Free Alien Romance: The Barbarian's Owned: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 1) by Marla Therron Page B

of the natural beauty of the tree. The trunk itself made up one wall, the bark composed of dark, sleek squama.
    One branch formed a beam that supported the ceiling. The bed was at the room’s center, circular, and massive enough that she could sleep without ever touching Garr.
    There were two adjoined chambers: the shower and a separate bathroom. While the bathroom’s walls were opaque, the shower… well, that was entirely translucent.
    “Not much privacy,” she worried.
    “As I said, it’s a common destination for mated Kaythonians.”
    He laid her on the bed, the blankets and sheets made from otoya. It reacted to her nestling into the fabric by swelling into a pillow beneath her head and softening at the touch of her skin. Garr, kneeling into the mattress beneath her, lifted one of her feet and untied her laces.
    She frowned. “While we’re on this date, I can still tell you ‘no,’ right?”
    He paused from loosening the laces, glancing down at her. “Yes.” He didn’t seem to like the idea of being told not to do something, and Rae toyed with the idea of ordering him to get lost.
    But instead, she grinned. For all his flaws, Garr hadn’t yet gone back on his word. She believed him, and what was more, she was so dead tired that having him pry off her shoes seemed fine. Depending on what he went after next, though, she might have to drop the hammer.
    He tossed both her shoes onto the floor. But when he went for her socks, her stomach lurched with the horrid mental image of her marred skin—pruned, blistered, and torn from hiking in wet shoes for two days. “Don’t,” she fretted self-consciously. “They’re going to be gross.”
    “You’re hurt,” Garr said, standing and going to a bough that grew inside their room, where maybe sixteen different varieties of fruit sprouted from the same short length of a branch—like a Skorvag’s idea of a medicine cabinet, she realized.
    Garr plucked a round, blue bulb and returned, kneeling onto the bed. He stripped her socks off and Rae refused to look at the state of her mangled feet.
    Garr softly cupped her heel, cracking that bulb open like an egg. Its yolk carried a medicinal aroma and he rubbed it into her frayed heel, the balm soothing the searing pain from her abrasions.
    He coaxed the oil over the whole of her foot and pressed this thumbs into her arch, rubbing until the tense muscles and stiff ligaments all went slack.
    It was strange how once that happened, her shoulders and spine relaxed at the same time, so that she pooled into the silky otoya sheets.
    Rae shut her eyes. His hands worked her pant leg up and his kneading at her taut hamstrings elicited a contented groan. He rotated her ankle to loosen it, and it gave a faint pop—she whimpered at the release of tension.
    By the time he started on her other foot, she was only faintly aware of the room, or the way the crystal lights dimmed. Her feet no longer hurt, and all her soreness was comforted by either sheets, cool medicine, or Garr’s relentless hands. Before he’d finished on her other hamstring, she fell into a pleasant black sleep.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Nine
     
     
    The hiss of running water woke Rae and, for a moment, she forgot where she was.
    It came back to her when she opened her eyes and streams of sunlight brought her to full alertness. Her room was a vista to the yawning green meadow with its golden flowers, the chattering river, and towering waterfall less than a mile away.
    Alien world. Big, weirdo kidnapper. Right. She groaned, rolling onto her stomach and glancing around…
    …Garr was in the shower. Fog from the hot water—they had hot water!—obscured the glass stall so that, through misty panes, she made out the rugged outline of his body.
    She could see the hard pane of his flat abdomen, the crest made by his ribs when his arms extended over his head to wash his short, dark hair. It revealed both the breadth in his shoulders and, because of the tilt to his