Page 18 of Gravel and Grit

She is clearly not my mate… but if she were, she would not be a bad one.

“Agreed. But she is not, so stop thinking about things you cannot have.”

His reasoning that his reaction to her was an allergy was beginning to feel

less plausible now, but he stubbornly held onto it anyway. He was leaving this planet, and he couldn’t imagine she would want to go with him. Better to not even entertain thoughts of what it would be like to be hers or for her to be his.

He knew he’d lost a bit of sanity over the centuries. If he doubted his ability to be a good mate to a Khargal female, with which he had some familiarity, regardless of how long ago, he damn sure wouldn’t make a good mate to a human with which he had zero familiarity.

Not true. We have watched enough television plays to see how Earthianscourt each other…

Shaking his head at himself, he retreated from her and the thoughts that were trying to creep into his mind.

While raiding the cabin, he found an unlabeled can in one of the cabinets, an old bathing cloth, and three small bandages in one of the drawers, but that was all. The water was shut off which didn’t surprise him, but the working pump outside did. Finding an old bucket nearby, he washed it and the rag, then filled it and took it back inside.

He set his meager bounty on the floor beside the couch then groaned as he lowered himself to sit. He gently cleaned and bandaged the worst of her split knuckles, then wet and folded the cloth, laying it over her forehead.

Zaek felt the skin of his wings and legs turning to stone before he’d finished caring for her, felt the bullet in his foot beginning to surface as his body pushed it out, but he determinedly ignored it until he’d done everything he could to make her comfortable. If she were not awake by the time he came out of his healing sleep, he would find her a physician, but for now he needed rest.

Lying down on the floor with his body between hers and the door, he shut his eyes and stopped fighting it, letting theduramnafall over him. His body slowly turned to stone until he resembled the lifeless gargoyle statues for which his people were mistaken.

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MIRA

Mira awoke slowly but kept her eyes shut, wondering just how much wine she’d had the night before to have such a splitting headache. She finally braved squinting them open when she realized her room didn’t smell anything like she was used to, and her comfortable bed had morphed into a lumpy surface riddled with springs that were digging into her spine, like the talons of some sleep-ruining little monster. The sight that greeted her was definitely not the ceiling at either her apartment or her room at the base.

Huh. That’s weir… HOLY SHIT! I was kidnapped by an alien!

Memories flooded her with the force of a tsunami, making her headache worse. Thankfully, the adrenaline rush that followed dulled the pain just enough for panic to take the forefront.

Whipping a look around, she took in the old, abandoned cabin, searching for a giant gargoyle or men with guns. It appeared empty, but just as she swung her legs off the couch she was lying on to make a run for it, her gaze fell to the floor and the massive stone statue lying there. That confused her enough to stop her from racing out of the room screaming.

“What the hell?” she gasped.

Mira blinked at the statue in bewildered disbelief for a second, before the thought that it looked exactly like the alien who’d saved her from being turned into swiss cheese by the security team’s bullets filtered past the panic and headache.

Why would he have a statue of himself? That’s… absurd.

Cradling her head, she squinted and gave the cabin a more thorough inspection. She peered into the corners, thrown into shadow by the setting sun, searching for her kidnapping savior.

“What kind of kidnapper leaves their victim alone? Seems silly, not to mention ineffective,” she muttered to herself, beginning to calm down now that there wasn’t an immediate threat.

Staring at the statue again, she touched the sore spot on her temple then lowered her hand when she felt something pulling at the skin of her knuckles.

She frowned when she saw three old-looking bandaids sticking to her hand then spotted the discarded wrappers on the floor along with a folded rag and a half-full bucket of water.

That he’d treated her injuries probably meant he didn’t want to kill her or beam her up to his ship for some probing or experimentation. That tipped him out of the kidnapper column and into the savior one which made her feel infinitely better about her chances with him and made his leaving her alone more logical. After all, you didn’t need to restrain or guard someone you didn’t mean to keep against their will.

Sliding off the couch to sit on the floor, she leaned in to take a closer look at the statue. Something about it was nagging at her, but when she tried to grasp the thought, it slid away, hiding under the throbbing in her temples and the haziness clouding her thoughts.

It was a beautiful and impressively accurate depiction of him, if her memory served. He looked even bigger as a statue which she wouldn’t have thought possible since he’d seemed like an absolute giant when she opened her lab door to find him standing on the other side. Maybe it was being so close that made him seem so massive, or he could have had the statue made to be bigger than the real thing. Alien or not, that seemed like a male thing to do.

His face was as she remembered, harsh and angular with a broad nose, wide, thin lips, and big eyes set under a pronounced brow, decorated with five black horns. This close, she realized it had bone-like protrusions lining its jaw and two on its chin, like rounded spurs. She hadn’t noticed that on the alien himself.

He was actually kind of handsome, in a harsh, alien, definitely-not-human sort of way.

No, handsome isn’t the right word. He’s… striking.

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