Read Online Return to Eden by Kaitlyn O'Connor - Free Book Online Page A

possibly go
wrong?” she wondered out loud, dismayed and envisioning another
several hours crawling back the way they’d come.
    Aidan settled his light on the bottom
of the culvert and sat back on his legs. The pipe was small enough
he was still hunched over as he grasped the bars with his hands and
shook them experimentally. Anya hadn’t expected them to move at
all. A flicker of hopefulness went through her when she saw that
they were loose.
    “ Can you get it out, you
think?”
    He flicked a glance at her face. His
gaze moved downward from there to her boobs for a few seconds and
then he returned his attention to the grate that was blocking their
path.
    Anya hiked the jacket up again, but
although it flashed through her mind that he seemed way more
interested in her anatomy than she would’ve thought an alien would
be, she didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it.
    Correction—more interested in her
anatomy in what seemed like a sexual way.
    Then again, she’d heard of men screwing
animals—no firsthand knowledge of that, but when rumors persisted
there was usually some truth somewhere.
    Not that she considered herself in that
light, but he was an alien from a race capable of space
travel—across vast distances, because they sure as hell weren’t
from the ‘backyard’. They would probably consider humans as far
down the chain as humans did monkeys, wouldn’t they?
    They must or they wouldn’t have
invaded, she thought angrily. Surely they wouldn’t treat a species
they considered equals like they had?
    Honesty compelled her to reconsider
that assessment, though, when she thought about all the wars humans
had waged between themselves.
    Was it a territorial thing, then? The
typical ‘you have something we want and we’re stronger so we’re
going to take it’ thing that humans did to one another?
    “ Get back,” Aidan said, breaking into her
thoughts.
    Anya stared at him blankly since she
didn’t understand what he was saying, but he moved back,
repositioning himself, almost as soon as he said it and she backed
off instinctively to get out of his way.
    Bracing himself with his hands, he
lifted his legs and began pounding at the grate with his feet. Anya
covered her ears since the noise inside the small tunnel was
painfully loud. Thankfully, it didn’t take him more than a few
minutes of pounding before the grate came loose and fell through
the hole.
    Picking up his light, Aidan extended it
into the area beyond and discovered that it was far larger than the
tunnel they’d been following. The bottom dropped several feet from
the pipe where they were. Scooting to the edge, he dropped,
straightened to his full height with a sense of relief and turned
to the female. He saw she’d followed him and was peering down from
the tunnel.
    It was ingrained courtesy that
compelled him to offer to help her down and yet when he’d caught
her against his chest, pulled her from the pipe, and lowered her
until her feet touched the bottom he was far more aware of her as a
woman than he wanted to be. She didn’t feel like an alien female of
another species. She felt like the women he was accustomed
to.
    That made it hard to view her as
nothing more than a specimen he’d collected as proof of his
theory.
    Frowning, he let her go,
trying to ignore her as she sat down to tug the sleeves of his
jacket off of her legs. It would’ve been easier if he hadn’t gotten
a really good look at her genitals as she did. That image seemed to burn itself
into his brain.
    Dragging his gaze from her with an
effort as she began trying to struggle into the jacket again
without unfastening the front closure, he lifted the light and
examined what he could of the space they found themselves in. The
larger tunnel seemed to go on for miles. He didn’t see any way out,
any choice for them except to continue to follow the
structure.
    It was evidence of a higher
intelligence in and of itself, though, not nearly as impressive as
some of their