick and foreign to his ears, and he barked a laugh. “I’m a Luxen.”
She pulled up her knees, tucking them against her chest. “An alien? Like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?” She laughed then, and it carried a sort of hysterical edge to it. When the sound trickled off, her head snapped toward him. “That’s why you like that dumb movie Cocoonso much. This…this isn’t real. It can’t be. Oh my God, I’m crazy… Schizophrenia.”
Dawson swallowed. “You’re not crazy, Bethany. I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to know, and I don’t even know how…how this happened.”
“What? You don’t normally light up when you kiss girls? Because that could get real awkward, right?” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Oh, God, I don’t know…alien?”
Hearing the confusion in her voice tore through him, and he wanted to somehow make it better, but how? At least he didn’t sense any fear in her anymore. Amazing.
He took a tentative step forward, and when she didn’t move, he was reassured. “Maybe it will help if I start over?”
She nodded slowly.
Taking a deep breath, he sat before her and tilted his head back, meeting her eyes. What he was about to do was unheard of. The rules he was about to break were astronomical. An image of his brother and sister formed in his head, and his chest squeezed. He knew if this went badly, it went badly for them, too.
And it would also go badly for Bethany.
Chapter 11
All Bethany could do was stare at Dawson. That was pretty much all she was capable of. Alien? The logical part of her brain kept spewing things like, This is just a hallucination or a dream. Or, This is the onset of a mental disease. Maybe Dawson never existed, but then again, that didn’t make sense. Pretty sure she’d seen other people interacting with him. Unless her hallucinations were on such an epic level she believedshe’d seen people—
“Bethany.” His quiet voice intruded.
Her heart turned over heavily. “This is real, right?”
His face contorted as if he were in pain. “Yes, it’s real.”
Crazy people probably did things like this all the time. Asked their imaginary alien friends if they were real, and of course, they’d say yes.
She placed her hands against her cheeks and then ran them through her tangled hair. Did crazy people also make out with their hallucinations? Because that was probably the only upside to all of this.
Dawson placed his hand on her knee. “I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through. I really can’t, but I promise you that this is real and you’re not crazy.” He squeezed her leg. “And I’m so sorry for making you feel this way and for you finding out like this.”
“Don’t apologize.” Her voice sounded hoarse. “It’s just…a lot to comprehend. I mean, I never really thought about aliens. Like, okay, maybe they do exist somewhere out there, but…yeah, I don’t know if I really did believe. And you can’t be an alien.”
She laughed again and then winced. It sounded like a whole lot of crazy. “I just saw you…glow, but it was more than just glowing. You were light, right? A human form of light — arms and legs made out of light.”
Dawson nodded. “We’re called Luxen. In our true forms we are nothing more than light, but…it’s not like you think. You can touch us — we have form and shape.”