8. Lois
Lois
“What have I done?” I mutter to myself as my comms orb flies from one end of my rooms to the other, blasting out ‘YMCA’ by The Village People.
This morning, the orb had explored a catalog of Mongolian throat singing; last night, it was all about French Rap.
“Hey, DJ,” I call to her, finding it a fitting name right about now.
The comms unit stops in mid-air and hovers closer to me.
“Can we have something a bit… calmer right now… please?”
The orb glows brighter. The Village People stop singing, and DJ immediately drifts into the Celtic melodies of Enya.
“Thanks,” I chuckle as the ball sways hypnotically as if performing some kind of ballet.
As it turns out, that little ball of light and music that I thought was acting differently to all the other comms orbs I’ve seen was doing so for a reason.
Vel had taken a look at DJ and told me that she behaves like she actually has a personality because she’s a repurposed unit.
Az had been angry at first – annoyed that Kiahn, or Vel, or whoever had procured the orb for me had cheated me out of a brand new one.
But I hadn’t been upset at all. I like the thought of recycling stuff.
Hell, I’d kept phones until they became relics and cars until they were held together by electrical tape and prayers.
But it turns out, DJ’s last owner had been an elderly Xaviann woman who had uploaded something called ‘companion software’ – coding that makes the piece of tech seem more like a friend and less like a computer.
Almost everything got wiped from DJ when the previous owner passed away, but some of the companion coding stubbornly remained.
Az offered to get me a new one; Vel offered to wipe DJ – completely this time.
Right back to factory settings. But I took one look at my little Dancing Queen and felt like I couldn’t do it.
So here we are: one human without a clue on how she’s going to persuade some high-and-mighty alien senator to care about another species, and one flying orb of light who has currently moved on from Enya to some Tina Turner.
A knock on my bedroom door cuts through my amusement at watching DJ dance and spin through the air. I expect to see Zek, Jaya, or her new, very tall, very imposing shadow at this time in the early evening, but it’s none of those. It’s Az.
“W-what are you doing here?” We don’t leave for the Capital until tomorrow morning.
Az’s smile morphs into a look of confusion as he looks beyond me, into my room.
DJ twirls past, enthusiastically bopping to the energetic chorus of ‘Proud Mary’.
He blinks down at me for an explanation.
“What?” I say, folding my arms over my chest, feeling defensive over DJ. “She likes upbeat music.”
Az makes a soft snorting noise and steps forward, practically pushing me backward with his sheer presence.
He mirrors my stance, his thick arms corded with muscle as they band over his chest like iron bars.
He observes DJ’s movements for a moment or two longer.
“She?” he finally asks, raising one brow at me.
“Yes, she,” I answer, turning to the dancing sphere. “DJ?” I clip. “How should I refer to you?”
DJ responds by changing tracks, specifically to Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’.
I turn to Az with a smug smile – a smug smile that his pink-flecked eyes find straight away, and fixate on for a moment too long to be casual. “Well,” he says, still staring at my lips. “I guess I should know better than to question you, little female.”
His voice is like hot melted butter, and it does something delicious to my insides. “Yes,” I near-whisper, my own gaze now locked on his mouth in return. “You should.”
My voice is hoarse and doesn’t sound like my own.
I’m not sure how long we stand there, Az and I in my bedroom, staring at one another, my belly feeling like there’s a whole swarm of butterflies fluttering around in there – but at some point I become aware that DJ is beside us, slowly ascending as if she’s staring at us, staring at each other.
And she’s playing Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’.
“Hey!” I take a swipe at her, but she dodges my advance. “DJ! Get back here!”
I’m about to engage in what has now become our daily routine of me chasing her around my rooms and DJ absolutely giving me the runaround.
But just as I leap, Az catches me with one of his big, strong arms banded around my middle.
“Let her play her Earth sounds,” he says, putting me back down, his hands steadying me, one on each shoulder. They’re warm and calloused.
I hadn’t really expected that from a prince.
“I wanted to show you something.”
Now it’s my turn to raise a brow at him. “I’m sure you do,” I tease, my eyes flitting suggestively from his face to his crotch and then back again.
Am I flirting? I should stop. I don’t do flirting!
Luckily, the big guy looks puzzled. He hooks a thumb over his shoulder and says, “I… I wanted to introduce you to-” his words trail off before an expression of realization blooms on his features. “Did you mean my cock?”
“I was joking-”
“Because you can see that any time you desire,” he says, the words rushing out of his mouth.
“Or any part of me, really. You have the Permission token, and I-” mortifyingly, Az starts to undress, his shirt coming off first, then his hands going to the straps of his blaster holsters. “I would very much like to show you-”
It’s when his thick fingers are already halfway undoing the laced cord fastening of his tight pants, and he’s quite literally two seconds away from shoving them down his legs, I find my voice.
“Az, stop!” I fluster, my hands held out in front of me as if he were about to unleash a weapon.
And considering his size… maybe he was?
Az freezes, and it’s only now that I realize DJ is playing ‘Mr Boombastic’ by Shaggy in the background like his hype woman or something.
“I don’t want to see your penis right now,” I tell him.
He tilts his head, which annoyingly makes me think of a puppy dog. “Later, then? It is a good one, I promise.”
I can’t help but giggle a little bit at that. Despite my better judgment.
“It’s just you were looking at-” Az gestures with his hand to his general crotch area. “And I just wanted you to know that anytime you want to-”
“Yes, thank you for the very kind offer, but I will decline right now.”
“Right,” he says, rubbing at one horn, still looking a little perplexed. “But, you definitely were looking at-”
“Yes! Yes,” I admit. “I was flirting, but what I really meant-” my words falter, and my face feels like it’s on fire. What did I mean? “Who did you want to introduce me to?” I ask, changing the subject and wrangling it back to the whole reason Az is knocking on my bedroom door this evening.
He narrows his eyes at me for a moment and then bends to pick up his gun holsters, buckling the main one around his waist and then a secondary one around his thickly muscled thigh.
“Why do you even carry those guns around?” I ask, trying to distance myself from our previous conversation even further.
He looks up at me through his lashes, a strand of his dark hair hanging down in front of his eyes so artfully, I can’t quite believe it just does that without a stylist or something.
He looks like a male model… if male models were freakishly strong, tall, had horns, fangs, and gray skin.
“I prefer to deal with my own security instead of having guards trail me around the city.”
He picks up his shirt, but instead of putting it on, he tucks it into his pants at the hip, the bunched-up fabric hanging down so casually.
“Aren’t you going to put that back on?” I ask, trying desperately not to stare at those abs and just how broad and solid his chest is.
Az grins. “No.”
Bastard.
Before I can insist, he turns that grin toward DJ. “You heard that, too, right? She flirted with me.”
I open my mouth to argue.
Nothing comes out.
I have no defense.
“You-” I start, shaking my head, my mouth opening and closing like a fish. “I can flirt with whoever I want. It doesn’t mean anything.” God, I sound like a petulant child. Shut up, Lois!
Az interrupts my frantic thoughts by stepping closer – stepping so close, I can practically feel the heat coming off of his body in waves. He looks down at me and hooks a finger beneath my chin. “You are wrong, Lois. On both counts.”
I can feel my brows knit together, my brain so foggy and thrown off kilter from just his nearness that I’ve completely forgotten what I even said. “Both counts?” I ask, stupidly.
Az nods and makes a smooth rumbling kind of noise. “It absolutely does mean something, and you most certainly cannot flirt with any male you want. Unless…” his calloused thumb comes up to smooth across my bottom lip, “that male… is me.”
You know, past me would have thought that in moments like this I might step back and knee a man in the balls for demanding something like this. Maybe launch into a TED Talk about personal autonomy. Or, I don’t know… burn my bra and start a feminist revolution?
Instead, I’m standing here like putty in this huge man’s hands.
I swallow, and I think he feels the sensation on the backs of his fingers because the next thing I know, he’s gently stroking my throat with his knuckles. His movements are small – tiny, really – I’d barely notice the touch if I weren’t so… utterly focussed on him right now.
Az’s lips part, his pupils blown wide as he watches himself touch me. But it’s not just any touch, is it? Especially not for a Xaviann. They’re very prudish when it comes to necks and-
Yeah – there’s that hint of fang that somehow makes my pulse race in my ears.
“You should be wearing a collar,” he says, his voice almost sounding like he’s hypnotized, and his knuckles continue the tiny, gentle strokes on my throat.
“Your collar?” I ask. Az sucks in a sharp breath, his fingers stilling.
I know he didn’t mean it like that. He meant a general cover-up like the many lace pieces I have stuffed in one of my drawers.
I don’t know why I even said that. I don’t want a bride collar.
I don’t want a contract at all, and certainly not with Az.
He must see something in my features – I don’t know, panic, maybe? – because he pulls his touch away and clears his throat.
“Come,” he commands, walking past me to my door. “I would like to introduce you to my ladies.”
I stand there a moment, utterly dumbfounded. “Your what-now?” I ask, looking around the room as if it could give me an answer, before scurrying after the big, stupid, sexy idiot.