Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror by Michael Talbot Read Free Book Online Page B

upset by what he said about UFOs?”
    The question intrigued her. In fact, she had been puzzling over its various and possible answers all night and had finally started to form an opinion about it. “I think it might be because of the time period I was raised in,” she said enigmatically.
    Her answer confused him. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, you know, when we were growing up all the monsters and alien spacemen in the movies were bad. Now they’re all good guys. If you see a movie in which a kid meets something coming out of a spaceship, you know it’s going to be his best friend. I guess it’s just a different way of looking at things.”
    “But is it a good way of looking at things?” Stephen countered.
    Lauren gazed meditatively off into the distance, the cogs of her writer’s mind now turning. “I don’t know. At some level of the collective human psyche we seem to have decided it’s a good way of looking at things. At least that’s the attitude we’re allowing to surface in our modern myths, our movies. But is it a good way of looking at things? I mean, if we really were to learn that a flying saucer was approaching the earth, should we ignore the possibility it might be hostile and allow it to land without interference? Or should we deem that too great a risk to take and shoot first and ask questions later?”
    Stephen snorted. “Sounds safer to shoot first, I think.”
    “But what if it was friendly?” she asked. “What if it possessed the knowledge and wisdom to propel us light-years ahead in our evolution and welcoming it with open arms turned out to be the best decision we ever made?”
    “That’s a long shot.”
    “But how can you be so sure?”
    “They’ll probably be from the extraterrestrial equivalent of Hollywood, so by nature they’ll be aggressive.” He laughed.
    “Oh, Stephen!”
    “Oh, what?”
    She was just about to say something else when he reached for her again and this time managed to catch hold of her and pull her onto the massive canopied bed.
    “Stephen!” she objected with surprise, but before she could say anything else he had drawn up over her and was staring at her with such intensity she fell silent. She wanted to talk some more, but as she looked at the way the candlelight gleamed on his hair and the musculature of his shoulders she felt her resolve slipping away. An amused glint came into his eyes as he seemed to sense the power he had over her, and with one deft move he pushed her robe back over her shoulders. With mesmerizing grace he traced his finger down her neck and along the side of her breast as he started to kiss her, first gently, but then more roughly.
    Becoming increasingly aroused, she grabbed his chest and moved her hands down the sides of his rib cage, but when she reached the well-defined muscles of his legs and then went to reach between them, he stopped her. “Don’t worry about me,” he whispered as he kissed down the side of her neck. “Tonight I only want you to be happy.” He gently eased her back into the pillows as he continued to move down her body, kissing first her breasts and then her stomach as his hand moved up the inner surface of her thigh.
    He continued to move over her with such skill and sensitivity that by the time they were locked together and were rocking back and forth in the feverish, almost frantic tempo of their lovemaking, she was racked with waves of pleasure.
    The candles had long since burned out when they finally finished, and after he had collapsed and drifted beyond exhaustion and into sleep beside her, she lay awake for a little while longer and simply savored the memory of how he made her feel.
    Stephen made love better than any man she had ever been with, even Miklos. Every time was different. Sometimes he advanced slowly, engaging in only the gentlest foreplay until she was so excited she could barely stand it. Sometimes he read poetry to her, or seduced her by arranging just the right romantic setting.