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Chapter OneThe young Averan mother's eyes were huge with terror. She clutched her small child to the front of her body until it whimpered. The two Averans drew back from us as though we were monsters.
This was the strongest fear reaction to humans I'd witnessed since we landed on the planet two months ago. Averans in the capital had grown accustomed to us and no longer flinched at the sight of us. But this excursion was the furthest we'd been from the capital since we arrived. The Averans here had never seen humans before. It was a forceful reminder that they were afraid.
Dr. Sheleigh O'Brien stopped typing her observations as one of her orange curls fell forward into her eyes, obscuring the computer screen. She brushed it back, and then returned her hands to the keyboard. But her train of thought had evaporated like morning mist in sunlight.
She exhaled a disgruntled breath and frowned. She was a trained anthropologist and should have found a reason for their fear by now. Averans looked so much like humans that the depth of their fear didn't make sense. She'd found nothing in the Averans' current society to explain their reactions and, for some inexplicable reason, she'd been unable to learn their history. When she asked questions, she received polite silence. Why couldn't she concentrate hard enough to find answers?
She knew the reason why: Kleet Kryszan, oldest son and heir of the Averan ruler. She'd never felt the desire for another man that she felt for Kleet. Between studying hard for her dual doctorate, then anthropological missions to various planets belonging to Unified Sentient Planets, most of whose species weren'thuman, she'd never met a man as magnetic as Kleet. And he was forbidden fruit. Scientists were strongly discouraged from fraternizing with the native population on newly discovered planets like Avera. Too bad she couldn't seem to keep a clinical detachment about him.
As though her thoughts had conjured him, he dangled a piece of orange food in front of her. She followed the long familiar fingers up the masculine arm to gaze at Kleet's face. Her heart sped up and her breath caught, as it did whenever she saw him. His dark brown hair set off his burnished skin beautifully. His light eyes sparkled with happiness. They reflected whatever he wore. Today they were the warm gray of his neatly pressed shirt. He smiled and she melted inside.
"I brought you something," he cajoled in a smooth baritone that caressed up her spine. "It matches your hair. Open your mouth."
She'd learned to trust his frequent gifts of food.
She allowed him to slip the segment between her lips and she chewed the sweetly succulent fruit. It tasted similar to tropical fruits she'd eaten on Earth.
"Umm," she relished the morsel.
He smiled at her response and moved around her desk, handing her the rest of the fruit. "I chose the ripest one for you. I thought you'd like it." He sounded smugly satisfied. Her heart fluttered at the thought that she'd made him feel that way.
"You're going to make me fat with all this food." It was hard to think with him standing so close.
He eyed her body, openly hungry, and she grew warm inside. "Never. May I taste it?"
"Sure."
She offered him the fruit, but he sampled her lips instead. The kiss electrified her. A sensual jolt shot to her lower body. She savored the taste of his kiss as hungrily as she'd savored the fruit. His kisses had become more frequent and more ardent lately. They were always exciting and usually unexpected.
"Umm." The sound rumbled through their joined lips. His hand slid down her shirt to mold her breast and she jerked. "Easy," he murmured. She tried to calm her rioting nerves. Her nipple pebbled under his stroking hand. Heat pooled in her loins.
His lips moved to her neck to nibble the soft skin there. "When will you give yourself to me?" he invited, not for the first time. A nip on her ear made her gasp.
"You know I've never given myself to anyone. It has to be right." But her protest had begun to ring hollow in her ears.
"It feels right to me, Shel. Don't you want me filling you where you ache? Imagine me hot and full inside you, and the pleasure of joining with me. I want to be with you like that."
She groaned with want. His words made her lower body clench and she grew moist between her legs. She might not have physical experience with sex, but her girlfriends and female co-workers had described their love affairs to her for years. She'd collected those tales, mostly from a sociological and anthropological standpoint.
She imagined what it would be like, she wanted it, and she wanted to be one with him ... but she remembered the obstacles. She sighed. "I need time."
"I need you, Shel."
"I know. I'm just not ready. We've only known each other two months." And at that, they barely knew one another.
"You know enough to let me touch you here." He stroked her nipple, making her moan. "No man has been here before me. If this intimacy is right for us, then joining together is also right."
He was so compelling when he talked about them making love. She felt like getting naked and letting him come inside her. Her body burned with the desire to be filled with him. She wanted to see him naked and touch his bare flesh, hold it against her own body. He made her weak and mindless with need. In her thirty years she'd never met a man with whom she wanted to share her body intimately. She was beginning to feel ridiculous for still having her chastity in the face of her attraction to Kleet. If only this was Earth and not Avera.
"Soon," she moaned, giving him what he wanted. She'd think about the repercussions later, when she was alone.
He kissed her again, crushing her to him. The kiss was possessive and triumphant. She felt a tendril of fear that there was no backing out of it now. She'd just promised to give herself to him. She told her fear to shut up and enjoy the kiss.
Kleet was a marvelous kisser. He made her whole body riot, down to her tingling fingertips. She wanted to devour those wonderful lips, drown in them and savor them endlessly.
Being close to his hard, warm body was intoxicating. Her skin cried out with joy at touching him. Her breasts savored being pressed against his chest. Her arms clutched him fiercely, wanting, oh, did they want.
He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers, panting. She controlled her instinctive sound of protest. "You'll be mine," he declared, and there was a triumphant ring in his voice. He pulled away from her slowly, like a caress. "I have to go. I wanted to steal some time with you, and some kisses, of course." His smile was devilish.
"I'm glad you came." Her voice sounded breathless.
He cleared his throat. "You're going to be at the reception tonight?" It wasn't really a question.
"Of course. Most of my team is going."
"There will be dancing. You'll dance with me." Another statement.
"I'm supposed to dance with several of the council members and other important people."
He cocked his head and gave her a sardonic look. "Not more important than me."
"No, of course not. But I need to mingle a little. Harrier said the council members were curious about us."
"They are. But you'll dance many times with me."
"I look forward to it." A shiver ran through her at the thought of being in his arms again tonight.
He kissed her again, and then let her go. "Tonight," he promised. His eyes sizzled with heat.
"Tonight," she replied. She heard the yearning in her voice.
He turned and his long black cape swirled out around him. It trailed him out the door of her office like a tail would follow a proud lion.
She sighed. The passionate fog he engendered faded with his lack of proximity. Only his musky scent lingered in the room and clung to her body. She could still taste his kiss on her lips and she touched them with her fingers. His lips were magic.
"I see the heir was here again, Sheleigh," her human colleague, Dr. Marne Vorndran, sneered from the doorway of her office.
She snatched her fingers away from her lips and straightened in her chair. Had Marne seen Kleet arrive and followed him to Sheleigh's office, and then waited until Kleet left to confront her? Her cheeks burned at what Marne might have witnessed. She tried to brazen it out. "What do you want, Marne?"
He wore his wavy black hair a little too long and his trousers a little too tight. He would have been handsome except for the way his right lip and nostril pulled up as he sneered. It made one side of his face look like it had melted upwards.
"What I want won't be offered to me. It seems you want it kinky ... well, kinkier than I can be. Kryszan's not even human, Sheleigh. Are you making a detailed study of his alien genitalia?"
"You're foul."
