18. Clair #2
Kaelus placed the moonpearl carefully on her tongue, his fingertips brushing her lower lip in the process.
The tiny contact sent a spark through Clair, and she closed her mouth quickly. Then the fruit burst.
“Oh!” she exclaimed as cool, sweet juice flooded her tongue. It tasted like ripe pear mixed with vanilla and something faintly floral. “That is really good,” she said, after she swallowed.
Kaelus nodded.
“I agree.”
“Give me another,” she said eagerly.
Kaelus raised an eyebrow.
“You have hands.”
Clair grinned at him.
“Proper husbands feed their goddesses—remember?”
“Yes, my goddess,” he growled sarcastically, but the corner of his mouth was twitching again as he put another moonpearl into her mouth.
Clair smiled around it.
“This planet is growing on me,” she remarked after she chewed and swallowed.
“I had noticed,” Kaelus said.
They moved on to the golden fruit, which Maera’s description identified as sunmelon. Kaelus cut off a piece of the startling blue flesh, tasted it first, then fed Clair a bite.
She moaned in ecstasy.
“Oh my God.”
Kaelus’s eyes were suddenly half-lidded.
“I take it you really liked that,” he rumbled.
Clair felt her cheeks getting hot. The sound she had made was entirely too close to the noises she’d made the night before while touching herself under his direction.
Quickly, she finished chewing and swallowed.
“It, uh, tastes like mango and pineapple had a baby with whipped cream,” she explained.
He shook his head.
“I have no idea what that means but I wouldn’t mind hearing you make that noise again.”
Clair slapped at his arm.
“Don’t be a perv. I only meant it means it’s delicious.”
“I see.”
His voice had gone slightly rough, but Clair pretended not to notice.
The purple ribbonfruit was even stranger.
Once peeled, the interior separated naturally into long curling strips of pink flesh which had the texture of a ripe peach and tasted faintly of strawberries and honey.
The glassberries popped between their teeth and released tart juice reminiscent of raspberry lemonade, while the crimson fireplums were intensely sweet at first and then left a warm cinnamon-like tingle across the tongue.
Clair bit into one and loved it—it was every bit as good as the goosenburly had been awful.
“Ooh,” she said.
Kaelus looked immediately concerned.
“Are you well, Clair?” he asked.
She nodded.
“It’s spicy—but in a good way.”
He frowned.
“You said it was sweet.”
“It is. Then it gets warm.”
“Unpleasantly warm?” Kaelus still looked worried.
“No.” She licked her fingers. “Actually, it’s kind of sexy.”
“Sexy?” Kaelus looked at the fireplum he had been about to eat. “How can a fruit be sexy?”
Clair laughed.
“Try it and find out for yourself.”
“But is it going to act as some kind of aphrodisiac? Like the Bonding fruit from Twin Moons?” he asked, examining the plum.
“No, nothing like that!” Clair exclaimed. “Look, just try it—you’ll like it, I promise.”
“Very well—I’ll try it.”
Kaelus tried a bite of the fruit and his eyebrows went up.
Clair grinned at his reaction.
“See? It’s good right?”
“It is…interesting,” he rumbled.
“You like it,” she teased.
“I did not say that.”
“You don’t have to. Your face did.”
Kaelus scowled.
“My face says nothing.”
Clair laughed again.
“Your face says lots of things. Mostly grouchy things.”
Kaelus shook his head but finished the fireplum.
They ate companionably for several minutes, trying the different fruits and dipping pieces into a pale green cream that tasted like vanilla custard mixed with lime. Somewhere along the way, Clair realized she had relaxed completely.
Sitting beside Kaelus, sharing strange food while the lavender evening light filtered through the translucent walls of their suite, felt right in a way she couldn’t explain.
Being with the big Hybrid put her at peace for some reason.
Maybe because she felt safe with him—felt like she could be herself.
It was almost like they really were a married couple coming home after a day at work to talk about their day and relax together.
She pushed that thought away quickly. She’d had enough of married life to last her—and besides, Kaelus was a Hybrid which meant he could never bond with a woman. So there was no point even thinking about making their current fiction a reality.
“So,” she said, wiping her fingers and reaching for her data slate. “Science.”
Kaelus nodded.
“Science. Tell me—what did you find?”
Clair projected the molecular structure she had discovered into the air between them.
“This is veloria.”
Kaelus leaned forward immediately.
“This is the nectar you drank this morning?”
She nodded.
“Right. Or rather, this is one of the major compounds in the blossom itself. The researchers here call it VEL-7. It’s a precursor molecule.”
“Precursor to what?”
“That’s the interesting part.” Clair brought up the second structure. “This.”
Kaelus frowned as he studied the compound. His brow furrowed and he seemed to be examining part of it very closely.
Clair noticed.
“What? What do you see?” she asked eagerly.
The big Hybrid didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for his own data slate and activated it. A moment later, another molecular structure appeared beside hers.
Clair’s mouth fell open.
“No way,” she breathed. She enlarged both images and found they overlaid almost perfectly. Clair felt goosebumps rise along her arms.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
“Where did you get that?” she asked at last.
“From the blood of Titus Four males,” Kaelus rumbled. “Every male sample I examined contained this compound.”
“How many in the group?” Clair asked.
“Twenty-five initially. I checked more afterward. It was present in all of them.”
Clair’s heart began pounding.
“What about the Glenvarren males?” she asked.
Kaelus shook his head.
“The compound was conspicuously absent.”
Clair stared at the molecule.
“Holy shit!” she breathed.
Kaelus gave her a wry half-smile.
“My thoughts were considerably more professional, but essentially the same.”
Clair ignored him.
“Kaelus, do you realize what this is?” she demanded, stabbing a finger at his compound. “This is the metabolized form of veloria!”
His eyes narrowed.
“Explain.”
“The raw flower doesn’t contain this compound,” Clair said.
“Neither does the prepared nectar. veloria contains VEL-7, which is inactive—or at least mostly inactive. But Maera drank a glass this morning and I tested her blood afterward.” She pointed at the molecular structure. “Her body converted VEL-7 into this.”
Kaelus frowned.
“Her body converted it.”
Clair nodded eagerly.
“Yes!”
“Not digestion alone?”
“I don’t think so. Men drink veloria occasionally and according to Maera they don’t experience the same effects. I think something specific to female biology activates the precursor. Hormones, enzymes, gut flora—maybe several factors together.”
Kaelus sat back slowly.
“And every Titus Four male carries the resulting metabolite.”
“Yes.” Clair nodded again. “If your findings are correct.”
“They are,” Kaelus assured her.
They stared at each other.
“The women make it,” Clair said. “Somehow they’re metabolizing the veloria nectar into something completely different.”
Kaelus nodded.
“And somehow the males are receiving it.”
The excitement that swept through Clair was so intense she nearly jumped up from the table.
“Oh my God, Kaelus! This could be it!” she exclaimed. “This could be the answer to curing the Savage Syndrome!”
“It could be part of it,” he said cautiously. “We still don’t know how the women are making the compound and if it would be possible for women other than those of Titus Four to achieve the same effect.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Clair told him.
He frowned.
“I am merely being scientifically cautious.”
“No—you’re being a buzzkill. It’s only our first day here and we’re already onto something big!”
“I am being accurate,” he protested.
Clair waved that away.
“Whatever. The point is, the men on this planet have the active veloria metabolite circulating in their blood even though their own bodies don’t appear to produce it.”
“And their viral loads are extraordinarily high,” Kaelus added.
Clair frowned.
“How high are we talking?”
“Comparable to Glenvarren. Some even higher,” he said.
Clair’s excitement shifted into stunned silence.
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not,” Kaelus said. “I confess, it surprised me too.”
“But that means…” Clair began.
“That the males of Titus Four are not resistant to the virus at all,” he finished for her.
Clair stared at him.
“So…the virus is actively replicating?”
Kaelus nodded.
“Yes.”
“But they don’t show any aggression towards women,” she said thoughtfully. “Wait, no—that’s not completely true.”
Kaelus frowned.
“What do you mean? Every male here treats his wife like a goddess.”
Clair explained to him what Maera had said about “the Taming” and how older, experienced women took young men to bed to “tame” them and keep them from becoming violent.
“So they ‘tame’ them sexually?” Kaelus rumbled. Suddenly his golden eyes were half-lidded.
“I guess they do.” For some reason Clair felt her cheeks getting hot.
Her mind immediately supplied an image of his mouth on hers…then his mouth on her breasts…then his mouth pressed between her thighs.
“Maybe the cure is passed along to the males in the same way the virus is—it’s sexually transmitted,” Kaelus said.
Clair looked back at the molecular display.
“We need samples to be sure,” she said.
“Of what?”
“Of everything.”
Kaelus raised an eyebrow.
“That’s very scientific of you.”
“Oh, you know what I mean! Saliva. Sweat. Maybe even tears. Anything the body secretes.”
His expression changed slightly.
“And other fluids,” he rumbled.
Clair nibbled her lower lip and glanced at him. Was he thinking of the way he’d licked her juices off her fingers last night? The way he was looking at her, she couldn’t think of anything else.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said, her voice coming out higher than usual.