Page 26 of Alien Jeopardy

Reality TV.

Mated and Afraid.

The first challenge.

I’m in heat.

As if summoned by my thoughts, my entire body shivers with the need for relief, and not any that Tylenol could provide.

Not unless that’s what my big ole alien dragon is shooting out his?—

I clear my throat, tearing my gaze away from where my hip’s pressed against his lower abdomen.

It would be so easy to just pull the leg of my pajama pants wide, tug his pants down, and shove him right up in there. My lower body tightens at the mere idea, and I lick my lips.

My lips, which are still covered by his hand.

I just licked his hand.

I grimace, and he stares down at me with those wild orange and gold eyes, a soft exhalation on his lips.

“Challenge?” I whisper, forgetting he can’t understand me.

Yeah, that seriously blows. We need to win whatever this is so we can communicate.

I shift slightly in his arms, quiet as I can be, my spine tingling with the sense that silence is very, very important right now. Slowly, so slowly, I turn my head, fear making my heart slam against my ribs.

My fingers curl into his shoulders.

What is it that has him afraid, this huge, muscled alien?

Maybe we have to fight some sort of awful alien monster, or a lion, or go through an obstacle course over lava?—

I blink, narrowing my eyes at the sight that has my mate, er, dragon alien partner, silent and crouching in the underbrush.

Lights cascade over a shining platform, an audience of Roth and green-scaled Suevans alike chatting amicably in front of it.

What the hell are the Roth and Suevans doing here? And chatting… with each other?

I swallow hard. Sure, the Federation told us all that the Suevans and Roth had brokered a peace treaty, that the leader who ravaged our planet had been replaced with someone less homicidal, but it’s one thing to hear it from the international government who basically threw women at the Suevans for technology, and another to see it with my own eyes.

My gaze drifts from the assembled all-male crowd back up to the smooth-surfaced platform, where a bevy of lights shimmer across the surface.

The truth of it hits me like a ton of bricks.

It’s a stage.

A stage?!

“What the fuck?” I breathe, only to have a huge hand clap over my mouth. Ka-Rexsh drags me up against his body, and I squirm, trying to get free.

Mostly because nobody puts baby in a corner—er, a hand over my mouth—but also because being pressed flush against his chest with his hands all over me is doing very delicious things to my body.

Delicious but also things that I do not need to be doing while filmed.

Cheese and crackers.

Ka-Rexsh is too late, though, because even my miniscule exhalation of a curse has attracted attention.