Chapter 2
Jeltom
I had a crick in my neck from the awkward way I’d slept at the table, but I wasn’t going to let the pretty little human know that.
The moment I realized it wasn’t some kinswoman trying to get me to move from my seat at the Laughing Nia, my curiosity was stirred.
Since arriving back in my hometown on Llykhe, people had been falling over themselves to catch up with me and sympathize with my reason for being back.
The whole “I’m so sorry you got shot” thing was getting old real fast.
Avertom, the bastard, knew what he was doing when he’d sent her my way, though.
He knew how much of a thing I had for the damsel in distress, how innate my desire to protect was.
This little human, with her sweet curves, was exactly the distraction I needed.
Was I mad that my childhood friend had known exactly what to do to get me moving?
Yeah, I was. But was I going to do it anyway? Stars, yes.
Her skin was so soft and fragile beneath my fingers, and I could feel the rapid beating of her heart.
It fluttered under her skin like a trapped bird.
I rarely regretted not having the commonly admired gift of empathy, but I was somewhat disappointed that I couldn’t tell what she was feeling now.
She’d gone from brazen and bold to frightened enough to try to run, and now I was intrigued.
Had she not done that, I would have told her no again, and that would have been that, but this?
Something that reeked of fear? Oh yeah, I was hooked.
It was her scent, I decided, when I discovered I was unable to release her wrist. She smelled like the Aderian grapes we grew all over these parts, and she smelled of flowers and freshly cut meadow grass.
She smelled… like something I wanted to press my face against until her scent was all over me.
That was new, that impulse, but I wasn’t frightened by it.
That was probably the side of me that had been enticed into following a second career in science.
Curiosity always did get the better of me.
“Tell me about the job,” I insisted a second time, because she’d frozen and was now staring at me with huge, golden-brown eyes from inside her pale face.
My thumb feathered over her frantic pulse, and my chest expanded as I inhaled her enticing scent.
Seriously good—too good—the kind of good that was dangerous. And still, I didn’t turn away.
“Oh… I thought… I thought you said no?” she tried, her head cocked and springy copper curls slid over her shoulder. She had round, tiny ears, and I wanted to reach out with a finger to stroke the tempting curve. That round ear wasn’t the only curve I wanted to touch.
“I thought you were someone from town,” I said gruffly.
“But you’re not.” I didn’t explain much more, but my eyes briefly shifted from hers to where Avertom was pretending to be busy behind the bar.
He had his back to us and was keeping as much distance as possible, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t privy to every single thing we were feeling.
Privacy on an Aderian world was a murky thing.
“I see,” my little human said in a tone that told me she had no clue what I meant. It made me want to laugh, but I had a feeling she’d spook and truly bolt if I did. So, I held onto her wrist to make sure she would not slip away and waited.
Her eyes flicked all over the place, as if she couldn’t bring herself to look at me.
Her blunt white teeth nibbled on the lush pillow of her bottom lip, her tongue darting out to wet them.
She was a temptation I shouldn’t give into, but the sight of that pink tongue made my cocks surge beneath the leather buckskin of my pants.
She could nibble on other things, lick more than just lips—though I wouldn’t object to that, either.
Would she taste like meadow grass and wine?
“I guess if you’re interested after all…
I really do need someone to fix my pressing machine,” she said.
“Can you do that? Fix the pressing machine on my farm?” With my eyes closed, I could do that.
Having grown up on Llykhe, I was as familiar with the winemaking process as anyone here.
More so, because I’d always taken an interest in the machines, the science that went into creating a balanced, tasty wine.
I didn’t say that, though, because my instincts sharpened on something else.
I wasn’t an empath—I had no psychic gift to speak of at all—but I had always prided myself on having good instincts.
Perhaps it was a very subconscious remnant of some kind of core empathy; perhaps I’d just learned to read expressions better than most Aderians to compensate for my lack.
I just knew that my little human was desperate, very desperate, to get her pressing machine working again.
That wasn’t so strange, a farmer depended on his machines, after all, to make a profit and live off his land.
But this? This went deeper than that. I was certain of it.
“I can,” I said. “I can fix pretty much anything on a farm.” It wasn’t a lie, but also a rather unnecessary bit of bragging.
She had only inquired about getting her pressing machine fixed, nothing else.
Since she still looked perilously close to bolting, I rose from my seat.
“Let’s go.” I wasn’t ready to let go of her wrist, but to hold on any longer would raise eyebrows.
She retreated a few steps the moment I let go, but to her credit, she did not bolt from the Laughing Nia.
Her hands fluttered at her sides, then rushed to smooth her blouse, even though it was not wrinkled.
“Go? Now?” she said, shocked. “We haven’t discussed a price yet…
What if I can’t afford you?” I was so confused by the mention of a price that I found myself staring at her, lost for words.
I hadn’t even considered that she’d want to pay me for my time.
Avertom made a coughing noise behind her, for the first time inserting himself into our interaction.
“If I may make a suggestion? Jeltom will accept payment once you’ve sold your first batch of wine.
You know, as proof that he delivered good work…
” I began to nod along right away, even if it was the most ridiculous suggestion I’d ever heard.
I didn’t want to get paid, I didn’t need any money, but payment after she sold her wines? That could be in a year…
Luckily, my little human didn’t realize how absurd Avertom’s suggestion was, and she seemed to be relieved.
“Oh, right, yes, that could work! If you’re okay with that?
” She turned her big brown eyes toward me over her shoulder, and I was briefly distracted by the easy way I could see exactly what she was looking at: me.
The beginning of a smile was forming around her pink mouth, and I liked that.
“I am amenable to that suggestion,” I agreed. As I followed my human out of the saloon, I gave Avertom a warning glare that just made him shrug and grin. His expression grew stoic and polite the moment my human looked his way, and I just knew that my usually gregarious friend did that for her sake.
“I’m Mariska,” she said as we stepped into the warm afternoon sun outside the Laughing Nia.
I eyed the cheerfully painted sign of a Nia rolling on her back with a ball of yarn rather than looking at my human.
That sign was beyond ridiculous, but Avertom seemed to think it was funny.
The Laughing Nia was a stupid name for a saloon, but Mariska?
That name was perfect for my copper-curled human.
“Jeltom,” I said to her, although I knew she must have already realized it was my name.
After all, Avertom had called me that. We weren’t just childhood friends, but cousins, hence why our names were so similar, but I didn’t think the little human had picked up on that yet.
She was striding confidently ahead of me, but there was something brittle to the way she held herself.
We were catching stares from all over town, but nobody said anything.
I gave a nod here or there in greeting, but mostly I was taking note of how many eyes my little human drew.
Curiosity was a common Aderian trait; after all, we produced many great scientific minds.
Curiosity was the fuel of our society. It was equally obvious, even without a gift for empathy, that those curious and friendly stares bothered Mariska.
Her shoulders were practically around her ears by the time we passed the last house.
Nobody had greeted us by then, sensing her “keep away” vibes, but that only made everyone more curious.
Who wanted to keep someone out that badly?
We were a social species, too, always eager for company.
This human, she was much more like me, happy to keep everyone at a distance.
I was just a grumpy old bastard, but she?
I feared her reason for withdrawing was much darker.
She was, after all, a single, pretty human in the Zeta Quadrant.
Safe on an Aderian world, sure, but she might not always have been under Aderian protection.
My mind flashed to the events that had caused me to get shot and forced me to retire from my second career.
Though that near-fatal blow had come from a Kertinillian mercenary, he’d been hired by an Aderian criminal mastermind—a crimelord.
It was proof that, even on a world as safe as Llykhe, a human alone like Mariska couldn’t be sure she was safe.
“Where’s your farm?” I asked. I’d roamed these hills as a boy and knew them like the back of my hand.
Since she’d walked into town, it couldn’t be far, and I considered which properties lay in this direction.
She didn’t really seem to know how to answer me; she just vaguely pointed up ahead along the dusty trail.
When I saw the river rock chimney up ahead, I was surprised.
“Wait, you’re living at the Meteor Crater?
” I demanded. That wasn’t really its name, but that’s what we’d called it growing up, as it had been abandoned for being extremely unlucky during Llykhe’s somewhat regular meteor storms—not actually unlucky, of course, just a fluke in terrain that made it more prone to being struck.
She gave me the haughtiest of looks over her shoulder.
“It’s called Hearth and Haven now, thank you very much.
” She had her hackles raised, as if I’d deeply offended her by calling her home a crater.
Maybe she was scared too, because a place with a name like that couldn’t be safe, could it?
Not on a planet where meteors striking were a regular occurrence.
“Sure,” I agreed, but I reserved judgment until after I’d seen the place. Who had been so crazy as to buy it? Had no one warned the human what a bad spot this property was? I felt bad for her, but she clearly took pride in owning it.
It was much worse than I expected. Much worse.
I recalled the nearly falling-down stone cottage and the ancient barn.
They’d been abandoned when I was a child and looked that way then; now they looked worse.
Sure, someone had given the front door a new lick of paint, and I could see some rudimentary roof repairs, but that was all that had been fixed.
The fences were broken, the trellis with vines of Aderian grapes listing and crooked, and the garden patch beside the house completely overgrown.
What the blazing stars had been going on out here?
“Uh, yeah,” Mariska began to stutter as I followed her into the farmyard.
“The pressing machine is in there, as well as my harvest and last year’s first attempt at wine.
” She eyed her overgrown cottage with the twisted chimney.
“Do you want to come in for a drink first?” She said it as if the last thing she wanted was for me to come inside her home.
Uneasily shifting on her boots, I pointed at the barn with a nod, and she led the way with obvious relief.
Inside the barn, my horror only grew. What had my people been thinking—dumping a helpless human on a farm without proper instruction? Or had she been too dense to understand what she needed to do to run a place like this?
Stacks upon stacks of crates were piled together with her harvest, which should have been going into the broken pressing machine right away for processing.
Massive barrels filled the back of the barn with last year’s wine—improperly stored and lacking the temperature control needed for proper fermentation, simply left haphazardly all over the place.
It didn’t appear that she had sold any of it, and there was hardly any space or barrels left for this new batch.
Rust and dust coated everything, and a hole in the roof here was going to be disastrous when winter came.
She wasn’t just in need of a mechanic to fix her pressing machine; she clearly needed more structural aid around the farm.
There was no way she could make this place turn a profit in its current state.
I turned toward her to eye her straight spine and pinched mouth, wondering how I could possibly tell her that fixing the pressing machine was the least of her worries. “How did you end up here?” I asked instead.