The decorations were minimal—a trio of smooth glass balls in varying shades of blue sitting atop a small granite slab on the dresser and two paintings on the walls, both of which were the sort of generic, almost abstract still-life paintings that could be found in the wall décor sections of most department or thrift stores.
His bedroom was neat and clean, but in a way that screamed model home.
Which made sense, really, considering he wasn’t human. Of course he would’ve decorated based on some idealized version of the modern American home. But after a few minutes, it was boring to look at.
Couldn’t he have at least turned on the TV or something?
With a sigh, she lay down and stared up at the textured white ceiling. Volatile emotions swirled within her, making her chest and throat tight.
I am not going to cry. Nope. It’s not going to happen.
Except those damn tears escaped the corners of her eyes, anyway, and slid down her temples to dampen her hair.
She blinked rapidly to clear her vision.
Damn it, why’d it have to be Logan?
No, not Logan. Zevris. An alien.
Tabitha had never imagined a scenario in which she’d be taken against her will and tied to a bed, much less by an alien. Aliens weren’t supposed to exist!
At least…at least he’d promised not to hurt her.
She snorted. “No, he just wants a womb to fill with his baby batter.”
But even as the words passed her lips, she knew they weren’t wholly true.
I want you, Tabitha. I crave to know your touch, thirst for your taste, and yearn to make you mine. I have chosen you to be my lifemate, and it is my mission to make it so.
She couldn’t deny the spark of surprise, hopefulness, and, strongest of all, desire his words had kindled within her. Zevris had chosen her—her—out of hundreds, thousands, millions of other women, many of whom were thin and pretty. Many of whom would’ve looked like the perfect partner standing next to him.
Because Zevris was gorgeous. How could he really want someone who looked like her, someone who’d made such a mess of everything?
He’d wanted to court her.
He said I was beautiful…
If only she’d been adult enough to have walked to his front door, if only she’d been brave enough to have just told him what Dexter had done and apologized for it, none of this would have happened.
But it would have eventually. Well, not exactly like this, but it would not have changed the fact that Zevris was an alien. An incredibly, mouth-wateringly, heart-throbbingly hot alien. She’d just found it out earlier than he’d intended.
Tabitha closed her eyes and groaned. She’d been reading romance books since she was a teenager, hundreds and hundreds of them, and some of her more recent favorites had involved alien abduction tropes. Like many women, she’d place herself in the role of the heroines. She’d fantasized about those heroes, about those males so obsessed with their female that they’d obtain her by whatever means necessary whether she had crash landed on an alien planet, was being sold at an intergalactic auction, or he’d abducted her himself.
But that didn’t mean she wanted it to happen in real life…right?
That was fantasy, and this…this was reality. And in reality, a man wasn’t supposed to kidnap a woman because she wouldn’t sleep with him and he couldn’t take no for an answer. Or, in her case…because she’d discovered he was an alien. It didn’t matter how attractive they were, or if they had stupidly sexy, sculpted muscles, glowing F-me eyes, tattoos, piercings, and a tail.
Damn it, why did Zevris have to have a tail? She was such a sucker for tails. And for strong hands with long fingers and claws, and wicked fangs that could scrape her neck and send shivers straight to her core, and nipple piercings she wanted to flick with her tongue…
Tabitha snapped her eyes open. “Damn it, Tabby, stop it. He’s your kidnapper.”
But her body was already responding to her fantasies. Her nipples were tight and achy, and her sex clenched with the stirrings of arousal. Worse, Zevris’s scent was wafting up from his bedding, filling her nose with sandalwood, musk, and cedar, turning her on even more.
She was totally blaming Dexter for this, the traitor. It was all his fault she was in this predicament.
The bedroom door opened, shattering the silence and stillness of the room. Tabitha started, heart leaping into her throat, and dragged herself back into a sitting position. Dexter raced in, panting excitedly, and jumped onto the bed. He barked and licked her face.
Tabitha turned her head away, sputtering against the onslaught of slobbery affection. “Dexter, stop!”
“Dexter, out,” Zevris commanded as he stepped into the room carrying a large cardboard box. Once again, he appeared as he had when she’d first met him—human.
Dexter pulled back from Tabitha, looked at the alien, and whined. His tail stilled, and his ears drooped depressingly. Tabitha frowned, straining her wrist in an effort to pet him, to comfort him, but the bindings locked tight to keep her arm in place. The dog jumped to the floor and left the room.
Swinging the box into one arm, Zevris shut the bedroom door. “His understanding of English seems to be selective.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” she retorted, leveling her gaze on him.
His nostrils flared with a huff, and his brows fell low. “Your tone implies that you are referring to me.”
“Let me go is a pretty simple phrase, but you sure act like you don’t understand it.”
“I understand it, Tabitha, but I cannot comply. This situation goes far beyond the two of us.”
Tabitha sighed and attempted to wipe the slobber from her face, but when the restraints again halted the motion of her arm, she scowled.
Bending her neck, she used her shoulders to wipe her face before settling back against the headboard. “Why did you bring my dog here, Zevris? What are you going to do to him?” Her eyes widened. “Is this because he dug up your flowers and pooped in your garden? Look, I’m sorry. I was trying to get him out of the yard and fix it before you knew anything but… Well, we all know how that turned out. Just don’t hurt Dexter.”
Zevris walked to the foot of the bed and set the box on the comforter, placing a hand atop the closed flaps. “Despite the grievous harm your beast has inflicted upon my flowers, I’m not going to hurt him. I would never hurt anything you love or hold dear. Dexter simply needs some discipline…and he cannot stay in an empty dwelling.”
His reassurance calmed her. Despite the mischief Dexter always got into, she loved him to pieces.
She looked at the box, frowning when she recognized her handwriting on the side. BEDROOM. She narrowed her eyes. “What is that?”
“Some of your belongings.” Zevris opened the flaps and folded them down. He began removing items from the box, placing them on the bed beside it—her makeup bag, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, face and body wash, lotion, shaving cream, and a razor. He’d even brought her a little box of tampons.
“You were in my house? You went through my things?”
He swept those items into his arms and scooped them off the bed. “I did.”
Tabitha gaped at him. He’d responded so nonchalantly that she might’ve thought he rifled through people’s belongings all the time. “How would you like it if someone went through your things? Your private things?”
“You are more than welcome to go through my things,” Zevris replied as he walked into the adjoining bathroom and out of her sight, “as you are to be my lifemate.”
“No, I’m not!” she called after him.
She heard him opening cabinets and moving things around, heard him grumble as something fell and clattered in the sink—her razor, by the sound of it.
He emerged from the bathroom a few moments later. His eyes settled on her, their blue impossibly vibrant even if they were no longer glowing. “You are, Tabitha. It can only be you.”
Tabitha ran her gaze over
him. He was still bare-chested, and his muscles were as toned and tantalizing as ever, but the tattoos and piercings she’d seen before were gone. She realized now that his face was different, too. His features were softer, still masculine but far more human, and his ears were rounded rather than coming to elvish points. The fangs she’d glimpsed as he’d spoken before were nowhere to be seen, and his fingers bore plain old fingernails rather than black claws.
Nothing about him looked alien anymore…but now that she’d seen under the mask, her brain insisted something was wrong about his appearance, even if it was just that he was too perfect.
“How are you doing that?” she asked.
He returned to the cardboard box. “Doing what?”
Tabitha motioned to him with her hand, waving her fingers up and down. “Looking human.”
Zevris removed a piece of clothing from the box—a pair of her jeans—and set it down on the bed. “It’s a holographic projection, of sorts. A relatively simple one, as our people are already fairly similar in appearance.”
His body shimmered and blurred for an instant. The effect was strong enough that it made Tabitha feel like she’d gone cross-eyed; everything was in focus but him, and it was almost maddening to watch. When that blur cleared, something like those old wireframe computer images appeared on his skin, the lines arranged in interlocking hexagonal patterns that rapidly faded, section by section, until only Zevris—alien Zevris—remained.
Yep. Definitely hotter as an alien.
God, what is wrong with me?
“How…many of you are here on Earth?” she asked, trying to ignore the way her body reacted to the sight of him. His sweatpants hung low, revealing the grooves of his Adonis belt, which guided her eyes toward his…
“I am the only one you need to concern yourself with, Tabitha.” The way he said her name, half growling, half purring, sent a thrill up her spine. He continued removing clothing from the box, stacking her folded pants and shirts on the bed.
“Well, would you recognize each other if you ran into another…faeleon?”
“Faloran. And yes, we have measures in place for such occurrences. But it will not happen here on Earth.”
“Why?”
He scooped up the pile of clothing and carried it to the dresser, setting it on top. He opened a drawer and shifted its contents. “Because that is the nature of this mission. We are operating individually, with no knowledge of one another. I must assume my comrades have their own designated areas of operation outside of my own.”
Tabitha’s gaze trekked down his muscular back to his ass, where it remained glued. The fabric of his sweatpants molded to his taut backside. She bit the inside of her lip. There was a slight bump at the top of his ass, and a hint of short, dark fur just above his waistband.
He’s hiding his tail in his pants.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked. “Through that hologram, I mean.”
“My commander.” He placed her clothing in the drawer, pushed the drawer closed, and opened the next one up, moving his arms again as though clearing space.
He’s…moving me into his house. My alien neighbor kidnapped me and is moving me into his house, and I don’t know how I’m not freaking out right now.
Or maybe I’m so freaked out that I don’t even realize it anymore?
Or maybe she believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt her, maybe she understood the mission he was on. That…didn’t mean she had to go along with it and become his mate, though.
But why not?
She hushed that voice faster than an ice cube could melt in a blast furnace. She was not going to go there.
Tabitha cleared her throat and forced her attention away from Zevris’s ass to something safer. Like…the bland painting hanging on the wall.
Ugh, why does he even have that?
“What were you talking to him about?” she asked.
Zevris returned to the box and paused. From the corner of her eye, she saw him tilt his head and follow her gaze with his own. “Is there a problem with the painting?”
“It just so…boring.”
He frowned, walked to the painting, and lifted it off the nails that were holding it in place. Grasping it in both hands, he leaned his head back and scrutinized the painting, like he was some sexy, shirtless alien art dealer.
“Why?” he asked, glancing at her.
“There’s no…life in it. No vibrancy. There’s nothing wrong with it, not really, but it just…doesn’t have any character. And it says nothing about you.”
Zevris angled the painting slightly, as though to view it from a different perspective. “It doesn’t say that I’m an ordinary human male in his early-to-mid-thirties with a comfortable career and room for a mate?”
Tabitha blinked at him. “No, it just says you’re boring. And most people don’t go into other people’s bedrooms, so it’s not like anyone would be able to see that thing and assume all that.”
Brows falling low, he set the painting on the floor, leaning it against the wall, and turned to face her fully. “Firstly, it is common for humans to bring people they are interested in into their bedrooms. It happens in almost all your forms of entertainment. Secondly, I am not boring. I’m a faloran althicar, a soldier who has run covert missions on over a dozen planets.”
“Are you seriously trying to educate me about human behavior?” She glared at him as unwanted jealousy simmered within her. “And just how many women have you brought in here that you were interested in?”
Zevris placed his big hands on the bed, mere inches from her thigh, and leaned toward her. The mattress dipped as more and more of his weight settled upon it. He held her gaze with his glowing, entrancing blue eyes. “One.”
Tabitha swallowed thickly. “Why me? I…I’m sure you’ve met plenty of other women since you’ve been here. I can’t imagine you’d have a hard time finding women who’d jump at the chance to sleep with you.”
“You assume that I would want to sleep with any woman who threw herself at me.” He stood upright and walked to the foot of the bed. “It is not merely a matter of fitting the right anatomical pieces together, Tabitha. I have met many human females in my time here. You are the only one who I have felt drawn to, and that draw is far too powerful to be ignored.”
I refuse to feel flattered. I will not be drawn in by sweet words.
“I just thought, well, with the urgency of your people needing women—” Her words ended when she saw him lift a handful of her underwear from the box. He set them on the bed, followed by another handful. Warmth flooded her cheeks.
Zevris plucked up a lacy pair of black and hot pink panties, dangling them from the claw of his pointer finger. “I look forward to seeing these on you, though I’m even more excited about taking them off.”
The fire in Zevris’s eyes stole Tabitha’s breath. Her pussy clenched, aching more deeply than she could ever have imagined possible.
He cocked his head, trailing his fiery gaze down her body. “I wonder what it is you are wearing beneath your clothes now.”
“You…you can just keep wondering,” she said, shifting on the bed to draw her knees closer to her chest and squeeze her thighs together. The movement caused something to roll from the pile of panties. The moment she looked at the object, mortification struck her, twisting her stomach into knots.
Oh no. No, no, no, no.
How could she have forgotten that her panties weren’t the only things she kept in that drawer?
Zevris chuckled, dropped the underwear onto the pile, and grasped the little bullet vibrator between his forefinger and thumb. “I am intrigued by this.” He turned it on. The sound of its vibrations was thunderous in the otherwise quiet room. “I think we’ll find many ways to put it to use.”
Unbidden, a scene played in her head—Zevris staring down at her with those magical blue eyes as he pressed the vibrator to her clit, his free hand kneading the flesh of her thigh before he slipped two of his fingers inside her, pumping
in and out, just like she wanted him to do with his cock. The Zevris in her imagination watched with a hungry gaze as she came undone before lowering his mouth to her—
He turned off the bullet and leaned his head toward her, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. One corner of his mouth tilted up in a mischievous half smile. “Are you imagining the possibilities, Tabitha?”
“No,” she lied, curling her fingers to press her nails into her palms.
A deep, rolling hum rumbled in his chest. “This was not the only surprise I found in your drawer. But your other toy is no more.”
He dropped the vibrator onto the pile of underwear and crawled onto the bed. “You’ll have no further use for it, my mate. I will satisfy your needs from now on. If you require a cock for your pleasure”—he caught her ankle in one hand and dragged her down until she was on her back before drawing himself over her—“it will be mine. It will be my cock that fills you, my seed that floods your womb, my name you will utter in the throes of passion.”
Tabitha stared up at him with wide eyes, her breath short and her heart fluttering wildly. Her body was on fire, and she was sure her cheeks were a color to match. She felt his heat radiating above her, felt his thighs as he straddled her, and couldn’t help but feel the incredibly large tent he was sporting between his legs that was currently probing her belly.
“You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?” she said, proud that she kept her voice steady.
He inhaled again, and he was close enough that she felt his hot breath on her collarbone when he released it. “You are already mine, Tabitha. Your body knows it.”
“I’m not going to be your…your breeder.”
Zevris moved a hand to her neck and brushed his long fingers over her skin. The teasing scrape of his claws sent a thrill through her, and she tilted her chin up reflexively. He hooked his thumb beneath it, settling his fingers on her cheek. Their eyes remained locked.
“I want you to carry my young.” He lowered his head until his lips were but a hair’s breadth from hers, filling up Tabitha’s whole world with his alien sexiness. “But more than that, I want you to be my lifemate. I want to touch you, to glide my hands over your body, to feel your soft skin and your alluring curves. I want to strip you bare and taste you, to lick every inch of you, to lap your essence from between your thighs like it is my altar and you are my goddess. I want to thrust my cock inside your pussy and feel your heat wrap around me. I want the air filled with your cries of pleasure, I want my name alone upon your lips.
Taken By The Alien Next Door Page 12