Page 9 of Matched to the Alien King
To his credit, Maxx didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. He was too busy hooking his finger into the back of my low-cut dress for a lovely view of my ass crack.
Yes, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, it was all commando all the time from here on out because I knew it would drive Maxx crazy.
Correction—crazier.
I swatted his hand away playfully. “Please continue, Pete. We’ll behave ourselves. Promise.”
Nothing but lies. Not with this pillar of hard, scaled muscle next to me that filled me with so much warmth and longing that he made my head spin.
“Lock & Key,” Pete said with a mysterious flare, as if I hadn’t just derailed the whole show, “is a game of speed. You have one hot minute to pick a heart-shaped padlock. Those locks have names on them, so pick the name of the person you want to spend the night with. Then, find the one key to unlock the lock.”
The contestants nodded. I did too.
Finally, a game I actually cared about. This one I could play and win if it meant alone time with Maxx in a bed without a crowd of people around.
“The one hot minute doesn’t begin until I say go.” Pete paused for a long, dramatic beat. “Questions?”
His shout whipped through the air, making some of the others flinch and jump. Not me though because I’d been shouted at plenty during my time at military school and much of my duties with Earth Space Fleet. Not Maxx either since he was laser focused on a heart-shaped padlock with my name on it halfway across the table.
I grinned up at him with what was sure to be an epic sassy tease tipped on my tongue just as Pete yelled, “Gooooo!”
A mad scramble erupted around the table. Arms and tentacles flung out for first the padlocks and then the mountains of keys.
“Where’s Maxx?” I murmured, searching for a lock with his name on it. “I want Maxx.”
“Head’s up, Captain.” Miekil, standing at the far side of the table, tossed one to me.
I snatched it out of the air one-handed. “Thanks.”
Both the locks and keys looked really old like they’d been in someone’s basement for centuries and were made out of rusty, but still hearty, steel.
After trying key after key, I realized my mistake of casually dropping the failed ones back into the huge pile in front of me. This wasn’t like laundry. I needed separate piles.
“Forty-five seconds left,” Pete called.
Yet even my brilliant plan of separate piles didn’t work so well because Josh next to me kept throwing his discarded keys into my used pile, and I obviously hadn’t tried those yet.
When he started to do it again, I grabbed his arm and said, “Huh-uh. Nope.”
He shrugged. “Sorry?”
His insincerity ground my teeth together. Ihatedwhen people put a question mark after an apology. It’s exactly what my ex-husband used to do.
More keys. More fails. My used pile grew higher and higher.
“Thirty seconds,” Pete called.
“I should’ve come up with a better plan than separate piles,” I muttered to Maxx, flinging another failed key to the growing mountain. “Is it too late for the tens of people who voted for me to stay on the show to change their minds?”
Except I was talking to myself because he was no longer next to me.
“Maxx?” I turned and found him sitting on a hoverchair at the front of the stage.
He was shifting the lock with my name on it toward the setting sun, peering inside it and inspecting it closely. Then he rose up out of his seat with one of those big, rare smiles on his face that always flipped my heart end over end.
“We win,” he announced as he strode to the table.
“But…” I pointed at his still locked lock.
