Page 97 of Invasive Species
“Not surprised that guy got ill to be honest, it's a mess in here,” I say with a chuckle to lighten the mood, but I'm not laughing inside. What have I done? I've put all my insecurities out like laundry on a line. “I mean, even you found me annoying.”
Gara gathers me in his arms, banding them around me and shutting out the world so it's just him and me. My breath shortens in my chest; he's so handsome, tiny scales glinting over his cheekbones and across the sharp profile of his square jaw, softened now as he gazes at me. Why did I ever think he was sour and severe?
His gaze captures my own, emerald eyes glinting. “I was… wary of you, Arra-bellah.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Probably not me as in me, right? It was because I’m a woman.”
A low breath escapes his lips, eucalyptus and mint. His air wraps around me. “Yes, that’s what I meant. You’ve seen how females here hold the lives of clones, in low value with high contempt. I thought you’d be the same, take advantage of our nature. But you didn’t. You, Arra-bellah.”
“Anyone from Earth would have been kind like that. I’m not special in that regard, just…” I tap my forehead. “The stuff up here, I guess.”
“You, Arra-bellah. And that means every part of you.”
It’s nice, but he can’t really mean that. Gara can take my unstructured mess of an outburst and help me organize it, but he won’t want to do that forever.
“I don’t have the words, I…” His green eyes glint as his luscious lips spread in a special smile just for me. “Arra-bellah, you are my treasure, my light, my beating hearts, my moon and my sun.”
His words ring with familiarity that make them a little hollow, like hearing a line from a movie. Where have I heard them before?
His breath is hot on my face, eyes flickering between mine, gauging my reaction. “You are my… prize. My conquest.”
Ah. The greatest hits from the love interests in the Planet of the Pirate Prince series.
I reward him with a smile; I know what he's trying to convey, and it's lovely he wants to say sweet nothings to me, but I love Gara's wit and humor too. What would he tell me if he used his own words?
A small frown wrinkles his forehead, scales darkening into moss green. “What’s amiss? Did I say something wrong?”
“No, but?—”
He jerks back. “I shouldn’t be this close to you. I’m sorry, I… I don’t know what came over me.”
“No, Gara, stay.” I stretch upward, resting against his chest. His warmth spreads to me, his scales firm under my fingertips. A tingle builds inside me like an unpainted mural, singing through me desperate to be let out. I run my hands over his color, each finger bumping across his soft scales. They turn peach wherever I touch, a perfect record like the sweep of paint from a brush.
As I stroke up his biceps to his shoulders and up to his neck, his eyes slide half-close like a contented cat. Where my chest presses against his, the scales glow an eye-wateringly bright neon green, and a throb builds in my heart at the connection point between us.
I don’t have the words either to describe this. Only impulses.
“I want you,” I whisper, throwing myself completely open, as vulnerable as when I paint, more so, because Gara means so much to me.
Heat pools between my legs as he runs his fingers over my arms, the light touch sending shivers of pleasure through me and raising goosebumps in their wake, like I have scales of my own.
“I…” His heavy hands drop on my shoulders, halting me. “It's torture to say no, but I don't want to hurt you further, Arra-bellah.”
The warmth heads straight to my cheeks, which start burning. What am I doing? I’m about to climb him like a tree.
But for the first time in a long time, energy pulses through my muscles along with the itchy feeling of forgetting something important scratching at me. I want a fifty-mile cold swim, a hot chocolate, a list making session, all at once. I need it all. Now.
I need Gara.
“You won’t hurt me?—”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
Is he right? Either way, if he's saying no, I have to respect that, and I sit back on my heels on the squelchy bed, shivers of want passing through me. “My body’s hotly disagreeing with you, but I understand.”
“I’m also finding it hard to deprive us, but… it is for the best. We need the results back from the biopsy to know whether…” He trails off, scales dimming to a brackish brown.
“Whether…?” I prompt gently.
