Tabitha looked up at him from beneath her lashes and lifted her foot, brushing the toe of her shoe up and down his leg beneath the table. “Your female very much approves of her male.”
Though it was barely audible over the soft hum of conversation, Tabitha heard Zevris’s growl. It went straight to her clit and nipples, making them ache.
“Behave,” she whispered, unable to stop a teasing smile from turning up the corners of her lips.
“You willfully tempt me and then tell me to behave?” His grin took on an even more devilish slant as he tilted his chin down to stare at her from beneath his dark eyebrows. “Every day, Nykasha, you show me more reasons why you’re meant to be mine.”
Yep. Panties officially wet.
Tabitha’s breath quickened, and her heart fluttered at the promise in his eyes. She took another drink, this one deeper, longer, but it did nothing to cool the fire burning in her core.
Who was she kidding? There was no way she was going to last three more weeks.
Lust doesn’t equal love, Tabby.
And she had to remember that he was looking for a womb. His whole race was looking for wombs.
But if it really is that simple, why all this? Why all the effort?
She knew, deep down, despite her reservations and insecurities, that he really was seeking a lifemate. She just… Was she really ready for that? Was she really ready to become a mother so soon? A couple weeks ago, she wasn’t even thinking about getting into a relationship, and now she had to think about having a baby?
But boy did her ovaries burst every time she saw him.
What would their child look like? Would they have pointed ears? Fangs? An adorable little tail?
As they continued with their meal, Tabitha finished her tale about the Grand Canyon and told him about the other trips she’d taken, including her those to New York City, Niagara Falls, and the beaches of Florida. She had him laughing when she described the time she and Nan had gone down to Disneyland in California and got lost in Los Angeles. After finally figuring out where to go, they’d hit a massive traffic jam and been forced to sit for hours on the expressway. It was the first time she’d ever heard her Nan swear.
The conversation flowed easily between them. Apart from Mia and Nan, no one had ever shown so much interest in Tabitha and her life, no one had ever listened to her stories so attentively, had ever made her feel so heard.
The waiter returned at some point to clear away their empty plates. The food had been so good that Tabitha had been tempted to lick her plate clean. He left them with a dessert menu and told them to take their time in deciding.
Tabitha perused the menu out of curiosity. Unsurprisingly, almost everything sounded delicious. “The cheesecake is tempting, but I don’t think I could eat another bite,” she said, sliding the menu toward Zevris. “You can get something if you want. Don’t let me stop you.”
Eyes locked on her, Zevris slipped a finger beneath the menu and flipped it shut. He pressed the pads of his fingers down atop it, turned it, and slid it to the edge of the table. “I already have plans for dessert, Nykasha.”
Tabitha blushed under that heated stare and the promise in his voice.
When the waiter returned, Zevris paid for their meal. He helped her from her seat and, rather than walking ahead of or behind her, remained at her side as he guided her through the restaurant, his hand resting possessively just above the curve of her ass.
She looked up at him in surprise. He met her gaze and smiled. There was no shame on his face, no embarrassment, just pure want and tenderness in his eyes. Zevris was walking with her as though he were proud that she was his date.
As though he was claiming her for all to see.
As though she was his.
Twenty-One
Cool night air swept over Tabitha as she stepped out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk, sending a shiver down her spine. Tonight, the breeze carried just a touch of winter, which was totally unacceptable—she refused to let fall be skipped over before it had truly begun. The chill wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for the pleasant warmth she’d left behind in the restaurant and the fact that she’d not brought a coat or a cover-up.
She hadn’t wanted to cover this dress, not with how Zevris looked at her in it. Not with how beautiful he made her feel.
Zevris released the door he’d held open for Tabitha and moved to her side, placing his hand once again on her lower back. She loved the feel of it there, but there were more than a few other spots she was eager for him to touch tonight.
They turned and walked down the sidewalk. The street was bathed in a yellowish-orange glow cast by the streetlamps and businesses along it. It was that particular quality of light, artificial but somehow charming, that seemed to settle upon most cities after dark. Each of the many trees lining the sidewalk cast multiple shadows, none of which were very deep or dark. The cars parked along the curb to either side of the roadway gleamed with reflected light, just like the river was somewhere behind Tabitha.
Parking had been the only real issue this evening, not that she’d considered it much of a problem. They’d had to park a few blocks away from the restaurant. Zevris had woven along the nearby streets in search of a spot to fit his pickup truck, muttering about the lack of parking places like a man who’d lived in a big city all his life.
She’d laughed a few times at the things he’d said, especially when he’d refused to find a parking garage, saying that the whole concept was criminal. Why, in a place where such methods of transportation were all but required, should someone have to pay to register their vehicle, to be licensed to operate that vehicle, to fuel and maintain that vehicle, and then have to pay to turn it off for a while, too?
That Zevris had laughed along with her had proven that his grumpiness was only on the surface, and that he’d not let anything so trivial as difficulty finding a parking spot put a taint on their evening.
There were a few other pedestrians out and about, including a well-dressed couple walking toward the restaurant Tabitha and Zevris had just left. Of course, everyone else out here seemed to have had the foresight to wear a jacket.
Tabitha shivered again, folding her arms across her chest and rubbed her upper arms with her palms.
Zevris stopped, hand falling away from Tabitha’s back.
She took another step before drawing to a halt and turning toward him. “What’s wrong?”
He unbuttoned his suit jacket, took hold of the lapels, and drew it down his shoulders. Tabitha’s brow furrowed. She meant to question him again, but the words had died on her tongue, and she found herself suddenly quite transfixed on the way his dress shirt molded to his muscles as he removed his jacket.
She’d never seen anyone—at least outside TV and movies—look so powerful, so predatory, so sinfully sexy in a suit.
Without a word, he closed the short distance between them and swept his jacket around her shoulders. The interior of the jacket was silky and warm, cocooning her in his residual heat, which was amplified when he smoothed his hands down from her shoulders.
Well, there go my ovaries.
His palms came to rest just above her elbows, and as grateful as she was for the warmth of the jacket, she wanted so badly for it to be out of the way so he was touching her skin directly.
“Thank you,” she said, catching the edges of the jacket.
Zevris lifted one of his hands to her face, brushing the backs of his fingers across her cheek and granting her the lightest scrape of his claws in the process. It produced another shiver in her—but this one was the best kind.
He tilted his face down toward her. “I should have considered the temperature before we left.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said a little breathlessly. She could lose herself in those impossibly blue eyes…
“To be honest, Tabitha, the idea of covering you up couldn’t have been farther from my mind when we left.” Gently, he guided her to face the direction in which they�
��d been heading. But now, instead of placing his hand on her back, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him, sharing his heat as they resumed walking.
She’d seen it in his eyes when she’d first come down the stairs wearing this dress—he’d been so fired up that he’d practically been undressing her with his gaze.
“Well…you’ll be uncovering me soon enough, won’t you?”
He chuckled and produced a low growl. “Not soon enough.”
Heat rushed to her cheeks and pooled between her legs.
Zevris had awakened a new side of her, had brought out the sexuality she’d learned to so carefully guard during her life. Her last relationship, especially, had taught Tabitha that women who looked like her didn’t get to be overtly sexual, didn’t get to say what they wanted out loud, didn’t get to do anything without being judged.
She’d known those lessons were wrong when she’d broken up with Cody. Zevris had taken those lingering ideas, had taken so many of those doubts she’d carried for so long, and ground them to dust beneath his heel, wearing that sexy, fanged grin of his all the while.
Tabitha leaned into Zevris’s solidness as they walked, drawing the coat snugly closed around herself. Besides the warmth, the best part of this was that his masculine scent was now surrounding her in a haze, at once arousing and soothing.
They turned onto a side street, and the atmosphere changed immediately. The trees were a little thicker here, the streetlamps spaced a little farther apart, and tall apartment buildings stood on either side of the road. The shadows were deeper, the patches of light less abundant and welcoming. Though several the apartment windows had lights on inside, many had blinds drawn.
This was the kind of street that would easily have been creepy and unsettling to traverse were Tabitha alone. But she wasn’t alone, and she wasn’t frightened, not while she was with Zevris.
Apart from the usual city sounds—most of which were from cars driving on out-of-sight roads—it was quiet. For this little while, it was easy for Tabitha to imagine that she and Zevris were the only two people in the world, that they were walking beneath a sky dusted with sparkling stars, that they could look up there and he’d point skyward and say, That one’s where I’m from, but this is my home now.
Any other time, with any other man, she would’ve felt silly about such imaginings. She didn’t now. Not with Zevris. She felt…fulfilled. Happy. Like she could dance on air.
Unfortunately, the world would soon remind her that it was, indeed, full of other people.
She and Zevris walked another block, crossed the street, and turned at the corner. The new street was like the last, with the dark, looming apartments and trees on either side and vehicles parallel parked up and down its length, but one key thing set it apart—Zevris’s truck was one of those vehicles, awaiting its owner at the end of the block.
Voices drifted to Tabitha from down the street—masculine voices, talking and laughing. Her eyes caught on something ahead. It was the tiny orange ember of a cigarette as someone took a drag from it. Only then did she notice the four men standing in the shadows against the building, two leaning against the wall and two standing on the sidewalk. At least three of them were smoking.
Zevris had already shifted his course so he and Tabitha were as close to the curb as they could be without walking face first into a tree, apparently aiming for the gap between the group of men and the parked cars.
The men looked toward Zevris and Tabitha, one of them taking another drag of his cigarette. Despite the shadows, it was impossible to miss their leering grins. Though none of them were as big as Zevris, they all looked solidly built and athletic.
“Well, aren’t you two fancy,” one of the men said.
Tabitha leaned just a little more firmly against Zevris, already feeling that old, familiar, uncomfortable heat creeping into her cheeks. She recognized the man’s tone. There’d only been a couple kids in school who’d truly bullied her, and that was the exact tone of voice they’d used when doing so.
“Surprised his coat’s big enough,” said another man.
She moved her feet a little faster, hoping Zevris would pick up his pace. They were so close to his truck, so close to moving on with their evening.
She felt the men staring at her as Zevris led her past them. A couple of the men snickered.
“Ever seen a cow in red?” the first man asked.
“Trying to attract a bull, maybe,” replied another.
“Target’s sure big enough.” The third man grunted and made a drawn-out mooing sound.
Tabitha tensed and pressed her lips together as ice flowed through her veins. Her chest was tight, and it was difficult to breath as she fought the sting of tears. She knew that man’s voice. She knew who he was.
Cody fucking Everton.
Don’t you dare cry, Tabby. It doesn’t matter what they say, doesn’t matter what he says. They don’t matter. He doesn’t matter.
“You could park a truck on that ass,” the fourth man said.
Zevris slowed his pace.
No, no, no! Don’t slow down, please. They won’t stop, and I don’t want to see him.
The second man laughed. “Your dick would get lost if you tried, Tad.”
“You’d get lost if you tried, Vance,” Tad replied. “We’d have to send in a rescue team.”
Zevris halted. He was still for a few moments before he hooked a finger beneath her chin. Tabitha resisted when he tried to tip her face up. After this perfect evening, he didn’t need to see tears in her eyes. He didn’t need to see how this affected her.
Because damn it, it shouldn’t have.
But it did.
She wanted to tell him it was okay, to just keep walking, but she couldn’t find the words. She’d heard all the insults before, and she’d moved on from Cody years before. She should’ve been above the hurt. But it always seemed to catch her off-guard, and she never came up with the perfect comebacks until long after the confrontations were over.
If she were to write down everything she’d thought of to say to Cody after she’d dumped him, she could’ve filled a five-subject notebook. Of course, her mind refused to produce even one of those things now.
“I don’t fully understand what their words mean,” Zevris said in a voice that, though low, already held a dangerous edge. “Are they referring to you when they say cow?”
Tabitha reached for his hand and tugged him forward. “It’s nothing. Let’s…let’s just go home.”
Zevris pulled her back toward him, caught her chin with his fingers, and forced her to look up at him. He searched her face for a second or two, and his eyes hardened. “There are tears brimming in your eyes, Nykasha. Are these men insulting you?”
Her bottom lip quivered before she could stop it. “It’s nothing,” she repeated.
He brows fell low, and he clenched his jaw. His hold on her chin tightened infinitesimally. “It is not nothing if it has hurt you.”
Zevris gentled his touch, stroked her jaw, and released her to turn toward the men. Menace radiated off him, and though it could’ve just been a trick of the poor lighting, Tabitha swore his shirt looked tighter—or his muscles larger. He stalked toward them.
Tabitha’s eyes widened and she wrapped her hands around his arm, pulling him to a stop. “Zevris, don’t. Let’s just go. They’re not worth it.”
“But you are,” he said gruffly, his eyes catching hers briefly before he shook her off and guided her behind him.
“What’s it like banging that, man?” Cody asked, thrusting his hips as he held his hands out wide in front of him. “I know from experience that a little cushion for the pushin’ can be good once in a while, but isn’t she taking that a little too far?”
Those words hurt more than anything else Cody or his friends had said. It hurt because Tabitha knew he was referring to her, it hurt because he’d not even made any indication of having recognized her, it hurt because, again, his words should never have a
ffected her since she’d moved on from him long ago. But it was like a wound that had never fully healed, and he was tearing it right open.
Zevris turned his head from side to side, as though scanning his surroundings—or surveying a battlefield. His attention settled on the men again; the two who’d been leaning against the wall had stepped forward to join their companions, and they all wore smug grins.
“I will allow you one opportunity to apologize to my female,” Zevris said.
That only roused more laughter from the men.
“Shall I take that as your decision?” Zevris asked.
“You should take your heifer and get the fuck out of here,” the man named Vance said, his humor giving way to aggression.
“Listen to her and walk away,” said Tad. “We will fuck you up.”
Zevris released a heavy breath. Tabitha stepped back, worrying her lower lip. She knew he was stronger and faster than anyone she’d ever met, but her list of acquaintances wasn’t exactly brimming with well-trained athletes and elite warriors. Was he really going to fight four men at once?
Was he really going to fight her ex?
She didn’t want Zevris to get hurt, couldn’t stand the thought of it, but at the same time…a small part of her wanted to see him put these jerks in their places. An admittedly larger part wanted to see Cody put in his place.
“You don’t know who you’re fucking with,” Cody declared. His gaze flicked past Zevris, landing on Tabitha for an instant before moving away again. His eyes immediately rounded and returned to her. “Oh, shit. Tabitha?”
Her cheeks flamed, and she could barely force air through her throat. This was one of those moments. She could’ve told him off in front of his friends, could’ve finally shown him just how little she thought about him, just how pathetic he really was.
“Tabitha? This is the fat chick you used to fuck?” asked Tad.
“Yeah.” Cody’s expression darkened with embarrassment as he looked away from her. “Pussy is pussy, right?”
“I’d let her suck my dick,” said Vance.
Taken By The Alien Next Door Page 24