He makes the noise again.
“I don’t understand what you?—”
His mouth cuts me off. Literally. His lips meet mine, shock blazing through me before I melt against him.
Oh. Akiss.
And hot damn, is it ever a kiss.
The press of his lips is overwhelming with the amount of hormones that must be circulating through my body, and I cannot get enough. I press myself against him, licking my tongue against his lips until he opens for me. I moan when the tip of my tongue slides across the sharp apex of his fang.
His body is all hard lines and strange, rough skin, but this—this is soft. This isn’t the aggressive banter he tried the last few days, or the constant arguing, or the off-key singing. No, this is the real Zan. Soft, tentative, and demanding all at once. Demanding without asking at all.
It feels incredibly right, and the longer he holds me, the longer the kiss lasts, the more I wonder if I haven’t made a mistake by telling him that I didn’t want to have sex.
Because after this kiss, I have a feeling this alien knows exactly what he would be doing, and that we would have a very good time.
“Congratulations,” a familiar voice booms.
The chicken squawks. Or maybe it’s me. But regardless of who’s doing the squawking, Zan and I break apart as if we’ve been caught doing something utterly obscene. From the way I’m panting and the heated way my body’s responded, perhaps we were doing something utterly obscene. But if it’s utterly obscene, then call me an obscenity, because I was very much down with it.
“You have passed today’s second trial, the Truth Serum BBQ. You two are closer than ever to becoming a bonded couple and finally completing your time onMated and Afraid,” Ken says.
Zan and I look around, and he keeps a firm grip on my hip, his wings still sheltering me from view.
“Your prize for tonight is a luxury accommodation. Unfortunately, I have a feeling things are about to get chilly, so this luxury accommodation is just in time.”
“The fuck it is,” I mutter under my breath.
“I thought we agreed we weren’t doing that,” Zan says quietly.
I don’t bother answering.
“Despite these luxury accommodations, you may find that you’re increasingly cold tonight. In fact, you could even be in danger of hypothermia. Not to worry, you do have one bed in which to cuddle for warmth,” Ken’s voice says.
Obnoxious applause breaks out, and the hen finally wakes up slightly, looking around with jerky movements before managing to settle back into her little dirt hole.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I say.
“You absolutely should,” Ken says. “Everyone loves only one bed. Goodnight, you two. Sleep tight, and don’t let the moon bugs bite.”
Another canned laugh track echoes through the woods, eerie considering there’s no live audience and we can’t see Ken either. Just disembodied laughter.
“He has a strange sense of humor,” Zan observes.
“You can say that again.”
“He has a strange sense of humor,” Zan repeats.
I blink, then shake my head. “All right. It looks like we’re going to be sharing a bed.”
“No,” he says. “I swear to you that I would not?—”
“It’s not about that,” I interrupt, annoyed. “It’s literally about sharing a bed to sleep in. To physically go to sleep in. Not to have sex. Just to sleep in. OK? I don’t want to die of hypothermia. That’s not necessarily something that I’ve ever wanted to do. It’s not on the old bucket list.”
“Bucket list?” he repeats. “What’s a bucket list?”
“I’ll tell you what, bud….” My teeth are already starting to shiver, whatever Ken has done has immediately made the temperature drop by at least ten to twenty degrees. I don’t love it.
