Fourteen
“I suppose we’re bonded by being recipients of that glare,” Zevris said, folding his arms across his chest and leaning his backside against the counter. “And we were both deserving.”
Dexter glanced up at Zevris without lifting his head. He was lying on the floor now, chin on his paws, doing his best to look contrite and pathetic. He’d had his paws on the table and was sniffing at the covered plates when Zevris came downstairs only moments ago. The dog and the faloran had exchanged a long, heavy stare before the dog had dropped down on all fours, sauntered away from the table, and assumed his current position.
Zevris sighed and shifted his attention to the table. With all the improvised coverings, the arrangement wasn’t quite as impressive as he’d thought. It looked…haphazard. Sloppy. Like it had been an impulsive decision, executed without any true plan, thrown together on a whim.
Even if that was all true, that was not the image he wanted to present.
He pushed away from the counter and stepped over to Dexter, crouching. The dog turned his eyes up toward Zevris, looking even sadder and more apologetic than ever.
“Stay put,” Zevris commanded. “Do not touch the food.”
Dexter’s tail thumped on the floor once and went still.
Though the answer was not satisfactory, Zevris accepted it. He only needed a minute or two. Rising, he hurried to the back door, deactivated the security field and disengaged the lock, and slid it open.
After a final warning glance at Dexter—who was facing away now but had his ears perked—Zevris stepped out into the back yard. He jogged to the fence, checked for any onlookers, and climbed over into Tabitha’s yard. Her back door was still unlocked. As he slipped inside, he reprimanded himself again.
This place was her home, and the items within were her belongings. It was inconsiderate of him to leave it unsecured and vulnerable. He’d have to remedy that today.
But for now, his goal was simple and clear. He walked into her kitchen, plucked the potted cactus off its windowsill perch, and returned to his dwelling.
As Zevris entered his kitchen, his pace slowed, and he arched a brow. Dexter was still lying on his belly with his head down, but Zevris could’ve sworn the dog was at least a couple feet closer to the table. Eyes narrowed on the animal, Zevris brought the cactus to the table, set it down, and shifted the food-laden plates in an attempt to find a more symmetrical layout.
After a minute or two of fiddling, he stepped back. It was far from perfect, but it would have to do. He was already stretching his limited selection of flatware as far as it could go.
Zevris glanced down at Dexter again. Those big, dark eyes, so sad and sorry, were almost enough to convince Zevris that he’d been the one who’d done wrong and not Dexter.
They were almost enough to convince him the dog hadn’t moved a few inches closer.
Zevris returned to the counter, leaned his backside against it, and propped his hands on the countertop to either side of his hips. He eyed the dog skeptically.
Dexter released a huff that made his lips flap.
With a huff of his own, Zevris turned his gaze to the hallway. Would Tabitha come down? She must’ve been hungry, but she’d also been furious with him. It was quite possible that her anger would outweigh her appetite, and she’d avoid him for the rest of the day.
Not that he’d allow that to happen.
Twenty-nine days…
He understood that she needed space, that she needed time to adjust to this situation, but he didn’t have much time to waste. Absently, he drummed his fingers against the granite countertop. His tail twitched against his leg. How long a wait was long enough?
Despite all the deadly tasks Zevris Akkaran had undertaken, despite all the times he’d faced his own potential death, nothing filled him with as much dread as the thought of Tabitha Mathews deciding she didn’t want to see him again.
“If she doesn’t come down soon, the food will be cold, and I suppose you’ll get your feast.” He glanced at Dexter and frowned. The dog was unquestionably closer now, his snout within a few inches of one of the table’s legs.
Upstairs, the bedroom door opened, and Zevris heard Tabitha’s light footsteps as she made her way down the stairs. Dexter lifted his head and turned toward the kitchen’s entryway.
The end of Zevris’s tail curled, and his heart thumped a little faster.
Tabitha hesitantly appeared a few moments later.
She looked freshly showered, with her damp blonde hair woven into a large braid that fell over one shoulder. She wore blue jeans that clung to her shapely legs, socks, a white shirt that said Too Hot To Candle across the front, and an unbuttoned maroon cardigan.
Even like this—in what must’ve been her everyday attire—she was stunningly alluring.
Dexter scrabbled to his feet and hurried toward her, tongue lolling and tail wagging faster than Zevris had ever seen. The dog barked and lifted his front paws onto Tabitha, who beamed a smile down at him, catching his face between her hands.
“Hey Dex,” Tabitha said, voice high and happy. She scratched him behind his ears. “Did you miss me?”
The dog barked again, rubbing his head affectionately against her before sitting at her feet.
Tabitha straightened, her smile fading as she studied the spread on the table before she raised her gaze to meet Zevris’s. “No breakfast in bed?”
“I’m more than willing to take you back to my bed if that’s what you desire.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “You do, and I’ll gouge your eyes out with a spoon.”
Blood thirsty female.
Zevris couldn’t stop the corner of his mouth from quirking up. “So long as you are the last thing I see, I wouldn’t mind.”
Tabitha snorted.
Pushing away from the counter, Zevris walked to the table. He drew out a chair for her. “Come. Sit.”
She stared at him for a moment longer, her fingers toying with the cuffs of her sweater. Finally, she closed the distance between them and sat, allowing him to push her chair in. Dexter followed, plopping down next to Tabitha, looking hopeful.
Zevris pulled out his own chair and leaned over the table, removing the coverings on the various plates of food. “I wasn’t sure what you would prefer. Help yourself.”
Her brows rose as she looked over the spread, but her gaze paused and lingered on the cactus. The corners of her lips lifted into a small smile. She reached out, picked up a strip of bacon, and fed it to Dexter, who noisily gobbled it down.
“So this is what you were doing while my bladder was in danger of exploding?” she asked.
He deserved the sting inflicted by her words. “Yes. I focused so much on fulfilling this need that I lost sight of the others.” Zevris gathered the spare plates and covers and carried them to the counter, where he set them down. “Again, I am sorry. Hopefully, this will make it up to you, if only in small part.”
“Are you going to tie me to the bed again?”
Zevris drew in a deep breath, returned to the table, and sat down. “No.”
“Are you letting me go?” she asked hopefully. Too hopefully.
“No. But”—he hurried to add when her features fell—“I wish to make a compromise.”
Tabitha’s brow creased, and she turned her head slightly, giving him a suspicious look. “What kind of compromise?”
“Eat. Some of it’s likely getting cold already.”
She looked back down at the table. Finally, she picked up her fork and used it to transfer a pancake to her plate, followed by a small pile of scrambled eggs, and two strips of bacon. She drizzled syrup onto the pancake.
“I’m listening.” Tabitha glanced at him as she took a bite of her eggs.
Zevris piled food onto his plate, barely looking at what he was taking. “I’ve already explained why I cannot let you go, Tabitha, but I want to do all I can to make you feel like…a guest, and not a prisoner. I will not restrain you again. You may move
about this dwelling freely, without restriction, but you cannot leave. My being here must remain secret.”
“Zevris, please just let me go home. I swear I won’t tell anyone.”
“I believe you, Nykasha, but I cannot take the chance. Not yet. If it were merely a matter of me being discovered, I wouldn’t care. But this mission is larger than me, and the consequences of me being discovered could be dire for my people.”
Tabitha stared down at her plate, absently pushing her food around with her fork. She didn’t take another bite.
“Four weeks,” Zevris said.
She looked up at him and frowned. “What?”
“I want you, Tabitha. More than anything I’ve ever wanted.” His heart pounded, his chest grew tight, and his mouth went dry, but none of that stopped him from continuing. “I have met more females than I can count since coming to this planet. Of them all, only you have this pull on me. From the moment we met, I knew you were it. You were mine.
“I know how much it is to ask, but allow me four weeks to convince you. To court you, to win you, to…earn you. And to make you see that you want me, too. Just…give me time, Tabitha. Give me a chance.”
Tabitha searched his eyes. “And…after the four weeks?”
“If I have failed, you are free to go.”
And you will never see me again.
Zevris placed his free hand on his thigh, curling his fingers as he gritted his teeth. The tips of his claws pricked his flesh through the denim. Would he be able to leave her? Would he be able to live without seeing her? It was insane to have grown so attached to this female already, to have come to crave her so much, but he understood on an instinctual level that he needed her.
And part of his mind was already formulating plans to disappear, to use his years of experience to evade the military force that had charged him with this very mission, just so he could be with Tabitha.
“And you are to never speak a word of my true nature, my people, or my mission to anyone,” he continued, “for doing so would put your life in danger.”
His female was silent for a long while. He wished he could read her thoughts, wished he knew what troubled her, knew her doubts, her fears, her wishes, her desires.
“So, four weeks to convince me, and you promise not to tie me up again?” she asked.
Not unless you ask me too, Nykasha.
The very thought of Tabitha submitting to him like that, of agreeing to be bound to his bed so he could do with her as he pleased, had his cock hardening.
“I will not bind you, but you will still share my bed.”
Her cheeks flushed, and Zevris knew she was thinking back to this morning, when she’d watched as he’d pleasured himself.
His gaze bored into hers. “I will not force myself upon you, Tabitha. I will only take what you give freely. But I will not relent. I will do everything I can to have you beneath me, to have your taste upon my tongue, to make you mine.”
Tabitha looked away, her cheeks turning that adorable shade of pink, but not before he caught the flash of want in her eyes. She reached up with both hands to fiddle with the end of her braid.
Zevris forced himself to take a bite of food, barely tasting it. Eager as he was for her to answer, for her to agree, he wanted her to do so in her own time.
“And, um…your mission,” she said. “It’s to…form a mating bond, right? To…impregnate me?”
“Technically, it is to determine whether those things are even possible between our species. But yes. Those are the objectives.” He leaned forward. “Regardless of my mission, even if that bond is not possible between us, I want you for my lifemate, Tabitha.”
Though he knew, deep down, that the bond would work. It had to work—he would accept no other outcome.
She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and quietly, and returned her gaze to him. “Okay. I will give you four weeks.”
He grinned.
“On the condition that you bring my supplies, equipment, and computer here so I can continue my work,” she added.
“Anything you need, I will obtain for you. Any comfort you desire.”
“What about my phone? And will I be able to record my videos, interact with my customers, ship out orders? Talk to my friends?”
“I…”
I haven’t thought about all that.
“I will move your equipment and supplies after breakfast,” he said, “but the phone and the computer…I need time for those, Tabitha. Granting you that access would put me at great risk.”
“What if I prove you can trust me?”
“Just give me time, Nykasha,” he said again, gently. “We will get there.”
Tabitha glanced down at Dexter, gave him another strip of bacon, then looked back at Zevris. She smiled. “Okay. I accept.”
Relief and excitement flooded Zevris, surging so quickly and powerfully that he felt like he would burst. All he could do was grin at her like a damned fool.
Tabitha Mathews, you are mine.
Fifteen
At least a hundred new scents had taken up residence in Zevris’s dwelling, each one vying for dominance over the rest but none managing to achieve that goal. He was handling the plethora of smells better than he’d anticipated. He wasn’t sure whether that was because they’d only been introduced a few at a time as he’d brought boxes full of supplies over or because the jumbled smells cancelled each other out, but it didn’t matter.
All that mattered was visible before him.
He was standing in the doorway of his spare first-floor room, shoulder leaned against the doorframe, watching as Tabitha arranged her workspace. She was focused and efficient, yet at the same time had grown quite relaxed. She’d made several amusing comments as she’d sorted the scents and colors, and she’d stopped more than a few times to open a container, sniff its contents, and make a pleased hum.
She was in her element now, and though he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt her, he found her passion and excitement astoundingly arousing. But if he were being honest with himself, there wasn’t anything about her that he didn’t find astoundingly arousing. His gaze dipped down to her luscious ass.
He was going to have to learn how to live with a permanent erection, because his cock refused to ease. The damned thing was making Dexter look well behaved.
At least he could be thankful that the scent that had affected him the day he’d given her the cactus was either absent or overwhelmed by the others. In his current state of arousal, that smell would’ve been too much to bear, and might very well have pushed him to break his word to her.
Reminder of that event, of his loss of control, brought a frown to his face. He didn’t know of any aphrodisiacs with so powerful an effect on falorans, especially not any that worked by scent alone. Learning what he could about it would be prudent—both to report back to the ultricar and to prevent himself from being overcome by it again.
Reluctant as he was to disturb his female’s work, he needed to ask while it was fresh on his mind. “Tabitha?”
She looked up at him as she opened another box. “Yeah?”
“The day I brought you the cactus, there was a strong scent in your home. What was it?”
Her brows creased. “I’m…not sure. There’s usually a lot of strong scents going on while I’m working.”
“It was extremely prominent. It seemed floral, but not a flower with which I am familiar. You had spilled it on your apron.”
“Oh! That was lily of the valley.” She smiled sheepishly as she returned her attention to the box, taking out bars of soap and stacking them neatly on the shelving he’d installed. She kept them together based on their colorations and designs. “I hadn’t been expecting company, so I was kind of…in the zone. When you rang the doorbell, I was walking with the bottle of scent, and Dexter jumped up in front of me. It startled me, and I dropped the bottle. Some spilled on the floor, but most of it wound up on me.
“Why do you ask?”
Just curious mi
ght have been the easiest answer, but his cock chose that moment to throb, making a deep ache resonate through his lower belly as though to remind him of what had happened.
“It had an…unexpected effect on me.”
Tabitha looked at him, tilted her head to the side, and lowered her eyebrows. Her gaze dipped down his body. Her eyes flared, and she quickly turned away, skin flushed. Her motions were noticeably quicker as she resumed stacking soap on the shelf.
She’d seen his erection.
He chuckled. She was not unaffected by him, and he found her reactions adorable. She was a shy female when it came to sex. He couldn’t wait to see pleasure brighten her eyes, couldn’t wait to watch her come undone beneath him, couldn’t wait until she gained the confidence to take all the ecstasy she craved from him.
“Is that, um…why you ran off?” she asked.
“Yes. It seemed best not to involve you in my…condition at the time.”
Tabitha tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I wondered why you ran off like that.”
Zevris smiled, and that ache in his groin intensified. In that moment, he longed to walk up behind her, wrap her braid around his fist, and tilt her head aside to skim his lips and fangs across her delicate skin. To nip at the ear she’d just bared, to trail his tongue along her jaw, to taste her lips with his.
He was beginning to wonder how long he could resist his desires even without the effects of the lily of the valley clouding his mind.
“I never intended to flee,” he said, voice sounding just a touch strained to his own ears.
She pressed her lips together for a moment, dropping her gaze. “I didn’t mean to run from you, either. Well”—she reached into the box and removed another stack of bar soap—“not the first couple times, anyway. You know, before I saw your, erm…” She mumbled something, the words so low and muffled that they were difficult to make out with any real certainty.
But to Zevris, they’d sounded suspiciously close to sexier side. He told himself that first word must have been alien, not sexier, though he wasn’t quite convinced by that explanation, however probable it seemed.
Taken By The Alien Next Door Page 17
