Page 28 of Alien Healer’s Mate

He felt it. Of course he felt it. Pulling back, he scanned her face.

“You’re not a project,” he rasped.

Then he found the crossover at her shoulder and gave a gentle tug.

The gown that had taken her five minutes and a wrestling match to get into came undone in a single practiced pull, unraveling around her and sliding down to pool at her feet in a sigh of shimmering fabric. She looked down at it.

“Oh, that is just insulting.”

Then she realized she was standing in nothing but her panties and her cheeks burned. Automatically, she crossed her arms over her bare chest, shoulders bunching… she was soft, curvy in places a warrior’s mate probably wasn’t supposed to be, and every insecurity she’d ever owned trotted out and lined up for inspection.

But he didn’t look away. He didn’t even blink. Instead, his gaze raked down her body, slow and thorough. It wasn’t a doctor’s look. There was absolutely nothing clinical in it. It was raw hunger that heated her skin everywhere it touched.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

Her breath hitched as an ache pooled low and heavy between her thighs.

He moved in, big hands spanning her waist, and lifted her like she weighed nothing at all. Gasping, she wrapped her legs around his hips as he carried her across the room and laid her back on the biggest bed she’d ever seen. She didn’t feel small; she felt tiny against the sheets.

She reached for him, tugging at his leather jacket because she wanted his skin against hers… Heat and the weight of him over her. He stripped fast, peeling the jacket off and shoving the rest down, and when he moved over her, she couldn’t stop her small gasp. He was a mountain of muscle and those silvery scars, his braids sliding over his shoulders. The mattress dipped under his weight as he braced himself above her, caging her in.

“I’ll take it slow,” he murmured, but within seconds, she realized he was a good liar.

He didn’t take it slow.

His head dropped, and his mouth closed over her breast, sucking the peak in, his tongue swirling until she arched clean off the bed with a moan she couldn’t have held back even if the whole crew had been listening in.

Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer. Sliding a hand down her stomach and under the lace of her panties, his blunt fingers parted her and slid straight through the slick heat of her folds.

“Fuck.” Her hips rocked against his touch. “Kellat… please.”

He watched her, his gaze locked on her face as his thumb found her clit. He circled it, his fingers pushing deeper, and her head fell back. The friction was perfect, everything low in her body tightening until her vision blurred at the edges.

Then he shifted down the bed, hooked her panties off her legs, and settled between her thighs. Her breathing stopped altogether at the first slide of his tongue against her, her hands mangling the sheets.

He learned her fast. Every flick against her clit that made her gasp, he repeated. Every angle that made her hips jerk, he came back to, his breath hot against her wet flesh, until she gripped his shoulders with her nails biting in. The whole world had narrowed to his mouth and the sound of her own ragged breathing.

Then it hit.

She shattered apart, his name a sob on her lips as her hips jerked up against his mouth. He pushed her right through it and straight into another shattering climax, then drew it out, not letting her down until the last tremor faded.

When he moved back up her body, his chest heaved, and his eyes were nearly black. There was no hint of the doctor left in him at all. Just a man, looking at her like she was his.

Settling between her thighs, the broad head of his cock brushing against her, and she sucked a breath in. He was huge, utterly huge… she was no innocent but, God, that was never going to fit, was it?

“Shhh, I got you,” he murmured, and pushed inside her.

Inch by inch, he stretched her around him in a slow, relentless ride of pure sensation. She watched him watching her as he pushed, not pausing, not stopping, and her breath caught. She’d never experienced anything so erotic. So hot. He filled her to the point of aching, and her eyes fluttered shut. He was bigger than any man she’d ever taken.

“Eyes on me, kelarris,” he growled, and her eyes snapped back open as his hips met hers.

He stilled, buried to the hilt, braced over her with his jaw tight. She could feel his heartbeat. Actually feel it, throbbing inside her, as the burn faded. She sighed, softly, as her body settled around him and the darkness in his eyes flared.

Pulling back, he drove into her again. And again. Slow at first, a rhythm that filled the quiet room with the sounds of skin and breath, then harder as she opened more to him.

His hands gripped her hips hard, as if anchoring her to him. Leaning down, he buried his face in the crook of her neck, his breath ragged against her skin and a low, possessive growl rolling out of him on every thrust.

“Mine,” he rasped. “You’re mine.”