Page 7 of The Alien Reindeer's Bounty
“Let me see.” He ran his thumb over her lip. “Should I kiss it and make it better?”
“Yes. Yes, you really should.”
Another kiss—their third, but who was keeping track?—and his tongue swept across her lips. Odessa wasn’t sure what to do with her hands. Her fingers flexed, fluttering at her side before settling on the back of his neck. The brushed nylon created an unacceptable barrier. She needed skin on skin. With a shake, the gloves tumbled to the snowy ground and her fingers dug into his dark hair.
He growled, nipping at her bottom lip, and pulled away. “You’re dangerous, Odessa Muller.” Another kiss. His teeth caught her bottom lip againas he pulled away. “I have to head back before my dad comes home.”
Just like that, Mads sent her back to campus. During the drive, she kept touching her lips and replaying the kiss. Multiple kisses. Were they dating now? She needed to put on her big girl panties and just ask, especially if it led to more kissing.
The truck idled outside her dorm. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m great. Thanks for today.”
“Listen, I’m going out of town.”
“What?”
“I have mandatory military service in my home… country,” he said.
“Norway? I guess I knew that.” Maybe? She couldn’t say if the national service requirement applied to people with dual citizenship.
“I won’t be able to communicate but I want you to know that you’re my favorite human on Earth.”
He was always saying weird stuff like that but Odessa replied, “You’re my favorite human too.”
A tired smile spread across his face and holy hell if it wasn’t sexier than his usual up-to-no-good smile.
They held each other’s gaze, the moment stretching out between them like caramel, warm and sweet. What was he waiting for? Should she invite him up? She should invite him up. She cleared her throat and he said, hurriedly, “I should go.”
“Yeah, sure. Drive safely.” Had she known she wouldn’t see him again for twelve years, she wouldn’t have let him get away so easily.
Chapter 2
Mads
He had been warned.
His father warned him not to get too close to the human female but Mads refused to listen.
It did not matter how the male threatened him, Odessa called to him. She had always done so, since the very beginning when she stumbled across him in the woods, no more than a child unable to control his shift. She was light and color in a dull, flat universe. Being near her sparked his soul, but he had never touched.
Until today.
Some of the old bull’s warnings must have permeated Mads’ thick skull but he’d never admit it to his father.
The taste of copper, bright and earthy, lingered on his lips. Odessa’s blood.
His mate’s blood.
His accidental bite started the mating bond. A moment’s clumsiness on a patch of ice tied them together, and he was glad of it. He would always choose Odessa.
Besides, he did not believe one nip of his fangs and bit of blood would create a mating bond. Those were rare and the reason Uncle Karl dragged them to Earth in the first place. The hormonal glands responsible for creating the mating bond had been stunted for the last few generations on Reilen. No one knew why. Without the mating bond, birthrates had fallen. Desperate to maintain the population, algorithms paired breeding-aged couples together to produce their mandated two children.
That was exactly the population-sustaining romance that produced Mads. Shortly after his birth, his mother left his father to raise Mads on his own.
A reilendeer and human could not form a mate bond. Humans were primitive, less evolved and inferior, or so Mads had been told since the moment they arrived on the planet. If bonding with a primitive human was impossible, Mads did not know why his father had been so adamant to prevent him from forming any friendship with humans.
Then again, Uncle Karl had taken a human female—Shelly—as a mate. Mads had fuzzy memories of the female, mostly that she had a powdery scent and made Karl laugh.
