Page 20 of Married to the Alien Mountain Man

And that mattered. That meant something to me. Because it was so damneasyto get small and hard and mean when pain hooked its claws into you. But to remain good, right down to your core, even when life took and took and took from you…

That was fucking impressive. And I admired that in a person.

In my husband.

Oh, boy.

The fact that Oaken was a good guy didn’t mean it wasn’t batshit crazy that I was marrying him only a few hours after I’d met him. I’d never even planned to marry anyone at all! And now, here I was on some isolated, unknown planet, sweating under the solemn stare of the warden as he read out the Zabrian marriage rights.

I risked a sideways glance at Oaken. He wasn’t sweating. I wasn’t sure if that was a Zabrian thing – some lack of sweat glands – or if he really was just that cool with everything that was going down right now. Now that the booty-cake issue wasn’t top-of-mind, he looked, calm, peaceful, resolved…

He also looked good. Like, really good.

My cheeks burned, and I yanked my eyes forward once more. I wasn’t supposed to be ogling my temporary husband at our fake wedding. Even if he did have starkly-carved bone structure like an Old-Earth god’s…

And a body to match.

“That is all for the Zabrian ceremony,” Warden Tenn said abruptly. “Now you just have to do the human kiss thing.”

“Oh, that’s not… We do?” I stammered. “Is that absolutely necessary?”

Tasha looked like she wanted to tell me that it wasn’t, but the warden answered first.

“If we’re doing this, then we’re doing it right,” he said. “Every human-Zabrian wedding I have attended thus far – including my own – has included the human kiss ritual.”

“I have read all about it,” Oaken said eagerly. “I am sure that I could perform the ritual adequately.”

“It’s not that!” I said, my mouth suddenly chalk-dry. “It’s just…”

It was just, what?

I’d never been shy about physical stuff. I didn’t have the patience for romance, so all my sexual encounters had been a collection of casual flings, harried hook-ups, and one-night-stands with strangers as I bounced from world to world, star system to star system, on theLavariya.

What was one little kiss compared to all that?

“And, if you don’t mind,” Oaken said, his voice gruff and low, “it might provide me a bit of practice for…”

“For?” I croaked. Holy Terra. Would I be allowed to have a sip of water first?

“For… For my next wedding.”

Oh. Duh. Of course. Unlike myself, I could already tell that Oaken was an ooey-gooey romantic at heart. He still wanted his forever marriage with a human after our short-lived one. And considering how much he was helping me, I figured I kind of owed him one.

Just one. One tiny little kiss.

Touching our mouths together wasn’t nearly as significant as the fact that we’d just legally tied ourselves to each other.

“Yeah. Of course,” I replied, nodding quickly. Too quickly. I was going to snap my damn neck.

As if worried about that exact possibility, one of Oaken’s hands rose to my throat. I gasped as the warm, rough surface of his calloused palm cupped the back of my neck. His fingertips dove into my hair. His thumb came to rest on the frantic pulse-point beneath my jaw.

And then his thumb stroked there. Only once, and so softly I was barely even sure it had happened at all.

So there was absolutely no reason that I should have felt that shivery whisper of a touch ghost hotly between my legs.

“Is this alright?” Oaken murmured. “I saw a male touching a female’s neck like this in the book.”

“The book has… has d-diagrams?” I stuttered.

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