Stolen and Seduced - Christine Pope Page 0,35

hands.

“I’m going to close my hands around yours,” I warned her, not moving until she had given that affirmative nod of her head. Then I folded her hand in mine and allowed the mating bond to fill my entire body, coursing through me until it overflowed and surrounded me.

The moment it flowed into her she gasped, her eyes opening wide. “What…what is that?”

“That is how I feel about you.”

Lucy

I couldn’t decide whether to jerk my hand out of Jalek’s or throw the rest of myself at him.

When he touched me, a jolt of electricity shuddered through my entire body, leaving every centimeter of my skin prickling with an awareness of him, as if all the cells inside me were straining, reaching out to him.

If this was how he felt about me, I didn’t know how he had remained so calm—so polite and so distant—the whole time we had been alone together.

I glanced from his hands to his eyes, certain that the wonder I felt filled my gaze.

Still, he simply held my hand lightly grasped between his own. And somehow, I knew if I pulled away, he would let me go, even though he was enormous and strong and could, if he chose, overpower me, and force me to stay.

There was power in that knowledge. If I wanted, I could walk away from him, and he wouldn’t try to stop me. I wasn’t certain how I knew it, but I was as sure of it as I was anything.

After running away from a stalker ex-boyfriend, the knowledge was exhilarating.

Jalek watched as all these thoughts flickered through my mind, and then gently transferred his hold to lift one and move it toward me slowly. “May I touch you?” he asked, gesturing toward my face.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, but almost desperate for him to continue.

He traced my cheek with his index finger, trailing invisible sparks behind. “That is the mate-bond,” he whispered. “Reminding us that we belong together. Promising that our union will be joyful.”

Closing my eyes, I leaned toward him, tilting my head into his touch. “I have a life here.” My objection was half-hearted, at best. “The kids at the youth center need me.”

“My entire planet needs you,” Jalek countered. “I need you. And you could build a life with me.”

I shook my head. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t just take off to another planet with some alien shapeshifter guy I just met. That was insane.

Everything about this is insane.

I sat up and pulled my hand away from Jalek’s. As I had known he would, he let me pull away, the only sign of his reluctance a last, lingering touch of his fingertips to mine. An expression of sorrow crossed his face, so intense it made me want to cry for him.

“I have a proposal,” Jalek said after a moment.

“I thought that’s kind of what you’ve been doing.”

His brow creased in confusion, then cleared. “Ah. A play on words. Sorry. The translator can be a little slow with humor. That comes with time.”

Time we wouldn’t have. He didn’t say it aloud, but I practically heard it echoing in the air around us.

“What’s your proposal?”

“Let us make love. Just once. Allow me to know what it is like to truly be with my fated mate. And then, should you wish to return to your life, I will take you anywhere you want to go.”

Make love. Such an old-fashioned phrase.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I rubbed my hands up and over my shoulders. The scar tissue covering my recent one felt odd under my fingers.

I’d never been a one-night-stand kind of girl. I didn’t hang out in bars and pick up men.

Then again, Jalek wasn’t an ordinary man. And when he left, he’d be going far away.

Too far for me to ever even contact him again.

I glanced at him, sitting so totally comfortably—and oh-so-naked—on the metal block he’d raised from the panels in the floor. His pink patterned skin darkened to purple in some places, and every part of me wanted to trace those patterns, to see if his skin was as soft as his fur had been when I’d touched him in his animal form.

I would never have another chance like this. I mean really, when would I ever have the opportunity to have sex with a gorgeous, shapeshifting alien again?

My stomach twisted with something between anxiety and desire as I whispered my agreement. “Yes.”

Jalek

With one word, Lucy made my world complete—at least for the moment. I had bought