Page 2 of Matched to the Alien King
He looked so dominant and powerful and sinfully gorgeous, the perfect storm to completely sweep me and my vulnerable heart away. His purple scales encasing hard muscle glimmered like moonlit amethysts, and the gentle sea breeze wafted his long purple hair across his grim, chiseled face.
I hurried toward him, his scowl aimed at Miekil relaxing when he flicked his lavender gaze to me, and handed him two of my slices of cheese. “I don’t give just anyone cheese, but when I do, it’s at the most awkward of times, and usually near a dead body.”
A soft smile curved his lush lips when he took the cheese. “Thank you.”
“She trusts me,” Miekil boasted as he skirted around the pool. “She said so herself.”
The pool lights sharpened the drill of Maxx’s gaze on him. “Yeah, well, don’t fuxx that honor up.”
Honor? Damn. How was it that every word out of that alien king’s mouth made me feel like the most treasured person in the entire universe?
I grinned at him, my feet floating me away with hardly any awareness. Even the dead body in the pool and the threat of poisoned death couldn’t sour my mood.
I was lost to Maxx. Utterly consumed by him.
The next few hours went by in a blur filled with yellow crime-scene lasers, a ton of questions, and few answers. Umo, the show’s producer, dripped sweat down his little orange body while he tossed NDA contracts around to everyone. Most of the crew and the cast were tight-lipped about Emjay anyway. Or maybe they knew exactly what we did—not much.
Camera drones swarmed the scene to catch all the action. One of them had captured Emjay earlier tonight on film springing out of the shadows at Maxx and corroborating everything he’d said had happened. There hadn’t been any sound though for some reason, and though I couldn’t bear to watch much of the video, I wanted to know why she’d been screaming at him. Why she’d been so angry to want to kill him.
And what that was she’d pointed at him to put an orange dot in the middle of his chest. Whatever it was, it was gone now.
When Emjay was taken away and all that was left were stunned faces, the contestants and crew dispersed to their respective beach houses.
“It’s late,” Maxx said while he held me to him, his voice as exhausted as I felt. “We should get some sleep.”
“Take our bed,” Miekil, who hovered near us by the empty pool, said. “Ours being Nera’s and mine. I’ll take the couch.”
“You’re sure?” I asked him.
He gave a short nod. “Go before you fall.”
I smiled at the kind gesture. “Thanks. Sleep well.”
Maxx gripped my hand tighter and glared the closer we drew to Miekil, as if looking for any cracks or catches in his offer. No lies were detected though.
“I don’t trust him,” Maxx growled on our way inside the bedroom.
“I know,” I said with a weary sigh. “And I don’t trustthem.”
We stopped in the doorway of the shared bedroom with six big beds, one for each couple. The other contestants spoke quietly with each other as they got ready for bed, but of course, I couldn’t hear a single word unless I stared directly at their faces to lip-read.
“Do you think it was one of them…?” I let the rest of that sentence dangle, knowing he’d fill in the blanks.
He gazed down at me, the harsh worry lines fading some from his face the longer he did. “I don’t know, but there are reasons we’re both alive tonight. We’re slow to trust. We’re always on guard.” He lifted his hand and skimmed his fingertips up my jawline, trailing a tingling path. “And we have each other.”
I shut my eyes briefly to savor those sweet words, to savor this moment with him, and held his hand to my face. “But we both need sleep. We could just go back to the bungalow and…”
He shook his head. “It’s dark. The horrors out there could be worse than the horrors in here.”
“You’re right. We don’t know where the threat’s coming from. Maybe it was Emjay who”—I lowered my voice when yellow-tentacled Nacket passed near on her way to the bathroom, her gaze raking up and down Maxx’s meticulously carved, bare chest—“did that thing to me at dinner, and now that she’s been dealt with, we’re safe.”
“We were kidnapped though and thrown on reality TV. She didn’t stage all that just to try to kill us.”
I sagged against him. “You being right all the time is exhausting.”
Maxx smiled. “For you or for me?”
“Both. Us. You and me.” Those words sounded so perfect together like that, but they invited in a sudden, splitting thought. A stab of panic twisted in my gut. “Maxx, both of us could be voted off the show tomorrow. Or one of us.”
