I found myself wanting to watch his face during this meeting, so I sat in a chair across the room from his designated table. He shot me a quizzical glance but said nothing about my move.
Only a few minutes passed, and the room filled. An air of expectancy flooded the space with everyone intently watching Derrial, expecting, waiting. After a few more minutes of him looking over some papers as if he didn’t have the eyes of the whole world on him, he stood.
“As you know one of our main initiatives since coming to this planet has been to improve the quality of women’s lives. On our planet, females are revered, they are worshipped. One of the first things we noticed about your planet during our first visits was the utter lack of care that is given to women on this planet. That’s why we mandated the use of a new birth control and that’s why we instituted higher penalties for crimes against women. Whether Earth wants it or not, things are going to improve. That’s why today we’ll be announcing a new mandate. All women will now submit to new health screenings, to be conducted every six months. Any medical concerns discovered will be automatically addressed at the cost of governments of each respective country represented at this Summit.”
Silence.
Not a word.
Then as if someone had unleashed a typhoon, a rising sound of gasps and groans escalated, followed by loud whispers because this was huge. It was fucking goliath in terms of the impact it would have on our society.
Holy shit!
Derrial was forcing governments to cover medical bills for females! Who the hell was he again to sway such power?
I stared at him in shock. All of this came from a creature that literally had stalked me for a week and abducted me in the middle of the night. And now he claimed that women were important to him? Had I misread his intentions? Where I called it kidnapping, did he call it protection on his planet?
I studied the faces around the room. Shocked expressions, a few women nodding, and some men scowling.
But I didn’t miss how Derrial’s eyes focused on me for the entire speech. Even in a room full of people and the distance between us, I thrummed with a feeling deep in my gut for him. There was no way for me to escape his pure magnetism, for me not to want him. Not after he’d just showed part of his plan, and it wasn’t horrific or the end of the world stuff. But simple things, like ensuring all females received the medical treatment they deserved for thousands who couldn’t afford it. So many were too afraid to visit a doctor. This would change so many lives.
When I met Derrial’s gaze, the sparkle in his green eyes glinted, my knees weakened and damn him on how he affected me, how he touched me so deeply with his mandate. I wanted to keep hating him because I understood those emotions. The itch I felt for him now made me see him in a different light, but underneath the surface I couldn’t forget what he was… Along with why he was so protective of human females.
I sensed his stare over me like a lover’s caress. Maybe if I itched this persistent scratch, we’d both move on from one another. Maybe that was the answer right there to finally end his obsession with me. And mine with him.
* * *
We wereon our way back to the hotel from yet another dull cocktail event that night, and I was glad for it, as I’d had enough of watching the most attractive women on Earth paw at Derrial all night, trying to get his attention. For some reason it had bothered me. I scanned the traffic quietly as it passed by, trying to understand why I felt this way.
“The traffic. I never appreciated it before tonight.” Derrial moved closer to me, taking my face in his free hand. Derrial’s other hand softly stroked the skin that was showing from my short cocktail dress. “This skin has been torturing me,” he murmured. My breathing shifted to panting as he slid a finger along the hem of my dress. He began to lift the hem higher, ignoring my startled gasp at the fact that he was doing that in the backseat of a car with a driver in the seat in front of us.
He brought my face closer to him but stopped short of kissing me. Instead, he lingered for a moment, and I breathed him in, losing myself momentarily to his touch, his scent, his nearness. When he finally crushed his lips to mine, my hand flew up and caught his, shocking both of us as I held him to me, greedy for the taste of him. As he kissed me, Derrial’s hands urged my legs apart and he slipped his hand up so high that his fingers brushed against the silk of my underwear. I wrenched myself away from him, gasping for air. When his fingers moved to pull my underwear to the side, I locked my legs on his hand.
“No,” I mouthed to him.
I could see the driver struggling to keep his eyes on the road as it was impossible for him to miss what was going on in the backseat.
Derrial took pity on me and withdrew his hand, giving me a smirk as he did so.
“I can smell you,” he said, inhaling deeply and closing his eyes as if he was in ecstasy and the car was somehow full of my scent. I blushed and turned so I was staring out at the traffic and the historic buildings instead of looking at him. My lips burned from his efforts and it was a struggle to sit still in the car as we made our way to the hotel. I could see him in the reflection of my window, silently watching me with that infuriating look he always had that told me he could see right through me.
We couldn’t get to the hotel fast enough.
By the time we had made our way to the Mandarin Oriental, I had almost convinced myself to go through with it. Sex with Derrial. It was clearly what he wanted. And maybe once the whole mystique of what having sex would be like with me was over, he would be over me and I would be left alone.
I ignored the part of me that balked at the idea of him leaving me alone.
He seemed in no hurry as we got out of the car. All of his motions were smooth...and slow. It took him what felt like a year to come and open my door, and then he chatted with the driver for another five minutes before we moved to go inside. The only thing that signaled that he still wanted me was his hand placement on the small of my back. It burned through my dress and into my skin and I was halfway certain that there would be an imprint in my skin when I took my dress off.
We walked slowly through the hotel lobby, Derrial stopping to chat with other Vepar staying there as we did so. They stared at me curiously, but Derrial never introduced me. Which was probably a good thing since his hand that was on my back had started to slowly trail lower, rendering me speechless.
We finally made it to the elevator, and he continued my torture by taking out and typing on the little silver device that I had seen him playing with occasionally.
“Is that a cell phone?” I asked, wanting to break the silence. He looked up at me, a slow grin on his face. “It’s a computer,” he said. “I’m going over the recordings from today so I can look more closely at who was in the audience and what their reaction was to it. It will help me know better what leaders we have to lean on, or what Vepar are thinking of going against my plans.”
I looked at him shocked.
“How did it record all of that? Wasn’t it in your pocket the whole time?”