Free To Trust a Warrior: An Alien Rogue Romance (Starflight Academy Book 4) by Immortal Angel Page B

painful throb. Ignore it. Focusing on it won’t help. Think of Liam instead. His scent washed over her, his pleasant earthy smell, mixed with her own sweeter one.
    He smells like me.
    The thought pleased her for reasons she couldn’t understand. Of course he smelled like her, just hours ago she’d bathed him. And shortly thereafter, she’d gently made love to him.
    “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he whispered, his arms tightening around her.
    And suddenly, she remembered why they lay tangled together in a slowly filling tub. The dream. Her responsibility. As much as she wanted to tell him the truth, it was classified. Only her mother, her father, and the president knew what she could do. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t tell him half the truth.
    Opening her eyes, she stared into his dark ones. “This happens sometimes.”
    He brushed a soft kiss across her nose, which sent a shiver right down her spine. “Why?”
    It took her a second to find her voice. “I was born with a rare deformity in my brain. My parents tried everything to save my life before they finally found an experimental surgery. It saved my life…but it had consequences.”
    There were so many of the surgeries she didn’t remember, but that one she did. She’d been six, and running out of time, according to her doctors. The man her parents had brought her to was unlike anyone she’d met before. He lived in an underground base on a strange planet. And the way he looked at her terrified her.
    She’d woken from the surgery screaming. And screaming. And screaming. Her parents were nowhere to be found, and the surgeon had glared at her, yelling right back in her face. She’d never felt pain like that before, even after everything she’d been through.
    That was the day she lost faith in her parents.
    “So,” Liam said, his voice breaking through the darkness of her memories, “these consequences include terrible nightmares you can’t be woken from?”
    She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Among other things.”
    Her thoughts tried to go back to the dream, to the Vuret male who’d hurt her. She sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. Liam’s legs lay on either side of her. His jeans and dark shirt were soaked, along with her red-and-white striped pajamas.
    “Liam?”
    “Yes.”
    She didn’t know what to say.
    He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against him. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
    Goosebumps erupted on her arms, and she snuggled into his touch. She was okay, wasn’t she? Now that the adrenaline was starting to fade, her face ached. It more than ached, it hurt like hell. And the rest of her body…she definitely felt like she got into a fight with a Turongan Ice Bear and lost.
    She often felt like this after a dream, which usually resulted in hours of lying beneath a shower streaming cold water, trying to forget what she had seen. What she had been through. This time was so different. Even though she hurt, the dream felt less like reality and more like a nightmare.
    And it was all because of the huge Keltair male holding her as if she was the most fragile thing in the world. She could get used to this.
    No, you can’t. How can you hope to focus on your classes with your heart slowly being pulled from your chest? Yet, in that moment, she found it hard to care.
    “Bed?” she whispered.
    He nodded, his chin rubbing the top of her head.
    Wrapping his arms around her, he started to struggle to his feet.
    “No!” she said, pushing free and standing on shaking legs.”You’re going to tear open your stitches.”
    His dark eyes flashed. “I’m a male. I can carry a tiny human female. How do you think you got here?”
    He rose completely, towering over her.
    She took a step back. “I can walk.” I think.
    His lips pulled into a thin line. “Come here. Stop being stubborn.”
    To her surprise, she laughed. Pressing a hand against his sopping wet shirt, she stood up on her tiptoes.
    His gaze