Page 76 of Stranded with the Alien

Of all the excuses she expected from him, this was not one of them. She blinked.

“Huh?”

He tried again.

“When we are around one another, we go into heat. I cannot explain it any other way.”

A slow blush rose from her throat to her cheeks.

“You’re saying your, um, pheromones are making us want to havesexwith each other?”

He regarded her steadily.

“It is all I can think about.”

Her face grew even hotter. But there was another heat too. Lower down.Muchlower down.

“Well, I guess that explains a lot.”

“How so?”

“Even when I was furious just now, I still thought about climbing you like a tree.”

Despite himself, his mouth twitched.

“So you understand the torment I am going through? Why I have to leave?”

“Not really. I mean, if we know what’s causing it, we can deal with it.”

“Oh?” Vahn folded his arms. “Are you some kind of biology expert? You have training in pheromone suppression?”

“No, but…” she looked down at her hands. “It, um, it strikes me that if we justdoit, we’ll get it out of our system.”

For a moment he thought he’d misheard.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not a biologist but I know that if you follow a biological impulse, the initial stimulus fades. Like, if you’re hungry you eat and then your hunger goes away.”

He cocked his head to one side, uncertain if she was jesting.

“You are saying that we should engage invastrato remove any further desire forvastra?”

“Well, I mean, we’ve done everything else.”

“You are wrong, human.” His voice was suddenly ragged. “There are many,manymore things we could do.”

In the silence that followed she thought she might implode from the rush of warmth that gathered low in her stomach.

“I don’t want you to leave,” she said in a low voice. “So unless you have a better idea…”

She trailed off. He tilted her chin up with a finger, forcing her to meet his eyes.

“Our people would call it treason.”

“Yes.”

“Unnatural, even.”

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