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“N-not now.” Louella wondered if he would force intimacy upon her anyway and felt a tendril of fear cool her heated body.
Yas’kihn’s nostrils flared as he drew in a deep breath as though to savor and imprint the scent of her arousal on his memory. The sour odor of her fear laced the sweet, musky smell emanating from the core of her.Fear. He exhaled and fixed her gaze with his. “You are safe with me, pretty spark.”
“But am I safefromyou?” she whispered.
“An honorable male does not harm his mate,” he replied, stung by the inference that he would hurt her.
“And you are honorable, right?”
Yas’kihn drew himself up to his full, impressive height. Affronted, he stated, “I am the general superior of Ahn’hudin.”
“And that means you’re honorable?”
“I can be nothing less.” He cocked his head to one side as an unpleasant thought occurred to him. “Are the generals on Earth corrupt?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted and reached for the shirt.
He nodded, as though having come to a decision. “You are mine, human Louella Cordelia Jefferson. I have claimed you—”
Louella opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his palm to forestall her angry words.
“—but I will not seal the claim until you are willing.”
She found her voice. “And if I don’t want you?”
A sound that combined clicking with rumbling emanated from deep in this throat. She realized after a second that he was chuckling. She frowned at him and, clutching the shirt in her fist, held it up to her chest in a futile effort to conceal her nakedness from him.
“You will.”
His confidence infuriated her, but Louella hadn’t managed to survive capture by the Sivuul only to lose her life by aggravating the hulking superior general standing in front of her. She was no dummy. Those claws curving over his fingertips weresharp. The teeth filling his mouth belonged to a predator. He moved with stealthy grace, prowling like a cat or lurking like an alligator.
Louella’s nostrils flared as she silently counted down from ten, a tactic she’d used for years to keep from succumbing to her hot temper. Nurses needed to be calm and in control of themselves at all times. She rather thought that was the hardest part of nursing: the emotional control.
Yas’kihn watched as the human female slowly turned away from him. Her resistance bewildered him. Though Ahn’hudin needed females, he’d not found a mate among his own species and the biologically compatible human females seemed not to understand what a desirable male he was.
“Do you worry I cannot provide for you and our young?” he asked. Surely, the female he desperately wanted could understand he wasthegeneral superior; there was no higher military rank on Ahn’hudin. “Or perhaps you worry that I will be killed in battle?”
Her shoulders moved, hunching as she looked down. He did not understand the body language. His keen ears heard her muttering. Was shecounting? Why?
“Once we are officially registered as mates, I will no longer be permitted to go to battle, so you need not worry for my safety.”
He inhaled, opening his mouth and tasting her emotions on the air running over the back of his tongue. He did not taste fear, but fury.
“I do not understand your anger, pretty spark.”
Louella finished her slow countdown. Again. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and stood tall, although her statuesque height in no way intimidated the huge male who towered over her. She turned back around to face the overbearing, conceited brute. “And what makes you think I wantyou?”
“You came to Ahn’hudin to be a bride. Except for the crown prince and the science master general who is already mated, I am the most eligible male on Ahn’hudin. I do not know why you should not be pleased I have chosen you.”
“I was under the impression that the choice of whom I married would be mine,” she replied in a prim tone.
Yas’kihn tilted his head as he sought to understand the concept. “Do females on Earth select their mates? How do they do this?”
Louella closed her eyes and took another deep breath, counting down from twenty, quickly that time. Opening her eyes, she said, “Men and women on Earth—at least where I’m from—get to know one another first. They determine if there’s attraction and compatibility. A good man—” of which there seemed to be all too few in her acquaintance “—then proposes marriage—”
Yas’kihn interrupted, “How do males and females determine this compatibility? By scent?” He inhaled a lungful of air. “You smell sweet to me.Delicious.”
Louella blinked, trying to understand what the general superior meant. “Um, no, we don’t go around sniffing each other like dogs.”And what did he mean, I smell sweet to him?
