“You’re insane,” she said, even as she felt hot excitement light in her belly. This was wrong, wasn’t it? To feel this way with someone, much less someone who was a potentiallifepartner?
“And youfucking like it,” he roared.
She was breathing hard. He was too. Her body was pulsing with awareness. With guilt and lust and feelings she didn’t want to unpack.
Her instinct was to deny his words. That was what her old self would’ve done. But now she knew better. She’d always worked so hard to be the woman people believed she was—the stable friend, the responsible sister, the teacher dressed in pencil skirts and cardigans, who never did anything to be embarrassed about—that she hid parts of herself that she thought would bring her shame.
Now, she didn’t fucking care anymore.
Jaxor saw her for who she was, not who she thought she should be.
And the truth was…she was the daughter of a recovering addict, one she used to stitch up after her husband beat her, someone who sometimes envied her siblings so much it was difficult to breathe, who had harbored so much anger year after year, who had formed herself into someone she’d always wanted to be, even while feeling like she was living a lie. She was someone who had been captured by aliens, who had lived her life one day at a time since then, and now she was standing in front of an enraged alien male that made her physicallyache.
The truth was…all she wanted was to be weak for once. She wanted someone else to take care ofherfor once. She was tired ofthinkingall the time, of planning. She wanted to be selfish and do what feltgood, not what was right or even smart. In fact, she wanted to do something entirely stupid.
Do it then.
That was what Jaxor had told her in the cave the night she’d gotten drunk.
“What would you have done?” she asked, eyeing him.
A steady rumbling growl was emerging from his chest, as if he couldn’t stop.
“What would you have done if I had left?” she asked, trembling.
“Come after you. Always.”
“Why?” she challenged.
“Because you aremine,” he hissed, as if it were obvious.
Erin swallowed, her lips parting. “And when you found me?”
“Tev?”
“What would you have done then?”
His jaw hardened, his voice unyielding as he rasped, “Mated you on the earth like a beast. So you never forgetwhat this is.” He thumped his chest, his eyes still wild. “So you never forgetme!Us.”
As if she could ever forget him. She knew that if she closed her eyes, she would see him there. She would hear his voice, smell his scent. He would never be gone from her. She didn’t knowhowshe knew that. But she did.
Do something bad to me. I know you want to, he’d challenged her that night in the cave.
“Jaxor.”
That rumbling, purring growl was all she heard.
Bite me again. Mark me. Make me yours.Those thoughts made her burn, made her want him so fiercely she shook with it.
But she didn’t voice them.
Instead, she whispered, almost frightened, “Let’s do something bad together.”
And then she took a chance, knowing the reaction it would elicit, knowing what she wanted at that moment.
Without a second thought, she jumped from the hovercraft…
And then she ran from him.
