Alien Overnight Read Free Page B

hair were just inspired . God, what she wouldn’t give to trickle it through her—
    “For your own safety,” Kellen was saying, “I would advise you to keep what I’m about to tell you to yourselves.” He paused and looked hard at Monica, probably making sure she was listening. To prove that she was, she forced her eyes as wide-open as they’d go, and he shook his head and sighed. “I believe that you, Dr. Teague, are experiencing pheromone intoxication.”
    “Excuse me?” she and Shelley said simultaneously.
    “Jinx! You owe me a Coke!” Monica crowed.
    “Congratulations, Doctor,” Kellen said dryly. “As I was saying, you appear to have suffered an overexposure to Garathani pheromones. You must carry the twenty-second halethoid mutation, which renders Terrans’ olfactory receptors more susceptible to their influence.”
    Monica gasped in outrage. “I do not!”
    “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Doctor.”
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    “I don’t!”
    “But you think it smells divine in here, don’t you?” he challenged, glancing at Snow once more.
    “Well, yeah, but that’s just lunch.”
    Kellen looked at Shelley’s BTC badge and asked, “So, S. Bonham, RN, have you noticed anything out of the ordinary? Does it smell to you like the kitchen is preparing something especially delicious?”
    Shelley shook her head with a frown. “No, it smells like it always does in here, like new hospital and old jockstraps.”
    Monica struggled to her feet, anxiety suddenly taking hold of her. “I’m not a mutant. Now leave me alone.”
    When she turned to leave, the world swirled and she just about ended up on her ass. It was humiliating to be rescued by the commander, who swung her up in his incredibly hulky arms like the overgrown child she resembled. Thrilling, but humiliating.
    “Let me help you to your quarters,” he offered gently. “The effect should wear off within a half-hour of my departure.”
    Since her head was still spinning like she’d had one or six too many margaritas, Monica laid her head against his chest. His mile - wide , rock - hard chest . Her hand itched to slide over every pectoral hill and valley outlined by the satiny finish of his uniform, but she confined herself to a visual tour with a sigh of regret. Some behaviors were just too deeply ingrained to be overridden, even by the table-dancingest, lampshade-wearingest kind of intoxication.
    Damn it.
    “Lay on, MacDuff,” she murmured, closing her eyes and basking in the novelty of being carried for the first time in her memory. That lovely, scrumptious scent drew her nose to his armpit, where she sucked in a lungful and held it before exhaling in a rapturous rush. “Oh my God, did anyone ever tell you that you smell good enough to eat?”
    “Yes, but not recently,” came the amused chuckle in her ear. “Thank you for saying so.”
    “Hey, why hasn’t this ever happened to her before?” From the sound of her huffing and puffing, Shelley must be practically running to keep up with them. “She works with you guys every day.”
    Kellen’s hesitation made Monica open her eyes and look at him. It was
    disconcerting to find him looking back. Such amazing eyes. Maybe if she stared into that velvety navy-blue long enough, she’d see stars.
    “We only emit actively when we’re excited. Sexually.”
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    Sexually . Ooooh, that tantalizingly adult word, so rich and delicious as it dripped off his tongue, made her shudder. She was seeing stars, all right, and they were falling fast and landing hard, right in her achingly empty lap.
    “So it was the guy doing the na—er, performing on stage who caused this?” Shelley asked.
    Stopping in the middle of the hall, Kellen and his amazing eyes looked at her friend. “In a sense. To be perfectly truthful, the demonstration was arousing enough to the rest of us that our glands…went into overdrive, so to speak. It takes more than one emitting male to saturate a room that