Page 54 of Resisting the Alien Rider

“You just… You just left.”

The hurt in her voice was like a knife to me.

“I had to.”

“Why?”

Why? How could she even ask me such a thing?

“Because if I had remained one moment longer in that tent with you, Magnolia, I would have mated you,” I snapped. Her breath caught. Her eyes went wide.

Did that shock her? Good. Maybe that would wake her up, if not myself. I was too far gone.

“I could not stay there and listen to you say you were sorry,” I went on. My tail went bruise-tight ’round its hook. The words tore out of me like thorns yanked from flesh. “Before I met you and Killian, Oaken was the only one I’d ever cared about. The only one I ever wanted to protect. And I couldn’t. Now, I am betraying him in a more terrible way than I ever could have thought possible. And the worst part? I want you so much that I can’t even be decent enough to be sorry, as you are.”

“Garrek…”

“Do you know what I felt when you said you did not wish to marry him? Did I feel pain for my poor cousin? Did I feel grief for what it would cost him? For what he would lose?”

“I… I’m sure you-”

“I did feel those things,” I conceded, “but not before I felt pure, cursed exaltation. Exaltation that you would not marry him. The only blood-family I haveleft, and I wanted to shout for joy at your rejection of him. And still, I cannot find it in me to be sorry. Empire knows that I have tried.”

“Garrek, please-”

“I’m not a good man, Magnolia.” Misery clawed at me. Arousal burned in me. Even now, I wanted her more than anything I’d ever known. “Oaken is good. You have no idea. You-”

“I love you.”

Magnolia closed the distance between us. I watched her come like I’d watch something in a dream. I was scared even to breathe. That I might wake myself. That she might disappear.

That the words she’d just said would never have been said at all.

Where my insides felt like they were collapsing under the weight of chaos, Magnolia’s face was pure, poignant calm. She spoke, and she spoke with a sureness that shook me to my deepest places. Holy in her loveliness.

“I’m sure that Oaken is a good man. And maybe, if I’d met him first, things would be different.” Her eyes were so serene. “But you’re a good man too, Garrek. And you’re the one I fell in love with. You and Killian both. I look at you two, and I see my family. I see my future.”

My muscles contracted hard against my bones. I was trembling, Empire help me.

Magnolia laid a cool hand above the place where my mad heart beat. My chest heaved beneath her fingers. Her other hand went to my jaw.

“I love you,” she said again, as if to torture me. As if to save me. “We don’t have to do anything for now. We can just continue on as we were before. We’ll still go find Oaken. I’ll apologize and tell him that I can’t marry him. And if you don’t want to be with me-”

“Magnolia, no, I-”

“-then I’ll figure out what to do when that time comes. But I just had to tell you now.” A crack finally showed in her composure. Her brows drew together, and her voice became strained. “I had to tell you. I couldn’t let you leave the tent and just walk away like that without saying that… That I love you. That I think I’ve loved you for a while.”

And then I was broken and I could not stop. My hands shook as they found her face. Her skin was glory to me. I cupped her jaw, her neck, seized upon the rope of one of her plaits. I bent, drew the plait against my mouth and my nose, inhaling the dizzying perfume of her. The flowers of her soap and oils and the sweet human musk beneath.

I felt her lips move against my jaw, then my cheek. I did not know what to do, what she wanted, when my lips found hers. But it seemed right that I should open my mouth. So I did.

Magnolia’s sigh lit fires along my spine. Her mouth was molten, a revelation. Her tongue touched mine, and my cock grew metal-hard.

“Magnolia,” I moaned against her mouth, one hand still clamped around her plait, the other palming the pulse of her throat. “I love you. I love you so much. You don’t know how I’ve-”

Magnolia spasmed in my arms. She wrenched her head back with a cry of pain.

“What was that?” she stammered, her wide gaze flying to the ground. “Did I just hit my foot on a sharp rock or something?”

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