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On the other hand, he’d immediately agreed to take Genevieve back to Earth, since she was “mated.” I didn’t think I’d gotten the wrong impression that he was a dick, but maybe I’d been wrong about what his people wanted altogether.
They made it pretty clear what they want, my brain reminded me.
Babies.
And no offense to the hot blue aliens—or the hot not-very-blue aliens—I was not, under any circumstances, having any babies. I didn’t care if they could alter my DNA or what. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to father children, let alone take care of them. Actually birthing them was one hundred percent out of the question, for every reason.
Kaelum was no less strained when he finished speaking to his father, and I could understand why. The guy had been half-hearted at best, and basically warned him to be stronger. Dude had an eight pack and I’d watched him force eight-foot-tall Crux to back off when the big blue jerk had grabbed at him.
How much stronger could he be?
I still wasn’t quite sure how he’d shaken Crux off. He hadn’t moved or shouted or reacted in any way. He’d just stared the guy in the eye, and the intricate silver tattoo on his right shoulder had flashed, seeming to coat his whole body for a second with a warm glow.
And Crux had let go.
I wished I could do that. Or maybe more important, I wished Ree could. I still didn’t like the way Crux had happily manhandled her. I just didn’t know how to ask my freaking... what, captor? Owner? Point was, I didn’t know how to ask him if she was even remotely safe. Or hell, if I was.
Kaelum kept his arm around me as he led me through the garden, his whole body tense and steps almost too fast for me to keep up with. I wanted to keep up. Wanted to lean into the touch, pressing my whole body against his like Donna Meowble when I’d been at work all day and she wanted to be petted so much she acted like she’d die without it.
It had been a long time, and he was seriously fucking hot, okay? Plus, like... cats were cute, right? We fed and housed them because we thought they were adorable. It couldn’t hurt to ingratiate myself to the big guy to make sure I wasn’t, you know,probed.
But at the same time, he was really tall, with a much longer stride than mine, and his planet was too damn hot. No, not like they were all sexy, even though the guys who had saved us certainly had been. Yes, even the asshole who apparently worked with Crux. But hot like we were in the freaking tropics, and I was sweating and wearing clothes appropriate to a Colorado autumn.
“Slow down,” I muttered to him. “I can’t keep up and I wanna look at the flowers.”
He turned an expression on me that said I was nuts, before understanding dawned. He glanced behind me, then pulled me hard against him as something rustled behind my back. Okay, that had kind of been what I’d wanted. He was hard everywhere, but not with tough armored skin, like Ree told us Crux had all over. His skin was soft and smooth, but the hard muscles beneath were... well.
His definition of hard up was going to become a problem pretty quick if he didn’t let me go.
“I forgot,” he whispered, his tone pained instead of turned on, and that managed to kill my mood. “How could I be so careless? I could have gotten you killed.”
Whoa, wait, what? I pulled my head away from him, looking up in alarm. “Killed?”
Slowly, he turned me around in his arms, till my back was facing his chest, and we were both facing a huge burgundy flower that looked like a cross between a lily and an orchid, with two bright yellow stamen poking out of its center. “The aleri. One of the first Thorzi on this planet was killed by one of its ilk.”
I jerked in his grip, pushing back into him, away from the—the killer flower? “How?”
He pointed to the ground beneath it, covered with a plethora of turquoise leaves that looked like an oversized monstera. “The plant is sticky. It attaches, then pulls you in. Then—” He pulled something out of his pocket that looked like beef jerky, and tossed it toward and above the flower. One of the bright yellow stamen shot out almost a foot from the blossom, latching onto the jerky and pulling it in. Maybe not stamen after all. The hissing sound and burned sulfurous smell didn’t bode well for the poor jerky either.
Holy shit. This wasn’t a garden, it was a death trap. I huddled even closer to Kaelum. “How many of the plants in this place want to kill me?”
His breath ghosted across my ear, warm and soft, making me full-body shiver, somehow in delight and terror at the same time. “All of them.”
“Can we leave?”
“Happily,” he agreed. At the same time, he pressed his body closer to mine. Didn’t look like he was going to need me to help him redefine hard up after all, since he was headed in the right direction.
I turned my head to look back and up at him, and those intense, so-human eyes were trained on me. Warm brown, inviting and absolutely ravenous. Kaelum wanted to eat me alive.
Probably not in an actual food way.
And why is that a bad idea?My pitiful, touch-starved ass asked.He seems to be pretty damn good at it.
“We should go somewhere less dangerous, little one,” he whispered down at me, leaning in to press a kiss to the shell of my ear. “There are much more enjoyable things we could be doing than feeding the aleri.”
Oh holy crap.
Bad idea. This was a bad idea. Prisoner, remember? Not capable of consent. My dick was feeling pretty damn capable of consent, but fortunately for me, Kaelum turned us and started walking, crowding behind me as we went, arms around my sides and keeping me from getting too close to any of the plants. He seemed to steer farthest away from the brightest, prettiest ones, which I supposed made a certain amount of sense. They were attention-grabbing, and some little part of me wanted to go look at them, even though I had a clue it would land me dead. Or maybe worse.
