Page 33 of Matched to the Alien King
Still joined, I rested my forehead against hers, our heavy breaths mingling.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“My Nera, my heaven, my beautiful star.”
Her eyes sank closed as she let my words wash over her, and the faintest trace of wetness formed underneath her lashes. “No one’s ever said that to me after sex before.”
“You’ve been having sex with the wrong people, then,” I told her while I kissed the moisture away, even as jealousy flared.
The thought of her with another man who was likely unworthy of her, who might or might not have known what kind of rare pearl he held in his arms, fused my lungs together with rage and made it much harder to breathe.
She kissed me then and put my body and mind at ease. She was mine. All mine. And I flatly refused to fuxx that up.
Sometime later, we reluctantly released each other, unjoined our bodies, and rose.
“Did you mess me up?” she asked, her voice teasing.
I crooked a finger under her chin and leaned down to kiss her plump bottom lip. “Your cheeks are flushed, but you look properly sated. For now.”
“Properly sated,” she said with a laugh. “I feel as limp as a rag doll. Think Space Fleet will notice I’ve just been properly sated by my royal Xenoxx prisoner?”
I froze mid hiking up my pants. “What?”
“I’m going to go deliver the weapon I don’t have to them, only I’ll tell them it got stolen while I scope things out. I figure I have an hour, maybe an hour and a half.” She shrugged as she picked up her dress from the jungle floor and brushed a few small leaves from it. “That’s plenty of time.”
“You’re going now?” I turned away from her under the guise of fastening my belt, but really, I couldn’t let her see the war of emotions that were surely battling over my face. “What do you think they’ll do when you tell them you don’t have the weapon?”
“I’m sure there will be screaming, some threats of maiming, and surely some disses about my mom.” She grinned. “But if I turn my head just so, I won’t be able to hear any of it.”
I grunted, taking entirely too long to belt my pants.
“You don’t have to worry about me telling them that you’re here too or that you’re the reason I smell like sex.” She came up to me and smoothed her hand up my arm. “It’s a good idea that you don’t come with me though.”
“Negative, Captain.”
“Youarecoming with me?”
I nodded. “What I was trying to tell you last night during a rare moment of clarity when—”
“When I was kissing you senseless while pressed against the bungalow door.” She grinned salaciously. “I remember.”
“The crewmember Umo sent out to look for Emjay came back. She found video footage of Emjay coming out of the same bungalow we stayed in last night. So she went there too and found this.” I untied the makeshift scabbard/handkerchief for my machete that hung at my side from a belt loop and shook it out to show her the Earth Space Fleet emblem.
Her big eyes widened. “But…she tried to kill you. Space Fleet and assassins don’t go together. That’s not what we do.”
Tension puckered her forehead as she paced away from me, still gloriously naked, but then she swung back.
“Wait, which crewmember? Black, spiky hair? Left-handed?”
“Black, spiky hair, yes. I don’t know which hand she favors.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
“The Baggage Between Buns note on the leaf about me was written by a left-handed person.”
Left-handed? Before I got sidetracked again by her nudity or how she knew that detail, I continued.
“Nera, there’s something else. Something I just learned this morning after you left with Smitha and Oreo. I talked to Axxel. Your engineer found out about the email address that sent in yourAlien Love Islandcontract. Its IP address is right here on Klio-3.”
She jerked back at that bit of news. “Well. If that isn’t the biggest coincidence ever.”
