Her Mate's Secret Baby. Grace Goodwin
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then things did go black. Sensation faded, as if I were coming out of a dream, a dream I really, really fucking wanted to get back to.
That was the best sex of my life, and I wanted more.
In my experience, waking up always sucked.
“Miss Montgomery?” A stern, female voice called my name.
I shook my head, not wanting to answer. I wanted more of my mate, his hard cock, that incredible orgasm. Holy shit.
“Natalie!” The voice had increased in volume, and now sounded concerned. If I’d learned nothing during my long years of boarding school, I couldn’t make myself be rude. Good manners were hard-wired into my system by strict and sometimes ruthless teachers.
“I’m sorry. Yes?” My voice was raspy and weak, as if I’d not used it for days.
“Open your eyes, dear. I need to know you’re back here, on Earth, with me.”
Reluctantly, I forced my eyes open, the backs of my eyelids like sandpaper. It all rushed back to me. The cold, clinical white walls. The strange chair I was currently strapped into like a demented mental patient. The strange hospital style gown I wore with the Interstellar Brides Processing insignia all over it in a dark burgundy pattern like ugly-ass wallpaper. Even the serious eyes and solemn expression on the pretty brunette woman who was performing my testing. She didn’t look like she was much older than me, but the darkness behind her gaze told me she’d lived a hell of a lot more.
Time for me to do some of that thing called life. I was tired of being kept on the shelf like delicate china. I’d cooperated for twenty-four years, and look what that had gotten me. An Ivy League education, parents I never saw more than twice a year, and a fiancé so desperate for hot sex he’d rather pay for it than sleep with me.
True, he’d never rattled my cage like the dream I’d just had, but he hadn’t tried all that hard either.
Getting him to eat me out took an act of Congress. He was much more a rut-into-me-like-a-pig-and-walk-away kind of guy. And I’d put up with that for the last eighteen months to try to please my parents. Seriously? What was wrong with me?
To make it even worse, the best sex I’d ever had had been a dream. Although, if I was going to get more of that, if I accepted the match, then I was all for it.
“Miss Montgomery, are you with me?”
“Oh, sorry.” I blinked a few times and dismissed thoughts of Curtis Howard Hornsby III from my mind. Billionaire, silver-spoon, spineless, limp-dicked, cheating low-life. “Yes. I’m here, Warden. Sorry.”
“I understand. Take a moment to recover. I know the processing protocol can be intense.”
I flushed. “I didn’t scream too loudly, did I?”
She smiled, then looked away. “No, not too loudly,” she replied, but I didn’t believe her. The way I’d come apart in the dream, surely everyone in the processing center had heard me.
“Yeah, about that. Sorry, but it was… God.” I couldn’t even explain it.
“Yes, I understand.” The warden’s name was Egara. I remembered that now. But was that her first name? Or last? It was a weird name for a woman, but then, I’d heard rumors from some of the others being processed in the center the last few days that Warden Egara had been mated to not one, but two warriors from a planet called Prillon Prime. And they’d both died. She was a double widow.
Sad. It sounded so sad.
Warden Egara looked down at the tablet in her hand, one it seemed she always carried, and nodded briskly. “Excellent. You have a ninety-nine percent match.”
“I do?” Yes, that pathetically hopeful voice was mine. My mother would scowl at the unnecessary display of emotion. But screw her, screw my billionaire banker father and their decision to have a child simply to conform to societal expectations. I’d been raised by nannies and housemothers in boarding school. I’d learned to keep a stiff upper lip from the age of three, and I wasn’t even British.
As of today, my mother’s opinion no longer mattered. I needed to remember that. I was getting off this stupid planet. I was going to have a real life, with a man, an alien, mate, whatever, that was ninety-nine percent matched to me. I didn’t care what he was called, as long as he cared. For once in my life, I wanted someone to put me first.
That one simple characteristic wasn’t my ex-fiancé’s or my parents’ nature. Hell, their consistent lack of interest in their only daughter probably meant that they wouldn’t even realize I was gone until Christmas, which was four months away.
“Yes, Natalie. You’ve been matched to Trion.” The warden’s eyes warmed slightly, and I relaxed back into the examination chair. I felt like I was at the dentist, but I wasn’t going to bring that up. And I wasn’t getting a filling, I was getting a man. A mate. A life.
“Okay.” I didn’t know anything about the planet, and I didn’t care. Anywhere had to be better than Earth, because when my parents and Curtis paid attention, they noticed everything and dictated what I did, what I wore, who I socialized with.
I’d pulled up my big girl panties and rebelled a few times, but that had never worked. It was a new boarding school or a first-class ticket home from wherever I’d run to. Just last year, I’d gone on an Alaskan cruise and was met in Juneau by a Montgomery lackey to retrieve me. It had been a fucking cruise, but that wasn’t allowed.
The only way to break free was to leave the planet, to go in a way that they couldn’t get me back. I glanced down at my left hand, at the oversized diamond engagement ring still on my finger. When I looked up, it was to see that Warden Egara had been watching me. “Can you take it off?”
With my wrists restrained, it wasn’t like I was going to do it. But I wasn’t going into space matched to an alien from Trion wearing Curtis’ ring. It was big and gorgeous and I didn’t want it. I wanted my matched spaceman. “Will you help? I can’t reach it.”
She nodded and walked to my side. She set the tablet next to my knee and carefully worked the ring from my finger. The moment it was off, I felt a bubbling, giddy sense of freedom. Was I really going to do this, leave everyone and everything?
Yes. Yes, I was. I wiggled my fingers and sighed. “Thank you.”
She held the ring and raised a brow. “What do you wish me to do with it?”
“I don’t care. Sell it. Keep the money. Give it away. Throw it in the trash. Whatever you want.”
“All right.” She slid the ring into her pocket and I worried she might actually throw it away.
“It’s worth well over thirty-thousand dollars. Don’t take a penny less.”
Nodding, she reached for the tablet again. She didn’t seem impressed by the ring and I liked her all the more for it. It seemed she wanted love over objects, just like me. The ring meant nothing because I meant nothing to Curtis. I settled back against the chair.
“For the record, Miss Montgomery, are you now, or have you ever been married?”
“No.” These were the same questions I’d been asked before, but I knew this was the last time. Now I had a mate. A match. A man who was supposed to be paired to my psychological profile perfectly. Knowing that my mate waited for me only made the questions seem much more real.
“Have you produced any biological offspring?”
“Hell, no.” And before today, I’d never wanted to. Curtis had never inspired me to want a child, and my own upbringing had left me cold. If I ever had a baby, I’d need to take mothering classes or something. I’d have to do all the things my mother never did, like learn all the little songs and games little ones played. The ABCs. I knew the ABCs.
Did they even have an alphabet on Trion? Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to find out. I bet it had its