Page 76 of Rescued By the Alien Bull Rider

I resisted the pull of pure elation.

“Am I dreaming?” I asked, slapping my hands against my cheeks so hard it made a loudsmack!“This can’t be happening.”

“It is real,” Zohro insisted, so fearsome that he nearly looked angry. His hands returned to my face, caging in my jaw. There was nowhere to run. “There was a time that I would have let you leave me. That time has long-since passed. Just try to leave me now. Try to go back to your old world. I will do anything to keep you, short of throwing myself in front of the shuttle meant to take you away. No. I will not even stop there. Try to leave, and you’d merely need to look out your shuttle’s window to see me clinging to the side of it. Like a barnacle.”

“A… A barnacle?!”

“Precisely so. A barnacle,” he said with a terrifying sort of certainty. His eyes burned. His voice went suddenly ragged. “Because I’m stuck on you, Jolene. I’m stuck on you and Autumn both.”

Some of the fearsomeness in him had ebbed, leaving behind a sombre tenderness. He stroked his thumbs along my cheeks, just below my eyes. Reverently, like I was something precious he could break but chose instead to worship. “I think that I was always meant to burn down my old life. So that I could find you and Autumn in the ashes.”

I laughed with startled wonder.

“Look around, Zohro,” I said softly. I took his hands from my face and squeezed them. Then, I gestured to Autumn in her cradle, to Wyn, to the paddock and the trees and the sky. “Does all this look like ashes to you?”

He followed the sweep of my arm with his eyes.

“No,” he said, his gaze finally returning to me. “It looks like mine.”

Unfortunately,I couldn’t just jump my Zabrian husband’s bones right there in the field. Autumn woke up soon after, very loudly demanding snacks and snuggles, and there were still a bunch of daily chores left on the list. I helped Zohro with some of it in between feeds, then took Autumn to the Surgery Shed to have a bath together.

When I returned to the house, Zohro wasn’t back yet. I fed Autumn again, burped her, changed her, and got her settled in the cradle Zohro had brought back here at some point in the afternoon. Then, I ate some food myself and put aside a plate for Zohro.

And then, I waited.

Which, it turned out, was kind of dangerous. Because in Zohro’s absence, a toxic voice inside tried to convince me that everything he’d said to me out there today wasn’t true. Even now, even after he’d declared his love for me in the clearest terms possible, I was still too afraid to get my hopes up.

But then I let my mind wander back over our time together. I re-examined everything he’d done for me with new eyes. And wanted to kick myself for not seeing any of it before. The way he’d always protected me. The way he’d made that salve for me, insisting on putting it on my back himself. The way he made me pyjamas my first night – the very pyjamas I was wearing now. The way he’d promised me I wouldn’t die that terrifying night on the surgical table. The way he’d called me beautiful.

The way his eyes burned so bright white when he looked at me.

I’d been blind. Blinded by my trauma. By the big hole inside me that told me no one would ever really love me. That everyone left in the end.

But not him. Zohro had never left. Had never wavered. Not once.

I jumped up at the sound of his boots on the porch. He came into the house, and it was like I was looking at a new man. Or maybe I was a new woman. Because the air between us suddenly snapped with electricity that I hadn’t let myself acknowledge before.

It made me feel very shy. Which was probably ridiculous, after everything we’d been through.

“I… I got you some food!” I squeaked, nudging the plate towards him. He ignored it, taking off his hat and placing it on a hook by the door. I watched the taut muscles of his shoulders bunch with the movement.

“Jolene.”

My tummy flipped. He turned towards me, desire dug into every feature.

“I want to kiss you. Because I’m realizing now I could have been kissing you this whole blasted time, and I want to make up for all those lost opportunities.”

“Oh… OK.”

That sounded good to me.

It sounded very, very good.

“Autumn’s asleep,” I said, tilting my head in her direction. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

I moved towards it, but Zohro’s tail shot out like a lasso, gripping my wrist.

“Not yet,” he grumbled. “Kiss first.”

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