Chapter Seven
Kai is absolutely silent on the other side of the pillow wall I built between us. Can he breathe? Does he even have lungs? He must have some way to oxygenate his blood. His arm felt normal, and his skin was warm. And the muscles under that skin were mouthwatering to touch…
I bite my lip hard. It’s been way too long since I’ve been with a man if all it takes is my hand brushing against Kai’s arm to get me going. I sigh loudly, not caring if Kai can hear me or not.
God, I cannot sleep. I turn my back to the pillow barrier and try to close my eyes.
I haven’t shared a room with anyone in over a year. Kai’s presence feels intrusive and uncomfortable–almost an invasion of my privacy.
The word Invasion rolls around my brain for a moment. Eventually, I cannot stand it any longer. I have to know. “Hey, Kai, why are you here?”
“You brought me to this location, Araceli.”
I sigh and turn to face him. I move a pillow out of the way and find those glowing gold eyes staring back at me in the dark.
“No, Kai. Why are you, an alien, here on this planet?”
Even in the dark, I can see him look away.
“Goddammit, Kai, you’ve come to do something bad, haven’t you?”
His silence speaks volumes.
“What have you come to do? Mess with our reproductive systems like the grays? Steal our cows? Sell us as sex slaves?”
He seems to take great offense to the last remark. “My people do not traffic other life forms. We relocate them.”
“Relocate them?” I can’t help myself as I take the pillow in my hand and hit him directly in the face with it. A small “ooof” comes from the pillow. “You can’t just steal our planet, asshole.”
“Your people have nearly destroyed this one,” he says, his voice muffled by the pillow still covering his face.
He kinda has me there…still. “You can’t just force people to move from their homes without their permission.”
“Your people do it all the time to each other.”
I sigh. “Yes, but we suck. You’re from a technologically advanced civilization…shouldn’t your people be more, I don’t know, progressive?”
He removes the pillow from his face and meets my eyes. “How is providing you with a better planet not progressive?”
“We don’t even know you exist.”
“Your governments do.”
I groan. “Of course they do. That’s not the point. The average person on the street doesn’t know. They’re all out there living their lives, doing the best they can. Your people think it’s okay to just traumatize eight billion people?”
“They have to learn about the galaxy sometime,” he replies, sounding completely logical.
I shove the covers off, suddenly angry. Anger makes me restless, and I have no choice but to take to my feet. “So do you believe the same thing is true for your people? Do you play porn for your small children because ‘they have to learn about sex sometime?’”
“Araceli, those two situations are nothing alike,” he replies.
“They are everything alike. You’re ripping their innocence away violently. There’s no gradual discovery.” My stomach drops suddenly as a thought occurs to me. “What happens with us, mate? Where do you and I end up since we can’t separate until I’ve been bred properly?” My words are dripping with sarcasm. Who knows if Kai’s translator can even do anything with it?
He sits up in bed and watches me pace at the foot of the bed. “You would come back with me. We cannot be apart.”
“And Dad? And Chorizo?”
Kai says nothing.
“Yep, that’s what I thought.” Anger fills every inch of me. I won’t be sleeping anytime soon. I snatch a pillow off the bed and move to lie on the loveseat. I have to pull my legs up a little, but I’m short enough to make it work.
“Araceli, there is room for you on the sleeping platform,” Kai says after a moment.
I turn my back to him and say nothing, but then a thought occurs to me.
“How long do we have, Kai?”
For once he doesn’t deflect. “I must report back in five days.”
I have a million things I want to yell back at Kai. We could argue this forever, but at this point, I’m almost numb, so I simply tell him the truth. “I’m not leaving everyone behind on some crappy refugee planet. I’ll take my life first.”
He says nothing for a long minute, and I think he’s fallen asleep, but then there is a shift in the bed. “It will not come to that.”