Page 30 of Loved By the Alien King
“He paid me a hundred credits so he could write something on your leaf.”
“My leaf specifically?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know what the message meant at the time. I’m really sorry. I… I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have let him…”
“It’s fine.” I reached out and lightly touched her shoulder as a brief show of solidarity. “Now, what about this guy? What did he look like?”
“Scary,” she whispered and then looked up at Maxx. “Not as scary as you.”
My big, broody, scaly alien warrior king was scary? I hadn’t noticed.
“What else?” he asked, a little gentler this time.
“Human. Tall. Gray hair but not old. Hazel eyes.”
I didn’t like this description. Not one bit.
“He made me feel very uncomfortable,” she admitted, wrapping her arms around her middle, “which is why I said yes.”
Me too. Because I knew that man.
I looked to Maxx, who looked just as stricken as I felt. He knew it too. Somehow he knew that the man this lady was talking about was my ex-husband.
“Thank you,” I said to her.
“You won’t tell anyone?”
“You have my word that I won’t.”
She exhaled a shaky breath, nodded, then started to turn away but decided not to. “You know, you two are my favorite couple. Everyone I know is rooting for you.”
I smiled. “Thank you. I’m kind of rooting for us too.”
Maxx watched her walk away with narrowed eyes. “Not only does he know you’re here, he knows you’re on the show. He knows what games you’re playing, and he probably knows where and when you’ll be eating.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, suddenly exhausted. “But what’s with the emotional blackmail? If he wanted to poison me, then just do that. He could’ve saved himself one hundred credits and just as easilynotwritten that leaf note for me.”
“Nera, is he capable of trying to kill you?” he asked, his voice such a low growl that I almost had a hard time hearing him even with working ears.
“See, that’s the thing.” I shook my head, trying to rattle out the truth behind all this new information. “Making me feel like shit? Oh, absolutely. But poisoning me? Or even have someone else do that for him? No. That’s not him. I lived with the man for almost six years, and we felt the same way about each other. He was the father of my child, and I was the mother of his. That’s it.”
“Sounds very…mechanical for a marriage,” Maxx said with a twist of his mouth.
I grinned at that and his obvious disgust. “You can say unhappy. It’s okay. But once we had a child together, we were bound in a weird, kind of sacred way. Even now, if that makes any sense. It’s why I didn’t want you to go and hurt him after I came back from visiting the Space Fleet bunker.”
His heavy exhale breezed over my face as he grazed his fingers over the healing cut on my cheek, now covered in makeup, that had been courtesy of Mike. “What if one taste for blood is all it takes for him to snap?”
“Well, he didn’t lick my face after he cut me, Maxx,” I said wryly. “Look, he wouldn’t hurt me physically.”
“If he knew someone was trying to hurt you physically, would he put a stop to it?” he demanded.
I opened my mouth to answer, but it turned out I didn’t actually know that. I mean, I thought I did. If it meant getting his ship and crew back, just how far would my ex go? Far enough to let someone else put baryer fish on my plate when it’s known to kill humans?
“Okay, so you might have me there,” I finally admitted. “Shit.”
“Why don’t we just go ask him?” he growled, turning in the direction of Space Fleet’s bunker.
“No, wait.” I spun around in front of him, stopping him with my hands on his perfect pecs.
