Page 1 of Forced to Mate by the Mad Scientist (Kindred Tales Spicy Shorts #3)

1

SYLVIE

“I hate him! I mean it—I can’t stand that big asshole!” Doctor Sylvia Cooper snarled, throwing her hairbrush across the room.

“Take it easy there, doll,” Kat said dryly as the hairbrush landed against the metal wall of Sylvia’s suite hard enough to make a dull clang sound. “If you throw that any harder we’re going to have a hull breach on our hands.”

Of course, it would take more than a hairbrush to breach the hull of the Kindred Mother Ship but Sylvie took her friend’s point. Taking a deep breath, she went to pick up the brush and continued brushing her long, wavy hair. It was what you might call strawberry blonde or rose-gold and she had both the freckles and the temper to match her coloring.

“I know I shouldn’t let him get to me,” she said to Kat, who was watching with her arms crossed and one eyebrow raised. “It’s just that I have to spend so much time with him! Why couldn’t Commander Sylvan have assigned me to some other Protector?”

Kat shrugged.

“Dunno. I’m sure he didn’t have any idea that you and Kross would clash like this.”

Kross was Sylvie’s Protector—a seven-foot-tall Hybrid Kindred warrior who was half Beast Kindred and half Blood Kindred. He also had some Skellax blood in him—a very rare alien race that had very few people.

Being part Skellax meant that Kross had dark gray skin, silver hair, and eyes that changed colors depending on his mood. Whenever he was around Sylvia they were almost always red, which she was fairly certain meant he was angry or irritated with her.

If so, the feeling was mutual. Kross was constantly complaining that she wanted to go to unsafe planets for her research and bitching about the fact that she was “reckless” and “putting herself in danger.”

Which was ridiculous, of course, Sylvie thought, as she pulled the brush through her hair in short, irritated jerks. She had a double PhD in Xeno-Botany and Xeno-Zoology with a minor in pharmacology, which meant she went to different alien words to find plants and animals that might have medicinal benefits. Sure, sometimes the plants grew in dangerous areas and the animals were difficult to handle, but that was just part of her job. And it was Kross’s job to protect her— without complaining.

It might have been different if he’d been the silent, growly type but it was worse—he was sarcastic and his remarks always bit her to the bone. He got under her skin like no other man ever had. They’d only been working together for a few months and already Sylvie was ready to ditch him for some other Kindred— any other Kindred. And their last mission together had only cemented that sentiment in her mind.

Closing her eyes as she brushed her hair, Sylvie remembered the humiliating episode…