Page 27 of Fated to the Alien Hero

“A color game?” The second I ask, I rethink my decision. Is their color game some kind of sex thing?

Evren nods. “Yes. They will point out different things and name the colors that make it up. For instance, this is brown.”

He lifts the fall of my hair and glides his fingers through it sending a shiver racing down my back. Was it only this morning that I told myself it wasn’t right for me to even consider being romantically involved with him? Because at this moment, I’m not sure why.

My marriage to Grady is over. I will never go back with him. Why shouldn’t I move on with my life with someone who couldmake me happy and who has made it more than obvious he cares deeply? Is it really wrong to start again? With Evren?

I stop in the middle of the path we’re on and turn to face him. My hand goes to chest. “What color is your skin?”

His whole body tightens as if my touch has the same affect on him as his does on me.

“Purple,” he says in a voice gone gruff and vibrates through my fingertips that lay on him.

“I’d consider it more lavender, but that’s just me.” I trace the swirling line of one of his mating marks. “What about this color?”

“Black,” Evren answers in an even huskier tone.

I step close enough that my bound arm brushes across his stomach. He sucks in a hissing breath. I thread my fingers through his hair, dragging my nails along his scalp before lifting his hair like he did mine. “Yours is yellow.”

“It is.” He swallows and I follow the movement.

Never before have I felt particularly like a seductress, but right now I do. Seeing Evren’s reaction to my touch makes me feel powerful. Grady’s only ever made me feel weak.Stop thinking about him. The past needs to stay in the past.

“Will you kiss me? I know what I said earlier today—about us—but I think I might have been wrong.”

He gently cups my jaw and I shiver. The rough, calloused pads scrape across my skin in the most delightful way. It makes me wonder how they’d feel on other parts of me.

“Are you sure?” Evren asks. “I do not want you to have any regrets about anything that happens between us.”

I shake my head. “I won’t. Gary’s visit changed something inside me. Made me realize what I want and what I’ve been missing. I don’t want to be afraid, and if there’s a chance for us to be together, then I think I need to take it.”

He doesn’t ask me again. Instead, he gives me everything I could have asked for and more. Evren’s lips capture mine in a gentle kiss that, for something so simple, nearly takes my breath away. My toes curl within my shoes and my nipples harden. I ache to rub myself against him, and curse Grady yet again for putting my arm in this sling which means there’s too much space between Evren and me.

I wait for him to deepen the kiss, but he doesn’t. It takes me far too long to realize it’s because he doesn’t know how. Which means it’s up to me to take the lead and demand what I want until he learns.

A boldness I’m not sure I’ve ever displayed before comes out, and I flick my tongue against Evren’s lips. Just a teasing, fleeting touch at first. The second time I do it, he parts them. Merely a sliver’s width, but enough that I’m able to slip inside his mouth and brush against his tongue. I graze one of his teeth and the sharpness of it sends a shockwave through me that starts a low pulse to beat between my thighs.

Evren catches on quickly and with only a bit more coaxing, he takes over. The kiss is perfect. Not too wet and with the right amount of playfulness that makes kissing one of my favorite things. Sex is okay. Or at least it was in the beginning of my marriage, but kissing? Kissing is different. It’s like…like the fuse on a stick of dynamite, I suppose.

It sparks and tingles, and the anticipation slowly builds because there’s the knowledge that at the end of that fuse the explosion happens. It’s like how the journey is almost better than the destination because there’s so much more to experience. An orgasm is a single, powerful moment. A kiss, though, is like a thousand moments, and I get to enjoy each one to its fullest.

A loud screech echoes around us and we break apart with heaving breaths. Evren grabs the sword in the belt at his waist, but relaxes his grip at the sight of the two yellow alien birds fighting in the sky above us.

“There must be a female nearby,” he says, sounding far more composed than I feel.

“How can you tell they’re male?”

He points upward at them. “Do you see that long black line that decorates their tail feathers?”

I study the two birds that dart and weave before nearly colliding with each other in a frantic flapping of wings. Finally, I spot what he’s pointing at. “Yes, I see it.”

“The females do not have that. Only the males do,” he says. “Mellenje spend the beginning of the warm season attempting to find their mate so they may nest and breed. It is a courting ritual, not unlike the dating of humans.”

That makes me smile. “Where did you hear about dating, anyway? Or at least a walking date?”

Evren laces his fingers through mine and we set off again.

“Benham, at first. Then Jodah. It is how they courted their mates before the females accepted the mate bond. They both said it isduring these walking dates that theirkeeshlasfell in love with them.”

---