Dark Side Of The Moon (BBW Paranormal Were-Bear Shifter Sci-Fi Romance) (5 page)

“Take
the fight out of me, I guess. Beat me. You know, in a fight.” She raised her
hand, making a fist, throwing a mock punch.

“Yeah,
I understand that. But what do you mean when you say… ‘ask you out?’”

She
realized he was still holding her hand. And for a startling instant, she
realized she really didn’t want to pull hers away. That scared her, more than
he did. And how she felt unnerved her further. There was a certain sensation of
having an anchor point in all this chaos, holding hand.  At least now that
he’d stopped trying to fight with her.

“It
means to take someone out on a date…” He shook his head at that. She waved her free
hand. “Never mind. In my case it usually meant they just wanted to have sex
with me.”

The
raised eyebrow and the flash of interest in his eyes made her smile. His voice
was low when he spoke. “I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.”

“Which?
The fighting or the sex?”

“Both.”

His
hand was warm, solid, and right now the only thing that was keeping her moored
to her sanity. She squeezed back, despite thinking she was absolutely insane to
feel remotely comfortable with her captor. She thought back to all the cheesy
paranormal romance stories that she had read, and growled at herself.  She
was
not
going to be one of those women who fall head over heels for the
asshole, by chapter three. Even if what he said ended up being true –  that
he really was an alien.
A very sexy, possessive alien, for that matter.

She
pulled her hand away from his.

“So
your world, they fight all the time? That must be hard?”

His
shrug was non-committal. “It is the way it’s been for as long as anyone
remembers. No one knows a different life.” His fingers tensed against hers. “I
would like for life to be different. I would like for the Clans to stop
fighting…for there to be one rule, one Clan…or many little Clans, but one
leader.” He was fidgeting now, uneasy. “No one believes it can happen.”

“But
you do?”

“I
do.”

“Is
that what you fight for? Back on your planet?”

“It
is.” He lifted his hand to hers once again, and for a minute she thought he was
going to kiss her knuckles. He held her hand, looking at it as if he wasn’t
quite sure whether to be so close. Then he turned and looked directly into her
eyes.

“And
I fight with you because you…how you would say. You make me want to ask you
out.”

She
did laugh then, and it wasn’t from hysteria or panic. “That’s not how it’s
supposed to…oh, never mind. I get what you mean. Do you always fight with your
women before you have sex with them?”

“We
fight because we’re strong, and we like that in our mates. I like women who are
strong…warriors. And I like someone who is my equal, who will stand by my side
through life’s tribulations.” Then he did kiss her hand, teeth hard against her
knuckles. It was anything but gentle, and she was certain she’d have a bruise
on her hand tomorrow.

Tomorrow…

“How
long does it take to get wherever we’re going?”

“It
takes several days. Normally you’d be asleep. We put the…women in a light
hyper-sleep so they don’t…worry.”

“If
you were any more careful in choosing your words I’d think you were a
politician.”

He
made a non-committal noise, ignoring her words. “I could offer you that, have
you take the drugs and sleep until we land.” She saw something in his eyes that
told her he’d much prefer her to be awake.

She
thought about that for a minute. Sleep, drugged, waking groggy and disoriented
in a strange new world. Maybe without Taso there. Being awake with him seemed
somehow less dangerous than being out for the count…helpless and even more
vulnerable.

“No.
That’s okay. I think I’d rather stay awake for whatever is going to happen. I’m
not a fan of checking out of situations, especially ones where I’m being taken
away on a space ship by aliens.”

Abruptly
Taso let go of her hand and stood. He crossed to the little window, looked out
for a minute, then slid the metal back over the opening. For a long minute he
stood with his back to her. Without turning, he spoke.

“I
came along on this mission for one reason only. To find a mate. A woman with
warrior spirit, but who won’t insist on being on the battlefield…” She heard
him breath out a sigh. “I want a woman to fight through the path of life with
me, but not on the battlefield. A strong warrior who will bear my children, and
help ensure the survival of my Clan. I want strength of mind, body, and of
spirit.”

When
he turned, his eyes had darkened, looking almost black as he gazed at her. Her
breath went shallow and fast, and she swallowed hard. Somewhere along the line,
she’d started noticing little details, the scars, the dark eyes and black
brows. But she’d never put all those details together. She did now: the black
hair shot with silver in the front. Obviously the scars…there were others on
his back that ran in cross-crosses over his skin. The width of his shoulders,
the narrowness of his hips. She swallowed again. This was crazy. Admiring a man
who’d kidnapped her was wrong. It was easier to chalk all that up to the drugs
in her system.

“And
you have that, Max. You have the strength I’m looking for. For a mate, and for
my Clan.” One brow twitched up. “You are a pleasure to look at. And I would
imagine back on your Planet, you were a formidable opponent to fight.”

She
wasn’t really sure how to answer that. She was still certain he was crazy, and
that all of this was some really huge mistake, or misunderstanding. Or a really
elaborate practical joke. Or she’d wake up and discover it really was a bad
dream.

“Clan.”
She wasn’t why that word surfaced, but she didn’t understand what he was
talking about.

He
looked at her, then nodded. She went on.

“You
keep saying Clan. Like what kind of Clan? Native American or…a religious sect,
or something?”

“My
Clan…the Lethian Clan?”

It
was her turn to nod, still confused. He went on.

“We’re
not Native Americans…whatever those are. Nor are our Clans based in religion.
We are shifters, all of us, every Clan. Ours is ursine. I think you humans call
them…bears.”

A
wave of dizziness made everything in the room spin. This was too much; she’d
maybe, just maybe, gotten it through her head that she’d been abducted by
aliens. Now, Taso was trying to tell her he was a… she thought he’d said…
bears?

“A
what? The thing with the bear…tell me that again?”

“A
shifter.” The tone of his voice told her that this was common knowledge, that
everyone knew who and what shifters were. “We shift from this form into another.”

“You
shift.” That made no sense, grammatically, functionally, in any way. “I have no
idea what that even means. And when you add a bear into that, you’ve lost me.
Completely.”

He
hesitated, then sat back down beside her. Clearly he was intrigued, if not a
little bemused. “You have nothing like that in your world?”

She
shook her head. “Not in the least. I mean, yes, we have bears, but not…
shifters. Unless you count sci-fi movies and books. But it’s all fiction. It is
fiction, right?”

“In
your world, maybe. In mine, it is normal.”

“And
by shift…you mean you change into something else? A bear?” The man was
seriously telling her he could change into a bear.

“Yes.”
It was said matter-of-factly. “My Clan is a bear Clan.”

“So,
if you’re a bear Clan, then what are the other Clans? The ones you fight with.”
Saying the words felt a little strange, but she went on. “Are they also bear Clans?”

“Not
all. There are tigers, lions, bears, wolves…”

“Lions
and tigers and bears, oh, my…” She breathed the words in a whisper. Another
wave of giggles threatened to erupt, but this was beyond laughter. Her mind was
coming unhinged, her emotions frayed. Maybe his offer of drugs wasn’t such a
bad idea after all.

“I
can’t really handle much more of what you have to tell me. I was almost ready
to accept alien abduction by someone who was relatively human. Taking me as a
mate…well, that’s the least crazy thing you’ve said so far. But this shifter
stuff…” She waved her hand. “I’m not sure I can hear what else you have to
say.”

“When
we land, you’ll see, and then you’ll understand. It’s difficult to shift here,
in this small space. Or I would show you that I am telling the truth. I have
these…” He put a hand over the scars on his chest. “We have the ability to heal
rapidly, but sometimes we end up with really deep sounds and they don’t heal
the same. These are from a battle a long time ago.”

She’d
lost the train of his conversation. He’d said landing.

Landing
. That meant on his planet. None of this
was making sense. There weren’t any planets close to Earth. Spaceships didn’t
just appear out of the blue, and abduct women and then vanish. That would have
been all over the internet, trending on Facebook, everyone posting pictures or
selfies with a spaceship in the background.

“How
exactly do you keep taking women without anyone seeing you? Someone must have
seen you?”

This
made him smile. “I’d explain it to you, but I’m not sure you’d understand. We
have the ability to travel great distances, from our planet to yours, very
quickly. To other planets. And we have the ability to take those we want
without being noticed.” At this, he smiled. “You were the one I wanted…the rest
were taken rather accidentally. That happens, unfortunately.”

 “I
was…targeted? What do you mean?”

“Yes,
when we decided the proximity in which to land, I saw you… and I wanted you
more than anything.”

Veronica
gasped, her eyes darting to her feet, as though she had any hope of making a
run for it.  She shrugged. This was all insane.

“Your
planet is close, and…” His smile widened. “You have a large number of people,
and many of them are women, but when we landed, all I could see is you.”

She
thought of the crowded streets in New York, the sheer amount of humanity she
had to deal with every day. Three models and a bike messenger wasn’t going to
make much of a dent. Taso and his ship could show up once a week, and it was
likely that no one would notice. Chalk it up to muggings, non-alien kidnappings,
someone just running away, moving away…all of them gone missing could be
explained in some way.

Then
she thought about Gus, and her job, wondered if anybody had missed her. Her
job, obviously, because she hadn’t checked in, still had packages in her
messenger bag. But they wouldn’t worry about her. Gus would worry, and that
made her eyes fill with tears.

Taso
touched her hand. She hardly ever cried, never in front of anyone if she could
help it, and this was a stranger, one who had abducted her. A man who believed
he was an alien shifter, out to bolster the reproductive health of his war-torn
planet.

The
lunatic actually thinks he’s an alien…a shifter.

The
last of her reserves were gone, played out, and she gave in to exhaustion, and
fear, and the crash from the adrenaline she’d been running on for the last
however long she’d been awake. Tears fell, and she dropped her head into her
hands. The fleeting thought that Taso would view crying as being weak passed
through her mind, but she didn’t really give a damn what he thought.

His
arm against her shoulders startled her, and she stiffened, pulling away, but
his pull was stronger than her resistance, and she found herself pressed
against his chest. She didn’t want to be here, in this little room, in the arms
of this…
whatever
he was. An alien shifter. It was absolutely crazy.  She
wanted to push away, fight…she choked out a little laugh through her tears.
Fighting for him, wasn’t fighting for her. Or maybe it was.

It
was too hard to think about it. None of it made sense, but the warmth of his
body, the pressure of his arm around her shoulders. That
did
make sense.
It was simple, familiar. At least he hugged like a human.

They
sat for a long time, and eventually her tears came to an end. She sniffed,
thinking she should sit up, move away. She was going to give him the wrong
impression, but it was easier to sit here, easier to keep her head against his
chest—eyes closed—than to move away.

“You
are brave, Max. And strong. You will understand after a time.”

“I’m
not really sure that’s ever going to happen.” She lifted her head. “You have to
know this is really hard for me to understand, first being abducted, then being
told my captor is an alien shifter. Then that part about being your mate…” She
managed a small laugh. “That’s probably the only thing that makes any sense.
That a guy would want to kidnap a woman for…for sex…for companionship.”

He
laughed, a soft sound. “I can see that some of this may be hard.” Then the
laughter stopped. “You are the first woman to challenge me, either by fighting,
or by questioning what I have done. And what I say. The women…” He made a
movement with his hand. “They submit, they are docile, even though they are
healthy women with real bodies. Curves and muscles and flesh on their bones.
They give us children, new shifters to continue to fight and, sadly, to die.
But they do not fight themselves. They do not have the spirit I see in you.”

“I
thought that’s what you wanted…women to give you more children, not women who
fight.”

“The
men on my planet want that. They need that. But I…well, I want something more.
I want…” He set his fingers under her chin, turning her face to his. “I want a
woman who will be fierce and passionate, who will give me children, and who
will be by my side when night falls, in my arms. I want an equal.”

He
kissed her, and for all the world, she knew she should pull away. She did not
want to be kissed by this man…this crazy
shifter
person.

Yet
despite knowing better, she responded to him, tipped her head back, her lips
parting against his mouth. The kiss was harsh, not like any first kiss she’d
ever had before, but something raced through her, a desire for more, for this
kiss to keep going. When he thrust his tongue against her mouth, she met him,
her tongue sliding against his, flicking inside his mouth, sucking greedily.

His
hand slid down from her face, over her neck, lower, slipping his fingers inside
her shirt, touching her breast over her tank top. The touch was soft, gentle.
That surprised her, the contrast, the contradiction.

She
slid her hand across his chest, over the smooth skin, the hard muscles beneath.
Her fingers trailed over the scar on his chest, stopping there, spreading her
hand so her palm was flat against his skin.

The
kiss went wild and brutal, with Taso sucking her lips, the sharp edge of his
teeth grazing her tongue. She tasted blood, and with any other man she’d have
hit him, but she smiled against his mouth, then caught his lip with her teeth,
pulling, biting down, hard enough to taste his blood, mixing with hers.

He
made a noise deep in his throat, a primal noise that did more to excite her
than any softly spoken words ever could. She broke the kiss, staring up at him.
His eyes had gone heavy-lidded, the irises almost as dark as the black pupils. Those
eyes held a feral passion, untamed, and it made her already thudding heart beat
faster.

With
his free hand, he reached up to his chest, covered hers, then curled his
fingers around her hand. He held it for a moment, and then pulled it lower,
over the hard nipple on his chest, then lower, over the hard muscles of his
stomach. She felt the taut edge of his navel under her fingers, and then flat
smooth skin. She tensed against him, then pulled her hand away.

“No…I
can’t.”

“But
you can…and I know you want me.”

She
drew a shallow breath, trying to stay in control.

“Taso,
no…please…”

“Do
you want to fight?” His lips curved into a smile.

“Oh,
God. No.” She closed her eyes. “No…”

When
she opened her eyes, it was to find Taso looking at her with a confused
expression.

“Then
what do you want? I find you desirable, very desirable. And do you not find me
suitable as a mate?”

The
laugh escaped her before she could hold it back. She saw the hurt flash in his
eyes, and she bit back the rest of the laughter.

“Taso,
it’s not that simple. People don’t just fall for one another this way…this
quickly, and certainly not under these circumstances. This is madness.” What
else could she say? “And all of this…” She made a helpless gesture with her
hands. There was no possible way she could explain to this man every emotion
that was churning through her. She took a breath, searching for the words to
start. “All of this is just too much for me.”

A
sudden flash of light made her wince. Taso was on his feet the next second, and
before she had a chance to even form the question of what happened, he had made
his way to the door. Before he reached it, the room tilted at a crazy angle.
She fell off the cot, landing hard on the metal floor. Taso was still standing,
holding on to the edge of the open door.

“What
the hell happened?”

He
turned, his eyes hard, brows drawn together. Before he could answer an alarm
sounded somewhere in the depths of the ship, an incessant high-pitched shriek
that drove a spike of pain through her head. There a resounding boom that shook
the metal beneath her and then the room righted itself a little. She pulled
herself up on the edge of the bed, managed to get to her knees.

“An
explosion. And…”

Someone
ran past the door, shouting words she didn’t understand. Taso said something in
a strange language, his voice tight and controlled. The man stopped, shook his
head, gestured wildly, and then disappeared.

Taso
turned to her, his expression grim. “An explosion in the engine room. We are
disabled.”

That
meant nothing to her. She shrugged.

“We
are going to crash.”

“Crash?
Into what?” What was there in space to crash into?

He
staggered across the listing floor and flung back the cover on the window.
“That.” He reached down, grabbed her arm, and pulled her to her feet. She
grabbed the table and looked out the little square of glass.

The
window was full of something dark and red, but she had no idea what it was.
Everything was out of context, her head full of the piercing alarm.

“What…I
don’t…”

“A
planet, Max. We’re going to crash there.”

With
a horrible sinking feeling, she realized it was something rushing up to meet
them, or they were rushing to meet it. She had no idea what crashing into a
planet at umpteen miles per hours from space looked like. All she knew was Taso
had her arm in his hand, pulling her away from the window.

“We
need to get away from this room, to the interior. Quick.”

“What
about the girls?”

“We
can’t get to them in time… we need to hurry.”

“No…we
can’t leave them!”

Taso
ignored her cries, and instead, he dragged her into the narrow corridor. There
were shouts from somewhere ahead of them, the Clang of metal on metal. Abruptly
the alarm stopped, and the silence was a blessed relief, but it was replaced
almost instantly by a sound she could not understand. It sounded like rushing
water. She tugged against Taso’s hold on her arm. He turned. What she saw on
his face frightened her more than the unidentified sound.