Andie had never known it was possible to find someone simultaneously entrancing and terrifying. She was rooted to the spot by the sight of Kragen, even as her heart raced like something small and fuzzy fleeing something decidedly not small and not fuzzy.

But she didn’t want to run.

Not unless she knew she would be caught, anyway.

Some part of Andie knew Kragen. It was like she’d been dreaming about him for her entire life, but she’d forgotten his face when she woke up each morning. He’d been with her for years. He’d been the man to pin her down, to hold her close, to compel her submission—in her dreams. It was only now that they were finally meeting.

This was clearly insane.

And then Trevor broke the reverie by literally stabbing Kragen in the back, as only Trevor would.

“No!” she screamed as Kragen’s knees briefly buckled, and Trevor ran, stumbling, drunk, stupid, back into the woods.

She should maybe be glad that Trevor was gone, but all she could do was look at Kragen in horror, even while that feeling he’d put inside her still pulsated. His own sword—a freaking sword—fell clattering to the ground, a molten red liquid smeared on its black blade. She watched Kragen frown ever so slightly and felt like she was losing her mind. Andie was about to start screaming, but this Leonid was totally calm after being stabbed. He pressed his hand to the wound, his fingers coming away stained with that same color of red.

“Cowardice,” he sneered.

Andie blinked, not for the first time. He’d been stabbed in the back and mostly he was mad about what a little shit Trevor was?

Well, that was fair.

The sight of his injury was enough to snap Andie into motion. Whatever she was feeling could wait.

“Bandages,” she said, taking one step toward the lab. “You need bandages.”

“No,” he growled. “You will not leave my side.”

It was…an order.

Andie drew herself up, ready to give the giant Leonid a piece of her mind, when that otherworldly heat washed over her again. It was the feeling that had been building all day, the thing that held her whenever she looked into his eyes. Wetness pooled between her legs, her nipples hardened, her heart beat faster. It was like a fever, a delirium. She must be delirious, because the spot on her left breast was burning again, and the thing this crazy alien had just ordered her to do made perfect sense. She didn’t want to be anywhere but by his side.

I have lost my damn mind.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she said, and as soon as she did, she knew it sounded false.

The Leonid looked at her, hard. His eyes glowing, ever so slightly.

“Not yet,” he said finally.

The certainty in his voice made her weak. She put a hand out, steadying herself against her car. The metal felt impossibly cool against her fevered skin.

She watched as Kragen drew himself up, the silvery-red blood trickling down his muscled side, staining the military leathers at the waist. She wondered why Leonids were shirtless all the time, but she wasn’t exactly complaining. It was just hard to look at anything else.

“Our attention belongs on more urgent matters,” he said.

Andie's head snapped up. Yes. Attention. She tried to ignore the heavy, insistent pressure that pulse between her legs, and looked fully at the Leonid.

“You need medical attention,” she tried again.

He didn’t answer her. Instead he balled a fist on his chest—not on the visible wound, but on his chest, on the exact same place on his body that Andie was currently hurting. Just below his left clavicle. Like they’d had twin wounds inflicted upon them.

Wait, not like wound, exactly. Like…healing. It was a productive pain, a tingling warmth that suggested growth.

“This hurts,” she said. She rubbed her fingers over her chest. There was no wound, no bumps. Just smooth skin gliding underneath cotton. “Why does it hurt?”

Kragen eased closer. He was eerily silent for something of his size. He took up the whole world.

He said, “Because we need to touch.”

The ground dropped out from beneath her feet. She leaned back against the car, breathing heavily, her head swimming.

“Touch?”

Andie had roughly one million ideas about ways he could touch her, all of them inappropriate considering the bananas-crazy circumstances. And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

What his hands would feel like on her body.

Fisting her hair.

Holding her down.

Andie was wet just thinking about it, and he was extending his hand toward her.

Oh. The kind of touching this alien had in mind was more like…a handshake?

That made sense. She was a small-town phlebotomist with a record, and he was…well…

“You will come to trust me, Andromeda,” he said. “I will never allow harm to come to you.”

The sound of her name in his deep, growling voice was almost enough to leave her undone.

Andie's eyes climbed from his hand along the lines of his rippling bicep to his shoulders, tensed in a line that drew her gaze up the thickness of his neck to the fullness of his lips. Twin indentations marked his bottom lip from where his fangs of his pressed gently against the skin.

And his eyes.

Oh good Lord, his eyes.

It was like staring into a silver star when it was about to go supernova.

Her knees trembled as she pressed her thighs together. She needed to get control of herself. How am I supposed to control myself in front of a god come to Earth?

Her chest was burning now. Like a hot poker had been yanked from the fire and jabbed between her breasts.

Andie could make the pain stop. She could get him to stop with this, and go get medical attention. She just needed to trust him.

Drawing in a deep breath, she extended her hand toward him. A huge hand encircled hers.

The pain stopped, sure.

That wasn’t the only thing that stopped. Time halted too. Andie could suddenly feel the moon and the planet underneath her and she knew that they were no longer orbiting. Blood didn’t flow through her veins. Clocks stopped ticking.

A bond opened between Andie and Kragen and it was a depthless chasm. She had no choice but to fall inside.

So…her chest had stopped hurting.

But now it was glowing. Something blazed underneath the stiff material of her scrubs, like she was smuggling a floodlight. And the same light appeared on Kragen’s chest. They shone at the exact same brightness, the same kaleidoscope of colors, and with the same pulsing rhythm.

In that light, Andie could see something. But she could feel everything. She saw images she didn’t understand; she saw herself, she saw Kragen. She felt pain, she felt love. She saw herself, bent over, screaming in pleasure…

She saw two divergent lines meeting to form one.

It was too much.

With no sense of her body, her knees weakened. Her vision fuzzed at the edges and Kragen’s whole face blurred.

She tumbled deeper into the chasm. The parking lot rose to meet her face.

Even as she passed out, she was distantly aware of being caught—scooped off of the ground before she could strike. She was lifted effortlessly by tree-trunk arms and nestled against a broad chest that still burned with their united, glowing hearts.

Kragen carried her—away from Silver Creek, and into the forest.

He was abducting her.

It was the last thing Andie realized before everything went black.

* * *

Andie had been here many times before.

She was on her knees, on a strange bed. A huge bed, the black, silken sheets twisted up around her. Her wrists were bound gently together, and she was resting on her forearms, her breasts pressed into a pillow, her ass in the air. Naked.

Exposed.

At the mercy of…someone.

There was a…a male behind her. That was familiar, too. So was the way he slipped his large hand between her thighs, running his hand up her leg until he came to cup her wetness, his fingers teasing her, rubbing her until a ragged moan escaped her lips.

But then…he growled. In appreciation, in lust. A growl. She’d heard that growl before…

And then there were huge hands on her hips, and instead of entering her from behind, he lifted her and flipped her over onto her back, all in one motion. Then those huge hands were between her legs, spreading her thighs, and she looked right at him…

And the man between her legs wasn’t a man at all.

He was a Leonid.

Her Leonid.

Kragen.

His eyes blazed and his chest expanded, his muscles rippling in a wave down his torso as he moved into position. Another growl rumbled in his throat, his fingers dug into her hips. And then he pinned her with that gaze.

“Mine,” he growled. “You are mine.”

And before she could say yes…

Andie woke up.

Holy bleeping shit.

That was one of her oldest fantasies, only this time it had been a dream…a dream with Kragen in it.

Well, part of it had been a dream.

Andie sat up. She was, in fact, lying on a strange bed. With black sheets. Her wrists were free, though. So. She had that going for her.

Slowly, and not entirely sure she wasn’t still dreaming, Andie looked around. This bed, with its black sheets, wasn’t exactly like the dream bed. It sat directly on the floor, for one. The scarcity of pillows told her it was definitely not a woman’s bed. Not that Andie knew any woman who would have a bed in an abandoned warehouse.

Because that’s where she was: a warehouse. In the basement, maybe, judging by the height and shape of the windows. Probably one of the warehouses that had been abandoned when the factories shut down.

It was fancy for an abandoned warehouse, though. Someone had built shelves out of scrap wood, and there were all sorts of little blinking widgets on those shelves, connected by cables that disappeared through a tiny hole in the wall. The lighting was provided by candles set around the room, leaving Andie blanketed in flickering, silky darkness. It was dim enough that nobody passing by would have known there were people inside.

Not that anybody passed by the abandoned warehouses anymore. Really, nobody went into the industrial district across the river. If that was where Andie had been taken, chances were great that nobody would ever find her.

So why wasn’t she more freaked out?

She ran her hands over the sheets and tried to think. They were soft cotton, not silk. And she wasn’t entirely sure this was all real. Could this be real? Had all of that really happened?

Trevor had attacked her?

A Leonid had saved her? A Leonid named Kragen?

A Leonid who felt like…

Mine.

She shook her head. No, that was insane. There must be some other explanation. She’d been feeling weird all day, she’d been fantasizing about Leonids, and then she’d fainted after one of them saved her. She’d probably imagined the weirder parts. It wasn’t like there’d even been a scientific match yet, so randomly finding a mate was ridiculous, and she did not believe in fate or any nonsense like that. Besides, the Leonids were going to have their pick of most of the women on Earth. Andie wasn’t even in the running.

And even if it weren’t for all of that…she just couldn’t be “mated,” whatever the hell that meant, to someone so dangerous. Kragen wasn’t just her type; he was her type on galactic steroids, and that was the problem. That dark, dominant energy always came with a dark side. A cruel, domineering side. Even if she couldn’t see exactly what it was yet. Besides the whole kidnapping thing, obviously.

But had she been kidnapped? He’d carried her. She hadn’t imagined that. And he’d taken her here.

To an abandoned warehouse.

“No,” she whispered, and shook her head again, as if to ward off bad thoughts. Even though Kragen was intimidating as all hell, he had been honorable so far. It’s not like a random Leonid would know where to take her if she needed help, and she had literally fainted. He had been injured, himself, and he’d needed…well, he’d needed to get back to his secret underground lair, apparently.

And somehow she knew that a male like Kragen would never leave an unconscious female alone and defenseless.

Why didn’t she feel alone now?

That warm feeling was pulsing deep in her core again. It was almost becoming uncomfortable, how aroused it made her feel. Andie took a deep breath, and looked down. Welp, she definitely looked like she’d just had a really hot sex dream, that was for sure. Her nipples were hard little points, visible even through her scrubs, and she was wet again.

She was trapped in underground lair, and she was turned on.

That doesn’t seem good.

“You are safe.”

She jolted, yanking the sheets to cover herself to the chest, even though she was fully dressed.

Andie hadn’t seen Kragen looming in the doorway at the end of the makeshift room. He’d been watching her from the darkness of a passageway, his huge bulk leaning casually against the wall. He’d be invisible if it weren’t for the dull, silvery glow coming from his own skin.

How long had he been there?

Had he seen her as she’d dreamed of him?

“Breathe, Andromeda,” his voice came from the dark. It sounded like he was smiling. “You truly are safe.”

“You sure about that?” she said, half to herself.

At that he pushed off the wall and came forward, into the flickering candlelight.

Good Lord.

He was even more physically impressive than she remembered. The light dappled the molten skin stretched tight over endless muscle, reflecting, at times, blue, red, green. At first glance she might have thought he was a warm gray, if such a thing could exist, but the light revealed the metallic sheen to his skin. It was beautiful.

And his eyes…

She didn’t dare look at his eyes. Somehow she knew if she did, she’d lose her mind. Instead she pulled her gaze lower, over his muscled chest, to where bandages now covered his waist, a gauze pad at his back where Trevor had stabbed him. Even so, the bandages did nothing to hide the raw power of his body. When he moved, she could see his muscles slide beneath his skin, could see the simple athletic grace of someone who exerted complete control over themselves and their surroundings.

The thought sent another wave of heat washing over her. Kragen glowered at her from the end of his bed, studying her body with roving eyes that she could feel upon her skin like the brush of fingertips.

Andie had never been so persistently, uncomfortably wet before. It felt like she was actively throbbing between her legs. She was swollen, aching, and the only relief would be the touch of fingers. Or a mouth. Or…

Her eyes dropped to Kragen’s groin. Her cheeks caught fire. Her shoulders trembled. They really, really couldn’t be mates.

Because there was no way she could handle that.

“I am sure, Andromeda,” he said. “You will always be safe with me.”

His voice commanded her attention, and he got it. She looked up.

His eyes were glowing.

“I am not accustomed to repeating myself,” he said, voice low and rumbling.

He said it with such easy command, with such…

With such dominance.

Andie swallowed thickly. This was not good. Not good at all. In fact, this was freaking dangerous.

He was going to kill Trevor!

Like he read her thoughts, Kragen strode to the side of the bed, until he towered over her.

“I did not kill them,” Kragen said, his words even. “Because you requested it. Every one of the human males survived. You are mine to protect from harm, physical or emotional. You were upset. So they survived.”

Andie understood all of those words individually, but together they were almost too much. She could barely breathe around Kragen. And the closer he got…

“Thank you?” she whispered.

“When you have cause to thank me,” he growled, “you will know it.”

Andie's breath hitched. He was so close that she was having trouble forming normal thoughts. She kept looking at the patchwork of scars that covered his skin, while the pressure between her legs grew into an uncomfortable ache.

It took her a second to even realize that he was talking again.

“Andromeda.”

She looked up.

Kragen folded his arms across his chest, eyebrows lowering over his eyes. “Are you hurt?”

“Me?” she said, her brain coming momentarily back online. “What about you? You were literally stabbed in the back.”

“I will be fine,” he growled. “You will tell me if you are injured, or I will check you myself.”

Andie felt a thrill run down her body and back up again at the promise in those words.

Control yourself, Knowles!

There was no such thing as magical mates, or whatever she’d imagined he’d said. There was no such thing as fate. And physical attraction didn’t mean anything, even if she’d never been so attracted to anyone in her life. Even if she knew, knew, that if he told her to, she’d…

She’d do anything at all.

Which was why she should be scared. Because she didn’t know him. And it’s not like being alone in an abandoned warehouse entirely at his mercy wasn’t a huge red flag.

“I’ll check myself,” Andie muttered. And almost hated herself for it.

She looked down. She was certain that Trevor had grabbed hard enough to bruise her, and indeed, she found five imprints in the shape of fingertips. But they looked to be old injuries. They were yellowing around the edges.

“Uh, sort of,” she said, confused. “But I’m almost healed. How long have I been unconscious?”

“Only a few minutes,” Kragen said. “You are healing because of my presence. Just as I am healing because of yours.”

Andie looked up sharply. He was looming over her, his size intimidating and sexy all at the same time. And he didn’t seem particularly happy about what he’d just said.

“How is that even possible?” Andie said. “How are we healing each other?”

Kragen took a long, deep breath, his nostrils flaring as he exhaled, his big arms still crossed over his chest.

“Because,” he rumbled, “you are my Mate.”