“Is your desire to listen a prerequisite to hearing commands? Since you don’t seem to know this, I’ll inform you that it’s not. Now come here.”
“No.”
“Isla,” Bash warns, his tone turning more flinty. “I am the master here—”
I groan and drop my head back on my shoulders. “You are on such a power trip with that!”
Bash moves so that he’s crowding me, his heat an intimidating wall at my spine, which means our eyes connect because he’s looking down at my face. He’s all scowly, of course. “I want you to follow me and do as I say,” he informs me. Then his gaze flits around my face before he takes a breath so big, it makes the scales I can see above his shirt collar spread wider as his chest and throat expands. “Please.”
“Earlier, you didn’t want me so much as touching your hand. You shook me off like I was a bug, so,” I spin around, moving back a step and glancing pointedly at his hands. “I’m surprised you want me with you at all.”
Bash’s head cocks slightly, like he’s processing information. “Was taking my hand in yours an idle touch for you?”
“It’s a friend thing. Friends can hold hands,” I inform him of something he should already know. “Are you aliens really that different with this?”
Bash stares me down. “Here, a male takes a female’s hand to show interest, to claim, to comfort, to bond.”
“Well, we—and by ‘we’ I mean humans—can mean all of that too.”
“But you didn’t,” Bash grates softly, and I start to get the feeling I wasn’t the only one who got slightly hurt back there when I took his hand. I mean, he rejected me by dropping our connection, but now I’m thinking he thought he had a reason. He dropped my hand in reaction to his feelings being hurt.
It’s a revelation for me.
He continues speaking, almost explaining, I think, and he even manages to toss in another order. “When you took my hand, it was not an idle touch to me. You don’t intend to become my mate. Don’t palter with me.”
“It can be a friendly gesture, where I’m from. And Bash, I would like to be your friend.”
“Friend,” he repeats, carefully. He scans our surroundings and grits his teeth. “Come with me,” he orders again.
When I don’t immediately leap to follow him, he tips his horns to me like someone would shrug and say, ‘O-kay then.’ He turns, stalks to the woman closest to me, and takes her by the arm. “You’ll do. You’re near the same size.”
She looks absolutely terrified. “I was working! I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“Yet,” Bash tells her. “You haven’t done anything wrong yet.” Smoke curls up in front of her face as he emits a slow exhale. “And if you start your infernal weeping, I start beating hobs.”
Three hobs nearby—all laden down with huge rocks—sigh. One of them looks super worried. Not for himself but for the poor woman in our angry alien boss’s clutches.
“Waaaaait,” I call, resigned.
Bash stops, but only turns his head enough that he can see me out of the corner of his eye. “Are you going to follow me this time?”
I jog over to him and tap his fingers where he’s holding the very scared-looking woman. “Let her go.”
Bash’s imperial green gaze bores into mine. “If I release her and you don’t follow, I’ll collect another.”
“I’ll go with you,” I mutter. “Good gravy, you’re nuts.”
He opens his hand, and the woman could not trip away any faster. She sends me a worried but grateful look as she retreats.
Warily, I eye Bash. “Why do you want me to follow you?”
“If I could tell you and be finished then I wouldn’t waste time taking you with me, now would I?”
“You really are a jerk.”
Bash’s ears go all wonky for a moment before he shakes them out, and I get a small kick out of the idea of him getting a brain full of pink fluffy platypus every time he hears the word jerk. I am so going to say it more often, completely randomly, just to amuse myself.
CHAPTER 13
ISLA
“Let me see your hand.”
Reluctantly, all wariness, I show Bash my hand. I’d followed the grouchy alien a moment ago because he told me to. I figured if he was stopping me from getting work done, it must be important. He led me to a little set up that sits about midway in the quarry that I’ve seen but hadn’t yet investigated.