Page 74 of Resisting the Alien Rider

“Yeah,” I whispered, “I think I know what you mean.”

“It is worth it,” he said. “I’ll take any amount of chest and stomach pain if I get to keep you.”

“Stomach pain too?! What, you’re telling me I makeyour tummy hurt?” I laughed. “You know, I’ve got some teas from home that would help with that!”

Garrek sighed. “No. No teas.”

“Yes, teas! They’re good! Very soothing.”

“I don’t need soothing.”

I snorted, because the sassy bite of his tone certainly suggested otherwise.

“Such a salty boy,” I teased, loving every fucking second of it.

“I do not require any salt, either. Especially in the tea.”

“Yeah, well,” I murmured, closing my eyes and relaxing in the shelter of his embrace, “that’s what you think.”

“That’s what I know.”

“And you know everything?” My words were coming slower now. Thicker. I wasn’t fully recovered yet, and the stupendous double-orgasm sex session had really taken it out of me. Sleep was coming for me, and fast.

“Of course I know everything.”

“You didn’t know I was falling in love with you,” I whispered sleepily, already drifting.

I barely caught his quiet reply of, “Thank the blazes I know it now.”

26

GARREK

Iwoke with an unusual sensation saturating my bones. My body felt pleasantly heavy, my heartbeat slow and sated. It was such a disorienting feeling of peace, of physical relaxation, that I did not trust it. I was not used to it and did not really know what to do with it.

Awareness expanded with wakefulness, and I found the source of this novel bliss at once.

Magnolia was in my arms.

And she was naked.

Because I had mated her.

My heart gave a hot, languorous throb as memories from last night galloped through me.

My cock throbbed, too.

This was the first time I’d woken with Magnolia and had not felt sick and terrified and guilty about my joy.

The last time I’d woken with her body pressed to mine like this, I’d nearly lost control.

And then I’d run.

Perhaps that was why my body felt so curiously weighted. It knew there would be no more running. It knew that, for the first time, it could lay down its load. I could rest my head beside hers as I did now. I could feel the morning sun with her. And there was nothing to fear.

Morning sun…

I realized with no small level of astonishment that it was well past dawn. I could not remember the last time I’d slept in this late.

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