Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Playing pretend
Shohari
THE CANTINA was so busy I mistook another pair of kri’ith for my crew and headed towards their table.
Paiata caught my eye, waving me over with a mug of keppli ale he’d saved for me, and I stopped myself in time. Garrison and his two remaining humans were already there; the other two must have already been back at the commonhouse that would be their new home.
“We need to introduce the humans to the wide range of beverages at this fine establishment,” Paiata said, and I groaned. He did love a drinking game—probably on account of his being definitely-not-a-pirate in a previous life.
It wasn’t my thing, but I found myself getting more into it than normal. The two smaller humans seemed very susceptible to liquor, so I made sure I drank some of theirs too, Garrison declaring he would drink what he wanted, when he wanted.
Did he take my hand or did I take his? It didn’t matter.
I took a long draw of ale, holding his hand tight under the table as though this was our normal. A bloom of happiness spread in my chest, and if it was pierced by the aged sting of bitter duty, the ale softened it enough it didn’t hurt.
Not enough that nobody noticed.
Garrison’s touch on my arm was gentle. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
The bloom spread again, coiling seductively downwards. Gods, I liked it when he called me that. He’d said it earlier. When he was inside me.
I squeezed his hand and gave him a smile. Yes, I could pretend for a few days.
As he spoke to Paiata, I took my fill of his round features. His deep brown eyes with their charming mobile hair lines above. And his nose that stuck out. And his soft, soft lips. Skykking gorgeous.
I leaned over, whispering in his ear, “I liked fucking you.”
He brushed a hand over my headspines. “I liked it too.”
A shiver darted down my spine, warming my bones. Under the table, I trailed my fingers up and down his thigh, creeping upwards each time until I was brushing his cock through his delectable trousers. “I want to do it again, Garrison.”
He gently repositioned my hand, murmuring, “I want that too, but not here.”
“Spoilsport.”
“Sweetheart, you’re tipsy.”
“And horny,” I agreed. “Tipsy and horny. We can go back to the ship, mitsha. We’ll be on our own. You can fuck me in the captain’s chair.”
He groaned. “Fuck damn, that sounds hot.”
It really did.
“Food’s here.” Muzati’s voice carried across the whole table, and I realised I was just as hungry as I was horny.
“The stew’s really good,” I told him, patting his thigh, unable to resist a quick kiss. “You’ll have to wait.”
Garrison
THE STEW was unusual but pleasant, a rich, umami broth packed with sweet vegetables and melt-in-the-mouth chunks of meat. My bowl was empty before I knew it, and I reclined, sated, my fingers entwined with Shohari’s.
We all drained our drinks and stacked the bowls on the small, wobbly table. When a booth finally became free at the back, I sat down first, shifting down to the end, and she slid in right next to me. Below the scents of spice and ale, she smelled of Shohari, and I drew her into my arms.
It was a strange limbo. We couldn’t be a couple; we weren’t supposed to even have any hope of a future. But right now, in this in-between station, this in-between headspace where I was tipsy but not drunk, I could pretend whatever we had now, just was.
She nuzzled into my neck, and all I wanted was to savour this moment, savour her.
I kissed her temple and stroked her headspines like I’d stroke hair.
They softened and gave under my hand, and she didn’t complain, but I’d no idea if it was pleasurable.
I wanted to know. I wanted to know all the ways I could touch her that she liked, sexual or not.
Shohari leaned in, her breath hot on my ear. Her clumsy movements and too-loud voice spoiled the sexiness she was going for, but it was kind of adorable anyway. “I still want to fuck you.”
No matter the delivery, it had the desired result; all I could think about was being inside her, and blood rushed to my dick in agreement.
“I had an idea about that,” I said, keeping my voice low as the others started filling the booth. “What happens if I fuck you from behind? We can’t lock that way, can we?”
“What? Like animals rut?” She lurched back, eyes wide.
I drew her back in. “Not so loud. Yes. We’re just animals, Sho.”
“We don’t… Kri’ith don’t do it that way.”
“Humans do it all manner of ways. Ways I’d love to show you.” I pressed a quick kiss to her mouth. “Why don’t you?”
She grimaced. “Because I don’t want a suhla sucking on my curl?”
“Okay. Let’s come back to what a suhla is because I feel like I need to know. But this is a thing we can try, isn’t it? Because I clearly don’t have one.”
“Oh. Maybe, then.”
I was on a roll now, running through my mental list of possibilities. “Or you could ride me, reverse cowgirl.”
“Reverse what? Another animal position?”
“No. It’s like this morning, but you face away from me instead.”
She pouted and sat back, facing the table. “But then I can’t see your face. And I like your face.”
I ignored the squeeze in my heart. “Oh my god, you’re being sweet again.”
“We can hear you,” Paiata said. “You may as well tell him what we’ve got. Actually, I’ll tell him. Seeing as how I’m apparently involved in this conversation too. And Shohari hasn’t—”
She thumped him on the shoulder. “More biology lesson, less gossip please, pilot.”
“Aye, Cap. A suhla is a shallow indentation above our cocks that sucks on the female’s clit.
” He paused, a satisfied smile lighting his angular features.
“Males have beads on our cocks that get stimulated by the ripples, which sets off a chain reaction. Lots of orgasms.” His short headspines bobbed as he tilted his head to either side, casting his eyes over the bar.
“Mmm,” Shohari said. “And that means you don’t accidentally get locked together.”
Paiata spluttered and set his drink down with a jolt. “What? You didn’t.”
“Shut up.” She whacked him on the shoulder. “I hadn’t done it before. How was I to know he wouldn’t have all the same parts as us?”
“Kri’s hairy arse, Cap, have you never watched interspecies porn?” he asked, as if, obviously, everybody had watched interspecies porn.
“I’ve never watched any porn,” she muttered.
“This is fascinating,” I said, “but let’s move on. Thanks, Paiata, for telling me about your dick.”
“Kheh, if I was telling you about mine, I’d tell you how many beads I have, and how big they swell when—”
They what?
“Paiata, you’re embarrassing the human.” Shohari grabbed my thigh possessively. “Human cocks are bigger though,” she said, a touch smug. “And I really like him. Did you know that?”
I allowed myself a small smile. She may have been drunk, but as it loosened her tongue, I let myself believe it was all rooted in truth.
“We see that, Captain.”
“And maybe I’m not going to mate skykking Rokharu when my parents say I will. Maybe I’ll skyk who I skykking like.”
Her words filtered through my brain, and my blood ran cold. I prised her hand off my leg.
“Shohari,” I said, drawing out each syllable, “are you engaged to someone else?”
Was I going to have an angry kri’ith come after me for fucking his would-be wife? Her parents sounded stuffy enough to be from a culture that still believed in—and prized—virginity, for goodness’ sake. Had I walked dick first into an alien period drama?
Colour drained from her face, leaving it a pale lavender, and her spines flattened. “Skyk no.”
“Cap, you’ll have to serve the chrya now. Don’t worry the poor lad.”
Shohari hauled a hand through her headspines.
“I don’t want to say it all over again. Can you tell him?
If I do it, I’ll rant so much I’ll rouse the whole cantina to storm my parents’ house.
” She slumped, nursing her drink, then sat straighter.
“Oh. Can we raise a small army? How many people can we fit in the cargo bay?”
“Fine, I’ll tell him. You’re sounding unsettlingly like Muzati,” Paiata said.
“Hey! I resent that.” Muzati cuffed him round the head. “It’s a fantastic idea. We—”
Paiata thrust his hands over both their mouths.
“Garrison, the captain comes from a traditional family. The people on our original homeworld, Orith, don’t like other species.
They don’t like modern traditions.” The normally taciturn pilot grimaced, and he spat his next words.
“Children are essentially treated like property. Shohari has to make money for them via trading, and if she doesn’t, she’ll be mated off to another family. ”
Damn. Shohari’s parents did live in the alien Victorian era, and I’d been cast as the underdog in their futuristic-historical drama.
My mouth took off before I could rein it in. “That’s awful, but— Sorry if I’m missing a really fucking obvious bit here. Why can’t she just say no and leave? We’re out here.” I waved my hand vaguely about the place, then back at my companions.
Paiata’s face wore its usual stoic expression, but the agony in Shohari’s eyes, as if she was ready to cry or scream, hit me like a mining truck.
My blood surged, fists clenching, eyes darting round the room for a threat I knew wasn’t there. “You can’t, can you?” I knew the answer before I even finished asking, and softened my voice. “Why not?”
She hung her head. A smothering silence descended on the booth. “My brother. They’ll hurt my brother.”
What the fuck?
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“My brother, Airida. He was born with a genetic condition. I don’t see anything wrong with him.
He just looks different, but my parents are ashamed of him, call him deformed.
” Her voice shifted into a monotone. “His condition needs ongoing, expensive medical care. If I don’t trade via the family ship, if I don’t send credits back home, they’ll send him off to a colony. ”
I forced back the waves of horror and anger that threatened to spill over. Shohari’s headspines hung flat and limp, falling in a curtain across her face. She looked so broken, so helpless, and it ached that I couldn’t make things right for her. “Fuck. Sho, that’s horrendous.”
I flung a wild glance round the cantina. Amongst all these unfamiliar beings, I was the only alien, wasn’t I? I didn’t belong here. This wasn’t my world. I didn’t understand anything about these people, their cultures, did I? Any of them?
She lifted her head enough to look at me. “Yes, it is. But that’s why I can’t have my own life.”
I took her into my arms, holding her stiff body close, pouring all the love and care I possessed into that embrace as if it could make up for the years she’d been without.
Because she’d gone without care for so long, hadn’t she? Who was really there for Shohari? Her crew were decent, but she was the captain. Who looked after her? Comforted her? Who did she share her hopes, her fears, her frustrations with?
Dammit, I wanted it to be me.
Her situation should have made it easier for me to walk away in two days. Star-crossed lovers. Never meant to be. But how the fuck could I walk away when we should be fucking flying there to confront them, to take her brother far away, where her parents couldn’t hurt either of them?
If that were possible, she’d have done it already.
“I hate them, Garrison. I hate them so much.” She pushed out of my embrace. “One day, I’m going to kill them.” Her eyes were clear and bright, glittering with violet fury under the cantina lights. She spoke with such venomous clarity, I had no doubt she meant it.
I rested a hand on her arm. “I’ll help you, sweetheart. Just say the word.”
“You promise?”
I held her crystalline eyes with mine. “I promise, Shohari.”
Her body relaxed, and she pulled me close, her words slurring again. “You’re so nice.”
I guess niceness was all relative. “Thanks.”
“You’re not even nice because you want something. You just… are.” She sniffed. “Don’t make me cry. Kri’ith don’t cry.”
“You don’t?”
“No. We can’t make tears.” A faint smile touched the corners of her lips. “My brother can. Because of his thing. But no, kri’ith don’t cry.”
“What do you do, then? When you’re upset?”
“We howl.” She looked past the slight bump of her nose as if it should be obvious.
Fleetingly, I pictured her face tilted up to the moon like a wolf, but it didn’t raise even a flicker of a smile.
With a huge heave of breath, she stood. “Going to the convi.” She pushed past her crew and stomped away.
The mood muted, Imani and Fenn made their excuses and headed back to the ship with Muzati, and when Shohari returned, her mask was back in place.
I didn’t drink much more, just listened to Shohari and Paiata talk and watched Sho get even more drunk, as if she could wash away her problems. I didn’t blame her.
Her parents sounded like monsters. I couldn’t imagine how awful must it be.
To be so trapped that even flying amongst the freedom of the stars, she was still chained to the devastating weight of manipulation and tradition.
When we eventually made a move, Shohari put her arm around my shoulder, and I slipped mine around her waist. For the first time in an hour, things felt better.