her foot) and move my gaze to her face. “So. What’s a pretty alien like you doing on a planet like this?”
Dammit, Matt, quit thinking of her as pretty.
Ha ha, Matt. You’re a dreamer.
I shove a stick of gum into my mouth, and hold one out for her, not looking at her as I finish castigating myself. Don’t tell her she’s pretty, dipshit. You’re going to freak her out. Don’t make her feel threatened, or I’ll have to kick my own ass.
Inara answers my question like she’s not having the same kind of internal battle I am. “I’m here for…” her eyes slide to me. “Reasons.” She follows my lead, unwrapping the gumstick and folding it into her mouth. She glances around automatically for a waste receptacle, I assume, but I know this room well. The building doesn’t offer one here. I snatch the wrapper from her, ball it up, and shove it in my pocket with mine.
An action she watches with a strange amount of intensity.
Then I lean into my grip on the machine’s handles, feeling the stretch all the way up my shoulders. “Oh yeah. Reasons. That’s why I hop in my spaceship and get hired to play a human first thing.” I squint at the wall—and then I pan the squinted look over to her.
She makes a thumping sound in her nose and smiles. “I was the only female whelped in a litter of eight—”
I whistle low. “Damn.”
She bobs her horns, like a nod. “Just so. All of my siblings are males. We are Rakhii,” her ever-so-slightly Roman nose goes up in the air a little, a proud look, “a fierce collection of beings unique to my home planet. Males do travel offworld—frequently, they are known to travel offworld—but for the most part, they live and die on home soil. My brothers travel all the time, yet most of them return to den in our homecave, or they’re home so often, they may as well consider themselves living there. Eventually, males are supposed to leave. Find mates. Get their own lives—and keep their snouts out of mine. But only three of my brothers have done this. And one of them was Tahmoh!” she adds miserably.
“That’s bad?”
She turns imploring, bewitching eyes on me.
Nope. You don’t get to call her eyes ‘bewitching’ either. It’s a sexy word and you know it. BEHAVE, MATT.
“He’s the most easy-going brother I have. If any of them were to remain at home with me, he would be the brother I would select. Never the other four.”
“Why haven’t the other four left?”
She purses her—
(Can I say wholesome and make myself believe they are?)
—lips. Her full, slightly shiny, scaly, and wholesome lips. “My mother feeds them too well, for one thing,” she gripes. “And they haven’t found mates yet. So they believe it’s their duty and their business to interfere with my efforts to find a mate. I haven’t just been protected, Matt—”
My body shudders to hear her say my name. She’s nearly groaning it, such is her turmoil over this topic.
“I’ve been smothered,” she finishes.
And I stop thinking sex-thoughts (finally, Thank God), because it genuinely guts me that she sounds so sad. “Aww, sweetheart, sounds like they just care about you—”
She tosses her little horns and her eyes go very wide. “Yes, they do, and yes, I know this—but you don’t know what it’s like.”
I can see she’s really firing up about this, and it won’t hurt me at all to agree, because she’s not wrong. “You’re right. I don’t know what that’s like.”
I happen to be on the other side of the fence in these situations. I should probably text my sisters with an apology. I wonder if they’ve griped about me doing this to them. Heck, they might have griped to me about such things. Sounds familiar.
“I grasp that they care for me. They really do, and of course I love them for that. But after I was abducted—”
“Whoa.” My hand is up, giving her a halt motion that must be clear on any planet, or despite the unfamiliar sign, she’s still reading me loud and clear because she stops speaking and comes to a complete stop on her treadmill. So do I. “Come again?”
She frowns, her forehead scales tugging towards the center of her face. “What?”
I motion politely for her to back up. “You said you were abducted? I’m gonna need more information on that.”
She makes a scoffing, growling noise. It’s almost cute. My lip wants to twitch. But she just