Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
“She had us in mind for each other all the time,” Grath said. Cupping her cheek, he swept away Mattie’s tears with his thumb. “I guess I was always meant to be your Protector. And to think I spent so much time pushing you away.”
“Only to pull me as close as you possibly can now,” Mattie murmured, nodding down to the place where the two of them were still joined.
Grath’s midnight eyes went half-lidded with lust.
“Mmm, baby, are you up for another round of bonding and breeding? We’re going to be stuck together for a long time anyway—takes a while for my Mating Fist to go down.”
“I’d love that,” Mattie told him, using their new connection again. “But this time let’s do it nice and slow. You know,” she added. “I know it sounds crazy, but for a minute there, it almost felt like I was…uh, opening up inside. Letting the head of your shaft even deeper inside me.”
His eyes widened.
“I thought I felt that too, but I wasn’t sure. It’s something else my people are known for.”
“What is it?” Mattie wanted to know, though she could feel his uncertainty about telling her.
“It’s called a deep breeding,” Grath told her at last. “It’s what happens when my precum stimulates the mouth of your womb to open and let the head of my shaft inside so I can shoot my seed directly inside you.”
“Oh…what does that mean?” Mattie looked at him with wide eyes.
“Means you’re definitely getting pregnant tonight, little girl,” Grath growled, stroking her back and shoulders with his big, warm hands as he looked into her eyes. “There’s no way around it—even if you’re not ovulating right now, the chemicals in my seed will cause you to. So I’m absolutely planting a baby in your belly—maybe more than one.”
“Mmm…” Mattie gave a little laugh. “Well, that will certainly be the answer to all of Grandma Thelma’s hopes and prayers.” She pulled him down for a long, lingering kiss and then looked into his eyes. “Go on, Grath—breed me and bond me some more. Let’s keep it up all night long.”
And so they did. It was definitely the best Christmas Eve Mattie could ever remember and it was all because she’d agreed to try…Faking it with the Hybrid.
EPILOGUE
“Oh my God—so the guy who attacked you in high school turned out to be a serial killer?” Sophie looked at her with wide eyes.
Mattie nodded grimly. They were sitting in Sophie’s suite back aboard the Mother Ship and she was telling her friend everything.
“Yes, it was awful! He’d been chopping off women’s heads for years and keeping them in his cabin as trophies, only he called them his ‘art collection.’ His Dad knew about it too—we had to tell the police the next morning when we led them to the crime scene.”
She shivered, remembering what a mess it had been. Only having Grath by her side and knowing they were bonded helped her get through the stressful situation of explaining everything that had happened to Chief Wainright, the head of the tiny Christmasville police department.
She and Grath had been separated and questioned at one point, but since they both told the same story, the Chief had no choice but to believe them. It helped that when he went to arrest Luke’s father, the older Hartsford confessed to everything.
“He was a sick boy…a sick boy,” he kept saying over and over as tears poured down his face. “I thought about trying to stop him but he was only killing whores, so he wasn’t really doing no harm to anybody.”
Mattie most definitely disagreed with this statement and she was certain all the sex workers who had lost their lives would disagree as well. It turned out that the police around Christmasville had been looking for Luke for years—ever since prostitutes had started disappearing from the local truck stops. Finally the mystery of the “Truck Stop Killer” as they had been calling him, had been solved.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to go back home and testify several times before this is all over,” she told Sophie. “The police took pictures of everything in the cabin, but I still have to tell what I saw and how Luke was acting and what he said.”
“Of course. That makes sense, though I’m afraid it’s going to be hard on you.” Sophie squeezed her arm sympathetically. “Did it totally spoil your Christmas with your family?”
Mattie lifted her chin.
“Absolutely not,” she declared. “As awful as the thing with Luke was, it turned out to be the best Christmas ever. After we finally got away from the police, we still had time to eat Christmas dinner with my family. And afterwards, Grath got down on one knee and asked me to marry him again—for real this time.”
“Oh, that’s so romantic!” Sophie clasped her hands to her heart. “How did your family react?”