Page 11 of Rescued by the Alien Bull Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #6)

JOLENE

I woke to the sensations of warm sun on my face, a soft blanket on my body, and something very hard pressing into my back.

Not just hard but…

Spiky?

What the hell?

I sat up – no easy feat at my current stage of pregnancy – and turned to see what was in the bed with me.

You’ve got to be shitting me.

It was a fucking bale of hay. There was a thin sheet tossed over the bulky block of it, but rogue yellow bits were poking out all over the place.

I wiggled and grunted, trying and failing to scratch my very itchy back.

Giving up on that, I grabbed yesterday’s bra and shirt, tugging them back on.

All the while, I studied the hay bale in the bed, mystified by what it could mean.

Was this some Zabrian wedding custom? I knew there were Old-Earth customs that involved burning hay in the shape of people or devils. But what did it mean to find a non-person-shaped, very-cube-shaped block of hay in your bed?

The very same bed that your husband-to-be obviously hadn’t slept in? I eyed the hay and shook my head. Nope. No way Zohro’s big body would have fit there. Unless he spent the night perched on top of the bale of hay. Like a sleep paralysis demon.

Or a cat.

Whatever the reason for the hay, I hoped to God I wouldn’t be expected to sleep with it in the bed again tonight. My back was already driving me mad.

I’d kept my panties on overnight. With no sign of my bag nearby, I pulled on my pants from yesterday alongside my boots, and walked out of the bedroom.

When I emerged into the kitchen and sitting room area, I already knew I wouldn’t find Zohro there.

A rancher’s day started early, whether human or Zabrian.

The sun was climbing into the sky. I estimated that dawn was a couple of hours ago.

Once I was used to this time zone, I was sure I’d be able to wake up early like I always had on Pa’s ranch.

Pa.

An unexpected twinge in the vicinity of my chest made breathing difficult, and unfortunately I didn’t think I could blame it on Baby Girl stretching or rolling over. I’d left word with Sal about where I was headed. I wondered if Pa had even asked about me yet. If he cared at all where I’d ended up.

Sighing, I tried not to think about it too much. I had more pressing matters to deal with right now. Like my upcoming wedding. And getting about a hundred pounds of hay out of the bed. Assuming Zohro was OK with that, I guessed. There had to have been a reason he’d put it there in the first place.

Right?

I’ll just go ask him.

First, though, I went for a quick pee. Upon my return, I gasped in delight to see my bag on the kitchen floor where I hadn’t noticed it before.

I washed my hands, scarfed down a protein bar, chugged some water, then put on some blessed deodorant, grateful that I didn’t have to go track down my fiancé this morning wafting my lovely human stank towards him.

Later today, I’d figure out the shower situation.

I was about to walk out the door, when at the last minute I stopped and fished out a small handheld mirror.

I regarded my reflection with a much more critical eye than normal, wondering what Zohro would see in the light of day.

My face was puffier than it had been before the pregnancy.

My freckles were darker, too. My hair was as unruly as ever, untameable red frizz grown extra fuzzy from sleeping with it down all night.

I blew an orange wisp of it out of my eyes and sighed.

Oh, well. It was my face, wasn’t it? No changing it now, even if I’d wanted to.

I didn’t bring any makeup with me. I didn’t even own any.

Not that I had anything against makeup. I’d always thought there was something so magical and pretty about putting colours and sparkles on your skin.

But it always seemed like other people knew what to do with it more than I did.

People with moms to show them the ropes, maybe.

The first and only time I ever bought makeup with my own money, I’d chosen a bright shade of blue eyeshadow.

I’d figured it would match my eyes. When I’d walked in the door wearing it, Pa had given me a bewildered, disappointed look that sent my squishy little teenage heart plummeting right down to my knees.

Even just thinking about it now made me feel like I was thirteen all over again.

I’d thrown the beautiful eyeshadow with its sparkly case into the garbage immediately afterwards and then scrubbed my face raw.

When I’d emerged for dinner, it was with eyes red from more than just the frantic washing.

Between bouts of nervous laughter, I’d made up a story about some other girls using me as a makeup model for a school art project.

I would never put eyeshadow like that on!

I didn’t care about that stuff. No way. Not me.

“I’ll buy you eyeshadow if you ever want some,” I said to Baby Girl as I closed up my mirror and chucked it in my bag. “Can’t say I’ll know shit-all about how to use it, though.”

Before leaving the house, I grabbed my hat from the bag.

It was one of the few things I’d brought here for myself.

Most of my large bag was devoted to baby stuff I’d been slowly stocking up on.

Onesies; blankets; bottles; cloth diapers; and soft, crinkly toys in the shapes of things like stars and sea turtles, with happy little faces sewn on that made my chest squeeze just to look at them.

“You’re the smallest person in this house,” I said with an affectionate click of my tongue, “how the heck do you have even more stuff than I do?”

Not more stuff than Zohro, though. I was still in awe of the wall of medical textbooks in the other room. I’d have to ask him more about that, too. How the heck had he been a whole-ass surgeon before becoming a cowboy so skilled I would have assumed he’d been born on the back of a freaking shuldu?

None of my questions were going to get answered standing around here on my own. So I pushed open the door and went looking for my fiancé.

Immediately outside the house were deciduous trees that I just now noticed were heavy with round fruit.

Their branches were thick and sturdy. Perfect for climbing to grab a bite of whatever that fruit was.

Or hanging a child’s swing beneath. The light was dappled between leaves edged with rosy yellow.

That, plus the crispness in the fresh morning air, led me to think that we were in a season comparable to a New Alberta autumn.

But I’d have to ask Zohro, of course. Maybe the leaves were like that all the time.

Maybe it never got any warmer than this.

That would be fine by me, at least for now.

Pregnancy had me overheating basically all the time, no matter how cool the temperature actually got.

Beyond the trees were tidy, well-maintained gardens with various plants that, at least to my human eyes, appeared edible. Bunches of leafy things in shades of green, yellow, and red. Plus big, bulbous growths that could have been a squash varietal.

I continued my tour of the property, poking my head into well-kept stables and barns – empty now, as the Zabrian cattle and shuldu were out grazing in two of the property’s massive, fenced-in paddocks.

I didn’t enter the paddock with the livestock, wanting to avoid any repeats of last night.

But I did drag a big, wooden step stool from a shed up to the fence so that I could peek over and take a better look.

I estimated that Zohro’s herd was around forty or fifty head.

The cattle were gigantic, more like bison than the smaller dairy cows Pa had.

They varied in colour, some the same reddish-brown as the dusty ground, some a creamy yellow, others navy blue.

A few were solid in colour, but many of them had splotches or speckles of other shades.

The largest among the herd – the males, I assumed – had sprawling antlers like the one I’d seen on the bull last night.

I wonder how Zohro’s injuries are today…

Two shuldu grazed at the far end of this paddock. I didn’t think either of them were Wyn. So he’s got at least three mounts…

I allowed myself a small smile. One for each of us. Him, me, and Baby Girl.

I finally found Zohro in a sunny paddock far from the house. I wanted to watch him at work for a moment, but somehow he heard me come through the gate from what had to be a hundred metres away. He immediately hopped up onto Wyn’s back and trotted across the field towards me.

And, holy hills of Terra…

He looked good.

He had damn-near perfect riding form. Relaxed but engaged.

Upright, strong, with a natural ease that reinforced just how skilled and experienced a rider he clearly was.

His lack of shirt gave me an unobstructed view of the flexing of his shoulders, chest, and abdominals as he maintained flawless balance on Wyn’s back.

His hat was just like mine, which made me grin.

“Got my own hat!” I called to him, waving jauntily as he approached. “We match!”

He didn’t return my smile. His eyes, however, did flash white beneath the shadowy brim of his hat, which I hoped was basically the same thing. I watched him closely, maybe a little too closely, as he dismounted, amazed by his easy strength, the practised swing of those long limbs…

And his ass. My God, the ass on this man! Perfectly sculpted and taut beneath the leather of his trousers, it was a work of freaking art. It deserved to hang on a museum wall somewhere, lovingly placed between Old-Earth masterpieces.

Maybe it was a little rude to be mentally curating a shrine to Zohro’s booty, but I couldn’t help it!

The universe needed to know about Zabrian butts!

How the heck were these guys hurting for ladies and reliant upon human mail-order brides when they looked the way they did?

Did Zabrian females just, like, hate beauty?

Oh well , I thought giddily as Zohro turned and began to close the final distance between us on foot. More for me!

“Good morning!” I said brightly as he walked through the grass. Maybe if I was extra nice about it, he’d let me take the hay out of the bed for tonight. “Thank you for the hay bale! Though I have to ask... Will that be a permanent fixture in our, um, marital bed?”

On the words marital bed , Zohro suddenly stumbled.

“Are you alright?” I asked as he caught himself with a curse.

“Of course I’m alright,” he muttered. “I just stepped in a blasted hole.”

I looked at the nice, flat ground. Not a hole to be seen.

“I see.” I chose not to poke holes in his, well, hole story.

Maybe he was embarrassed to trip in front of me.

Frankly, I kind of liked it. He was so damn impressive.

Everything he’d done for me last night had elevated him to something close to superhero status.

It was nice to see him fumble a little bit.

He clearly didn’t enjoy it, though. And that honestly kind of made it funnier.

I swallowed laughter. “So. The hay bale?”

His eyes shifted back to pink. “What about it?”

“Is it, um, staying with us in a long-term capacity? Or…”

He crossed his arms over his broad, bandaged chest.

“Depends,” he growled. “Are you going to stay sleeping on your left side like you’re supposed to? Or are you going to keep rolling onto your back, putting us both at risk of a stroke?”

“Wait. I was sleeping on my back?”

Shit. I knew that was a no-no this late in pregnancy.

“You were,” Zohro confirmed with narrowed eyes.

“You refused to stay put every time I rolled you onto your side. And you also refused to wake up and listen to my medical advice. So I had to come up with another solution.” He pointed his tail towards a stack of hay bales near the fence of this paddock.

“The hay bale kept you in the correct position.”

My cheeks sizzled at the thought of Zohro trying to roll me over and getting progressively more pissed off when I rolled right back.

Though uncomfortable, his solution was kind of ingenious.

My back might itch like fucking hellfire, but at least I didn’t smoosh my vena cava and cut off blood supply to my poor brain.

It might not have been the most impressive brain in the cosmos, or even the most impressive brain in our household. But it was the only one I had and I wanted to keep it in good working order if at all possible.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You already thanked me for the hay bale.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t really mean it the first time.”

Zohro’s thunderous frown was nearly as spectacular as his ass.

“Why the blazes would you say it if you didn’t mean it?”

“Because I didn’t know what the hay meant to you! I wondered if it was some, like, sacred wedding ritual or something. Or a gift. I didn’t want to offend you.”

His brows rose as if with disbelief.

“A gift? ”

“I mean, it is a very nice hay bale,” I said soothingly. “Same with those ones over there. Well-packed. Competently tied. The grass all nice and evenly dried. No dampness or mould.” I gave him two thumbs up, which only seemed to confuse him further. “Good work!”

“Good work?” he scoffed. “Any fool can bale hay.”

I kept my thumbs up and angled my arms back, using them to point directly at my own chest. “Want to show this fool?”

I knew the basics, but we’d had a lot more equipment on our ranch than Zohro seemed to possess.

He turned his gorgeous, frowny face towards the hay bales, then back to me.

“Fine,” he said. “But don’t thank me for things if you don’t mean it. You can be direct with me.”

“Noted,” I said with a nod, pleasantly surprised.

“And Jolene?”

“Yeah?”

His eyes burned suddenly white before he turned away.

“Don’t call yourself a fool in front of me again.”