My Alien Beast (Draci Alien 3)

Lesson two?

I look around the empty ranch house. Lesson two, lesson two… Ideally, lesson two would be get yourself the hell out of the situation. Which I would cleverly accomplish by…being clever.

My kidnapper isn’t even here. God, think Giselle, think.

But even as I chide myself, I hear a loud noise in the distance. Like a swoop, swoop, swoop.

I hurry—well, as much as a girl in fifty pounds of chain can hurry—toward the kitchen window and look out to see him dropping to the ground, his great purple wings folding into his back as he jogs a few steps and finally begins walking toward the house.

I scramble back from the window and rush back to the couch where I lie down and pretend to be sleeping.

The door shoves open—does this guy even know how to do anything in half measures?—and he steps inside.

I should have turned my back toward the door, but I didn’t and through the little slits in my eyes where I’m peeking at him, I see far more than I ever wanted.

For the first time, I see First in the full light of day. And I shudder at what I see.

He’s a monster.

He’s huge, bigger than a man should be, but his huge, muscled shoulders slope down on one side, like the transformation was trying to make him man-sized and failed. So now he walks with a slight hunch.

And his face.

Oh God, his face. The human skin is patchwork on his neck and on his face stretches like a mask over the left side of it. The right side is still alien, with purple skin that isn’t exactly scaly, but doesn’t look soft either. And those eyes. Those burning purple eyes.

That are staring right at me as I gawk at him.

I turn my face into the pillow on the couch. And then sneeze because of the dust.

“Look your fill, little human,” he growls. “This is your future now. I am your mate and I do not care if you like it.”

I can’t help lifting my head to look at him in astonishment. Mate? That’s the first time he’s said anything about mate. “I thought I was just supposed to be your baby factory.”

He lifts his chin. If he’s embarrassed of how he looks, he doesn’t show it. “I have changed my mind. You will be my mate and I will be yours. You will have none other but me.”

I gasp in shock. “You’re crazy. I’ll never be your mate.”

His eyes narrow, making his terrifying face even more menacing. And then his wings spread, filling the entire room.

I’ve never seen them close up. I’ve only ever seen Juliet’s and Ana’s, whose are far smaller. First’s wings are beautiful… and terrifying.

Especially when he leaps forward and crosses the distance from the door to the couch in one flying swoop.

I screech and sit up, covering my head and crouching into a ball.

But he stops inches away from me, so close I can feel the warmth of his body. His naked body, since he never wears clothing.

And then strong hands grip my wrists, pulling my arms down from my face. I’m shaking as I look up at him.

His eyes burn with a purple fire. “You are mine and I will show you. You will feel it too.”

“What do you mean?” I ask shakily.

He reaches down and clicks a button on the weapon he keeps holstered at his hip—the only thing he ever wears—and it burns with blue electric light. I shudder in his arms. Is he going to hurt me after all?

But when he drops one of my wrists and reaches down for the weapon, he runs his own thumb across the tip of the searing blade.

“Why did you do that?” I cry as he winces in pain.

“You must taste me to feel what I feel. Then you will know you are my mate.”

“What? Taste you—?”

But before I can ask any other questions or object, he shoves his bleeding thumb past my lips and into my mouth.

I choke a little and try to pull back, but he moves with me, his face harsh and determined.

In the next moment, I’m flooded with foreign sensations.

Feelings I don’t understand. Wants and longings. Images.

Oh my God, I’m in his head. Juliet and Ana told me about this, but I thought it was only with… You know, sex fluids. I didn’t know that blood could…

Want you. Need you. Mate. MINE.

Powerful need sweeps through me and this time when I shudder, it’s not with fear. I’m beautiful to him. Beautiful and desirable. Everything in his life is bitterness, pain, and disappointment.

I was only meant to be a tool of revenge and a means of gaining more power… But then things changed after he took me.

I’m a beauty he hasn’t seen or experienced in a very long time.

It’s also overwhelming, I can’t— I don’t know what to—