her gaze with his own. “Is there a problem with the painting?”
“It just so…boring.”
He frowned, walked to the painting, and lifted it off the nails that were holding it in place. Grasping it in both hands, he leaned his head back and scrutinized the painting, like he was some sexy, shirtless alien art dealer.
“Why?” he asked, glancing at her.
“There’s no…life in it. No vibrancy. There’s nothing wrong with it, not really, but it just…doesn’t have any character. And it says nothing about you.”
Zevris angled the painting slightly, as though to view it from a different perspective. “It doesn’t say that I’m an ordinary human male in his early-to-mid-thirties with a comfortable career and room for a mate?”
Tabitha blinked at him. “No, it just says you’re boring. And most people don’t go into other people’s bedrooms, so it’s not like anyone would be able to see that thing and assume all that.”
Brows falling low, he set the painting on the floor, leaning it against the wall, and turned to face her fully. “Firstly, it is common for humans to bring people they are interested in into their bedrooms. It happens in almost all your forms of entertainment. Secondly, I am not boring. I’m a faloran althicar, a soldier who has run covert missions on over a dozen planets.”
“Are you seriously trying to educate me about human behavior?” She glared at him as unwanted jealousy simmered within her. “And just how many women have you brought in here that you were interested in?”
Zevris placed his big hands on the bed, mere inches from her thigh, and leaned toward her. The mattress dipped as more and more of his weight settled upon it. He held her gaze with his glowing, entrancing blue eyes. “One.”
Tabitha swallowed thickly. “Why me? I…I’m sure you’ve met plenty of other women since you’ve been here. I can’t imagine you’d have a hard time finding women who’d jump at the chance to sleep with you.”
“You assume that I would want to sleep with any woman who threw herself at me.” He stood upright and walked to the foot of the bed. “It is not merely a matter of fitting the right anatomical pieces together, Tabitha. I have met many human females in my time here. You are the only one who I have felt drawn to, and that draw is far too powerful to be ignored.”
I refuse to feel flattered. I will not be drawn in by sweet words.
“I just thought, well, with the urgency of your people needing women—” Her words ended when she saw him lift a handful of her underwear from the box. He set them on the bed, followed by another handful. Warmth flooded her cheeks.
Zevris plucked up a lacy pair of black and hot pink panties, dangling them from the claw of his pointer finger. “I look forward to seeing these on you, though I’m even more excited about taking them off.”
The fire in Zevris’s eyes stole Tabitha’s breath. Her pussy clenched, aching more deeply than she could ever have imagined possible.
He cocked his head, trailing his fiery gaze down her body. “I wonder what it is you are wearing beneath your clothes now.”
“You…you can just keep wondering,” she said, shifting on the bed to draw her knees closer to her chest and squeeze her thighs together. The movement caused something to roll from the pile of panties. The moment she looked at the object, mortification struck her, twisting her stomach into knots.
Oh no. No, no, no, no.
How could she have forgotten that her panties weren’t the only things she kept in that drawer?
Zevris chuckled, dropped the underwear onto the pile, and grasped the little bullet vibrator between his forefinger and thumb. “I am intrigued by this.” He turned it on. The sound of its vibrations was thunderous in the otherwise quiet room. “I think we’ll find many ways to put it to use.”
Unbidden, a scene played in her head—Zevris staring down at her with those magical blue eyes as he pressed the vibrator to her clit, his free hand kneading the flesh of her thigh before he slipped two of his fingers inside her, pumping in and out, just like she wanted him to do with his cock. The Zevris in her imagination watched with a hungry gaze as she came undone before lowering his mouth to her—
He turned off the bullet and leaned his head toward her, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. One corner of his mouth tilted up in