Chapter 6 #2
“Yes, and you went about it as obnoxiously as possible; I assume to wear me down.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
“Well, I would. And you did,” I say.
“And frankly, I think honesty is better than what we were doing.”
“I hate again that you were right.”
“Should I stop trying to be right?”
“I don’t think either one of us can stop saying what we really want to say.”
I place, my hands at my hips, more uneasy by the moment.
The chicken pays us no attention, and I sigh, pausing briefly to tilt my chin up, staring at the stars overhead.
They’re extremely different than the stars on Earth, and I recognize absolutely none of them.
Still, there’s something peaceful about the inky black of the night sky and the fact that even on this strange, abandoned space station in some corner of the galaxy I never thought I would go to, stars still exist.
I breathe out deeply, somehow settled by that thought, and look at Zan.
“We gotta get through this. We have to get through this. I refuse to not make it out of this competition.”
“You think that I would let you fail?” There’s a bit of a growl to the question.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that we can’t get so wrapped up in our sexual compatibility that we forget that we’re in serious danger here.”
“So, you think we’re sexually compatible?” he says, raising one eyebrow. Starlight glints off his white hair, and he grins at me, a fiendish thing.
Zan stalks closer, and I refuse to give an inch as he approaches, lifting my chin in defiance.
“Well, my body is absolutely saying that we are, and while I don’t prefer admitting that out loud, you’ve just declared that you will not take advantage of me until I’m one hundred percent sure that we want to be together forever.
" I take a deep breath, raking a hand through my short hair in an attempt to self-soothe. "So you do that sexy walk thing towards me as much as you want, and you give me that sex-on-a-stick look, but you better believe that I’m not getting anywhere near you, mister, unless you decide that there’s no strings attached. ”
“I’ve never had a string attached,” he says, pausing and looking down at his arms, then his legs, inspecting his feet. He stares at me, and I realize belatedly he’s looking for a loose—
“That’s not what that— you know what,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about the string, okay? I mean that we’re not going to bang.”
“Bang?” He’s staring at me again. “What do you mean, this bang?”
“We’re not going to have sex,” I say, increasingly annoyed. I have a feeling I’d feel a lot less annoyed if we just did have sex, which makes me even more pissy.
“Unless you realize that it doesn’t mean forever to me, then we will not have sex,” he says easily. “Does that mean you do not want me to touch you?”
“I still want you to touch me.” The words come out through gritted teeth, and no matter how much I try to bite them back, I can’t.
“Well, good. I’m OK with touching you too. Do you truly want me to touch you?”
“Yes,” I say, unable to swallow the word.
I shiver as he traces the tips of his talons down my bare arm.
“So responsive,” he murmurs, his lips so close the warmth of his breath washes across the shell of my ear as he leans down next to me.
His wings flare out, and I suck in a breath as he wraps them around me, not touching, but close enough that the increasing chill of the night air no longer holds such a sting.
The contrast is sharp, and I’m intimately aware of the fact that he’s completely surrounding me.
“You make me feel safer,” I tell him.
“You like it when I’m with you,” he says.
“I like it when I’m with you,” I agree.
“I don’t want to leave your side again,” he tells me.
“I don’t want you to leave my side again, especially not if it means that creepy oversized chickens are going to try to eat me.”
“I think we should make a deal,” he says, and that full-fledged chaotic light glances in his eyes again as he grins down at me, his fangs sharp points in his mouth.
I’m deeply aware of every bit of his skin near mine, of the feel of his breath against the goosebumps that have raised all along the side of my neck.
“A deal?” I repeat, confused. “What do you mean, a deal?”
“If you don’t want me to listen to how rude you are to me again when you tell me to leave, which I am sure that you will once the effects of whatever that miserable artificial intelligence has put in our food to make us be truthful—”
“You think that he did put something in our food?”
“Stay on topic,” Zan commands.
I glare at him. “I don’t like being ordered around.”
“That’s why we’re making a deal,” he says breezily, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He even shrugs, which moves his wings closer to me, brushing against my back.
“What? What deal? I shiver, torn between desire and annoyance yet again. It appears that’s my constant state around this alien, no matter what happens between us. What’s the deal?”
“I’ll ignore when you tell me to leave, and I’ll protect you without asking for anything else,” he says, “except for a kahithss right now.”
“Kahithss?” I repeat, staring at him. “It’s not translating
He pronounces whatever it is again, like he’s coughing or maybe like a cat hissing, and I just blink up at him for a moment.
“What?” I ask.
He makes the noise again.
“I don’t understand what you—”
His mouth cuts me off. Literally. His lips meet mine, shock blazing through me before I melt against him.
Oh. A kiss.
And hot damn, is it ever a kiss.
The press of his lips is overwhelming with the amount of hormones that must be circulating through my body, and I cannot get enough. I press myself against him, licking my tongue against his lips until he opens for me. I moan when the tip of my tongue slides across the sharp apex of his fang.
His body is all hard lines and strange, rough skin, but this—this is soft. This isn’t the aggressive banter he tried the last few days, or the constant arguing, or the off-key singing. No, this is the real Zan. Soft, tentative, and demanding all at once. Demanding without asking at all.
It feels incredibly right, and the longer he holds me, the longer the kiss lasts, the more I wonder if I haven’t made a mistake by telling him that I didn’t want to have sex.
Because after this kiss, I have a feeling this alien knows exactly what he would be doing, and that we would have a very good time.
“Congratulations,” a familiar voice booms.
The chicken squawks. Or maybe it’s me. But regardless of who’s doing the squawking, Zan and I break apart as if we’ve been caught doing something utterly obscene.
From the way I’m panting and the heated way my body’s responded, perhaps we were doing something utterly obscene.
But if it’s utterly obscene, then call me an obscenity, because I was very much down with it.
“You have passed today’s second trial, the Truth Serum BBQ. You two are closer than ever to becoming a bonded couple and finally completing your time on Mated and Afraid,” Ken says.
Zan and I look around, and he keeps a firm grip on my hip, his wings still sheltering me from view.
“Your prize for tonight is a luxury accommodation. Unfortunately, I have a feeling things are about to get chilly, so this luxury accommodation is just in time.”
“The fuck it is,” I mutter under my breath.
“I thought we agreed we weren’t doing that,” Zan says quietly.
I don’t bother answering.
“Despite these luxury accommodations, you may find that you’re increasingly cold tonight. In fact, you could even be in danger of hypothermia. Not to worry, you do have one bed in which to cuddle for warmth,” Ken’s voice says.
Obnoxious applause breaks out, and the hen finally wakes up slightly, looking around with jerky movements before managing to settle back into her little dirt hole.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I say.
“You absolutely should,” Ken says. “Everyone loves only one bed. Goodnight, you two. Sleep tight, and don’t let the moon bugs bite.”
Another canned laugh track echoes through the woods, eerie considering there’s no live audience and we can’t see Ken either. Just disembodied laughter.
“He has a strange sense of humor,” Zan observes.
“You can say that again.”
“He has a strange sense of humor,” Zan repeats.
I blink, then shake my head. “All right. It looks like we’re going to be sharing a bed.”
“No,” he says. “I swear to you that I would not—”
“It’s not about that,” I interrupt, annoyed. “It’s literally about sharing a bed to sleep in. To physically go to sleep in. Not to have sex. Just to sleep in. OK? I don’t want to die of hypothermia. That’s not necessarily something that I’ve ever wanted to do. It’s not on the old bucket list.”
“Bucket list?” he repeats. “What’s a bucket list?”
“I’ll tell you what, bud….” My teeth are already starting to shiver, whatever Ken has done has immediately made the temperature drop by at least ten to twenty degrees. I don’t love it.
The earth rumbles, and the barbeque pit and table transform, building themselves into a strange sort of metal dome.
“Interesting,” Zan says. “Is this the bucket where your list is?”
“You know what? Get us inside and I will explain it to you.” My teeth are chattering so hard at this point, a cloud of frost forms with every word between us.
Zan doesn’t hesitate. He simply lifts me into his arms and darts toward the odd dome.