Page 1 of Tempting Her Grumpy Protector
1
GREER
“Well, I understand this will be your final mission with us, Dr. Craythorn.” Commander Sylvan, head of the Kindred High Council, nodded formally at Dr. Soleil Craythorn—Sunny to her friends—who nodded back at him with a smile.
“Yes, I think I have enough research to write my paper now—or I will once we visit the Thropp’ians.” Her voice was light and sweet—exactly like her temperament. She even looked like a person whose name meant “sunshine,” Greer, her Kindred Protector thought, as he watched her from the corner of his eye.
Sunny Craythorn had a lovely heart shaped face framed with long, wavy hair that was the color of honey. She had big, meltingly brown eyes that were almost the same color as the Earth confection called “chocolate,” a pert little nose sprinkled with what the humans called “freckles”—though the Kindred called them “Goddess kisses”—and a pink, bow-shaped mouth that was almost always curved into a smile and looked entirely too kissable for Greer’s liking.
But it wasn’t just her adorable face or petite, curvy body that got under his skin—Sunny had a personality that matched her name. She was what the humans called an optimist—or, as Sunny herself put it—“I’m a glass is half full kind of person!” Which seemed to mean that she always looked on the bright side and saw the good in any situation—even when things went badly.
This was a good thing, because situations around Dr. Sunny Craythorn tended to go badly on a regular basis. And because her work required her to travel to other planets and meet alien people, the confusion that seemed to follow her everywhere she went was multiplied and compounded.
Sunny was a renowned academic on Earth and she was writing a paper entitled “Xeno-cultural Gender Roles and Societal Norms Contrasted and Compared in Five Separate Alien Societies.” She had let Greer read part of it but the fucking thing was full of academic language so dense it hurt his head.
It wasn’t that Greed was stupid—it was just that Sunny was extremely intelligent—brilliant even, he acknowledged to himself. But like many people who are intellectually gifted, she unfortunately wasn’t very practical. She lacked what the humans called “street smarts” which was what led to what Greer had privately dubbed “The Sunny Effect.”
For the past several solar months as the Kindred assisted with her research, Greer had been acting as her Protector and he had seen The Sunny Effect—the way things just seemed to go wrong around his Ward—over and over and over again.
It had started on the very first planet they had visited together—Rigel Four. The Rigellians worshipped a Sun Goddess and Sunny’s favorite color to wear just happened to be yellow—it brought out her golden skin tones and made her eyes look even more like pools of melted chocolate. Their final night on the planet, she had come to the Grand Banquet dressed in a long yellow gown with her hair fixed into a ceremonial gold corona that spiked around her head dramatically.
She explained to Greer later that she had seen what she thought was the local fashion at the Sun Goddess’s temple and had meant nothing by it. But the High Priest had accused her of impersonating the Goddess and attempting to get the entire Royal Court to worship her.
That had been a sticky situation and Greer had been forced to draw his blaster to get her out of there. To make matters worse, half of the Royal Court really did seem to want to worship her. They had gathered at Sunny’s feet, throwing cru’she blossoms—the little yellow flowers that represented the sun—and begging her to bless them and their first-born children and give them abundant crops and rich harvests.
“Release your breasts and bathe us with your Fertile Milk, oh Goddess!” they had been shouting and the whole time Sunny had been trying to explain that she didn’t have any “Fertile Milk” to give them because she didn’t have any children and she wasn’t lactating.
At the same time the High Priest had been shouting, “Imposter! Heretic!” and gesturing at her angrily.
Between the would-be worshipers and the angry High Priest and his guards, it had been extremely difficult to get away. But Greer was a professional—he had worked in the Kindred Elite Espionage Corps before becoming Sunny’s Protector and he had managed to get them out without a scratch—barely.
Sunny had apologized profusely but Greer hadn’t been mad at her—though he had been privately irritated at the huge mess. But it had been an accident, he told himself. Nothing to get too upset about. He was a stoic male—he could shake the incident off and move on.
But then, the accidents kept on happening…
On Prakus Prime, Sunny had fallen into the locals’ water reservoir after getting tipsy on a single sip of sweet Prakian gin. She’d been wearing clothing made of delicate pink and gold tissue-paper—as had Greer, since their hosts had made it clear they wouldn’t be welcome unless they dressed like the natives did.
The result of that encounter was that Greer had been forced to dive in and save her. Apparently, despite being raised in Florida—a part of Earth surrounded by water on three sides—Sunny wasn’t a very strong swimmer.
By the time he’d reached her, all of their clothes had melted away. He’d gotten her to shore but when he stood up to walk through the shallows with her cradled in his arms, he had realized that both of them were completely naked.
Sunny had been embarrassed and blushing bright red but also giggling because any kind of alcohol made her extremely silly in a distractingly adorable way. She had a bubbly laugh that even made the stone-faced Greer want to smile. Though he wasn’t smiling at the time, he recalled grimly—he’d been too busy doing his best not to stare at her gorgeous, naked body.
At that point, a local priestess had appeared and informed them that jumping into the water and allowing your clothes to melt off was a form of marriage proposal.
“My children, let me join the two of you in Holy Matrimony and the Bonds of Selective Service to Zern,” she told them. (Zern was the double-tongued, four-eyed, green-skinned deity the Prakians worshipped.)
Greer had been forced to make excuses as to why they couldn’t get Joined at once while Sunny, apparently oblivious to the fact that they were both naked and about to be married against their will, had simply asked for more details on the ceremony.
Once her intellectual curiosity was aroused, her common sense seemed to fly right out the window, Greer thought in exasperation! And all the while she had been chatting with the priestess, he had been doing his damndest to keep his eyes off her—which was fucking hard since she was so fucking gorgeous! It made him fucking crazy.
Despite her petite stature, Sunny was what the Kindred called an “Elite”—a female the Goddess had formed with extra generous curves. Elites were highly prized as mates and wives and any warrior who was blessed to mate with one was envied by his counterparts.
Greer had tried not to look at her full breasts and ripe pink nipples that were tight from the chilly water. He had also tried not to notice the small patch of neatly trimmed curls between her thighs at the apex of her sex and imagine what her soft little pussy would taste like. And afterwards, he had attempted to forget ever seeing Sunny naked.
But the scene had stuck in his head and refused to leave, no matter how often he tried to banish it—no matter how often he told himself that a happy, sweet, gorgeous Elite like Sunny Craythorn wasn’t for the likes of a dour, grim and pessimistic male like himself.
After that, he had promised himself to keep her from any further mishaps since they were so damn distracting. But despite his best efforts, the accidents kept happening—the Sunny Effect was in full force wherever the curvy little Elite went. The chaos around her was like a force of Nature—completely unstoppable!
