Chapter 2 #2
“I think it’s close enough and I think you’re doing a wonderful job of sorting through a very difficult language.” It wasn’t until they’d gone into more detail about how they’d learned English that I realized how many words we used that hadn’t started out as English.
Klynn shifted side to side, but the faint wiggle motion said he was feeling a lot more than I was able to read. “Reading has helped me expand my understanding of English and of American behavior, but Toman has more practical experience with them.”
“Because he found his mate and he was the outward-facing part of your team.” It was easy to see why Klynn hadn’t been comfortable with the locals outside the gate.
They were all insane and entirely too open about their personal lives.
“You gathered information in the best way possible for you and guarded the gate.” He’d still been helpful in very practical ways.
He also hadn’t ditched them like the other guy they’d come with.
“You went to a completely foreign land through a portal you had no idea would stay open or not. I’m very impressed. ”
As I hoped he could read my sincerity in my words, he went still for a few long moments before standing straighter again. “The experience was educational in unexpected ways, but thank you.”
I bet.
But before I could decide if I could touch on any of that, footsteps started coming closer.
For fuck’s sake.
They’d found me again.
Klynn’s face twitched in what I thought might’ve been their version of showing how funny he thought the situation was. Instead of laughing, though, he put one finger up to his lips in a clear human signal to be quiet and stepped closer to me.
I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I decided not to question it when he actually wrapped one arm around me.
Questions could wait.
Oh.
Okay.
As he held me tighter, one hand pressed a panel on the wall I hadn’t noticed and he whispered in my ear. “Closing your eyes makes it easier.”
I was never going to get used to disappearing in one place and reappearing in another.
But I might try harder to get used to it if Klynn was the one helping me with it.
“We have arrived.” Something about his tone said he’d cut off his sentence shorter than he’d wanted to, but I wasn’t sure if it was an honorific or something else. “My first thought was your rooms. I hope that was not inappropriate.”
Considering he’d saved me from more weird questions, it didn’t matter if it was inappropriate or not.
“No.” Forcing my eyes open, I stepped back and pretended the situation was perfectly normal. “I don’t have privacy concerns about my room.”
Hmm.
Testing the waters, I shrugged and gave a tiny smirk. “As long as I get something out of it.”
Oh, he was curious.
I could see something faint shift in his expression but he was a cautious cutie. “I understand the human behavior of trading.”
I bet he did…especially with what he’d been reading.
“What did you have in mind?” Since he was confident enough to put the question out there, I didn’t back down from taking it in a more interesting direction.
“I think trading one personal thing for another would be fair.” Shrugging, I pretended not to notice how close he still was to me. “You might let me see your rooms or there might be something else you can think of.”
Quietly processing for several moments, I ignored how long the time felt and focused on how it felt to have him right next to me. Klynn was usually careful to position himself closer to me than he did anyone else, but never enough to invade my personal space.
It was like he’d read somewhere how close he could get to a human and was staying right on that line with me. The part of me that overthought everything wondered what signal he thought he was sending, but the Dom part of me couldn’t help making several confident guesses.
When he continued to think and, I thought, slide into worries about something, I knew I had to take control again.
But how?
“Do you need me to step back and give you room?” I had to force myself to not call him baby or anything like that since logically it didn’t seem appropriate.
Taking a slightly deeper breath, he shook his head in a very human gesture.
“Do you need me to go back to behaving more professionally?”
Another head shake.
Thank fuck.
So he liked where we were going and he didn’t want me to move away…but what did he need?
“I would like to wrap my arms around you and touch your head and your back.” Spelling it out felt weird, but I couldn’t read him well enough yet to guess what he was thinking, much less what his limits would be.
“Most humans desire physical contact with close friends or people they want to get to know on a more personal level.”
He must’ve known that from his books, but I didn’t bring them up because they made him nervous. I was just going to have to guess what other topics might make him uneasy, though. “It’s perfectly reasonable to tell me that’s a limit you’re not comfortable with yet.”
Something about limits stopped whatever mental doom spiral he’d been in. “Discussions about limits are important in specific human situations and relationships. Are you familiar with those?”
Was he asking if I understood BDSM?
Was he asking me if I was a Dom?
Somehow that hadn’t been how I thought our conversation would go…but yeah…aliens. I needed to stop forgetting that he wasn’t from Earth.