Chapter 5
Leigh
The twins showed up at the worst possible time. I had completely forgotten they’d be back today, and, judging by Dad’s reaction to their truck pulling up outside, so had he. As we scrambled to close the barn and get T’raat hidden, the boys got out of the truck and headed over to us.
Jim and Tim had been working on our farm since they were teenagers. The identical twins were tall and lanky, with dark brown hair and piercing green eyes. I’d had a crush on both of them in the past, but they’d always considered me to be like a younger sister. They each rejected me when I made advances on them. Their words were gentle, but the hurt remained for months. When they took the summer off to visit family, it had given me a chance to grow up and realize I didn’t have a shot with either of them.
T’raat’s arrival helped soothe the sting of rejection from the twins, so much so that I forgot they were due back any day. It wouldn’t have been a problem except we had an alien spaceship hidden on the farm, and we were harboring an illegal visitor from another planet.
“Jim! Tim! Hey, guys!” I shouted as I slammed the barn door behind me. If they caught sight of T’raat or his ship, my aunt was gonna kill me.
“Hey, squirt.” Jim ruffled my hair affectionately as he headed for the barn. I grabbed his hand and pulled him around, making him do an about-face.
“No working in this barn today. A, uh, coyote got hold of one of the barn cats. Nasty fight. Cat lost. We haven’t cleaned it up yet.” God, that was a lame excuse. I realized it was a good thing Dad already knew about T’raat, because I was a terrible liar. No way I could’ve hidden him from my dad like this.
“Well, then, I’ll start cleaning.” Tim started to push past me, but Dad stopped him with a palm on his chest.
“No, Tim. Leigh’s the one who left the barn open last night, so it’s her responsibility to clean up the mess. She’ll never learn if you take care of it for her.”
Dad took the twins away, muttering something about needing them to check out the tractor and figure out why it was making a weird noise. Since they fancied themselves mechanically inclined, the ruse should keep them occupied for a good while—especially since there wasn’t any weird noise to be found.
I ducked back into the barn and barred the door behind me. A hand on my head startled me, and I whipped around to see T’raat right behind me. He wore a confused frown, and he kept petting me.
“What are you doing? I told you to stay put. You could’ve been seen!”
“The duplicate human disturbed your hairs.”
I removed his hand from my head and smoothed my hair back. “There. Better?”
He cocked his head. “Yes. Not that I didn’t like your hairs that way, but I’d rather I was the one disturbing them. I did not like seeing him touch you.”
“You were watching? Dude, what if they’d seen you?”
T’raat blinked at me, his brows drawing together. “I did not know who had approached. I had to be certain they weren’t a threat.”
Oh, geez. “T’raat, the two of them work on the farm. They’re not a threat.”
He grumbled and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I did not know that.”
I grunted with frustration and stomped over to the cabinet in the back where we kept a supply of tarps. The spaceship was huge, but maybe if we covered it we wouldn’t have to tiptoe around Jim and Tim while they were here. I pulled out several of the thick plastic sheets and hauled them over to the ship, dumping my load on the floor and gesturing to T’raat.
“Here. Toss a few of these over the ship. They won’t really hide the fact that we’ve got something in here, but maybe we can come up with some story about what’s under them if the twins get curious.”
“Twins?”
“Jim and Tim. The guys outside with Dad.”
I was starting to get accustomed to T’raat’s funny range of facial expressions when he was internally translating the things I said. I bit my lip to keep from laughing at him as he worked out what a twin was.
“Interesting. A split zygote? I assume from their appearance that they share identical genetic traits.” He rubbed his chin in thought. “Although, I am not familiar enough with human genetics. Perhaps they simply shared a womb, and the resemblance is coincidental.”
That was actually kinda cool. More than just rote regurgitation of what the nanites told him, he was taking the time to process things. “They’re identical, yeah. Same DNA.”
“DNA?”
Oh, fuck. “Yeah, it’s short for—shit, I can’t pronounce it. A big ol’ long word for genetic material.”
“Why not just say ‘genetic material,’ then?”
I sighed. “It’s the scientific term. Just about everything has another word for it that’s scientific. It’s complicated.”
“Indeed.” He tossed the last tarp over the ship, and it was covered—ish. “Will this suffice?”
“I guess.” It’s not like we had many options. Hopefully the twins didn’t get curious and come snooping in here. We might be able to bluff our way through some story about a new piece of farm equipment, but with our luck they’d beg to see it. No, best to keep them out of here if possible. “It’ll have to do.”
Awkward silence descended on us, stretching out and making the time drag. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours, and I had no clue what to say to break the tension.
T’raat eventually found an icebreaker of his own, and the bluntness of it threw me for a loop.
“Would you like to mate?”
I choked on my own spit, coughing and wheezing. Was he serious?
“Um, what?”
He reached out and stroked my cheek. “I find you quite attractive. For a human, that is. You do not have as many teats as a Xalanite woman, and your skin is so soft and delicate, but I do not fault you for that. It is a consequence of your birth. I am certain I can be gentle enough that I will not damage you.”
Just the thought of getting railed so hard as to potentially cause “damage” had me flustered, and I stammered out a response.
“I-I … You want to, erm, mate with me?”
He nodded. “Yes. Very much.”
“We, uh, hardly know each other. I mean, we haven’t kissed or anything even.”
“We must kiss first?”
“It’s preferred, yeah. Kiss, cuddle, date …”
“Date?” His face fell. “You mean courting.” Without another word, he turned and slipped behind the tarp. I heard a door close inside his ship. The sound had a finality to it, like he wasn’t ever coming back out.
“T’raat?” I called, pulling a corner of tarp aside and knocking on the hull of the ship. The hollow sound of my knuckles on the metal shell echoed in the barn. I wondered what could have made him so upset at the idea of dating me. “T’raat? Was it something I said?”
Silence.
“I’m not opposed to dating you, you know. Or kissing you. But we can’t just skip straight to mating. Dad would kill both of us.”
Still no answer. I inspected the seam of the door to the inside, searching for a handle or a touch pad or something to open it. There didn’t seem to be anything of the sort, but finally my hand brushed across a spot that looked just like everything else, and the door hissed open. I peeked inside and got the view of a lifetime.
T’raat stood just inside the door with a pained expression on his face, but that wasn’t what shocked me.
No, it was the double tents in his pants that had my jaw dropping and my pussy wet.
Two?! I knew Xalanites were rumored to have something extra, but … two?! The second teepee was smaller, shorter than the main one, but it was distinct enough that I realized he was sporting more than the one package a human would have.
“Oh! I, uh, I guess I should, um, go …” I covered my eyes with my hands and stepped backwards, missing the mark by a mile and landing square on my butt outside the ship. I cried out at what I knew would end up being an embarrassing bruise, and before I knew what was happening, T’raat appeared and crouched at my side. He scooped me into his arms and carried me onto the ship, which closed behind us without him pressing any buttons.
We crossed through a small room and down a narrow corridor before he deposited me on a small, padded table. He tapped a panel on the side, and his eyes flitted back and forth as he watched a small screen. I leaned over and saw a human-shaped thermal image that had a bright red spot on the ass.
My ass.
T’raat pointed at the spot. “You are injured.”
Well, duh. “It’s nothing. I’ll probably get a bruise, but it’s not like it’s broken or anything.”
“Bruise … Ah. Yes. I have something for that.” He turned and rummaged through a drawer that he pulled out of the wall. I didn’t see any handles or knobs sticking out, but somehow he opened it without any trouble. Weird.
After a few seconds, he gave a triumphant shout and held up a small, round metal jar. He held it out to me with a broad grin.
“Here. Vritz oil is the best cure for a bruise. It should help your tender human skin to heal.”
I had some choice words in mind for the “tender human skin” comment, but I kept them to myself. Something was bothering T’raat, bruised butt aside, and I felt like it was my fault. I took the jar and turned it over in my hands for a moment as I tried to find the right words to ask him what was wrong.
“I’m not worried about my ass. Growing up on a farm, I’ve had a lot worse. What I’m worried about is you. Something that I said upset you, and I want to know what I said that was so wrong.” He started to turn away from me, but I grabbed his arm and held fast. “Uh-uh. No running away. We’re two different species; we’re going to have communication problems at some point. This is clearly one of those points. Just tell me what’s upsetting you.”
He raked his other hand through his hair with a sigh. “I am just disappointed. You said that we must court for us to mate, but you rejected my attempt at courting this morning. So, we cannot mate.”
Wait, he was trying to court me with the dead weeds and Mom’s demolished rosebushes? I had a moment of confusion before a lightbulb went off inside my head, and I slapped my forehead as realization hit. “You were trying to bring me flowers.”
“Severed plants are a desired gift for humans, yes?”
“Kind of. I mean, certain flowers are desired, like the roses, but some of what you had there were weeds. And you don’t just rip the flowers apart. You’re supposed to cut the stems. What you did to Mom’s rosebushes …” I stopped and bit my lip to keep from crying at the thought. Now that the morning had slowed down, I had more time to process the damage he did, unintentional though it was. “She’s been dead for years, but Dad and I have kept those bushes as healthy as we could. They were her favorite.”
T’raat frowned. “Your mother is deceased?”
I nodded, and a tear slipped down my cheek. I moved to wipe it, but T’raat beat me to it. His touch was gentle despite the slightly rough texture of his scales. I turned into the touch and kissed his palm. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t rejecting you, T’raat. I was just so upset that you destroyed her plants, and I was terrified Dad would hurt you if he found out.”
“So, we can still court?”
I offered him a shy smile. “I’d like that.”
T’raat grinned and leaned in closer. “We can kiss, yes?”
My heart thundered in my chest. I tipped my chin up to meet him, and his lips descended onto mine. A jolt of electricity shot through me as we kissed, and when his tongue joined mine in my mouth, I moaned.
I’d kissed boys before. Tim and Jim each at one point or another, boys at school, that kind of thing. But kissing T’raat? That was a whole ‘nother experience.
I’m pretty sure my soul left my body at some point. Wherever it was, anyway, it wasn’t on planet Earth.
He cupped the back of my head with his hand. Put his other hand on my waist. Pressed his body to mine. Every single touch lit me on fire, and before he finished I was a pile of putty in his skilled hands.
Hands so skilled that I didn’t even notice when he took the jar of vritz from me until he slid his oil-covered fingers down the back of my pants.
I yelped from the shock of the cold gel on my hot body, and T’raat pulled back.
“Are you all right? Did I hurt you?”
“That stuff is freezing! ” I shouted.
“But you are not in pain?”
I paused. My ass felt … cold, but fine. “Well, no.”
“Good.” He smiled and kissed me again. When he finally let me go—after slowly massaging the vritz into my bruised butt—he gave me a very human wink. “I’d hate for you to experience discomfort later when you’re sitting on my n’ril .”