Bati Read online

  I smile at the woman’s assessment of her daughter. Amina was indeed afraid of many things when she came to Lyqa, but she was also very brave. The way her mother’s expression flashes a hint of pride makes it clear she is also aware of her daughter’s courage. She continues to look closely at me, her head shaking slightly every few seconds before she puffs out a large breath of air.

  “Well, I guess this is real.”

  “It is,” I confirm.

  “I still can’t believe it, but I can look at you and tell you aren’t human.”

  “I am not,” I confirm again.

  She leans forward. Her eyes pierce mine.

  “And you promise my daughter is okay? You aren’t holding her hostage or against her will or something?”

  She looks ready to attack me if there is even a possibility that her daughter is not on Lyqa by her own volition. I look over her tiny, round form and can imagine even with my advantage in height, weight, and strength, this woman would do me harm to protect the ones she loves. Lyqa aren’t violent creatures, but this need to protect others is an instinct that even we possess.

  “I promise. She is well and unharmed. My brother loves her very much and has been caring for her the entire time she has been with us. He will not let harm come to her.”

  Thinking of my brother’s happiness with finding his lehti makes me smile. I could not believe at first that the leht would bind him to a human, but there is no doubting the happiness my brother feels at having found Amina. As twins, we are more in tune with each other’s emotions and feelings, and this has allowed me to share in my brother’s new found joy. The sound of Kwarq’s first heart beating strong and steady in his chest has awakened my own curiosity about the leht.

  “Well, alright then. Alright.” She’s still trying to convince herself. Every so often her head shakes. “I just can't believe it, but I can’t deny what’s in front of me, either. So what’s going to happen now?”

  A shadow falls across the living room. It’s late. I should leave to return to Lyqa. There are other arrangements to make before Kwarq brings Amina back here, and now that my task is complete, I would return to help him.

  “I would leave you now, Ms. Bennet. My brother would like to arrange a celebration when we bring Amina back. If it is acceptable, we would bring our parents and older brother to meet you as well.”

  “You’re gonna bring your whole alien family here? To my house?”

  I smile again. Humans really do not like the unknown. Although, I imagine Amina’s mother is taking this new revelation better than most humans would.

  “If you would permit it, I would.”

  “I mean, do I have a choice? I want to see my daughter.”

  “Ma’am, if you are uncomfortable with having us here, we will of course see that Amina arrives safely and remain away. I do not deceive you when I say that she is not held hostage. She may come and go as she pleases. She may choose to never see us again if that is what she wishes.”

  “And what if she gets here and decides she doesn’t want to go back?”

  “Then we will leave her here.”

  “And your brother?”

  I smile again. I do not have to guess what Kwarq would do if Amina never wanted to return.

  “He would follow her to the ends of the planet if she would have him. Believe me when I tell you that he loves her very much.”

  “Hm, well, I guess it’s okay for you all to come. I probably need to see this all with my own eyes. I still can’t believe it.”

  She sighs and her head shakes again.

  “I will go now.” I stand slowly and she does too, although her movements are more hesitant and nervous. I round the table and pull her into another embrace. “Thank you for welcoming me into your home and allowing me to speak with you, Ms. Bennet. I look forward to seeing you again.”

  I give her a gentle squeeze, absorbing again the contentment that floats around her and her home. It’s such a peaceful feeling, and as I hold Amina’s mother against me, it intensifies, growing quickly so that it is almost overwhelming. I suck in a breath when it morphs into something different. Something stronger and more sensual. It steals over me, suddenly, so that I cannot shake it off. I can only pull Ms. Bennet closer in an effort to get more of it, to pull it into myself, and still, it’s like it isn’t close enough.

  “Young man.”

  I ease back and blink. The soft, brown face of Amina’s mother comes into focus. Her eyes are confused. Embarrassment colors her scent.

  “I cannot believe it.” My eyes roam over the woman’s face, trying to make sense of what I’m feeling. How did I miss it before? How did I not realize the entire time I was speaking to her that this woman is bound to me? I feel it now, getting stronger and stronger every second. The pull, it yanks against my heart straight through the lovely woman in my arms. I know the leht knows no bounds, but even I cannot deny that this is an unexpected turn of events.

  I smooth my fingers over the faint lines at the corner of Amina’s mother’s eyes. She scowls. Her mouth moves, but I can only hear the blood rushing through my body and the soft thump of a heart that is not my own.

  “Uh, okay. Am I interrupting something?”

  My body jerks. The sound of this new voice is like a string, pulling my attention to it. The words are a caress across my senses, and all at once, my breath quickens, just as a surge of pure joy flows through me.

  She’s standing just behind her mother. I didn’t even hear her come in. The pull tightens, and it takes everything in me not to go to her, to lessen the tension, to ease the ache in my chest.

  She’s staring at me as I stand with her mother locked in my arms. Her dark, nearly black eyes are wide with shock, but a smile plays about her mouth.

  Our gazes meet, and I hear the sharp intake of her breath. Her lips move, a movement so slight, so imperceptible that only a Lyqa could see it, and I catch the clearly murmured utterance just as I detect the faint scent of arousal perfume the air: “Damn.”

  “Young man.”

  I drag my eyes away from the woman who has captured my heart and look down at her mother, who is still trapped in my rigid embrace. I blink and try to focus on her, even though my mind wants to stay on my lehti, a woman so beautiful, I already cannot imagine being without her. It’s powerful. My brother did it no justice when he attempted to describe it. This is the best feeling ever.

  “Young man?”

  “Ma’am?” I answer her respectfully as I focus back on the amused expression of my love.

  “That thing poking me better be a flashlight in your pocket, sir.”

  Chapter 1

  TIANI

  “You got an eyesight problem?”

  Bati’s eyes blink slowly over my face. He’s staring. He’s been staring at me since he got here with his tall, fine family. Even though I’ve felt his eyes on me every second of the day, can barely look at him, and not because I don’t want to. I do. God, I do. Everything in me is saying climb him like a pole, and that annoys the hell out of me. He annoys the hell out of me even as he makes all kinds of dirty things fly through my head.

  “I do not know what illness you refer to, but my eye functions operate properly.”

  I narrow my eyes in annoyance and lean forward before I can stop myself. Of course, he leans forward, too. His mouth curves, and his gaze travels down to check out my cleavage. I mentally shake my head. Men. Even the aliens.

  “I thought my sister was teaching you guys Ebonics.”

  My sister Amina is currently cutting a wedding cake with her alien husband at the edge of our mother’s backyard. This would be shocking if it weren’t my family. If anyone was going to fall in love with a seven-foot-tall, golden skinned, yellow-eyed alien, it would be my sister. Although, I would have put my money on LaShay before Mina. That just goes to show what the hell I know. I guess I have to admit, though, that so far, these aliens aren’t that bad.

  “She is teaching my brother,” Bati returns and contin
ues to stare me down. Every place his eyes land is like a hot spot on my exposed skin.

  They’ve rigged up some kind of forcefield around the backyard, so even though it’s winter outside, the space around our yard is toasty. I’m wearing the only thing I have that’s appropriate for a spontaneous, backyard, middle of the night wedding—a strapless red dress with a sweetheart neckline that dips much lower than I wish it would. Especially now that Bati’s sitting across from me, looking at me like I’m wearing nothing at all.

  “Well, let me give you your first lesson,” I shoot back when he continues to stare. “An ‘eyesight problem’ is what you have when you can’t seem to stop staring at someone. You’re clearly suffering from one.”

  He smiles. It’s not a cocky smirk. It’s a real, full blown smile, and it nearly knocks the air out of me. He’s got big teeth. Not really big, but wide. Wider than human teeth, for sure. They shine brightly in the blue-black of his face. His sharp cheekbones tilt up. Heavily lashed eyes sparkle down at me. Damn, this dude is fine.

  “If enjoying the face of another gives one a seeing problem, then I will confess to being afflicted with such an ailment,” he says with something close to pride.

  “I’m serious.” My voice is a quiet hiss. He’s doing things to me, and I don’t like it. I don’t like being out of control, and that’s all I’ve been feeling since I met this damn alien. I hate that when I’m in a room with him, I don’t know whether to kiss him or kick him. I told Amina he was creeping me out. That was a big fat lie. What his lingering eyes do to me isn’t creepy at all, and I’m finding it hard to pretend otherwise.

  Amina and Kwarq are still cutting the cake. It’s taking longer than it should because Kwarq doesn’t really know what to do. He looks confused, but when Amina puts her hand over his and slices through the lower layer, he lets her guide him. His eyes float over my sister’s face with so much love that my throat gets a little tight.

  He looks at her like this all the time. Like she holds his heart in her hands. Like she’s the only person in the world that matters.

  “I am also serious,” Bati returns, bringing my focus back to him. Not that it ever strayed too far. “I will not deny that looking at you gives me pleasure. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, my lehti.”

  “Yeah, well, didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare?”

  “They did not.”

  I roll my eyes. Of course they didn’t.

  “Well, it’s rude to stare. I don’t like it, so stop looking at me. Got it?”

  “Yes, my lehti, I will not stare at you if it makes you nervous.”

  “You don’t make me nervous.”

  I don’t know why I’m denying it. Of course he makes me nervous. He makes me more than nervous. He makes me hot. Hotter than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve been giving Bati shit for flirting with me, but I can barely keep myself from jumping across the table and straddling him. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

  Bati arches a brow, and I lose our little stand off when I look away.

  “I can smell you, my lehti, and you smell nervous. It is pointless to deny. You cannot hide from me. I will always know what you are really feeling.”

  My heart ratchets up as his minty breath floats across the space between us. All these Lyqa folks smell so good. Sweet, like something new. I don’t know if this is just some weird alien thing, or if this whole Lyqa household shares the same cologne. Although, something tells me that having super smell would make cologne a bad idea. Maybe that’s also why they smell good. All the funky folks probably got bred out.

  I take a shaky sip from my glass of champagne. We put this little shindig together in a hurry, but we shelled out on liquor. LaShay and I both agreed that a little buzz might be necessary to deal with an alien wedding. Except, I’m pretty sure LaShay’s celebrating. She’s at the front, sitting awkwardly close to Kwarq’s older brother and sighing dramatically.

  “You know it’s kind of rude to go around telling people you can smell them,” I return finally. “Maybe you should add that as lesson two of things you don’t do with humans.”

  I push back my chair and step away from the table because being this close to Bati makes it hard to remain unaffected by what I’m realizing is some serious Lyqa mojo. I need some distance. A breather is in order if I’m going to survive the night without jumping him.

  BATI

  Tiani rushes inside, pulling on the door so quickly that it knocks into the side of the house, causing several people to turn. Her mother glances back in displeasure at the retreating back of her daughter. My mother also turns, her eyes gently holding mine. She would have heard the exchange with my lehti. My eyes shift to Kwarq.

  I have not been paying attention, but for some reason, his face is covered in a layer of the dessert. Amina cackles loudly as she holds a smashed bit of the confection in her hand. I ignore them and stand to follow my lehti into the house.

  I hear her the moment I step through the door. Her movements are quick and agitated through the thin walls. I follow the frantic shuffling and heavy handling of objects until I stand inside the doorway of a bedroom on the other side of the house.

  The room is hers. It smells of her, a faint, flowery scent that makes my chest flare with warmth. A neatly made bed sits in one corner of the room. It’s so small. Perhaps not for a human, but most of my legs would hang off the end of it. My eyes linger on the place where she sleeps, and I imagine what it would be like to lay with her. To feel her wrapped in my arms throughout the night.

  She doesn’t hear me enter, so I have a moment to watch as she lifts various items from a drawer and packs them into a small cloth bag. She’s changed. The beautiful red dress she wore is draped over the foot of her bed. She has exchanged them for a small pair of shorts that show her thick, toned legs and a thin shirt that barely masks the brown skin beneath it. She’s still breathing heavily. Her agitation is a fog in the room, but it’s underlined with something very close to desire. With hope, I step over the threshold.

  “I apologize for making you uncomfortable. It was not my intention, lehti.”

  She pauses with her back to me. Her shoulders heave once, a great heavy sigh that raises the narrow muscles of her back before dropping them back down. When she turns, she’s looking at me curiously.

  “You know what? I have no idea what’s going on, but I really, really want to fuck you, Bati.”

  It’s the first time she has said my name. It triggers a blaze throughout my body, a solar pulse of emotion, that’s immediately followed by a powerful thump in my chest. I stand frozen, unable to believe what I’m feeling. Tiani gasps from where she regards me a few feet away. Her hand slaps over the space between her breasts at the exact moment my first heart surges to life.

  She clears her throat, massaging her chest with a slight look of panic. Her’s would have paused for the briefest moment, one split second of inactivity, before it began to beat again in rhythm with my newly animated organ.

  She frowns. I want to tell her that she is okay, but I can only listen to the syncopated music of our hearts. Mine, a deep thud. Hers, a light patter along side of it. It’s beautiful and fills me with such a sense of love and strength that I can barely believe its awesomeness.

  “My lehti.”

  She looks up and shakes her head.

  “So should we just do this? Get it out of the way?”

  Her eyes travel from my face, down my body, and then back up again. They flare, briefly, when they get to my middle.

  I don’t have to look to know what has caused her shock. My first heart is beating, and it’s primary purpose is to prepare my body to join with my lehti. I normally wouldn’t display myself so openly to any female, but I can’t stop the blood being pumped so furiously to my cock. Even as my brain struggles to return to the conversation, I feel it rising behind my thin travel pants, pulsing with desire. The desire to be where it belongs. Buried deep within my lehti. Buried where she is currently
inviting me. Even though, her invitation is somewhat…off.

  “Lehti?”

  She steps closer, peering curiously up at me. I almost step back. Her scent and the desire to pull her to me is so intense that I fear I will not be able to contain myself.

  “Do you really not know my name?”

  “I do.”

  “What is it, then?” Her eyes narrow skeptically on me.

  “Tiani.”

  “Good. Then call me by my name. Stop with all that Lettie stuff, okay. Lesson number three. It’s rude to call people you don’t know random names.”

  “But you are my leh—“

  “Buh, buh, buh,” she cuts me off, holding the flat of her hand up so that it’s right in front of my face. She is closer than she was a moment ago. Her sweet scent fills my nose, flooding my brain, and making it difficult to stand upright. “You don’t know me, okay, and it’s pretty much going to stay that way. Now, for reasons I can’t understand, I’m really, really attracted you. And since you’ve been staring at me ever since you walked in the door, I’m going to assume that you’re really attracted to me, too. So I’m asking you, as two consenting adults, if you would like to fuck me. Would you?”

  Of course I do. I want nothing more than to lay my lehti down and sink into all of her warm places. To savor every part of her, but even in my limited experience with sex, I know this is not what she is offering. She does not want to, as humans call it, “make love.” She does not even want the fevered passion of what Kwarq and Amina refer to as “fucking,” even though this is what she has called it. What she wants comes without feeling or emotion. It is limited to the moment and offers no potential for things to come. No future. No…love.

  It is not what I want with my lehti, who I already love so much my bones ache with it. And yet, my cock continues to rise. It continues to prepare for her. Right now, it is thick and straight behind my pants, pointed directly at its target.

  Tiani sucks in a breath and lays her small hand over my length and squeezes, trying to make her fingers meet with little success.