Page 49 of Alien Mine

It took an hour for everyone’s curiosity to wind down and for the girls to protest hunger. Dyuvad handed out dried fruits from his ship’s stores to appease them, and to demonstrate that the Terrans could, if they had to, live on food grown on other planets.

Just in case.

Once it became apparent that Rachel wasn’t going to freak out on him, as Kelly would say, his anxiety lessened and he relaxed as he led her and hers through his ship and answered the dozens of questions they flung at him. What was life like in outer space? Did the ship have gravity? How did it work? How many planets did humans live on? Were aliens friendly or were they bent on dominating the known universe?

The last question came from Kelly and was, he suspected, born out of a fear bred by Earth’s movie industry. He hadn’t the heart to tell her that there were several species of hostile aliens, but he did fill her in on the ones humans were largely friendly with, and even accessed the Net to show her pictures of a few of the humanoid ones.

If he’d let her, she would’ve happily spent hours in front of the viewscreen, exploring a universe she’d never known existed.

Eventually, the questions petered out. Rachel insisted on going home, and Dyuvad obligingly jumped them all back into her now-darkened living room, thankful he hadn’t passed out as Fate and Kelly did. The wooziness was there, but it was largely controllable. It was a change he deliberately put out of his mind for later study, filling his thoughts instead with all the things he could freely tell Rachel, now that she knew part of who he was.

Not all, but enough for the rest to make sense once he explained it.

He bided his time through a quick supper and Fate’s goodbyes, through the girls’ bath time and story time and bedtime. At last, Rachel headed for the shower, and Dyuvad couldn’t waitanother minute more. He followed her into the small bathroom, shut the door firmly behind himself, and shucked his clothes.

She was standing still under a spray of steaming water, hunched under it with her back to him. He paused for a moment and admired the curve of her shoulders, the indentation of her waist, the drops of water clinging to her smooth skin. His heart leapt and flipped in his chest and he knew, just knew, that whatever the future brought, he would spend it with her.

Even if it meant never returning to Abyw.

He yanked the shower curtain back and grinned when she whirled around and squawked and smacked a wet hand against his bare chest.

“Miss me?” he asked.

She huffed and put her back to him again. “I just saw you not five minutes ago.”

“Yes, but we were surrounded by people then.” And he’d desperately needed to be alone with her, any way he could get her. He picked up the soap, lathered his hands good, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her gently into the shelter of his body. “You took being on a spaceship well.”

He felt her laugh more than heard it. “It wasn’t like I could run screaming out of the room or something.”

“You could’ve asked me to take you home.”

“Would you have?”

“Any time you wanted.” She had to know he’d do anything for her, anything at all, if only she’d ask. “We can go back if you want to.”

“Kelly would like that,” she said softly, and relaxed into him, tilting her breasts into his touch. “I have so many questions, so many things I want to know about you and the worlds out there.”

“In good time, beauty.”

Though there were plenty of things she needed to know now, things he needed to tell her for his own peace of mind, and because he was his father’s son. And his mother’s.

He cupped his soapy hands over her breasts and kneaded gently, ignoring the desire pooling in his gut and hardening himagainst her firm ass. “On my world—”

“Abyw?”

The single word, uttered in her mountain sharp drawl, filled him with a possessive pleasure unlike any he’d ever known. “Yes, beauty. Abyw is an ice world. Beautiful, yes, but a hard world to survive on. We have…problems breeding daughters, and so, there’s always a shortage of marriageable women.”

She twisted in his embrace and looked up at him, her somber expression broken by the mischief twinkling in her green eyes. “That’s not a problem, Dyuvad. That’s a tragedy. Reckon there must be a lot of virgin men out there, huh.”

He sputtered out a laugh, outraged in spite of the humor lacing her voice. “We have spaceships.”

“Uh-huh.” She turned back around and traced her fingers lightly over the backs of his hands. When she continued, her voice held a studied nonchalance. “You weren’t a virgin when you landed here.”

“No,” he said gently. “But I was fresh from selecting a woman as my wife.”

She stiffened, and he rushed on, allowing his words to drown out her quick protest. “Someone else stole her before I could, and for this, I will always be grateful. If not for that, I would never have been sent to Earth. I would never have had the opportunity to protect Tiny, and I never would’ve met you.”

She was silent for a long while, still stiff under his hands and the water streaming down around them both. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible above the roar of the shower, and held a cautious note unlike her normal, straight-forward tone. “Stole?”

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