Protected: Alien Mate Index Book 2: (Alien Warrior BBW Paranormal Science fiction Romance) (The Alien Mate Index) (18 page)

“You’re free in my eyes and the eyes of the Goddess,” I growled softly. “I’m the one who’s not free, Leah. I’m the one who’s…”
Not good enough.
“Who’s wrong for you,” I finished at last.

“Maybe we’re wrong for each other,” she said in a low voice. “But then…why does it feel so
right
when you touch me?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe it’s just you getting away from your home planet which is making your
La-ti-zal
powers manifest. Maybe any male you came in contact with after you left Earth could have given you the, uh,
feelings
you talked about.”

“Maybe.” But she didn’t sound convinced. To tell the truth, I wasn’t either. But I knew damn good and well that I was saving her a lot of pain and heartache by turning her down, as much as it hurt me to do it.

“Well…” I said, not sure how to go on. I felt the need to leave the small room and get some time alone. I wanted so badly to take her in my arms and pleasure her it was almost more than I could bear being in the same place with her.

“Well,” she echoed me and sighed. “I guess…let’s just forget this conversation happened. Let’s chalk it up to the whole crazy
La-ti-zal
thing and just…just try to forget about it.”

“All right.” I nodded awkwardly, feeling fucking miserable. “If that’s what you want.”

“I do.” She took a deep breath and lifted her chin. “Let’s just be friends.”

“Fine,” I growled. “Friends.”

Leah nodded and smiled at me. Stepping up to me, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me coolly on the cheek.

“Thank you, Grav. For putting up with all my craziness and for healing me when I was ill. You’ve been a really good
friend
to me.”

“You’re welcome,” I muttered. “I, uh, I try.”

“You certainly do.” She smiled brightly—a little
too
brightly, I thought, and took a deep breath. “Okay. So now that we have what we need from Sincon, tell me more about Gemina. I need to know what we’re going into.”

Leah

The next few days as Grav’s little ship hopped its way to the all female planet of Gemina were pure misery.

That was because I had to spend the entire time pretending that nothing had happened between Grav and me—pretending I didn’t feel anything for him or want his big, hard, muscular body against mine when I did.

I
so
did.

I won’t lie—my body was on fire for his touch. It was like the last healing he had performed on me had flipped a switch inside me and all the sexual desire I’d never been able to feel before was breaking over me in waves, leaving me breathless with need almost all the time.

And yet I had to act like I felt fine, had to act like I didn’t feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin with pent-up sexual frustration every time I was near the big alien.

Believe me, the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me.

I’d spent years with Gerald trying to pretend to feel passion when I had none…now I was in the exact opposite situation, trying to pretend I felt normal when actually, I was what my best friend Zoe would have called “horny out of my mind.”

Every time I was near Grav, I wanted to reach out and touch him. Every time I smelled the dark, masculine spice of his skin or heard the low, rumbling tones of his voice it made my nipples hard and my sex wet and hot—throbbing between my thighs.

And I had to act like it wasn’t happening.

The worst thing was, I couldn’t get any relief. And believe me—I tried. Back on Earth when I’d attempted to touch myself, I hadn’t been able to feel enough to make it worth while. I usually just gave up and went to sleep. Here, on Grav’s ship, I thought I might have better luck—after all, my body was finally alive and awake—maybe I could give myself pleasure and ease the terrible ache I felt.

Unfortunately, I felt
too much.

It was like my body was on a hair-trigger, so highly strung that even my own touch was painful. I literally couldn’t stand to touch myself, even though I desperately wanted and needed to. So as my sexual frustration continued to grow and grow, I had yet to experience my first orgasm. Had yet to reach that elusive peak I’d nearly reached when Grav was licking and sucking my breasts.

Talk about a mess.

It was hard to tell if Grav was as uncomfortable as I felt—or uncomfortable for a different reason. After all, I had practically thrown myself at him. It couldn’t be easy being cooped up in a small spaceship with a sex starved Earth girl who had cried all over him and begged him to help her “feel.”

The more I thought about it, the more embarrassed I was. Especially the way I’d practically demanded he commit to me! What was I
thinking?
I hadn’t even known him a week and I was already looking for some kind of death-do-us-part type statement, even though I was still married.

Speaking of my marriage, I didn’t know if I believed what Grav had said, that Gerald had invalidated our vows by hitting me, or not. I
did
know that the farther I got from Earth, the less connected I felt to him. There had never been any passion between us and now I realized there hadn’t been much love either—not really.

What Gerald and I had was control—namely,
he
liked to control
me
. And because I thought I was broken and incapable of giving or receiving sexual gratification, I let him. I guess I thought it was my duty, or something. The only way I could be a good girlfriend, and then a good wife.

It was, after all, the only pleasure I could give him.

Well, I was finally awake. Awake and alive in a way I never had been before. I no longer wanted anyone controlling me, especially now I knew full well that I
could
receive pleasure. Even if I could forgive Gerald, (which I doubted), I couldn’t see myself going back to him or the limp dishrag existence I’d lived before.

I was traveling the universe on an interstellar adventure, damn it! If I ever got home, I sure as hell was going to do more than make dinner, do the dishes, and go to bed by nine. (Eight fifty-five if Gerald felt like having sex.)

I was going to
live.
And the first thing I would do on seeing him again would be to serve his abusive ass with divorce papers.

But that was all for when I got back to Earth. Right now I had a more immediate problem to deal with—like the fact that I increasingly felt like I’d made a needy fool of myself with Grav.

The idea made me miserable and to counteract it, I tried to act as cool and distant as possible to the big alien, (even though I really wanted to jump his bones, as Zoe would say.) We danced around each other and made stilted conversation, much more awkward than we’d been before, even when he first rescued me from Gerald and dragged me naked up to the Commercians’ station.

It was, as I said, pure misery.

But at last the ship took its final hop and the broad, silver side of Gemina came into view as we made orbit.

I have to confess, I was relieved. Finally, some action! Even if it was going to be dangerous, as Grav had warned, it was still something to do rather than sit around the spaceship and remember what a stupid fool I’d made of myself.

“So,” I said brightly to Grav as the silvery planet revolved on the front screen of the ship’s control area. “What’s the plan? You got something from Shekk to help disguise your appearance, right?”

“Right.” He sighed and swiveled the chair around to face me. He was so tall that even with him sitting and me standing we were almost at eye level. “It’s this.”

He held up a small, silver cylinder about as long as my finger and half as thick.

“Is that the image generator?” I frowned, watching the way the light glinted across it. I’d seen it briefly before back at the space station but hadn’t gotten a good look at it.

“Uh-huh. I’ve been playing with it some—watch.”

He looked at the cylinder lying in the center of his big palm, as slender as a twig, and glared at it, seeming to concentrate hard.

And then, suddenly, Grav wasn’t there anymore. Sitting in his place was a huge, scaly creature that looked a little like an alligator with purple skin and slitted silver eyes. It looked at me and smiled, its jaws parting to reveal hundreds of sharp, white teeth.

“Oh!” I gasped and put a hand to my heart. “What in the
world?”

“It’s a
chorg.”
The image flickered and then it was just Grav sitting there in the control chair, grinning. “Native to Tilpia Six. They’re sentient, you know—just not what you would call ‘humanoid’ because their planet wasn’t seeded by the Ancient Ones.”

“So…you can actually talk to them?” I asked, thinking that I wasn’t sure if I’d want to have a conversation with a seven foot tall muscular purple alligator.

“Sure.” He shrugged. “You might even get a few words in—before they ate you. Hey, I said they were sentient—never said they weren’t savages,” he said in response to the look I gave him.

“So back to the matter at hand. Literally.” I nodded at the silver cylinder of the image generator. “I’m assuming you’re not going to try and disguise yourself as a big purple alligator down there on Gemina?”

“Nope. That look doesn’t inspire a whole lotta trust for some reason.” He grinned again and I could see he was in a good mood. Clearly he was glad we were going to see some action too.

“Then what?” I put a hand on my hip.

“Try this.” He glared at the cylinder again. Once more he vanished and then, in his place, was a huge blue Amazon. She had broad shoulders and muscular breasts, short black hair and eyes like Grav’s—white-on-black.

Honestly, she looked like a guy with boobs.

“Well?” the blue Amazon said, further ruining the illusion. Her voice was deep and gravelly—unmistakably male.

“Well…” I frowned. “I don’t know. Can’t you make yourself look just a
little
more feminine?”

He sighed. “Unfortunately, there are limits. The generator can only change my appearance to a certain extent and it can’t alter my voice.”

“What? But it just changed you into a big purple
chorx.”

“A
chorg,”
he corrected. “And that was a
male
chorg. The generator has some problems with male to female and back again.” He sighed. “All right—we’ll have to do it the other way.”

“What other way?” I asked, frowning.

“Well, the Geminanians don’t like males—in fact, the entire planet is off limits to males. With one exception.”

“Which is?” I asked, frowning.

Grav closed his eyes, concentrating again, and suddenly he changed again. This time he was clearly male but his skin turned an even dark tan and his hair became a blue so intense it was almost black. When he opened his eyes, I saw that they had changed too. No longer white-on-black, they were now what I would consider “normal” on Earth—a dark, chocolate brown resembling my own. Most strikingly, the curling black ram’s horns that grew from his temples had disappeared.

Essentially, except for dark blue hair and his immense size, he looked like a guy I might meet in an aisle of my local Publix supermarket back home.

He looked
human.

“Wow,” I breathed. “That’s amazing!”

“You like it?” He gave me a slightly strained grin and I wondered if it was difficult for him to hold the outer image the generator was projecting.

“I do,” I said, although to be honest, I didn’t like it as much as his normal look. I missed his strange but beautiful eyes and he just didn’t look right without his horns. But for someone who didn’t know him, it was the perfect disguise. “It works so much better when you’re not trying to make it show you as a female,” I said.

He grunted. “Yeah. Shekk said it would. You like the eyes? I tried to copy yours.”

“They’re nice,” I said. “But what are you supposed to be?”

“Ma
jor
an,” he said. “A Ma
jor
an bonded to his fated-mate is the only kind of male allowed on Gemina. And even then, he has to have his female with him to gain admittance.” He grinned at me. “That’s you.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “But if we’re Ma
jor
an, am I supposed to look like you? I mean, do I need to dye my hair blue?” I really hoped not but I supposed if I had to I could do it.

“Nah.” He shook his head. “Ma
jor
ans are chromatacromes—able to change their skin, hair, and eye color at will. The only tricky part is that the males usually change their skin color according to their female’s moods. I don’t think the image generator can do that so you’ll have to appear calm at all times.”

“I can do that,” I said. “But why didn’t you use this look right away? Why even try to have the generator make you look female when you knew another male form would be so much better?”

He sighed. “I thought we’d get less flack as a couple of females. But since I apparently make one seriously ugly woman…”

“You do.” I tried to stifle a laugh and couldn’t quite manage it. “Sorry but you
really
do.”

“Ah, well…” He shrugged and grinned. “We’re Ma
jor
ans then. A mated pair. Which means…” He looked at me, the humor fading from his face to be replaced by a strange intensity. “Means I’m devoted only to you, darlin’, and have no interest in any other female.”

The way he said it and the intense look he was giving me made the blood rush to my cheeks but I tried not to show it.

“You don’t have to be anything, you know,” I said, trying to ignore my hot face and pounding heart. “You don’t have to go down to the planet at all—just let
me
go. I’m a female so they shouldn’t have a problem with me.”

Thanks to the universal translation viruses the Commercians had been sending through the hole in Earth’s ozone layer, I should be able to communicate with any sentient species in the Galaxy—at least, that was what Grav had told me when he explained about the Alien Mate Index. So I thought I would be able to do the job with no problem.

But Grav clearly didn’t agree.

“Let you go into danger by yourself?” His face darkened, making him look scary despite his drastically altered appearance. “No fuckin’ way, darlin’, not gonna happen.”