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Heather took another step out into the corridor.

Loka backed away.

“Thanks.” Heather cleared her throat. “The coal gifts are lovely.”

“Heather,” Vegas called, “there’s no escaping this. I need you to take a look at these strange matches. I must be missing something.”

Heather looked over her shoulder. “I’ll just be a minute.” When she turned back to Loka, he had gone. He was fast for a big alien.

With a sigh, Heather returned to the office. She sat back at her desk. Her fingers traced over the picture of her dream home stuck on the wall. She was flattered Loka was interested, but now was a terrible time find the alien love of her life.

My Single Alien was growing. Heather was saving hard for her own piece of space paradise and harboring an ambition to set up a matchmaking outpost in deep space. Gorgeous alien or not, it wasn’t the right time for them.

“Take a look at this.” Vegas handed her a tablet. “This match has to be a mistake.”

Shaking thoughts of Loka out of her mind, Heather opened the file and began to read. Focus on work. Focus on her dream. Nothing else mattered.

Chapter 2

Loka’s insides felt both hot and cold as he walked away from the tiny, intriguing human female. Ever since their first encounter, his compulsion to leave her mating gifts of coal had grown.

He remembered the first time he’d left a piece of coal outside her quarters. He’d debated if it was the right thing to do. He wasn’t looking for a mate. He was immersed in a spatial mapping project of the Milky Way that took up all his time. He barely had a moment to eat. When he slept, it was short and sporadic, his thoughts tangled with the project. Mapping a galaxy was taxing, and this system had a number of curious anomalies and quirks that had him stumped. In addition, he was cultivating a number of bacteria discovered on rock deposits. It was his own personal project, but one he happily dedicated time to.

Still, Heather’s face kept intruding on his thoughts. He enjoyed the way her cheeks flushed whenever she saw him. She had a curious spattering of dots over her nose, and her lips were always slightly curved as if she was on the verge of laughter.

His instinct had taken over, and he’d discovered himself heading to her room to leave her a mating gift.

Loka knew it was a primal thing, the basic part of his brain overriding his logic. He’d taken the coal three times before returning and retrieving it. Finally, he’d given in and left the piece of coal outside her door, uncertain what she would think of such a gift or even if she would know what it meant.

The joy he’d felt the next morning when he’d seen the coal gone had been disproportionate. He shouldn’t care whether this female took his coal. He was not seeking a mate. He was too busy to think of mating and offspring and uniting with his life partner.

Still, he found himself, again and again, taking small pieces of coal, being increasingly brazen each time he left his gifts, secretly hoping she would discover him and a formal mating could begin.

On this occasion, Heather had almost caught him placing the coal outside her place of work. She spent a lot of time there with other females, helping aliens find their breeding mates. He needed to leave her gifts there to show he identified the important areas of her life. Work was obviously a big part of this female’s life, and he had to respect and honor that.

Loka had briefly thought about signing up for My Single Alien when he’d been assigned a posting on the station. It would be a joy and a privilege to have his own female to breed with.

Picars had not had such devastation on their home planet as many had during the intense phase of the intergalactic war, but there had been losses. Fertile females tended to focus on breeding with warriors and nobility.

Picars could easily breed with human females, so the service had been welcomed when licensed by the Council of Representatives. Loka had met several babies from successful pairings through the agency.

He smiled to himself as he strode along the station’s curved corridor. A baby with Heather would be a beautiful one. He could imagine the baby would have her enormous blue eyes and his height.

He stroked a finger absently on a horn. Would the baby have horns? Most hybrid infants took the dominant races genes, and that was never human. Picar babies arrived with tiny nubs on their foreheads, so as not to harm their mother when they were born. The horns grew as they matured.

Loka shook the thought from his head. He was not here to breed. He was here to work with his colleague, Hoan. The Prodigy space station was an ideal central location to do just that. Right next to the wormhole, it was a safe and stable place to conduct their work. The fact it came with the added bonus of the alluring Heather was an attraction, but one he could not let distract him from his true purpose.

He reached his quarters, stepped into the dark room, and let the door slide shut behind him. He leaned his head briefly against the wall, his horns sticking into the surface. This had to stop. He was being side-tracked, and that was a bad thing.

His door alert pinged. Loka slid a hand over the access panel, not certain he wanted company.

Hoan stood on the other side. “Greetings, brother.”

Loka did not move his head. “And to you.”

“You have had a productive evening?”

Loka gestured for Hoan to enter. “Lights on.” The room brightened. “Not all that productive. There was an error in the quantum gauge anomaly we have been mapping.”