6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
E lyse
We’re cuddled together, his fingers combing the tangles out of my hair. It’s soothing and arousing at the same time. I should be dead tired; I think it’s deep into the middle of the night. I’m jazzed, though, as I wonder if there might be more lovemaking before we leave the peaceful protection of our little malta .
“You’re a good female, Elyse. Sleepy?”
“It depends. Is there a better offer on the table?” I toss my head and give him a saucy look, not wanting to admit how desperate I am for more.
“There could be, but I have a question.”
It must be a hard one, because he doesn’t just launch, he waits for my response.
“Okay,” I say reluctantly.
“No. It’s not a question, it’s a statement. You gagged on me. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want with me. Not in bed or out.”
I stroke my palm on the flat of his chest, my head tipped down so he can’t read my face. Then I force myself to explain. Really, what have I got to lose with this male I danced among the stars with?
“I’ve learned in the past four years it’s something males like. For all the years it was forced on me, I thought it might be nice to offer it to someone I like. Kind of a gift.”
His hands gently reach under my armpits and haul me higher in bed so we’re face to face.
“I would love to be showered with gifts, Elyse. As a gladiator, I haven’t received any. But never at your expense. Never.” He pauses, takes a breath, and shakes his head. “Never.”
Then he kisses me. He must have a long menu of kisses, because this is unlike any other we’ve shared. Although his lips are hard, the act itself is tender and possessive.
And then it’s more. We share in bed all night long, learning each other’s bodies and preferences and little idiosyncrasies. He never penetrates me, though. I’m still not sure why.
I t’s going to be a long day of meet-the-parents. In fact, I don’t even know if both his parents are still alive. He’s been in contact with his mother through comms. She’s supposed to meet us at the shuttle station. Other than that, he’s been mum other than to say he wanted me to make my own judgements.
As I slip out of the communal malta bathroom, feeling refreshed and more awake than I have a right to feel, his wide smile tells me he likes what he sees. If that wasn’t clear enough, he says, loud enough for everyone waiting in line to hear, “You look beautiful.” When I join him at his side, he whispers, “No one will know we were dracking all night.”
The little male behind him, four feet tall and the color of my favorite yellow and orange spring lily, says in a loud stage whisper, “No one but the inhabitants of the malta next to you, that is.”
Everyone in line laughs. Oddly, this doesn’t mortify me. There’s something about being in the cheap seats together, having to share a communal bathroom, having gotten a lousy night’s sleep because of the accommodations, that gives us license to act like family for the rest of the trip.
Breakfast is hurried so we can be evicted before the folks in the more expensive cabins wander in to eat. It consists of little more than nutrition bars and thinned down sour milk. At least we get to sit upright for a moment.
We’re only smashed in our cabin for another hour before it’s our stop.
“You’re sure you’re not going to give me a heads-up? No info on weird Uncle Fester? No tales of your childhood?”
“It will come later. I just want you to draw your own conclusions.”
“Okay, but I don’t want you to worry about me. I’ll hang back while your family hug the spots off you.”
“After all we shared last night, you should know I don’t have spots.” His face is deadpan, but I’m learning he has a wicked, dry sense of humor.
“It’s an Earth expression. Just imagine hugging so tightly they rub someone’s spots off. At any rate, I’ll just bask in the pleasure of watching how they greet their long-lost son.”
His expression is unreadable as he grabs my hand and shoulders his way through the crowd.
The shuttle disgorges us onto a long, thin walkway, and we follow the crowd into the hangar, then take the giant lift to the main floor and go to Passenger Pickup. And we wait. And wait. Until just about everyone on our shuttle has been picked up or secured a hover.
“My mother’s original comm said if she wasn’t here by now we should catch a hover,” he says as he hails one that was waiting nearby.
“Did she comm to tell you why she wasn’t coming?”
“No,” he says curtly.
I may only have three pieces of a thousand piece puzzle, but I know something’s wrong. Really wrong. First of all, his back is stiff as a piece of steel. Gone are the loose, post-orgasm muscles I got to enjoy over the last several hours.
Second, who, unless they’ve suffered a heart attack, doesn’t come to the station to pick up the son they haven’t seen in fifteen years? And even then, no comm?
And third, he’s been way too tight-lipped about this.
Unless there’s a damned good reason they’re not here, I hate his family already.
We landed on the industrial outskirts of the city and are hovering toward town, passing the suburbs and heading toward the tallest buildings of glass and steel.
“This is quite different than where I grew up,” he breathes, as interested in the scenery as I am.
“Where did you grow up?”
“It was farther out. My father was in the clergy in a small town nearby. We lived at the edge of a forest. It was beautiful. The bark on many of the trees was blue, the leaves crimson. I’d go there after school and on my free days. It was my sanity.”
This is the most he’s told me about his childhood. I’m glad he’s sharing. I store this bit of information in the back of my mind—he had to escape his house to gain his sanity.
The hover pulls up in front of a tall building with a uniformed doorman. I wonder if they’ll allow me in wearing this rumpled outfit of t-shirt and yoga pants. Wrage doesn’t look much more comfortable than me. From what he mentioned, this male’s been living in a barracks on one shithole planet or another for the past fifteen years.
We enter a five-story lobby filled with light and exotic colorful flowers and next-gen moving stairways that are lightyears ahead of the escalators back on planet Earth.
And still—no family expectantly hurrying toward us to see the prodigal son return.
I want to ask Wrage if we can turn around. If this is the way things are, I don’t want to meet these people. He checks his comm and steers us toward the lift, then presses the top button. I guess it doesn’t matter what planet you live on, the penthouse is the penthouse.
When we exit the lift, instead of spilling into a common hallway, we enter his family’s dwelling. It’s furnished in black and white with a splash of red on the couch pillows and knickknacks. It’s like something out of a dystopian movie. There’s absolutely nothing homey or warm, or even attractive about this living area.
A woman who must be his mother sweeps into the room. I’m so used to Wrage’s handsome alien features, it surprises me to see them on a female face. What looks so masculine on him—the craggy horns, vertical pupils, and startling mreen —looks masculine on females, too.
She’s wearing a colorful caftan of swirling oranges and reds, her hair in a matching turban that’s tucked between her horns.
I wait for her unpleasant face to light in a smile when she sees her son, but her eyes narrow. She couldn’t mistake him for an itinerant peddler or interloper; he comm’d her, she must have given permission for the elevator that took us directly into her living room. She has to be expecting him.
“Come in,” she says as she steps back.
The whole hover-ride here I was fondly imagining my own homecoming—how could I not? I pictured my whole family, down to aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews thronging to whatever secret black-ops Air Force Base I was taken to upon my return. I pictured hugging and kissing and tears—lots of them.
I imagined a thousand questions and a million words. And touching—lots and lots of touching as if we were confirming that I was really safe and back home.
And people would say my name—a form of praise and hope and reunion.
Crickets.
No hugging. No touching. No tears. No words. Not even his name.
I try to account for cultural differences. Even if the Wryth’N are the most repressed people in the galaxy, they’d be happier than this bitch is.
I look at Wrage, whose full attention is on her, as if he’s waiting for the same things.
“This is your mate?” Her nostrils flare on the last word as she tips her chin up. “I thought you’d find a nice Wryth’N female.”
This is the first thing she says after, “Come in”? Hate surges through me, lodging in my throat hot and warm like a piece of food that’s stuck. Only it’s not food that’s stuck, it’s the vile words I want to spit at her.
“This is my beautiful mate, Elyse,” he dips his head toward me as if he’s introducing his beloved queen. I like him more this instant than I ever have. “Elyse, my mother.”
“She can call me Madame,” she says formally as if this shriveled, horrid shrew is the Queen of Sheba.
“Madame,” I say pleasantly as I ignore my urge to glance at my comm, note the time, and do complicated mental mathematics to figure out how many more seconds I need to stay here before I can leave and never come back.
“You’re legally mated?” she asks as if perhaps there’s a loophole she can manipulate to get it annulled.
“Yes. On planet Paragon.”
“I thought you were on planet Trent,” she says.
His head cocks slightly, almost imperceptibly. I doubt she even noticed, but I did. There's something about her question that caught his attention.
“You knew where I was?”
“I followed the vids,” she snips with a toss of her head as if she was a beautiful young ingénue.
“And father? Is he . . .”
“Died shortly after you were taken.”
“Did you . . . did you ever try to buy me back?” he asks, his head tipped slightly as he watches her take a breath, her eyes sliding from his.
“Right after you were . . . taken and your father died, I was offered an important position in the government. I sold the house, moved to town and was consumed with my new duties. It just never seemed like the right time to conduct the search.” She spears him with a piercing look, as if daring him to confront her about the pack of lies she just told.
Search? She just said she knew where he was. And money? She lives in the fucking penthouse of the tallest building in the capital city of the planet. Something is off here. Way off.
He looks around, and I follow his gaze. This male is smart. The inconsistencies of her story have not been lost on him.
“You must be tired from your long journey,” she says flatly. “I’ll show you to your room.”
“Actually,” I say. Both heads swivel in my direction. “I’m starved. Do you have any . . . snacks?” The truth is I am hungry, famished really. But mostly I want to see more of this witch’s character. Certainly she’ll warm to him after a few more minutes.
She leads us into the kitchen. The only thing helping me maintain my sanity is Wrage’s warm hand on the small of my back. His mother opens the fridge, they call them cold boxes in space, and rummages. Although it looks full to overflowing from my vantage point, she shakes her head, closes the door, and paces to the pantry.
I can’t help but imagine what it would be like if places were reversed. If my family had a day’s notice that I was coming home after my four-year absence, there would be a stovetop full of food cooking, an oven full of baked goods baking, and various casseroles covering every flat surface. Plus balloons and flowers and possibly a ‘Welcome Home’ banner or two. Yeah, definitely at least one banner.
Wrage sits in a kitchen chair, but doesn’t pull one out for me. Instead, he tugs me onto his lap. I like the gesture. So there, mother dearest.
Madame tosses a box of crackers on the table in front of us. Not even the good kind. They’re kind of like Saltines, and look old. Like they were purchased before Wrage left.
I restrain my urge to ask if there’s any cheese in the full, spacious fridge, choosing instead to nibble on the tasteless cracker.
Every muscle in Wrage’s body is tight. The muscle in his cheek is leaping and I can hear his teeth grinding.
Her lack of interest in her son’s life, his new wife, how he fared since he was brutally abducted makes my heart ache for him.
“Let me show you to your room,” she intones with all the emotion of a museum docent on her tenth tour of the day.
She leads us through white-carpeted hallways with artwork on the walls that must be worth a fortune. Who puts spotlights on their paintings other than a museum? I peek in a few open rooms filled with large, inviting beds, but we keep walking to the end of the hall.
“This should do,” she says as she sweeps the door open.
I’ve never been rich, so I can’t know for sure, but I think this is the maid’s quarters. It’s devoid of decor other than a small bed and one nightstand. The sumptuous rooms we passed had thick comforters, plump pillows, and artwork on the walls. This stark, uninviting room is an insult. Certainly Wrage sees this, right?
I’m standing next to a statue. A statue made of flesh. If I didn’t know it was physically impossible, I’d think he wasn’t breathing. My fists are balled at my sides to keep from punching the bitch. When I look at her, I could swear she’s trying her best to hide a smirk. In my mind, I bestow on her a death sentence. She’s earned it.
I’m silently begging Wrage to leave. I’m screaming at him inside his head, urging him to quit yearning for scraps. There’s nothing for you here , I try to telegraph to him. But leaving has got to be his call. He’ll have to come to this conclusion on his own.
“Thanks for your hospitality, mother. I think my mate and I will go elsewhere.”
His tone is seething. Good. At least he’s not going to stay here, sucking up to garner attention from a heartless stone.
“If you wish,” she says.
What, did I think for a moment she’d argue with him? Beg him to stay?
He stiffly places his hand on the small of my back and escorts us down the long hallway toward the lift.
“I can’t leave without saying something, Wrage. Will you hate me forever for speaking my mind?” I ask. I’m so enraged I’m surprised I’m able to form words into complete sentences.
“When I get angry, people die, beautiful Elyse. I don’t trust myself to say anything else to her. I won’t be able to live with the guilt if I kill her, nor do I want you to see that part of me. I can stay here, though, and root for you. I’ll protect you if things get out of hand.”
I’m glad I got his blessing, but I’d have to do this even without it.
“You fucking bitch,” I seethe, the words ripping out of the back of my throat so loudly I feel the burn already.
My fists are balled, and I march toward her. I’m not a hitter. I’ve never been in a physical fight before and I have no intention of doing more than speaking my mind. But even though she’s a head taller than me and has those spiky horns, I’m willing to go toe to toe if I have to. Besides, Wrage has my back.
You’d think the female would approach me, meet me in her lily-white living room and hear me out, maybe even strike me for speaking to her like this, but she scurries into one of the bedrooms and slams the door.
Marching to the doorway, I scream, “How dare you! How dare you treat him like that! I wouldn’t treat a dog like that. A canine deserves more kindness than you showed your own son.
“You bore him. With this much money you could have freed him from slavery! Did you ever give a thought to the fact that your inaction put him in harm’s way? You could have saved him from fighting for his very life on the sand of the arena. You’re heartless.”
I’m panting, my heart is racing, my fists are balled so tightly I feel my nails breaking the skin of my palms. I think if God came down from on high right now and ordered me to cease and desist I couldn’t stop myself.
“You don’t even have the courage to open this door and face us. You don’t deserve a wonderful son like Wrage!”“
My tirade continues for long minutes. My epithets get dirtier, my castigations become more scathing. But I don’t hear a peep from her.
Wrage walked to my side minutes ago, giving me his wordless support. I finally glance at him and what I see breaks my heart—concern for me is written all over his face.
Maybe over the last fifteen years he’s said all of this in the privacy of his mind a thousand times—and received just as much satisfaction.
Look at him. Affection for me shining from his eyes. As much of a bitch as she is, he’d feel guilty if he hurt her, but he’s proud of me for saying it.
Breathing deeply, I shake my head, realizing the futility of my actions. She’s probably inside her room wearing noise-cancelling headphones and practicing dance moves for her next state dinner.
I nod at Wrage, grab his hand, and instead of heading for the lift, I pull him back into the kitchen. He follows, giving no protest, just the arch of an eyebrow in silent question.
As I plunder her pantry, noticing five boxes of tasty-looking crackers, I find something that will do.
I’m not sure what’s in these cans, but from the picture I think they’re beets. I grab a bottle of what looks like ketchup from the fridge and carry it all into the pristine white living room.
I take great joy in opening the pull-top cans and dribbling their shocking magenta contents on every white surface I can reach. Sofas, overstuffed chairs, and carpet get splashed in color.
The ketchup is a squeeze bottle. I splatter every wall, and when nothing more will squeeze out, I open the cap and burp the remains of the contents onto a book on a stand in a place of honor. It looks hella expensive. Not anymore.
I glance around to admire my handiwork. It looks like a crime scene. For someone with no decorating experience, as my grandma would say, I done good.
I know I should feel remorse, or at the very least feel like a naughty child after a tantrum, but I can’t dredge up an iota of regret. Too bad it provided no relief. I’m still furious.
We exit without a word of goodbye. The ride down is silent and swift. I’d like to give him a moment in the quiet of the lobby to process his emotions, but I think my little stunt in the penthouse deprived us of that opportunity. I don’t want the local badges coming for me.
Three blocks away, we find a park bench under a tree with blue bark and crimson foliage. The leaves aren’t nearly as pretty as the color of beets, though.
“You were magnificent,” he says as he drops two sweet kisses on my lips. Then he grows silent.
I sit next to him, pausing only a moment before I grab his hand. I’ll sit here until tomorrow if that’s what it takes to allow him time to process what happened in that penthouse. How does a person absorb the fact that their mother is a she-devil devoid of emotions?
I think about this male’s life. His mom couldn’t have been different when he was a boy, could she? Maybe his dad was the demonstrative one in the family. Could it be, though, that he received no loving-kindness at all for his first fifteen years and then was catapulted into an even hotter hell to toil as a gladiator, risking his life for the amusement of others?
“I shouldn’t have brought you here. I should have known . . .” His eyes are gazing into the distance, looking at nothing. “There’s nothing for me here. Perhaps the fifteen- annum -old male who still lives inside me expected her to have changed.”
I hold his hand tighter and give him space. Finally, he says, “I’ll book us passage on the next shuttle. Want a room, or a malta ?” He says the last word with a little leer, but it’s false bravado. He’s still swimming deep in his own thoughts.
“I’ll take a stall in the john if it gets us off this planet any faster.”
This earns me his glance, and the meagerest smile. I sit taller so I can reach my arms around his neck, then kneel on the bench so I can really hug him. I don’t have to look around the little park square to know I’m receiving looks from everyone. Evidently PDA’s are frowned upon here. Fuck you, planet Wryth’N.
“You’re a good female,” he says as he squeezes me back. It’s a bit too hard, but I don’t care. I think he’s trying to crawl out of his deep hole of anger and sadness. “I should have told you she wouldn’t listen to you.”
“I feel better. It felt good to scream those curses. But the ketchup, that was fun.”
He kisses my temple with exquisite tenderness, then gets busy on his wrist-comm. Shaking his head he informs me, “The best I could do was secure us a malta for tomorrow.”
“Works for me,” I say. “Can we call a hover and get a hotel room?”
When we’re in our hover and ask the driver to take us to a hotel, he politely informs us,“I can’t do that, Ma’am, Sir. It’s the Saracen games. People come from all over the galaxy to participate and watch. There isn’t a room within a hundred milles of here.”
“Certainly there must be something,” I protest. “A stall in a barn for rent? A kennel in a pet hotel? We don’t care.”
“I’ve checked my comms. There have been no rooms available for the past two days.” His thick green lips puff out as he thinks. “My brother-in-law has a room, but he reserves that for the singer in his bar. Perhaps . . .”
“We’re singers!” I inform him.
Wrage’s head whips toward me. “ You’re a singer. I’m a gladiator.”
“We’re singers,” I repeat. “Take us to your brother-in-law’s.”
Two hours later we’re ensconced in a tiny but clean room behind Elkin’s bar. He’s a very nice spotted green male. I couldn’t catch the name of his race, but it doesn’t matter. He’s an immigrant who scrupulously wants to follow the planetary rules so he isn’t forced back to where he came from.
He fed us, then engaged us to do three sets—sets! That means there are breaks! We’ll sleep here for the night and be winging our way back to Paragon tomorrow. Yay!
I know I could sing three sets with my eyes closed, but I’ve decided that not only will it be way more fun to sing with Wrage, but more importantly, teaching him the lyrics to all these new songs will keep his mind off the heinous disaster that occured in the penthouse.
I picture the living room—it was like a scene out of a slasher movie. All that white—the carpet, the floors, the walls—covered in the imaginary blood of the bitch who birthed my good male.
Whoops. Did I just call him my male? I don’t even scold myself for that. We’re married, how am I supposed to think of him?
“Another love song?” he asks, his eyes penetrating mine. “Is that all that’s in your repertoire?”
“That’s all we’re going to sing tonight. People will love it. Let’s practice ‘Deepest Part of My Heart’ one more time.”
I’m exhausted. We got no sleep last night, and we’ll be up late tonight singing. We have just enough time for a long nap. Wrage doesn’t protest. He’s got to be tired too, and taking that little ride on the Nightmare Express with his mom has probably stressed his system to the max.
We pull off our clothes and cuddle in bed. After the penthouse bloodbath, I’m sure neither of us are in the mood for sexy times—just a nap.
As I play and replay what happened with his mom, my insides turn to ice. I see his whole life as one long timeline of rejection. First Mommy Dearest and what sounds like an absent father, and then abusive masters and derisive gladiators. This male has never been loved.
He was so starved for it, he believed Sibyl’s lies. I doubt she even put a lot of effort into acting the part of the smitten lover. And now me.
It’s clear he likes me. He’s made no secret of that since he sang karaoke at that restaurant back on Paragon, but does he actually like Elyse Carmichael? Or does he like anyone who gives him the time of day? Is he so starved that he just fell for the first female he spent time with? First Sibyl, then me. Would he like me if I was a bitch like his mom as long as I showed him some attention?
I’m curled on my side away from him, his arm is slung across my waist. He’s on his bad side, tolerating the pain just so he can be closer to me. It’s kind of heartwarming until I think that maybe this is just his desperate love-starved need and has nothing to do with me.
On some deep Google dive before my abduction, I stumbled onto the story of babies who died in orphanages in England in World War II. The tots were fed and diapered, but because of a lack of staff, they weren’t regularly held or loved. There was a huge infant mortality rate. They even gave it a name—skin hunger. People need touch. And love. In order to survive.
I gaze down at his hand splayed across my belly as if he wants to touch as much of me as possible. Is that all I am to him? A supply of something? Could I be replaced by someone else? Anyone else?
It slams into me with the force of a freight train that maybe I have skin hunger too. Is this why I can't keep my hands or lips off him in spite of my best intentions to keep it platonic? Maybe we’re both too messed up to even know if our feelings are real or it’s just desperation.
I don’t get much sleep after all. I’ve been kind of falling for my husband, but what if we’re really nothing to each other, other than a source to fill our needs? An illusion? An imaginary cure for skin hunger?
Wrage
I pretend to sleep. I know Elyse’s heart hurts for me. That’s good in one way, it affirms she cares, unlike my mother. But I don’t want her to feel bad for me. I’m the one who should feel guilty.
I never should have brought her here. I was ninety-nine percent sure of the reception I’d receive. I was surprised, but not shocked, to find mother living in an expensive penthouse that took up an entire floor of a downtown building instead of the cottage the three of us shared when I was a young male.
My dad wasn’t evil, he was just absent. The kindly parish clergyman who spent every waking hoara tending to his flock, ministering to every birth, death, marital spat, and ceremony in the county. To look at him you’d never know he had a son languishing at home desperate for attention.
It was clear to me at a young age that my mother had nothing to give me and my father didn’t have the inner strength to spend one waking minima at home with his mean-as-a-reptile wife. That’s why I took long walks in the nearby woods and found my way onto the forbidden web to learn not my father’s religion, but that of the Indira sect who practice peaceful meditation and urge every sentient being to love each other. It was in those deep dives into their holiest books that I discovered the wreathing technique I taught Elyse. It’s given me a bit of sanity and peace throughout my life.
For fifteen annums a thought has been niggling at the back of my mind. Although she tried to keep it a secret, I knew my mom was corresponding with people high up in the government. It was another riddle about her. I’d always wondered why both my parents had been very tight-lipped about her past.
I put more effort into studying computer hacking than my school studies, and surreptitiously tunneled into her secret accounts. I managed to read some of her mail, but some was encrypted so tightly my skills were no match for them.
I discovered hints and clues, though. Enough to believe a secret interplanetary cabal wanted her to return to work for them. I’m not sure what she did before she married my father, but by putting things together, I think he provided an excuse for her to escape that lifestyle. Her correspondence toward the end of my time on Wryth’N hinted that she was hoping for a different escape—from marriage and motherhood so she could slip back into whatever life she’d left.
Whoever she corresponded with wanted her. I wondered what skills she possessed—other than having no heart—that they wanted so badly.
After I was kidnapped and enslaved I wondered if I was the price she had to pay to leave the miserable life she led in our rural cottage and get back into the position of power she craved. It didn’t surprise me to discover my father died shortly after my abduction. She didn’t need him anymore. Nor did it surprise me to find her rich beyond her wildest dreams.
I believe she somehow sold me into slavery and perhaps even killed my father to free herself from us in order to gain this lifestyle.
I shouldn’t have come to Wryth’N. And I certainly shouldn’t have brought Elyse. She deserves better than to be treated like that. So do I.
“You awake?” she asks as she rolls toward me. When I see her slight wince, I jump out of bed to grab the salve.
“Let me,” I say as she reaches for the tube. I dab it on, careful not to touch her fiery skin with my finger, just the cream itself. “Better?”
“I’ll do you,” she says, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here. I apologize. It was selfish.” I say as she ministers to my arm.
“Selfish?”
“I didn’t really believe, not in my heart, that my mother had changed enough to welcome me and my new mate back into her life. The female you met? She wasn’t new. That was the female I grew up with.”
“I guess we all hope for things we’ll never get. I still fantasize about going back to Earth. As we were approaching your house, I was imagining the homecoming I’d get.”“I hope it was better than the one I received.”
“Yes, way better.” I pause, then decide it’s time to move forward. “Elkin said there were some costumes in the closet that others had left behind. Let’s see what we can rummage. Somehow I imagine the audience wants us wearing something nicer than wrinkled t-shirts.”
My gaze doesn’t leave her form as she flips through clothes in the closet. Perhaps it was our time in the malta , but she acts as if she doesn’t even know she’s naked. The curve of her ass makes me wish we had more time before our first set.
She laughs as she holds up a shirt with wide flowery sleeves so ruffled they look like wings.
“I hope that’s not the one you want to wear,” I say shaking my head and putting my hands in front of me as if for protection.
“I think this is for the male,” she says. “I think Desi wore this in an episode of I Love Lucy .”
“Keep looking.”
“It goes with this.” She shows me the matching dress. The flowers are huge and ugly, the dress will cover her from neck to ankles.
“Keep looking.”
“This?” she says, holding up a blue shimmery scrap of fabric. Even my cock strains, as if he wants a glimpse.
“I don’t know. You should try it on,” my voice is deep.
“You’re a horndog, Wrage,” she scolds as she steps into the dress.
“I have horns, but my race is not considered canine.”
“It means . . .” she shimmies into the tight dress. It’s a small, sparkly tube that barely covers her breasts on top and her bottom below.
Before she can finish her sentence, I urge, “Keep doing that until I tell you to stop.” Although I didn’t think for a moment she’d follow my order, she looks directly into my eyes, gives me her first genuine smile since we left our malta this morning, and wiggles.
Her hips shake slow and wide, her expression dares me to take her. Bounding from the bed, I pull her into my arms, press myself against her, and give her one long, lingering kiss.
“No time, little Elyse. Maybe tonight after our performance. That is, if we don’t fall asleep first.”
When I release her, she saunters to the closet and keeps flipping through the costumes.
“Looks like this is your costume,” she says, tossing me a piece of fabric that matches her dress. It’s much smaller than what she’s wearing.
“You want me to perform nude?” I must admit, this shocks me.
“We’d get great tips handsome, but no. I think you can wear your t-shirt and cargo pants. Just wear this as a tie and we’ll look like we belong together.”
“A mated pair,” I say, my gaze full of affection.