Monsters Under Mistletoe

7. Gwen

Chapter 7

Gwen

I wake slowly, my brain fogged, my head heavy, my hair full of…

Leaves?

It’s the crunch when I turn slightly, my bladder screaming for me to empty it while the rest of my body shushes it, that gets me awake and sitting up. There’s a sleepy grumble next to me echoing the aches of my own body.

Tasi.

He’s still asleep, his wings sprawled on the forest bed to keep me from collecting leaves everywhere, the slickness of his skin reformed into the flocking that he promised would come when the mating heat had faded. It’s hardly anything, a down, not even as thick as a teddy bear, but it’s so soft that I can’t resist running my hand down his chest.

I love you , I think, then immediately banish the thought. That’s ridiculous, I just heard it so much from him last night that it settled in my brain. It’s the power of suggestion. I’m also extremely susceptible to the poster in the dining hall of the pizza slice with half its cheese being pulled from it as it’s being lifted away from the pie. I would be mad if the pizza they gave me had lost half its cheese, but I buy way more pizza than I should because of that poster.

I attempt to shimmy away from Tasi, to give myself some space to think about this, but one giant silvery wing suddenly goes around me, blanketing me and pulling me under him.

“Stop!” I squeal, forcing myself to hold back my laughter. I can’t laugh. This isn’t funny. It’s weird. I don’t do weird. I’m an accountant.

His eyes meet mine, and I have to tell myself I don’t do immediately wet with arousal, either.

He looms over me, his body and his wing blocking the bright morning sun from entering the cocoon. “I’ll never stop,” he swears. “You’re my mate.”

That word, mate , sends a shiver shooting right up my spine. A bad shiver, I tell myself. Humans don’t mate, not like that. Everything I’ve heard about those women who ran off with their alien paramours, it’s all lies.

I’m not his mate.

His cool hand strokes down my side until it grips onto my hip. I get lost in the touch for a moment, snapping out of it only when both hands sneak under my thighs to part my legs.

I swallow hard and say, “I need to go home,” ignoring every warning bell in my brain that tells me this is it, this is everything I’ve ever wanted.

It isn’t . It never has been.

His brow ripples, but he smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yep, we’ll get your stuff and move you into my place. Or I can move into yours, of course. What size unit do you—?”

“No, I’m not moving in with you.”

“Do humans not live with their mates?”

“Humans don’t mate. I’m not your mate, Tasi. You’re mistaken, and you need to take me home.”

“And everything just went back to normal after we left?”

“?‘Left,’ she says,” Allison snorts. “You flew out of a window. You were flown out of a window. No, of course everything didn’t go back to normal. Everyone freaked out, and a security squad had to come out and interview everyone while the window was getting fixed.”

I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, trying to find my inner calm, but it detours to inner feels. I felt trapped all weekend. I swear Tasi drugged me somehow. It doesn’t make any sense, not when he barely touched me before I was crawling all over him, but I’ve felt hungover since Friday night.

The worst hangover I’ve ever had in my life.

But it’s just a hangover.

“So, what happened? What caused it?”

Allison’s eyes bug. “You? Tasi? You? Tasi walks in, everyone freaks out, and then he flies off with you. I assumed it was you.”

“It wasn’t!” As I protest, the elevator doors open and two security hybrids get off. They go straight to the floor manager, who scans the room before pointing at me. “Gosh, you didn’t tell the squad it was me, did you?”

Allison clucks her tongue. “Of course not. But they know who was there, Gwen! They know who didn’t get interviewed. Just tell them you don’t know what happened.” With a skeptical glare, she adds, “You don’t know, right?”

I don’t, but as the hybrids lead me to the elevator and bring me down to a conference floor, I start getting antsy. They’re polite with me, acting like I’m not in trouble, they just have some questions, but I’ve experienced this before.

Because I got busted for cooking books on Earth. It’s why I was imprisoned and ultimately ended up on the Space Brothel. It’s why I’m such a good forensics accountant.

They lead me into a room with a single long table that seats about thirty. Other accountants are there, each of them flanked by security, most of them looking irritated or bored, ready to go back to work. And at the far end of the table is Tasi.

My heart skips a beat before starting to pound in my chest. The fug that’s hung over me all weekend lifts away, and I feel warm again. There’s nothing I want more right now than for Tasi to be next to me.

I love him.

It’s insane, I know that. I still don’t know him. I don’t like him. But I need him.

As though he knows this, he spreads his wings, their span stretching nearly wall to wall. Everyone else in the room looks at him — how can they not? He’s absolutely majestic — and the atmosphere in the room shifts.

The women begin to move toward him. They flush. They reach for him. They push at each other.

Oh no.

Tasi beats his wings once and takes to the air. The hybrids scramble for him and the women but are only able to get control of the women as he soars above them toward me. I open my arms, welcoming him.

He lifts me up, but he’s not gunning toward a glass window that opens into atmosphere this time. He makes a torpedo of himself to get through the narrow hallway behind me, shooting us into an elevator as it opens. We bowl into another trio of hybrids and accountant, and they go flying out as we smash into the back wall.

The doors closes behind us with a muted ding as I peel off of Tasi, crying out, “Are you okay?”

“No,” he groans, staggering to his feet. He looks so awful, his skin dull and his wings painfully crystallized, his hair lank and damp, that I don’t know where he’s injured.

I run my hands all over him, seeking out the damage, feeling a touch of relief when his skin goes dewy, at least. He might have hurt himself, but obviously he can’t be too damaged if he’s doing the sexy gel thing. “Where are you hurt?”

He suddenly grabs me by the back of my thighs, lifting and splaying me for him. “Here,” he says, grinding his ice hard shaft against me. “I’ve been aching here since you forced me to leave you.”

I’m tired of fighting him. I’m tired of pretending that because my feelings for him are nonsensical, they’re not real. I kiss him as hard as his needy grind deserves.

He digs his fingers into the space between my thighs, and I feel an instant, familiar, amazing chill there that has my body going livewire. I don’t hear the rip of the fabric he freezes so he can push his fingers through it, I just know I’m suddenly filled with two fingers.

“Tasi!” I cry out, bucking on the cold burn.

He kisses under my neck as I tip my head back, and I chase the tingles. “This is mine,” he growls as he parts his fingers, spreading me. “You’re not getting away from me this time.”

“I need you. Oh god, I was empty without you.”

He chuckles darkly, no doubt misinterpreting my words. Since it results in him replacing his fingers with his thick, frigid cock, I don’t care.

He fucked me gently on Friday night. He fucked me frantically. He fucked me passionately. This is the first time he fucks me angrily, driving himself into me with enough force that he has to be proving a point.

I love every second of it. The entire rest of my body melts as my pussy frosts, and the mark he leaves on me is the mark I want. I want him.

“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you so much.”

He suddenly orgasms, ending things too quickly, but his cum triggers my own climax.

“I know.”

I giggle. “You’re supposed to say I love you, too.”

He pulls away from me. He crystalline gaze makes me shiver with its intensity. “No, I meant what I said. I know you love me. I’ve known since the moment we locked eyes at the bar. So it’s nice to hear the words, but they don’t matter. I know you love me.”

I shake my head, too ooey gooey to protest. “It’s going to be an adventure with you, isn’t it?”

He pulls out and digs two fingers into me, plucking out a peppermint cumsicle to feed me.

The elevator dings softly, and the door opens just in time for the wall of hybrids on the other side to see the frozen cum slide out of me.

“It’s your pheromones, dickhead,” says one of the hybrids to Tasi, and the next says, “You’re triggering the humans’ sex drives when you enter your mating heat.”

Tasi cringes. “Does that mean I’m fired?”

Everyone stares at us for a long, embarrassing second, like it’s obvious from the fact that we just literally dented the wall of this elevator that we’re both fired. The last finally says, “Dude, you’re going to have to be deported.”

Tasi looks mildly irritated by this, but it’s a big deal. There are only two places in the galaxy that permit both human women and full-blooded aliens, here and Raddor, and I doubt Raddor will allow us, either. But now that I have Tasi, I can’t imagine letting him go.

Tasi notices that I’m panicking and, casual as you like, reaches out and hits the button to close the elevator door. Everyone on the other side looks smug as the door closes. The reason becomes obvious when he hits the button for the top floor and the elevator beeps softly but doesn’t move. They locked it.

Tasi lifts me off my feet with one hand as he smashes through the roof panel, pulverizing the sprig of mistletoe we just fucked under as he launches us into the elevator shaft.

“What are we going to do?” I yell, ducking to protect my head when he punches through the roof and sends us into the sky. “No one will take us.”

“We’re good! My uncle’s a space pirate. I already got us a transport off the planet.”

And that’s how I became a space pirate’s accountant.