Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Killan
Icould have sworn… I breathe deep, and there, under the scents of sweat and this morning’s breakfast, is something else. Fainter than when we had been climbing up the ladder, but still as distinct.
I have not smelled it before, and I cannot immediately pinpoint its meaning, for all that I know with certainly that Lydia is the source.
It is sweet. Delicious, even. And I am licking my lips as though I can taste it on the air.
“Earth does not sound like anything special,” I hurriedly say, continuing our conversation as if I am not thoroughly distracted. “And you are better off without your former Mate, if he would not give you what you wished for.”
I study Lydia’s face, searching for some clue as to the origin of the scent. She is flushed still, but then she scowls at me, lines marring her forehead and her eyes narrowing.
“You don’t know anything about Earth.”
“And after hearing those few things, I have realized that I do not want to know any more. It is nothing in comparison to Ril II.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really.” I nod decisively.
“Earth has shops.”
“What are shops to rocks and mountains?”
“You don’t have any mountains! The surface of this planet is completely flat.”
“We have mountains. Underground.”
She rolls her eyes, which I diagnose as her second favorite expression, after the withering glare. “Under-fucking-ground. Because there’s a shit ton of wind above ground. I can’t go outside without it trying to kill me.”
“The wind provides us with endless free power.”
“It isn’t actually free, though, is it? Not when you’re constantly having to run maintenance work on the turbines.”
I wave a dismissive hand. Details.
“That’s it.” She stands again. “Time to get back to work.”
“Time for me to return to work, yes. For you—”
“Think very carefully about what you’re about to say next.” She points a shaky finger at me. There are shadows under her eyes, and her filthy clothes are streaked with dark algae stains.
“It is nothing to take offense at. You worked yourself too hard this morning. You should rest—”
“Yeah, nah.” She steps around the table, heading toward the door that leads back into the caves. “I’m not tired. And you don’t get to tell me what to do all the time. Sure, the others obey your demands, but I’m not like them.”
“No,” I agree. “You are not.”
She pauses, as if silently searching my words for a hidden meaning.
I step closer, under the pretense of also heading toward the door. Her fingers rest on the handle, and I casually reach for it too.
I think I hear a catch in her breathing.
Or mayhaps I am imagining it. I can imagine a lot of things—like how easy it would be to step closer, eliminating the small amount of remaining space between us.
I imagine that the pink flush in her face is there not because she is angry at me, but because she is pressed against my chest, her eyes dark with wanting.
It happens like this sometimes—when I am tired or distracted.
Suddenly, the breath sticks in my lungs, and I swear my thoughts short-circuit.
Then I am filled with what can only be described as an ache.
It sits uncomfortably in my chest, an unwanted reminder of what I do not have, what I will probably never have, but what I want.
What I want is to look at my future and see Lydia in it. But not Lydia as she is now—angry, exhausted, frightened. Battling an impossible fight, one she is never going to win. But happy, content, peaceful.
And then it hits me—what that scent is. Desire.
My mouth drops open. I am floored. Lydia…desires me?
Is that possible?
She is watching me, distracted enough by what she sees that she does not pull her hand away from mine.
I breathe deep, chasing the fast-fading smell. It is incredible. Infatuating. Exhilarating. It has my cock swelling, pushing against the confines of my slit, as my imagination presents me with a dozen different ways I could fuck Lydia. She need only wrap her legs around my waist once more.
And then another thought occurs to me. What if she really can read my expressions, as she claimed? What if she knows I am thinking about thrusting into her warm heat? Fucking her until she cannot remember her own name, until she cannot remember that she wishes to leave?
My desires are a betrayal of everything she is trying to achieve, and I hastily break eye contact, striding around the table to get as far from her as possible, praying she does not notice my barely contained cock.
“You’re acting weird today,” she says. “More weird than normal.”
I ran a hand down my face, scratching at my scales and trying to hide from her scrutinizing gaze. “I am distracted by the harvest,” I say, which could be true.
Grabbing my datapad, I flick aimlessly through the applications, pretending to be focused on work. When I accidentally launch InGal, it reloads the last search (29,353 direct hits for Reality Investments), sparking a cowardly idea.
“Here.” As I switch on the accessibility options, a metallic voice picks up reading from where it left off last time.
Lydia frowns. “Don’t you need your tablet for your work?”
“Not today.”
“I see.” Her voice is icy cold. “Your determination to get rid of me would be insulting, if I weren’t already so fucking desperate to leave.”
I drop the datapad onto the table as if it has burned me, hating myself, but knowing that she would hate me even more if she knew the truth of my desires.
I find temporary refuge among the trees, hiding in the forest as if I can hide from my overwhelming need.
With my eyes closed, it is incredibly easy to imagine Lydia standing before me again.
My scales tingle with the pretense of her touch, so light and so insubstantial I find myself tracing my hand down my chest before I can stop myself, pushed to my limit by weeks of exhaustion and temptation. And years of loneliness.
I want to be everything she wakes up thinking about and the only one she dreams of.
I want our futures to entwine so tightly that they can never be separated—not by memories of LOVE GALAXY, not by the destructive interference of John Smith.
Not even by Lydia’s determination to leave and my unrelenting guilt about her being forced to stay.
My hand drifts lower, to the bulge at the apex of my thighs that is covering my hardening cock. This is the first time I have touched myself since the Humans’ captivity on Ril II, and it is certainly the first time I have allowed my thoughts to linger on Lydia.
Lydia, who possesses the ability to infuriate me faster and more thoroughly than anyone I have ever met.
John Smith might have pushed us together because he knew we could clash and fight, but he failed to recognize one important thing. I failed to recognize one important thing about myself. I would never have been happy with a shy and meek female.
Lydia challenges me. Excites me. Fascinates me.
I can never quite predict how she will react, for all that I am slowly learning the shape of her personality. And every new thing I learn about her makes me more sure that I am falling irreversibly in love with her.
Applying pressure to my slit, I release my cock. It arches up toward my stomach, and I must clamp a hand over my mouth to stop from moaning aloud as I take myself in my fist.
It is a punishing pleasure, one filled with as much shame as desire. I should not be doing this, acting like an untried youngling, too obsessed by his own needs to think clearly and act rationally.
Afterwards, I promise myself. I just need to take the edge off.
I push into my fist, one hand around my cock, a hand on my chest, and my third hand over my mouth, trapping any involuntary moans in my throat.
I do not think I could stop for anything now that I have let myself think of Lydia in this way.
It is as if I have widened a cave tunnel and all the water which was trapped is flowing free.
I cannot undo what I have started, and so I continue to thrust into my fist, my movements becoming jerky and uncontrolled as my pleasure threatens to undo me.
I come in long spurts, my body shaking with the force of my climax. Milt splatters the leaf-covered ground in stripes, and I sag forward, catching myself on a tree before I hit the ground. My legs weak, my head spinning, and my vision blurred.
My foul temper follows me into the caves.
I ready the net but cannot start properly until Roan joins me.
Which further infuriates me—that I cannot complete the work of our farm myself.
I would certainly be more efficient than my brothers, especially with their attention divided unevenly between our tasks and their new Mates.
Lydia, I think darkly, is the only one who works as hard as I do, for all that she has no connection to the farm. For all that she has no reason to help.
I am grinding my teeth and reliving the catastrophe of my last interaction with Lydia in my imagination when Roan and Harlee finally reappear.
I point to Harlee. “What is a Human bak-ree?”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen a fraction in…surprise, I believe. “It’s a shop where someone sells bread and pastries—”
“Which are?”
“You don’t have bread?” She looks at Roan, who shrugs.
“Well, bread is a type of food. And pastries are like…a sweet bread. You eat them as a treat when you want to feel good about the world,” she says, as if that is explanation enough.
“I’m guessing you’ve been talking to Lydia.
She’s a baker back home. So she makes the bread and pastries for other people to buy. ”
“And what is a Human period?”
“Oh, wow.” Harlee splutters. “That’s not what I thought your follow-up question was going to be.”
“I think you mean a per-oid,” Roan says, patting Harlee on the back. “My clever Mate has told me much about the Human female reproductive cycle. It is...unnecessaryily complicated,” he concludes, with a sly glance at Harlee, as if such a look will stop her from taking offense.
Frustratingly, it seems to work. She grins, then turns to me. “Is this about something else Lydia has said?”
“Sort of. Yes. When I asked if there was anything I should order for her from off-world, she talked of her per-oid.”
“I can explain.” Roan puffs out his chest. “When a Human female’s body is ready to make a youngling, it releases an egg into her worm—"
“Womb,” Harlee corrects, her face flushing.
“—where it stays for a sennight—”
“A day or two,” interrupts Harlee.
“And,” Roan continues confidently, “if there is no procreation or if her virile male partner uses contraception during procreation, then her womb releases the unfertilized egg. It falls from her body, and that is her per-oid.”
“Period, Babe. It’s pronounced period.”
Not to be discouraged, Roan hurries on, “There is a little blood, too, which the female ceremoniously collects in a cup—”
“It’s not a ceremony,” inserts Harlee. “I never said anything about a ceremony.”
“And then…” he finally falters. “You keep the blood?”
“No.” The color in Harlee’s cheeks darkens. “We throw it into the trash.”
“So…” I try to decipher what is happening. “I need to buy Lydia…a ceremonial cup?”
“Yes,” says Roan, giving me a Human smile.
“No!” says Harlee, furiously shaking her head. “Do Ril’os women not have periods?”
Roan and I share a glance, neither of us experts when it comes to procreation. Before LOVE GALAXY, we had little contact with females.
“No?” Roan says, although it sounds more like a question than an answer.
“No,” I conclude. An egg is surely something our parents would have mentioned if it was part of Ril’os biology. We might have little formal education, but our parents made sure we completed basic classes between tasks on the farm.
“Okay…” Harlee glances between us again, eyes slightly narrowed in…
suspicion? Confusion? If she were Briar, she would surely be asking a lot of embarrassing questions now, like how does a thirty-eight-year-old male not know the answers to these simple questions?
Like are you so naive? Like is this why you have so much trouble communicating with Lydia—because you have no experience with females?
Yes, I want to shout. I constantly feel as though I have been thrown into the deep end of a lake and am floundering, well beyond my depth. Instead, I scowl. “We have taken far too long away from our work, when we have a schedule to keep.”