“Aria, I’m sorry. I was teasing you. I’m not your tanash’ae.”
“Then why—?”
“Your tanash’ae is our king.”
Her head jerked up.
“I’m supposed to marry a king?”
“Does the thought appeal to you?”
“If I believed you, which I don’t, I would be honored, of course. It’s like a fairy tale, in a nightmarish sort of way, but I’m not going to marry some stranger on another planet, king or not. I don’t want to leave my family and friends behind.”
He leaned toward her, his silver gaze piercing her delicately maintained composure.
“Aria, you don’t have a family. You were separated from your mother at a very young age and she refuses contact with you.”
She felt as though he’d stabbed her heart. The pain of long, lonely years in an orphanage, then a group home and foster care, slammed through her.
Of course, anyone would understand why her newly widowed mother might decide to give up her young baby when she barely had the resources to care for her other four children. It had been the responsible thing to do, given the situation. Supposedly, she’d wanted Aria to have a better life than she could provide—but wasn’t being surrounded by brothers and sisters and a parent who loved her a much better choice than leaving her all alone in the world, rejected by the one person who should love her no matter what?
Logic dictated that her mother could not have truly loved her.
Aria stiffened her back against the debilitating pain, refusing to meet the man’s gaze.
“I don’t want to leave my world behind.”
He leaned toward her, his hands folded between his knees. “If he weren’t a king, you could have negotiated where you’d live. Our home world or yours. But in this case, nata’tai has given you no choice.”
No choice. Déjà vu or what? She knotted her fingers together and sighed heavily. “Will I be expected to have sex with this guy?”
He smiled, kindness lighting his eyes. “That’s usually what two bonded people do.”
She glared at him. “Why do you think I’d have sex with a strange man after being abducted?”
He smiled broadly. “You mean, you’d have sex with a strange man if we hadn’t abducted you?”
She stared at him blankly. She couldn’t believe it. This alien captain was teasing her.
Alien.
Oh, God. Although he looked quite human, he was an alien. A man from another planet.
She felt trapped. Fear and pain built inside her as she realized this was really happening. This man—this alien—had kidnapped her and intended to drag her untold light-years from Earth. She was being torn from her home, again, regardless of what she wanted.
All the tension that had been building in her ever since she’d taken that strange elevator ride curled around her chest and tightened painfully. Dizziness overwhelmed her and breathing became difficult.
Everything went black.
Chapter Three
Tai watched her expression go blank, then her lower lip start to quiver. Gattra, she was going to faint. He jolted forward, catching the slumping woman before she hit the floor. He scooped her into his arms, and her softness and warmth pressed against him, magnifying the already intense feelings thrumming through him ever since she’d come aboard. The result was instantaneous. Adrenaline jolted through him. Every cell in his body screamed its need for her. His groin tightened and his penis hardened.
He gritted his teeth against the onslaught. This was his brother’s woman. She would soon be his queen.
He laid her on the couch and tucked a cushion under her head.
He’d been aware of her for a long time—the residual effect of the psychic link he shared with his brother—but he hadn’t expected that awareness to increase so dramatically with proximity. It was Zander’s link, and he was still many light years away.