Free ALIEN ROMANCE: Captivated by the Alien Lord (Alien Invasion Abduction SciFi Romance) (Kahara Lords Book 7) by Lindsay Blanc

white against sun-browned skin and a neatly trimmed beard. Standing on ground even with Jenna’s own, he had probably six inches on her, and he was built big—broad shoulders, heavy arms. It wasn’t often Jenna met a man so much bigger than she was, and she felt a little rush of heat at the thought of just how easily he’d be able to put her where he wanted her.
    “Neither did I,” she said, answering him. “But I’m not entirely adverse to company.”
    Not if company looked like him.
    “Arthur,” he said, offering a hand that swallowed hers up when she took it.
    “Jenna Mayfair.”
    She turned her gaze to the other man, who still hadn’t spoken. He was maybe a couple of inches shorter than Arthur, leaner, but still muscled, regarding her from under a fall of tawny hair with a gaze that seemed to see right down to her bones. For a moment she found herself caught in brown eyes, and then she gave herself a little internal shake and offered her hand.
    He took it, his own hand warm, fingers calloused.
    “Barrett,” he said by way of introduction. “Nice to meet you.”

Chapter Three
    By unspoken mutual agreement, they found themselves pausing there on the hilltop, settling down on a reasonably flat spot to break from their hiking. Jenna set her pack down beside her, pulling a granola bar from the bag inside. Arthur and Barrett waved away her offer to share the rest of her food.
    “So, Jenna,” Arthur said when they were all settled. “What brings you to Katmai?”
    “Celebrating,” Jenna said. “Just got my Masters in Natural Resources, and I’ve already got a job lined up at Palisades-Kepler  in Iowa, so I’m taking a couple weeks to enjoy myself.”
    “Congratulations.” There was that grin again, a glance exchanged with Barrett. “You chose a good place to treat yourself.”
    Jenna swallowed a bite of granola bar and leaned back against one arm, legs stretched out in front of her. “How long have you two been up here?”
    “Oh, we come up here as often as we can. Been out here about a month this time.”
    “I guess that explains what you’re doing hiking without a day pack?”
    Arthur’s lips curled up in response to her raised eyebrow. “Probably not the best backcountry etiquette, now you mention it, but our camp’s just about a mile that way.” He tipped his head north, back the way they’d come. “And sometimes I want to go places without the camera. Just enjoy it for what it is.”
    Jenna wasn’t sure that explained it, but she let the explanation go in favor of a different question. “You’re a photographer?”
    He nodded. “It’s what I come up here to do. Barrett just tags along because he’s antisocial.”
    His smirk made the teasing obvious. The dark look Barrett gave him was ruined by the barest upward twitch at the corner of his mouth.
    “It’s not so much that,” Barrett said, with a conspiratorial wink that looked a lot like flirting to Jenna, “as it is that it’s impossible to get a word in edgewise around Art.”
    It was Arthur’s turn to glare. He did it much more convincingly. Jenna laughed.
    “So what do you come up here for, Barrett?”
    Intent brown eyes settled back on her face.
    “I’m a writer. I come up here for inspiration.” He grinned, shooting a look at the other man from the corner of his eye before he looked back at her, smile widening lazily. “Art relentlessly quashes it.”
    Arthur reached over and slapped him lightly across the back of the head, and a minute later they were rolling around in the grass, laughing. Jenna rolled her eyes skyward. Men.
    They did look good like that, though, muscles rippling under their shirts as they wrestled. She leaned back on her hands and watched them. Barrett, unsurprisingly, seemed to be having a bit of a rougher time than Arthur was, and in a few minutes he was pinned against the ground, panting. For a moment, they lingered there, staring at each other, still huffing out occasional breaths of laughter,