if we get you a pet?”
“It needs to be people.”
“What if we collect many pets for you?”
“I still need to socialize with people. You really didn’t know this about me? This is not new. Why do you think I talk so much? Notice how I talk to everybody?”
Bash’s sexy-lids are gone because his eyes have grown wide again. So wide. You’d think I just revealed that I need to supplement my diet by eating live kittens, or drink the blood of a dozen weeping women. Actually, he probably wouldn’t mind the second option. Heck, he’d collect them for me. I better never throw that out there as a joke. He orders, “Repeat what you’ve just uttered.”
“I need to mingle. Talk with people. Interact. With more than just you. A. Lot.”
“No.”
I snort. “What do you mean no? Bash, this is how I am.”
His horns slice the air for how violently he shakes his head. “Can you be fixed?”
Unbidden, my lips tug up into a grin. “You want to cure me of my preference for socializing?” Not because he begrudges me an enjoyment of other people, but because he hates other people so badly he can’t comprehend how this isn’t an affliction for me. “This isn’t a disease. It makes me happy.” I shrug. “I like talking to people. I like interacting with them.”
“But why?”
“Because I like people. To you, it probably seems weird and unfathomable—”
“Yes.”
I pat his cheek affectionately. “Stop freaking out. Just think about it, okay?”
He shudders and clenches his eyes shut.
“Aww.” I stroke along the length of his ear, making it flick when my fingers reach the tip of it. When I move to drop my hand, Bash catches it and covers it with his, making me pet his ear more.
After a moment of this, I can’t help but give him a tiny, tiny wry smile. Which he doesn’t see, because his eyes are still squeezed closed. “Are you going to make it?” I ask.
He sighs.
“You’re so cute when the idea of people scares you, by the way.”
He growls.
“Do you still want to see my panties?”
His eyes open.
My smile grows. “That’s a yes.”
Steam warms my face as he exhales. To my surprise, he sets me down until my heels are touching the floor again. “It is a yes. But there are humans here now and you have worked hard to complete your workday. You should enjoy your after-hours filling your interaction quota.”
I tip my head one way, then the other. “That’s a good way of visualizing it.”
His tail strokes my leg once before he takes a step away. He nods down to me. “Rejoin your people’s herd.”
“Thanks for your permission.”
He nods again, either missing my sarcasm or ignoring it. With Bash, it’s a little hard to tell which.
He folds his arms and slowly eases back until his shoulders look like they’re leaning against an invisible wall. He’s too far away from the real wall for him to be supported by that, I think to myself, until I hear the twin thunks of his horns coming to a stop.
They’re what’s propping him against the wall, the tips keeping him from having his shoulders against it like a normal person would or could. Having lived with a huge set of horns for a large part of his life though, he’s neither surprised nor concerned. When there’s no space behind his horns, this is what a Rakhii deals with when he wants to lean back and wait for his woman.
When he notices that I’m watching him instead of frolicking with my people, he raises his brows in inquiry.
I tip my head towards everyone on the mats. “You know, if you wanted, you could dance with us. I’d get my extrovert card filled, and you’d have fun with me.”
Bash scoffs. “Dance? With humans?”
He says this like Dance? With vegetables?
I get an image of Bash doing a jig between rows of carrot tops and cabbage heads. That’s pretty much how he views most people, I think.
“All right,” I tell him. “Give me five minutes.”
“I still don’t know what minutes are,” he grumbles. “It seems like such an inconsistent term. Your people use the word ‘minute’ to describe everything from a moment to half of a day.”
I move forward to give him a hug—which makes him stop bitching and hug me back. When he lets me go, I head for the group on the mats and spend fifteen minutes doing some dance moves with Callie and Jonoh and Mandi and Laura after some light stretching.
And