She dropped her chin to her chest, hiding her face from him in a curtain of dark waves. Veck, she was beautiful.
Though his usual sense of interpersonal relations would dictate he simply leave her alone—give her some privacy until she’d recovered—he couldn’t bear the thought.
My female requires calming.
Odd that he considered her his. But she was. He’d paid for her. She was his slave, and he was her master.
“It’s over now, Bayla,” he repeated. He checked his cuff for her vitals. Her elevated pulse showed stress, and the arousal meter read 60 percent. He was surprised she could be aroused and crying at the same time. Another oddity of human females.
Her legs wobbled, and she swayed. He moved without thought, sweeping her up into a cradle carry before he realized he meant to.
She lifted her tucked chin and gazed up with surprise, her arms slowly moving to circle his neck.
Something in his physiology turned haywire then—his head swam, and the room seemed to swoop, even as his chest filled with something gooey and warm.
To his shock, Bayla tucked her face against his neck.
He inhaled sharply at the pleasure the gesture produced in him. Not lust this time, something different, something deeper. It stemmed from that need to comfort her—satisfaction that he’d seemingly succeeded in some small measure because she’d turned to him rather than away. Which seemed wrong, since he was the one who’d made her cry in the first place.
His scientist brain short-circuited. He’d spent a lifetime living in his head, guided only by logic. This foreign flood of emotions literally dampened his ability to think.
What power did human females possess that caused Zandian males to lose their minds? He needed to find some way to distance himself from this beautiful girl before he jeopardized his project.
But his emotions had full control of his body, now. His mouth murmured, “You need rest,” and his feet carried her across the room to her cage. “Open cage.” The door sprang open but he made no move to put her inside. It didn’t feel right.
Since when did he make decisions by feel?
He carried her to his sleepdisk instead, laying her on the soft mattress and sitting beside her. Her dark tresses fell in a wave, hiding her face from him. He stroked them back, telling himself it was only to see her, to evaluate her emotional state as her doctor, but his fingers never stopped stroking. He petted her, soothing away her sniffles and hiccups.
Sweet human.
A knock sounded at the door, and he saw from the screen inside that a servant stood outside with his human’s food. He flicked the coverlet over her naked, paddled bottom and called for him to come in.
“I’ll take it.” He accepted the tray right there on the bed, arranging it on his lap.
Bayla lifted her dark head and sat up, eyes fixed on the tray, and he kicked himself again for not having provided her with alimentation sooner.
He placed the tube from the liquid bag into her mouth.
Her nose crinkled adorably, but she sucked the tube. The moment the liquid reached her mouth, her long black lashes flew wide. She sucked in earnest, draining the bag in a matter of moments.
“Sixty milliliters of kai juice,” he reported to his cuff.
“Kai juice,” she echoed with awe.
“You liked it?”
She licked her full lips. “Oh yes. Is that for me?” she asked, pointing to the food.
“Yes.”
Before he finished speaking the word, she’d pulled the tray to her lap, snatched up a spoon, and tucked into the savory grain dish Chef Barr had prepared.
He observed with fascination as she stuffed the food in her mouth, rolling her eyes and moaning with pleasure. Watching a being eat had never been such an arousing experience. Her full, lush lips closed around the utensil; that little pink tongue flicked food from the corners of her mouth. Her obvious pleasure with every bite made his cock go as hard as it had been when he’d brought her to orgasm earlier.
She finished the entire tray of food in record time then dabbed her lips with a napkin and smiled shyly at him.
“You were hungry,” he observed.