Page 47 of Claimed by an Alien Warrior

I don’twantRen to leave me.

It wasn’t because of his promise to protect her, even though shedidfeel safe with him around. Shelikedhim. A lot. He made her laugh, listened to what she had to say, made her feel like she mattered.

He made her feel good. Desirable, even. She hadn’t felt that way in…well, she’dneverfelt that way. When he looked at her, she felt like she was enough, like she wasmorethan enough. Like she waseverything.

But Rendashwasleaving. As soon as they reached his ship, he would fly away from here — and out of her life — for good. There was no sense in getting attached or hoping for anything more. He had a home somewhere out there, and she wasn’t part of it.

Over an hour had gone by when a large, dark figure approached the truck from the passenger side. Zoey’s eyes widened, and her heart skipped a beat. The figure stopped beside the passenger window, raised an arm, and pressed a now familiar four-fingered hand against the glass. Zoey immediately unlocked the doors.

Ren tugged the door open and climbed into the truck. Even with the cab being so high off the ground, he still had to fold himself to get in. She shivered against the cold air that followed him in, but he quickly pulled the door shut.

“Where have you been?” Zoey demanded, at once angry and relieved. He’d been gone far too long. She reached across him to open the passenger-side vents. “It’s an ice storm out there!”

“I’m aware,” he replied, brushing crusted snow off the shoulders of his coat.

She grabbed one of his upper hands. It was freezing.

“Jesus,” she said, snagging hold of the other. Without thought, she shoved them up her shirt, placing them high against her sides. His fingers brushed the bottom of her bra. She clenched her jaw to hold in her cry of shock at the chill of his palms against her bare flesh and caught his other hands, placing them below the first pair. When they were in place, she tugged her shirt down to lock in what body heat she could offer.

“What are you doing, Zoey?” he asked, voice tight as he pulled back. She had a sense that the slight trembling in his hands wasn’t because of the cold.

She grasped the wrists of his upper arms and held them in place. “Warming your hands.”

He frowned, but his fingers clutched her a little tighter. “They will warm easily enough on their own. You’ve only managed to make yourself cold.”

“This is faster,” she said, trying to ignore the way her body was reacting to his touch. A combination of cold and desirous anticipation made her nipples tighten. “Everyone knows that body heat works best.”

He watched her skeptically with all four eyes but didn’t withdraw. After a short while, his hands slid a little higher, the slight roughness of his scales grazing her sides. Zoey’s breath quickened as her skin heated.

Rendash released a heavy breath. His hands stilled before he abruptly pulled them away. “We should go,” he said hurriedly. “I found a place for us to stay.”

Zoey stared at him. He’d curled his hands into fists and dropped them onto his thighs as though that were the only way to maintain control of them. No one had ever acted that way with her before, no one had ever strugglednotto touch her. But shewantedhis hands on her. She’d been so close to lifting her bra and leaning forward to press her breasts into his hands.

But he was right; this was not the place, not the time, and she obviously wasn’t thinking clearly.

It’s been way too long…

Skin pulsing with the lingering effects of his touch, Zoey took hold of the steering wheel and backed out of their spot. Rendash directed her out of the parking lot and onto the main road. After a few minutes, they turned onto a side road that led higher into the hills. Between the thick snow, the trees on either side, and the darkness, she was lost after a few more turns.

“How did you get this far?” she asked. “You were on foot.”

“I was sped on by mynyros. Fortunately, my control held long enough for me to find a place and return.”

Though there was snow on the roads, they had clearly been plowed recently — one thing to be grateful for, at least. Even the single-lane road he told her to turn onto looked to have been well-maintained, though it couldn’t have been more than a long driveway.

They turned off that path and onto another, passing through a thick copse of fir trees. Zoey’s jaw dropped as the headlights finally hit the building at the end.

“This place?” she asked, unable to look away.

The cabin before them was something out of the movies — specifically, movies about rich families that went to their fancy getaway homes in the mountains to ski and wear matching sweaters by the fire. It was two stories tall, with vertical wood siding on the top that onlyappearedweatherworn and old, and gorgeous stonework on the lower floor. The windows were wide and generous, without a curtain in sight, but who would look in? The place was surrounded by trees, a private little slice of the Rockies.

“It appeared to be unoccupied,” he said, “and there is some sort of computer system handling its security. I was able to interface with the system and deactivate it.”

Zoey tore her gaze away from the cabin to look at Ren. “You did what? How?”

“Mynyrosholds a great deal of information within it to aid me on alien worlds, which happens frequently. Its energy can be used to interface with various systems and disrupt their operations in a variety of ways. The technology on this planet is relatively simple compared to what it must usually interface with, so it was not difficult to override the security.”

“You candothat? Like, with your mind?”

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