Page 26 of Alien Mine

One corner of her mouth turned down. “Is it really?”

“Have I not said so?” He zipped the shorts and, without bothering to button them, strode across the room and hauled her against him. “On Abyw, a woman greets her man with a kiss.”

“On where?”

He nearly cursed the slip. She was too easy to be around, too comfortable. He’d have to watch that, unless he wanted to panic her with the truth. “My home,” he said simply, and buried his face in her throat, breathing in her warm scent. “From now on, you will never leave my bed without kissing me.”

She sputtered out a laugh and thwacked a hand into his side. “There will be no more bed sharing, Dyuvad.”

Yes, there would be, as soon as he could manage it again. He nipped her throat, smirked when she sucked in a sharp breath and melted against him. His beauty was ripe for the pleasure he could give her, but there was time yet for that, when he’d done what he’d come here to do.

When he’d wooed Rachel as a man should.

He let her go and followed her into the kitchen, smug over her dazed expression and not quite steady progress through her home. Kelly and Tiny were sitting at the kitchen table, huddledtogether over one of Kelly’s books about space. Kelly’s quiet voice filled the room as she read the text out loud to her sister.

She stopped abruptly when he and Rachel entered, and grinned, her brown eyes dancing. “We got too much to do to lay in bed all day, lazy bones.”

Rachel gasped, but Dyuvad laughed. He tousled the girl’s hair, earning another mischievous grin, and dropped into a chair beside her. “Hold your tongue, little one, else I won’t talk your mother into taking us to the lake this week.”

Kelly’s eyes widened and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You reckon she’ll really let us go?”

“I can hear you,” Rachel said drily from her station at the stove.

Dyuvad waggled his eyebrows at Kelly and lowered his voice likewise. “Maybe if we work really hard, she’ll take us. What do you think?”

“Still listening,” Rachel sang out, and Kelly giggled and rocked back and forth in her chair.

Fate arrived ten minutes later, just as Rachel turned the eye off under the heaping pan of meat and vegetable laced scrambled eggs she’d made. He sat down next to Dyuvad, his narrow face set in firm, unhappy lines. “Rach called me earlier, told me aboutyou know what. Me and you need to have a little talk later, ol’ son. Get this mess straightened out, you hear?”

Dyuvad caught the glance Rachel slid his way and understood exactly. “When the girls nap this afternoon.”

Fate nodded and leaned his chair back, balancing it on two legs with his hands sprawled out across the worn denim covering his lean thighs. “I got some ideas.”

“As do I.”

Rachel smacked a plate onto the counter. “This is still my home.”

But the determined gleam in Fate’s eyes matched Dyuvad’s will. A man took care of his own, no matter what part of the galaxy he hailed from, even when his own was a stubborn Earthling with enough gumption to fill a universe.

The chance for a man to man talk came sooner than either had anticipated. Rachel kept the girls busy in the back of the house with the goats and the garden while Fate and Dyuvad attempted to clean sprayed paint off the front of the house.

Dyuvad hadn’t taken the time to translate the partial word scrawled across the front door after chasing the intruders off, but now that he had, a slow burn roiled in his gut. What kind of men thought it acceptable to vandalize a woman’s home with a derogatory term? Thank Fryw his alarms had gone off the moment the aggressors had set foot on Rachel’s property, else they may have had time to complete their profanity laden task.

Fate clucked his tongue as he backed screws out of hinges. “Good thing you was here to scare them bastards off.”

Dyuvad held the open front door still, out of the way of Fate’s work. “Rachel could’ve handled them on her own.”

“Maybe. Glad she didn’t have to.”

Dyuvad grunted an agreement.

“Heard you wound up inside the house after,” Fate continued.

“Seemed like the best place to watch over everyone,” Dyuvad said mildly. “You have ideas on how to handle this situation?”

Fate cut a side-eyed glance at him, his grin a little too knowing. “Which situation you talking about? The fact that them hombres is messing with my sister or the fact that you are?”

Dyuvad ground his teeth together. Damned if he’d apologize for winding up in Rachel’s bed, holding her through the rest of the night. He’d enjoyed it and so had she. As long as they were both in accord, what business was it of anyone else? “I’m not messing with her. Now, can we please discuss a strategy for dealing with these winyu runners?”

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