because they all make noises about how awesome it is, I ask Callie to show me some Pilates. Every time I’ve tried it at the compound, I arrived late, which always ended up with me seeing the more complicated half of the sessions. ...Which resulted in me trying one pose, failing, and hightailing it out of the room. I did the classes a disservice: Callie is a good teacher, and Pilates is surprisingly fun when I finally give it a real chance.
My hand is planted on the mat near my face, my neck is relaxed, my legs are straight out, my navel is sucked to my spine and my derrière is in the air. My muscles are pleasantly warm. Pleasantly stretched. I’ve heard girls whimpering about how painful some of the moves are and that was previously my experience—but Callie started me off with easy stretches. Told me to take my time. This one feels nice. It does feel relaxing.
“Um, Isla?” Callie says.
“Hmm?”
“I’m gonna go. We’re all—going.”
I raise my head. “What? Why?”
Before I can fold my knees to straighten, my hips are caught from behind.
I curl my neck to look under my arm and my gaze collides with my hot mate. Bash’s eyes have darkened to pure black.
Everyone is filing out of the building in a mad rush.
“Well, hello,” I tell him. And I wiggle my hips until my chastity lock clanks against my belt.
Bash grabs his own belt—just a regular leather one to secure his pants—and he rips it free of its two-pronged teeth and tears his fly down.
“I like the stretches Callie taught me,” I share.
Jerking my dress up, Bash agrees. “So do I.”
CHAPTER 45
ISLA
ONE MONTH LATER…
Our houses are done. A couple of them, anyway. We’re in one now, the one owned by Crispin and Laura. Laura has wrangled everyone who knows how to cook—and everyone who wants to play taste-testing guinea pig. She and Crispin are in charge of the actual feast itself, and they’re blending local dishes with human cuisine… using primarily alien ingredients. It’s gonna be interesting.
We’re expecting thousands of planet citizens to attend our feast’s location—and not only hobs and Rakhii. We’re also expecting some Gryfala, and this has caused no end of stress for the hobs, who worry about the selective taste buds of the females of their species and also because they’re gearing up to break up violent clashes. Apparently, hobs have to be hyperalert to make sure the aggressive gender doesn’t get close enough to each other to fight.
Crispin and Laura make a capable team, and not only where cooking is concerned. They played a significant part in planting crops in this region as well as spearheading this sector’s harvest itself, including where all the gathered goods get allocated. A lot of it goes to storage, some goes to market, and the rest is what we’re going to party with in grand fashion.
And it. Is. Grand.
“What IS this?” I moan around the strange-looking egg beater that got shoved in my hand. Beside me, Bash is holding my beater’s match, only with less enthusiasm, and such a serious load of distrust that he hasn’t tasted what’s on his yet. He’s eyeing me licking the brown sticky confection off of the metal blades like I’m nuts for gobbling up brown sticky goo when I don’t actually know what the brown goo is.
“It looks like fecal material,” he murmurs like he’s trying to gently warn me away from it.
“Stop it! It’s not!”
“You don’t know that,” Bash insists, his whisper more of a worried hiss.
Laura laughs. “It’s not, I swear.” Her voice fills with a little pride. “And I’m glad you like it, Isla. That’s whipped dark chocolate mousse.”
Something I’ve totally heard of back home but apparently never tried. I’d have remembered this, believe me. “Oh my goodness, how is it that I’ve never tasted this before?” I gasp, dragging my tongue up the egg beater’s length passionately enough to make Bash’s ears stand straight up.
Bash reaches out and plucks my beater from my hand, and gives it a tentative taste. Shaking my head at him, I take his untouched one and go to town on it. If he’s afraid to try it unless my tongue’s approved it, that’s fine. I’ll be his taste tester anytime.
“If you tried it on Earth,” Laura says, “It probably tasted a bit different on account of the cream coming from different animals. Speaking of which, we’ve got to find an easier source of dairy. You tried milking a yanak