Grace Goodwin - The Virgins - Complete Boxed Set

“Can’t allow? This is my home! If there’s a murderer wandering about, I need to let Mr. Anderson know so he can take precautions. There is a rifle above the kitchen door, Maddox, and I know how to use it.”

“It is too late for that. Neron knows who you are, where you live. The rifle will not protect you. You will not return to that house.” I changed my words to a command.

“Watch me.” Cassie pulled away and shoved her feet into her flat brown shoes. She whirled then, and started running in the direction of the boarding house.

In two strides my arms were around her, locking her to me as I made my intentions clear, as I staked my claim. “You can try to run, Cassie, but it changes nothing. You are mine, my marked mate, and I won’t allow you to go.”

She kicked and fought, but I held her as easily as I would a small child. Finally, she grew weary and fell limp in my arms. “Please. He’s my father. He adopted me when I was four and I had no one, no family, no home. We have to warn him. Please, Maddox.”

Her pleading should have fallen on deaf ears. Returning to the house was a risk I did not wish to take, but I could not bear the idea of her pain. If I forced her away now, would she ever forgive me? I had not realized her relationship with Mr. Anderson. Her father.

On Everis, family was all. This, I understood, despite my desire to deny it.

“All right, Cassie. But we will go together. Once he has been warned, we will leave this town and travel to my ship. I won’t leave Earth without you.”

She stumbled forward, out of my arms, and turned to face me, her eyes round as disbelief filled her gaze. “What did you just say? What do you mean, you won’t leave Earth without me?”

Cassie

“I am not from here,” Maddox said, placing his big palms on my shoulders. My right shoulder heated along with the birthmark on my palm.

“Of course, you’re not,” I countered, a little afraid of the answer. While I was eager for his touch, I was also overwhelmed and confused. It was difficult to keep a clear head with him about, when he looked at me with his pale eyes, searching and seeing far deeper into me than anyone had before.

He spoke of murderers and mates and marks and not leaving me on Earth. I was a little fearful of him, even though my instincts insisted that he was safe. I’d even run to him, grabbed hold of him after that man—Neron—approached.

Neron. An odd name for an odd man. He’d been big, as large as Maddox with hawk-like features and a long, pointed nose. His eyes had been dark, unnaturally dark, like the ink that filled Mr. Anderson’s quill with almost no whites around the edges but his hair had been pale, but dull, more like aged paper than the sunny gold on the children’s heads at church. His clothing had been normal enough, pants and boots and a brown cotton shirt. But his deep voice had made goosebumps race up and down my spine, and he’d stared at my hand as if he expected to find the answers to the universe on my palm.

Or he wanted to bite me. I’d seen something feral in his eyes; not desire, for I recognized that now, but something darker. Fascination? Anticipation? Obsession?

I had run to Maddox, trusting that he would protect me. But now… now I had to wonder if the man was insane. Perhaps they were both insane. Not from Earth?

It was as if Maddox read my mind.

“I am not from the Montana Territory or your United States. From any place on this world. I am not from Earth. I am from a planet called Everis.”

His face was close, so close I could see the dark whiskers on his cheeks, the little sliver of a scar by his right eyebrow, the darker blue flecks in his eyes. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Putting a hand to my mouth, I tried to stifle it, but I couldn’t. His eyes widened, for this probably wasn’t the reaction he was anticipating, but how else could I react? He said he was from some other planet. He was insane. And for a moment, that thought broke my heart.

The first man I’d truly desired, the first man I’d allowed to touch me, and he turned out to be crazy. God, wasn’t that just my luck? As if being an orphan and a widow wasn’t bad enough, now I’d allowed a madman to seduce me.

But there would be no more touching, or kissing, or—anything. No more.

Tears gathered in my eyes as I stepped back once, twice, and held my hands out in front of me. “Mr. Maddox, I’m just going to go back to the boarding house and go about my day. I’ll forget we ever had this conversation, that you think you’re from… somewhere else.”

“I speak the truth,” he replied.

That validation did nothing to sway me. “All right, say I believe you. How are you speaking English? I haven’t been outside of the territory, but I know people from different countries speak other languages. You can’t tell me that people from… from—”

“Everis,” he added for me.

“—Everis speak English.”

He shook his head, then turned his head and pointed to a small button, no larger than a ladybug, behind his ear. He tapped it and a strange language I’d never heard before filled the air between us. He tapped it again and I heard French, a language I recognized from some of the trappers and miners who passed through town. One more tap and silence returned as he lowered his hand and turned to meet my gaze. “It’s called an Osteo-Communications Implant. We call it the O-C. The rest of the Fleet is using new tech called a Neurostim Processing Unit, but on Everis we’re slow to adapt. We’re an ancient race with even older customs and we don’t like change.”

“What is it? I don’t understand.” I lifted my hand toward his ear, lowered it to my side. Did I want to touch it? Touch him? No.

“It’s a translation device that allows me to communicate with any known species in the universe. With it I can speak and understand all the known languages of Earth and every member planet.”

A translator? He could speak English or any other language on Earth? Any language in the universe? I bit my lip to keep from laughing again. “What you say is completely unbelievable. I can’t decide if you’re being cruel or if you truly believe your words.” I pointed to the sky, which was now quite bright. “Either way… I have to go. Mr. Anderson is surely wondering where I am by now. I should have had the coffee brewing and the biscuits baking.”

I spun on my heel and started walking away. I didn’t dare run, for he would know that not only did I doubt him, but feared him, too.

I made it to the top of the slight rise in the prairie when he called out, “The mark on your palm, Cassie.”

Rubbing my fingers over the spot that even now tingled, I stopped, but did not turn.

“It’s a mating mark. When I came here, when I got close to you, it came to life.”

I started walking again, not wanting to hear this. Not wanting to consider what he was saying might be true.

“Five days!” he shouted. “Four dreams.”

The images of those vivid dreams flared to life.

“I have them, too. The dreams, the mark on my palm. I know you have a little mole on your right hip. There’s a small scar on your left elbow. I know the sound you make when you come all over my cock.”

I gasped at his intimate knowledge. My skin heated at the truth of his words. I knew what his cock felt like as I came around him.

“You can try to run away from the truth, but the dreams will continue to come. And so will I.”

I fled then, grabbing the hem of my dress and running up and over the rise, not stopping until I came to the back door. I knew he followed me, and as much as I hated myself for it, I slowed to make sure I would not return home alone. If Maddox’s crazy words challenged me, Neron’s too-bright gaze unsettled me in ways I didn’t even understand.