Page 34 of Rescued by the Alien Bull Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #6)

“You failed her,” he said again. “But I did not. I saved her from the bull. I saved her from the genka. I saved her from the labour that could have killed her and our daughter both. And she has saved me from myself. Tell him,” he growled, his gaze suddenly tearing to mine. “Tell him that you will stay with me!”

There was something so terribly raw and searching in the white of those eyes.

He wasn’t commanding me. My God, my husband was begging.

He had done nothing but choose me. Over and over again.

But he still wasn’t sure if I’d choose him.

I placed Autumn back in her cradle. Then, gingerly, like I was pulling something from Autumn’s tiny fist instead of Zohro’s, I took back my tablet.

“Pa, you really hurt me.”

He hung his head.

“But… Thank you for calling me today.”

“Jolene,” Zohro whispered. Tense. Maybe even distraught.

“Thank you, because you’ve given me some closure. It really helps me to know that you regret what you’ve done. But…” I gazed at Zohro, who looked stricken beside me. “But Zohro is… He’s fucking everything. And…”

Ah, shit. Here we go. All or nothing.

“And I love him. I choose him. I’m staying with him.”

Zohro went entirely still. I didn’t even think he breathed. The leaves rustled overhead. Autumn yawned. Wyn snorted softly. The moment stretched with incredible, diamond-like silence between my husband and me, cushioned by the mundane sounds of our life all around us.

And then, Pa’s voice.

“I’m happy for you, Jolene.”

I wrenched my attention back to him.

“Really,” he said. “That kind of love… That shit is once in a lifetime.” For a minute, he didn’t speak, and his eyes looked very far away.

Like they were gazing twenty-three years into the past.

Then, thickly, he said. “I’d better go. I’m sorry. About everything. I’m not asking you to call me. But… If you don’t mind too much, I hope that you’ll send me a picture every once in a while.”

“Of Autumn?”

“Of both of you.” His fingers came suddenly into view as he fumbled with his tablet. “Goodbye, Jolene.”

“Bye, Pa.”

The screen went black.

I cried out, and dropped the tablet, when a huge, warm body crashed into mine.

“Jolene.” My name was a guttural groan. “ I love you .”

My whole world shrank down to only those words.

“You… You do? Like… Like a sister, right?”

He froze, then reared back, looking at me like I’d just suggested that he eat his own hat.

“Pardon,” he said dangerously, “ me? ”

“I…” My mouth flapped open and shut as I groped about for the words to explain. “You… Your sister! She was pregnant and you couldn’t help her, so you helped me instead. Because you’re so kind!”

Confusion, and then pure astonishment shaped his features.

“You keep saying that I am kind,” he said slowly, as if he could not believe any of this, “but I can assure you with absolute certainty that I am not so kind as to marry someone I do not want! It was pure, selfish desire that drove me to accept your proposal that night, Jolene! A proposal I had already gladly accepted before I even knew that your situation so closely mirrored Meryn’s! ”

“Wait… What?!”

“That night! I was about to tell you that I wanted to marry you. But you interrupted me with the grand declaration of your pregnancy. I decided that I wanted you so badly that it didn’t matter. I’d take you pregnant or not. I’d take you any way that I could get you.”

I resisted the pull of pure elation.

“Am I dreaming?” I asked, slapping my hands against my cheeks so hard it made a loud smack! “This can’t be happening.”

“It is real,” Zohro insisted, so fearsome that he nearly looked angry.

His hands returned to my face, caging in my jaw.

There was nowhere to run. “There was a time that I would have let you leave me. That time has long-since passed. Just try to leave me now. Try to go back to your old world. I will do anything to keep you, short of throwing myself in front of the shuttle meant to take you away. No. I will not even stop there. Try to leave, and you’d merely need to look out your shuttle’s window to see me clinging to the side of it. Like a barnacle.”

“A… A barnacle?!”

“Precisely so. A barnacle,” he said with a terrifying sort of certainty. His eyes burned. His voice went suddenly ragged. “Because I’m stuck on you, Jolene. I’m stuck on you and Autumn both.”

Some of the fearsomeness in him had ebbed, leaving behind a sombre tenderness.

He stroked his thumbs along my cheeks, just below my eyes.

Reverently, like I was something precious he could break but chose instead to worship.

“I think that I was always meant to burn down my old life. So that I could find you and Autumn in the ashes.”

I laughed with startled wonder.

“Look around, Zohro,” I said softly. I took his hands from my face and squeezed them. Then, I gestured to Autumn in her cradle, to Wyn, to the paddock and the trees and the sky. “Does all this look like ashes to you?”

He followed the sweep of my arm with his eyes.

“No,” he said, his gaze finally returning to me. “It looks like mine.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t just jump my Zabrian husband’s bones right there in the field.

Autumn woke up soon after, very loudly demanding snacks and snuggles, and there were still a bunch of daily chores left on the list. I helped Zohro with some of it in between feeds, then took Autumn to the Surgery Shed to have a bath together.

When I returned to the house, Zohro wasn’t back yet. I fed Autumn again, burped her, changed her, and got her settled in the cradle Zohro had brought back here at some point in the afternoon. Then, I ate some food myself and put aside a plate for Zohro.

And then, I waited.

Which, it turned out, was kind of dangerous.

Because in Zohro’s absence, a toxic voice inside tried to convince me that everything he’d said to me out there today wasn’t true.

Even now, even after he’d declared his love for me in the clearest terms possible, I was still too afraid to get my hopes up.

But then I let my mind wander back over our time together.

I re-examined everything he’d done for me with new eyes.

And wanted to kick myself for not seeing any of it before.

The way he’d always protected me. The way he’d made that salve for me, insisting on putting it on my back himself.

The way he made me pyjamas my first night – the very pyjamas I was wearing now.

The way he’d promised me I wouldn’t die that terrifying night on the surgical table. The way he’d called me beautiful.

The way his eyes burned so bright white when he looked at me.

I’d been blind. Blinded by my trauma. By the big hole inside me that told me no one would ever really love me. That everyone left in the end.

But not him. Zohro had never left. Had never wavered. Not once.

I jumped up at the sound of his boots on the porch. He came into the house, and it was like I was looking at a new man. Or maybe I was a new woman. Because the air between us suddenly snapped with electricity that I hadn’t let myself acknowledge before.

It made me feel very shy. Which was probably ridiculous, after everything we’d been through.

“I… I got you some food!” I squeaked, nudging the plate towards him. He ignored it, taking off his hat and placing it on a hook by the door. I watched the taut muscles of his shoulders bunch with the movement.

“Jolene.”

My tummy flipped. He turned towards me, desire dug into every feature.

“I want to kiss you. Because I’m realizing now I could have been kissing you this whole blasted time, and I want to make up for all those lost opportunities.”

“Oh… OK.”

That sounded good to me.

It sounded very, very good.

“Autumn’s asleep,” I said, tilting my head in her direction. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

I moved towards it, but Zohro’s tail shot out like a lasso, gripping my wrist.

“Not yet,” he grumbled. “Kiss first.”

“Right now? You can’t wait?”

“I’ve never been a patient man, Jolene. I’ve tried to be. For you. But now that I know that you love me, too…” He dragged me against his body, letting me feel the unmistakeable heat of a hard cock. “No. I can’t wait.”

With his hands at my waist, he lowered his head, crushing his mouth to mine. It was a hard, close-lipped kiss. A groan rose in his throat as he pressed himself even more firmly against me.

I had a feeling my husband knew what a kiss was. But not what making out was.

Thank the good lord that at least in one arena, I was more experienced and competent than he was.

The sexy arena.

“You can open your mouth a little bit, I whispered against his lips. “Like this.” I kissed along the seam of his mouth, caressing with my slightly open lips. When my tongue came out to play, Zohro’s fingers spasmed at my waist, and his lips parted.

“That’s right,” I said, pulling back slightly before diving back in.

Zohro followed my lead at first, meeting the deepening kiss with swipes of his tongue.

But I should have remembered what a freaking genius I’d married.

The man learned fast . Within the span of seconds, he had one hand possessively cupping the back of my head while he claimed my mouth entirely.

All the while, his cock was a throbbing sign of his desire against my belly.

He really does want me.

He’d seen me at my weakest, at my most vulnerable, at my worst. He’d seen me leak milk and other unmentionable bodily fluids… or solids. He’d seen my fucking organs from the inside.

And he still wanted me.

As if to confirm it, Zohro’s hips suddenly shuddered forwards against me, and he moaned into my mouth. It was a bolt of pure need, right to my clit.

“OK. Bed. Now,” I panted after barely pulling myself away.

Maybe worried that I’d be too slow – though I was a hell of a lot faster now that I didn’t have a baby in my belly – he didn’t wait for me to walk. He scooped me up and practically loped for the bedroom. He closed the door with his tail as we passed through it.