Earth Girls Aren't Easy by Charlene Teglia Read Free Book Online Page B

working muscle left in me anywhere.”
    “I fucked you.” He sounded downright smug, but the sated bliss that sang in every cell told her he was probably entitled.
    “Finally.” Once she’d gone limp, she found he weighed heavily on her. “You can get off me now.”
    “I would if I had a working muscle left in me,” Danek admitted.
    She laughed, a low, lazy sound. “So we’ll just stay like this forever. Eventually a search party will find our spent, wasted bodies locked together, and everybody will know we died happy.”
    “I prefer to live happy.” He kissed her neck and she slapped at him with one limp hand.
    “Hey. That’s a working muscle. Save us both, move over.”
    Danek braced his arms on either side of her and levered himself up but didn’t withdraw from her. “You are beautiful.”
    She blinked at him. “Do you have poor vision? I’m an exhausted, sweaty mess. My hair probably looks like Medusa’s, and I’m currently a naked refugee.”
    “You are not a refugee.” He kissed the corner of her mouth, pulled out of her by inches, then lowered himself to lay beside her. “You are not displaced. You have a place with me. And if naked ceases to suit you, anything that I have is yours. You have only to ask.”
    “You’re sweet, but we’re not the same size.” Angie rolled to snuggle into him and smiled as his arm closed around her, pulling her closer. “Although borrowing your shirt sounds like the kind of sappy thing I’ll want to do next.”
    “Your feelings for me are not sappy.” Danek nuzzled her neck. “You feel just as you should.”
    “You seem awfully commitment-happy for a guy who just nailed a girl that got naked at hello,” she answered. “Maybe you’re used to having to work for it and as soon as the novelty wears off, you’ll start looking around for the next female.”
    “I have never had to work for it,” he informed her. “Females fall at my feet. Or they did. They will do so no longer. It would be a waste of their time.”
    “See, there you go again.” Angie made the monumental effort of rising up on one arm to look at him. “Making these we’re a couple now noises.”
    “I thought I was being patient. Not rushing you.” He gave her a disgruntled look.
    “Not rushing me? Why do I get the feeling you have the wedding planned already when you say that?” She bit her lip. “It can’t be that sex equals permanent relationship in your world, or you wouldn’t have all those alien orgies.”
    “Now you are imagining all manner of things.” Danek pulled her back down and on top of him. “If you had been raised on my world, you would know what I am to you. You would not worry over my motives or resist my claim. You would welcome me gladly.”
    “I think dropping my pants for you in the stairwell was pretty damn welcoming,” she muttered. “And then I let you bring me on this space odyssey. Why are you making it sound like I’m putting up obstacles?”
    “Because you are.” He rubbed her back in long strokes, up and down either side of her spine, and she relaxed into him by degrees. “You think you should not love me when I am a virtual stranger to you, so you resist in your mind. You think if you allow yourself to bond with me, I will be as quick to leave you as I was to take you.”
    “That’s not putting up obstacles.” Angie hated that her voice came out wavery , but she went on, “That’s trying to retain some remnant of sanity.”
    “Not sanity. Separation. You think of reasons to hold yourself separate from me, when deep inside you want only to yield everything. You resist what we both want and deny us what we both need.”
    “What do you want from me?” The waver deepened into a hint of tears.
    “Everything.” Danek tightened his arms around her. “Forever.”
    She was silent for a minute, trying not to sniffle. She felt cornered and panicked and also almost angry, as if he were tormenting her by offering something she wanted too badly