Page 18 of Delivered to My Alpha Alien Lovers (Mail-Order Matings #20)

Farsel

Such a fun evening! Even though I was on the downside of mating sickness, we were spending at least some of every day so far this week with our mate, getting to know one another better. We’d observed enough of the customs of the planet, particularly in this area, to understand that matings among humans did not happen instantly. Shifters usually seemed to, which was one of the reasons I’d looked into the website where we met our mate. There were a lot of other people besides shifters there, but they were the most populace group.

And yet, the Goddess or Fate as shifters said she was called, had given us a human as our mate. We used the term fated but not in the same way. As I got to know our mate, I believed that the one they called Fate was the same as our Goddess. And it gave me chills to think that she could bring together people from different galaxies and know that they were right for one another. We were not a specifically religious planet, although we did believe there was a Goddess. We just didn’t recognize—or at least I didn’t—how huge her place was in the universe.

Cuddled with our mate between us on the sofa, we watched the movie she loved and took pleasure in her enjoyment of the reenactment of a work of Earth literature. She had made us sweet treats, which, although she could not know this, were traditionally what a mate did to let her male know she’d chosen to accept them.

Her whole home was permeated with her scent. Light, sweet, indescribably heady, and when I bent to nuzzle her throat and inhale that fragrance, she tipped her head to the side, granting me access, which I took full advantage of. I saw Tylan’s hand take hers, on her thigh, linking their fingers, and rubbing his thumb slowly over the back of it. Then his other hand brushed her hair from her cheek and he kissed her lips.

If I hadn’t had my own lips moving down the side of her throat to her collarbone, I might have been jealous. We were bonding, not mating yet but exchanging touches and kisses, moving in the right direction. And from the way she linked her free arm around Tylan’s neck and continued kissing him, she was fine with it.

The movie continued, flickering on the screen, the music swelling as the hordes stampeded across a landscape that looked nothing like we’d seen on this world. I understood it had been filmed in a Southern Hemisphere country, and what I’d actually viewed before becoming absorbed in our mate’s fragrant skin, made me want to take a trip to that place. It looked a lot like parts of the continent where I’d grown up.

I slipped the top button on her blouse free and kissed the skin revealed before moving on to the second. The elegant curve of her neck was only the beginning of the part of this female I wanted to explore, to memorize, so that whenever I was apart from her I could close my eyes and remember everything about her.

Things were getting hot and heavy, but I could sense reluctance, as if she was fighting a desire both to mate us and to wait.

She wasn’t ready. I sat back and waited until their kiss ended to say, “I think we’re going too fast for you, female. Why don’t we sit back and watch the movie for a bit. Eat some more of your delicious sweets.”

Tylan nodded. “You’re just too intoxicating.”

We watched a couple of minutes of the movie before she spoke up. “Would you…can you tell me what is different about your people from humans? I mean, you’re very sexy and tall and good-looking by our standards, and you breathe oxygen… Are you just like us?”

“Not exactly.” Tylan stroked her cheek, and she leaned into it. “Would you like to see what makes us different?”

“Yes please. I’m kind of nervous about it, though.”

“We don’t have to rush,” I put in. “It’s nothing frightening.”

“No.” She struggled to sit up straight on the soft couch. “Share. Show-and-tell.”

“Is that an idiom?” I asked. “It sounds like I might have heard it before.”

“Yes. It’s actually a thing in kindergarten where children bring something from home and show it to their class and describe it.”

“I see. In that case, you remain seated and my bond mate and I will show and tell, answer any questions what you are about to see may reveal.” Standing, I steadied myself before pulling my shirt over my head. Tylan did the same, and we both shifted our jeans down on our hips, released the belt there, and turned in a circle, revealing all that made us different in appearance from the average human.

After a long moment I stopped, dizzy, and allowed Tylan to help me stay upright. “You all right, Farsel?” he asked.

“Fine.” I was anything but fine, but he knew that. His question was more about whether I was still with him than anything. “Okay, Amaris—you don’t have anything to say at all?” Her silence worried me.

“I-I don’t know what to say.” She stood up and came close to walk around us, her gaze focusing about where I’d have expected it to. “You have tails.”

“Yes,” Tylan agreed.

“Can I touch them?”

“Of course.” I stepped a bit away from my friend, not wanting our female to think I couldn’t stand upright even though she was well aware of my illness. I still hated that it might make me appear weak.

When her hand closed around my tail, I shuddered, unable to stop it, but once she’d finished looking over those obvious parts, her fingertips crept to the tattoo on my right shoulder. The minute she touched it, it glowed. And as she examined all of the tatts on my upper body and Tylan’s, they all lit up. Because that was how they worked. “What makes them light up?” she murmured.

“You do. Happiness, excitement, sometimes even anger. The colors will change with the emotion,” I explained.

“And they don’t all show all the time either,” Tylan added. “It’s complicated.”

“Either you have the best tattoo artists in the world, or you’re telling me the truth. You really are aliens.”

Well, one bridge crossed. I’d thought she’d already gotten to that point, but since she hadn’t, I was very glad she had now.