Page 27

“Draalian drums,” I command, and the pounding music plays immediately. I pull off layers until I’m down to a t-shirt and those ridiculous turquoise pants. Funny, Annora doesn’t seem to mind them. Perhaps it’s because they’re so tight they hug my ass and cocks.

I reach up, lifting my palms to rest on the ceiling, then sway my hips to the hypnotic beat of the drums as I pierce her with the sexiest stare I can muster.

“Freeze!” she says as she makes adjustments on the nav screen. “We’re on autopilot now, big boy.” She turns and gives me her full attention. The scent of her arousal wafts toward me.

I’m tired and the basking rock looks inviting, but right now, the look on Annora’s face is much more enthralling. There’s a tiny smile playing at the corners of her lips, and her gaze scans my body, but always lingers on my cocks.

“I’m going to make you feel good,” I tell her, hoping I don’t sound too much like a sexbot. “I’m going to taste your cream and then fill you, Annora.”

I tear off the t-shirt, then slide my thumbs inside the pants’ skin-tight waistband and work it down slowly.

“You’re killing me here, Zorn,” she says, her voice husky.

“I wouldn’t want to do that,” I tell her as I turn toward the back of the van and swing my ass from side to side.

She groans. I may be new to planet Earth, but I’m pretty sure that’s a good groan.

Facing her again, I thrust my hips toward her as I watch her eyes glaze over.

Then I pull the pants down just a small increment at a time until my cocks spring free.

That evolutionary failsafe? The one that keeps blood flow where it needs to be for the survival of the species?

It has decided it’s imperative to keep my cocks engorged with blood.

They’re full and hard and needy. But I refuse for our first time to be like this. Not now. Not worrying if the hover will manage well on autopilot. Not with me ready to fall over from exhaustion. And definitely not now, with my sweet Annora fatigued and still wincing from the pain of her injury.

After sliding in between the two front seats, I lean to give her a quick kiss, just lip to lip.

“We’ll finish this tomorrow after we’ve had a good night’s rest.” I kiss her again. “Can you land in a hundred miles and get some sleep? As soon as I’m done basking, I’ll join you in the blankets. I think we’re getting close to Zoriss. In the morning, if you feel better, we’ll finish this.”

Annora

If I hadn’t seen his skin the color of the cement in that basement only a few hours ago, I would be out of this seat and attacking him right now.

But he was about to slip into full-on torpor.

Since then, he’s only held it together through sheer force of will.

Well, that and the tea and stew he practically inhaled.

I stop in a hundred miles, as instructed, and make sure we’re hidden in a stand of trees. Tired to the bone myself, I take another painkiller, move to the back, lie as close to him as the rock will allow, and fall asleep almost immediately.

When I wake a few hours later, the sun is rising pink in the east and the hover is swaying with Zorn at the controls.

“He’s close, Annora. I can feel Zoriss,” he looks over his shoulder at me as he accelerates.

I slip into the passenger seat and watch the rural countryside fly by. I can feel Zorn’s anxiety, and reach to pat his thigh, hoping my proximity will calm him.

“Thanks, Love.” He glances at me with those sexy blue eyes and smiles.

He just called me his love! As if it was no big deal! I have such a wide smile on my face it feels like it’s going to split open. I’m about to say something when he makes a u-turn at a high rate of speed, almost slinging me onto the floor.

“Mind how fast you’re driving, Love,” I tell him and enjoy his double take as he grants me a devilishly happy smile at my use of the word.

Less than an hour later, he makes another abrupt u-turn, then scrubs the back of his neck with his palm.

“Care to tell me what the erratic u-turns are all about?” I ask.

“He’s close. And he’s moving. Do you think he could be trying to find us, too?”

“Should we find a place to stop? A hotel? And just let him find us?”

“Good idea, sweet.”

“I like the endearments,” I say.

“I’m trying to figure out which one I like best.”

“You don’t have to pick,” I tell him, feeling like a femme fatale, “you can use them all.”

“Great! How about brownie?”he asks.

His lusty glance ricochets between my mouth and fingers so long and so expressively it’s a wonder we don’t crash.

“Maybe that one should just be for private, big guy. Look! There’s a place up ahead.”

We hover to a stop, I get us a room braving lots of winky-winky eyebrow waggling from the woman behind the desk. I couldn’t tell if she was more scandalized by my traveling companion or the picture and wording on my van.

“The name of your company is Shameless?” she asks for the third time as she hands me the receipt.

“No Shame. It’s a great concept,” I snip. “We considered naming it No Judgments, but it didn’t have the same ring,” I tell her pointedly.

“To each their own,” she says. “Room seventeen.”

“Hey, babe, a bed,” I say when we’re in the room and the door is closed. I throw the pillowcase full of my belongings I’ve been dragging with me since Windy City onto the little table in the corner. “Have you ever thought of things we might be able to do in a bed ?”

“You mean instead of in front of hundreds of onlookers at a national monument? Or on top of a hover? Or on the floor as we fought for space with an army of sexbots? No, can’t say that I have.”

“Well, I have. Wanna join me?” I pat the bed and lift an eyebrow in blatant invitation.

“Shower first?” he asks as he lifts a sexy browridge of his own.

The room is old-fashioned and no-frills, but it’s not gross, and it’s clean. What more do we need?

All of a sudden, though, this femme-fatale is feeling kind of shy.

“So, now would be the time to call you brownie?” he asks, his voice husky, his blue eyes full of liquid warmth. “Or to tell you I can’t wait to fulfill every fantasy you’ve ever had? Or to . . . ask you to be my mate, Love?”

I squeal. If that wasn’t a happy enough noise, as if that didn’t express my sheer joy at his proposal, I squeal again.

“Mate? Really?”

He nods slowly, a serious look on his handsome face. “I know we have a lot of details to work out, but as soon as we find Zoriss, I promise we will find a way to stay together and be happy.”

He grabs my hand and pulls me off the bed to stand next to him.

“I’ll never be able to talk sexy to you without sounding like a sexbot, Annora. I want to tell you I can’t wait to taste you, but I think that one’s already taken.”

“Tell me whatever you want, big guy. Out of your mouth it sounds loving and sincere.”

We’re both filthy. He smells of damp cement. I’m still wearing the t-shirt I was shot in. But it doesn’t matter as we bridge the distance between us.

While he makes short work of stripping our clothes off and tossing them haphazardly wherever they land, the back of my mind is wondering what ‘mated’ really means to a Draalian.

The front of my mind is preoccupied with wondering just how fabulous it’s going to feel to make love in a bed, and how exquisite it will be to have a real, live Draalian ease himself inside me.

But right now, I try to stay in the moment, because his kisses are divine. That tongue, so capable and attentive, is pressing against the seam of my lips and a little hiss of enjoyment escapes him. When it flicks, fast and hard against me, I moan in the back of my throat and open to him.

“You want me already, Love? I smell your desire. They should bottle that as a fragrance. You’d be rich.”

Yeah, Zorn , I think. A much better idea than bottling the smell of bacon . . . or brownies for that matter.

My fingers curl around his muscular shoulders as I tip my head back, hoping he’ll flick his talented blue tongue down the column of my neck and forge toward a nipple or two.

As if he could read my mind, he does just that, zigzagging his way south, then stopping at the pulsebeat of my throat as if he’s absorbing some of my life essence. Later, I want to do that to him, it’s supremely sexy.

He drags one of his fangs across my collarbone and I suck in a surprised breath. It’s one of the sexiest things I’ve ever felt. It makes my knees weak.

Okay, Zorn, you’re on the homestretch. You’re mere inches from my nipple, big guy.

Suddenly he’s completely off his game. He stands tall and stares at the door as if he knows there’s a posse of zombies on the other side just waiting to eat our brains.

“Zoriss,” he announces one second before the knock sounds on the door.

It’s only my heretofore hidden catlike reflexes that allow me to wrap the bedspread around me before Zorn’s brother crosses the threshold, a human woman in tow.

Zorn

I should have noticed Zoriss’s proximity sooner. Maybe it was what Annora and I were engaged in, or maybe that I’ve been so focused on him for days I failed to notice I wasn’t just thinking about him, I was feeling his energy.

Either way, he’s here, bombarding me with love and relief and the exuberance of being reunited. We clasp each other by the shoulders, then hug each other in a powerful embrace. The act of touching, our chests crushed together, reactivates our bond.

I squeeze him even tighter for a moment, then pull away to look at him. It’s only now I see there’s a human female an inch from his right shoulder.

“Zorn, this is my . . .” he pauses as if he’s wondering how to introduce her, “Lumina. She’s agreed to return to Draal with me.”

I guess Annora and I weren’t the only couple to take things a bit fast.

“This is my love, Annora. She’s agreed to be my mate,” I reply without having to ponder for a second—I know exactly what my relationship is with my female. Glancing at her, by the shy smile on her face, it’s apparent she didn’t miss my proud announcement that we’re going to be mated.