Intergalactic Desire (9 page)

Chapter 4

It was all Sia could do to wrap her arms around Q’s waist as he raced them to safety on his motorcycle. The sun, close to setting, was still hot on her back
and she felt
delirious with exhaustion. The bike came to a growling halt in front of a courtyard covered with patches of drying grass
in strategic clumps across cracked pieces of clay ground. A ramshackle single-story house with ivy growing over the peeling white walls in a crisscross needlework pattern stood before her. Then she passed out.

“Shit!” Q hissed under his breath. He caught Sia before she tumbled off his bike. Cradling her in his arms, he carried her inside.

He placed Sia
on top of the table in his tiny kitchen. He ran his fingertips over her chest and her pulse points. All three were buzzing out of control. She was in a state of intense trauma and shock.

There was only one thing for it and he had a feeling it would earn him another nut-shot.

He ripped the buttons open on Sia’s
red and white plaid top revealing a simple, black bra that brought out the curved beauty of her womanly peaks. Q put his middle and index finger to the pulse point on his own neck before placing them on Sia’s skin. He slid both fingers over her rib bones, starting at the swell of her breasts down to her navel where the provan was placed, feeling her abdominal muscles surrendering under his touch.

His ministrations evoked a satiated, feral response from Sia.

Her brown eyes flickered open and her breath hitched with rumbling moans. Q briefly cupped the undersides of her breasts again before rubbing soothing circles over her exposed pelvic bones. Her back arched slowly toward him. He gently supported her, his breath fanning her forehead with cool air. His lips recited incantations taught to him a lifetime before.

His lips hovered near her ears:

“Wake up.”

The color returned to her cheeks as her eyes opened and her breathing steadied.

Then she looked down and realized her tits were showing.

“W-w-what did you…d-d-did you take off my shirt?”

“Yes, I did, but the thing is—” Q didn’t finish because Sia suddenly threw her shoe at him. “Hey, hey! Quit whalin’ on me!”

Sia, held her other shoe threateningly, staring daggers at Q.

He held his hands up to show he meant her no harm. “I know what I was doing before was a little whack. But it wasn’t…sexual…not exactly. I have, ah, special healing powers, Sia. You were really weak and you hit your head. I had to take your shirt off to transfer energy to you. Sharing my life source with you is seriously personal. It kinda makes people feel…turned on. But your head feels better, doesn’t it?”

Sia, who had been conjuring up different ways to maim him with her remaining shoe, pushed her hand to the back of her head. She rubbed all along her scalp where it should’ve been too painful to the touch. Instead, she felt no discomfort whatsoever.      

She quickly wrapped her plaid shirt around her body so that it covered her chest adequately. “So…who the hell are you, man? I mean, alien.”

“My name is Quell, and I
am
an alien.”

Sia couldn’t help smiling at the alien waving his hand lamely at her in greeting.

“S’up…”

For someone out of this world, he was pretty adorable. “So, you’re like, really an alien? Are you a Stratan like that Crev guy?”

Q tensed up and Sia suddenly wished she hadn’t asked. “I’m from an alien race called the Ku’ait. The Ku’ait and the Stratans have similar genes, but we’re like…super different.”

“Oh, I get it now. Hmm, Kuwait…” Sia sounded it out. “Isn’t that, like, in the Middle East?”

Quell chuckled. “Touché, Sia Dodge.”

“How do you know my full name?”

“I’ve been watching you for a long time. You seemed like a cool chick and I wanted to get to know you better. I’m sorry I freaked you out in the alley earlier. I saw the tattoo on Crev’s neck in the diner; it’s a Stratan military symbol. So I wanted to keep you away from him. That’s when you kicked me in m’nards.”

Sia blushed crimson. “Yeah, sorry about that. I get pretty aggro when guys get up in my grille. So, um...Crev seemed pretty intense, like he wanted to kill me. Do you think he’ll try to jack me up again?”

“Don’t stress, he can’t get to us. You’ll be safe here.”

Despite the strangeness of the situation she found herself in, Sia couldn’t help believing him.

Chapter 5

To her surprise she found she liked Q. He was easy to be with and, in turn, let her be. His house was wild and unkempt outside, but the inside was tidy.

She slept in the spare bedroom, the walls and ceiling of which were covered with black wallpaper and luminous glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars and planets. It was an unexpected treat to fall asleep at night staring up and counting the various constellations.

She liked listening to Quell talk about the Ku’ait’s ways while fixing his Harley or the four rectangular aluminium electrical boxes he’d placed in corners throughout the house. He said they emitted high-powered, blue electrical beams, creating a protective force-field around the house.

A few days after he rescued her, Quell approached Sia as she watched
Beavis and Butthead.
Both of them had scrutinized the news, mostly to track how the media spun the damage Crev had wrought on Halley’s Peak. Somehow it was reported as a freak hurricane, flinging several cars and turning buildings to rubble. Sia was relieved nobody knew the truth of that day; it was safer if everyone remained ignorant. But nothing would stop Crev from reappearing.

“Put on your jacket. We’re going to see some people.”

“Who?” Sia turned down the volume on the TV.

“Some of my friends. They live a few miles away from here.”

“Are they also Ku’ait?”

“Yip. I have my own theories, but I want to hear what they think about the Stratans trying to kidnap you.”

A good 40 minutes later, they arrived at their destination: a red, dusty farmhouse. 

Four figures stood waiting for Sia and Quell as they dismounted from his bike. She kept her distance as Q embraced a middle-aged couple standing alongside two teenagers. Judging by their likeness, they were a family.

Q reached for Sia’s hand. “Sia, I’d like you to meet my chosen family: B’ev and Khin Khan, and their son and daughter, Dax and Ariana. Guys, this is Sia Dodge, the girl I told you about.”

“Please call me ‘Bev’,” the middle-aged female said as she took Sia’s free hand and shook it amicably. “B’ev is such a mouthful.” Sia couldn’t really see her point since she surmised both names still had the same number of letters, but she held her tongue.

“You told them about me?” Sia scowled at Q.

“Of course he did,” Ariana winked. “You’re the only girl he’s ever mentioned; you must be pretty special.”

“Pffft, as if. I talk about tons of girls; you’re just…really slow.” Quell ears turned bright red.

“Let’s head inside and talk,” Khin suggested, his grey-blue eyes scanning their surroundings with wariness.

They all sat down together in the living room. B’ev disappeared into the kitchen and returned minutes later carrying a tray laden with glasses of lemonade and a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches.

As they exchanged niceties, Sia blurted out the question burning on her lips:  “Why are aliens after me?”

The gathered aliens all looked to Khin.

“It all started millennia ago when the Stratans began their inter-galactic war campaigns. Those wars left their species severely depleted. By design, the Stratans have always been intelligent but their bodies are weak. They wish to obtain what they call ‘the essence’. That is the best and most evolutionary human DNA. In other words, humans with bigger IQs, stronger reflexes, superior athletic abilities. The Stratans are even drawn to those humans with rallying, charismatic personalities for politics and social welfare. The most notable people that demonstrated these characteristics in human history are individuals like Ghandi, Hitler, Florence Nightingale—”

“Michael Jordan,” Dax added.

“Michael Jordan’s a superior human?!” Sia spluttered in amazement.

“True source! Look at the dude’s handles.”

“The Stratans wish to exploit these genes to advance their own race,” B’ev ignored her son’s interruption.   

“I’m still lost,” Sia admitted. “I’m a nobody. What do they want with me?”

Khin laid a hand on her shoulder. “Anyone just needs to look at you to know that isn’t true. But even if you do not possess ‘the essence’, your life is still in grave danger. It’s our duty to protect all mankind from the Stratans.”

“But the Ku’ait seemed to have found ways to live on Earth and co-exist with us. Why are the Stratans so different? Why aren’t the Ku’ait doing the same thing to us? Don’t you also want to advance your species?”

“The Ku’ait believe in preserving all life, both alien and human,” Q replied. “If anyone threatens that mandate, we take action.”

“Spoken like the son of a true Protector,” Khin praised.

“A ‘protector’?”

“That’s the title given to Ku’ait men who serve their people as keepers of the peace. Plin Forx, Quell’s father, was a Protector before his passing.”

The air grew somber and Sia shifted her gaze onto Q, who sat with his head bowed.

“I saw how Crev looked when he put the provan on me. He seemed…excited about cutting me up into little pieces.” Sia subtly steered the conversation back to her.

“Crev is certainly sadistic, but the Stratans generally believe that it’s acceptable to use humans for genetic experiments. They are unconcerned if a human dies from such intensive probing. Many of them take delight in it,” B’ev explained.

“But why? What did we ever do to them?”

“The Stratans want revenge on humans because they claim that human scientists abducted some of their kind and experimented on them in similar fashion to achieve genetic and technological dominance. Some of the more recent accounts of Stratan capture and torture happened in Roswell in 1947—”

“Holy shit, I knew it! I knew something was whack about Roswell!” Sia piped up exuberantly. “Sorry. Continue.”           

“Enough of the history. We need to discuss how you intend to deal with Crev. You say that he and an accomplice named Turk abducted Sia. But we can’t be sure how many Stratans are in Nevada at present. It could be an entire military unit; if so, we need to mobilize all the Ku’ait we can find,” Khin advised.

“I think that Crev is searching for us right now. When he finds us, I will find out what his terms are,” Q declared.

“What if his terms are war with the Ku’ait?” Ariana voiced what everyone in the room was thinking.

Q took a long time to answer. But when he finally did, his gaze and tone were resolute: “Then we will go to war.”

Chapter 6

Sia
and Q climbed to the top of the hill and sat on a jagged boulder. They had said their goodbyes to the Khan family 15 minutes ago, after partaking in a delicious meal of roast chicken, potatoes and green beans. Sia couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed a family gathering filled with laughter and tranquility. She’d grown up in this place and not known that it was a dust-land fairy tale.

While Sia was perfectly relaxed, Q seemed nervous.

The waitress smiled reassuringly at him. “What’s on your mind?”

Q chuckled and Sia liked the way it sounded. “I’m…just wondering whether it was a good idea to involve you in all this craziness.”

Sia giggled and the alien
was surprised her carefree aura made her even more beautiful. “Well, you kinda had to, otherwise Crev would’ve killed me.”

“Yeah, probably,” Q agreed.

A comfortable silence ensued before Sia began on a new topic. “So…how come you don’t live here with Khin and B’ev? I mean, for aliens, they seem pretty cool, like…a real family should be.”

“They are. But I’m more of a drifter. I like going off on my little solitary adventures, knowing someone will always be waiting for me when I come back. Does that make sense?”

“Not really,” Sia deadpanned.

“What they have is nice, but it’s not exactly what I’m looking for.”

The dark-haired girl propped her hands underneath her chin and stared at Quell’s profile. “What are you looking for?”

“Companionship. Someone I can truly call my own.”

“You want someone to belong to you?”

“No. I want to belong to someone.”

His sincerity threw Sia. She couldn’t imagine belonging to anyone. All she ever wanted was to escape everything, everyone.

And here was an alien named Q, ignoring everything that made him special, and latching onto this world in every way that mattered.

The sentiment impressed her. “So you essentially wanna be someone’s little bitch?”

Q rolled his eyes as Sia laughed heartily. “I didn’t see you complaining when I was being your little bitch and saving your bony ass.”

“Watch it! Your ass is scrawnier than mine!”

“How would you know? Get a good peek yesterday when you spied on me in the shower?”

“Whatever, I was not checking you out,” Sia defended feebly.

“Oh yeah, I forgot. You only like pretty guys.”

“Excuse you, what pretty guys have I been checking out?”

“Well, there was ‘Pretty Boy Crev’ at the diner,” Q teased. “And I saw the way you were looking at Dax earlier. I’m told he’s a stud.”

“Ok, first off, Crev was a paying customer at a diner where I work. And second, I just met Dax and I only flirt with guys I like. But even if I was flirting with either of them, what’s it to you? Are you, like, jealous?” Sia probed.

Her suspicions were confirmed when Q began spluttering indignantly. “Pffft, you wish. I don’t buy into that ‘R. Kelly and mack shit’.”

“Good.”

“Of course, you didn’t kick any of those guys in the nuts just for being nice to you.”

That quip earned Q a smack to the head, which then led to several minutes of playful wrestling between alien boy and human girl on top of a hill overlooking Halley’s Peak.