Page 75 of Resisting the Alien Rider

Had Ieverslept in this late?

I gave the sweetly sleeping creature in my arms a look of wondering suspicion. Is this what mating could do to a man? By the blazes, it had taken me down like a drug.

A drug I gladly would have given into again, if it were not for the sudden shout of my name.

“Quiet,” I said at once as Killian bounded into the cabin. “She’s sleeping.”

“She’s sleeping? Here? Withyou?” Killian slammed to a halt, his feet skidding. At least he had his boots on without being told for once.

“Yes,” I grunted. “You know we plan to marry, don’t you? I’ve told you this.”

“That doesn’t mean you should be sleeping with her!” Killian cried, as if shocked to the very core of his being at the idea. “And… Are you naked?!”

The mere possibility sounded deeply repugnant to him. He visibly recoiled, white flooding his eyes.

“You’ve bathed with Magnolia before, haven’t you?”

“I’m not talking about her!” he gasped with disgust. “I’m talking aboutyou!”

“The bedroll is covering me,” I pointed out, slowly disentangling myself from Magnolia and sitting up with the leather hiding my lap. “Quit complaining.”

“No! There’s barely any room in that bedroll! She should not be subjected to your… yournuditythis way!”

He lunged for me, and I wasn’t sure if he meant to drag me from the bedroll or throttle me for my indecency. Maybe both. I swatted him away.

“She’s fine with it. At least I think she is.” I glanced down at Magnolia’s peaceful sleeping face. She certainly hadn’t asked me to dress again after mating. But then again, she’d fallen asleep very quickly afterwards. Maybe she’d been too tired to instruct me on her expectations. Maybe she would wake up and be similarly horrified, as Killian was.

I was not horrified. I could not think of anything better than waking up with her nude body so smooth and deliciously warm against my own.

Killian glared, aimed a hostile tail-tip in the general vicinity of my covered genitalia, and imperiously sniped, “Absolutely horrendous.” Then he positively careened out of the cabin, the soles of his boots smacking the wood before he leaped out into the grass and disappeared.

A muffled snort, followed by shaking, told me Magnolia was no longer asleep.

“Oh, you enjoyed that, did you?” I asked, crossing my arms and narrowing my eyes at her.

Her eyes opened, and they were so beautiful, so lit with mirth, that I could already feel the hardness I’d tried to maintain in my expression melting away. Like I’d been frozen for cycles and her joy was a tiny but unrelenting flame.

“I did. Immensely,” she trilled, her voice lilting with laughter.

“Didn’t feel the need to jump in, then?”

“Nope! You seemed to have everything under control!”

“He called me horrendous.”

“Yes, well.” She paused, as if thinking of something else to say. But I supposed she must have given up, and settled on just that for her response.

“Thanks,” I grumbled.

“Come here,” she said, opening the lithe, brown lines of her arms to me. I could not refuse her.

I’d never been able to. I did not think I ever would.

I scooted back down in the bedroll until we faced each other.

“I don’t think you’re horrendous,” she said sweetly.

My ribs ached.

---