Free Aedian: Alien Warrior: A Sci-Fi Alien Invasion Paranormal Romance by Ashley West Page B

back with him, after all, and there were only flimsy reasons why she couldn’t stay among the humans if she wanted to. It wouldn’t be breaking the treaty as long as they still got married and had children, and Calphesian family units rarely stayed together all the time, so no one would really mind all that much if they didn’t. It was the offspring they cared more about, anyway.
    He’d been planning to explain all of that to her before he left, but before he could, she’d been grabbing her things and following him to the door.
    “Ready?”
    Aedian had frowned. “You do not have to come back with me. I know you’d prefer not to.”
    Roxanne shrugged, shouldering her bag. “It’s not a big deal. Plus most of my stuff is there anyway.”
    Her sudden change of heart had him off balance, but he was learning that it was pretty much how he was always going to feel around her, so he just inclined his head and motioned for her to lead the way out.
    Aedian had walked to her home from the compound, needing the exercise to help clear his head, but he rode back in Roxanne’s car, cramped and uncomfortable and grumbling about human contraptions the whole way back to the compound.
    Instead of being offended that he was talking bad about human things, Roxanne giggled under her breath, clearly amused by the way his head was bowed to keep his horns from scratching her sunroof.
    She seemed lighter than she ever had before, and her mood was infectious, leading Aedian to take her bag from her when they made it back and carry it up to his— their —rooms without a word. And she let him, which he was going to count as progress.
    He watched her put her things away, including the small plastic container of leftovers from her mother, and then she turned to face him, hands on her hips.
    “We had a fight,” she said.
    He inclined his head, acknowledging that. “One of many.”
    Her lips crooked upwards in a smile. “True. But you know how married people deal with fights on Earth?”
    “We aren’t married yet,” Aedian pointed out, and smiled a bit when she huffed and rolled her eyes at him.
    “That’s beside the point,” she insisted. “They have sex. Make up sex.”
    “We had a fight, and now you want to have sex?” Aedian was skeptical, but that lasted only long enough for her to stride forward and grab his shirt, yanking him down while rising up onto her toes to press her mouth to his in a firm kiss.
    “We were interrupted earlier,” she murmured against his lips. “And this is clearly the way to...bridge the gap between our kinds.”
    Her argument was a compelling one, and Aedian definitely wasn’t going to complain about the way she was pressed against him and the way her mouth tasted against his. So he stopped talking and started doing .
    His hands slid down to her waist, and he smiled when he could almost wrap his hands entirely around it without much issue. With a smirk, he lifted her up and put her over his shoulder, ready to carry her to the bedroom.
    She yelped in his ear and wiggled around, so Aedian rested a hand on her bottom to keep her from falling, a strong arm around her waist. “You said we were going to bridge the gap,” he pointed out.
    “I didn’t mean that you should throw me over your shoulder like a sack of flour,” she complained, but stopped thrashing about.
    “I’m saving time,” he said, and deposited her on the bed when they made it to the bedroom.
    The lights were low, and he left them like that, wanting to keep this mood. He could see well enough to make her out anyway, and she was beautiful as always spread out on his bed. Aedian followed her down, taking up his customary position above her, head dipped down to trail hot, open mouthed kisses from her neck to her shoulder, one hand moving to pull the collar of her shirt away so he could have access to more skin.
    Roxanne gasped softly and shuddered under him, her eyes fluttering closed as she canted her head to one side to give him