Page 19 of Resisting the Alien Rider

“Need I remind you,” I said with a shake of my head, “that you also didn’t request a wife?”

“I did not request a wife precisely because I amnotan idiot,” he shot back.

“Oh really?”

“Of course,” he grunted. “What in the great dusty blazes would I do with a wife?”

“What everybody does, I suppose,” I said dreamily, thinking of the way Silar and Fallon so obviously worshipped their human wives. “Love her.”

I heard the breath rush out of Garrek, like he’d been punched.

Maybe he was just exhaling in exasperation at what he probably saw as a sort of star-struck naivete in me. Apparently finished with listening to my sappy human sentiments on the subject of marriage, he quickly dismounted. Luckily, the man seemed to have learned enough from yesterday’s fiasco not to stomp away from me again before I’d gotten down. I wrenched my leg up and over the saddle so that I was sitting sideways, ready to slide off with a little help from him.

When I saw Garrek waiting for me, my breath snagged like fabric caught on a hook.

He was standing there, still and silent, his thick thighs spread, his boots in a wide stance. His bare, brawny arms were outstretched towards me. Posed as if ready to catch me.

I knew with a stunning, visceral certainty that even if I leaped right now, flailingly and without warning, even if I absolutelyhurledmyself off the back of this ginormous alien creature head-first, I wouldn’t get hurt.

I wouldn’t even hit the ground.

I wouldn’t even comeclose.

“Thanks,” I said quietly. I scooted a little closer to the edge of the saddle. But maybe that made Garreknervous. His mouth tensed and he took a quick step. His hands snapped in and closed around my waist, his long fingers nearly spanning the entire circumference of it.

The restrained power in that grip was nothing short of astonishing. The careful control of those long blue fingers curling against my body, strong enough to crush me if he’d wanted, made an odd, heated sort of anticipation coil low in my belly. He’d grasped me beneath my jacket, only the thin Terratribe II cotton of my shirt separating his skin from mine, and warmth throbbed from him as he lifted me.

“Thanks,” I said again as he set me down. His eyes gleamed, bright as moonlight glancing off white metal. For a moment, that hot white gaze seemed to search mine.

Or maybe it didn’t, and my imagination was running away with me. Because he abruptly released my waist and unceremoniously blurted that he was going to go find water before he turned away and then left me standing there in the dust.

8

GARREK

I’d only been travelling with Magnolia for two full days and things were already getting too hard.

And this was coming from a male who’d killed his own father and had been exiled to an untamed and isolated planet as a mere child. Some days it felt like I was more scar than skin. I knew hard. Hard was who I was.

Unfortunately, that was becoming uncomfortably literal in Magnolia’s presence.

I stopped inside the cover of the treeline and glared down at the crotch of my pants. The leather there was pulled far too tight.

It had started on the ride, having her soft body fit so perfectly within the intimate space between my thighs. The alien sweetness of her scent, warmed by dust and sun and shuldu, wafting over me every time she so much as shifted. Things had become a little… stiff. I’d ignored it. But then, just now, when I’d held her and helped her down, that stiffness had sharpened with a suddenness and a strength that sucked the breath from my lungs.

My cock was irritatingly, inconveniently hard. I could feel the hot, needy stretch of the flesh, could feel the way my cock tail pulsed around the base of my shaft in time with my unsteady heartbeat.

She’d have to start getting down off the shuldu on her own from now on. I couldn’t keep touching her and having my body react this way as a result. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t mine.

She’d likely hate me if she knew.

The mere thought of her horror at my erection was enough to help it subside a little. I crushed my eyes closed and focused on the image. I conjured the look of betrayal, the disappointment and disgust, that would no doubt have shaped her face if she’d only let those large and shining eyes dip towards my straining genitalia a moment ago.

A stool, I thought in a sudden, miserable moment of inspiration. I’d make her a stool so she could get up and down from the saddle with ease. I could stand nearby to make sure she didn’t stumble or trip or do anything else to put her already vulnerable little body in danger. But I wouldn’t have to keep grabbing at her the way I currently was.

Feeling only slightly relieved but mostly nauseous, I started moving again to find water for the night and located a large, deep creek. When I returned to the area I’d chosen as our camp, I saw that Killian had already set up his tent and was working on Magnolia’s.Magnolia was nearby but was turned away from us, crouched and digging around in her bag for something.

Surreptitiously, I took my bedroll down from where I’d strapped it to Shanti.

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