Page 19 of Rescued by the Alien Bull Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #6)

JOLENE

I left Zohro to eat so I could try on the PJs in the bedroom. I laid the garments out on the bed and gave a low whistle.

These were nice . I usually just wore a tank top and underwear to bed, if I wore anything at all.

These items, with the luxurious shine of their white fabric, almost looked too good to sleep in.

They looked more like they should be for wearing while you lounged around on a couch with a martini while some snooty photographer took your portrait.

I was glad to get out of the big jacket I’d been wearing since laundering my clothes. It was pretty bulky, and frankly, it had always kind of smelled like wet horse.

“Check this snazzy shit out, Baby Girl,” I cooed into the darkness, picking up the pants. I sat down on the edge of the bed to pull them on. Damn. There was even a little drawstring to hold them up. Had Zohro really made these?

I was a bit worried about how the top would fit, but I needn’t have been. Zohro had thought of everything. There were pleated sections of fabric at the front, below the bust-line, that expanded silkily over my bump. And it would still look pretty good when I didn’t have a bump, too.

I smoothed my hands down over my stomach and felt Baby Girl wiggle.

“I know. Fancy, right?” These pyjamas, sewn by an alien murderer in this bizarre cowboyland-cum-prison-planet, might have been the nicest things I’d ever owned besides my leather boots.

But even my leather boots, which were excellent and had lasted me for years, were mostly utilitarian.

These pyjamas were practical but also just…

beautiful. And so well-made. I fingered the tight stitches of the fabric, the perfect seams and symmetrical construction, marvelling that he’d done such a thing presumably by hand.

“I mean, he’s definitely not going to shank us in our sleep now, right?” I said aloud, patting my belly. “He’d get blood all over the white fabric he worked so hard on!”

It was mostly a joke. I was feeling significantly better about the conviction thing now that I’d spoken to the other human women.

We’d ended up chatting for ages, and they’d all shared their stories of how their husbands had come to be here.

They’d all been children when convicted, and all of them had been acting in some sort of self-defence, or the defence of a loved one in Garrek and Oaken’s case.

In every single case, it had seemed incredibly unfair to me that the boys had been found guilty and sent away.

I imagined Baby Girl getting in trouble for defending herself as a mere child, imagined her getting ripped away from me, and had decided through a veil of furious tears that the Imperial Justice Committee of Zabria could eat my big, pregnant ass.

After that, the other women shared stories about how their husbands cared for them. How they cooked and cleaned and built furniture for them. How they worried themselves endlessly over things like human body temperature and sunburns and keeping their wives healthy and happy.

I’d thought of Zohro’s reaction to my skin irritation and realized that he would fit right in among all these nice husbands who very obviously hadn’t pushed their human wives off a roof or down a well or into some other dark hidey hole she wouldn’t be able to crawl out of.

I’d obviously need some more time during the trial period to make my final decision, but hope was returning to me. Not in a big, exciting wave like it had when I’d first come to this planet. But slowly, it crawled. Like a frightened animal whose trust needed to be won back.

But frightened or not, that hope was really there. This might actually work after all.

“What a whirlwind, eh, Baby Girl?” I said with a tired laugh. I really needed to get some sleep. Zohro probably did, too.

He was still in the kitchen. I took the other door outside and headed for the clothesline. My clothing was still a bit damp, as was the heavy quilt from the bed. Only the thin bedsheet and pillow case were entirely dry.

Damn. No blankies tonight, Baby Girl.

At least I had my not-dildos.

Not too far away, I saw Warden Tenn setting up a tent.

“Are you guys sure you’re alright out here?” I asked. While I’d personally never had a problem sleeping out under the stars, I wasn’t sure if Tasha was the camping type or not.

“Yes!” Tasha replied with what looked to be a sincere smile. “Tenn and I have spent quite a few nights in this tent when travelling.” Pretty colour suffused her face. “It’s actually how we fell in love.”

“Ooh,” I said, grinning. “So this tent has, like, seen some shit.”

“You could say that,” Tasha said in a conspiratorial voice, raising her brows.

“Jolene!” Warden Tenn boomed, finishing up with the tent. “Your jamspaghettis become you very well!”

“My… what?”

“Ignore him,” Tasha said with a laugh and a roll of her eyes. “That Zabrian couldn’t remember the pronunciation of ‘jammies’ if his life depended on it.”

“I can hear you,” the warden said, his gaze sparking white and his mouth pulling in amusement at his wife. “And I can remember the pronunciation just fine. What sort of warden would I be if I couldn’t even pronounce something as simple as jamiolis?”

“Hey, that eye thing,” I said quietly to Tasha. “What is that about?”

It didn’t seem to have anything to do with providing light in dark areas, because I’d seen Zohro’s eyes go all white in the bright sunshine of morning, and I’d seen him shift them back to pink in the darker light of the house at night.

The warden’s eyes were almost never white, consistently maintaining their warm orange hue.

“Oh. That. It’s tied to emotion. Strong emotion of any sort. Anger. Fear. Love. Pain.” She hesitated, then quickly added, “Arousal. I’m writing a whole guide on Zabrian biology and culture right now, similar to the one about humans I wrote for the Zabrians.”

“The manual Fallon mentioned?”

“Correct. Though, like I said before, I consider it more of a primer.” She watched Warden Tenn pull some more of their personal effects out of the small boxy compartment on the back of his vehicle – his slicer, I assumed.

“I think there are some cultural connotations with the white eyes as well,” she went on.

“From what I understand, it’s considered proper and polite in Zabrian society to keep your eyes from going white.

For males especially, letting the white come through can be quite humiliating.

It indicates a lack of character, and a lack of control. ”

“Damn. That’s… That’s quite harsh, isn’t it?” I asked. “You said the whiteness is only tied to feeling an emotion, right? Isn’t the true control about how you act in response to that emotion? That would be like someone judging you for your heartrate increasing or something.”

“You could certainly make that argument,” Tasha said. “But, as I think the very existence of this planet proves, the Zabrian Empire is… It’s not exactly flexible, or even reasonable, in these matters.”

“Maybe these guys are better off way out here,” I muttered. Although I knew Zohro certainly didn’t feel that way.

“I think you could absolutely make that argument as well.” She patted my shoulder. “Why don’t you go get some rest? It’s been a tough day. And we’ll have the wedding in the morning.”

“Yeah,” I agreed weakly as Tasha went to join her husband.

After that, I visited the outhouse, then returned to the house. I didn’t find Zohro in the kitchen, but when I started washing my hands in the sink there, I heard the heavy stride of his boots on the floor behind me.

“How are your hands?” he asked, leaning in behind me and scrutinising my sudsy fingers.

“Not too bad,” I told him, rinsing and wiggling them for him. “Definitely better than this morning.”

“I will make you more of the salve tomorrow. We should apply it twice daily as tolerated until all signs of irritation are gone.”

I twisted to look at him, and found his face very close to mine.

My heart flipped, then took off like a spooked animal.

His eyes went suddenly white.

He shoved away from me and headed for the door.

Oh. OK. Bye.

“I will retrieve the bedding.”

“I just checked it,” I said. “The sheets are dry but not the quilt. Do you have an extra one?”

“No.”

“Alright… So, what do you want to do about that, then?”

He turned to face me, frowning. Good God, he really was good-looking. All haughty and frowny with that jaw and that hair and…

“What do you want to do about it?” he countered.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It’s your bed.”

“The bed, like everything else on the property, is at your complete disposal,” Zohro said. His eyes burned brighter, something hot and raw going through them. “Did you want me to share the bed with you?”

“I mean, where else are you going to sleep?”

“Outside, as I did last night.”

“I’m not going to make you sleep outside if you don’t want to!” I dried my hands on a clean rag.

“What I want is irrelevant.” He made an odd face then.

“What is it?”

“I never thought I’d say such a thing in all my life,” he remarked with something close to bitter wonder. “And look how easily you’ve pulled it out of me.”

“Hey, don’t blame it on me,” I said, raising a brow. “Because it’s not irrelevant. At least, not to me. So. What do you want?””

He didn’t flinch, exactly. But at my words, I saw every muscle in him draw suddenly tighter.

“I do not wish to crowd you.”

That doesn’t really answer my question about where he wants to sleep…

“You won’t,” I told him. “The bed is plenty big enough for both of us.”

So, it turned out I was completely wrong.

The bed was absolutely not big enough for both of us.

At least, not big enough for us to share and each still have some space.

I realized it the moment I lay down after Zohro put the sheet over the mattress.

Even without the hay bale, the empty part of the bed, with Zohro looming over it now, looked woefully insufficient.

We might have to spoon.

A fraught giddiness zipped alone my nerves. But that feeling wasn’t fear about sharing a bed, sleeping, being entirely vulnerable beside someone who had taken the life of another.

It was a shivery excitement at the thought of Zohro wrapping his big, hard body around mine.

My eyes dipped to his crotch as he kicked off his boots.

Hard…

Did he get hard like human males? Would he?

What would I do if he did?

I hadn’t been with anyone since getting pregnant.

But before that, I didn’t really have any reservations about sex.

Sexually transmitted infections had been eliminated ages ago, and I was generally down to bone just about anybody who sent a drink and a wink my way at Sal’s bar.

None of them were boyfriends. None of them stuck around.

And yet, here I was with someone who’d not only made a life-long commitment to me, but also to my child, and I was faced with all sorts of insecurities I’d never really worried about before.

What if we fooled around, and he decided he didn’t like it? What if he got grossed out by my bump or my swollen boobs or my stretch marks? What if, after one night with me, he decided he’d made a mistake? What if he called off our wedding tomorrow?

What if I wasn’t enough?

Suddenly that tight, pleasantly nervous excitement just became plain old anxiety.

“You know, Zohro,” I said, rolling with not a small amount of effort onto my left side and facing the wall, “I’m actually really tired...”

“Obviously,” he said on a peevish little grunt. “That is why we are going to bed.”

The mattress sagged with his substantial weight. I held my breath, warmth and worry coursing through my veins as I waited for him to press his front up against me, to wrap himself around me, in the narrow space.

But he didn’t.

He faced away from me and slept the whole night with his back firmly wedged against mine.