Drova #2
Kra-ell females didn't lie awake at night pining for a male and replaying every moment they'd spent with him.
She could invite Pavel.
The form of the invitation was simple, and the male's response was supposed to be equally simple, and the entire transaction was supposed to take less emotional energy than this stupid extended sitting-on-a-rock pretense she was currently engaged in.
But she did not want to invite him.
She wanted him to want to be invited. She wanted there to be something between them first, the kind of feelings she'd read about in her books.
She wanted Pavel to look at her and feel whatever it was that the heroes in the books felt when they looked at the heroines, and she wanted him to act on that feeling rather than on an invitation that obligated him to say yes.
She was contaminated.
That was the only word for it. She had been contaminated by human stories. She had been infected with a sentimentality that had no place in Kra-ell society.
Pavel had already dismissed her as being too young for him. She wasn't going to humiliate herself by asking him.
Besides, she wasn't ready.
How could she invite a male to her bed when she'd never been touched? Never been kissed?
If not for the human contamination, she probably would have thought nothing of it. But now she couldn't think of anything else.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked.
She did not look at him.
"Books," she said.
"Books? Since when are you into books? You hate reading."
She chuckled. "I hate textbooks. I like books with stories."
"What kinds of stories?"
She didn't answer immediately. The honest answer was complicated. It required her to admit that she'd been reading things she shouldn't have and feeling things she shouldn't have felt.
"Love stories," she admitted nonetheless, because she wasn't a coward. "Human love stories."
He was quiet for a long moment. "Did you like them?"
She snorted. "Obviously. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been consuming them at a rate of one every three days. I got addicted to those stupid books."
"What did you like about them?"
She turned to him. "The feelings, the kissing, and all the other stuff that I'm supposed to start doing but can't bring myself to do."
The words left her mouth before she had decided to say them, and once they were in the air, she could not pull them back, and the silence that followed was so complete that she could hear the small sound of Pavel's breath catching.
He was looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time and didn't know how to respond.
"Aren't you going to say something?" she challenged him.
"I'm speechless."
"Why?"
"Because you were honest with me. That was brave of you."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Did I ever give you a reason to doubt my courage?"
"Not in battle. But this is different. You are admitting to feelings, and I know how difficult that is for you."
She shrugged and turned away from him because it was painful to look at his handsome face.
She heard him shift on the rock. She heard the small sound of his hand moving, the displacement of air.
"That's a shame," he said.
"What is?"
"That you can't bring yourself to do any of those things. I can help you with that."
Her heart did something inside her chest it shouldn't have. Kra-ell physiology was supposed to be more disciplined than this. Her heart was supposed to beat at a rate appropriate to her level of physical activity, but even though she was currently sitting on a rock, her heart was racing.
It was the blood.
She hadn't had blood since yesterday. The lightheadedness she was now experiencing was a physiological response to nutritional deficit and not a response to the male sitting half a hand's width away from her on a rock under the moon.
"Help with what?" she asked, even though she knew exactly what he'd meant.
"May I kiss you?"
"What?" She whipped her head toward him.
His face was closer than she had expected. He had been leaning toward her, and his dark eyes had a reddish glow.
He was excited, and he was waiting for her.
He was waiting for her to either accept or decline, and the choice was hers, but he wanted her to say yes.
A proper Kra-ell female would have made the decision with words. A proper Kra-ell female would have said yes or no clearly, and moved forward, but Drova had been contaminated by human books.
She leaned toward him.
The distance closed slowly. She hadn't been kissed before, and she didn't know how fast a kiss was supposed to happen, and so she did it at the speed her body told her to, which was slower than she had imagined and more careful than she had expected.
Pavel did not move toward her. He let her come the rest of the way, and that was right somehow, that was what she had needed from him without knowing she had needed it.
Her mouth touched his.
Her first thought was that his lips were softer than she would have guessed for a male who looked the way Pavel looked.
Her second thought was that the warmth of him was different than the warmth she had felt through their pants on the rock, that this warmth was directly transmitted from him to her and had no fabric to soften it.
Her third thought was that her heart had stopped racing and had instead begun to feel as if it might float out of her chest, which was anatomically and physiologically impossible but was happening anyway.
He moved his mouth against hers gently, asking a question.
She answered it by leaning further into him.
His hand came up to the side of her face.
His fingers were warm and rough as they curved against her jaw.
She made a small sound that she most definitely hadn't authorized.
She'd just have to be embarrassed about that later, because right now she couldn't care less.
She was being kissed for the first time, and the books hadn't lied or exaggerated.
The books had not even come close.