5
Jamie
“Come,”he said again, leading me toward the door that would take me to the world beyond.
For one naughty second, all I could think of was him telling me to come for a completely different reason.
Good grief. I was on an alien planet, bonded to a sexy alien—for life—and I couldn’t get my mind to focus on anything but kissing him again. Having him cup my breast once more. Sex.
Sex. Sex. Sex.
I hadn’t thought about sex this much in months. No. Hell no. Ever. In. My. Life.
As I followed Alex, I decided my obsession was entirely his fault. He was too tall, his ass was too tight, his cock had been too damn hard pressed into my back, and his eyes were too green. Who had eyes like that, anyway? And his hair? Like black silk? Wrong. Totally wrong. He was too much for any normal, red-blooded woman to resist. So clearly this new obsession with stripping him naked and climbing on him was his fault.
And we lived here. Together. Me and him. Him and me. Us.
He studied me before opening the door, cupped my jaw. “How is your head? Any dizziness?”
“No.” I had a tiny lingering headache, but that was all. The shower had really helped, and I hoped when he said I’d adjust, he meant this quickly. “Hey, what exactly did you mean earlier when you said ‘implant’?”
He moved closer and his palm slid around to the side of my head. I held perfectly still, longing for his touch and nervous at the same time. He threaded his fingers through my hair and nudged a very sore spot at the base of my skull. I winced.
His eyes flicked to meet mine. “Apologies, bondmate. The cipher implant is made up of nanites that bond to your nervous system. They will allow you to read, hear, and understand any language known to us.”
My eyes widened. “A universal translator?”
“Yes.”
“And it works for reading, too?”
“The implants adjust the impulses sent to and from the processing centers of your brain. Your eyes may see Velerion standard, but the neuronal implants will adjust the signal so your brain believes it is seeing your native tongue.”
“Any language?”
“Any language known to us, including most languages spoken on Earth.”
Wow. Um… insane. I could have used this in high school French. “What language are you speaking right now?”
“Velerion.”
“Really? But I hear English.”
“As I said, the cipher implant adjusts the electrical signals once they hit your ears. It adjusts the neuronal impulses to emulate your language before they reach the processing centers of your brain.”
Holy shitballs. I should have paid a lot more attention in biology.
“Okay.” I’d think about that later. Or maybe I wouldn’t. I’d add it to the list. A very long, growing-longer-by-the-second list of things that didn’t make sense. I bit my lip. “Hey, Alex?”
He raised a dark brow, waited for me to continue.
“When I picked you, did you have a choice?”
He frowned, blinked. “I do not understand.”
I didn’t like the idea that he might have been forced to partner with me when what he really wanted was a tall, thin redhead with freckles and blue eyes. “Were you… are you stuck with me? I mean, what if you didn’t like me?”
He watched me closely, staring so long I wanted to squirm. “I reviewed your first few training missions. At that time, I accepted you as my training partner. Had I desired another, I could have ended our pairing.”