Alien Mine (The Pruxnae: Earthside #1)

Chapter Ten

Dyuvad and Rachel winked into existence inside her living room near the couch. He staggered under the weight of gravity pulling him down and the dizziness gripping him tightly.

Couldn’t pass out, not this time. She needed him to hold on, needed him to protect her and the girls. He curled a limp Rachel against his chest and struggled to focus around the disorientation clouding his mind. The short distance between jumps hadn’t been so bad this time, but making one right after another was like being enveloped in Fryw brewed fog. One touch of the goddess’ breath could bespell a man into sleep for eternity. So it was said and so it was believed. None dared venture into a sudden fog for fear it had been sent by Fryw.

Rachel stirred against his chest and moaned softly.

Dyuvad forced his shaky legs into a staggering totter toward the couch and sank into it with a relief born of diminished strength. Rachel’s lashes were honey rich against ashen skin and her hair tangled in cold, damp knots over his arm. He cupped her face and stroked a thumb along her cheekbone, watching carefully as she slowly recovered from the jump.

She could’ve been hurt. If he hadn’t jumped into the van, those men would’ve turned it over with her inside it. There’d been no time for any other action, no time for Fate to reach her by car or for emergency services to dispatch aid. No time for anything but what Dyuvad had done .

Her eyes popped open on a quick inhale and her fingernails dug into his bare chest. “Dyuvad. Where…?”

“Shush, beauty,” he said. “You’re safe.”

“Safe. Ha.” Her lower lip trembled, then firmed, and her gaze flashed away and back. “How did we get home?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember Miguel’s man, Pablo, and the boy from the beach. They were rocking the van, trying to turn it over, and you…” Her hand curled into a fist against his skin, held tight against the erratic thud of his heart. “You were in the van, but that’s impossible. It was locked and you were supposed to be here at home.”

He met her gaze evenly, unsure what to say. He couldn’t lie to her, wouldn’t whether he should or not.

She sighed and closed her eyes. “I don’t care. I’m just glad you were there to…to stop those men.”

“That’s why I’m here,” he said gently, and cradled her close, stroking her hair as her softly hitching sighs slowly became muted, trembling sobs. A hollow ache grew in his gut, a numb certainty that if he hadn’t jumped when he had, if he’d passed out after the jump, if he hadn’t grabbed her and jumped again as quickly as he’d arrived…

If even one thing had gone wrong, Rachel would not now be wrapped safely in his embrace.

He weathered the storm of quiet tears, comforting her as much as he could, and all the while, turmoil reigned inside him. This had to stop before it escalated into real harm. He and Fate had formed a nebulous plan to approach Miguel Ramirez and negotiate a détente.

Or as Fate had said, Go in guns a-blazing and beat some ever lovin’ sense into that goll darned drug dealin’, woman stealin’, heavy fisted son of a biscuit eater .

The time had come for action. At the very next opportunity, Dyuvad would talk with Fate, and together, they would track Ramirez down and do what had to be done. And if that didn’t work, there was always Plan B: Steal Rachel and the girls away like the Pruxn? Dyuvad was.

It had always worked for the men of his people, and Dyuvad saw no reason why it wouldn’t work now, save for Rachel’s objections. Then again, it was hard to object to being stolen away when you were tied to a bed on a spaceship light years away from your home planet.

The rightness of it settled the uncertainty, squashing it into a tiny, forgettable lump. The Net ‘path had sent Dyuvad here to protect Tiny. What better way to do it than on Abyw, far away from the men intent on harming her mother?

Rachel sniffed a final time and pulled away, eyes lowered. “Sorry about the blubbering.”

Dyuvad waited for the appropriate definition to pop into his head, and grunted when nothing came to mind. Kraden autolearner. Where was it when he needed it? “Blubbering?”

“You know. Crying and carrying on like a banshee on a two day bender.” She blotted her eyes with the back of one hand, smearing black makeup along her skin, and frowned into his chest. “Are you ever going to wear a shirt again?”

“Only if you ask me to.”

She huffed out a laugh, part exasperation, part humor, and swept her palm over his bare shoulder, drying it. “A woman would have to be a pure plum fool to ask a man to cover up when he looks like you.”

He grinned, oddly pleased by the compliment. “You’re no fool.”

“No, I am not,” she said tartly, and immediately softened. “Thank you.”

He crooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. “You are welcome.”

A sigh shuddered out of her, warming his skin. “Lunch?”

“I have to check on Kelly, but after, I’ll make you a sandwich and sit with you while you eat and tell me of your journeys into town.”

“Dyuvad—”

He shushed her the best way he knew how, with a gentle kiss pressed against her lovely mouth, and he kept on kissing her until she relaxed against him and he was certain she’d forgotten all the reasons why she shouldn’t do exactly as he wished.

The rest of the day passed in a fog. Rachel checked on the girls right alongside Dyuvad, found them safe and sound in Kelly’s bed exactly where he’d told Kelly to go when he’d done whatever it was he’d done to get Rachel out of a bad situation.

She’d fibbed there. Oh, not at the time, certainly. She hadn’t needed to know how he’d gotten her out of that van right then, but after she’d made sure the girls were ok and had a quick lunch, after the rain finally petered out for good and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, after Fate came jogging over, all worried frowns and rumpled hair, after all of that, Rachel’s mind began turning over the impossibility of it all and raised a few inconvenient questions.

Like how exactly Dyuvad had gotten inside a locked van that had managed to keep out a handful of hooligans.

Like how exactly he’d gotten her home without her remembering it.

Like why exactly he kept telling her he was there to keep her and the girls safe, as if he’d somehow known trouble was heading their way before it even arrived.

But try as they might, those questions didn’t do more than buzz around inside her head. Rachel was too numb to voice a single question, too shaky to do more than pass the time between being saved and bedtime with family and chores, and a single thought underlying it all. Being held so close in Dyuvad’s embrace had felt right as rain and somehow like it was the safest place on Earth.

And wasn’t that a thought to give a body pause.

She called a tow truck and let Fate drive her out to meet it. Her van was dinged up good. Those rascals had managed to bend the goat up, break the windshield, and puncture a couple of tires. Rachel didn’t want to know what else they’d done that couldn’t be seen. When the mechanic called with an estimate for repairs was soon enough to learn all that. She retrieved her cellphone from the floor and left the tow truck driver to his job.

Bedtime did roll around, right on schedule, and with it the kind of dread Rachel hadn’t felt in a good, long while. The mere thought of facing an empty bed with Miguel Ramirez’ goons on the loose raised a sick knot in her gut. Dyuvad was right there through a narrow passage in her closet, just like he’d been right there all day long, never letting her or the girls out of his sight for longer than a cat’s breath.

Did he really have to be so far away during the night?

She gnawed on it while brushing her teeth. Her skin was still pasty pale underneath her tan, like the fear running thick in her blood. A God fearing woman would rest her worries on the Good Lord and trust in Him.

But maybe trusting in Him meant trusting in the man who seemed to think he’d been sent to Warwoman to protect a woman and her young’uns. Maybe it meant putting her faith in a man who, for the short time he’d been in Rachel’s life, should’ve been a stranger, but wasn’t. Maybe it meant leaning on somebody when she hadn’t had a body to lean on in years, save her own.

Rachel spat into the sink, rinsed out her toothbrush and mouth, then stared at her reflection in the mirror, the too pale skin and the wide green eyes and the tense set of her lips. She didn’t have to believe Dyuvad had been sent by God to know she could trust him. That, she already did. Otherwise, how could she possibly feel safe around him? How could she possibly have allowed him to watch over her girls in her absence if she didn’t trust him?

How could she want him the way she was beginning to, so much that just the thought of inviting him into her bed for a purely innocent reason fired her blood and weakened her limbs?

A quiet knock startled her out of her reverie. She put her toothbrush away, sucked a deep breath in and out of her lungs, and opened the door.

Dyuvad stood on the other side. One corner of his mouth twisted down. “The house is secure.”

She nodded, unsurprised at his initiative. “Ok.”

“The girls are asleep in Kelly’s room.”

“I know.”

“Fate is but a telephone call away.”

She cocked her head to the side and regarded the stiff set of his wide shoulders. “You ok?”

“I am…” His frown deepened and his hands flexed. “Concerned for your safety. I’ll sleep in your room tonight.”

Relief swept through her, brushing away her nerves and the aching fear. “Ok.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her, frown firmly in place. “It’s for your own safety.”

“I know.” She patted his arm and attempted a wobbly smile. “I appreciate it, too. Just give me a minute to check on the girls and we can go on to bed.”

“You gave in too easily.”

Probably, but what was the point of arguing when she’d already been trying to talk herself into asking him to sleep beside her? “I’ll fuss more next time.”

“No fussing,” he said, and stepped away from the door, still glowering at her.

She had a funny feeling he meant it, too.

Voluntarily agreeing to lie next to a man she wasn’t married to was one thing. Actually climbing into bed with that man was something else altogether. The one time Dyuvad had slept beside her, they’d both been too worn out to do anything except sleep. This time, as soon as the lights went out and they settled down next to each other, every sense Rachel had went on alert.

He pulled her against him, chest to chest, and tucked her head under his chin. “Relax, beauty. You’re safe now.”

“I know.”

She gathered her nerve and placed her palm flat against his chest over the steady thud of his heart. His skin was warm, smooth, and far too tempting for her peace of mind. Unbidden, her own heart skipped a beat and slow heat curled into her womanhood. She shifted, hoping to ease the ache, and her legs brushed against his.

“Mmm. Here.” Dyuvad skimmed one hand down her back over her butt and wrapped it around the back of her thigh, then wedged his thigh between hers and draped her leg over his bare hip. “Better?”

She huffed out a laugh. His thigh was pressed right against her nethers through her panties, exactly where a woman should want it to be. It was much, much better as far as she was concerned, but not exactly a proper position.

Screw that.

The thought popped into her mind, startling her, and she nearly laughed again. Yup, screw that. Dyuvad was here, wrapped around her, and so what if he was? What happened between them was just that, between him and her and nobody else except God.

And maybe, just maybe, He didn’t give a rat’s patootie what she was up to in her own time.

Rachel did laugh then, a muted giggle breathed into Dyuvad’s throat. “God’s truth, Dyuvad. I reckon you get better every time I see you.”

His hand tightened on her hip and he grunted.

“In fact, you get so much better,” she continued, “I reckon I might have to do something about it.”

A long silence followed her pronouncement, broken only by their soft breaths and the chirp of crickets outside her window. Finally, he said in a low, gruff voice, “Like what?”

“I don’t know. What do you want me to do?”

His hips pressed into hers, and with them the rigid length of his erection, right against her lower belly. “Don’t tempt me, beauty.”

If that wasn’t a challenge, she’d never heard one. She raked her fingernails down his chest, hard enough to pleasure, not hard enough to draw blood. “Why ever not?”

He groaned into her hair and his erection bobbed against her tummy. “You’re not ready for me.”

“Well, now,” she teased gently. “That depends on what you’re offering.”

Dyuvad pushed her onto her back and slid on top of her, and captured her mouth in a hungry kiss before she could catch her next breath, before she could do more than return what he was giving in full measure. He was deliciously heavy on top of her, his mouth greedy and demanding, devouring her in rough slides of his lips and tongue as his hips rocked against hers and heated passion burst into her, fully formed.

Oh, it was good to be held again, good to be loved. Good for the man doing the loving to be so strong and good and kind, and sexy as sin to boot. Dyuvad could have any woman he wanted. He’d had his pick that day at the beach, probably had all his life, and likely would again.

Yet he wanted her, a single mom with nothing to offer but a whole lot of work on a rundown farm.

He eased his hips off hers and slid a finger under the elastic of her panties, into her core. She drew back on a gasp, breaking their kiss, and arched her hips into the easy thrusting. “Dyuvad, please.”

“You don’t have to beg, beauty,” he said, and his finger slid out, leaving her bereft and empty. A moment later, he wrapped his hand around her panties and yanked them down, and was on top of her again, pressing her into the bed, his muscled body heavy and warm and right. “Tell me to stop.”

She dug her fingernails into his back and wiggled her hips, sliding the head of his erection along her wet heat. “Not on your life, mister.”

And he laughed softly and pressed his hips forward, slowly easing into her. “I live to serve.”

“Is that what you’re doing? Serving me?”

“Yes,” he said simply, and thrust a final time, fully seating himself inside her. “You feel so good, so…”

His next words were low murmurs in a vaguely familiar language, whispered between soft kisses pressed to her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her cheeks. He moved against her, gliding his erection in and out of her core, and she moved with him, silently urging him to take what little she had to give, to take it and build it into something new and wondrously heady, something bright and alive and molten.

To take the fire licking her skin and feed it until it scorched them both.

Together, they rose along a writhing flame, higher and higher, faster and harder, consuming each other in a desperate headlong rush. Rachel’s hands slid along Dyuvad’s sweat-slicked back, grappling for purchase. She wrapped her legs around his waist and arched her back, and hung on the precipice of release as he thrust into her over and over again, his breath a panting moan against her skin.

And because he was there, because he was pleasuring her so well and she needed more, so much more of him than she’d ever dreamed, she squeezed her muscles around him and bit his throat, sucking his salt-glazed skin into her mouth. He groaned and quickened his pace, pounding into her, wild and gloriously hard, and she burst into a million burning pieces and moaned her release into his throat, and lost herself in his unfettered passion.

His hips thrust against hers once, twice, three times in rapid succession, then his own release throbbed into her, filling her, and he slowed and finally stilled. “Beauty,” he murmured, a reverent whisper full of wonder and need. “Let me clean you.”

She tightened her limbs around him, holding him in place. “Not yet. I want to feel you inside me for a while more.”

“Just for a while,” he agreed, and slid to the side, still ensconced in her heat, taking her with him. She placed her palm over the unsteady thrum of his heart and drifted into sleep wrapped within Dyuvad’s strong embrace.

Rachel woke to an empty bed and a brightly lit room. She frowned at the rumpled pillow resting so innocently beside her own. When a man loved a woman as good as Dyuvad had loved her, he ought to stick around for the aftermath, oughtn’t he?

That was simple common courtesy .

She flopped over onto her back and glared at the shadows drifting across the white plaster ceiling. Maybe where Dyuvad came from, a man could get away with leaving a woman’s bed before she was ready for him to. Didn’t mean he could get away with it here.

Rachel flung the covers back and slithered out of bed, grabbed fresh clothes and a towel and plodded into the bathroom. A quick shower later, she dressed and brushed her teeth, and stalked into the kitchen, her mood not one whit lighter for completing the simple routine.

Dyuvad was propped against a counter, coffee cup in hand, listening to Kelly natter away about the solar system while Tiny tried to shove half a waffle into her pint-sized mouth. He glanced up at Rachel when she entered, then lifted his cup, hiding a small, knowing grin behind a sip.

A wave of something warm and alive flooded through her, heating her cheeks. Rachel glanced away. Talk about lighting a bulb from ten feet away. If he kept that up, she’d have to send the girls over to Fate’s so she could drag Dyuvad back to bed.

And didn’t that just make her a shameless hussy.

She bit her lower lip, stifling her own smile, and slid into a chair at the table next to Kelly. “Morning, Sunshine.”

Kelly leaned over and brushed a sloppy kiss across Rachel’s cheek. “Morning, Mama. We done did the chores already.”

“Did you, now?” Rachel cupped a hand over her eldest’s shiny hair. My, how they grew up. This one seemed determined to grow a bit too fast, but what could a mother do to stop the inevitable? “What about the milking?”

Tiny dropped a sticky fork into her half-full plate and jabbered away in her made up language, all smiles and bouncing curls.

Dyuvad grinned and said, “Finished, beauty. What are your plans for the day?”

“Only the usual Friday chores.”

Kelly slumped into her seat, a glum frown twisting her sweet mouth. “We missed library day this week. ”

For some unaccountable reason, Rachel’s gaze slid to Dyuvad. The troubles were upon them again, worse than before, seemed like. Was it really wise to go tromping around town where there wasn’t a dire need?

Dyuvad drained his cup, then set it in the kitchen sink. “We’ll make up for it in other ways.”

Kelly’s slumped shoulders straightened. “Other ways?”

“As we did yesterday.”

“You mean with your watch and the Internet and stuff?”

“With all of that,” Dyuvad agreed.

Rachel arched an eyebrow. “Your watch?”

“It’s magical,” Kelly said. “It’s got a 3D display and everything. You reckon we could look at the solar system on that thing, Dyuvad?”

“If you like.” Dyuvad’s eyes met Rachel’s across the room. A furrow appeared between his brows and his lips compressed into a tight line. He rubbed a thumb against the furrow, then dropped his hand to his side. “Fate and I must journey out of town tomorrow. I don’t want to leave you unprotected in my absence.”

Rachel stuck her chin in the air, bruised by his inference. “We got along just fine before you broke down my fence, Dyuvad.”

“Before is not now,” he pointed out, his voice as calm as the surface of an undisturbed pond.

The spit and vinegar drained out of her as quickly as remembered terror welled up. She sank against the back of her seat, one hand covering her trembling lips.

He was right. Before wasn’t now. Before, Miguel had finally forgotten about her. She and the girls had been safe enough for peace of mind, or the appearance of it anyway. That day at the lake had popped the balloon of her illusions, revealing them as the ethereal, unreal creatures they were. If not for Dyuvad, what would’ve happened to her yesterday? What would’ve happened to the girls?

The truth was, she and the girls weren’t safe. Maybe they never had been. Maybe they never would be again .

She blew out a weary breath, knuckled her own forehead, and finally gathered the words for a possible solution. “Maybe you and Fate could drop us off at Yasmin’s before you leave. She won’t mind a’tall, and maybe after she gets home from work, us girls can have a fun day without you men around.”

Kelly wrinkled her nose above a grin. “Big ol’ hairy men.”

Rachel laughed. “Some of them are anyway.”

“I think I’m insulted,” Dyuvad said, and Kelly giggled so hard, she nearly fell out of her chair.

They finished breakfast and cleaned up. Rachel scooted the girls into the back yard with a shouted admonition to stay on that side of the house. Surely they’d be safe for one morning’s play.

Dyuvad caught her arm on the way out the back door behind them and pulled her into his embrace. “You made no protest upon learning of my journey.”

Rachel shook her head, more amused by his language than anything. “You really need to deformalize a little, Dyuvad.”

“You need to stay on task,” he chided gently, and bumped his hips into hers. “It pleases me when you bow to my judgment.”

She snickered. “I ain’t bowing to nothing. You and Fate are gonna do what you’re gonna do. A mere woman doesn’t stand a chance of stopping you.”

“Is that so?”

He bent and brushed a kiss over her mouth, lingering when her lips parted and a soft sigh escaped her throat. If he was hoping to make her forget the conversation, it was working. Every thought in her head floated away at the slightest touch of his skin against hers.

She skimmed her hands up his bare chest, rested one over the muted beat of his heart, and with the other, traced a random pattern along his tattoo. He jerked back, hissed in a sharp breath, and smug pleasure joined the heat he’d whispered into her. Turn about was fair play, as far as she was concerned, and she meant to hold her own with him.

“Beauty,” he said, a reverent murmur meant only for her. “If the night were upon us and the girls in bed, you would not now be standing here torturing me with your wicked hands.”

She grinned against his skin, pleased to no end. All that church worship hadn’t driven the sin out of her. Reckon she’d have to make up for it come Sunday services with an extra prayer, one of thanksgiving.

Thank the good Lord she still had it in her to move a man to desperation.

“Go on with you now,” she said. “I need to see to the goats.”

“See to them.” He planted a hard kiss on her mouth and his hands tightened on her hips. “We will continue our discussion after lunch.”

“Which one?”

He huffed out a laugh and stepped away, but his heat lingered on her skin for a long time after.