Page 38 of Loved By the Alien King
“Nera, you need rest. I’m all for going with you, but it can wait until tomorrow.”
“What if it can’t? What if someone tries to kill us again, and while we’re lying there dying, we’re also kicking ourselves that we don’t know the whole truth?” She leaned her forehead against my chest and held to me tighter. “After the show? Please?”
“All right. If you’re sure.” It had become impossible to say no to this woman.
Yet…a feeling cinched up my nerves and crawled up the sensitive scales at the back of my neck—just as I was keeping something from her, Nera was keeping something from me.
Chapter fifteen
Nera
Ehhh,sothiswasa little awkward. And stupid. Like, so stupid that it’s proof evolution works in reverse. All because of me. You’re welcome, scientists.
Call it intuition or whatever, but I might have a little problem.
I don’t get dizzy, but when I do, I find out I’m pregnant two weeks later. That’s exactly how it happened with Lucy.
It’s not like I don’t know where babies come from, but tell that to the wild cavewoman inside me who, with one single touch from a certain purple alien king, forgets all sense of responsibility while she’s ripping off her dead mammal clothes for a one-on-one concert with a hot scaled dick and its serpentine backup singers.
Of course Xenoxx can impregnate humans. That’s why we made a deal with them years ago in the first place! They help us hunt down Faid. In exchange, they propagate their dying species with Earth’s females. Everyone’s happy.
I wasn’t sure about the particulars like gestation and such. I wasn’t sure about anything, especially how I felt about just the possibility of being pregnant with Maxx’s child.
After Lucy… Well, I could in no way imagine going through any of that again. I hadn’t sworn off more children, but I was divorced and irreversibly broken…or so I’d thought until I fell hard for Maxx.
He was the unexpected missing piece for every part of my soul. So perfect and warm and beautiful…and the chance of carrying his child felt the same way. Not like it was with Mike at all, though what we’d created were the best parts of both of us.
What would Maxx say?
What wouldIsay?
The only way to know what either of us would say was to find out for sure, in secret, with as few people who knew just how reckless I’d been as possible.Notvia Maxx’s communicator bracelet that linked him to Axxel, Doc, and the rest of my crew.
No, I needed Rain for this one.
Did I want to kill her? Absolutely. Did I trust her? Fuck no. Would she tell me the truth about this one thing? I believed she would.
She’d once been programmed to be a caregiver for families. Hell, she’d even tracked my periods for five years as noninvasively as possible in case we ever decided to have another kid. In a lot of ways, she knew me better than I knew myself.
Still, asking her for help, especially about this, wouldn’t be easy. She could snap at any second. Decide to attack Maxx. TakeeverythingI loved.
Of course, Maxx wasn’t at all helpless, but still. It was a risk taking him with me. It was an impossible chore to leave him behind.
Even as we parted ways on the stage, him to one side, me on the other, I hooked my fingers around his, hating to let him go. When he wasn’t at my side, I missed him. Painfully.
He glanced over his shoulder at me, a perfect smile cupping those lips, his fingers not quite willing to let me go either. “I’ll be right over here thinking all about you.”
Despite all my worries, I fell into my hoverchair like I was sinking through clouds.
Grinning, Bling reached over and rubbed my arm. “Feel better now that you got your Maxx fix?”
“He’s the best kind of drug,” I said with a nod.
Pete bounded up the steps three at a time, his concerned gaze pinned to me. “We all good, Nera?”
“We’re all good, Pete.”
“Can I get you anything? An e-cig? A lady friend? A giant stuffed banana in case of an emergency?”
