“I’m fine.” I tried to lift my hands, to adjust the hospital gown where it had inched up just past mid-thigh, but the cuffs stopped me cold. Damn.
“Are you sure? The matching process can be… intense.”
So, was that what they were calling mind-numbing orgasms these days? Intense? Hell, yes, that had been intense. I’d like more then, please.
She looked sympathetic, and I found I wanted to tell her everything. Hell, I wanted to ask her the one burning question I’d been too afraid to ask. But I couldn’t find the courage. I was terrified of the answer. Instead, I pasted a smile on my lips. “Yes. I’m fine.”
“Excellent.” She smiled and nodded, apparently convinced by my halfhearted attempt at a smile of my own that I wasn’t about to go into shock or have a mental breakdown. Obviously, she’d never had to wait tables for a busy dinner shift with puking kids and drunken idiots surrounding her in equal numbers. I could handle a whole lot more stress than this. And orgasm stress? Yeah, that wasn’t stress at all. It was… overwhelming.
I tried to relax, leaned back into the chair and focused on counting as I pulled air into my lungs. Four in, four out. That’s how I did things.
The room was pale and white, clinical, and I felt like I was in an emergency room, not a bride processing center, but when you were about to commit to life as an alien’s bride, I guess they did things a bit differently.
Her fingers moved over a small tablet too fast for me to track, and frankly, I didn’t care what she was doing, as long as the stupid matching thing worked. Which, I realized, I had no idea if it had.
“Did it work? Do I have a match?” I swear my heart stopped beating as I waited for her answer.
“Oh, yes. Of course you do.”
I shuddered, my sigh loud, even to my own ears, and she lifted a hand to my shoulder in a sympathetic gesture. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were worried about that. You’ve been matched to Atlan.”
I didn’t know a thing about Atlan, but that didn’t stop hope spreading in my chest like wildfire. I’d been matched. Holy crap. “And this matching thing… you’re sure that the alien will want me to be his mate? You’re sure the matching works?”
“Absolutely.” She patted my shoulder one more time and returned her attention to the table.
“Even for girls like me?” Shit. My deepest fear slipped past my lips before I could stop it. I bit down and hoped nothing else slipped out.
That stopped her cold and she lifted her gaze to mine. “What do you mean, girls like you? Are you married? Because that was one question you were required to answer under oath. If you lied, I can’t process you.”
Married? As if.
I sighed. Jeeeez. Did I have to spell it out for her? With her size-eight body and C-cup breasts, she had probably never worried about being wanted. I studied her concerned gray eyes and decided that, yes, I did have to spell it out for her. Damn it. I took a deep breath and gathered my courage, spitting out the words as fast as I could. “Girls like me. Big girls.”
She raised her brows, as if surprised, her gaze raking up and down my very plus-sized body in a quick survey before returning her attention to my face. Her grin was one of the best things I’d ever seen. “Don’t worry about being too small for an Atlan, de
ar. I know that to an Atlan warlord, you’ll seem a bit undersized, but you’re his matched mate. You’ll be perfect for each other.”
“Too small?” Was she freaking kidding me? I hadn’t been able to shop off the rack since tenth grade.
“Atlan females are at least a foot taller than the average woman on Earth, and the Atlans need their females to be strong enough to tame them.”
“What do you mean, tame them?”
“They are not human, Tiffani. Atlan warriors have a beast that lives within them. When they are in battle, or want to fuck, the beast comes out. Think of it as an entire planet of males like The Incredible Hulk. You might be a bit smaller than they’re used to, but strength is mental as well as physical. You’ll be perfect for him.”
My mind wandered to the giant hand that had gripped my wrists, the huge cock stretching me open, the massive chest pressed to my back…
I shuddered in anticipation. Yes. I wanted that again. If that was what an Atlan male was like, I was game. Absolutely. “Okay. I’m ready.”
She chuckled then. “Not so fast. First we have to go through some standard protocols. For the record, please state your name.”
“Tiffani Wilson.”
She nodded. “Are you currently, or have you ever been married?”
“No.”
“Have you produced any biological offspring?”