“Was it alien communications you studied?” he asked with a grin.
“Perhaps. So, are you ready to talk about the Boogieman Affair, yet?”
Chapter Eight
“What?” Diesel looked shell-shocked. Juliana didn’t want to talk about her lonely, pathetic existence on this planet anymore, so she pivoted.
“That’s the other question I forgot to ask you last time we were together. The truth is, I didn’t really forget. I just wanted to ask it when we were alone.”
Diesel didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped closer and kissed her again very thoroughly, very firmly, very aggressively. It was amazing. Juliana enjoyed it for a few minutes and then pulled her mouth from his. “You can’t keep kissing me every time I ask a question you don’t want to answer.”
“Why not? I like kissing you.” He slid his palms along her face gently, dropped them to her shoulders and then to her back, pulled her close, stared into her eyes and kissed her again. Passionately, like it had been done since the dawn of humanity when a man wanted to coax a woman into a deeper…connection.
She was lost to it. Lost to him. Wanted him. Needed him.
Juliana danced him backward toward her bedroom. He was the first man she’d ever wanted to take there…needed to take there.
She couldn’t wait another second to discover what it felt like to be pressed to him, naked. She’d thought about this rather scandalous prospect all week, hoping he didn’t change his mind or cancel their date.
Crap.
This was their first date. She shouldn’t sleep with him on their first date. What would it say about her if she lured him to her bedroom in the first hour they were together? She slowed her pace, clinching him tighter, kissing him harder.
Then she thought of something. He’d told her he didn’t shapeshift on the first date. But when? Juliana remembered it like a dream. Like the dream she’d had before waking up in her car and meeting him in the convenience store. Wait. How could that be? Thathadbeen a dream hadn’t it?
Juliana remembered another very important something. She stopped moving toward her bedroom. She should straighten this one important thing out first.
He stopped, opened his eyes and noticed they’d drifted halfway down the hallway to her bedroom. His gaze moved to her open bedroom door. The corner of her bed was visible from where they stood.
“I need to show you something,” she said quietly, knowing if she didn’t stop them now, they’d be on that bed, if she had her way.
“Okay,” he said, and cleared his throat.
She released him and returned to her living room. He cleared his throat again, straightened to his full height and moved to follow her. She bent and pulled the small gray card from a box on the coffee table.
“It’s not another apple is it?” he asked, the sound of his concern growing again.
“No.” Juliana handed Diesel the card. “What do you make of this?” She studied him closely for his reaction.
He held the card up and frowned. He looked at it, flipped it over and then his eyes grew as big as plates. The wide-eyed gaze shifted in her direction.
“Where did you get this?”
“I found that in my pocket when I got home from meeting you at the truck stop. But the funny thing is that I dreamed about it before ever meeting you.”
“You had a dream about this?” he asked in a stern tone. “What dream?”
She nodded at the card. “The one where you pushed my hand against the Maxwell the Martian fortune-teller box and this was the fortune that came out. It seemed so real I wanted to ask if you remembered it.”
Diesel forced a smile and a puzzled squint. “How could I remember your dream?”How could you be dreaming about something the Defender erased from your mind?
“Maybe I didn’t dream it. Maybe you used your mind control on me and I forgot,” she said with a laugh. Her gaze was steady, inquiring, emboldened as if she wanted to ensure he hadn’t truly used his non-existent powers of mind control.
He couldn’t muster even a glimmer of a smile. He didn’t respond to her shocking knowledge. “Care if I keep this?” he asked.
She snatched it from his fingers. “I’d rather keep it, if you don’t mind.”
