Alpha Star: Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides #1 (Intergalactic Dating Agency): Intergalactic Dating Agency (8 page)

His other eyebrow shot up. “You won’t let me live that down, will you?”

She shrugged. “Probably not.” The warmth of amusement and rum in her faded a bit. It wasn’t like he’d be around to tease much longer. She gulped back half her drink for boldness. “C’mon. Let’s go look at those rocks.” She led him into the living room and settled on the couch.

He hesitated, then settled beside her. He pulled the bag she’d filled from the shop toward him. “Quite the collection.”

“Yeah. This place seems to collect more than its fair share of space junk.”

He glanced up at her through his lashes. “Indeed.”

For a moment, she was dazzled by the crystal blue of his eyes. She tried to stare past the brilliant had-to-be contacts to glimpse whatever true color he was hiding. “Do you see the one you want?”

“I do.” His gaze never left her while he pocketed one of the fragments.

She half expected him to rise then. Instead he leaned back and unfurled one arm across the back of the couch behind her, as if he had nowhere else to be.

To keep him squared in what remained of her view, she had to lean back too. Her shoulder brushed his forearm, sending a little shiver of awareness down her spine. God, it’d been such a long time since she played these flirting games, and she hadn’t been good at them even back then.

Without moving his arm, he angled his hand to wind one finger through a lock of her hair. The little shiver deepened to a full-on ache. Oh, he was
so
much better at this than she was.

He wrapped another loop around his knuckle. “When you said you weren’t dating…”

She waited a breathless second, but he didn’t continue. “When
you
said we should proceed immediately to the mating…” She left him hanging as he’d done to her.

His lips curved upward, and she reluctantly admitted those gorgeous blue eyes were all his, no faking. The aroused spark that ignited his gaze would be impossible to counterfeit. He really was too hot, completely out of the realm of reality for someone like her.

But here he was on her couch. Well, Delaney’s couch, technically, in Tisha’s house. But whatever.

Slowly, as much to give him time to evade the maneuver as to make sure she gauged the distance correctly, she reached up to cup his cheek. His jaw was firm and so smooth he must’ve just shaved despite the late hour.

He leaned into her caress at the same time his grip on her hair tightened, a strange medley of surrender and dominance. “I don’t know your ways.”

The confession, softly voiced, reassured her. As high and mighty as he acted, he wasn’t an irredeemable jerk.

“I’ll show you.” She stroked her thumb across the velvety skin of his lower lip and leaned in.

There’d been a time his slight, startled inhale would’ve made her grin, back when something like this would’ve been just another night of adventure. But the hitch of his breath seemed to snatch the air from her lungs, and her heartbeat echoed in the sudden hollowness of her chest.

Half twisted on the couch to face him, she hesitated off balance, and an embarrassed chill rushed through her body. How desperate was she, trying to recapture a little of the boldness that had used to come so easily…

But in her frozen moment, he mirrored her gesture. Though his finger was still wrapped in her hair, his hand was big enough that the pad of his thumb rested lightly on her lip. She gazed up at him uncertainly, and the weight of his contact increased, pressing down on the flesh of her mouth. As if her lip was a game show buzzer, her whole body seemed to light up at his touch.

“Sin,” she murmured. A flush of warmth swelled in her, branching out along the tracks of her blood vessels and nerves, and sizzled away her sudden doubts.

He closed the last, small distance between them and slanted his mouth over hers.

With her lips parted at his touch and the exhalation of his name, the kiss was too intimate, too fast.

She gasped as his tongue swept in to tangle with hers. Apparently she didn’t need to show him anything…

The sweet bite of the drink she’d made him swirled on his breath and swept aside all coherent thought. Except one: she craved a deeper taste of him more than she needed air itself.

She slid her hand into his hair to anchor herself, tangling her fingers in the raggedly cut locks. In marked contrast to his smooth skin, the dark strands were thick and coarse against her skin, more like the pelt of a wild animal than the coiffure of a foreign mercenary prince.

The low rumble in his chest, almost a growl, was dangerously feral too. “Zoe,” he whispered against her mouth. “You make me think that launching this new life will not be so hopeless as I’d feared.”

He was inheriting a rich estate somewhere while she was just praying she’d be able to see and think clearly again, but she totally
got
him. She hadn’t felt so alive and focused since before the flying brick had bashed her. He had his dating app to help him along. And she had him. For this night.

She traced her tongue over the bow of his mouth, finding him just a little sticky from the soda pop. Not sticky enough to actually stick around, but she wasn’t looking for that, not after watching her mother and Del go silent and still in their loneliness, not when she’d witnessed firsthand how randomly life could be taken away. Shit happened, yeah, but she’d learned how to flush it all away and not let it touch her.

Sin
could touch her, though. And he did. His big hand cupped her nape possessively, angling her head to seal their kiss. Their panting fell into sync, as if they were keeping each other alive with swapped breaths. When he reached behind her to pull her closer, she braced her palm on his chest.

She didn’t mean to, but her hand slipped up under his torn shirt. His skin was hot, so hot she gasped. And copped a feel of the taut muscles rippling up his belly. Hot and so
hard
. The men she usually dallied with did enough physical labor to keep in shape, but she’d never even heard of ten-pack abs. The smooth satin of his skin barely softened the power of his body, and her heart tripped a beat in atavistic delight at the evidence of his strength.

Ridiculous. She was a modern woman with a vibrator of her own; she didn’t
need
a man.

She just
wanted
this one.

Twisting her hand to grip what was left of his shirt from the inside, she rose. “Follow me.”

Though there was no way she was strong enough to lift him, he stood so quickly she felt as if she’d levitated him from the couch. “Anywhere.”

He didn’t mean that, she knew. Or at least not beyond this moment. He was looking for a bride and she was just looking for a hookup. She led him upstairs, turning away from the open door to Tisha’s master bedroom and branching past Delaney’s closed door to the third bedroom. The shared bathroom between their bedrooms offered some privacy, but Zoe put her finger over Sin’s firm lips as she pulled him into her room.

“Gotta be quiet,” she murmured, already distracted by the scalding rush of his breath feathering over her knuckle.

“As a meteorite,” he agreed.

Burning up on entry probably wasn’t a quiet way to go.

Although she suspected she was about to find out.

Sin stepped closer to the small female who matched him, wanted to mate him, but didn’t want to wed him.

Well, there was an ancient Jaxian metal-lord saying that two outta three wasn’t bad.

He’d taken one quick survey of the room as he stepped inside—bed, chair, a window covered with filmy fabric, almost monastically sparse in its décor, as if she was confined to a cramped survey ship without the freedom of a whole planet—and nudged the door closed behind him. His heart thumped slow and steady in anticipation, same as it did when he locked himself into a fighter pod, ready for action.

“Lights,” he said softly.

She tilted her head. “Do you mind if we leave them on? I…have some vision issues, and…I want to be able to see. You.” She gave him a half leering smile, although the corner of her mouth wavered.

He’d only meant to summon up the light controls to lower the illumination, not make it dark, but he’d forgotten for a moment where he was. Sunset Falls, trapped by the disruptions of the EM repulsor, didn’t have voice-activated environmental controls. Despite her smile, Zoe seemed trapped too, standing stiffly at arm’s length. He frowned. Did she think he’d judge her for her mating mood preferences?

When she blinked and averted her gaze, he realized she hadn’t meant to reveal her vulnerability. That he could understand.

He reached out to touch her chin, levering her face higher. “Whatever you want.”

She looked up at him. “I want you to kiss me again.”

“With pleasure.” He lowered his head.

In the moment before his mouth slanted over hers, her lashes fluttered down. But not before he watched her focus blur. Whatever her issues were, they didn’t stop her, but they bothered her. Well, there were plenty of other senses to indulge.

Their first kiss had startled him. Most humanoids had some tradition of kissing. The mouth was a means to feed the soul as much as the body. But among Jaxians, to share another’s breath, when breath fanned the flames that melted all but the strongest metals, was an intimacy reserved for bonded mates. The IDA rep had said Earth females were open and willing, but Sin hadn’t imagined
this
.

The slow, steady thrum of his pulse accelerated, like a ship in descending orbit, falling and heating. His closer step brought one knee between her legs, just as his tongue slipped between her lips. She licked out to meet him, and beneath the enticing flavor of the drink they’d both had, the deeper, more opulent taste of
her
enticed him, like a treasure hiding just beyond what was sure to be a fierce firefight.

As a merc, he’d always enjoyed the fight
and
the win.

He walked her backward toward the tidy bed, never lifting his mouth from hers. While she wasn’t objectively small, compared to him she was, and her body yielded ahead of him step by step. She skimmed her hands up inside his shirt, and her lips vibrated under his with a hum of arousal. Jaxians were evolved along the same humanoid lines as Earthers, but he had a few structural differences. Nothing she would notice, especially if her eyesight was poor: a few extra muscles, the metal-lord density of his flesh, the striated metallic crystals that shone behind his eyes. She’d tell herself it was just the way he was, nothing strange.

He hoped.

“Take this off,” she murmured. She pushed impatiently at his ripped shirt.

“You want to see?” He caught her hand against his chest. “And feel?”

She petted him. “How high and mighty are you?”

“More by the moment.” He angled his elbows back, shedding the outermost layer of his clothing. The heavy, self-healing synth overcoat had protected him from shrapnel and even the cold of space that one time he’d fallen out of the airlock, and for a nanosecond, he hesitated to let it leave him. Which was ridiculous. Did he think Zoe was going to hurt him?

Or did he just not want her to see him?

She grasped the ragged ends of the shirt and tugged. As if he couldn’t stop her—and honestly, he didn’t want to—he lifted his arms to let her strip him. She had to go up on her toes, pressing closer, to make up for their height difference, and the feel of her plush warmth against his bare chest made the inexplicable sense of danger worth it.

He snaked one arm behind the small of her back and bent her over, staring down at her. He suddenly remembered the instant before he unveiled the mark that won him the
Sinner’s Prayer
, that suspended moment between possible death and ultimate freedom. The grip of his wounded hand, disguised by the glove, tightened on her.

“Ooh, so high and mighty again,” she said, her eyes hazy-bright with passion.

“And I’ll take you with me this time,” he growled.

It was an offhand line, nothing more than a bed promise, but as the words left his mouth, they rang with something deeper. It sounded as if…as if he meant to take her as his bride. But she’d already turned him down. Hells, she didn’t even know
what
she was turning down. He bit down on his tongue before he said anything else.

Using his greater weight as a fulcrum, he spun her toward the bed. She went readily, kicking off her shoes as he did the same with his boots. He should’ve used that brief separation to calm the urgency seething in his blood. Instead, he followed her. She sprawled back, fumbling at the closure of her jeans that all Earthers seemed to wear.

“Let me.” He knelt at her feet and bumped her hands aside.

She reclined back on her elbows. “Yes sir.”

“If you want me to command you…”

“If I get bored…” Her half-lidded gaze challenged him.

He rumbled low in his throat. “Not with me you won’t.”

“So much talk.”

Whatever he’d been about to say vanished like it was sucked down a black hole when she lifted her hips and let him slide the sturdy blue fabric down her legs. He’d always liked furred mates. The more hirsute races were known for being fun, fierce lovers. But the sight of her silky skin lowlighted with fine, dark hairs from the knees down struck him as wildly erotic.

He tossed aside her jeans and ran his hands from her ankles up the back of her calves. So lush… He wished he could rip off the glove that covered his torn hand, but he couldn’t explain the exposed cybernetics to her. He let out a harsh breath.

“I haven’t shaved since it got too cold to wear shorts,” she said in the hurried voice of an apology. “If I’d know you were coming…”

He wasn’t sure why she was apologizing. “Never shave again.”

The tension in her shoulders eased. “So bossy.”

“Don’t want to bore you.” He curved his fingers into the soft flesh of her calves and opened her knees, exposing the paler skin of her inner thighs. His gaze tracked inward and froze.

He’d only glanced at the IDA guidebook on Earther female physiology, thinking he had plenty of time to study the schematics. And he was intergalactically known as an intuitive and instinctive commander, so he’d figured he could figure it all out. But…a face on her crotch?