Sex, Love, and Aliens 2 Read Online Free Page B

argue, but he held up a hand.
    “Please, Turana . Even if it’s just to keep the pen pushers happy.” He smiled, and the softening of his face had her close to hyperventilation.
    Her nipples pebbled into tight buds of hunger, jutting against the light cotton. It took every ounce of willpower for her to refrain from covering herself.
    Dria knew the instant he realized just how aroused she was by him. His eyes turned smoky. His gaze drifted to her chest.
    “I... Uh...” Intelligent thought fled as the rapid thumpa-thumpa-thump of her pulse ratcheted up. She reached out, needing the touch of his skin.
    “ Turana... ” His deep voice rippled over her, and she was sure stepping forward was the right choice.
    The Ba’Tuan part of her mind screamed that this action made no sense, as her foot moved, stepping toward the man who intrigued and attracted her. “I... Marcus, if you don’t feel...”
    “ Ishouldleave .”
    His strangled words stopped her in her tracks, hitting her hard and stealing the breath from her lungs. He doesn’t want me. Never had she thought that a man turning away would gut her like this. An integral part of her being, maybe it was her soul, cried out in anguish.
    Carefully, with great deliberation, she pulled her hand back against her body, hoping the tearing pain didn’t show. “Of course. I appreciate you apprising me of the findings.”
    Without a further word he spun on his heel and left.
    A single tear escaped and burned a track down her face. She knew if she called, he’d return to the room, but consoling her wasn’t enough. With a growl, Dria strode to the table and snatched up her personal communicator. Any hope of sleep had fled, so instead she’d work.
    “It’s never failed me before.”
    For the first time, she realized that in disengaging herself from her peers, she had turned her back on companionship. There was no one she could ask for aid or assistance in matters of the heart.
    She turned away from pondering her confused emotions and tugged her tiny handheld comp-screen closer. Dria logged into the security system and began a tactical search.
    * * * *
    Marcus lumbered down the hall and settled himself into his room, slumping to the bed with an oomph .
    I want her. God help me!
    She was the only woman since... Marcus refused to allow the other woman into his thoughts. But the Turana , she was so far above his pay grade that he might as well be asking for the moon.
    She was royalty, and he... He was nothing more than a damaged fighter with a questionable past and not much of a future if he couldn’t make this mission work.
    The memory of the Turana rekindled the erection he’d been sporting since leaving her room. He’d noted the rosebud points of her nipples, the way they jutted against the material, and it had taken every ounce of his resistance to drag himself away.
    “She’s more than some piece of ass, you fool.”
    Tugging his hand through his hair, he wondered if the world was conspiring to tease him with beautiful and barely dressed women—first the devious Christina, and now the Turana Dria. He’d seen the way her cheeks had pinked and her breathing accelerated. The way her eyes dilated.
    Classic symptoms.
    He worked on banishing the thoughts that filled his mind by reaching for the file his staff had amassed. He’d start by reading through the statements his people had collected after the explosion at the airfield, then he’d look a little closer at the staff of both the airfield and the refueling station.
    The stories they all told were similar. They all seem to have arrived at their usual time, and security inspections found nothing unusual.
    Although they had determined the initiation site of the explosion, they knew very little else.
    He thumbed through the pages of the refueling station information. He read of the minimal security after hours, that the cameras had a glitch from twenty-three hundred hours through to oh-one hundred, so the feed was