The Barbarian's Owned(23)

She tried for levity, hoping it would keep that from happening. “Fire away, big guy. Consider me a captive audience.” It didn’t entirely work, and her shoulders quaked.

“Humans have elaborate courtship rituals. What are they called? ‘Dates’?”

She nodded, a hand still over her eyes. Where was he going with this?

“In these dates, the female may turn down the male without finding a defender to fight him.”

“We’re big on the not-fighting part. Only females at places called ‘fraternity parties’ or ‘Boston sporting events’ require fighting before they’ll mate.” A little better. She had control of her voice again.

“Tell me about dates.”

Rae shrugged helplessly. “It’s just dinner and a show. Feeling each other out. Minimal kidnapping. Look, it won’t work. You can’t drag me away from everything I know and then ask to take me out.” She lowered her hand, though only to glare at him.

He settled into that tall marble chair. “Date me for one week. If you don’t wish to be my mate when it’s done, I will take you home.”

Rae stared at him. The floor seemed to have dropped out from under her. She scrabbled for a thought, her heart hammering in her chest. Leaning forward, searching him for the lie, she asked, “Seriously?”

“One week,” he said resolutely.

That stalled her. She took the moment to look at Garr. To really look at him, and to wonder what he’d planned.

In a week, there was no way he could change her mind. He should have known as much. “You’re lying.” He had to be.

“I am prime. I do not lie. Especially to my mate.”

That was why he’d offered the deal. It was his arrogance! He thought she’d fall for him if he just loosened his grip a little. Rae narrowed her eyes. “One week and then I go home.”

“If you choose to.”

“What do I have to do for the week?” she asked, stomach turning when she realized he might not apprehend that dates weren’t necessarily going to end in sex.

“Dinner. And a show.”

No, she did not like his smile one bit. It sent goose bumps all over her body.

Garr stood abruptly and prowled toward her. She squirmed back into her seat, suddenly unsure, but he scooped her from the chair into his arms.

Her hands gripped the first thing she could to balance herself—steeling one against his shoulder, the other his ridiculously thick forearm. The ease with which he carried through a threshold and up the stairs made her flush. “Where are we going?”

“To bed. You’re exhausted.”

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

He didn’t answer, and she scowled, deciding his attempt to woo her was off to a sore start.

The bedroom was nice, though. The glass encasement of its walls hid none of the natural beauty of the tree. The trunk itself made up one wall, the bark composed of dark, sleek squama.

One branch formed a beam that supported the ceiling. The bed was at the room’s center, circular, and massive enough that she could sleep without ever touching Garr.

There were two adjoined chambers: the shower and a separate bathroom. While the bathroom’s walls were opaque, the shower… well, that was entirely translucent.

“Not much privacy,” she worried.

“As I said, it’s a common destination for mated Kaythonians.”

He laid her on the bed, the blankets and sheets made from otoya. It reacted to her nestling into the fabric by swelling into a pillow beneath her head and softening at the touch of her skin. Garr, kneeling into the mattress beneath her, lifted one of her feet and untied her laces.

She frowned. “While we’re on this date, I can still tell you ‘no,’ right?”

He paused from loosening the laces, glancing down at her. “Yes.” He didn’t seem to like the idea of being told not to do something, and Rae toyed with the idea of ordering him to get lost.

But instead, she grinned. For all his flaws, Garr hadn’t yet gone back on his word. She believed him, and what was more, she was so dead tired that having him pry off her shoes seemed fine. Depending on what he went after next, though, she might have to drop the hammer.

He tossed both her shoes onto the floor. But when he went for her socks, her stomach lurched with the horrid mental image of her marred skin—pruned, blistered, and torn from hiking in wet shoes for two days. “Don’t,” she fretted self-consciously. “They’re going to be gross.”

“You’re hurt,” Garr said, standing and going to a bough that grew inside their room, where maybe sixteen different varieties of fruit sprouted from the same short length of a branch—like a Skorvag’s idea of a medicine cabinet, she realized.