Alien Romance: The Barbarian's Owned: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 1)

by Marla Therron

  “Delicately,” he insisted.

  Nodding, she went for a clean yank.

  His whole body went rigid. She could tell he was trying not to scream in front of his mate. It was weirdly endearing—she thought briefly of Reese and she was pretty sure if he’d even seen Garr’s wound, he’d have broken down into hysterics. So Garr is a filthy kidnapper. I still rank him a half point above my ex.

  The pool beneath the waterfall wasn’t large, but was crystal clear. Beneath, the blue moss ended and instead there were hexagonal squama. Two of the plates started to glow faintly orange and Rae frowned at them.

  “What’s going on in there?” She hoped her question distracted him, because she plucked the second knife out once he looked.

  The prime winced, but otherwise her trick worked. “Those plates warm the pool.”

  “Why?” The fact Lyr would heat a pool of water in the forest was fascinating. Maybe it had to do with fostering some kind of algae bloom.

  “Because you’re filthy and unused to cold baths.”

  “Whoa. I’m not taking a bath,” she said hastily. “Not in front of you.”

  “You’re not taking one alone. Not after running.” He handed the dish with the poultice to her.

  “You’re about to be very disappointed.” She had a cat as a girl, and she’d once tried to bathe it. Once. Rae intended to give him precisely the fight Tabitha gave her. Size mattered in such struggles, but so did a willingness to bite and spit.

  Garr ignored her comment. “Pack each wound.” He indicated his shoulder, which hadn’t even bled much since she’d freed the knives.

  The wounds went deep, but from his mobility and the clotting, she realized Ythirians healed much faster than humans. It had been an hour, and she suspected by tomorrow he’d have recovered.

  She packed the poultice over each wound and Garr completed the process by using a strip from his otoya as a bandage.

  He rotated his shoulder and nodded at her. “Good.”

  In spite of everything, she allowed a tight smile. “I interned one summer with—”

  Before she could finish, he snapped a hand around her wrist and stepped back into the pool—dragging her with him.

  There was no time to bite, hiss, or gouge. She went headlong into the warm pool, submerged with Garr.

  Water shot into her mouth and she came up sputtering, batting at him. He caught her one wrist, then the other, and spun her to face away from him. She writhed, but when he collapsed against the edge of the pool, she wound up in his lap.

  “You bastard!”

  “You can wash or I can strip you naked and do it for you.” His arm was around her waist—snug, like the ride bar on a roller coaster. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Rae made sarcastic bathing motions over either arm, her clothes sopping wet. She’d be that way all day. Her shoes, too! Just when she’d started feeling bad for him, he did this. “I hate you with the fire of ten thousand suns.”

  “Good,” he murmured, voice a dark rumble in her ear. God. That sound set her on edge, made her aware of his warm body pressed into her. The wetted fabric of their clothes clung to their bodies, so that she could sense the sculpted shape of him beneath.

  “Hate is passion. I want your passion, and all other parts of you.”

  In spite of herself, the words tickled somewhere deep. It caused another reflexive comparison to Reese, who had despised her passion and obsession and even the intellect he’d once claimed had attracted him to her. Everything that made her strong had made Reese feel small. Garr wasn’t put off by any of it.

  “You know, take me home and stop dunking me in the water, and maybe I’d let you take me on a few dates,” she lied. “Do this the traditional human way and you wouldn’t be half as bad.” It was a hell of a gambit.

  “You already want me.”

  Pompous jerk! She scowled while scrubbing some of the mud from her clothes with her fingers. “I want nothing to do with you.” She kept her voice sharp as she dared.

  “Ythirians can smell arousal.”

  Oh. Rae assessed her body, and in fact, the sensation of him pressed into her had her insides knotted tight, her skin flushed. She’d thought it was the warm water at first, but it had been a while since she’d been with a man—and she’d never been with one quite so physically sculpted as Garr. “Arousal isn’t the same as liking someone. Let alone loving them.”

  He snorted. “You either want me or you don’t. And you do.”

  Irritated, she pushed against him in a bid to escape. He opened his arm to let her surge away, and Rae turned to glare back at him.

  Garr relaxed into the pool, arms spread wide on its rim. He watched her, amused.

  Fisting her hands beneath the water, she said, “Love isn’t a purely genital connection where I’m from.”

  He frowned, confused now.

  “You know. Love.” The word was coming out as English and not Ythirian. Had they no exact equivalent? “Wanting to be with someone for reasons beyond just the physical. For all the reasons, all at once.”

  “Of course,” he snapped. “The words don’t translate well, but we have it too. I want more than your body.”

  She nodded. Okay. Prediction: in five seconds, he’s going to say something that makes me want to murder him.

  Struggling to explain, Garr glanced at the water, then back at her. “I also want your children.”

  Yyyup.

  “And,” he went on, “for you to manage the homestead.”

  Uh huh. Keep it coming, big guy.

  He stood so that she was reminded how she had to crane her head to look up at him. Water sleeked from his enormous shoulders. “And I want your spirit. Your intellect. As taliyar, you will help rule domé Kaython.” He squeezed his hand into a fist. “You will strengthen my people and we will crush our enemies.”

  “Romantic.” Rae patted his flat, powerful abdomen and—okay—even after all that, she sort of wanted to kiss him there just a little. Shirtless as he was, she could see where those dark markings disappeared into his waterlogged pants, the weight sagging them low enough to reveal the ridges of his hip bones.

  Between those ridges was the just-slightly concave cup at the root of his abdomen. Pushing carnal desires aside, Rae looked into his shiny black eyes. “Love isn’t just the sum of different metrics for things I give you. Or even things you can give me.”

  “Then explain it to me,” he growled irritably.

  She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “For starters, it’s a partnership. It’s both of us making each other the best people we can be—and that won’t happen if you’ve got all the power.

  Love doesn’t mean I’m yours, so much as that we’re each others. It would mean—and this is totally hypothetical, as it will never happen—it would mean you’re also mine.”

  He scowled stonily at her. “I am prime.”

  “And I’m sure you’re very good at it, sweetie.” Another pat to his abdomen. Whoo boy. That is fast becoming the “just one more M&M” of physical gestures. It’s a nice feature on him, but I’ve got to stop. She willed her hand to her side.

  Garr frowned at her and it was clear he’d sensed the sarcasm—he just didn’t know what to do with it. “Sit.” He pointed, and when Rae folded her arms, he moved closer.

  She danced back, but soon found herself in his lap again, as before. Sighing, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Now what?”

  “A prime takes care of his mate,” he answered simply, taking that dried fig. He squeezed it, breaking the rind until a viscous substance filled his waiting palm beneath.

  The strong fruity scent and consistency made her realize that somehow the Skorvag had grown soap. On a tree. For people to just pick and use.

  She winced from Garr’s hand at first, but he took hold of the tie holding in her braid, loosened it, and was surprisingly gentle in the way he combed the braid out, starting at the bottom and working his way methodically up.

/>   At his gentle touch, she relaxed just a little. Truth told, Rae had always loved having her hair played with. She enjoyed haircuts, and the soothing quality of having it braided or combed out.

  “I’m not your mate.” She felt compelled to point it out, maybe because she was simultaneously easing back into his chest while his fingers loosened her locks. The tight braid’s erasure eased a tension in her scalp and the graze of his fingertips slackened her body and mind at once.

  He didn’t answer. A wise move: without his stubborn insistence to gall her, Rae could guiltlessly enjoy the way his fingertips massaged her head, working shampoo through her hair.

  She tried not to sigh loudly—just a soft exhalation, as though all the pressure in her center leaked from her lungs slowly. Garr took his time, sure to work her hair from the roots to the ends.

  His ministrations were firm, knowing, and never too rough, pushing her gradually into a state of languid satisfaction.

  “On Ythir, the male cares for his mate,” he purred over her shoulder. “We show it through rituals, and this is one. Is my affection demonstrated, Dr. Rae Ashburn?”

  He eased her into the water, tilted her head back, and washed the suds from her hair while being ever-so-careful not to get any in her eyes—his thumbs brushed any stray rivulets that threatened to drip past her eyebrows.

  It was a different side to Garr, and truth told, had he not shown her through this ritual, she’d not have believed him capable of it. It would have been like expecting tenderness from a wild lion.

  She thought briefly of the mating rituals of birds. Demonstrating his value to me, she realized.

  Sighing, because the comfort of his hands had to eventually be replaced by the cold, hard fact of his sins, she twisted to face him. On her knees beside him, so as to avoid straddling, she squared him in her gaze.

  It was easier to look at him now, her reflexive desire to punch his perfectly square jaw somewhat diminished.

  “These are your rituals. Not mine. The most important ritual where I’m from is that you ask to get into the bath with me. You only come in if I allow you.”

  His face hardened. “A prime does not ask. He wins. You are mine by victory.”

  The good feelings evaporated and she stood from the pool, water running from her sleeves. The mud had been scraped from her blouse, dark colors disguising the stains. She would need a change of clothes eventually, and wasn’t looking forward to wearing wet clothes the rest of the day.

  Garr followed her from the pool. His outfit rippled into that liquid form, shedding the water until it all dripped clear. After the otoya solidified again, his clothes were bone dry. He seemed to wait for hers to do the same.

  Her teeth chattered.

  It dawned on him that her outfit didn’t shed water that way. “You will wear mine.” He disrobed his jacket, offering it.

  “I damn well won’t.” She pushed past him and strode away, water squelching from her wet shoes.

  Chapter Five

  The sun dried everything but Rae’s shoes and socks. Those she was stuck with for the rest of the day.

  Vaya behaved skittishly, always looking off into the canopy or down the trails, perhaps alert because Lyr was alert. Rae hoped the arboreal squid-beast was finished with them—getting a dozen knives embedded in its body should ward off most predators, right?

  Around midday, they were close to Kaython’s border but had to cross the “geyser jungle.” The terrain was a swampy territory filled with dingy trees bleached of all low-lying foliage, the squama bark made from dense, foreboding armor plates.

  The ground was wet, with an orange lichen that seemed to thrive off the humid atmosphere, and all around them a thick mist reduced visibility. Periodically, jets of steam would explode from pores in the soft earth, filling the air with boiling water and hot vapor.

  “How do we cross?” Rae could see no pathway that didn’t occasionally erupt. “For the record, humans are burned by steam. Not sure what it does to Ythirians.”

  “About the same,” Vaya murmured.

  “Lyr wants us to cross here,” Garr said. “She’ll provide a sign.”

  They waited, until Vaya pointed out a swarm of insects that hovered in the distance. Their reflective azure shells twinkled through the jungle’s fog, as though beckoning them.

  “You’re sure about this?” Rae did not want to argue about Lyr’s responsiveness, but the domé had certainly sent her some mixed signals before.

  “Yes.” Garr confidently strode directly at the glinting swarm. Vaya prodded Rae forward, but when geysers burst into the air close by, she interposed herself. Soon, the giantess and Garr both walked together in front, where most of the eruptions occurred.

  They arrived at one insect swarm and saw another floating off in the fog. They stepping-stoned through the geyser jungle that way, using the swarms as guide posts.

  Partway through one of their hops, Rae first noticed Vaya and Garr had started walking side by side. There was no more rearguard, and their focus was on the geysers, the swarms, or one another. From their silent glances, they were communicating with each other and entirely distracted from what Rae was up to.

  Desperate, she scanned her surroundings, utterly turned around in the swamp. Once she hit Kaython’s ground, though, she was sunk. If Lyr would send her home, she needed to do it now.

  “Show me a way,” she mouthed silently behind Garr’s back. “Please let me go home.”

  Off in the distance, Rae spotted a new swarm of insects, this one green. The lights twinkled from their constant, shifting movement.

  Well, Rae thought, summoning her courage. Green does mean “go.”

  ***

  Traversing the geyser jungle, Garr brooded on his human’s words regarding “love.” An aberrant concept, to suggest males might belong to females—or, worse, a prime might belong to anything other than his domé.

  Did she not understand her arrogance? In implying Garr belonged to anyone but Kaython alone?

  Something troubles you, Vaya messaged through their microbial connection. They had not used it since Earth.

  You seek to exclude my mate from this conversation? It could be considered improper to hide a conversation with a subordinate from one’s mate—doubly so a female subordinate.

  Don’t mean it that way, boss.

  Of course she didn’t. Vaya was his trusted lieutenant. Perhaps the human’s words on “love” had him overly focused on propriety. Speak.

  I’ve got your back no matter what. But have you thought about how this will go over with the tribe?

  They will follow their prime.

  Sure. But you turned down Kaython’s last choice for your taliyar—Yahlalla was a 98 percent genetic amplifier. No prime’s been so strongly suited for a mate in twenty cycles. Turning down such a prestigious member of our tribe for an alien? One who we’re not even sure you can reproduce with? This will upset people; people like Yahlalla’s enormous brothers, for instance.

  True, but Yahlalla had not suited him. She’d been beautiful in that typical Ythirian way—slender, elegant. But her attitude had been too fawning. She was a pliant creature, and eager to please, which made most males happy. Not so Garr.

  There was more to a taliyar than genetic compatibility. He needed one who would teach his son or daughter by word and action, and not just through the gifts of blood.

  The fire in Rae mattered more to him than any genetic amplifier. The only problem would be taming her and banking those flames to serve his own ends. Her strength made it difficult for her to see the superiority of Ythirian culture.

  What are you thinking, Boss?

  Do you trust me, Vaya?

  As much as Kaython, sir.

  He grinned at her blasphemy. If Kaython minded, she had not signaled any displeasure. Another reason his domé pleased him: she liked her people as fiery as Garr did. Probably why she’d nudged him toward Dr. Rae Ashburn.

  I am not without my concerns, he confessed. She is confused
about the role of a mating-class female—behaves more like a castoff—

  Vaya winced. He regretted the slip. That word was a powerful slur, and he forgot at times that it technically fit Vaya’s situation. After all, had she not foresworn mating to take up arms and hunting?

  Garr frowned, not wishing to soften the word with his subordinate. Softness would have come off as disrespectful—as him treating her differently from a male warrior.

  He needed to, instead, demonstrate he respected her regardless of the slur. Tell me your thoughts. Human “love.” Can it be reconciled to our ways?

  Steam jetted from the ground in front of them, causing them both to pause. The task of avoiding geysers had become routine, their trust in Lyr increasing.

  You cannot belong to her, Vaya said. This would be a great sin for any male, but the greatest of sins for the prime.

  Of course I can’t belong to her, Garr shot back.

  Then there is no reconciliation. I’ve witnessed her human culture during my scouting trip to Earth. I don’t think a human female from her tribe would want to be a Ythirian’s mate. Vaya glanced at Garr. In truth, sir, it’s similar to why I chose to become a castoff.

  That floored him. He knew she’d chosen it—had, in fact, fought for it. The word “castoff” implied a shame Vaya had never felt for her decisions. But she’d never actually told him the reason for those decisions.

  He’d assumed she simply had no carnal desires—and ridiculous though that was, it had been a uniquely Vaya sort of ridiculousness. You wish to possess a male? He’d have laughed if it were at all funny.

  Sort of? Not as a male possesses a female, she insisted. But to be possessed and to possess in turn, as the humans do? Maybe if the idea had occurred to me as a youngling, I’d not have sworn off mating so quickly. To be “claimed” in a challenge felt degrading; especially for one like me, who is not so easily beaten. It felt dishonest to submit when I was stronger than all my would-be suitors.

  How is it more honest for a male to submit to a female? Garr demanded.