Page 24 of Resisting the Alien Rider

To spy.

Blast! No. Not spy.

If I had come to spy, I was certainly doing a poor job of it. I barely even allowed myself to look at Magnolia until I realized that she was not entirely nude. She’d retained her skimpy underthings while bathing for some reason. I could not imagine, tiny little garments as they were, that they provided any heat for her body.

It occurred to me then that she’d kept them on precisely in anticipation of what was happening now.

To keep my… supervision… away from her private bits.

Probably a good thing, in all honesty. Even the swift glimpse I’d gotten of her belly and the bare top of her fleshy chest when she’d removed her top had struck me like a stunner’s blast.

It was absurd. It was foolishness. I could not explain it. I wanted to put it down to some sort of inevitable animal attraction, like the way a male bracku became a mindless, female-focused beast during rutting season.

But Zabrians had no rutting season.

And I had not felt this awkward clawing of… whatever this was… around Cherry or Darcy.

It was only Magnolia.

I glowered, grinding my fangs against each other as I watched Magnolia scrub something sudsy through her hair. The perfume of it wafted towards me, surrounding me, teasing me as if it knew what I was doing, as if it could see through the excuses I was making for myself. Without realizing I was doing it, I fingered the semi-circle of soap in my vest pocket, that pink half-disc she’d given me before we’d left on our journey.

Magnolia ducked beneath the water. I tensed, my lungs ceasing, until her head popped up once more. A little flicker of respect and gratitude warmed my chest when I realized that Killian was holding her hand, making sure she was steady on her feet as she climbed out of the creek.

I leaned back, further into shadows, as Magnolia headed straight for where I stood. I was certain thateven her sad little human ears would be able to pick up the sound of my thunderous heartbeat.

But they didn’t.

She snatched her towel from the branch of the tree I stood behind. She was so close that I could count each bead of moisture upon the rich expanse of her moonlit skin. Could see the soaking gleam of water in the long coils of her hair. Her arms were dotted with small bumps that were not usually there. I wondered what they were, what they meant.

I wanted to touch her.

That want filled me with a loathsome sort of panic, because I didn’t know what to do with it and I didn’t know where to put it and there seemed to be nothing I could do. Nothing but stand here, wanting to touch her skin simply to feel what it felt like.

Like an idiot.

I shut my eyes before they could glow like a beacon and let Magnolia know I was no more than two strides away from her as she wrapped herself up in her towel. When I dared crack them open again, her back was to me. The towel was still around her, but with a jolt that left me dizzy I realized that she’d removed the chest covering she’d had on before. The straps that had been visible on her shoulders a moment ago were gone.

And then, something even worse.

She shimmied, bent a little, and from beneath the covering of her towel she produced the soaked garment that had been covering her backside and her sex. One-handed, she pulled it down, keeping her towel firmly in place as she did so. When the garmentreached her ankles, she stepped daintily out of it, revealing the soles of tiny little feet with surprisingly high, curving arches.

That felt strangely, incredibly intimate. Getting to glimpse her feet like that. In flashes and slips, that vulnerable skin that I’d never otherwise get to see.

It made me feel nearly savage with the need to protect her. Little feet and all.

Magnolia gripped her wet underthings in one hand, holding the towel with the other, and it was only then I truly realized how completely, how utterly, how devastatingly naked she was now. There was nothing but her towel on her. It barely covered her backside.

I couldn’t stop staring at her legs. I feverishly tracked a little rivulet of creek water as it trickled down the sumptuous curve of the back of her left thigh. My throat was so suddenly, lethally dry that it seemed the only thing left to save my life now was to grab that thigh…

And lick it.

And not just her thigh. The hollows behind her low ears. The divots between the pebbles of her spine.

The secret place where her thighs met.

I didn’t even try to stop myself from wanting now. I wasn’t strong enough.

There was something addictive in the pain of it. I hadn’t let myself want anything for so, so long.

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