Levi's salt and pepper hair was edging on unkempt again and he had a few days worth of sparse beard. His musky velvet and favorite couch smell was particularly strong. He smelled and looked like a lazy Sunday morning where the last thing you wanted was to get out of bed and make breakfast.
I blinked it away. This was not the situation to be feeling so. The intensity in his gaze and the arms on either side of me made that laughable.
"Look me in the eye, Jo," he growled.
"Um, uh," I looked, but gawd if it didn't make me feel autistic.
"I love you, bitch. I think you're hilarious and attractive and you should tell your god damn insecurities to shove it and stop acting like the only reason I do is because you're the only woman I've been around in thirty years who isn't my sister."
I couldn't help but blink again. "But I am the only woman you've been around—"
He shut me up with his mouth. Hard.
The only time I'd been kissed in my life had been on a dare. It'd been the first and last time I'd played Truth or Dare. 'Kiss the ugly girl' was a favorite of peoples.
But that terrified peck was nothing like this. Levi's mouth was hot, wet, and slightly parted and covering more than just my lips. I thought I could even feel a bit of his teeth through my upper lip. He even tasted like lazy Sunday mornings, with a hint of the curry he'd been having with Naomi. For the first time, I thought curry would make an alright breakfast choice.
Then his mouth was gone and he was back where he'd been before, if not a might closer, dark eyes level with mine and nostrils flared.
"Just listen," he said, sounding just a mite breathless, which raised the hairs on my arms. "I've had my fair share of relationships. I've tried those genetically beautified bitches. There's a reason they call it being 'shallow.' Anything that comes from such superficial attraction is just that, superficial. But you..." He lowered to a knee so he was looking up at me from my knees, the palms of his hands sliding down the back of the couch, brushing past my arms. "From the moment you met me, from the moment you knew of my past, you didn't judge me for it once. There was never a moment you weren't honest and frank with your thoughts, which were always kind and accepting. You moved me more with an off-hand joke than any touch of a woman I'd felt before. Naomi may be my family, and I know she loves me, but you're the first to have befriended me without such bias." He sighed in a fast puff and put his forehead to my thighs, letting his forearms come to rest on either side of my hips. "There. I've spent my quota of talking for day. Be grateful and believe it."
For a few minutes we stayed that way: me staring down at his head, speechless, and Levi all but hugging me with his face on my thighs.
"Also," he said at length. "I'm a boob guy. You got the perfect breasts for drowning in."
I laughed a little at that. I felt him smile.
Truly, my heartfelt moved.
But the so called 'insecurities' of mine couldn't be brushed away so easily.
I took a deep breath to steady myself as I gathered my thoughts. I'd have to make this precise. Gilrack's instincts were still raw, so there was no telling what he might do if he should return and see Levi like this, and I had yet to decide to fully reject him—if rejecting an alien would fix whatever carried him away.
"I...I was born a mistake," I said. "My mom was fifteen and didn't want to give me up for adoption. I used that as my excuse, that she was too poor and young to think about genetic therapy, but the truth is my siblings didn't have it either and they came out looking just like the other half of the population who didn't bother. But you know, the moment my sister was born, my step dad called me 'Miss Ugly.'" I looked to the side. I'd never actually told anyone besides a therapist any of this. It just sounded too much like I was asking to be pitied. "My mom didn't stop him, said it was an endearment, and my siblings called me that too. When I became a teenager guys made it a dare, like a right of adulthood, to kiss the ugliest girl in school, even though I'm sure there were other kids uglier than me."
Levi lifted his head to look at me, frown deep.
"There were," he said.
I gave him a half smile. "You don't even know what school I went to."
"You're not that ugly, Jo."
I allowed myself to soften, just a bit, but went on.
"I know. A part of me always figured it was just, you know...a thing, to make me the ugliest girl, because I was the one in the spotlight. I was really good at school, at anything I tried, really, and the guys didn't like it when I beat them in sports, so what better way to beat me than to shove how ugly I was down my throat? But, anyway, I thought college would be my chance to get away from that, small town and all. I went to the entire other end of the country and, well, long story short I met this guy who I thought liked me. He never kissed me, but he held my hand and cuddled and all that. I thought..." I swallowed hard, eyes burning with shame more than hurt. "I thought I'd marry that guy. Stupid, I know, but...I've...I had always wanted to have a family. I'd grown up watching those normal families, those normal moms who actually liked spending time with their kids and those dads that didn't flake out and I thought—I thought I wanted to try doing that. I wanted to feel what that was like. I wanted something to hold and love and take care of and dote on and, well..." I blinked hard, I did not want to cry in front of Levi, but he was watching so closely I'm sure he already saw it all.
"He was just messing with you," he said, so low he could have given Gilrack a run for his smoke and lava bass.
I sniffed. "Yeah. Said he thought I was in on it, because there was no way I could be so unattractive on accident and think I could be with someone like him. Tried to excuse it as 'just two friends messing around.'"
Levi's hands turned to squeeze my hips and I rubbed my eyes hard with a forearm.
"There's more to it than that, a whole lifetime of experience and crappy family. My siblings said my brains were all I had going for me. Oh, and my biological dad. He'd brag about my talents all the time but wouldn't actually spend more than a week a year with me, and he'd never really look at me then too. It was like he was trying to justify how ugly I was."
"That sucks ass," said Levi, because really, what else do you say to that?
"I guess I'm telling you this to let you know where I'm coming from, so you know it's not that easy to just, you know, tell myself to stuff it."
"If it helps any, I'm no catch. I'm afraid the moment I let you go you'll realize I'm old enough to be your grandfather, scrawny no matter how much I work out, and, well, I'm told stuffing men to death in rubber tubes, drug trafficking, and burglary aren't exactly character building materials."
I chuckled wetly, and when I looked up through my wet lashes I saw what was unmistakably the softest smile I'd ever seen Levi make. It made my stomach jump. Had anyone ever looked at me like that?
No. But someone had conveyed that amount of feeling telepathically.
Face warm, heart puttering, I asked, "Let me think on it?" I had remembered I couldn't linger in this position for long. There was still an unstable alien on the station to think of.
His eyes flickered over my face, his mouth thinned, but he reluctantly pulled his arms away. He didn't miss the chance to let his fingers slide against my thighs, though.
"You're running away now," he said, less of a question and more of a statement.
"Not without my food, I'm not. I swear, I could eat you raw with how much I'm missing meat lately."
Something I could only describe as heady hooded his eyes and slackened his jaw just enough to part his lips.
"I wouldn't be against that," he said softly.
Every hair on my body rose with a tingle. Something like a hot stone dropped in my stomach.
I took that as my final warning to leave before things got dangerous, taking my fake meat with me. The halls were empty, but I managed to find an empty stairwell to stuff myself in and eat like a savage, my thoughts too wild to nail down. I'd felt this jump in my heart before. Even if it had been a lie once, surely, surely, it wasn't a lie now, not with Levi and certainly not with Gilrack.
I remembered how gently Gilrack's clawed finger brushed against my eyelashes. How firmly those large arms had held me close. And the warmth...the burning warmth of safety and precious so precious wonder awe mine that bathed me, no, nigh drowned me.
Then there was Levi's hooded eyes.
I shivered and rubbed my thighs together, embarrassed at the heat gathered there.
What the hell kind of Twilight Zone had I dropped into?
______________
Author's Note: I went back and made some edits to chapter 1 and 6 to make them consistent because thorough story planning is for type A personalities and people who are offended by this note.
Now, to go and update my website, because I've let it languish like America's national debt.