It’s true, what she says, about my taking the anti-bonding measures. But the drugs that her hob is working to refine and further develop don’t prevent a bonding. It only inhibits a Rakhii’s mate-threat-heightened and possessive killing instincts.
Gracie does not have any interest in having me as a mate—no more than I’d want her for one. Thus it would behoove her to keep all contact and ‘enhancing touches’ to herself.
I fit her with a stern look of warning and turn to the other humans. The new ones along with the ones who have been here for some time. Normally, on any given day when the whole herd can be found at my heels, their constant presence irritates me—but I’m suddenly feeling jovial towards all of them, to their entire species, and I even jest with them. “Your species may finally have a use that I approve of, along with those tiny specks you call rocks. But still, you’re slow. Get a move on those rock piles in the center there. The lot of you may have managed to please me now, but you still couldn’t be slower if you were picking up stones with one arm.”
There’s the loudest rush of sucked-in air. The humans, all of them it seems, have gasped.
...Which is odd. I insult them all the time.
Yet all their wide eyes stare at me in disbelief and horror and maybe a little mutiny.
My glare narrows on them.
Rather than cowering, they stand under my baleful scrutiny, beginning to dart looks at…
At the female I worked near today. She’s here! The one I brought the hydration gel to. The one who set down her rock in order to accept the drink offering from me, which only marginally registered in my consciousness. If I had given her a more thorough looking over, as I am now, I’d have seen that the reason she did this was because she had to.
She only has one arm.
CHAPTER 2
ISLA
I’ve heard so much about this Bubashuu alien that it was starting to feel like he was more myth and legend than man… erm, alien. But, uh, turns out everything I’ve heard is true. He seems permanently grumpy, he’s Herculean in strength, he’s jacked like The Rock, and I’m pretty sure he could break Chuck Norris. Heck, he’d probably eat Chuck Norris after beating him. I mean, this alien’s fangs have been bared the whole time we’ve been here because he’s always snarling at us.
Except for when he offered me something to drink.
A warm shiver moves up my back, remembering how surprised I was to have him of all people—aliens, whatever—bring it to me. Scales and other alien-ness aside, he’s a knockout. I literally thought we’d all swallowed our tongues when we came around the side of the wagon and saw the big bad boss man that everyone talks about.
Gracie, our guide-de-jour, hadn’t breathed a word about his hotness. But the sparkle in her eyes and her wicked smile as she’d faced us during the introduction said she knew why we were all stunned and staring.
It was also because the hot alien looked seriously pissed.
Still, when he’d lifted that chunk of mountain, his arms had strained, and his work shirt, which was rolled up at the sleeves, showed him off to perfection. All his visible muscles being gloriously exerted, his veins popping up, standing out pretty despite his scaly skin.
*Mental wolf whistle.*
Then he’d stretched to dump the mountain chunk into the wagon, and his work shirt had ridden up, his rugged work pants sitting just right on his hips to expose the hard-cut V-frame of his lower torso, the midriff of which is filled to almost celestial perfection with a scrub board of abdominal muscles.
Good God. I’m still drooling. Apparently, if a guy is stacked like this one, it does not matter if his stomach has scales.
So we’d stood there like idiots, mouths hanging open and struggling not to wilt under the serious unhappy face he was wilting us with while we came to grips with the knowledge that this super hot alien is the horribly mean taskmaster who everyone is afraid of. Oh, the warnings we’ve heard in regards to this guy. When you get to work don’t speak, don’t stop, don’t argue, do not attempt to throw holy water on him. (It makes him meaner.) He can’t be cured by holy water because he isn’t evil… he’s just a grouch.
Tales are told that he makes girls cry. Hot guys should not make girls cry. Hot