The Alien’s Obsession by Zoey Draven

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Where are we going?” Lainey asked, smoothing a hand down her dress as Kirov guided her to the front door of the house. The dress was a beautiful dove grey and Kirov had surprised her with a whole wardrobe of different ones in different colors, as well as soft pants and shirts, since she’d tried to explain jeans to him a few days ago.

He must’ve had all the seamstresses in Troxva working night and day to create that vast of a wardrobe for her in such a short amount of time. It had only been four days since the lunar celebration and she had more clothes there than she’d had back on Earth.

“To my labs,” he replied, placing his hand on the door to unlock it before pushing it open. She’d asked him a couple days ago if crime and theft was a problem there, if that was why he had the house so secure, but he’d replied that no, it wasn’t an issue. And when she pressed, he’d retreated a little, dodging her unspoken question.

Things between them had been amazing since the lunar celebration. More than amazing. So amazing that Lainey sometimes questioned if it was real or just some dream. Sometimes, she worried she was still back in the Pit, in a cage, in the dark, and she’d dreamed up Kirov as part of a delusion, to escape the horrors of her true reality.

But no, he was real. Every day he proved that to her, every day he washed away her worries and fear and left her so vulnerable and exposed that she couldn’t help but give everything to him.

If only he would give everything of himself in return.

But he was hiding something from her. Whenever she asked about his father, who presumably lived right down the terrace, he dodged and bobbed and weaved. He left at odd times to go next door and would come back…different. Changed. And every time he did, it cut a little deeper.

“Your labs,” Lainey repeated softly, his warm hand pressing into the small of her back. The dress material was so light she felt that hand like it was pressed against her bare skin, like she was naked. “Why?”

“I wish for you to help me,” he replied, guiding her over to the hovercraft parked right outside on the terrace.

It was a beautiful morning in Troxva, bright and cool. It didn’t get as hot there as it did in the Golden City, but it was still warm by Lainey’s standards. Whenever she wished to go outside, Kirov would take her to the lake’s shore or the white forest or into the outpost marketplace, where she was surrounded by Luxirians. Everyone still looked at her, studied her with curiosity and perhaps a little distrust, but Lainey was no longer intimidated to go among them.

But she’d never been to his labs.

Just as Kirov guided her into the hovercraft, the door opened from the house at the end of the terrace. An older Luxirian male stepped out and Lainey’s lips parted, wondering if that was his father.

Kirov stiffened, but revealed nothing. He simply said, “Wait a moment, luxiva,” and went to meet the male, his long legs making quick work of the terrace.

Lainey blinked and watched closely as Kirov spoke with him. There was a familiarity between them, plainly obvious, though she could not hear their voices. Kirov jerked his head in a nod to whatever the male was saying and then clasped him on the forearm before turning back towards her.

Kirov’s face was unreadable when he climbed onto the hovercraft and Lainey looked past him, at the older male watching the both of them.

“Is that your father?” she couldn’t help but ask, shifting her eyes to look up at her male.

Kirov looked at her and said, “Nix.”

Nothing more.

Frustration, disappointment filled her…again.

But before she could say anything, Kirov had her secured against his body and the hovercraft lifted from the terrace and hurtled towards the opposite hill of Troxva.

In less than five minutes, Kirov was landing onto a very similar terrace, except there were no homes in sight. Only a long, single glass panel, imbedded into the side of the hill. And just like Kirov’s home, it was mirrored, so she couldn’t see past it.

Kirov guided her down the hovercraft and she walked next to him as they approached the panel. He reached out, scanned his palm, and the door slid away, revealing a long, metal tunnel leading into the hillside.

Much like the command center in the Golden City, she realized. They stepped inside and the air felt cooler, fresher within. The door slid shut behind them and Kirov murmured, “Come.”

The hallway was brightly lit, but not in a clinical way. Kirov led her down and they passed mostly closed doors. But a few were open rooms that revealed walls of Com screens, similar to the ones at Kirov’s home, rooms Lainey shamelessly peeked inside.

A pair of Luxirian males inclined their heads at Kirov, stopping in their paths, as they passed. Kirov murmured something in Luxirian but his grip tightened at her waist and Lainey was once again reminded of the night of the lunar celebration. How he’d told her his Instinct demanded he ‘mark her as his.’

Suppressing a shiver at that erotic memory, Lainey nodded at the two males with a small smile when their eyes narrowed on her curiously. But Kirov kept moving, never stopping.

Not until he reached a door at the end of the labyrinth of a hallway he’d just maneuvered her through. Without him beside her, she’d never be able to find a way out. There were no neon exit signs with arrows to point her back, not on Luxiria.

That thought made her antsy, slightly trapped, and she picked at the skin around her fingernails, that old nervous, disgusting habit returning. She’d forgotten what it felt like, to be surrounded by walls.

Then Kirov ushered her through the last door…and Lainey managed to forget about those fears. Because he’d taken her to a large room, a room so big that if she yelled, she would hear echoes. There were no windows, since they were deep inside the hill, but there were ten panels of screens that showed live feeds of Troxva, of the Golden City, of other places on Luxiria that she didn’t recognize, beautiful places she wanted to see one day. She even saw an ocean on one panel, with giant, cresting waves. In another, she saw a peaceful forest, with trees similar to the ones surrounding the lake, white and mossy, swaying with a small breeze.

In the center of this giant room was a large, metal table, with various projects in various states of completion laid out, much like Kirov’s ‘office’ at home. Coms, with their bright, blinking screens, were positioned on the furthest wall. Some of Kirov’s projects were there, hovering in beams of blue light from the Coms. She wondered if those beams were the Luxirian version of a USB adaptor.

“This is my personal lab,” he said from behind her.

“It’s all yours?” she asked, awed.

“Tev,” he murmured, coming close, leaning his forehead down into the back of her head, wrapping his arms around her waist.

And just like that, Lainey forgot her frustration with him, for keeping her in the dark about his family. Perhaps ‘forgot’ wasn’t the right term, but she wouldn’t push him, not right then.

“And you think I’ll be able to help you with something?” she questioned, eyeing the space with trepidation. “Because I have to confess…back on Earth, I still had an old flip phone and I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Windows computer and a Mac.”

Lainey had only ever needed her sheet music and a piano. That was what she’d spent her time on. Nothing else.

“I need you to identify something I found,” he said, dragging himself away from her. She followed him to the impressive set up of Coms and he pushed away a heap of metal from a nearby table, clearing a space for her to sit. He helped her up, the cool table chilling her ass and the backs of her thighs, before his long, graceful, masculine fingers flashed quickly across one of the screens.

“Okay,” she said, slowly, still slightly confused.

Then she froze.

Because sounds were coming from the Coms. Sounds she’d never thought to hear again.

“That’s…that’s…” she trailed off because she didn’t want to miss a moment.

It was the song “Johnny B. Goode.” Performed by Chuck Berry.

The famous opening guitar riff was playing through unseen speakers, the sound completely…human in such an alien place.

It was jarring. It was surreal. It was familiar.

Kirov was watching her reaction closely but he let her listen to the entirety of the song before he asked, “This is…music from your home planet?”

“Yes, it’s rock and roll,” she whispered, her eyes wide because she huffed out a breath, a sudden grin appearing on her face. “Oh my God, Kirov, where did you find it? Do you have others?”

He jerked his head in a nod and her breath hitched in excitement. “Tev. I found them in the Uranian Federation’s database. Apparently, an Earth probe was intercepted in the Fourth Quadrant, its contents uploaded, and then released.”

A probe?

Lainey’s brow furrowed, racking her brain.

“There were other contents,” Kirov explained.

“Like what?”

“Images. Languages. Sounds. Audio sounds, not music,” Kirov said, turning his attention back to the Coms before he played the unmistakable sound of chirping crickets.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

He played another sound, this one was the sound of cars, of buses driving. Another sound was rain, of the ocean, of waves crashing.

“And the images?” she asked, excited.

Kirov swiped on his Coms and dragged a photograph onto the screen.

Lainey stood from the table on shaking legs, approaching. It was an image of numbers, of mathematics. Kirov swiped again and another image showed, a picture of a mother breastfeeding her baby. The next was the UN building, the next one after that showed cars in traffic, and then an old photograph of Earth appeared.

“This is your planet?”

“Y-yes,” Lainey whispered, overwhelmed, happy, homesick.

Kirov flipped through other images: a book, an airplane taking off, a woman with a microscope. He stopped on a black and white diagram of a pregnant woman and a man, staring at it intently.

He paused only for a moment before the next photograph was…sheet music and a violin.

“Stop,” she whispered, getting closer to the screen. Notes. Actual notes. She could read them better than she could read words.

“Is this your instrument?” he asked, peering at the violin.

“No,” she said. “But it’s a beautiful instrument nonetheless, one I’ve played before.”

“There are other images, other sounds,” Kirov explained, turning his attention back to her. “Many of them that were uploaded and then forgotten.”

“Kirov,” she said, her suspicions confirmed, “I think you found the Golden Record.”

“The Golden Record?” he asked, frowning.

She’d read about it once. She’d been interested in the music NASA had put into space.

“It was launched in a probe called Voyager. It was a collection of sounds and images and greetings in different languages spoken on Earth. They put it all on there, hoping to find an audience,” she explained, looking up at him. “It was supposed to take over 30 or 40,000 years before it got close to another system. But someone found it long before that.”

He absorbed that information like a sponge and inclined his head. “Tev. There are many advanced species with access to that technology.”

“There was more music on Voyager,” she said, hope rising in her chest. “They put on Beethoven and Mozart and Bach. I know they did.”

“It is why I brought you here,” he said. “I wanted to see if your piano sounds were among them, so I can begin creating your instrument.”

Lainey inhaled a sharp breath, deep affection warming her chest.

“My instrument,” she repeated softly.

“Tev,” he murmured, pulling her closer. “I promised you, did I not? That night at the base of the facev.”

The night he’d taken her to their little meadow, with the pink fireflies and the stream that shimmered with moonstones and the blue moss that felt like velvet against her bare skin. The night they’d been intimate for the first time, when she’d first kissed him.

Lainey shivered with that memory. That night had frightened her because she’d realized just how deeply she could fall for Kirov.

That night he’d stolen a piece of her heart and he’d been taking little pieces ever since.

When had she started falling in love with him? She didn’t know. Not truly. It might’ve been that night, or it may have been when she first saw him, bathed and magnificent in moonlight, a fantasy made flesh.

Or it may have been all the other moments after that.

“Yes,” she whispered, looking up at him. It hadn’t been so long ago, but somehow she felt like it’d been ages. She felt like she’d known Kirov for a lot longer than she truly had, as if time moved differently on Luxiria, as if time moved differently between them. “I remember.”

Kirov’s eyes warmed, softened in a way that she knew was only meant for her.

When Lainey looked back to the screen, she looked at the sheet music for a long time, hearing the notes in her head as though she was reading words from a book.

“Can I hear more music?” she asked.

“Tev,” he said immediately, swiping over the Com. “Of course.”

And he played the songs for her, going through the Golden Record.

There were chants, there were songs with bagpipes and windpipes and drums, there was opera by Mozart, the Queen of the Night aria. Kirov’s favorite—thus far—was by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven, a wonderful jazz piece that made her close her eyes and feel.

Who knew aliens loved jazz?

But then she heard it.

Bach.

The Well-Tempered Clavier. Book Two. Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1.

Pure piano, the beautiful sounds drifting over her ears like a caress.

Tears sprung in her eyes, her hands shaking with the notes, as Kirov watched her reaction.

Lainey listened to it in its entirety, with bated breath, hardly daring to move. And when it was over, she asked to listen to it again. And again.

“This,” she finally whispered to Kirov, pointing to the Com. “This is my piano.”

Kirov inclined his head.

“What…” Lainey trailed off, her head still muddled from the music, but feeling determined, wanting to create that music again. “What do we do now?”

Kirov guided her to the table and pulled out a tablet for her, not unlike the one he’d given to Crystal.

“I need a design for your instrument.”

“I’m terrible at drawing,” she warned.

“Try,” he urged. “It does not need to be perfect. I will need the approximate size as well.”

That would be easy, considering she knew a piano like the back of her hand. Lainey quickly drew a rough sketch of a standard 88-key grand piano and a sketch of a keyboard, up close. She’d once played on a piano with 97 keys—with 9 extra bass notes—but thought better of including those.

When Kirov looked over her designs, he asked, “How do you produce sound?”

A loaded question. Lainey took in a deep breath and said, “Well, to put it as simply as possible, when you press a key,” she tapped Middle C on her keyboard design, “a hammer strikes a string inside and produces a specific note. But on Earth, there are keyboards where the sound is programmed in and reproduced without strings.”

Kirov nodded, cocking his head at the design. He was getting a look in his eye, a look she was slowly beginning to recognize. His intense look when she knew his beautiful mind was working like crazy.

“We will begin with this keyboard, tev?” he finally said. “You can isolate specific notes from the music you heard and I can program them. Any notes you still need, we can synthesize if you can identify the correct pitch.”

Lainey’s lips parted, her belly warming unexpectedly with arousal. Kirov’s brows ticked up when he scented her and a growl rose from his throat.

“Baby,” she breathed, reaching up to lock her hands around the back of his neck. “It really turns me on when you talk about pitch and piano notes like that.”

Kirov chortled and rasped, “Noted, female.”