Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance by Juniper Leigh Page B

just wanted to see Earth, and here I was, hundreds of thousands of light years away from my destination, on a primitive planet, with slavers on the hunt for me. I’d left a note for my parents, so they wouldn’t start to worry about me for a month, and I was on my own.
    No. I wasn’t on my own. Calder was with me.
    “My parents work for the Echelon, and I studied languages so that I might follow in their footsteps, but so far…” I shrugged. “I feel worlds away from what I set out to do, who I set out to be.”
    “It seems quite fortuitous, given the circumstances,” he said. “What you chose to study, I mean.”
    I smirked. “Yes,” I agreed. “It certainly does.”
    A long silence lapsed between us, but it wasn’t strange or awkward as some of the previous silences had been. It was comfortable, companionable, and after a deep breath, Calder said, “My lady, I want you to know that I am willing to help you.”
    “Thank you, Calder.”
    “Even if it means that it is only a…how did you say…a paper marriage? Even if it is only make believe, just for the time while you are here and trying to get back to your people and rescue your friends, I am at your service.”
    I swallowed hard as I stared at him in the firelight, and my heart was nail hammered into the hard wood of my chest.
    “Why do you want to help me?” I asked, my voice small even in the electric air between us.
    “I do not know,” came his gruff reply. “You are loud and pig-headed and stubborn and entitled and I had never thought that I would return to the city of my birth, nor that I would take a wife, even a temporary pretend one. And yet here I am.”
    “Well, you are abrasive and ornery and demanding and inflexible,” I shot back. But he smiled at me, and I softened. “And I am terribly grateful.”

***
    We laid our heads down upon the furs when they were still fuzzy with drink, and I scooted in close to Calder so our body heat might warm each other. He slung an arm around me and we slept that way, my back pressed to his chest, his hand cupping my breast. We slept like we’d always slept that way, all tangled up together, and when the dawn crept in through the canvas of the tent, I thought perhaps the daylight would break the spell. But it didn’t.
    Instead, he lifted himself up onto one arm and peered down at me, drawing his hand away from my breast to brush a few errant strands of night black hair out of my eyes. I gazed up at him and saw how his eyes seemed to shine with their own source of light: they were almost incandescent in the dim glow of morning.
    He was silent and self-assured as he got up on his knees in front of me and tugged the pants he’d made me over the curve of my hips, down past my knees, and off completely. And I let him.
    I sat up and tugged the tunic off over my head, baring myself to him completely, and laid back down again, my knees winging out to the side so that the flower of my sex bloomed fully in front of him.
    My breath quickened as I watched him reach a tentative hand out to trail down the line of my neck, and over the slope of my breast until he reached my nipple. He rolled it between his thumb and index finger before his hand continued on its journey south: across the plane of my belly, over the jetty of my hipbone, past my pubic mound, and — finally, blessedly — between my nether lips. His fingertip brushed the engorged kernel of my clitoris and sent a shudder down my spine. Then he slid a finger deep inside me, slipping inside easily given the force of my desire. He bent down as he probed me with his thick fingers and took my nipple between his lips, suckling it gently. I arched my back to meet him, groaning madly at his ministrations.
    I wanted him desperately, wanted to feel him filling me up, but just as I was about to express that desire, Waelden called our names from just outside the tent.
    “Calder?” he said, and Calder froze, his fingers still inside me. “Lorelei? It is time to