Grace Goodwin - His Virgin Mate

I’d left him sitting in his car in front of my apartment with his dick in his lap. After seeing the bulging, veinous head, I had to wonder why any woman would want to put that in her mouth. Even now, I shuddered at the memory.

Every kiss I’d ever had, from the peck on my cheek from Will Travers in fifth grade to the first French kiss behind the bleachers in tenth, had left me feeling nothing but sloppy, cold and wet.

I didn’t fit in. Clearly, men didn’t find me appealing and my clit must be broken. I felt nothing when it came to men. I even wondered if I was gay. I’d spent a month after Robert and the cock incident looking at women, studying them, wondering if I might find myself attracted to their bodies. I’d asked a friend of a friend, Meg, who was a lesbian, how to tell if one was actually gay. She’d said if I didn’t want to dive in the bushes, then I probably wasn’t interested in women.

She kissed me once, because I asked her to. And I felt nothing. Nada.

Since the thought of putting my mouth on another woman, down there , held about as much appeal as putting my mouth on Robert’s cock in the parking lot, I figured I wasn’t a lesbian. Which kind of sucked. I didn’t care who I might fall in love with, I just wanted to fall . I wanted to feel desire. I had loved my parents, but that wasn’t the same. I loved my dog. I had friends I cared deeply about in high school. Cute memes of kittens and puppies and babies online made my heart lurch. So, my heart worked just fine.

Since I wasn’t into women, and no man I’d met made me hot, made me pant like I saw on TV, I finally gave up. I just buckled down and worked. I went to school and studied to be a chef because the only thing I was passionate about was food. The tastes, the textures, the surprises that could roll over my tongue when I combined spices or ingredients in unexpected ways. I’d spent the last three years in school, learning everything I could at the culinary institute downtown.

I excelled in class, but I felt like life was parading in front of me in a twisted and cruel taunt. As the monotony of caring for first one ill parent and then another wore me down, I discovered that going to class made me feel twice as lonely heading home at the end of the day as I did in the morning. The people in my classes were working in real kitchens, earning their place already while I had to squeeze every moment of study I could into my day.

Eventually, I had to stop going to class and take care of my father. We couldn’t afford a nurse, or a nursing home. And I couldn’t’ bear the thought of him wasting away in a place like that while I sautéed mushrooms and made cream sauces for wealthy tourists.

I took care of my father, and every day I thought more and more about the Interstellar Brides Program advertisements. They assured their matches were ninety-nine percent successful. Those were crazy numbers since the divorce rates I’d heard quoted for regular Earth marriages were around fifty percent.

Ninety-nine percent sounded really damn good. And if I didn’t have to go on any more dates with guys like Robert, and I was guaranteed a guy that was perfect for me, then I was all for it. What the hell? I had nothing to lose.

Even if that guy was an alien.

“Hmm.” Warden Egara paced beside me, her dark brown hair up in a bun and her total attention on the tablet in her hand. She didn’t look happy anymore. She looked worried.

Maybe I was really, really broken. Maybe their system didn’t work on girls like me, stupid, scared virgins who had no idea what to do with a man, let alone an alien.

Oddly, that thought dried the tears immediately. Pain and loneliness I could deal with. Hope hurt a hell of a lot more.

“It didn’t work, did it? You couldn’t find me a match.” I sighed, tried not to let the disappointment make my voice quiver. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?” she wondered.

“That I’m broken, that there’s something definitely wrong with me when it comes to men.”

The warden offered me a sad little smile. Yeah, I was that pitiful. “Oh, no Alexis. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were worried. I should have spoken sooner. You have been matched.”

My heart skipped a beat and my eyes widened. “I have? Really?”

There was someone out there for me? Who was waiting for me right now?

“Really,” she repeated, now smiling fully.

“Who?” I knew I sounded breathy and excited, but I couldn’t help it. Today, the dream, was the first time I was hot for a guy. Ever. And I had no idea who he was, or where he was.

With a swipe of her finger over her controls tablet, the restraints retracted. I sat up, rubbed my wrists, although the hold hadn’t been too snug.

“All brides are matched to a planet first, then a mate. For you, and this is quite interesting, your genetic profile matched you to Everis.” Her shrewd gaze raked over me. “It seems you have met the special requirements that are very specific to that planet.”

“Oh? What kind of requirements?”

She tilted her head to study me. “Let me see your palm.”

I didn’t know which one, so I rolled my hands over, palms up so she could see both.

She frowned. “Strange.”

Lexi

I looked down at my hands. “What’s strange?”

“All Everians are born with a mark on their palm.”

She didn’t say more than that, just eyed me. “In order to be matched to Everis, you must have a mark somewhere. Do you have an unusual birthmark anywhere on your body? A large birthmark that runs in your family?”

Holy shit. “Yes.” Instinctively, I lifted my arms and wrapped them over my breast to hide the mark there. “Why?”

Her dark gaze followed the movement of my arms, but she smiled. “Long ago, Everian explorers colonized many worlds. Some of their ancestors made it all the way here, to Earth.”

“And? What does that have to do with me?”

The warden’s face was kind, but her words made my head spin. “Their descendants carry the birthmark you are trying to hide. Your ancestors make you a potential marked mate of an Everian Hunter. Your genetic profile alone would have sent you to Everis. The processing protocols confirmed your psychological compatibility.”

“What?” What? Was she saying that I was an alien? “I’m from Denver. My family is from Vera Cruz. My abuela still lives in Mexico. I’m not an alien. I went to East High School. I was born in Denver.”

“Of course you’re not an alien, my dear.” She whirled and waved her hand in the air to indicate the chair I still sat in and the bank of computers and screens built into the wall. “You’re just the descendant of one.” She glanced down at her tablet. “According to your genetic profile, you are seventeen percent Everian and eighty-three percent human.” She smiled proudly, like a mother bragging about her child’s accomplishments in school. “Even after thousands of years, the Everian DNA is very resilient.”

“What? If you already knew I was some kind of alien, why did I even go through the test?”

“Your DNA profile placed Everis at the top of your probability matrix. However, the testing you just completed uses many variables to define your wants and needs in a mate based on conscious and subconscious thought. Planets are removed from your options one by one based on these until only one planet remains. At the end of the testing, sexual compatibility is analyzed and ultimately, a recorded mating ceremony is fed to your core brain processing for verification.”