Swept Away: A Krinar Story Read Free Page A

erection pressing into her ass. It didn’t seem to frighten her as much as his technology, and Arus realized he’d done the right thing by using his embrace to calm her. The best way to demonstrate his nonviolent intent was to hold her and let her get used to his touch, so she’d stop fearing it.
    So she’d focus on him as a man, rather than a stranger with magical powers.
    “Are you hungry?” he asked, resuming stroking her hair. Even damp from the rain, it felt thick and silky to the touch. “Is that why you had to go out in this weather?”
    She blinked up at him. “No, I just always gather mussels in the morning. My family needs the extra food.”
    “I see.” He’d already guessed that she was poor. Even by human standards, her roughly made clothes were quite primitive. “So your family sent you out in this weather?”
    “No, my sister warned me against going, but I thought the storm wouldn’t be this bad.”
    Of course. Arus had forgotten that her people didn’t have a way to track the storm and measure its strength. All they had to go on was the weather at the present moment and whatever experience their elderly had gathered over their short lifespans.
    “Well, you’re safe now,” he told the girl, whose shaking was finally subsiding. Outside, the storm raged on, but inside their shelter, the temperature was comfortably warm. “Nothing can hurt you here.”
    She looked up at the transparent bubble over their heads, and he realized how odd the force-shield walls had to appear to her. When she met his gaze again, he wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear her ask, “What are you? Where do you come from, if not Mount Olympus?”
    “I come from another world, a planet similar to this one,” Arus said, though he knew the girl wouldn’t understand. “It’s very far from here.”
    “Another world?” He felt a tremor go through her. “Like Hades?”
    “No, not like Hades.” Arus stroked her back in a calming motion. “It’s beautiful where I live. Very green and bright.”
    She gave him a puzzled look. “Why are you here then?”
    “Because I wanted to see your planet,” Arus said, watching her lips. For some reason, that imperfect, delicate mouth of hers kept drawing his attention. “Your people fascinate me.”
    “We do?” Her tongue came out to wet her lips, the gesture unconsciously seductive, and Arus felt his hunger intensify. Her body was now soft and pliant as he held her, and there was more curiosity than fear in her brown gaze.
    Curiosity and a glimmer of feminine heat.
    The realization that she wanted him—and the intoxicating scent of her growing arousal—made his groin tighten. The balmy air inside their shelter suddenly felt steaming hot, and his skin prickled as her hands shifted on his chest, her palms splaying on his skin without any attempt to push him away.
    She licked her lips again, her eyes darkening, and Arus could no longer control himself.
    Sliding his hand into her hair, he lowered his head and claimed that tempting mouth with a kiss.

Chapter Five
    C aught in the god’s powerful embrace, Delia felt like she’d been swept up by the storm. When Arus had first picked her up, she’d been too anxious to focus on his naked body, but as her fear abated, the unfamiliar ache between her thighs returned—and with it, an intense awareness of him as an attractive man.
    A man who wanted her, judging by the large erection pressing against her bottom.
    Delia was a virgin, but she wasn’t ignorant about the mechanics of sex. She’d watched many animals mate, and her mother had told her it was the same for humans. Delia also knew she shouldn’t mate with anyone but her husband. It was a rule she had always intended to follow—except it now seemed that her husband was likely to be Phanias. She couldn’t imagine so much as kissing the old blacksmith, and the idea of this exotic, powerful stranger taking her virginity was more than a little appealing.
    So appealing, in