Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance by Scarlett Rhone Page A

scar.”
    Vega grimaced. “I don’t care about scars.”
    “It’s also less likely to rip.”
    He didn’t reply, too caught up suddenly in thinking about how her hair was falling out of its braid strand by strand, and how it was gilt in this light, lit like gold or brass. And it was beautiful. So was her skin, smooth and pale, and then he got caught up considering the misty gray of her eyes. How did eyes come in that color? At once a stormy sky and the smoke from a wildfire.
    “Did I win?” he asked.
    “In a manner of speaking,” she muttered. He wanted to lift his head and watch her hands, but he suspected she would only yell at him for it.
    In short order, she was finished. He watched her lean back from his bedside and dig into her bag, pulling out an adhesive bandage which she settled over the wound on his side, hands gently smoothing it into place. The touch of her hands, he realized, was pleasant. Soft, warm, swift but kind. There was a throbbing in his side but it was dull, likely because she’d numbed the spot before getting to work. He found it astounding that a human could be so efficient, could be skilled enough to mimic the careful work of a medical droid. And she was admittedly much more pleasant to look at while she worked.
    “And my brothers?” he asked.
    “The guard told me they were put in the cells as punishment. Whatever those are.”
    “They’re cells. They’re what they sound like.”
    He did not envy them. The cells were dark, cold, and small. But he was having a hard time sympathizing since they’d stabbed him a whole bunch to get themselves there.
    “Well, I saved you,” the donara said, a bit curt. She looked down at him and he found himself lost for a moment in her eyes. “You’d had bled out on the sand, but I stopped it. You won’t be fighting any time soon, though, not if you want to keep being saved.”
    “You saved me twice,” he said, though he hadn’t meant to say it. Only to think it. But there it was, between them suddenly, so he went on. “You called my name and I heard you. I saw the axe. And then you saved me again.”
    Her expression changed. He saw something surprisingly soft in her eyes. “You saved me first,” she replied quietly.
    Vega dug his elbows into the cot’s mattress and started to sit up. He wanted to sit up. He found he wanted to look more deeply into her eyes. And some part of him knew that it was whatever medicine she’d given him to dull the pain, but he found that he didn’t care. She leaned forward, grasping at the pillow behind him, stuffing it up against the wall behind his back to help him sit.
    “You should stay lying down,” she said, frowning.
    “I don’t want to,” he said.
    “You’re weak.”
    “I don’t feel weak.”
    “That’s because whatever these Errai drugs are, they’re potent. But you are weak.”
    As though quite of its own accord, Vega’s hand drifted up and touched the donara’s hair. Fingertips first, just a light brush against those golden curls by her ear. She went still and he watched, fascinated, as his fingers sank deeper. They twisted more strands about his knuckles until he’d plunged his hand into that sunwheat spill, tresses falling free of the braid, and his thumb brushed her jaw.
    He looked into her eyes, then at her lips as she exhaled a breath, and then he kissed her. She tasted sweet and strange, foreign and familiar at once. He’d been afraid all he would taste was the sand and the blood of the fight, but her mouth was lush and inviting. Instead he tasted warmth, a coil of desire twisting itself through him as her lips answered his. He tightened his grip on her hair and pulled her closer, deepening the kiss, until he could slip his tongue into her mouth, exploring. Her tongue met his, twining in a dance, and Vega felt desire’s embers flare towards passion. He got an arm around her waist and lifted her off her knees on the floor, pulling her into his lap on the cot.
    In the back of his