Page 25 of Alien Mine

She sucked in another breath and got out of bed, not bothering to pull her shorts on over her undies. A few tiptoes later, she peeked in on Kelly, and melted. Her eldest was lying on her side facing the door. Tiny rested behind her, barely visible beyond her big sister. She must’ve snuck in during the middle of the night, abandoning her own room for her sister’s company.

Exactly the way it should be. What was childhood without late night gossip and early morning hijinks?

Rachel pulled the door almost shut and crept back to her own room. Lordy, what a night. Dinner with her favorite people, kisses touched by starlight, and trespassers. She peered blearily at her clock’s red digital numbers. Nearly three a.m., past time for sleep.

Dyuvad appeared in her doorway, startling her. “The property is secure.”

She placed a hand over her thudding heart and plopped onto the edge of her bed. “I reckon I need to check on the damage.”

“In the morning.” He strolled in, one loose limbed stride at a time, his eyes on her bare legs and the stretch of pink panties barely visible in the darkened room beneath the hem of her t-shirt. “I’m sleeping in here for the rest of the night. Tomorrow, Fate and I are reopening the passage between your room and mine.”

Her head was shaking before he stopped talking, but he just grunted, set his odd-looking gun on the nightstand, and unbuttoned the waistband of his shorts. “Bed now, beauty. There is much to be done when we wake.”

And with that, he dropped his shorts and stepped out of them, more than six feet of solidly built man, gloriously nude from head to toe. Rachel’s breath clogged in her throat, and for the life of her, she couldn’t find a single way to tell himno. He crawled into bed behind her and tugged her down beside him, spooning her, and a minute later, his breaths eased against her neck, evening into those of deep sleep.

She stared at her closet, blinking gritty eyes against the darkness. Dyuvad was in her bed. He was in her bednaked, holding her as a lover did. For some reason, it tickled her funny bone good. She covered a giggle with her hand and relaxed, and let humor carry her into sleep.

A solid weight rested on Dyuvad’s upper abdomen. He pried one sleep-deprived eye open. Tiny’s smiling face swam into focus. She was straddling him, one chubby leg on either side of his torso, with the bedding bunched up between them.

He tucked an arm behind his head and grinned at her. “Myengen dun arig, Lady Bettina.”

“Mengen arig, Dooda.”

She patted his chest as she prattled on in Pruxnæ, describing a trip they’d taken on his spaceship with Kelly and Rachel to Abyw.

Except she’d never been on his ship and wasn’t likely to ever be. Another curiosity to add to the growing collection, each a singular piece of the puzzle as to why he might be here protecting her.

Whywasshe so important to the Net telepaths? Earth was in the middle of nowhere, a virtual backwater planet. Humans here hadn’t even re-mastered space travel to any real degree. They hadn’t journeyed outside their own solar system, hadn’t established contact with any other space faring civilization, and they were too far from civilized space to reliably hook into the Net without help, let alone take advantage of its possibilities.

Rachel bounced into the doorway, already dressed for the day ahead, and skidded to a halt. Her smile faded into a blank stare. “Oh. You’re not up yet.”

He patted Tiny’s thigh and grinned at Rachel. “We were discussing travelling to my home.”

“You really understand her?”

Only when the toddler spoke his language or another he’d acquired. Rachel undoubtedly would not react well to learning that, and so, he held his tongue. He plucked Tiny off his chest and dropped her into the cushiony bed, goosing her ribs for good measure. She giggled and squirmed away from him off the bed, and away she went, half bouncing, half running past her mother into the house at large.

Dyuvad patted the mattress beside his hip. “There’s time yet before breakfast. Come to bed and kiss me.”

Her cheeks flared bright red. “Dyuvad!” she hissed. “The girls are right down the hallway.”

“Shut the door.”

“I am not shutting the door,” she gritted out. “It was bad enough you slept with me last night—”

“The first of many.”

“—and Tiny caught you in my bed, and now you want to…” She stopped in mid tirade, blinking at him. “What was that?”

“It was the first night of many.” And she wasn’t coming back to bed. Stubborn woman. He sat up, flung the sheet aside, andstood. There’d be time for romance later, when he could corner her again as he had early that morning after shooing off their trespassers. In the meantime, he had work to do, starting with undoing the damage those trespassers had inflicted on Rachel’s property. “You should’ve awakened me when you arose.”

“Oh. Well. Ha.” She cleared her throat and fixed her gaze on the far wall, well away from his nude body. “I figured you could use a minute or two more sleep, seeing as how you were up in the middle of the night.”

“As were you, beauty.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t the one doing the chasing and shooting. And I really appreciate that, by the way. Don’t know what me and the girls would’ve done if you hadn’t been here.”

He shoved his legs into his shorts and yanked them on. “It’s what I’m here for.”

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