Chapter 8
EIGHT
EUN
"This is your new home," I told her as I handed Leija the key.
I didn't know how many words she would understand, but I knew it was important to say them anyway.
You didn't help someone learn by holding back and treating them like an infant.
She was fully immersed in our culture and our language.
The best way to help her was to talk to her like she would one day understand.
We stood in the hallway outside the new door, the air filled with the scent of a cleaning solution, crisp and recent.
After work, I'd led her to this building one street over from the restaurant instead of back to the old apartment.
I couldn't keep her in the dingy studio that had served me just fine.
Money had never been the issue. My paycheck from the restaurant was a droplet in the vast sum of my savings.
I wasn't working there because I needed a job.
I was working there because I needed to work to stay sane.
She deserved a better place to live, a safer place, to find her way.
She took the key from my hand, her brow furrowing as she turned it over between her fingers.
“Home,” she echoed softly.
It wasn’t the same key I had before. That old studio was the first place I found that let me move in immediately.
This place was different. My uncle had pointed it out to me, mentioning a friend of his who managed the building and was willing to get me a unit.
It was one street over from the restaurant, nestled above the market strip where shops spilled out their colors and scents.
The building itself sat above a grocer who specialized in southern fruits, and from the top floor, you could smell the ripe aroma of the harder fruits set out in the sun to finish ripening.
The key wasn’t even a key anymore, not a piece of cut metal, but a sleek band that wrapped around the wrist. Flexible when worn, it would stiffen when straightened, flat enough to slide into a pocket or bag if the holder didn't want to wear it.
Leija stared at it like it was a riddle she couldn’t quite solve, the crease between her brows deepening.
"Key," I said, pointing at the key in her hand. I almost touched her, pulling my hand back at the last second, my heart jumping in my chest as my fingers almost brushed against her soft skin.
I had to grow to protect her.
The thought flashed through me, brutal and sudden. I recovered, my heart still thrumming in my chest as I cleared my throat and pointed at the lock instead. "Put it against the lock here."
What was wrong with me?
I'd never felt like this before, not that I touched prey beings often.
The few times I had done so, it didn't cause this kind of reaction in me, those kinds of strange urges.
The thought of even touching my hand to hers was causing my heart to race and my breath to quicken in my chest. This was something new.
Something different. It was made so much worse by how much I enjoyed brushing my hair against her skin, something she kept responding to positively.
She turned away from me, giving me a moment to catch my breath and calm my racing heart.
She pressed the key to the lock, and the door clicked. She glanced at me before grabbing the door and pushing it open.
On the other side of the door was an apartment my parents would still hate, but not quite as much as the one-room dive I’d called home before.
This place had been updated recently, still carrying the faint scent of fresh paint. Sleek appliances lined the kitchenette, and a soft carpet cushioned every step. A small cleaning bot, programmed to collect loose hair, waited patiently in the corner, ready to run whenever she left the apartment.
It came fully furnished, but I’d have to find a way to show her it was hers. That she could change anything she wanted. I could easily cover whatever made her feel at home here.
She let out a soft, cooing sound as she stepped inside, kicking off her shoes and padding across the room.
I watched her hips move, framed by the fabric that brushed against her skin.
She was so beautiful. Her fingers brushed over the back of the couch, and I wished they were brushing against my chest. My hair began to reach for her again, brushing past my cheeks, and I knew I needed to cut it.
I had enjoyed letting it grow so long, but it was starting to act like it had a mind of its own, responding to my desires rather than my thoughts.
She lingered on the couch for a moment before she disappeared through one of the bedroom doors.
It was a two-bedroom unit, each with its own en suite bath. There was even a small guest restroom near the front. The living room opened into the kitchenette, and across the far wall, a floor-to-ceiling window offered a full view of the market below.
I walked toward it, gaze drifting down to the crowds. Even from here, I spotted three predator species weaving through the vendors, sharp teeth, sharper eyes. It would only take one glance upward. One moment of her standing there, all that soft, bare skin catching the light...
I didn’t like the window.
I moved to the control panel and slid the curtains shut. The room dimmed, and I flipped on the lights, flooding the apartment with quiet warmth.
There, much better.
I needed to think of a way to keep the windows shut.
Worry gnawed at me. What if she didn't listen?
What if I didn't find a way to communicate well enough?
I wasn't going to be living here; I would stay at my old apartment.
If she opened the door to the wrong person, I wouldn't be there to protect her.
She came out of one of the bedrooms and showed me all her teeth, indicating hostility. If I were another prey animal, it would be a positive social sign, but because I wasn't, the gesture was not friendly.
She didn't like it.
I needed to figure out what the problem was so I could find her a place she liked better, but that was going to have to wait.
For now, even if she disliked it, it was better than sharing the small space of a studio apartment with a creep of a predator that couldn't keep his mind off the way her hand curled around him.
"Me?" she asked, pointing at one of the doors of the rooms.
"Yes," I said. "Both rooms are for you. This apartment is for you."
I took a deep breath, and for the first time, I was grateful that she didn't understand what I said because I needed to get it off my chest just as much as I needed her not to understand me, so I let the words come out in a fast rush, tumbling out over one another. "I wanted to eat you so badly last night, and then I wanted to fuck you just as bad, and I am extremely confused by that. I feel strange, like I’m too small, like I’m compressed and just being around you makes me hungry, not just for you but to protect you but I’m the one I have to protect you from.
It isn't safe for you to stay with me, not in a small room like that.
Not when my cock swells if I get within a few feet of you.
The urge to touch you, to feel your softness, and find out the taste of your cunt is a madness all on its own.
I don't want to hurt you, on purpose or by accident, so I had to get you your own place if I want to keep you safe, so this whole place is for you, but now that I got it, I'm worried.
What if someone sees you from the street?
You don't know anything. You could open the door to someone else, and then I'd lose you.
I just found you. I must keep you safe. Being around you is driving me crazy, but the thought of not knowing where you are is worse. "
The thought of someone else coming up here when she was here by herself caused a tight fury to coil inside of me. How could I leave her here by herself every day?
She was mine.
The thought startled me, filling me with self-disgust at how obscene I was to even think that. I had to stop thinking of her as mine. She wasn't prey I could hunt and own.
Her fingers slipped gently into mine, shocking my shame into silence.
It was like being struck by lightning. Every hair on my arm stood on end as her touch slid across my skin, a soft echo of the way her hand had wrapped around me the night before.
Heat flared beneath my ribs, sudden and scorching, and I drew in a sharp breath as her scent enveloped me, warm, wild, and utterly her.
It curled into my senses, wrapping around my mind like a promise I hadn’t dared to want.
The largest strand of hair I had, at the base of my spine, reached out and wrapped around her waist, pushing the unpleasant fabric of her shirt up so it could brush against the bare skin of her belly.
I didn't pull it back, and she didn't push it away.
Instead, her lips parted as I tasted the flavor of the patch of skin just inside the curve of her hipbone.
Mine to envelop, something inside me whispered, and for a moment, I relished it.
But it was a lie.
She wasn’t mine. She couldn’t be. She was delicate, prey, by nature if not intent. And what I felt… it wasn’t real. It was instinct, hunger, the beast in me dressing up possession as protection. A trick of biology meant to wear down my restraint until I did something I couldn’t undo.
"Fuck?" she asked, her skin turning a soft pink as she looked down at the ground and then glanced up through her eyelashes at me.
"What did you say?" I gasped out.
"What is the fuck?" she asked, a glimmer in her eyes.
Relief washed through me as I realized she didn't actually understand what I said.
I was a deviant, but she didn't know it.
Not yet. I had to keep myself away from her so I didn't expose her to any more of my...
urges. Except now she was asking me to explain a word I was educated in but not experienced with.
I knew what I was supposed to do with a female; I had taken the expected courses and used the practice dummies to ensure proper licking technique, but I hadn't had the chance to practice my skills on a real person.
It wasn't that I didn't have ample opportunity.
There were always females who offered themselves to me, but I always knew they were there for the connection to my family.
Plus, I could smell the blood under their skin, and it smelled rotten.
Leija didn't smell that way. She didn't smell like she had consumed flesh and blood.
She smelled like the sunlight had broken through the cool mist of the morning, heating the droplets that waited on the small flowers in a field, sending the soft scent of life awakening in the air.
She smelled like I always thought coming home should be like.
No, I couldn't focus on all of that. She smelled like prey.
She was the confirmation of the root of my deviance. I was attracted to my prey.
"What is the fuck?" she demanded, stepping in towards me as she looked up at me, the slender line of her throat exposed to me, delicate and oh so biteable. I could see the throbbing vein underneath her skin, and she was so close to me, her body inches away from mine.
I swallowed hard and realized it wasn't just my swallows that were hard again.
The hunger awoke within me, rolling around in her scent and the awareness of the soft lines of her body.
"It's... not...." I said, hunting for the words that would draw her in or push her away. She had only spent two days learning words in my language. What could I use to explain without making her feel like I was asking for it from her?
I stepped back, slow and careful, and gently slipped my hand free from hers. I felt a tug on my tailbone, and I looked down to see that my tail had curled around her calf. I attempted to unwrap it, but it tightened instead.
"No fuck," I said first, firmly, hoping that was enough to make sure she knew I wasn't asking for it. "Fuck is..."
I pointed at the hard line making an outline in my trousers, then I pointed down between her legs.
"No," I said firmly.
The upward tilt of her expression faltered, her shoulders dipping as she looked down at the floor.
Just for a heartbeat. Then she drew a breath, lifted her chin, and that tentative smile bloomed again, brave, despite the crack I’d just seen.
My heart fluttered in my chest. Did she actually want to go there with me? Had I just rejected her?
She was the one who had grabbed me last night, but I thought that was just self-preservation, a prey response to do whatever it could to keep itself from being eaten.
What if it wasn't?
What if she actually wanted to...
I swallowed again, hard.
“Eun, there?” she asked, pointing toward the second bedroom.
I opened my mouth to explain, no, this was her space.
She wouldn’t be alone, of course, I would check on her and make sure she had everything she needed.
I could bring her dinner every night, and maybe I could crash in the extra bedroom if I felt worried about anything.
I would stay in my own place some nights, at least a few, and then anyone could just look up into her window and see her and find her doorway and...
“Yes,” I said instead. "I'll stay here too."
Because I couldn’t leave her here. Not yet.
Not when her eyes searched mine like that, unsure if I was staying or vanishing like the rest. Not when her cheeks were coloring as she repeated the word of the obscene act we couldn't do because of what I was, because of what she was, because it was dangerous, deviant.
She was mine.
To protect.
I would protect her, even from myself, even if I couldn't seem to walk away from her.