But no—she couldn’t wait forever to get her things. She had already extended the lease on the small single-story bungalow she was renting in South Tampa once and she couldn’t afford to extend it again just to store boxes. That was ridiculous.

She’d thought about asking her favorite aunt to bring the boxes to her own house, but she still had kids at home and lived in a constant clutter as it was—she didn’t need a bunch of Sammi’s stuff clogging up her house. She—

“I’ll come with you.”

“What?” Sammi looked up. Roark’s words surprised her so much she froze in the middle of fastening her skirt.

“I said, I’ll come with you,” he told her. “We can get your things from Earth and bring them back up to the Mother Ship in the morning, and then perform the experiment that evening.”

“Oh…” Sammi’s heart fluttered, though she knew he was probably only offering to help in order to keep the experiment on schedule. “If…if you really don’t mind,” she said. “I mean, there’s going to be a lot of heavy lifting, I’m afraid. Some of the things I’m getting are boxes of books—the old-fashioned kind, made of paper, you know.”

Roark nodded.

“All the more reason for me to come. I don’t want you overexerting yourself and getting too tired to fully engage when I strap you into the inseminator.”

“All right.” Sammi nodded. “Have you ever been to Earth before?” she asked curiously.

“Once,” Roark said shortly. “To meet Amanda’s family—my ex-fiancée.” He cleared his throat. “It was not a warm welcome.”

“Why not?” Sammi asked, surprised into being curious.

“There was some…prejudice against my kind,” Roark explained stiffly. “Amanda’s father and brother weren’t very happy with the idea of her joining with an ‘alien.’”

“What jerks!” Sammi exclaimed.

Roark shrugged, his broad shoulders rolling under his crisp white lab coat.

“It didn’t matter in the long run, since we didn’t remain together.”

Sammi started to tell him that her own family wasn’t like that—that her aunts and uncles and cousins would welcome him into the family with open arms…But then she remembered yet again that Roark wasn’t looking to form a relationship with her.

She was just an experiment to him and that was how he wanted things to stay.

The thought gave her a heavy heart as she finished dressing and went back to the main office part of the lab to try and concentrate on the files of data she was trying to consolidate. But she reminded herself for the thousandth time that Roark was only her boss—not really her lover.

No matter what erotic things they did together, it was all for science and nothing more.

Twenty-Six

Gods…Roark licked his lips again, remembering Samantha’s sweet, salty flavor and the soft, helpless way she’d moaned and carded her fingers through his hair as he licked her…

How he had longed to make her come! And then to stand up and press not his tongue or his fingers, but his cock deep into her tight little pussy channel. He would take her—own her…bond her!

It was this last thought that kept him from doing something extremely foolish. Beause he couldn’t bond her to him—couldn’t give her the children she wanted. It was hopeless—impossible.

And so Roark held himself back. No matter how badly he wanted Samantha for his own, he knew he could never have her.

Twenty-Seven

The boxes were almost all loaded in his shuttle when Roark saw the folded piece of paper on the kitchen counter. They had been working together all morning, getting the last of Samantha’s things packed for her permanent move to the Mother Ship and now they were almost done.

He had picked her up at the door to her suite that morning and greeted her with a slow, passionate kiss. When he’d let her go, Sammi had whispered breathlessly,

“I thought you only did that on workdays?”

Roark had replied something about how he had to keep her sexually amorous in order to get her ready for the experiment that night.

The truth was, though, he had simply wanted to kiss her. The same way he wanted to help her move—to act like what the humans called a “normal boyfriend” and lift the boxes that were too heavy for her and just generally be near her all day.

They flew down to Earth and got to work. To Roark, it almost felt as though they were a couple—part of a team—two halves of a whole. It was what he had always longed for, in his deepest heart, though he tried not to admit it. Against his will, he had found himself wondering if Samantha might consider having a relationship without being bonded. And was it really so important to her to have children? Hadn’t she said something about adopting if you couldn’t have children of your own?

The thoughts were foolish but Roark couldn’t seem to push them out of his head. He was thinking them when he saw the paper on the counter.

Tags: Evangeline Anderson Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net