How Not to Date an Alien by Stephanie Burke Page A

resting into his rich lemon vanilla scent, the smell that covered her and filled her bedroom. “It may kill me, but bring on round two.”

Chapter Eleven
    “Come with me.”
    “What?” Kilana was luxuriating in another hot bath, still basking in the afterglow of the most amazing sexual experience of her life. “I thought I just did, several times.”
    She knew she was thinking that a lot when it came to this man — no, alien — but each new experience just kept upping the bar.
    “Come with me,” he urged, wrapping his arms tighter around her.
    “Um, where?” She looked up into his face from over her shoulder.
    Valan was such a comfortable backrest, and that amazing hair just seemed to massage her, stroke her, soothing muscles strained from her prolonged and quite enjoyable climax.
    From his serious expression, she knew that something big was about to happen.
    “Back to my home.” He finally spoke after examining her flushed face for several pregnant moments.
    “Your home?”
    “Yes.” He sighed, running his hands up and down her arms. “This planet is strange. Most of the people I have met here are strange. It is contradictory in so many places that it makes my head ache just trying to make order out of the chaos here.”
    “It’s not that bad,” Kilana defended.
    “You do not belong here.”
    “Well, where else would I belong, Valan? I am an earthling. I was born here, I was raised here, and I think I will die here.”
    “That is the issue.”
    “What issue?”
    “You, dying.” He shrugged in the water, sending a small wave over her as he sat up and gripped her arms. Then in a show of amazing strength, he easily lifted her body and turned her around so that she was facing him.
    “Oh, my God!” she gasped. “Are you going to tell me that I have some kind of incurable disease and this was some kind of pity fuck before I die?”
    “How can you fuck pity?” His eyebrows wrinkled in confusion.
    “Don’t change the subject, man! Am I dying?”
    “Every day you exist on this planet, you die a little more inside.”
    “That is not what I meant!” She was getting riled up, her face turning red as she jammed one finger into his chest. “Am I dying right now?”
    At his “No,” she sighed and relaxed again in the water. “Don’t scare me like that,” she muttered. “You gonna give a girl a heart attack.”
    “My point is that living on this planet will greatly shorten your lifespan, Kilana.”
    “Smoke and smog, yeah, yeah, I get it.” She rolled her eyes. “And all the chemicals and preservatives I put in my body.”
    “That is a factor,” he agreed readily. “But there is also the extreme ignorance of your people. You are not like them from what I have observed. You and a few others actually have the ability to think wholly.”
    “Think wholly?”
    “To take in every opinion and view your issues from many various viewpoints before you act. It is a rare thing.”
    “You are saying that I am well-rounded? Lots of people are well-rounded, Valan.
    That’s not unusual.”
    “Not too many people would welcome an alien into their beds and into their lives, Kilana.”
    “Well, you can move here and —”
    “No.”
    “Why not?” She began to nibble on her bottom lip. “I mean, there is still a lot we can learn about each other and our different cultures…”
    “The air, Kilana. It will kill me.”
    “You are dying here?” she gasped, her hands going to cup his face as if checking for fevers and ensuring that the man would not just disappear on her all at once.
    “I can resist the ravages of your atmosphere, but not for too much longer.”
    “You do breathe oxygen… You do breathe, right?”
    “Yes,” he chuckled. “But the oxygen here is tainted. I will not survive here long, and I do not wish to leave you behind.”
    “Well — hell,” she moaned, her hands tangling in his hair as she released his face.
    “Hell, yes.” He ran one wet finger over her jaw line. “Well,