Star Mate Matched, Margo Collins [the unexpected everything .TXT] 📗

acknowledged the command, I dropped back into my primary bipedal form. It was always harder to hold the half shape than it was to maintain either my primary or my feline form. Both of those felt natural. There was absolutely nothing natural about my half-shift.

I turned to face my mate. She held her hands over her mouth, and her eyes watered. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked from behind her hands.

“Home,” I told her, pulling on my tunic and lacing up my boots.

“I don’t think I have a home anymore,” she said in a tone that suggested some sort of confession.

“Of course you do,” I tried to reassure her. “Your home is with me.”

All signs of potential mirth dropped from her face. “Wait. What? What do you mean my home is with you?”

“We’re destined to be together.” I headed toward the bridge, and my mate hurried after me. I loved watching her move. She was so round and soft and delectable. I wanted to pick her up and impale her on my cock right now, make her my own.

Make sure she could never run away.

But I at least needed to get the coordinates for our next stop into the computer. High Command insisted that both homeworld and all military space station coordinates be entered manually. Keeping that information in our computers made us vulnerable should the Karlaxons attack one of our ships for information.

“Seriously. You can’t take me with you,” my mate insisted.

I moved to the nav control on the bridge. “Of course I can. You’re my mate.”

“I’m your what?”

I turned to move to the captain’s chair, only to find her blocking my way. Her anger and fear added a spice to her scent I could not resist. Leaning toward her face, I rubbed my cheek against hers, marking her with my scent.

Mine, my inner cat agreed, purring in satisfaction.

“What the hell are you doing? Stop that.” She pushed me away. “You can’t take me with you. This is kidnapping.”

I brushed past her to drop into my command chair.

“Yes, I can. You are mine and I am yours. We belong together.”

“I’ve been abducted by aliens,” she said disbelievingly.

“Alien,” I corrected her. “You have been abducted by one alien. Females are not allowed multiple male partners on the Drovekzian homeworld.”

“Oh my God. Of course I couldn’t be abducted by an alien from a nicely civilized matriarchy. Nope. Right back into another patriarchal shitshow. You are such a… man!” She nearly spit the last word at me.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s certainly not good,” she said, her face scrunching up in anger. “I cannot believe I’m on a spaceship with a sexy alien catman who has just kidnapped me and is just like every other male I have ever dealt with. It’s like I can’t get away from your type.”

“You think I’m sexy?”

She sputtered for a moment—and when it became clear she wasn’t going to answer, I spoke again.

“I promise, sweetheart, soon enough you will never want to get away from me.”

She squeaked in frustrated outrage, but it only served to make me want her more. I liked her spirit—she was feisty, this mate of mine—but the sooner she figured out who was really in charge here, the better off she would be.

The better off we’ll both be.

Chapter Seven

Nora

It took everything I had not to march over and smack the smug smile off his face. Only the memory of the bloody mugger dead on the ground stopped me.

That and the fact that the deck underneath my feet suddenly seemed to fall away into nothingness.

“Better hang on,” the infuriating alien catman said. “We are about to jump into hyperspace.”

I reached out and pulled myself into a chair not far from his, similarly bolted onto the floor but without a control panel in front of it. The seatbelt-like straps were far too big for me, but at least I wasn’t likely to float up to the ceiling when we lost gravity.

Assuming losing gravity actually happens.

I could not believe I was having thoughts like that.

Jumping into hyperspace was horrible. Everything around me seemed to stretch out, as if the ship went on forever in front of me. I was afraid to glance to either side, worried that I would vomit if I did.

When this is over, I promised myself, I will get back home. What Catman didn’t know was that ever since I’d followed him into this control room, I had been carefully watching to see what buttons he pushed.

I figured if I wanted to get home, I would have to learn how to fly the ship.

And yes, that was quite possibly the most arrogant idea I’d ever had. I hadn’t even driven a car since I moved to New York. But if this was really happening—if it wasn’t a hallucination and I actually was being abducted by an alien to become some sort of breeder (God, that sounded creepy, even inside my head)—I was going to find a way to get back home.

No matter what it took.

I stretched my hand out in front of me, and for just an instant, it felt like I could touch infinity as my fingertips disappeared in the distance. I had to force myself not to vomit all the way through that trip.

Just when it felt like reality had stretched out to its absolute limits, like it might break at any moment, suddenly everything snapped back into place, like a rubber band popping.

“What the hell was that?” I asked Catman.

“Hyperspace.”

“Yeah, you said that part already.”

He shook his head and muttered something rude. Then he took a deep breath and exhaled in a long-suffering sigh. “Hyperspace allows us to travel from one spot in the galaxy to another almost instantaneously.”

“How does that work?”

“Theoretically, we are passing through every point in the universe simultaneously. In reality, it doesn’t work quite that way. I could show you the equations, if you think you could follow calculations.”

“And I thought mansplaining