“Get it off,” he demanded.
She gulped. Getting off was probably the very last thing she should be thinking about at the moment, given she was either about to be killed, or go into a permanent vegetative state when her obviously rapidly swelling brain tumor imploded. She squirmed, or tried to. “You’re . . . crushing my dahlia hybrids.”
Really, Dani? A guy beams into your shop, like a character straight out of a Spielberg movie, assaults you, appears to be quite ready, willing, and able to finish what he’s already started . . . and the best you can do is whine about your smashed-up floral arrangement?
Maybe it was just as well that E.T. had found cute little Drew Barrymore instead of her, after all.
“No time,” he muttered, apparently changing his mind about . . . whatever he’d been talking about.
Dani wasn’t following, mostly because she was still thinking about what it would take to get this guy off. As for getting her off, well, sadly, that didn’t require any thought at all. It had been long – far too long, clearly – since a man of any size and shape had pressed himself so intimately on top of her. One year, four months, two weeks, and a couple of days, to be exact. Not that she was counting. The date just happened to stick in her mind for other, more demoralizing, cheating-rat-bastard reasons.
So, it seemed a shame, really, bordering on unfair, that when the opportunity for body-to-body contact finally happened for her again, the guy was some kind of raging psychopath, possibly recently beamed down from another planet, and more interested in the glue gunk on his hand than her womanly form, trapped beneath him.
For God’s sake, get a grip! “Right, right,” she muttered to herself, trying to focus on the situation at hand without going into a full-blown panic. In her defense, though, who wouldn’t, really? Well, besides Drew Barrymore? Hence the thinking about hot, sticky sex, instead of . . . whatever the hell was actually happening to her, neurologically or otherwise. And, she had to admit, the guy presently molding his body to hers seemed like a pretty realistic “otherwise” to her.
Take charge, Dani! This is your shop, your business, the livelihood you worked so hard for. The one thing you have left, dammit. He can’t just . . . just . . . beam down and have his way with you.
Okay, well, clearly he could. But still. “Who are you?” she demanded, hoping he didn’t notice how shaky her voice was. “And . . . and how did you get here?” She wasn’t sure if she really wanted the answer to either of those questions, but she had to face facts at some point. Either he’d give her a perfectly plausible, scientific explanation about how he’d magically appeared in front of her, and she’d have to deal with the fact that this was really happening and E.T. had finally shown up, after all, only older, taller, and a hell of a lot hotter . . . or he’d tell her he was Han Solo, beamed down from the Millennium Falcon after escaping Darth and his buddies, and she’d have to deal with the fact that her mind had, in fact, cracked. Not in your right mind, you must be.
She held her breath, trying to decide which response would be the better reality of the two, but he wasn’t listening to her at all. He scraped his hand hard along the sharp edge of a shelf, removing most of the rapidly solidifying glue chunk, then gripped her wrist in his wide palm and tugged her along with him as he headed toward the back of the shop. “You have transport?”
“I – have a car,” she said, answering before she thought better of it. Sure, just tell him you have a car, so he can abduct you and car-jack you. Dear God, she was handling this exactly like an idiot actress in a bad D-list sci-fi flick. She’d never pictured herself as that girl. She’d always wanted to slap that girl.
He pushed through the swinging door that led to the rear storage area, pulling her along behind him, and she finally snapped out of her shocked stupor and dug in her heels. “Wait!” she shouted. “Just—” She flung out her free hand and grabbed on to the handle of the wall-sized refrigerated unit she stored her flowers in, and held on tight. She almost got her shoulder wrenched from its socket for her troubles, but when he did snap around, she said, “Hold on a minute!”
“No time!”
“Then you’re going to have to make some, because I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what the hell is going on.” Yeah, she cheered herself, that’s more like it!
He turned on her and, with one simple maneuver, shifted himself in a way that forced her to release her hold on the handle and land in front of him, where he could now pretty much shovel her toward the door.
“No time means no time,” he panted in a near snarl, next to her ear.
She gulped, because he sounded a lot more lethal – which she, frankly, hadn’t thought possible – and, oddly, she realized . . . Australian. Had he had an accent before? Or was this just a sign that her brain synapses were in their final zenith and her hallucination was shifting accordingly?
For a hallucination, his grip on her sure felt real enough. As did the rest of him, hot, hard, and supremely male, pressing up behind her as they stumbled forward toward the door that led to the rear lot behind the shop. “Wait, I need my—”
“Stop talking.” He pushed them both through the door, then kicked it shut behind him. “Where is your transport?”
It was after shop hours, and the sun had set some time ago. For late October, it was still pretty warm on the southeastern coast, but she shivered nonetheless. The small security light didn’t do much to illuminate the area, but the full moon bathed the narrow alley behind her shop in a bluish glow . . . making the whole situation feel that much more surreal. “Right there,” she said, inclining her head toward her green Jeep Cherokee, since he held her hands, crossed at the wrist, behind her back. “But, I was trying to tell you – my purse is in the shop.”
“Purse?” He dismissed that as unimportant. “Uncloak this transport you speak of, and do it now.”
She tried to swivel her head so she could look back at him. “It’s right there,” she said. “But we’re not going anywhere in it without the keys.”
“Keys?” His scowl deepened.
“Yes,” she said, with exaggerated patience – which was a marvel really, considering she had the pulse rate of your average jackrabbit at the moment. “The ones you just locked inside the shop with your Rambo door-slam move.”
He followed her gaze toward her Jeep, then spun her around so she faced him. Literally almost nose to nose. Well, nose to chin. He took care of that by tipping her face up to his, his hold on her chin just the wrong side of civil. “I have no idea what game you think you’re playing, but this is no time to test me.
Now, reveal your transport to me.” He pulled her clenched hands up between them with his free hand, which easily circled both of her wrists. The sudden move had the very special consequence of jerking her hips up flush to his. And . . . oh my. Why, he was no Greek god after all. Because every statue she’d ever seen of those guys? Yeah, not all that well-endowed. This guy? Exceedingly different in that department.
He tipped her chin up further and leaned down until she swore she could see so deeply into his eyes, she—
“Give me the sequence start-up code, sweetheart, and I’ll fly. I’ve no choice but to take it. But, look at it this way. Losing your transport isn’t worth losing your life for.”