“Ha!” I jump, snatching them from his grasp. “Victory!”
The alien makes that rumbling sound again, and this time I’m almost certain it’s laughter—or whatever passes for it among his kind. The thought makes something flutter in my chest, a strange warmth that has nothing to do with fever.
I shake it off, focusing on pulling my pants on as quickly as possible. “Very funny. Hilarious. You should take that act on the road.”
Once dressed, I feel marginally more in control of the situation. I smooth my hands over my clothes, trying to look somewhat presentable despite having spent the night in a cave.
Meanwhile, the alien has moved away, crouching by the stones he’d arranged. He picks up a larger rock and begins crushing something—the leaf he’d used to bring me water, I realize. Why he’s destroying it, I have no idea, but alien customs aren’t exactly my area of expertise.
I shrug and finish getting ready, pushing my hair back from my face and tucking it behind my ears. That’s when I feel it—or rather, don’t feel it.
My hand freezes, fingers brushing against my bare earlobe.
“No. No, no, no,” I whisper, my voice rising with panic as I drop to my knees and scan the cave floor. “It has to be here. It has to be.”
The alien looks up from his work with the stones, watching as I desperately crawl around the cave, running my hands over every inch of stone.
“My earring,” I say, touching my naked earlobe to demonstrate even though I know he can’t understand. “It’s gone. It’s—” My voice catches, and to my horror, I feel tears pricking at my eyes. “It was my mom’s. She gave them to me right before she—before she—”
I can’t finish the sentence. I never can. Instead, I continue searching, panic mounting with each passing second. It could be anywhere—lodged in a tiny crevice, buried in the dust, lost forever in this godforsaken alien wasteland.
“Please,” I whisper, my voice cracking as I crawl toward where I’d been lying during the fever. “Please be here. Please.”
I dig my fingers through the sand settled there. Nothing. My heart sinks further with each empty handful.
“This can’t be happening,” I mutter, crawling faster now, more frantic. “Not the earrings. Anything but those.” The tears I hold back blur my vision as I search. “I’ve already lost everything else.”
I’m so consumed by my search that I don’t notice the alien moving until a shadow falls across me. I’m about to look up when a sound stops me cold.
“Jus-teen.”
The voice is so rough, so guttural—like stone grinding against stone—that for a moment I don’t recognize it as speech. When it registers, I freeze completely, my hands hovering above the ground.
Slowly, I look up.
The alien is standing over me, those golden eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my breath catch. His mouth—that strange, alien mouth with its sharp teeth—is slightly open, as if he’s surprised himself.
“You—” I stammer, momentarily forgetting about the earring. “You can talk?”
He doesn’t respond, just continues staring at me with that same intense focus.
“Say something else,” I urge, rising to my knees. “Anything.”
He remains silent, but slowly crouches down to my level, bringing his face closer to mine.
The world seems to shrink around us, the cave walls fading away until all I can see is him—those topaz eyes flecked with gold, the strange patterns of light beneath his skin, the sharp angles of his face. He’s so close now that I can feel his breath on my lips. My heart hammers against my ribs as he just stays there, studying me with such intensity that it feels like he’s looking straight through to my soul.
I should move back. I should put some distance between us. But I don’t. I can’t. It’s like I’m paralyzed, caught in the gravity of his presence. The rest of the universe has disappeared, and there’s only this—only him—filling my entire field of vision, consuming every one of my senses.
Finally, his gaze slides from mine. Shifts to something to the side. To the crushed leaf he’d been working on, reduced to a paste, with some of it coating one long finger.
“So you can talk,” I whisper, gaze traveling over his face. “You’ve understood me this whole time? Or just my name? Why haven’t you—”
“Jus-teen.”
I gulp.
That strange rasp is like he hasn’t spoken in years, maybe never. It sends a shiver down my spine. I can’t look away from him.
He leans in, even closer than before, his gaze sliding to my lips.
“What are you—”
Before I can react, he raises his finger—the one coated with the crushed leaf paste—and brings it to my lips.
That’s all I manage before his finger slides between my lips. The paste is bitter and herbal, with an underlying sweetness that reminds me of molasses or licorice. I instinctively suck, trying to swallow the strange substance before I have time to think better of it.
The alien makes a sound the moment my lips enclose his finger—a low grunt that seems to come from deep in his chest—and his pupils dilate sharply, consuming the gold of his irises.
Something flutters low in my belly in response, a sensation so unexpected that I jerk back, his finger slipping from my mouth.
“What was that?” I ask, my voice embarrassingly breathless. “What did you just give me?”
He doesn’t answer, of course. Maybe “Jus-teen” is the only word he knows, or the only one he can pronounce with that alien mouth of his. But his eyes remain fixed on my lips, and there’s something in his expression that makes heat rise to my cheeks.
“I need to find my earring,” I say, trying to focus. “It’s important. It’s—”
“Jus-teen,” he says again, softer this time, almost a caress.
And in that moment, with the desert sun streaming into the cave and this alien creature saying my name like it’s something precious, I realize with perfect clarity that I am in way, way over my head.
Chapter 12
YOUR CAT ISN’T THE ONLY ONE THAT LIKES HIGH PLACES
JUSTINE
I don’t find my earring. One more whole day has passed stuck in this cave and I’ve spent the time checking every grain of sand, every inch of this cave. It is nowhere to be found.
What’s worse, I’m having nightmares. Or dreams, depending on how you want to look at it. Strange ones that crept into my mind in the night. Dreams where I’d seen those tiny particles again, swirling around me, inside me, changing something fundamental in my cells. Except, in this deam the alien was there, too. His hands, his touch, so gentle despite those deadly claws, had soothed the burning beneath my skin, chasing away the fear with a different kind of heat. A heat that lingers even now, a phantom ache that pulses between my legs with every beat of my racing heart.
I must be ovulating. It’s not my fault it makes me a horny fiend.
It is with great effort that I push the thoughts away, focusing on combing through the last handful of sand.