if I let you take your verbal cap off, you'd run out of steam eventually, surely—”
“You have inflatable tires here?!” she dares to marvel. “Like ours?”
I turn an incredulous, offended look on her. “Female, it sounds like you barely have the beginnings for airships. How dare you ask if we've invented mere inflatable tires, you primitive-societied twit.”
She snickers until I raise my tail, threatening to strike her.
Suddenly, it feels as if we have every eye on us, everyone making sure I don’t bring my limb wailing down on a female.
They needn’t worry. Where Isla is concerned, I never would, but there’s blessed silence for two trips to the rock wagon and back.
Then Isla puffs, “For a primitive society, where I’m from,” she heaves another rock into the wagon bed, “we at least have figured out how to use explosives to break up the rock.”
I send her a raised brow. “We use explosives as well.”
“Oh.” There is another welcome silence between us for several moments. Then: “All right, I give up. Why are you beating the rock to death by hand if you can just push a button? Kachow—it’s busted up.”
“It’s beat the rock or bring my foot down on every human here—‘catch cow,’” I copy her strange alien phrase, “they will all be ‘busted up,’” I tell her.
She blinks, perhaps uncomprehending.
Nervously, a hob named Wirav—one of Gracie’s downtrodden minions—leans near her to whisper, “It’s thought that Bubashuu would be less inclined to destroy humans in a rage if he tires himself working rock all day by hand.”
Isla makes a drawn-out, “Ahhh,” noise. “Probably a good call.”
I place my chisel on a fissure of stone and bring my mallet down. As the rock makes a slicing break, I profess, “It was. Otherwise, I’d have rampaged through all of you.”
We work until I can smell Isla. Until her scent is drifting to me over all of the other human stink. Hers though is not unpleasant. Alarmingly, it’s quite the opposite. Citrus, I decide. Some type of alien citrus is her scent. And while many of the humans smell somewhat like me due to the application of my saliva over their wounds—a fact which would unsettle any Rakhii, having his scent on females who weren’t his mate—I don’t unconsciously bristle to scent myself on this human.
It’s pacifying a long-buried yearning.
Hmm. Pacifying may be a stretch. My instincts are urging me to take this woman and finally, finally quench my lifelong desire to have a mate.
Something I vowed to myself I would never require. I don’t need anyone. After the broken mess I was in after my last attempt at securing a mate, I learned to find peace in my own company, and be glad for it. Definitely not to burn for something more.
Yet… I can feel that yearning calling to me.
I clamp down on the craving and bellow an immediate halt to the workday. It’s been my custom to shore up human morale by telling them I’ve grown sick of having them underfoot and ordering them away until the morrow. Today though, my earlier feelings of contentment make my bugle almost placid. I don’t even feel like cursing the males who sired this lot. I don’t wish them well, but I don’t chase them out of my quarry with my customary aggravation either.
Of course some of the humans notice. Especially Gracie’s little pack. When I cut my gaze their way, they all straighten from where they were huddled, whispering. They’re thick as bandits, that bunch. I send a growl their direction to get them scampering. (Although that iron-hearted Gracie only saunters away, uncowed, daring to smirk at me.) Their males, including Gracie’s mate Dohrein, give me warning looks, ones I ignore.
“Baaaash! Buuuubaaaashuuu…”
My eyes cut to a lone female by the stone steps that lead out of the canyon. It’s Isla.
She raises her arm and waves with ridiculous exuberance. At me.
Itching scores the top of my tongue as pleasure bumps, more of them than earlier, break over it.
While I’m soundly cursing this development, without my conscious permission, my tail waves back.
From across the canyon, Isla beams at me.
My tail coils around itself in idiotic bliss.
And alarmingly, when she turns to leave, I just barely manage to check myself from following her. I turn a hard scowl on my feet and direct a blistering kick at my happily wagging tail.
CHAPTER 7
BASH
The next morning, I’m waiting. Watching. I’ve seen all the humans struggle in their early days of labor here. I expect Isla’s muscles to pain