Taken by the Alien Next Door (Aliens Among Us #1) - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,34

for which he’d longed.

Zevris pushed forward, and she poured surprising strength into her legs, halting his momentum. The weak frame of the screen door buckled under her foot, causing part of it to pop off the rails.

Though he could have easily overpowered her, doing so would have placed her at risk of injury, and Zevris had not lied. He would never hurt Tabitha. He took a step backward, and her legs fell, one of her heels bumping his shin. Spinning around, he walked through the doorway backward.

Tabitha said something against his hand—he wasn’t certain, but it sounded like a curse—and threw her legs up again, hooking her feet on either side of the doorway. Her resistance slowed Zevris for a moment, but she could not find strong enough purchase to stop him this time. Both her feet slipped, and again her legs fell, but not before he saw the angry red lines on the tops of her feet.

A pang of guilt struck his chest, yet he did not hesitate. He turned around again, putting his back to the door, and curled the end of his tail around the handle. With a twist of his hips, he dragged the glass door shut. A flick of his tail engaged the lock, and a signal from his neural transceiver activated the forcefields at every door and window in the residence along with the sound dampeners.

Now that his dwelling was secure, he took a moment to breathe. He should’ve been used to things going wrong so quickly, should’ve been accustomed to sudden bursts of action, but his stay on Earth had been so quiet, so peaceful, so uneventful, that he’d let his guard down.

Why had she been in his yard? Why had she happened to come just then, when he was uncloaked and speaking to his commander, the one time he’d forgotten to close the door?

A sharp pain on his hand swept those questions aside. Zevris hissed through his fangs as the pain intensified—he’d never imagined how much a bite from those relatively flat human teeth could hurt, but Tabitha was certainly demonstrating the potential now.

He dropped her onto her feet as he attempted to pry his hand from the viselike hold of her teeth, which had clamped down over part of his palm and the knuckle of his pointer finger. Zevris didn’t realize his mistake until it was too late. Her new position meant her backside was no longer against his pelvis.

Tabitha twisted her torso aside and swung her hand backward. Her fist struck his scrotum—which was offered no protection by his sweatpants—with the force of one of those huge wrecking balls humans used to demolish buildings.

A supernova of pain blasted outward from the point of impact, so overwhelming that it dropped Zevris to a knee. Tabitha wrenched herself out of his hold and ran for the front door.

Again, when he’d yearned for her touch on his cock, he’d had something rather different in mind. He clenched his teeth and cupped his groin, trying to breathe through the pain as his runaway mate-to-be tugged on the doorknob and fumbled with the locks.

“Someone help me!” She pounded the door with her fists.

“Tabitha,” Zevris rasped, bracing a hand on his knee and shoving himself back to his feet. His stomach lurched, and a tight, impossibly heavy lump of agony sank low in his belly. He forced himself toward her.

She turned her head and caught sight of him. Her eyes widened, and after a brief search, she grabbed the carved stone tray—meant primarily to hold house keys—from atop the stand beside the door and raised it as though it were a weapon. The keys that had been in the tray fell to the floor with a jangling clank.

“Stay away,” she warned.

Zevris paused in the entrance of the foyer, placing a hand on the wall to steady himself as another wave of agony nearly made him double over. “I need you to calm down, Tabitha.”

“And I need you to let me out. Now.”

He trailed his gaze over her. Blades of grass clung to her bare feet, her shirt was slightly twisted, and part of its hem had worked its way under the waistband of her pants. Her hair was loose and wild around her heaving shoulders, and her face was flushed.

He’d wanted to see her like this, but he’d wanted it to be in the wake of their mating, not after he’d been forced to take her prisoner against her will. Not with that fear gleaming in