Page 82 of Rescued By the Alien Bull Rider

And then I lost count.

She did not hate me. She was not ashamed of me. At least, not anymore.

My body felt as if it were filled with light.

I ran from the barn, and when the sunlight hit me –me, Zohro, prisoner of the empire, forever a convict – I was freer than I’d ever been.

I found Jolene beneath a fruit tree near the house. She was speaking in gently admonishing tones to our daughter, who was reaching up towards the branches.

“You’ll have to be a lot bigger than you are now before you can climb a tree, little miss!” she said, her cheeks dimpling. “Besides, I don’t want one of those apple-looking things falling on your head, and – oh!” She noticed me and froze.

“I read it.” My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. Like I had not spoken in cycles.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She pursed her lips. “Actually, I’m not sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Apology rescinded.”

I took a step towards her.

“I hope you’re not mad at me,” she went on, “but I understand if you are.”

I moved as if in a dream.

“It’s OK. I can wait until you’re not mad anymore. I’ll be patient. I can-”

I silenced her with the claiming rapture of my kiss, stealing her words and her breath. Autumn made a slobbery sound of delight between us, batting at my chest with her mittened hands.

“Thank you,” I hissed vehemently against my wife’s mouth.

“You’re not angry?” Her eyes glistened.

“No,” I said. And I meant it. And then, I thanked my wife again.

I thanked her for a third time that night when I moved, hot and hard and ardent inside her. What else could I do but thank her? She who loved me, who gave a daughter to me, who looked at all the ugly, broken pieces of me without flinching or pulling away? Who reached into the still-bleeding wounds of my past and stitched them up when I, a surgeon, could not even do it.

She wrapped her arms around me and came on my cock like a storm. Like a sunrise.

Like a beautiful, powerful thing that can take you so wholly by surprise. That can knock you down to your knees and leave you wondering…

How the blazes you ever deserved it.