“Shhh-Sean, Shelley, Shnow. Shhh-Sean, Shelley, Shnow,” Monica sang. “It’s like a
lil’ tittie-twister, isn’t it?”
“That’s tongue-twister, you idiot! Now shut the fuck up before Dr. Snow comes over
here!”
“May I be of assistance, ladies?”
Shelley’s squeal of alarm made Monica laugh out loud. Then she caught sight of a bulging
crotch covered in sublimely tight steel-gray synthetic and fell silent mid-guffaw.
Her eyes traveled up, up, up, skimming over a granite belly, pecs that were sharply
defined even in uniform and shoulders too wide to be real. She got hooked for a second
on a set of sculpted lips and had to drag her eyes upward until they finally met the
dark blue gaze of the formidable Commander Kellen.
Speaking of good enough to eat! The super-sized hot tamale looking down at her made
half the female tongues in the compound drag the ground, and a few of the male ones,
too. But not hers, though. Nuh-uh, no way, because God, he was so
fucking
far out of her orbit, he’d need the Hubble telescope to notice her. She’d be dumber
than a bag of hammers to get all gooey over his lion-haired splendor.
“Ooooh, hi, Commander,” she heard herself breathe anyway. God, when had she started
talking like Marilyn Monroe? “Are you a gentle giant?”
Then she smacked herself on the forehead.
Duh
! Of course, he wasn’t any such thing. He’d blasted Planet Narthan into a flaming
charcoal briquette and roasted wienies over the smoldering embers. But what the hell.
Nobody was perfect, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have cause, losing his wife and little
girl that way.
Aw
,
the poor guy could probably use a hug
.
The quirk of his lips as he crouched in front of her desk was inviting enough to make
her breath catch in her throat. Okay, scratch the poor guy thing. And the hug. He
was a hottie and he knew it, Conan the Barbarian with a James Bond accent. “When the
occasion calls for it.”
“And when it doesn’t?” she dared. Shit, it almost sounded like she was flirting with
him.
Flirting
with Kellen, the ass-kicking commander from outer space. And from Shelley’s fish-eyed
look, it sounded that way to her, too.
And hell if it wasn’t giving Monica her first-ever tingle in panty territory. Okay,
second-ever. Watching that other sweaty spaceman push his long hard self into Carrie’s
open charms had triggered the first-ever. Maybe this was only the beginning of a major
tingle-fest south of her border. Wouldn’t that be, like, the fucking greatest thing
ever? She’d always secretly dreamed of tingling, especially whenever she passed the
commander in the hall. He was hot enough to—
No
! Monica tossed her spiky head back and forth, trying not to pout. Damn it, it just
wasn’t fair! She could flirt with the commander ‘til the cows came home, but in the
end, it would get her nowhere. Ever. Even if, in some freaky right turn into an alternate
reality, she managed to catch this hunky alien’s eye, the joke would be on the both
of them, because the only two things he’d want from her, she had no way of supplying.
Sex and babies.
Damn it.
“Then I’m a different sort of giant altogether.” The commander’s reply to her sally
was accompanied by a full-fledged grin that made her squirm with…something. Something
sticky and warm and anxious. “But enough about me,” he continued, lowering his tone.
“I must apologize to you, Dr. Teague.”
“Oh?”
Her little pity-party promptly forgotten, Monica followed his gaze as it flickered
to Dr. Snow, who was now deep in conversation with—what was his name? Lieutenant…something.
Shauss, that was it, Lieutenant Shauss. Now there was another primo piece of alien
real estate. Why had she never noticed how yummy he was? Those thick streaks of pale
blue in his otherwise black hair were just
inspired
. God, what she wouldn’t give to trickle it through her—
“For your own safety,” Kellen was saying, “I would advise you to keep what I’m about
to tell you to yourselves.” He paused and looked hard at Monica, probably making sure
she was listening. To prove that she was, she forced her eyes as wide-open as they’d
go, and he shook his head and sighed. “I believe that you, Dr. Teague, are experiencing
pheromone intoxication.”
“Excuse me?” she and Shelley said simultaneously.
“Jinx! You owe me a Coke!” Monica crowed.
“Congratulations, Doctor,” Kellen said dryly. “As I was saying, you appear to have
suffered an overexposure to Garathani pheromones. You must carry the twenty-second
halethoid mutation, which renders Terrans’ olfactory receptors more susceptible to
their influence.”
Monica gasped in outrage. “I do not!”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Doctor.”
“I don’t!”
“But you think it smells divine in here, don’t you?” he challenged, glancing at Snow
once more.
“Well, yeah, but that’s just lunch.”
Kellen looked at Shelley’s BTC badge and asked, “So, S. Bonham, RN, have you noticed
anything out of the ordinary? Does it smell to you like the kitchen is preparing something
especially delicious?”
Shelley shook her head with a frown. “No, it smells like it always does in here, like
new hospital and old jockstraps.”
Monica struggled to her feet, anxiety suddenly taking hold of her. “I’m
not
a mutant. Now leave me alone.”
When she turned to leave, the world swirled and she just about ended up on her ass.
It was humiliating to be rescued by the commander, who swung her up in his incredibly
hulky arms like the overgrown child she resembled. Thrilling, but humiliating.
“Let me help you to your quarters,” he offered gently. “The effect should wear off
within a half-hour of my departure.”
Since her head was still spinning like she’d had one or six too many margaritas, Monica
laid her head against his chest.
His mile
-
wide
,
rock
-
hard chest
. Her hand itched to slide over every pectoral hill and valley outlined by the satiny
finish of his uniform, but she confined herself to a visual tour with a sigh of regret.
Some behaviors were just too deeply ingrained to be overridden, even by the table-dancingest,
lampshade-wearingest kind of intoxication.
Damn it.
“Lay on, MacDuff,” she murmured, closing her eyes and basking in the novelty of being
carried for the first time in her memory. That lovely, scrumptious scent drew her
nose to his armpit, where she sucked in a lungful and held it before exhaling in a
rapturous rush. “Oh my God, did anyone ever tell you that you smell good enough to
eat?”
“Yes, but not recently,” came the amused chuckle in her ear. “Thank you for saying
so.”
“Hey, why hasn’t this ever happened to her before?” From the sound of her huffing
and puffing, Shelley must be practically running to keep up with them. “She works
with you guys every day.”
Kellen’s hesitation made Monica open her eyes and look at him. It was disconcerting
to find him looking back. Such amazing eyes. Maybe if she stared into that velvety
navy-blue long enough, she’d see stars.
“We only emit actively when we’re excited. Sexually.”
Sexually
. Ooooh, that tantalizingly adult word, so rich and delicious as it dripped off his
tongue, made her shudder. She was seeing stars, all right, and they were falling fast
and landing hard, right in her achingly empty lap.
“So it was the guy doing the na—er,
performing
on stage who caused this?” Shelley asked.
Stopping in the middle of the hall, Kellen and his amazing eyes looked at her friend.
“In a sense. To be perfectly truthful, the demonstration was arousing enough to the
rest of us that our glands…went into overdrive, so to speak. It takes more than one
emitting male to saturate a room that size.”
Diverted by the play of muscles in his jaw as he spoke, it took a moment for Monica
to assimilate what he’d said.
“You’re horny!” she accused, wide-eyed, her heartbeat accelerating. Part of her was
horrified, knew she ought to be blushing to the tips of her toes at both the idea
and her own candor. Fortunately, that part of her brain currently in the driver’s
seat was deriving too much pleasure from the flurry of intriguing visuals to be concerned.
“That’s why you smell so good.”
“Yeah, okay, Monica, we get the picture,” Shelley hurried to head her off.
Although Kellen’s gaze had focused on Monica once more, it was his tongue that distracted
her now, snaking out to lick his lips before he answered as if Shelley hadn’t spoken.
“Guilty as charged.”
Uh-oh. Her heart stopped as his confession echoed in her head. Just stopped dead,
right there in her chest.
Beat
,
damn it
,
beat
! Then her brain signaled that she wasn’t getting any air, either.
And breathe
,
damn it
,
breathe
! What the hell was going on with her autonomic nervous system? Weren’t these things
supposed to take care of themselves?
Her pulse rebounded with a thump, her indrawn breath with a shudder. But then she
noticed the saliva pooling under her tongue and had to swallow audibly. Oh God, the
commander was horny, and he was holding her, and his lips were thick and shiny and
they’d be close enough to suck on, if she just had the guts to grab his neck…
Like he
’
d want to kiss a freak like you
, the ugly voice of sobriety sneered.
Monica squeezed her eyes shut tight and set her jaw, suddenly depressed and weary.
“Well, not to worry. You should be back to normal shortly,” she choked with a bitter
laugh, pressing her face into his chest for one last snuggle as he continued down
the corridor. “Shelley’s knocked up and I’m glandularly challenged, so there should
be nothing here to turn you on.”
His murmured reply was too low for her to catch and she was too tired to ask him to
repeat it. By the time he laid her on the bed, she couldn’t even manage to thank him
properly and she was out like a light before he’d left the room.
* * * * *
Kellen strode down the corridor at a brisk pace, filled with purpose, energized by
this morning’s coup and the subsequent encounter with his new mate.
Don
’
t bet on it
, he’d told her. The unexpected and charmingly offbeat Dr. Teague may not be emitting
pheromones of her own just yet, and her current form certainly made him doubt she
would ever develop any measure of physical beauty, but the knowledge of her Garathani
heritage and her all-but-irrevocable bond with him made his cock rise to rapt attention.
Convincing it to stand down until she was ripe for mating would require heroic resolve.
Or an entire vat of Malascan ale.
Convincing it to stand down
after
she was ripe for mating… His lips curled in a wicked smile. Here he’d been bracing
himself for the occasional and hopefully brief coupling with a Terran female, and
instead the Powers had seen fit to bless him with the object of his darkest fantasies—a
Garathani female without rank or authority. Refusing to even consider that her Terran
genes might have shown themselves between her legs, Kellen began counting the ways
he would enjoy her and wondered if his cock would ever stand down again.
He had to stop outside the door and adjust himself before stepping into the diplomatic
offices. A waiting page led him directly to Ambassador Pret.
“Congratulations, Commander,” Pret told him. “I was dumbfounded to learn that a hybrid
was hiding right under our noses.”
“Thank you.” Kellen sank into an oversized conference chair and took the proffered
mug of lorba tea, though ale would have stood him in better stead. “No one was more
surprised than I.”
“And let me compliment you on your deft handling of the matter. Many others might
have requested probabilities on hybridism or Sparnism before filing.”
“Many others might have had their petitions preempted by some com-hacking opportunist,”
Kellen pointed out. “Since I’m more than capable of calculating probabilities for
myself, I decided not to take the chance.”
“A shrewd, if somewhat cynical decision on your part, Commander. You should consider
a transfer to the diplomatic corps when this assignment ends. We could use an officer
who thinks on his feet, as it were.”
Not likely, Kellen thought, amused by the quandary of being too innately honest for
diplomatic assignments but too diplomatic to say so. He took a sip of the tea and
then reached to set the mug on a strategically positioned coaster on the Ambassador’s
polished cherry desk.
“I was wondering if you could get Dr. Teague reassigned as my aide,” he said casually
as he leaned back and crossed his ankles.
Pret’s brows rose. “With all due respect, Commander, I would have thought you’d remove
her at once to the
Heptoral
.”
“That would, of course, be my preference.” In fact, only Nurse Bonham’s watchful presence
had prevented him from flaring the little doctor directly to his on-board quarters.
His initial annoyance had given way to amusement and then a grudging respect for the
way she protected her unconscious friend. Obviously frightened of him, she’d nonetheless
stood there with her hand on the knob of the open door, inviting him without words
to leave. After a lingering glance at the boneless figure on the bed, he’d bowed slightly
and taken his leave.
His bow, once a deeply ingrained habit, a gesture of deference from a bygone era,
had taken him by surprise. He hadn’t bowed to a female since… Actually, he couldn’t
remember the last time he’d felt compelled to bow to a female out of genuine respect.
He’d always bowed because it was customary and expected. And more importantly, because
to not bow was to invite retribution.