Protected: Alien Mate Index Book 2: (Alien Warrior BBW Paranormal Science fiction Romance) (The Alien Mate Index) (11 page)

It’s what my friend Zoe calls “a holy shit minute” which is a pretty apt description, I have to admit. It’s that moment after you make a huge, possibly life changing decision that could backfire horribly in your face if you’re not careful. It’s when you do something you can’t back out of and the only choice is to go forward and hope you haven’t screwed yourself too badly. That’s when you ask yourself—“what the hell am I doing and why did I do it?”

Which is exactly what I was asking myself now.

Why did you decide to go with Grav? To go with an alien you barely know on a dangerous mission to rescue a girl he used to guard from space cannibals?
I asked myself.
Why, Leah? What’s wrong with you?

Well, it was the right thing to do, just like I’d told Grav. That poor little girl was in danger and Grav needed a female to help him get down to the all-girl’s planet and find out what had happened to her.

Yeah, sure, like that’s the
only
reason you decided to go,
sneered the little voice in my head.
Just because it’s the right thing to do and you’re so noble and courageous. Riiiiight. And of course it had nothing to do with the kiss you two shared, or all those feelings you had for the first time when he touched you.

“Stop it!” I muttered to myself in a low voice. “Of course that’s not it. I just wanted to help.”

Which was a total lie, of course, but I wasn’t willing to admit it. Wasn’t willing to admit that I couldn’t let Grav go and never see him again. Wasn’t willing to admit that I wanted to chase the feeling I’d found when he kissed me—to chase it as far and as fast as I could.

The feeling of desire—of passion—was an addictive one. I could still feel his big arms around me, could still taste the sweet, delicious minty flavor of his hot mouth and feel his big body pressed tight to mine. I wanted more of that, whether I admitted it to myself of not. More of that heady rush of need, that tingling that told me my body was alive and awake for the first time.

I wanted it like a drug—craved it like a junkie craves a fix. And if I had to go into the lion’s mouth to get it, well, I would go, damn it. Anything to feel that rush again. Anything to feel alive and whole and not broken anymore.

Because that was how I had felt every time Gerald made love to me and I couldn’t feel a thing—broken.

But as I said, I didn’t admit any of this to myself. I pushed the nagging little voice that said I was doing something crazy and wrong away and told myself I was being good and noble and self-sacrificing. We would save the little girl and then I would go home, back to Earth, and get my life in order. Right?

Right.

That was the story I told myself and I intended to stick to it.

Grav

“So that’s Sincon Delta?” Leah asked, looking over my shoulder at the viewscreen.

We’d been traveling together about two and a half solar days at that point. The hopper is a hell of a lot faster than traveling in a straight line but it takes time to create and destroy the worm holes it uses. In that time, it seemed like Leah and I had never stopped talking.

She told me about Earth, her life there, the way it felt to think you were isolated in the universe. I tried to give her an idea of the rest of the galaxy and answer as many questions as I could. She had a lot of ‘em—it was clear she was smart as a whip which I personally find very fuckin’ attractive. But then, I found
everything
about Leah attractive, even though I was trying my best not to act on it.

We talked about everything—everything except the kiss we’d shared.
That
we were pretty much pretending had never happened. I think we both knew it was a dangerous subject so we skirted around it—tried to sweep it under the rug. But it was always there—the unspoken event like a wound that won’t heal.

We ate together too—laughing as I got her to try different cuisines. I don’t have a food-sim on my little hopper but I introduced her to some Vorn and Braxian cuisine, re-hydrated from my vita-stores. She didn’t want to eat anything that was alive, which left out most of the Braxian stuff since we like our food as fresh as possible. But she liked some of the Vorn dishes, especially the ones that were light on meat and heavy on produce.

But even though we were being as polite as possible around each other, Leah still seemed to be too close to me about ninety percent of the time.

If I sat down on one of the comfort couches I had in my small lounge area, she sat right beside me so our legs brushed. When I stood at the counter of the food-prep area to make a meal, she was right beside me, so close I could smell the warm, sweet scent of her hair and feel her arm brush mine. Everywhere I went, there she was. It was enough to drive a male crazy.

The weird thing was, though, that I didn’t think she realized what she was doing. It was almost like she was drawn to me unconsciously—like there was some kind of weird magnetic field between us, pulling us closer whether we wanted to be or not.

It affected me too. More than once I caught myself right before I put an arm around her and once I almost kissed her good night without even thinking about it. I couldn’t understand what was going on or why I had such a hard time keeping my hands off her but I wished like hell I could figure it out so I could stop it.

Leah wasn’t in my league not nearly. Besides being gorgeous, she was a Pure One and a
La-ti-zal.
But that wasn’t the only reason she needed to stay away from me. I was a hybrid—a half-breed. I couldn’t bond with a female and it wasn’t fair to lead her on and pretend I could. Of course, my friend Sarden was also a half-breed and he’d managed to bond Zoe to him. How he did that, I didn’t know but I couldn’t assume I would be as lucky as he was.

But even if Leah had been in my league and I had been sure I could form a bond with her, I still wouldn’t have pursued her. Because if I did, at some point, she would have to learn about my past. And if she found out what I had done—if she knew the kind of male I really was—I knew she’d run as fast and as far in the other direction as she could.

I wasn’t up for that.

I didn’t want to see the look of horror and disgust on her lovely face when she found out the reason I was locked up for ten years in triple max lockdown. Far better to keep my distance and hope Leah did the same.

Only she wasn’t exactly keeping her distance right now.

I was sitting in the control seat and she was leaning over in such a way that her soft breasts brushed my arm through the thin white nothing of a blouse she was wearing. I felt their soft, yielding weight like a brand on my flesh, making me want to turn to her and grab her—an urge I strongly resisted. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the long, silky curtain of her hair fell across my skin too, tickling and teasing me in a way that was hard to ignore. Damn hard.

“So this is the place? This is Sincon Delta?” she asked again and I realized I’d been too distracted by her nearness to give her an answer.

“Yeah.” I heard the low growl in my voice and tried to smooth it out. “Uh…this is it.”

“Oh. It’s really
big
.” She shifted and I felt her breasts move against my arm, the tight little nipples poking through her thin blouse. Inside my flight trousers, my shaft snarled.

Sincon Delta wasn’t the only thing that was big at the moment.

Stop it,
I told myself.
Just fucking
stop
now.

But I couldn’t.

Once again, I didn’t think Leah was aware of how her closeness was affecting me. After all, it was no fault of hers she was so fucking gorgeous or that the damn Commercians had given her such a tiny, revealing outfit to wear which barely covered her lush curves.

She probably had no idea of what she was doing to me and it wasn’t my place to say anything about it. It wasn’t her fault for being desirable—it was mine for desiring her. I knew all that and yet somehow I couldn’t stop.

Ever since the kiss we’d shared I was hyper aware of her. Every time she brushed a strand of that long, gorgeous hair out of her big brown eyes, every time she moved and I could see the shadows of her full breasts shift inside her thin blouse, the little pink nipples looking achingly hard, every time I caught a tendril of her warm, delicious feminine scent, I wanted her.

I needed to stop that shit.

“Yeah, it’s big,” I answered, trying to keep my voice even. “But this is just the planet—the actual tech district we want is a station that’s orbiting it. In fact, none of the inhabitants live on the surface.” I gestured to the vast orange and white curve of the planet beneath us.

“Oh? Why not?” Leah wanted to know.

“It’s a gas giant. Like some of the ones in your own solar system,” I told her. “There’s nothing to live
on.
But the planet has rings full of precious metals—good for mining. And where there’s precious metals, there’s tech. You need gold and platinum to make malleable, incorruptible alloys for nanobots, robo-dendrytes, immersion circuits—you know, that kind of stuff.”

“Right.
That
kind of stuff.” Leah laughed, a soft, musical, feminine sound I swore I could feel all the way down to my balls. Gods, even her
laugh
was gorgeous! I really wished I hadn’t kissed her—it seemed to have started a chain reaction somehow. All I wanted to do was take her in my arms and kiss her again. What in the Frozen Hells of Anor was wrong with me?

“So what are we going to do?” she said. “I mean, when we get to the station.”

“You’re not going,” I said, frowning. “Safer if you stay in the ship.”

“What?” She stood up straight and put her hands on her hips. The gesture pulled the white blouse tight across her full breasts and I had to work damn hard to keep my eyes on her face.

“You heard me,” I growled. “The tech district isn’t as bad as say, the cloning district on Gallana, but it’s still more danger than I want to put you in.”

“I’m going to be going into danger with you when we get to the all-girls’ planet,” she pointed out.

“You mean Gemina?” I tried not to laugh. “Yeah, so?”

“So you might as well let me go with you to the Sincon space station too. We’re partners, right?” She raised one slim eyebrow at me. “Didn’t you tell me we’d split the reward fifty-fifty?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Then we should split the risks fifty-fifty too,” she said, frowning. “If I’m really your partner, I want you to treat me like an equal.”

Well, she had me there. Or maybe I was just trying so hard not to stare at her chest it was making me stupid.

“Fine,” I growled. “But if you come with me, you do as I say. You’ve never been off your little planet before—you don’t know how rough and violent it can get out here in some of the darker parts of the galaxy.”

“I know about violence,” she said quietly and I wanted to kick myself for being an idiot. Of course she knew about violence—living with that evil, brutal bastard of a mate of hers.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, looking back at the viewscreen.

“It’s okay. I’m sorry too.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t have brought it up—I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s not that.” I ran a hand over my hair. “It just makes me fuckin’ crazy to think of him hitting you.” I gave her a sidelong glance. “How often did he rough you up, darlin’?”

She bit her lush lower lip.

“Only…only twice before…before you stopped him,” she said in a small voice. “Neither time was as bad as this last, uh, attack though. The first two times, he cried afterwards and said he was sorry.”

“Uh-huh. Probably brought you flowers and presents too,” I said grimly. “And promised it would never happen again, right?”

She gave me a surprised look.

“Well…yes. How did you know?”

“There’s a pattern for that kind of male,” I said shortly. “I’ve seen it before.”

“Oh, right. During your job as a Protector, right?”

That wasn’t what I’d meant but I wasn’t about to dive into my bloody past right then and there.

“Uh, sure,” I said, nodding. “That’s right.”

“What I don’t understand is why I stayed with him. That first time he did it, I should have gone. But he acted so sorry and I thought…I thought…”

“Hey…” I heard the broken sound in her voice and looked over to see that she had drawn in on herself, her arms crossed over her chest as she stared down at her shoes.

“I don’t know why I stayed,” she said again.

“You didn’t want to believe the worst about a male you cared about. A male you loved.” The word seemed to stick in my throat but I got it out anyway. “Hey, c’mon, darlin’…”

I reached out a hand to her and she took it. I felt the tingle as we touched but didn’t let go.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I told her, as gently as I could. “It was his. Any male who could have a female as special and gorgeous as you and want to hurt her, well—he’s just no fuckin’ good.”

She looked up at me and I saw her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“What if…” She cleared her throat. “What if he had a…a
reason
to hit me?”

“What?” I frowned at her. “What are you talking about? There’s no reason good enough to hurt a female. No excuse for that kind of thing—it’s the lowest thing any male could do.”

“He… I don’t know if you heard what he was shouting before he started hitting me.”

“Some of it,” I said, frowning. “Mostly I was just focused on getting him off you. Why? What did he say?”

“He… No, never mind.” She shook her head and drew her hand out of mine. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and swiped at her eyes. Then she sniffed and gave me a smile I thought looked more than a little forced. “So tell me the plan. What are we going to do once we reach Sincon?”

“Well, first we have to dock with the station,” I said but her words were replaying over and over in my head.

What reason had her bastard of a mate given for hitting her? I’d heard him accusing her of cheating on him, which still wasn’t a good enough reason. As far as I was concerned,
no
reason was good enough to hurt a female. But if it wasn’t that—if Leah hadn’t been cheating, (and I was pretty damn sure she hadn’t been) then what was she talking about?