devouring the distance between them, saw himself grab her by the arm and spin her to face him. In his imagining, her skin was pinkened, her eyes glossy with desire, and he—
He grunted, shattering his own reverie.
Zevris wanted this odd little human, wanted her more than he’d even dreamed possible, but it would do him no good to stand here in the street fantasizing about her. All that would come of that was an erection—or a full-on erection, anyway, considering his shaft was already partway there. And that would be both uncomfortable and quite visible to anyone looking thanks to his snug jeans.
Unbidden, his gaze dipped to Tabitha’s backside. Her hooded sweater had ridden up in her haste, granting him a perfect view of her rounded ass, which her black leggings hugged closely. The tightness and heat in his gut intensified, and his cock, caught between his pants and his thigh, hardened further.
After almost a year of wondering what it meant, he finally understood one of the human phrases he’d heard so often.
That ass, though.
As his eyes trailed down her legs and back up again, a firestorm ignited within him. He very nearly dropped a hand to his groin to squeeze his shaft, desperate to alleviate the pressure, to address his growing discomfort. Only his military discipline stopped him; he was on the street in daylight, and humans frowned upon such public displays.
I’ve many things to do today, regardless.
Zevris willed himself to turn away from her, but found himself staring until Tabitha, his alluring little human, had walked around a corner and vanished from his view.
Though she was gone, her scent lingered in the air, easily discernable from all the rest. Today, its vanilla note was more pronounced. Zevris breathed it in, closing his eyes for a moment as he let her fragrance flow through him and overwhelm his senses. Some part of him might’ve been content merely with his every inhalation being perfumed by her scent.
Yet there was more to her scent than its allure or the hunger it roused within him—there was information in it. Or rather there was information in what was absent from it.
Both times he’d scented her, Zevris had picked up on a hint of the beast—Dexter. Dogs and cats, the most popular human pets, were species driven by scent in many ways, and they left traces of their own smells on everything. Tabitha had not escaped when it came to Dexter, though it was faint enough to easily ignore.
But there had been no trace of another male’s scent on Tabitha. Even when Zevris had been so close to her that he had heard her heart beating, he hadn’t smelled anything that suggested she’d been near another male—not yesterday and not this morning.
He knew it was a leap in logic, but that lack of male scent could very well have meant Tabitha was without a mate, that she was unclaimed…that she was single.
I will mark her.
Zevris lifted a hand and combed his fingers through his hair, extending his claws just enough for their tips to graze his scalp.
What am I doing?
He caught a fistful of his hair and squeezed. His experiences in covert operations had taught him how powerful emotions like hope could be—and how dangerous. It was wholly exploitable, used as a weapon as easily as it could be used as a source of inspiration, and he knew better than to base plans around it. He needed intelligence, information, insight. Evidence. He couldn’t risk his mission—his entire species—based on the small chance that Tabitha was single, that she was interested in him, that she was…that she could be, his mate.
He needed to be certain that she was unclaimed by another, that she was seeking a mate and not a fling like so many of the Earth females he’d met.
Zevris swore he’d seen that gleam in her eyes again this morning, that reflection of his yearning, that flame of desire. He also swore he’d smelled a hint of her arousal—just enough to set his blood ablaze but not enough to make him lose control.
What would his name—his true name—sound like from her lips, spoken in her soft, lyrical voice?
Clenching his jaw, he turned toward the mailbox. Even if this was not a combat mission, it was a military mission, and he would conduct it with the same precision and attention to detail he’d maintained through all his deployments.
Because that approach has been so successful thus far, right?
He was about to walk back to his dwelling