Buck Read online

  Buck

  Stargazer Alien Mail Order Brides (Book 11)

  Tasha Black

  13th Story Press

  Copyright © 2018 by 13th Story Press All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  13th Story Press PO Box 506 Swarthmore, PA 19081

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Buck

  Buck

  1. Beatrix

  2. Buck

  3. Beatrix

  4. Buck

  5. Beatrix

  6. Buck

  7. Beatrix

  8. Buck

  9. Beatrix

  10. Buck

  11. Beatrix

  12. Beatrix

  13. Buck

  14. Beatrix

  15. Buck

  16. Buck

  17. Beatrix

  18. Buck

  19. Beatrix

  20. Buck

  21. Beatrix

  22. Beatrix

  23. Buck

  24. Beatrix

  25. Cecily

  26. Buck

  27. Beatrix

  Solo (Sample)

  1. Cecily

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Intergalactic Dating Agency

  About the Author

  One Percent Club

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!

  Get your FREE books now at tashablack.com!

  Buck

  She’s the ultimate introverted artist. But this irresistible alien is determined to draw her out…

  * * *

  Beatrix eats, sleeps and dreams graphic novels. And her latest creation is about to be made into a movie. But Bea’s new-found fame keeps putting her in the spotlight in social situations when she’d rather be curled up with her sketches. Worse, an incredibly sexy interstellar hunk is distracting her from putting the finishing touches on her fundraising efforts.

  * * *

  Buck is the ultimate extrovert. From the instant he wakes up until his head hits the pillow at night he applies himself to interacting with the captivating inhabitants of the strange new world that is now his home. The only one who doesn’t respond to his efforts is the beautiful Beatrix. The reserved artist has a sharp tongue and an unmatched ability to resist Buck’s alien magnetism.

  * * *

  When a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Bea at Comic Con turns into an insurmountable battle for her dreams she’ll have to rely on the hunky alien to help her embrace her emerging celebrity status. But will she be able to resist the mate bond that draws them inexorably together?

  Buck

  1

  Beatrix

  Beatrix Li took a single step down the dark path and felt ice crunch under her foot.

  She knew this was a dream, but it felt so real. Her breath misted in the crystalline air. Stars and planets hung low, casting odd shadows against the rocky terrain.

  The world was black and white.

  And it was framed - a perfect rectangle with only darkness outside the lines - as if she were standing on a stage.

  You’re just dreaming about the book again, she told herself.

  Beatrix had spent enough time drawing and re-drawing the panels of her graphic novel - she certainly recognized the terrain.

  She was inside her own comic panel.

  But she shouldn’t be able to smell the tang of the copper mines in the air, or hear the shimmering song of the frozen lichen moving gently in the breeze.

  She turned back, but behind her was only darkness, outside of the frame.

  There was no place to go but forward.

  She took another step and another, grateful that there was a path between the crags. Twin boulders stood side by side in the near distance, like a gateway.

  But Beatrix didn’t know what lay on the other side.

  She had never drawn anything beyond the boulders.

  She picked up her pace, unaware if safety lay ahead.

  A shooting star blitzed across the sky and she stopped to admire its glittering trail. Beatrix loved drawing light and shadow, which was why she had created this world in the first place, and the humans who visited it.

  When she looked down again, she saw a flicker of color near the boulders.

  She blinked and it disappeared.

  Colored panels were expensive to produce, so Beatrix used them sparingly. This world was meant to be black and white.

  But as she got closer to the rocks, she saw another flash of purple.

  She began to run. Cold air filled her lungs.

  When she got closer, she was startled to see a familiar shape.

  A butterfly.

  The butterfly fluttered closer. Its violet wings were enormous and webbed with delicate turquoise patterns. It sank, then rose with a dainty flap of those impossibly lacy wings.

  She had never seen a butterfly in nature with colors like these. Yet it did not belong on this foreign planet, either. It shouldn’t have been able to survive the cold.

  The butterfly sailed on a current between the boulders, then hung in the air a moment, as if waiting for Beatrix.

  She followed.

  The world erupted into a riot of color as soon as she stepped between the massive rocks.

  The icy ground turned pale blue. The cliffs and crags took on the sepia-tones of a Pennsylvania winter.

  And the air was filled with the trembling wings of a thousand technicolor butterflies.

  Beatrix closed her eyes and counted to seven.

  When she opened them again the butterflies were still there.

  And a man stood before her.

  Tall, dark and handsome didn’t begin to describe him. He gazed down at her hungrily.

  There was something familiar about his brown eyes and the curve of his sensual mouth.

  Beatrix tried to place him, but the air was sizzling between them, pulling her closer.

  The man reached out to touch her hair.

  Shivers of need ran down her spine at his gentle caress.

  He cupped her cheek in his warm hand and leaned down toward her, unhurried.

  Every cell in her body thrummed in anticipation. She ached for his touch with a desire so fierce it frightened her.

  Somewhere in the distance, bells began to ring.

  She tried to ignore them and lose herself in the pull of his big body.

  But the sound startled the butterflies and they began to dart away.

  “Please,” Beatrix murmured, but her plea was lost in the sound of the pealing bells.

  And the man whose hand still cradled her cheek was fading away, the warmth of his touch dissipating.

  Beatrix awoke with tears prickling her eyes.

  Her cell phone cheerfully blasted its alarm on the bedside table, oblivious to the fact that it had shattered the best dream she’d had in a long time.

  Beatrix slapped it into submission and flopped back down, rubbing her eyes.

  She’d never been a morning person.

  And today was moving day.

  She and her two roommates, and the three aliens they had taken in, had to pack up their belongings from this rented Philly condo and take a car down to Baltimore for the next leg of the Comic Con circuit.

  She ran a hand through her hair and tried to decide whether to get up and get moving early like she had planned, or just snooze for ten minutes.

  There was a gentle knock at
her door.

  “Beatrix?” a deep voice said.

  Buck…

  The dream flashed back before her eyes and she saw what she hadn’t before.

  She had been dreaming about Buck.

  “Give me a minute,” she groaned.

  She was exhausted, embarrassed and a little turned on. Definitely not a good combination for seeing Buck face to face.

  “You said you wanted to be up early,” he said through the door.

  “I know, I know, I’m getting up,” she told him, suddenly feeling decidedly more awake.

  “Okay, I’ll see you later,” he said, sounding a little amused.

  Bea waited until his footsteps told her he was leaving. Then she slid out of bed and wrapped a robe around herself.

  She had time for a shower. That was one good thing about being up early.

  She grabbed her caddy and headed to the bathroom.

  Maybe a good soak under the hot water would get her head in the game. Dreaming about a hunky alien wasn’t on her agenda right now.

  Beatrix’s real dream was on the razor’s edge of coming true. She had written a break-out graphic novel that was on every teenager’s night stand right now. She had a studio interested in making it into the movie version she’d been envisioning ever since she conceived the story.

  And she finally had a star, her friend and roommate Kate, who would get butts in the seats, and had the investors interested enough to make the movie happen.

  But she’d lost a lot of funding last night.

  It was a big price to pay, but her principles were her principles and she would never allow an investor to dictate casting at all - let alone when it came to casting the man who had harassed the star of her film, who also happened to be Bea’s friend.

  She had two weeks to make up the shortfall.

  If Beatrix Li was ever going to be a morning person, now was the time to start.

  2

  Buck

  Buck had a spring in his step as he walked down the city street.

  He had found a way to help Beatrix, if not with the larger problem that was vexing her, at least with her trouble waking up on time.

  Though Cecily had cautioned him that Bea was “not a morning person,” he had knocked on her door anyway, prompting her to begin her day early enough to accomplish all she wished.

  Next he would delight her senses with coffee and doughnuts.

  Of course that wasn’t the only way in which Buck longed to delight Bea’s senses, but he hoped that in time, this way might lead to that other way.

  Besides, Buck loved coffee and doughnuts himself, so the task was doubly enjoyable.

  Back on his home planet, Buck was a gaseous entity. Like his brothers, he had attained his energy through soaking in the starlight that dappled the rocky planet.

  When he was chosen by the leaders of Aerie for migration into human form, he had been fed a nutrient-rich but tasteless formulation in order to maintain his big, hungry body.

  It was only on his arrival at the lab in Stargazer, Pennsylvania that he learned of the pleasure and variety of eating.

  In addition, he was excited about the fascinating transactional experience of obtaining the foodstuffs, and then the social traditions of eating them.

  He arrived at the coffee shop he had visited with Beatrix on several occasions.

  “Hey, buddy,” said the man behind the counter.

  “Hello,” Buck said, grinning at the honorific the man had used indicating that they were friends.

  Buck could see the glazed doughnuts shimmering seductively behind the glass, but he understood that more talking had to be done before beginning their trade.

  “How’s it hanging?” the man asked politely.

  From all that Buck could understand, this question referred to his penis, which good manners dictated was not supposed to be discussed, particularly around foodstuffs.

  “Fine,” said Buck carefully. “How is the weather?”

  “Ha,” the man laughed. “You want some doughnuts, don’t you?”

  “Yes, please,” Buck said. “I’d like twelve doughnuts and three cups of coffee.”

  “Be damned if I can understand how you have a physique like that when you eat so many doughnuts,” the man said, shaking his head as he began to pile doughnuts into a box.

  The woman behind the counter stopped pouring coffee to wink at Buck while her employer was bent over the case.

  She did not know that Buck’s flawless metabolism had been custom-designed for him, as well as the rest of his ostensibly pleasing physique. His looks were the product of good science and good fortune. They had nothing to do with merit.

  But he winked back and enjoyed the sight of her cheeks turning pink with pleasure.

  He only wished he could earn Beatrix’s favor so easily.

  “Here you go, son,” the man said, handing over the white bakery box.

  The woman finished putting lids on the coffees and placed them in a cardboard tray.

  Buck tried to focus on his money, instead of thinking about the fact that the man had just called him son.

  Buck didn’t have parents - relationships didn’t work that way on Aerie. All of society was like a single brotherhood there.

  But he liked the idea of human families with younger and older members having different jobs to protect and provide for the whole.

  He handed the man a twenty-dollar bill and got back his change, several more bills and a handful of sparkling coins.

  Though he understood intellectually that this money was less than what he’d had before and that the food was appropriately priced, he couldn’t help but feel he had gotten the better end of the trade, between the jingling coins and the wonderful breakfast.

  “See you next time,” the man said, grinning as if he too thought he had the better part of the bargain.

  Buck stepped back out into the sunshine and headed home again.

  It wasn’t home, not really. It was only a borrowed space and they would be leaving it today for another.

  But he had already begun to think of home as wherever Beatrix was.

  A group of young women wearing backpacks and walking the other direction down the sidewalk stopped talking and observed him wide-eyed.

  He smiled at them and they melted into giggles.

  He kept walking, satisfied with another sign that all was well with his appearance. It seemed that the only woman who didn’t fall apart at the seams looking at him was Beatrix.

  She would make a fine mate. Her presence of mind would serve their children well.

  But right now, when he was trying to convince her to become his mate, her quiet dignity was a little frustrating.

  It wasn’t that she was cold to him. Bea was very nice, so nice that at first he thought they would be mated in no time.

  Then Cecily had explained to him what flirting was and how good Bea was at it, and he began to worry that all his progress with her might be imagined.

  He turned a corner and the breeze blew in just the right way to waft the heavenly scent of the freshly baked doughnuts directly into his face.

  Buck sighed with pleasure.

  Even if he didn’t have complete faith in his own seductive abilities, he had utter confidence in how she would respond to this breakfast.

  3

  Beatrix

  Beatrix stood in the kitchen eating a doughnut and watching Buck pack up her artwork.

  She had stepped out of the shower, still feeling like a wrecked ship, only to have him press a cup of coffee in her hands and point wordlessly to the kitchen counter, where a full box of delicious pastries glistened seductively.

  Between the caffeine, the sugar, and the view, she was feeling more cheerful by the minute.

  Buck knelt on the floor. He had pushed the coffee table out of the way in order to spread out her drawings. The smaller ones he placed lovingly into a box. The larger ones he rolled and put in tubes.

  Beatrix did this all the time, but som
ehow when Buck did it he made it look like it was choreographed. His muscles bunched and stretched as he worked, biceps rippling, until she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be the paper he was smoothing so gently with those big hands.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Kate teased from behind her.

  “Doughnuts,” Kirk said happily.

  Beatrix was so busy ogling Buck that she had not even noticed them join her in the kitchen.

  “Hey guys,” she said.

  “It’s nice to see you awake and alert,” Kate said.

  Kirk mumbled his agreement around a mouthful of doughnut.

  “That coffee’s for you, Kate,” Beatrix said, indicating one of the two remaining cups on the counter. “Can I assume you were packed up and ready to go hours ago?”

  Kate hummed noncommittally as she took a sip of coffee. Bea’s friend, and the star of her upcoming movie, was always super organized but clearly didn’t want to rub it in.

  Which only made her seem even more obnoxiously perfect. Thankfully, Kate had a sense of humor or Bea might not have been able to forgive her. And that would have been a shame, because even though she looked like a blond-haired baby doll, Kate Henderson was one bad ass friend. She had single-handedly salvaged Bea’s chance to make her book into a movie. And Bea knew that in doing so, Kate was sacrificing her own retreat from the spotlight and the privacy she had longed for since she was a teenager.