The Barbarian's Owned(44)

Biodiversity had always been Rae’s true calling, the planetary resource she cared about above all else.

If she could resurrect the Tasmanian tiger or grow and study the mega-fauna destroyed during the K-T winnowing, she owed it to her own world to try.

It was the Ythirian culture—not its people, not its dangerous wildlife, but its culture—that gave her pause. While she had allies in Garr and Vaya, Rae feared the gradual curtailment of her freedom if she chose to stay.

And yet, when she looked at Garr and honestly considered life without him, it pinched her somewhere deep. Her heart warmed at the sight of his broad, guileless features, and she liked how worry knit his brow when he observed her—no doubt assessing any lingering damage from the drug Yahlalla had dosed her with. Always concerned. Always the protector. There were things about their culture to like.

Ythir was dangerous. It wanted Rae to behave in a docile, submissive manner. Yet it was considerably less dangerous if she could trust Garr to protect her from that too. Trust, then, was the thing that made her nervous.

Scientists were not big on trust, and perhaps Rae was too much a skeptic. But then, if she could get Garr to relent on some of his traditions, perhaps she could take that as evidence he would always protect her interests.

As it happened, Rae had precisely an experiment in mind to collect this evidence—and it would be one they would both enjoy.

Flexing her fingers into fists and then extending each digit to make sure her manual dexterity was back, Rae took a long drink from the fruit juice Garr had brought.

She felt much more like herself and considered her lover. Sliding onto her knees, she raised her whole body until she was almost nose-to-nose with him.

He blinked in surprise. “You feel better?”

Nodding, she wrapped her fingers through his otoya vest, silky fibers making her shiver. Looking into his shiny black eyes, she could make out hints of where his pupils were, because of slight gradations in the darkness visible only when she was close. “You don’t want me to go back to Earth.”

“I want what is best for you,” he said evenly.

“I want what’s best for us both,” she emphasized.

“Us?”

“Yes. If you want a human woman,” she whispered into his ear, so close his breath tickled her throat, “you’re going to have to get used to the idea of an ‘us.’ ”

“More talk of belonging to one another?” He sounded unsure.

“Precisely.” She brushed her nose against one of the markings that traveled up his throat, and his breath caught.

“When Yahlalla was threatening me, I was afraid to die—but also afraid for you.”

“Why me?”

“Because she’d have killed you eventually. She wanted you so bad she’d have destroyed you for fear of someone else being yours.”

Kissing the hard line of his jaw, Rae could feel the faint traces of stubble from a recent shave. His bronzed skin smelled clean, and she tasted him with a kiss, as he’d tasted her skin so many times before.

She liked it; could certainly get used to his primal mode of lovemaking.

“Rae.” His eyes shut, body going still. “We cannot do this. I—this world—it’s dangerous.”

“Then stop me,” she teased, brushing her bottom lip over the dark circle beneath his ear, as she had before. He shuddered, and just when he started to, she heightened it by circling two fingers over the nova marking on his chest.

He let out a low, raw groan that filled her belly with excited flutters—a hungry sound that reached into the carnal parts of her imagination and filled it with phantoms of him claiming her on all fours in that overpowering, half-feral way.

“You’re obviously not going to stop me,” she whispered, opening his vest and trailing kisses down the dark lines.

She looked up into his eyes, teasing her lips over the nova marking. “If you aren’t going to stop me, the least you could do is touch me back.”

Garr needed no further encouragement, hands threading through her otoya night shirt. The fabric turned fluid and he pulled it from her—not off and over her head, no, he merely bunched his fist, pulled away, and it half flowed and half ripped, leaving her nude.

He clasped one hand around her back, the other firmly cupping her buttock. He hoisted her into his lap and, once she straddled him, his kisses fell to her breasts, feasting on her in a way that was all heat, tongue, and possessive growls.

Rae sank her fingers into his short, charcoal-colored hair and urged his mouth to her nipple. “That’s it,” she encouraged as he enveloped it. “Just where I want you. Keep doing that.” She looked down at his shiny-eyed stare and grinned.