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CHAPTER TWENTY
Stephanie
Heat flamed under myskin, and it wasn’t because of the hot water that now enveloped my body. It was because of the massive, annoying alien lying in my bed. Only, in this moment, he wasn’t annoying me. Not at all.
It was slightly alarming how fast my dislike for him had faded.
It’s just because he almost died in front of you, I reasoned, frowning while I scrubbed at the bloodstains on my palms.It’s not because you might actually be starting to like him.
I glanced up, peering through the steam at the bed to find his glazed eyes still on me. I crouched lower, deeper into the water, even though I was still wearing my tank top, bra, and panties. I was even more covered up than I would be in a bikini at the beach, and I still felt the need to hunch down and hide from his gaze.
The fact I was trying to stay out of his gaze wasn’t all that weird.
It was thereasonfor my hiding that was knocking me off my axis. If I’d merely hated him, I wouldn’t really care if he saw me in what essentially equated to a bathing suit.
But my feelings, apparently, had suddenly grown a lot more complicated.
That moment on the bed, pulling the arrow out so painfully slowly, had been undeniably intimate. But it wasn’t the simple closeness of the fact I’d had his blood pour all over me, the fact I’d spread my legs over his body while I’d literally held his life in my hands.
No, it wasn’t just that.
It was the other things – the ways he’d surprised me tonight – that were making things so suddenly new and complicated. For example, the way he’d made me laugh. Apart from choice conversations with Fiona, I didn’t think I’d laughed this much the entire time I’d been on this planet. And then there were the slices of authentic vulnerability he’d shown me tonight.
And the way he’d obeyed.
The throb of heat inside me grew more intense, moving deeper. I never would have expected this arrogant Gahn of the Deep Sky to look at me like I ruled his entire world and utter the words, “I obey.”
Our eyes met through the steam. Despite the fact that I’d released him from thesight stars on mecommand, he clearly had no interest in looking anywhere else. An odd wave of self-consciousness broke over me, different from the one I’d had a moment before about being too exposed in front of him. I mean, right now all he could see was my head above the water.
And even that felt like too much.
I wonder what he sees when he looks at me...
Right now, it probably wasn’t a pretty picture. I could tell my hair was a mess, falling out of my ponytail and turning all weird and wavy from the steam. I hadn’t washed my face yet, so it probably shone with oil and sweat and the occasional streak of Gahn Errok’s blood. It was late at night, now, so I assumed I must have looked pretty exhausted, too.
Why do I care what he sees when he looks at me? I’m not here to be pretty for him. I don’t even like him!
