just killing him to have this conversation, this guy probably eschews feelings and all conversations involving said feelings—he gives me a chin jerk. “Yes.”
“Makes sense that you’re nervous.” I feel a little pang, because if Bash wanted to keep me forever, he wouldn’t be worried about bonding, right? But it doesn’t mean he won’t want to someday. I need to play this cool. Just like Earth, no guy wants to get locked down after one kiss. Plus, he said he had a bad experience. Of course he doesn’t want to get bonding-hitched without road testing this a little further first. That’s fair, right? Right. Chill out, Isla, you’re being crazy. “Everybody talks about it. Bonding, when Rakhii find a woman they connect with in a special way, I mean. But all right then, I can make this really simple for you. We can just have sex. I’m going to amaze you with my ability to do friends-with-benefits.”
If possible, Bash actually tenses up even more. Very, very low, and very, very quiet, so quiet I’d have missed hearing him if I wasn’t staring at him so hard, Bash asks, “What?”
I shrug. “No expectations. No,” I make quotes with my one hand’s fingers, “‘bonding.’” He gets to his feet, towering over me. “We can just fuck,” I finish, feeling weird saying the word. It feels crude coming out of my mouth, and with him standing above me all imposing, it makes me blush to say it. Even though it basically describes the commitment depth of every relationship I’ve ever had.
An arrow couldn’t pierce me more sharply than Bash’s reply: “Isla, I don’t want to fuck you.”
There’s a Rakhii word, tevek, that pretty much translates as fuck. But that’s not the word Bash uses. To hear him say my word, this word, in his thick accent—and to stay it so stonily and disapproving?
I die inside. I actually feel little petals on my inner sunflower shrivel up and fall. And they don’t float down to the bottom of my stomach like fall leaves leaving trees. They drop like stones.
“Uh,” I say, blinking rapidly. “Oh, I’m—I’m sorry, I misread—I thought—”
Bash’s hands wrap all the way around my upper arms, his smallest finger reaching the sensitive skin of my elbow on my full arm, and his thumbs touching my shoulders, his hands are so broad. His teeth gleam like a Colgate commercial’s dream—if Colgate hired fanged aliens, that is. And his eyes spit fire as he glares down at me. Which is ironic, because he looks like he wants to literally spit fire.
Concerning, when he actually can.
“Do you know why I hate humans?” Bash asks, voice a dark rasp.
Embarrassed, hurt tears at his rejection are trying to slam tiny pickaxes into the backs of my eyeballs, so I’m blinking like someone’s blown dust in my face to keep the moisture from betraying my feelings. “Uh, no.”
So much for hiding how I’m feeling and trying to save my pride. I manage two words without bawling but my voice cracks and crackles like a Sun Chips bag.
(Seriously. There is no stealth-handling a bag of Sun Chips. You want to sneak ‘em, you can forget it. It’s like the manufacturer made their sacks a beacon for chip-lovers. All chip-lovers know what that crinkly racket is.)
Even as he scowls down at me, Bash’s eyebrows draw together. It seems like he’s trying to parse out the change in my voice as a distant process, struggling because he’s so fueled by his sudden, unexpected anger. “I hate humans because they remind me of Gryfala. I hate Gryfala because they love their hobs, but they only love to sample Rakhii.” Bash’s nose, covered in very small, smooth, roundish scales, brushes the tip of mine as he grits out. “They love their hobs—they’ll fuck a Rakhii.”
The word sounds extra ugly coming out of his throat now. My throat is too tight to speak, and my heart has shriveled to the size of a bleeding raisin. My chest tries to force out, “Oh,” but since my throat won’t work, the sound gets trapped, humming there until I can clear it enough to manage, “I meant something else.”
Bash keeps on. “You’ll recall that I shared with you how I’ve been kept by a Gryfala before. I’ll save you the sordid details of how she crushed my hearts—”
“Oh, Bash,” I say softly. Sadly.
“—but she amazed me with her ability to be nothing more than… ‘friends’ with benefits,” he drawls, his eyes incandescent with emotion. “I told her