Obsession

Panic clawed its way up my throat. Kicking and thrashing, I tried to wiggle free from the powerful hold, but only managed to knock my leg into the dresser.

“Oh, for the love of God,” Hunter grunted. “Knock it off.”

I shoved my elbow back, satisfied when it connected with hard skin.

Hunter swore again, and the next thing I knew my feet were off the ground. One moment I was hovering in air, my back pinned to his cool chest, and the next second I was flying.

Hitting the middle of the bed, I let out a sharp squeak as I bounced. A second later, the weight of a building crashed into me. My back hit the mattress, knocking the air out once more. The worst sort of terror spread, and I turned more into caged animal than human. I swung wildly with both hands, but he caught my wrists with astonishing and frightening ease, securing them to the bed on either side of my head.

Arching my back, I tried to knee him where it counts, but he pressed down, covering my legs with his.

I couldn’t move—couldn’t breathe. Hunter weighed a ton, and every part of him that touched me was hard and cool. Heart racing into cardiac territory, I went completely still.

“Are you insane?” he growled. “Look at me!”

Shaking my head frantically, I kept my eyes squeezed shut. “Please don’t—”

“Please don’t what? Strangle the ever-loving common sense into you? I might do that.” There was a pause and his chest rose against mine. “Jesus H. Christ, woman, I didn’t sign up for this. I think you gave me a flesh wound.”

I pried open one eye, and then both. Those startling pale eyes, full of anger, fixed on mine.

“Are you done acting like a psychotic, cracked-out Muppet baby?” he asked, and I could tell by the way his fingers spasmed around my wrists, he really wanted to shake me. “Or do you need a couple more moments to return to sanity? I have all day. And you actually feel kind of good under me, so take your time.”

My eyes popped wide. I was under him, like really under him. Our bodies were touching in all the right areas one wanted them to touch when they were in bed. I shifted just a fraction of an inch, and his eyes narrowed. Something long and thick and hard pressed against my belly. A flush stole across my cheeks and swept down my neck. Alien or not, he was endowed like the small percentage of men who actually had something to brag about.

He smirked and then pulled back a little. The rest of his face came into view, and somehow I had forgotten how good-looking Hunter was in this form. It wasn’t a pretty kind of beauty, like Phillip or the man who attacked me in my apartment. His was a harsher beauty, wild and untamed, a kind of beauty that would be hard to replicate.

And why was I thinking about how good-looking he was? Seriously not important, but at some point, I realized he wasn’t trying to kill me…and that my heavy breathing had nothing to do with fear at the moment.

“Calm now?” he asked.

“You’re a—”

“If you say alien again, I’m probably going to strangle you a little. Okay?” By the edge in his voice I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. “We’ve already established what I am. You don’t see me walking around blabbering about you being a human.”

My mouth dropped open. “But that’s different!”

“How so?” he proposed.

“You’re on Earth!”

He smirked. “Okay. I’ll give you that.”

That infuriated me. “What did you do to me?”

“When?”

My fingers curled helplessly around air. “When you, like, kissed me?”

“I didn’t kiss you,” he scoffed.

For some reason, I thought I should be insulted by the way he said that. “All right, when you put your mouth on mine? Is that clear enough for you?”

Hunter’s grin tipped higher. “You have a feisty little attitude, don’t you?”

“You’re about to get a feisty little foot up your ass,” I spat back.

Tipping his head back, Hunter did the most mysterious thing. He laughed. At me. A deep, body-shaking laugh that shook me and made me shiver for what was probably all the wrong reasons.

Quieting down, he lowered his chin. “I fed off you.”

“You fed off me?”

“Yes. I took some of your energy from you—sort of like tapping into your life force,” he said, giving me a cheeky grin that said he didn’t feel bad about it.

My face scrunched up. “You’re like an incubus or something.”

“Well, how do you think myths get started? And stop staring at me like I’ve damaged you. I didn’t take enough to kill you. You’ve only been asleep for two days.

Eat some chocolate and you’ll be back where you were.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. Two days? That meant today was Saturday. I’d lost two whole days. “You knocked me out for two days? That can’t be healthy.”

His brows lowered. “You could be dead.”

Good God, I wanted to hit him. “You fed off me, dude. I can’t even categorize how messed up that is. That’s not okay.”

“I’ll tell you what’s not okay, is you throwing shit at me.” Curiosity marked his expression. “Why did you throw something at me?” When I didn’t answer, a muscle popped in his jaw. “You’re not going to answer me? Or do I need to repeat myself for a third time? It’s okay. I like to hear myself talk.”

In a second, anger and irritation roared through me. Something about his cocky tone pissed me off. So did my body’s reaction to him. Parts of me were all kinds of tingly, especially when I wiggled again and felt him twitch.

“Get off me.” I tried to push him off, but that didn’t work. “Get off me now!”

“Or what?” He tilted his head down so that his mouth was inches from mine. “You going to pick up a picture frame next and wing it at my head?”

“Maybe,” I snapped back.

“Then I can’t let you up.”

I stared at him in disbelief and sputtered, “You can’t— Get off!”

One single brow arched up. “I can’t get off? Oh, I most definitely can get off.”

The flush increased until I felt like I was under the sweltering sun. Muscles in my stomach tightened. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Hmm, so you say…so you say.”

He was— Oh my God, I was struck speechless.

A long minute passed as he stared down at me, and then he released my wrists, finger by finger. Then in one fluid, unbelievably quick motion, he rolled off and stood. Jesus, the guy was part alien, part human, and part ninja.

I sat up and almost toppled off the side of the bed. Peering through the mass of tangled hair, I got my first real good look at Hunter. I’d been caught off guard in the parking garage and too frightened in my apartment to really get a good look at him, and since he had all that very human flesh on display, I drank him in.

Holy hotness…

Jeans hung low on narrow hips. Hunter’s stomach was perfection—each taut muscle tight and totally lickable. Not that I’d ever licked a man’s stomach before, but now I got why someone would want to. I was in six- pack heaven. He even had those dips beside the hip-bones…

Oh God, I felt dizzy.

His chest was defined and cut like marble. I got hung up on staring at that for a few moments before I literally had to force myself to look at his face.

Checking him out couldn’t be right. What was wrong with me? “Look, I’m sorry about the whole throwing things at you and everything else—”

“You don’t look very apologetic.”

I frowned. “Well, I am. Things are kind of…messed up. And you knocked me out.