Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Axel
I looked from Mia to T’ukka, grinning. They had spent the last three meals in sullen, awkward silence. Meanwhile, I was basking in the hilarity of the awkwardness between them. How these two were ever going to have sex was beyond me. Right now, they could barely communicate.
T’ukka was responding nicely to my prodding.
Once I had discovered that I could transmit sexy fantasies directly into his brain, I may have gotten a little carried away.
Fine, a lot carried away. I probably shouldn’t have had an explicit fantasy about sucking his cock while he was talking to the Aunga’ri commander.
But I had to get my comedy somewhere. I was living in an alien fortress in Montana, and these aliens did not value entertainment in the slightest.
Mia stared down at her food, and T’ukka looked irritated by her depressed expression.
It was weird as hell that I could feel his irritation, but I was getting used to the accurate read on every one of his emotions.
For someone so solemn on the outside, he had a lot of emotions.
I couldn’t do anything but silently laugh.
Well, maybe I could have tried to rescue them from their misery. But right then it was more fun to make it worse.
“So, Mia, maybe we can show T’ukka how you use the bondage gear?” I asked. T’ukka shot me a look that could only be described as sheer panic, and I could feel the way his heart constricted at the thought. He was more afraid than he had been during combat.
Mia swallowed and glanced at me. “Just jump right in?”
Her nerves made me more curious about her. “Isn’t that what you did when you did this kind of thing professionally?”
She tugged on her hair, then sighed. “I guess so, but it was a long time ago. Usually, there was a conversation about kink, about what turned the man on. T’ukka doesn’t even know what he’s in to.”
T’ukka growled at the use of his informal name, and she flushed then took a deep breath.
She didn’t back down. Instead, she frowned at him, her voice strengthening.
“And usually, as the domme, I can call my submissive whatever the fuck I want to call him. His body is mine to play with, his dick is mine. I name him how I like. You’re lucky I’m using your name, and not just calling you my slave. ”
“Now that’s what we’re looking for,” I said, grinning.
I glanced at T’ukka, who was studying her intently but saying nothing.
A wave of intense curiosity that could only have come from him flooded my mind, and I couldn’t help but allow my mind to wander back to my new favorite fantasy.
What would it be like fucking her with him?
Both of us acting as one, our bodies and minds connected and attuned.
Would I feel everything he felt? It sounded intense, but not unpleasant.
“Come, let’s get this over with,” T’ukka said with a very dramatic and long-suffering sigh.
I could feel the tension emanating off of him, and beneath that the worry.
He didn’t know if he could please her, didn’t know if he could become aroused by her, and I could sense that with a strange intensity.
I wondered if, in the same way I shared fantasies with him, I could somehow share my own attraction to her. Because I was in to her. A gorgeous, slightly geeky scientist who used to be a dominatrix and probably had a secret kinky side a mile wide? Yes, please.
“You don’t want to do it?” Mia asked.
“Of course not; I was volunteered for this role.” T’ukka stood and stalked off. I wondered if Mia’s question had bothered him, or if my wild thoughts were putting him on edge.
Mia glanced at me wide-eyed. “Do I follow him?”
I closed my eyes and reached for T’ukka, feeling his aggravation, his unrest, and something new.
Arousal. “Maybe give him a minute.” Searching mentally for T’ukka had become more and more second nature to me, but I realized how it must have looked to her.
Still, I couldn’t exactly explain that I had a psychic connection with an alien, could I?
His thoughts filtered through my head more and more, often coming in his harsh alien language but easy for me to understand.
They had used a computer chip to learn our language, and it was technology I didn’t understand, but they had a lot of technology I didn’t understand.
Essentially, they all had something installed in their brains somehow that allowed them to translate language from other species that they interacted with on the fly.
In the beginning, the chip had sometimes gotten things a little wrong, and there would be an almost imperceptible pause in speech for a moment while they processed language through it, trying to find the words they wanted to say.
Now, it was fluid and seamless and T’ukka was speaking English mostly on his own.
He had learned the language well enough that he only relied on the chip occasionally, for a difficult word.
But he still struggled with concepts that his people just couldn’t understand.
It also meant that I had spent far less time than I was supposed to learning the Aunga’ri language.
But hearing it in T’ukka’s booming voice, as it appeared in my head, was different.
Their language was harsh and guttural, but I could feel T’ukka’s pride in it, and it felt.
.. It was difficult to describe how it felt to hear him as his true self.
“What did you just do right there?” she asked. I realized I had likely gone silent for a moment too long while being aroused by how the big alien felt in my head, and Mia was staring at me, a million questions in her eyes.
“Not sure what you mean,” I lied easily.
Her curious expression didn’t disappear.
Fortunately, a knock on the door saved me from her intense scrutiny, and I stood and stalked over, peeking through the peephole to find the doctor standing there, looking a little unsettled, which was strange for her.
I unlatched the big bolt that blocked entry into the rooms and watched as the doctor composed herself.
“Dr. Vralziks Yes’niet, how is your day?”
“Mia’s brother is here,” she said. “I thought maybe Mia would like to see him. You will have to decontaminate afterwards, of course.”
T’ukka reappeared in the room, his eyes scanning over the doctor. “I will come. To make sure that Mia is safe.”
He looked startled by his words, which were the words I had been about to say. Thankfully, I had caught myself before we creepily said the same thing at the same time. We needed to figure this the fuck out before someone other than Mia noticed us behaving oddly.
But T’ukka couldn’t take back what he’d said without the doctor questioning him. I raised an eyebrow at him and he rolled his eyes slightly, darting a gaze towards Mia, who was looking at both of us. “I take my role and hers in this research project seriously,” he said firmly.
“Of course,” Dr. Vralziks Yes’niet murmured.
“We will be with you in a few minutes, Doctor. I just want to talk to these two idiots and find out why they feel like they need to escort me everywhere,” Mia said.
“Can we come to the medical rooms?” The doctor glanced at the prince then politely nodded and turned away, closing the door behind her.
Mia turned back around. “There’s something weird happening with you two.” She settled her hands on her hips and glared at both of us.
“No there’s not,” T’ukka and I both said at the same time.
Fuck. “That was a coincidence,” I added.
I wanted to reach for T’ukka’s hand and touch him so badly that it felt like an itch building under my skin, like I had been touching poison ivy and the oil was sinking in, doing its business.
Except it was him sinking deep into my mind, and it felt like he belonged there.
I glanced at Mia, who was watching us intently.
In my head T’ukka’s voice was quiet, calm.
“I don’t know if I trust her, but things have escalated with her presence.
” I glanced at him and tried to give him a subtle nod, shooting him the question that was echoing in both of our minds.
“Why?” But I already knew that neither of us had any answers.
His knowledge of what was happening to us was buried behind centuries of myth and legend.
I wondered if there was a way to research it.
“Do you need anything before we go meet your brother?” T’ukka asked Mia, distracting me from my worries. “Let’s focus on that.”
Mia stared at us for a moment, then must have decided to let it drop for now.
“No, I think I’m good. Let me just grab some shoes.
” She turned and headed towards her room, and the moment she was through that door I gave in to that insane itch and touched him, instantly soothed by the contact of his skin.
He had been reaching for my hand as I had been reaching for his, and I knew he felt the same, that it was escalating and amplifying between us as we both experienced it.
“Could it be her? She’s causing this shift in how we are?” I asked quietly. “I mean, you can’t deny it now.”
“Or it could have started the other day, when we touched. More than touched,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s causing it, and I don’t know how to stop it.”
“Or if you want to stop it.”
He sighed. “Or that. I do not have experience with intimacy. But I might find I enjoy it.”
We heard Mia’s door click and dropped our hands. She was still studying us, and I knew she was brilliant and curious and she’d want to understand more than anything. She was going to push the issue as hard as T’ukka and I tried to avoid it.