feel ten times a fool when I wake out of a miserable sleep and find the noli has worn off. Kim is moving around in her kitchen, deliberately not looking over at me. There is a fresh wet cloth on my brow and one on my groin, which feels achingly raw.
All of me does, actually.
And I am ashamed. As the noli pushed its way through me, I confessed everything to her just so I could lick her small human hand. I told her about paying the bounty hunter. Told her about my hunger for her. Instead of falling upon me with gratitude, she looked at me as if I was sick-minded and left the room.
I suppose I have not made a good impression on her. I stretch and get to my feet, my trou full of half-dried seed. The moment I stand, the chair splinters under me and the cuffs snap, freeing my arms.
Right. I was pretending to be captive.
Kim looks over at me with that. Her mouth flattens as she stares down at the remnants of the broken chair. She thinks for a moment. “You could have left the whole time, couldn’t you?”
I rub my wrists, wondering if she will scream and hide now. “I…wished for you to feel safe.”
She just shakes her head. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of this.”
I think it is rather obvious, but it is clear humans do not think the same as praxiians. “Ask your questions of me. I will try to answer them.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” I try not to scowl. Is she being deliberately vague? She and I really do need to learn how to communicate. “Why did I pay the bounty hunter to bring me instead of a stranger?”
“That’s a good place to start.”
“Because you are far too trusting. You paid her upfront for her services without any kind of guarantee. You do realize that most pay a bounty hunter only when the job is complete?”
“O-of course.” Her cheeks flush red. “Of course I knew that.”
I don’t point out that she paid her far too much, too. We are both treading on brittle ice, her and I, and I don’t want her to grow insulted again. Not when she is finally talking to me and looking at me. “You paid her, and I did not trust who she would bring back to you. So I paid her to take me instead.”
“But…I thought you hated me. I thought you wanted me dead.”
“Why would I want that?” I am genuinely puzzled. “I have tried to court you.”
“Court me?” She huffs a laugh and gestures at her surroundings. “You dropped dead things on my doorstep, you jizzed on my house. Do you not realize that sort of thing is utterly fucking terrifying to a human?”
“Fucking?”
“Keffing,” she shouts. “Fucking is keffing.”
“Is it keffing or is it terrifying?” Her language is very confusing.
She puts her palms over her eyes, as if trying to compose herself, and takes a deep breath. “No one is keffing anything.”
I shift in my seed-filled pants uncomfortably. I have to admit she is right. My cock feels like a big bruise after the night I’ve had. “You…did not know I was courting you?”
“No!”
“Ah.” I try to see it from her perspective. A stranger…using her door for sexual purposes. And leaving corpses on the step. “Oh.” Huh. Perhaps it does seem alarming from a human perspective. “I did not realize I was frightening you.”
She lets out a wobbly little laugh. “Terrified me, actually.” She leans against the counter, and her lip quivers, and she looks as if she might cry. “I was so scared someone was trying to kill me that I hired Bethiah to kidnap me a nice husband. And I got you instead.” She gestures in my direction. “And now I’m screwed.”
“Screwed…?”
“Fucked. Keffed. Whatever.”
I hesitate for a moment before I ask, “You are not referring to copulation when you say that, are you?”
“No.” Laughter bubbles from her lips and then she collapses in place on the floor, the tears I was so worried about streaming from her eyes. “And now I have no savings, no husband, and I poisoned my neighbor. I’m doomed.”
I watch, awkwardly, as she buries her face in her hands and sobs. This is not what I wanted. I wanted Kim to fling her puny human arms around me in delight. I wanted her to scratch my chin and stroke my tail and tell me how excited she was to have such a big, strong mate to