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She turned her attention to the details, to the two arches inset into the walls (doors, she assumed), to the protrusions to the sides of those arches (though she couldn’t fathom their function, if they had any), and to the soft glow illuminating the room. Try as she might, Mia couldn’t pinpoint the source of the low lighting.

She sat up slowly, as puzzled by the lack of dizziness as her surroundings. Where on Earth was she? A vague memory nudged at her, of the elation of watching her seedlings sprout, of chatting with Leona and Kira, of a giant ship descending from the heavens, and of a mountain of an alien pinning his gaze on her and saying, emphatically, “Mine.”

Her heart fluttered in her chest and sank like a stone, and she pressed a trembling hand to her stomach. Oh, no. Had that ridiculously attractive alien abducted her?

The door on the opposite wall slid back, and said alien stepped over the threshold into the room wearing the same skintight outfit, or a similar one. As before, his gaze zeroed in on her. This time, though, instead of stalking toward her, he merely stood just inside the room staring at her. Large as he was, the distance didn’t really help. He was just sobigandmuscledandhorned.

She forced herself to stay exactly where she was, when everything inside her screamed at her to scramble away, to put her back to the wall, to ready herself for him to pounce and claim her as his hot gaze promised.

“You are awake,” he rumbled in that lightly accented English.

Well, duh, she thought crossly. “Where am I?”

“Shipboard. Come, littleklika. I will show you.”

Uh, no. No way was she going anywhere with him.Anywhere else, she corrected silently, since clearly he’d taken her somewhere.

“I’m fine where I am,” she said. “Thanks.”

His nostrils flared and he sniffed. “You wish to rut now?”

She wheezed out a breath and squeaked out a startled, “What?”

“Rut,” he said, seemingly unruffled by the volume of her response. “That is your purpose here. In exchange for technology, your government promised to give us our choice of breeding females.”

Red hot embarrassment flared through her. She slapped her hands over her face and moaned a low, “Oh, my God. We don’tdothat anymore. Women have achoice, you, youbarbarian. You can’t just kidnap anybody you want!”

“They reneged.”

“So!”

“So.” His shoulders rolled under the black shirt-thing he wore. “We took you.”

“You say that as if you truly believe you’re in the right here.”

His expression remained implacably, furiously firm. “We upheld our word. Your governments did not.”

She sank back against the wall, shocked to her very core. Had some moronic government official really promised to exchange fertile women for technology? Surely whoever had made that deal had intended for the women to volunteer. If she’d had a choice…

She shook her head firmly. But no, she hadn’t had a choice. This lout had kidnapped her out of her own greenhouse without so much as aby your leave. All that work! Years of research, down the drain because she was here, whereverherewas, locked away by this…

Barbarianseemed too weak a word for the anger and frustration filling her. How dare he take her against her will! How dare he!

“Did it never occur to you,” she gritted out icily, “that I might have better things to do with my time? That I might be in a relationship already?”

“It did,” he said evenly. “You are not.”

“That’s not the point,” she muttered.

“Is it not?” In one stride, he reached the side of the bed and snagged her wrist in a surprisingly gentle hold. “Come, littleklika. You have much to learn.”

In that moment, she wished she were as brave as Kira, who’d left India against her parents’ wishes to travel to the States for grad school, or as feisty as Leona, who would’ve flattened this alien guy as soon as he walked into the room.

But no, she was just plain ol’ Mia, crop research scientist. Meek, biddable, too curious for her own good. He’d said the magic word—learn—and that curiosity had already overridden her brief spurt of fury.

Too bad. She could really use some indignation right now.

“No rutting?” she said, entirely too timidly for her peace of mind, but still, there it was. She’d drawn a line on acceptable behavior.