Page 116 of Dancing for the Minotaur

And with that, she left his bedroom and went quickly to the room down the hall he had designated as hers.

Once inside, she tried to find a way to lock the door, but it was made of bark and vines, and she couldn’t find any way to secure it. For the first time, it registered how foolish she’d been. Taking a job with a huge, muscular alien and then letting him take her millions of miles from home where he could basically do anything he wanted to her.

Was Taurex going to turn ugly now? Was he going to come charging in, angry that she’d rejected him–eager to hurt her and take revenge?

The thought somehow hadn’t occurred to her before, and she shivered and wrapped the towel more tightly around her shoulders. She barely knew the big Monstrum–why had she come all the way to freaking Mars with him? What was wrong with her? Her sense of self-preservation, which had been finely honed from dealing with so many creeps at The Doll House, had utterly failed her.

And then her door opened, and he was there–a massive shadow in the doorway.

“P-please…” Terra put up both hands, the towel dropping away as she took a step back. “Please, don’t hurt me!” she begged. “I know I hurt your feelings–I’m sorry! But please–you know I have kids!”

Taurex just stood there, staring at her, his golden eyes glowing in the dim room.

“Hurt you?” His deep voice sounded genuinely confused. “Why would I hurt you?”

But Terra’s imagination was working overtime, and she couldn’t hear the honest emotion in his voice. She could only see how big and strong he was and think how easy it would be for him to kill her and dispose of her body. Hell, he could jettison her corpse out into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter if he wanted to–nobody would ever find her there and then Lisa and Cody would grow up without a mom and she would never see her own mom again, either.

“Please…” She was crying now, tears running down her cheeks. “Please, I’m sorry. So sorry…”

“No…I am the one who is sorry.” His voice felt heavy in the darkness. “I must have done something to make you believe I would harm you. But Terra, I never would–I would rather cut off my own arm than bring you the least amount of pain.”

His words gave her some hope, but her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. He was just so big.

“If you’re serious and you’re not going to hurt me then please…please just leave me alone,” she begged in a broken voice. “Please, I just need to feel safe right now. I need to be alone.”

“Of course I’ll leave you alone.” He took a step back. “I am sorry you no longer feel safe with me. I wish I knew what I did to cause you such fear.”

Terra thought about shouting, “You were talking about owning me! About making me yours and looking inside my head! Don’t you think that’s enough to freak any girl out?”

But she didn’t dare say it–because what if he was just toying with her? What if he was waiting for her to say the wrong thing so he could get angry and shout and throw things or push her around? She’d seen enough men get angry at being rejected during her stripping days to know that anything might set him off.

So she just stood there, naked and shivering, hoping to God he would close the door and leave her alone.

As it turned out, that was exactly what Taurex did. With a final,

“Forgive me for upsetting you,” he swung the door shut, leaving her in the darkness.

Terra grabbed the towel from the floor where it had fallen and climbed into the middle of the king-sized living bed. She curled up into a ball and lay on her side, her eyes never leaving the door. And though the mattress formed itself into a snug nest around her and almost seemed as though it was trying to comfort her, she didn’t get a single wink of sleep the whole night.

30

TAUREX

Taurex closed the door to Terra’s sleeping chamber as softly as he could, then stood there for a long moment with one hand resting against the living bark, unable to make himself move.

On the other side of the door was the woman he had dreamed of finding for most of his adult life—the female the Goddess had chosen for him, the one whose scent had awakened something inside him that he had thought might remain dormant forever—and she was afraid of him.

Please, don’t hurt me.

The words seemed to echo inside his head, each repetition cutting deeper than the last.

Taurex squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his forehead against the door, careful to angle his horns away from the living wood. He could still see her exactly as she had been only moments ago, naked and shivering as she backed away from him with both hands raised as though she expected him to strike her. Tears had been streaming down her cheeks and terror had filled her lovely brown eyes. For one unbearable instant she had looked at him, not as the male who had held her while she slept, not as the friend she had trusted enough to travel millions of miles from her home with, and certainly not as a potential mate.

She had looked at him as though he were a monster.

Well, perhaps that was exactly what he was.

A low, broken sound rose from deep in Taurex’s chest and he pushed himself away from the door, forcing his feet to carry him down the curving hallway before he did something foolish, like knock and beg her to let him explain himself. She had asked him to leave her alone, so he would give her space, no matter how badly it hurt.